Soul Source: Back and There Again

by Charles Vella

  Why'd he shown up? Why'd any of them shown up?

  "SLOW DOWN GODDAMMIT."

  The smell of the puke on the boy's sleeve seemed to fill the stale air in the van, sending his stomach up several inches again like a boiling pot. He pulled the ski mask higher on his head and scratched absently under it, fought to keep the cover on his stomach while the brother's nose twitched and his scowl deepened in the mirror. The boy could see him shift to try to get away from whatever was bouncing against his head, but there was nothing anchored enough to help him keep his balance. He glanced up and caught the boy's eye in the mirror. The brother quickly dropped his eyes but the boy'd seen the terror. Seen it and recognized it. The game was over. The brothers had jumped on a merry-go-round that'd gone faster and faster without them noticing and now it was too late to jump off. The veneer of the Middle Eastern streets they'd spent so much time polishing stripped off, exposing their cowardice in all its nakedness. The brothers claimed to be angry. To be anxious to strike a blow. But the boy didn't think they had the imagination to get angry at anything bigger than scoring badly on a video game. It was just a part of the costume they put on for the pennies the leader threw at their feet, like the perpetual two days of stubble on their faces.

  But the curtain had dropped on their act. The eye that'd caught the boy's in the mirror was wild with fear. The brothers rolled around as the van swung around a turn. One grabbed for something to hold on to but there was nothing but loose metal, shaking and clanking angrily at them. He went down on an elbow, painfully judging from his reaction, while the other braced himself with the two rifles like a downhill skier on a tricky slalom. Why hadn't they gotten a car? Or at least an empty van? How the hell had he ended up here anyway? Did the boy's eyes radiate that same fear he'd seen in the mirror? If they were all so scared why were they doing it? All they had to do was say no. Drive the van back and walk away. The boy could go back to feeling his way down the corridor of numbness and pain to an end that he couldn't've imagined even if he'd wanted to try.

  But somehow he knew they wouldn't. The van lurched to a stop. The boy twisted the key off. We're here.

  They froze. A terrorist diorama inside a wheeled coffin. The sudden silence made the faint crackling of the cooling engine deafening. The boy sat with his hands on the wheel staring down the alley. The brothers knelt among the plumbing fixtures chiming their way to stillness. The leader's head swiveled from one to the other of them. His eyes weren't panicked, not exactly. He stood bent at the waist, scanning the four of them like a searchlight picking out prisoners. It occurred to the boy that the leader was crazy. He wondered vaguely why he hadn't noticed it before.

  For a second they remained frozen in the van and it all tipped in the balance. Whether the boy and the brothers would go through with it, run down the alley pulling off their ski masks, or sit there dumbly until someone happened on them and dragged them all away. The spell was broken when the killer calmly opened his door and stepped into the alley. They boy looked down at the key again, but the killer stared stonily into his eye as he pulled his weapon out after him. With a deep sigh the boy let the key slip from his grasp.

  The creaking of the killer's door was like a knife tearing into the metal roof in the silence. The other doors were flung open and they were pouring out, an army storming the beach. The boy ran around the front of the van as the door in the wall of the building was flung dramatically open. Her eyes stared out into the gathering light but the boy could tell they weren't really seeing anything. He passed so close to her that they almost touched. He could have taken her. Pulled her away and run down the alley. Away from the voice screaming in his head. He looked into her eyes from inches away. Read the question in her mind. What was she doing here? What were they doing here? Why didn't it stop? The leader waited while they ran through the door. Somewhere in the fog that was the boy's brain he noticed the lack of a gun in the leader's hand. Below his lowered ski mask the leader wore a light blue polo shirt and khaki pants, same as the girl. The rest of them were all in black. The boy didn't know why. It'd probably been one of the things explained while he watched the doorway at Callaghan's.

