by J. T. Warren
“Didn’t Jesus cry to God on the cross? Didn’t he ask why he had been forsaken?”
“In the Book of John, Jesus embraces his role and before dying on the cross, says, ‘It is finished.’ Let your suffering be over, Anthony. Let God take you in His arms and soothe your pain. It is time to say, ‘It is finished.’ ”
Anthony didn’t know if that was true or not what Jesus said but he hoped it was. Those three words strung together made one of the sweetest sounding phrases he could ever imagine. It is finished. Oh, how desperately he wanted all of this to be finished. The pain. The pity. The anger. The helplessness.
“What should I do?”
“Go home,” Ellis said. “Go to your family and rescue them.”
Anthony started to say something and then Ellis told him to keep God in his heart and hung up.
Anthony got back on the highway. He drove until he needed gas and then he pulled off, found a gas station, filled up, and kept driving. His mind was a blank page but all the words screaming to mark the page pushed and prodded from the other side. When those words finally broke through and he realized he did have to go home, he did have to rescue his family, he was an hour outside of Philadelphia. He parked at a rest stop and slept until dawn.
In the morning, everything was clearer.
6
Brendan was in his room adding a chapter to his tale of the Darkman (Detective Bo Blast had faced off with the Darkman in the corner of an alley only to have the villain escape in a delivery truck the driver had left idling behind a deli) when Tyler burst into his room and said he needed Brendan’s help.
“I thought you didn’t want it.” They had spoken in the kitchen nearly an hour ago.
“A small favor.”
“What happened to your hand? Sasha do that?”
Tyler hid his hand in his jeans again. “You have some imagination, know that?”
“Just like a puzzle.” That was Bo Blast’s catch-phrase. A gorgeous blonde would say how impressed she was that he’d solved the case and he’d smile and say, “Just like a puzzle.”
“Who? What?”
“Never mind.”
“I need you to distract Dr. Carroll.”
“Why?” The doc was still in with Mom and Aunt Stephanie. Mom’s crying had died off but the vibrations of voices murmured through the wall. Brendan had tried to decode it early and gave up. It was easier to write more of his story than strain to make out words through a wall.
“Knock on the door, get him to come out and talk for a minute. Tell him you’ve been having headaches or something, something requires medicine. He’ll bring that black bag with him. Then you’ve got to do some real imaginative work.”
“What?”
“Get sick.”
“As in … ?”
“Vomit.”
“I can’t make myself vomit.”
“You won’t have to. Just say you’ve been having stomach pains too and then have one, a pain so bad you have to run to the bathroom. The good doc will follow you in, leaving his bag behind.”
“If you want any drugs, he’ll write you a prescription.”
“No time. I need them now.”
“Why don’t you take Mom’s? She’s got a ton and she won’t notice.”
“I need something strong, real strong.”
Brendan didn’t bother to ask how he knew Dr. Carroll carried anything real strong with him because they had both seen the doc open that black bag a few months ago and remove a slew of prescription bottles, placing them in a line up on the kitchen table in front of Dad. The doc gave Dad the choice of whatever “line of treatment” he felt comfortable with Mom following. Dad took Dr. Carroll’s recommendation and ever since Mom had been like the barely walking dead. There was strong stuff in that black bag, one prescription so potent that Dad smirked at the bottle and asked if Dr. Carroll wanted to help her or kill her.
Brendan asked if the latter was Tyler’s intention as well.
Something passed over Tyler’s face again, not quite the cloud as before but something similar, something suggesting Brendan was right. “I’m not going to kill her. I’m trying to help her.”
It was pointless to once again offer his own services (and Dwayne’s), so Brendan didn’t say anything. He would do what Tyler wanted because Tyler was his brother and because Brendan needed him to think everything was on the up and up, that Brendan wasn’t hiding anything. Dwayne said this mission required secrecy. Brendan had tried to offer his help openly to Tyler because he knew that though Dwayne said the mission was “hush-hush,” he would applaud Tyler’s conversion to accept help because that would bring him one step closer to accepting God.
“You’ll do it?” Tyler asked.
Brendan said he would as long as he didn’t have to pretend to vomit in the bathroom for very long. There was something weird about Dr. Carroll and Brendan didn’t like the idea of having him so close in such a confined space.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “he is sort of a creeper.”
* * *
The plan worked much better than expected and the doc ended up much creepier than feared.
* * *
Brendan knocked on the door, waited for Dr. Carroll to open it—he didn’t, Aunt Stephanie did—and asked if he could talk to the doc. Aunt Steph (that nickname made her sound like a teenager) said the doctor was busy helping mommy. Brendan went all-in, saying he felt sick and might have to throw up. Aunt Steph, never a mother herself, backed off immediately and called the doc away from the crying woman on the bed. That’s my Mom, Brendan thought with a strange sort of detachment. Not that that means much anymore.
Brendan got the doc into his bedroom, started telling him about these headaches he’d been having and, while he was saying this, a headache started to take root in his head. Dr. Carroll placed a thin hand on Brendan’s shoulder; it was the hand of someone who didn’t go out much, just stayed in a basement away from the sun. Like a vampire.
