Maybe they were more a distance away, he hoped, watching from some superior perspective. Were they above him, perhaps, looking down on him the way a child lords over a pile of toys? Was theirs a bird’s eye view, a god’s view?
Or did they watch him from below?
Seth tightened his grip on the wheel and increased speed. It felt like the universe was slowly closing in on him, becoming smaller and more confining with each passing moment. He drew a hand across his forehead; wiped away the perspiration that had formed there then opened the window and let in some cold, sobering air.
“Madness,” he mumbled. “Fucking madness.”
Help me.
Eddie Brock strolled back across his mind’s eye, his letter jacket slung over his shoulder as he walked casually up the street. He acknowledged Seth with a slow raise of his chin then flashed Raymond a smirk.
“Hey, hold on a sec,” Raymond said, moving toward him.
Seth tried to reach out and stop him, to grab his arm and hold him there, but he was already gone, already standing in front of Eddie and blocking his way.
“Yeah?” Eddie sized Raymond up.
“That was some funny shit you did.”
Eddie smiled. “Oh yeah, what shit was that?”
“What you and your friends did to my stuff in the locker room the other day.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, dude.” He placed a hand on Raymond’s shoulder and gave him a quick shove. “Fuck off.”
Seth remembered walking toward them, remembered he had planned to say something to distract Raymond. But it all happened so fast.
With one fluid motion, Raymond removed a hand from his jacket pocket and swung it at Eddie’s head. It connected near his hairline and Eddie stumbled back a few steps, initially looking more stunned and surprised than hurt.
It was then that Seth saw a large brick in Raymond’s hand.
Eddie Brock seemed to realize this about the same time, and he blinked a few times, dazed, as the beginnings of blood began to trickle down across his face. He touched his scalp where the brick had cut him, looked at his bloodied fingers then back at Raymond groggily. “What the fuck?”
Raymond dropped the brick as Eddie’s knees gave out. He fell back onto the road, still conscious but clearly hurt.
“Jesus Christ, Ray!” Seth ran forward but Raymond had already straddled Eddie.
With one hand he grabbed his shirt and lifted him up off the ground a bit. With the other he made a fist and pummeled Eddie’s face with four or five hard punches. With each strike the blood from the head wound sprayed up into the air, and after the second punch, blood from his broken nose erupted as well.
Seth grabbed his brother and pulled him off before he could hit Eddie again.
Raymond stumbled away a bit, regained his balance and looked down at the fallen boy. “How’s that, motherfucker? Feel good?”
Seth knelt next to Eddie, held his head and told him it would be all right and not to move. A passing car screeched to a halt and the driver, an older man, got out.
He remembered screaming at the man to call an ambulance and the confused and frightened look on his face. He also remembered the blood: blood on Eddie, on him, on Raymond, on the pavement—everywhere.
Raymond’s childhood ended that day. Seth watched it die right before his eyes as his brother returned to the stone wall, sat down and waited for the police with Eddie Brock’s blood sprayed about his face and hands.
Eddie Brock spent that night in the hospital but was not seriously hurt as it turned out, his injuries having looked far worse than they actually were. But no one in town or at school ever forgot the incident, and it earned Raymond an almost mythical reputation as the “crazy kid.”
Raymond was arrested for assault and sent off for psychological evaluation as well as a brief stint in a juvenile detention facility. Upon his return, and as time went on, Raymond did as much to perpetuate his newfound reputation as anyone. The person he had been before was gone forever, and the most disturbing aspect of his transformation was that Raymond seemed imminently more comfortable in this new role than he had in his previous one.
From that fateful day forward all that waited for Raymond were stints in juvenile prisons, endless physical confrontations, drugs problems, and when he was older, jail.
A few weeks after his graduation from high school, Eddie Brock was seriously injured when he fell from a ladder while working as a house painter. He lost his balance and plummeted from a high roof to a pavement driveway below, suffering severe neck and spine injuries that left him a paraplegic to this day.
