by Neal Goldy
Some men had to stop and rest, coming back up a few minutes later, but most continued until the final steps. At the end they were met with a door to the top of the De Angelo building. The paint on the door had been cracked, nobody taking part in adding new coats to make it better. These days nobody cared about doing anything – only work mattered, doing your job.
“Should we go in?” asked one man.
Lincoln laughed. “’Course we’re going in,” he said. “D’you really thinking that, by going up all these steps and taking all that time, we were gonna back down now? You must be blowing your nuts out.”
Other men laughed along with Lincoln. They took no shame in it.
But their laughter stopped, cut off like air supply. Someone had shot on the other side.
“What the –?” said one man.
Lincoln quieted everyone down. He did not do it in the harshest of manner for fear of others hearing him. Who knew what kind of people were on the other side? Only the people themselves knew; everything else was unknown.
Georgie mouthed, “Should we barge in?”
“No,” Lincoln mouthed back. “Just wait.”
So they did. Everyone else backed out making space for Then Officer Now Chief Lincoln. His left ear was pressed against the middle-aged metal blue door.
He heard voices, many voices. Old and new, aging times and new times, young and old, cunning and sweet – Lincoln heard the voice of the world inside, wrapped in a teasing box.
What were they saying? Lincoln strained to hear, but achieved the same result. Surely they were on to something, right?
And then, out of all the nonsense: “They’re coming, you know.” Pure English prowling through like shining light in darkness.
It was time. One order and Lincoln n’ his men barged through like red bulls rampaging through fences. They never felt the fences when they crashed.
Pandora’s Box had been recreated into a full life-size room. Minimal in its visual standards, it appealed to Lincoln that sense of curiosity that plagued man for eternity. Four doors stood like advanced beings on every face of the wall. He thought there were four until he looked up and found a fifth on the ceiling. The room was made of glass: every face including the floor in which Lincoln and his men stood.
D.! PAUL MCDERMOTT!
Lincoln’s thoughts leaped like flying fish. The old detective had entered through one door, Paul McDermott going in another, and a ragged man wearing a white wig from the 1700s jumping into the scene. What was going on?
All the glass from the Pandora Room (which was what he called it from now on) melted away. Of course glass didn’t melt, but here it did, it was possible. Guns poised everywhere from all men, including those who followed Lincoln up here. Everybody shot, including a lady with a little girl beside her. How did they –
*****
Bullet hit flesh. D. hit like no other.
His vision was blood-caked without anything else. The room shattered, it rocking tremendously like some insane amusement park ride. The blinking rate engaged him far more than what the maximum could intend. His leg appeared to his crazed vision demented and cruel-looking. Half of his brain, he assumed, had been struck by lightning if that were the case.
Winnie had been shot, too. He felt it rather than saw it. Poor girl had only wanted her older brother back, her one comfort. This was old detective D. assuming the girl had been grieving for her brother this long in the game and not some follicle of the truth.
A long, towering shadow bloomed above him. God was not here to save him now. D. was left alone in the dark like humanity had been since the beginning.
“Dear,” said Lake coming into full view, “I have been waiting.”
D. crawled back, a child, until he faced a corner. All of this was done in the child-like manner of running away from angered parents. But, of course, Lake came forth, the dominant opponent. Tiny little pawns never lasted long, anyway.
“Do you see now?”
“Where’s McDermott?” Stretching his neck to the left and right, D. searched for the missing son. “Where’s Paul?”
“He’s fine. No need to worry.”
D. was bitter in tone. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I did, D. You just didn’t figure it out yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Lake laughed, not saying anything at all.
“Tell me!”
“You are such a child, D.,” said Lake. “I wonder why they chose you.” Laughing again, he cleared his throat. “That’s right, because they didn’t choose you.”
The old detective noticed that the ex-police officer hadn’t been harmed. In fact, the only thing wrong with his image was the ragged clothes he wore, but even that looked fitting. “They didn’t choose me? You mean the police?”
Lake nodded.
“Then who?” the old detective demanded.
“I,” he said. “I did, dear.”
The realization of the whole thing sunk deep into D.’s skin like a vaccinated needle, sharp until the point. He swallowed the truth long and hard. “It was you?”
“It was you, yes,” said Lake. “Sounds incredible, doesn’t it?”
The thoughts of before came rushing back. “But – the two letters – both of them were mismatched.”
“Yes. They are.” His smile tugged forward. “Keep going, you’re getting there.”
“The case wasn’t real.”
Around him, for the first time, everything had frozen in place. No one could go where time needed them to. D. wondered if that was from the mischievous hands of Lake.