“I can give you something for the pain,” he said in that nasally voice. “Would you like that?”
Tyler stood in the doorway playing The Concerned Brother. He offered a slight nod of encouragement.
“My stomach is sick, too.”
The doc bent down, more eye level with Brendan. The black in his beard might have been pieces of dirt. Brendan imagined the doctor on all fours crawling around in a garden somewhere eating weeds. The image was not funny; it left Brendan cold and actually sort of ill.
“I have to … have to go,” Brendan said, rushing the last few words to really sell the urgency.
He ran to the bathroom and the doctor followed. Brendan lifted the toilet lid and seat and stood hunched over the bowl. Dr. Carroll gently shut the bathroom door and then stood before it, appreciating Brendan. Goosebumps sprouted along Brendan’s arms. He felt naked, trapped. He was only a few feet away from Tyler and Aunt Steph but here in the bathroom, Brendan might as well have been in a different house entirely. The good doc could do whatever he wanted.
“It helps if you get on your knees,” Dr. Carroll said. “It’s safer that way.”
Brendan did, bowing before the toilet, and stared into the water, which actually started to make him feel sick, as though being in this position was a trick to induce vomiting.
The doc approached him with soft footsteps. “Regurgitation can be troublesome for many people. It is preceded by a racing heartbeat, extreme nausea, of course, and fear. The actual vomiting can be painful, especially if the sick one is dehydrated. But once it is over, most people invariably feel much better. Throwing up is a defense mechanism, designed by God to protect our bodies. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Brendan turned back to the water and then the doc’s hand was on his shoulder. “I’ll be right here next to you. Then, after you’re done, I’ll give you something for your headaches and you can sleep a while.”
How long is a while? Brendan thought of Mom.
Tyler should have gotten whatever he was after from
the doc’s bag at this point. Now all Brendan had to do was pretend the discomfort had passed and they could get out of this bathroom, but his body started to shake. The cold tile got into his legs and the subsequent chill rippled throughout his body like an electric current. He willed his body to stop shaking and that only made it worse. He grabbed the sides of the toilet bowl to stop the trembling but the bowl was cold too.
“It’s alright, son,” Dr. Carroll said. He got to one knee, very close to Brendan and then slipped his hand from Brendan’s near shoulder to his other, in effect hugging him. “Don’t fight it.”
“I’m okay.” Brendan’s voice betrayed him.
“There’s something I learned many years ago, something that has helped me through tough times.”
Brendan expected the typical adult rigamarole about enduring pain and maturing, but what he got was something so unexpected that he nearly made himself vomit just to end the awkwardness.
“The first year of medical school is tough, as you can probably imagine. There’s a lot of books to read and notes to take but that isn’t all of it. You see, the first semester of medical school is when the college tries to weed out the weak from the strong, to sort out who should really be there and who should go do something else.
“The first class you take is gross anatomy. That means it’s about all the parts of the human body. There’s fancy textbooks and large diagrams and pictures, all in wonderfully detailed color, but you can’t learn what you are truly made of from pictures in books. So, you go to anatomy lab, which is really an on-campus morgue. In fact, we medical students called it Cadaver City.
“Over the course of a semester, you dissect an entire human. You learn where the organs are, how the different parts of the body are connected. You learn more this way than you ever could through books. Besides, a doctor has to be made of sterner stuff; he has to not get sick at sea, which I’m sure you can appreciate right now.”
Is he trying to make me ill?
“These cadaver labs are run by the professors and the labs are taken very seriously. But the labs stay open late so the students can do additional work, improve their skills. People would normally go to these after-hours sessions in groups or pairs but not me. I preferred to be alone with the bodies. I liked the quiet. I liked the serenity.
“People spend much, if not all, of their lives complaining or weeping or cursing or just being loud and unpleasant. When we die, however, we are completely silent—inert. Our bodies are utterly vulnerable to the elements and to human hands, of course.
“It was during that first semester that I discovered not only did I enjoy being in Cadaver City with all those half-dissected corpses, but that I could find complete peace with them. I used to lay next to them on the dissection table. I would hold their hand, if it hadn’t been dissected yet. Sometimes I’d pet their hair, like you would a cat.”
The doc ran a hand from the top of Brendan’s head slowly down to his neck, where his fingers lightly tapped like a spider inspecting a new area.
“It’s standard that they keep the faces of the donated bodies covered for much of the semester. It’s easy to cut open arms, legs, stomachs, but most people find it particularly challenging to cut the face. It’s usually the last thing you do.”
Genuine nausea had gathered in Brendan’s gut and now he gripped the sides of the toilet harder and needed to vomit. That would stop this horrible story from this horrible man.
“In my solitary sessions, I would uncover all the faces. I liked seeing the peacefulness that Death had left there. Sometimes, I would strip naked and stand before those bodies like an equal member, only living of course. I’d lay down naked with those bodies and then I’d start cutting up their faces.
“I cried for many of them as I did it, but it got easier and easier as I went along. Stripping the skin back, revealing layer and layer of fine muscle. The human face is extremely complicated. I’d work sometimes all night and only get half a face finished. But each slice of my scalpel and every new layer of discovery was an epiphany. I wasn’t merely discovering human anatomy, I was discovering God.”