  The boy could hear his heartbeat. Hear it clearly. Or maybe it was the chorus of all of their hearts, pounding and echoing in the narrow corridor. He doubted the killer's heart was pounding. One of the brothers leaned close to the boy's face. His mouth hung open as if he were watching a horrible accident unfold in front of him. A scream in a silent movie.

  "I shouldn't've come," and the boy was shocked to hear a human voice. A girl, not a goddess. A scared girl. She stared at them from the doorway where she and the leader stood. "They have guns." The panic in her voice was something that the boy understood. "I shouldn't've come. Oh God I shouldn't've come," she was almost wailing.

  "Get a hold of yourself." The leader grabbed her by the arms and shook. "You know what you have to do."

  In the end it was the shout that did it.

  "STOP."

  The boy heard it from inside so he couldn't see who it was. The leader's and the girl's heads whipped around and stared down the alley. The leader slipped through the door and the boy was suddenly running down the hall, following the bouncing line of heads in front of him, holding his weapon like a hard, metal snake that might erupt to life any second. Why didn't he just stop? Watch them run away? But the boy didn't stop. Just followed the bouncing heads down the empty corridor. The leader'd explained that this part of the building is used for storage. The kitchens and the morning activity are at the front. The boy could stand here until they disappeared and he'd be alone. He was still wrestling with this as they piled into a freight elevator held open with an empty cart. They stood in a loose circle, breathing like runners just over the finish line of a marathon. But this race was just at the starting line.

  *

  "STOP."

  Agnes hadn't realized that they were still in the doorway until she heard the scream from the end of the alley. A scream, not a yell. It carried anger, fear and desperation in front of the woman sprinting at them. Her eyes were locked on Agnes's with an accusation that Agnes knew she'd see in the mirror for the rest of her life.

  Pruitt stared for a second then slid through the door but the woman was almost on her before Agnes came to her senses, grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled it shut. Barely in time. The banging at the door seemed to start before she'd gotten it closed. Agnes turned and reeled back from the face up against the square of glass. The woman screamed as she pounded the metal of the door with both hands. Agnes backed away. It was a young woman, with crazy eyes.

  Agnes glanced up at the camera mounted in the corner and snapped her face back to the floor, but it was too late. The tape. She was supposed to have a mask like the rest of them but there wasn't anywhere to put it in her conference outfit, polo shirt and khakis, so she'd hidden it. She knew she had. But it wasn't there when she went to get it. How could she've looked at the camera? She stared at the floor as hands twisted her stomach into a knot like a towel being wrung out. She had to get to the console and get the tape.

  "STOP," the crazy woman screamed through the door. "YOU TRICKED ME..." the words followed Agnes down the hall and she realized she was running. Tricked me? What was she talking about? Who was she? She'd ripped her feet from the floor like young plants torn from the ground and flung herself away from the door, the crazy woman's voice trailing after her. What did she mean, I'd tricked her?

  This must be what it's like to survive a tornado or earthquake. First the fear. The anticipation. Then just when you start to believe it won't happen, it hits. Houses sucked up into the air. A door opens and the blur of masked faces blows past. A crazy woman screams. Then the eerie stillness. View the devastation around you and wonder how there can be a God. Except she couldn't blame God, could she? Not for this disaster. Only Pruitt. And herself.

  The silence of the empty corridor screamed accusations at her as she ran. The calm was a sham. A mas
k over whatever was happening a few floors away. Guns. She'd known, but the actual sight of them had ripped away the lies and rationalizations that'd gotten her this far. What would they do? It didn't take much imagination. But why? It was too late to be asking that now. What would it look like upstairs? The shock of a door swinging open on armed men. The clatter of weapons. Bodies torn apart as they tried to find refuge behind particleboard tables from metal missiles moving at the speed of sound. Why? How could she've done it? All she'd had to do was not show up to open the door and it wouldn't've happened. Couldn't've happened. The thought sat in her brain and burned white hot. Without her it couldn't've happened.