“Yes, of course, D.! The case never existed to begin with!”
“And the other detectives before... Darren Will...” He shuddered at the thought of the detective who was the image of worship, his worship.
“All of them, fake. Well, I wouldn’t use the word ‘fake’ in that kind of sense for it might bring some misunderstanding of a sort. A better word, I think, might be ‘fictionalized,’ how about that?”
But D. had no idea, the poor child.
“Still unsure?” teased the ex-police officer. “Not a problem. Lemme explain it small and simple.” He crouched down so that, when looking into old detective D.’s eyes, they lined up together. Lake grinned. “Come to think of it, you may just be the first detective on the job.”
“I’m the first in finding the case of McDermott’s disappearance?”
“It’s the truth.”
D. turned back as if the other investigators before him were behind, former past lives in a circle. “But the other detectives...”
“None of them were given the job, D. Understand that.”
“They were all a lie?”
“Not a lie specifically. I tend to think of it more like they were made up names – all except for Will, that is – and given false ones for quitting the job and/or death.”
Hitting the wall, old detective D. slumped down. Everything was fading... was he dying?
“Help me,” he muttered. “I think I’m dying...”
“You are? Dear me, somebody needs hospital assistance.”
And the cruel man laughed.
“Did you know Advert’s dead, right?”
Did he mean the chief? “I did not know.”
“Now you know.” Lake paced back and forth. “Mark my words, old man; things will change from now on. Since my change of position into mayor of this dreaded city, you detectives will become obsolete, forever forgotten in the memory of all. In case you didn’t know (and the pun was intended, for your information), this ‘disappearing McDermott’ thing was a fake, too.”
This one did not surprise D.; he had been suspicious for some time. “The whole family?” he wanted to make sure even though the tone of his voice wavered.
“Yes, D., the whole family,” Lake assured him. “Every single one of them played their part well and achieved the goal in its entirety: to eliminate all of you.”
“All of us?” he repeated. D.
repeated a lot of things.
Lake nodded. “The police should be the only ones who take control of such cases, not poor frail men like you, barely making a penny per day. Isn’t it how all of you are? That seems to be the appropriate label for people like you.”
No comment.
Around them the scenery had changed. The once glass walls disappeared (they were already melting from before) and they were now on the rooftop of the same building. Paul was nowhere to be found. Inches away from where D. crouched was the dizzying distance of thirty stories and a thousand falls, the place where anyone afraid of heights (or falling for that matter) would shiver and wet their trousers.
“Where is Paul?” D. asked.
Lake giggled. “Paul is dead.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It is to me. Now, why don’t you put your mind to work on why Paul disappeared, and I mean really disappeared? Go on.”
The pain was coming back into D.’s veins and blood. Arms were twitching mad, screaming in mystical tones that came from the hell next door. D.’s lips jolted and rose up revealing his pink gums and filthy yellow teeth. Opposite him Lake stood, doing nothing at all. He had his arms behind his back, waiting for the old detective to react. So far nothing was happening except the old man was fighting back impulses.
“Realize, now, that Paul never existed to begin with. Realize how, after all this time, fifty years is the true number – but not from the time of his disappearance. It has been quite the fifty years since this yarn of a story began, and it will end today. The end of the story is premade and will surface in the world soon; why, it already started with Paul’s so-called return. Every single version of Paul McDermott – from child to young adult to man – had been portrayed by actors, none of those people knowing what they were doing while they were doing it. The only ones in on it were his made up family. Their roles were complex since the beginning, but they did well. Winnie, on the other hand, was a different problem. She never knew she was living her life in lies, wrapped together with a petty bow and luxuries. She will never know and will continue to live that way, thinking her brother returned and she’ll live a happy, more prosperous life. Her parents, in a way, brainwashed her, but I suppose that was my doing to make her grow up into a lie, like Mr. Truman in that fabulous TV show of his. Quite the shocking surprise, isn’t it? The darling little star of this show, but none know it as such. On another note, the police force had to be traumatized in order to make them choose you – all pieces of the story. I’m sure you know about the story map web? Yes, that one, I made that for you specifically so you would know what to expect. And yet you think this is all some kind of revelation to overcome, to bear, when it really isn’t in truth. Blinded by your own instincts, that is how you have lived that pathetic life of yours. For fortune to arise, sacrifice must be made. There you have it.”
Lake took a deep breath that reached the capacity of his lungs, then exhaling. “Never in your life had you ever felt such pain and loss of control,” Lake said, bringing forward his step. One kick had D. on the rocks, the tips of his fingers clinging to, not just the edge of the De Angelo building, but to life itself. “Few times have you seen light as bright as this.”