But it was the violence perpetrated against Eddie Brock by his brother that day that changed them all forever. He’d seen fights before, seen violence in many circumstances growing up, but never like that. Never before had he seen someone hit someone else with such a clear intent to seriously injure, if not kill them. That degree of violence forced him to see it for what it was: something beyond controlled teenage bravado and posturing and instead something at home in a realm where all theatrics and glamour was stripped away. In the end it was the sound of that brick striking Eddie Brock’s skull, the sound of Raymond’s fist breaking bones and the sound of blood spurting all over them both that burned its way into Seth’s consciousness. This violence was more determined, more defined. It was real, and it was abhorrent, and it made him feel like he needed to bathe, to cleanse himself of it somehow. And just as the humiliation Raymond had suffered at the hands of Eddie Brock had been worse and more personal than the typical hazing freshmen endured, Raymond’s response to it revealed an entirely new terrain of human experience, a place that until that day Seth knew existed but never suspected he’d ever have to explore personally.
Their innocence died a particularly gory death, and nothing could bring it back.
All these years later, Raymond was still paying for his sins.
We both are, Seth thought. For your sins...and mine.
Seth focused on the road as he pulled into his apartment building parking lot.
He found a space, parked and shut off the engine.
There’d been so much violence over the years, so much pain. But the violence was Raymond’s world, not his. Seth was convinced of this. He was a peaceful man, one who believed violence and anger solved nothing. He hadn’t had a physical confrontation with anyone since high school, hadn’t even come close. And yet just moments earlier he’d felt a rage so sadistic and encompassing he’d nearly attacked Peggy with a savagery he hadn’t even realized he was capable of.
The blood flashed in his mind. Eddie Brock’s blood, Christy’s bloody shirt, the blood that had leaked from his nose at Nana’s—and more blood—blood in the snow, in the moonlight, in the woods.
More recollections conveyed piecemeal struck in quick flickering bursts then dissipated, leaving only the memory of Peggy’s horrified face.
Seth dropped his head against the steering wheel, let it rest there and whispered, “What the hell’s wrong with me?”
After a moment he looked up at the apartment building looming before him. He opened the car door and stepped out into the chilly air.
It was time to find out.
CHAPTER 18
“Where the hell you been?”
“I was at the hospital until late.” Seth moved past his brother and into the apartment. He saw Darian sitting on the couch, head back as if asleep. “Then I went to see Peggy.”
Raymond closed the door and followed him into the living room. “You shouldn’t have done that, man, you—”
“I had to see her.”
“Yeah well—”
“I had to see her, Ray.”
Raymond backed down, bowed his head. He looked worse than he had in some time, which was saying something. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles, his face drawn and pale. Both he and Darian looked like they’d been up all night.
“Any word from the hospital?” Seth asked.
�
�We called a few minutes ago,” Darian answered for him, head still back, eyes still closed. His suit was even more disheveled and wrinkled than the day before, and at some point he’d kicked off his shoes. “He’s listed as critical, but still alive.”
Seth went to the kitchen; he could smell the coffee. He poured himself a mug then headed back into the living room. Darian remained on the couch. Raymond took up position near the far wall, standing there and looking as awkward, nervous and out of place as ever. In scanning the apartment it struck Seth just how sterile it was, this small space he’d run to and been occupying these last several months. Peggy’s place had the look and feel of being lived in, but it was different here. His apartment looked more like a demo unit than one where anyone actually resided. Stark and ascetic, it was barely furnished with unimaginative, purely functional necessities, and since he’d become someone that existed rather than lived, it all made perfect sense. Sleepwalking, that’s what he’d been doing, working and consuming, a mindless drone unaware of life as it unfolded around him. But the transformation had happened quietly, slowly, like a measured whisper in a silent room.
How had he failed to notice the severity of these things until now?