  The questions swirled in her mind mingled with her rehearsed instructions. Walk calmly down the empty corridor. The words jumbled together as she ran with everything she was worth, every step like a drum beating the realization that it was too late to stop it, any of it. That it was her fault. The crazy woman's face followed her around corners and up the stairs. Seared into her brain. A face she'd see in her dreams.

  *

  The early morning streets slid past as Mike guided his cruiser through the growing traffic. The days all run together with shift work. By the time you get back to the station and clear out it's time to come back. Seems like it anyway. Course the other side is the three days off to every four on. Rotating shifts though, that was hard. Days to evenings to graveyard and back to days. Seems like he never saw the boy. Not easy on a marriage either. Which brought him back to the same place he always ended up when he had time to think.

  Mike slid to a stop behind a car at a light. He laid a palm under his chin and worked his jaw in a circle. How'd he gotten himself into this? How could he even be considering it, leaving his wife and son? But the fact was he was considering it. More than considering it, he'd decided, hadn't he? It just wasn't there for him and Cathy anymore. And Lorraine, well he hadn't intended for Lorraine to happen. She just had. Happened and happened again. The thought of Lorraine set Mike's heart beating, but it also made him avoid his eyes in the mirror.

  That's the real problem with police work. Too much time driving in circles, alone with your thoughts. Especially days. More people around than nights but most of them were working stiffs earning a living. No time to get involved with the police. So days tend to drag by. Like yesterday, except for a memorable hour after he'd found that young woman in the car stopped in the middle of the street. What'd that all been about any...what was that?

  Mike glanced in the mirror then swung into a tight U-turn and pulled into the narrow opening between the buildings. An ancient van sat diagonally across the alley, all its doors open. A young woman ran down the alley and disappeared around the corner at the other end. He pulled up behind the van and got out. He did a circuit around the thing, thumbs locked in his belt. Doors open. Key in the ignition. What was it? Something familiar about it. He leaned into the back door. It was every beat up work van in the city, that's what. Like recognizing a cocker spaniel. Sure it's familiar. They all look the same. He looked up and saw two eyes staring through the glass square set in the door of the building. He raised his hand and beckoned with a couple of fingers. One beat. Two. The door swung open. A face popped out of the crack, a face that didn't look thrilled to be talking to a cop, but what face ever did?

  "Know anything about this?" Mike tilted his head in the direction of the van.

  "All cars in the vicinity of 111 Exchange Street..." Mike raised a hand to the guy's open mouth. That's cops all over, he read the expression on the face. Ask you a question then tell you to shut up, "...respond to possible ten-ten sierra, repeat, possible ten-ten sierra over."

  "111 Exchange?" Mike looked up at the building then back down at the face, watching him with a mixture of curiosity and fear. "That's here isn't it?"

  The head nodded. "What's a ten-ten sierra?" Mike vaguely registered the accent that probably accounted for the fear of cops as he jumped back to his car, grabbed the radio from the dash and ran to the door.

  *

  "Pull your mask down," The leader said, holding the calm in front of his voice like a blanket that was just a little too short. The boy looked into the eyes staring back at him through slits and found to his surprise that his wool cap was still perched on the top of his head. He pulled it down and stared at black. Leaned the rifle against his belly so he could twist it around.

  "Don't shoot yourself you asshole," someone, one of the brothers, hissed. The boy found the eyeholes and snatched the rifle up. It swung past their faces. They fell back wide-eyed. One of the brothers dropped his weapon. It bounced off the floor with a clatter.

  "Jesus Christ," the other brother muttered. A funny thing for a Muslim to say flitted through the boy's over-crowded brain but didn't find a foothold there and slipped away.

  "When we come out on the mezzanine," another of those English words that'd escaped the boy's education. "...I'll prop the door open." Even the imperfect calm in the leader's voice was out of place in the emotionally charged box of the elevator. His eyes played over them through the slits of his ski mask. The brothers radiated panic. Their eyes white circles behind the slits of their masks. Even the killer was hyperventilating slightly, though the boy didn't think it was from fear. "I'll be right behind you." Like most leaders he intended to lead from the rear. And the boy noticed it again. He didn't have a gun. Was the boy the only one who'd noticed? "The door will be right in front of us when the elevator opens. You know what to do?"