And there it was – here came the sun. Light showered the two men, one old and one cruel, in such a way that not even heaven could replicate the feeling. D.’s eyes saw the taste of death coming through and sure enough it really would come this time, set forth in the coming light. Slightly did his mouth open? Strangely, it tasted like hope.
“Why am I doing this?” Lake said. “I won’t tell you that. I’m saying too many things and am beginning to sound like a villain. Which isn’t my intention, I might add. I am not one to spit on with pure hatred; no, I want to help people and not hurt. You all, on the other hand, are obstacles blocking me from my true passionate goals and the bright futures to withhold.”
The old detective understood it all. This man, Lake, had truly gone into a mental breakdown. He had turned mad to the point where he thought himself a savior, hope itself glimmering in golden armor. The image of Christ and other religious idols could not compare with this new man who came from the sorrow depths of horror resurfacing into something so diabolical it might actually be true.
One second he might actually have let go. But he didn’t. Life was too pure for that. The last of his fingers slipped away, but the other hand grabbed on. Was it the light behind all the work of this nearly dead man? A mystery was a mystery, anyway.
“You truly are mad,” said the old detective, barely living and breathing. “And you will die because of it.”
“Still a child, aren’t you, D.?” said Lake. “Detectives do nothing but con people’s personal lives. You are no different. Ask me what have I done and I will tell you.”
“What have I done? I did nothing wrong!”
“Of course you didn’t. Most of your cases were late in the schedule and a far cry from complaints. Believe me, I’ve checked.”
“You have?”
“I have. Nothing different, believe me. My mission is to save people from this disaster and put faith in the police for ones who have always been frightened of them. Make the world a better place. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Yes, but not in the way you will do it.”
“Are you sure about that? I doubt your mother would want to see you this way, in such depressed a state. I spoke with her and she made that particular point very clear.”
“Y-you have?” stammered the old man. “Lake, that’s impossible for you to have talked to her.”
“Yes. Now don’t believe before I’ve finished talking that I’m your mysterious father or some nonsensical plot twist, because I’m not. But yes, I spoke with her before she died. If you die for me, make yourself disappear and never become an investigator again; you can always see the sunshine, D. Maybe you can see your mother again.”
He thought about it. Most of the blood in his body was draining low, making him barely able to stand. About now he tipped and topsy-turvied or however you say it. Life was leaving him.
He pushed Lake off the De Angelo Building. The story would never be finished in Lake’s point-of-view. Once the man fell, everything turned dark again as if nothing had happened. Had anyone else seen what he had seen, or was it all just a dream?
D. collapsed to the ground. Was he waiting to die? Death scared him, like children had been, but this was worse. Also, to add to the scenery, it had begun raining. His coat got heavier and wetter. His head rested on the roof, the bullet holes punctured into his chest with legs no longer sustainable. Somewhere, according to Lake, was his mother, but D. didn’t know where. She could be anywhere, he thought. As the blood left his body and nobody was there to help him (where in the hell was Paul, Winnie, Lincoln, and the rest of them--he had seen only a glimpse?) the old detective thought in long strung out sentences. Forever in he might have the pain of the strings tugging his life, but the right decision still lingered. Was Lake right? D. thought that when you die, everything becomes calm but it was anything like that. Brain damaged to the point of death, thinking was without form. Were he to be alive, the world might become a different place. D. didn’t know for sure, but at least one rational thought was kept in his mind: he was dying alone – like he feared – and he was thinking like normal.
Was Lake right?
Was Lake right?
Was Lake right?
*****
In 1945 A.T. – that stood for “alternate time,” similar to alternate realities – the P.I. Abolishment Act had been established in the city of Old Chicago Way City, the corrupt replica of what people thought of as Chicago. A precise 20 minutes later, the remaining detectives and P.I.s were murdered. All of the deaths weren’t done at once, synchronized, but it was done quickly.
Everybody believed in the new force of government, where nobody could do what they wanted. Freedom did not exist anymore (it had died before they knew it) and an old woman in a hospital had shuddered
her last breaths. She said something starting with the letter D, but nobody knew what the word meant, much like Kane’s rosebud. The world definitely was a happier place now, they guessed. Where had they been all these years? Oh wait: everybody forgot the year.
And yet even after the P.I. Abolishment Act, a strange and lone old man strolled through the streets like a ghost looking for something it had not done in its standard lifetime. Like most things, people recognized it, but never acknowledged its existence.
The End