“Is Peggy OK?” Raymond asked.
Seth sipped his coffee. “Far as I can tell, Ray, nobody’s OK.”
“We had a long talk last night, Raymond and I.” Darian sat up, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “There were things I needed to know, and he shared them with me. Unbelievable as they may seem, I have some equally disturbing information for you. Things you need to know, too.”
“I’m listening.”
He slid his glasses back on. “Ever since that night at the cabin we’ve all avoided talking to each other about what happened—what really happened—because I don’t think any of us truly remember or understand it. But we all know something happened. We all knew that from the start.”
“And the sky’s blue and fish swim in the sea.”
“You’re not the only one who’s sick and tired of this, Seth.” His choice of words seemed to amuse him suddenly. “Sick and tired. How apropos.”
“What’s your point, Mother?”
Darian found his shoes, a pair of leather tassel loafers, and casually slipped his feet into them. “There are some things I haven’t told you. I tried to tell Louis but never got the chance. Last night, I told Raymond.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s finally my turn.”
His smile crept away. “After we got back from the cabin I subscribed to some newspapers in Maine, including a little local rag from Gull’s Peak and a handful of others from areas nearby. Every time I got one I’d check it front to back looking for any news about Christy or the man she told us about.”
Seth took another swallow of hot coffee. “And?”
“I wanted to tell you, Seth, believe me I did. I did a thousand times in my mind, rehearsed it over and over again driving to work every day. But I couldn’t go through with it because it didn’t make any sense—not then, not now—and I didn’t want you to think I was completely out of my mind.” Darian sighed. “Truth is I’ve spent every waking moment for the better part of a year trying to convince myself I’m not crazy.”
“Me too,” Seth said quietly.
“A few days after we left, at a cabin not far from where we were, they found that man Christy told us about,” Darian said. “He was dead, but not from an ax like she said.”
Seth drew a deep breath. “OK.”
“A brain hemorrhage killed him. One so severe the coroner that worked on the case said he’d never seen anything like it. It was as if a part of his brain literally exploded, Seth, that’s what it said in the article. Something of a medical mystery is how they described it.”
“Then Christy didn’t kill him. Why would she lie and say she’d hit him with an ax?”
“She lied about a lot of things,” Raymond mumbled.
Seth looked to his brother then back at Darian. “Go on.”
“Apparently this guy was just some retired local yokel, a former mill worker named Clayton Willis. He had a wife in town, couple kids who are grown now and also live in the area. Just a simple backwoods sort, had this cabin where he’d go now and then to hunt and do whatever else it is those types do out there in the woods. The last his wife knew he’d gone to Portland to find some part for one of his trucks or something. He never came home. When his son went out to the cabin looking for him, he found the body. Far as his family knew he hadn’t had any plans to go to the cabin the day he left for Portland.”
“But Christy claimed he’d picked her up just outside Portland, remember?”
Darian nodded. “It seems at least that much was true.”
“Did they find something that tied her to this guy?” Seth asked.
“Well, they didn’t find any evidence that Willis was some crazed rapist or serial killer, but they did find something odd: a backpack. Inside it was some clothes and other personal items, including a wallet with an old high school student ID card among other things that made it clear the backpack belonged to a woman named Christiana Miller.”
“Christy.”
“Subsequent articles in a couple papers ran her picture. It was definitely the same girl.” Darian slowly rose from the couch and walked across the room to where he had left his briefcase. “She was a runaway, like she said. Ran away from home and never came back. No one ever saw or heard from her again.”
“Then that was all true too.”
“Yes.” Darian grabbed his briefcase from the corner. “But there’s more.”
Seth remembered the morning after Christy’s disappearance at the cabin, how Louis had awakened him and how they had discussed things quietly in the kitchen area.
I don’t feel the same now, I feel different.
Different how, Lou?
Like myself again, I guess. Only different.
Darian retuned to the couch, his burgundy briefcase in tow. “Christy was sixteen when she ran away.”