What would Ellis and Dwayne say about that? How did the psycho doc’s medical school behavior fit into God’s Grand Plan?
He sounds empowered.
And totally fucking nuts.
Dr. Carroll squeezed him with both hands, shoulder and neck. His beard prickled Brendan’s neck like pieces of dry hay. “I learned, son, that in the darkest corners of our minds there is a gateway to the illumination of the soul.” He let that piece of wisdom sit for a moment. His breath stuck to Brendan’s skin like slime. “Let that give you comfort if nothing else.”
He had to vomit, had to force out whatever was in his stomach, if anything, because he had to get out of this situation, get this weird fucker off of him and get the hell out of the house if that’s what it took.
The doc was almost on top of him, practically humping him. What if he was getting turned on? The doc’s crotch was right by Brendan’s ass; the doc could slip a hand down to Brendan’s belt buckle and then slide his pants right off. Bile came into his throat.
“Let me comfort you,” the doc whispered. “You’re a very special boy.”
Brendan couldn’t stop the tremors shaking his body. He gripped the edge of the bowl harder and imagined chunks of orange and red vomit floating before him.
“You remember when I gave you that myth book? Remember what I told you?”
It had been something about being strange and being a Greek or something.
“I told you not to worry about being weird. The Greeks would have thought you special, a gift—they would have made you a priest, a keeper of the peace between man and God. You are very special, indeed. Don’t be afraid.”
He saw maggots squirming in the chunks. Yet vomit did not usher up from his stomach. “That book is stupid,” Brendan said.
“Did you finish it?”
“I don’t need to.”
The doc’s hand gripped Brendan’s neck more tightly and then relaxed, his fingers sliding over the skin like worms. “That’s my boy,” he said.
Three thunderous knocks sent Dr. Carroll to his feet and quickly to the door. He wasn’t going to let Tyler in, no, he meant to lock the door and stay in here until Brendan finally spewed his guts or until the doc had his way with Brendan’s “dark hole,” as his friends called it. Tyler, however, had come to save the day; he burst into the bathroom and caught the doc mid-stride, arm extended toward the knob with a lost expression on his face as if he had forgotten where he was.
“My mom needs you,” Tyler said.
After a moment of indecision, Dr. Carroll told Brendan he’d be back to check on him and then went off to Mom’s bedroom.
“Sorry that took so long,” Tyler said. “But it’s done. You alright? You’re pale.”
Brendan couldn’t answer him. Was he alright? How could such an easy question be so hard to answer?
“You really sick?”
“I don’t know.”
They stayed like that for almost a minute before the grinding wine of the automatic garage door vibrated beneath them. Dad was finally home.
7
Tyler was on the phone (it was Delaney’s cell, all pink with shiny rhinestones that formed a “D” on the front) with Paul—hung over now, nursing “a bitch of a head throb”—when Dr. Carroll’s black Town Car pulled into the driveway. The short man got out of his car, that same stupid tie with pink flowers on it dangling beneath a drooping face.
“Christ, now the family doc is here.”
“You’re living in a fucked-up world these days, my friend,” Paul said.
The branded arrowhead on his hand had started to throb a few hours ago and hadn’t let up. “No shit.”
“You running out of options.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, what the fuck were you thinking last night? We were trying to send a message and you go all hero on me.”
“Stupid, I know
.” He had taken two Tylenol but it wasn’t helping with the pain.
“There are other bitches, better bitches, you can go after, fuck, and then drop if you want, ones without psycho witches for mothers. The first time, I mean, I can understand but why go back? Why?”
“You going to keep telling me what a fuck up I am or are you going to give me some advice?”
Paul snorted. “Advice? We tried that, wreck the bitch’s place—you fucked that up.”
“I don’t know. If she’s really pregnant …”
“You’re fucked.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Tyler laughed because it was better than getting more and more anxious or pissed off or even start crying. How had all of this happened? A week ago things had been, if not normal, then at least palatable, but since then he had raped and impregnated a girl who had a witch for a mother, Delaney had been killed, and Mom and Dad had checked out. And Brendan had been talking strange, too, since some religious freaks brain-washed him or something, so who knew where that would lead.
Back to the funeral home.
Paul started eating something, possibly cereal from the crunching sound. “You know what you should do,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
Paul made him wait. Even with a hangover, Paul still appreciated a good dramatic pause. His idea better not be to burn Sasha’s house down, though with Paul that was always a possibility. An honors student, a jokester, and sometimes a violent guy, Paul had once lit a book of matches on fire in the cafeteria because Ed Greene said he didn’t have the balls. Paul got one day out of school—everyone else got a two-hour fire drill.
“You should get that ol‘ family doc to give you some meds to help remedy your situation.”
Tyler was struck silent by the simplicity and, yes, the brilliance of this idea.
“You could get some really potent shit, get Sasha to help you drug her mom, make her think it’s just to get the crone to shut up for a while and then before she even realizes her mother is in some deep shit, she’s fucked, too. Ground up some painkillers or something, drop it in some champagne and you can toast to the end of your problems.”