  Nobody acknowledged the question. The boy gripped his rifle with both hands so it pointed at his chin.

  "Be ready as soon as the door's opens," The leader said.

  This time the boy and the brothers nodded dumbly, avoiding each other's eyes. But they didn't understand. They didn't understand anything. Why were they doing this? Why didn't they stop? Where was the leader's gun? "Safeties off." The boy obediently, mechanically, clicked the button. Must have imagined the small jolt of electricity that raced up his finger and arm and set his scalp tingling.

  The leader gave one more nod and the brothers lifted their rifles and pointed them at the door. The killer's rifle was already pointed, his eyes closed. His breathing just a little labored. Like a lonely man in a dingy theater watching two naked people on a screen. The leader pushed the stop button back into place and the door slid closed. The boy stared at the leader's two hands hovering over the console, ready to override anyone trying to stop the elevator by pushing and quickly pulling out the red stop button. Something he'd evidently practiced. But it turned out not to matter. No one tried to stop the elevator.

  His hands dropped as the elevator bumped to a stop. The fluttering in the boy's stomach churned into a froth and he could taste the bitter edge at the back of his throat. He hoped, prayed, the door wouldn't open. Would be stuck. That it'd open but no one would move. That someone would ask the leader where his gun was. How he was going to join the shooting without it. He'd smile. It was all a joke. Let's just push the button, ride back down, jump into the van, drive away. The brothers stared at the vertical line where the doors met. The leader's eyes followed the boy's down to his empty hands, then rose again to lock on the boy's. Maybe it wouldn't happen. Time must be passing and nothing happened.

  "Why?" The words formed on the boy's lips, emerging as a whisper. The tiniest smile formed on the leader's mouth as the doors began to separate. His eyes were wild.

  The killer's eyes shot open. The brothers tensed on either side of him. The doors slid open revealing an open area. Empty. About ten feet in front of them stood a wall with double wooden doors. A placard on an easel read 'LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE 2012'. A few feet from the doors in either direction the wall ended into a hallway leading to the other conference rooms. They'll freeze. Ask the question. Freeze and want to know why the leader isn't armed. Why he isn't dressed like them. They'll freeze and demand answers. The boy's voice screamed inside his head but nothing broke the silence in the elevator except their pounding heartbeats. T
he boy opened his mouth one more time. Summoned up all his strength.

  "Where is your gun?" the boy croaked. But the spell was broken. The brothers darted through the doors and ran down the hallway, their rifles clattering onto the carpet behind them. The boy stared at their backs. The killer stepped into the corridor. The blasting was impossibly loud, like a giant ripping a thick piece of metal. It rang in the boy's ears as if he were inside a huge bell. The momentum of the bullets flung the brothers jerking and twitching onto their faces, a red explosion billowing out and splattering the muted wall paper in their wake as they slammed to the carpet. One of them grabbed at a small table with a flowerpot as he passed, pulling it down on top of him. There was a second of silence broken by muffled screams. The boy's skin went numb. Was he having a heart attack? His feet were rooted into the floor of the elevator. He turned back to the leader but his head was only halfway there before the shove sent him staggering backward into the hall, watching the leader's blank face disappear behind the doors sliding closed.

  The boy staggered backward, swinging his arms to catch himself, finally fell onto his back, knocking the wind out of him. The gun flew from his hand and bounced on the carpet between him and the killer, who walked slowly and deliberately over to the doors. He rolled over to his stomach out of reflex, trying to catch his breath. Muffled screams echoed up the open stairwell from the floor below and from the other side of the double doors. Behind that door were people. Innocent people. The boy watched from his knees. The killer reached out a hand for the shiny brass knob.