“She told us that too,” Seth said.
“She also claimed to be nineteen, which means she would’ve been on the run and missing from her family for three years.” Darian let the briefcase rest across his knees. “And that’s where it gets weird.”
“So she lied about her age, so what?” Seth shrugged. “Easy enough to believe, she looked younger than nineteen anyway.”
The metal clasps on Darian’s briefcase flipped up with a loud snap. “Actually, she was older than she claimed.” He reached into the briefcase and pulled out a section of newspaper that had been folded down into a manageable size. “I know nothing’s made much sense over the last year, but can we all agree on the simple fact that we’re currently living in 2004?”
“Of course,” Seth sighed, his patience a distant memory. “Will you get to the fucking point already?”
“How’s this for a point?” Darian held the paper out so Seth could better see it. “Christy ran away in 1980.”
CHAPTER 19
The grainy photograph in the newspaper was positioned beneath a headline which read: Long-time Runaway’s Belongings Found Near Local Man’s Cabin, and looked like something out of a high school yearbook. Formally posed, Christy’s head was cocked slightly to the right, and a bright smile lit up her otherwise vacant face. As when he’d first seen her in person, it was her eyes Seth focused on as he reached out and took the newspaper in hand. Those same pained eyes were evident even then, signaling so much more brewing just beneath the surface. A small caption under the photograph read: Christiana Miller, missing since 1979.
“This isn’t possible,” Seth muttered. “It can’t—she must—I mean—this can’t be the same person.”
“Look at it, goddamn it.”
“I am, but—”
“That’s her and you know it.” Darian slammed his briefcase shut. “We all know it.”
“That would’ve made her forty-three years old when we saw her,” Seth said. “There’s no
way. She was a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
Through a hard swallow he said, “Yeah.”
“1980 was twenty-four fucking years ago.” Seth gripped the paper harder, pulled it closer so he could read more of the article. “The girl we saw wouldn’t have even been born in 1980. It’s just not possible. This has to be someone else.”
“When the police checked out the area, as they always do in an unattended death,” Darian said, “and due to the odd nature of Clayton Willis’s death, they did a brief search of the forest around the cabin. Apparently it’s a procedural thing they do just to see if there’s anything in the immediate vicinity that might yield clues as to what happened.”
Seth’s head was swimming again. “It can’t be the same person. It can’t.”
“They found Christy’s backpack in the woods,” Darian continued. “I think the article said thirty yards or so from the cabin. It was just laying there against a tree. No sign of her, no sign of foul play. But the backpack was twenty-four years old, and it was in better shape than it should’ve been, so obviously it couldn’t have been there long, officials decided, because exposure to the elements over that amount of time would’ve been evident. It wasn’t. It had normal wear but was still relatively new, like it had just been left there recently. They determined it had only been out there a few days. The same amount of time they estimated Clayton Willis had been dead when they found him.”
A pain shot through Seth’s temple. He dropped the newspaper on a nearby chair and began to pace. “Did they find anything else?”
“Of course his family says there’s no connection between Clayton and this runaway girl from twenty years ago, why would there be? Their take is: it’s the wilds of Maine out there, that backpack could’ve come from anywhere or anybody. It’s strange, sure, but it’s got nothing to do with him. After all it was found near his cabin not in his cabin. The family wrote it off as an odd coincidence. If there was a connection they had no idea what it could be. The cops wanted to make sure that maybe this guy hadn’t come across Christy twenty-four years before, maybe killed her out there in those woods and kept the backpack, hidden it in the cabin all these years, which could explain why it was in such perfect shape. The problem is that you’re dealing with a man who’s lived up in those parts his whole life, has family and friends all through the area, many of them on the police force investigating all this. According to some articles I found they did conduct an investigation, even had crime scene specialists come in and see if they could find anything in the cabin that might link Clayton to Christy. They came up empty.
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