“No.”
“Have you ever had one of these night terrors like your brother?”
There was something in our room.
“Why do you keep asking me that? I just try to help Ray when he has them.”
I saw it too. I saw it in our room.
“It’s important if you’re not feeling well to tell your Mom and me, OK?”
“OK.”
“You don’t have to be afraid, but if things get to bothering you and you feel you need to talk to somebody and—well, maybe your mom and me are too close or whatever—you just tell me and we’ll get you someone to talk to, OK? If need be, I mean.”
“I don’t need anybody to talk to, Dad.”
“I’m not trying to hassle you, I—look I’m doing my best. I promise you I am.”
Seth wasn’t sure what to say. “I know.”
“Sometimes these things just happen, OK? It’s nobody’s fault. Ray has problems and he needs help working through them. He’s not strong like you. Some people need help more than others is all, and that’s why he needs you the way he does. You’re a good brother to him, son, and I’m proud of you.”
Seth felt like he should smile but couldn’t quite manage it. The words seemed particularly poignant coming from his father. “Is Mom OK?”
“She’s upset but she’ll be all right. You know your mom. She’s not used to being apart from you boys. But Raymond’s going to be home before we know it, and this’ll all work out fine. Those doctors are gonna get this all straightened out, you wait and see.”
His father’s voice—trying so desperately to sound convincing—echoed in memory then faded beneath the squeak of windshield wipers and the hum of the car heater.
The snow was a bit lighter as they crossed the bridge and headed onto the cape and it seemed to lessen in strength the further along they went.
Seth checked the rearview mirror. Raymond was leaned toward the backseat passenger side door, head rested against the window and eyes fixed in a glassy, faraway stare that Seth now knew held more secrets and housed more shadowy caverns than either of them would ever fully be able to comprehend.
Seth had only begun to understand in any genuine sense how truly alone his brother was and had been for most of his life, and that realization not only brought forth in him tremendous sorrow, it chilled him to the very core of his being.
Images flashed: The cabin, night, snow, blood, screams, visions of running through dark forest, bitter cold…and the same omnipresent terror.
I’m beginning to remember, Ray, he thought. Why am I finally beginning to remember? Am I getting closer to the truth…or is it getting closer to me?
Eyes back on the road, Seth watched the snow blow across both lanes in furious gusts, carried and shaken by nearby ocean winds.
He remembered his father a second time, not long after Raymond’s assault of Eddie Brock. Only this memory revealed him standing on the back steps of their house, staring out at the field Raymond so often ran to in the night. As Seth came upon him he realized his father was crying.
Despite the fact that he was often quite emotional, Seth had only seen his father cry once before, when as young children he and Raymond presented their father with a handmade birthday present, a peace sign made from elbow macaroni painted with sparkly paint and glued to a sheet of heavy construction paper.
But on this day and in this memory, his father’s tears had not been born of joy. They fell across his cheeks in a steady stream as he smoked a cigarette and glared at the field and forest like they were to blame, and maybe in some way they had been. A red bandana he often wore as a headband was tied and in place, and he still had on his work pants and shirt with his name embroidered on the pocket.
For a long while he and Seth stood silent on the steps, together in thought.
“I always tried to teach you boys right from wrong,” his father finally said, voice gravely and raw. “From the time you were old enough to understand I talked to you about the value of peace and understanding. I always tried to teach you violence is never the answer.”
“They mess with Ray at school, Dad, they do it all the time and he finally snapped.”
“He hit that boy in the head with a brick.”
“He was—”
“In the head, Seth. With a brick.”
“I was there, I know.”
His father looked at him, smoke leaking from his nostrils. “He could’ve killed him.”
“But he didn’t.” Seth knew had he not been there to stop him Raymond just might have, but he defended him anyway, in the only way he knew how. “Eddie isn’t even hurt that bad. His nose is broken and he has a concussion and some stitches. He’ll live.”
“That’s not the point and you know it. Violence isn’t the way, not ever. All it does is make things worse. It’s a lie The Man teaches innocent and impressionable children so they’ll kill and die for some ideal the government and a handful of corporations sell them and say is right and just and necessary. But it’s all a lie designed to convince people that murdering each other is the answer. It’s bullshit.”
“Ray went too far,” Seth said, “but people have the right to defend themselves, Dad, and sometimes violence is the only way.”
“Violence is never the only way, just the easier way.” He took a hard pull on his cigarette and exhaled angrily. “You know the cops and the juvenile courts are talking about charging your brother with attempted murder? Did you know that?”
Seth shook his head no, watched the empty field.
“Fascist bastards,” he growled. “Like assault with a deadly weapon isn’t bad enough. They talk about my boy like he’s some crazed killer or something. Nazi motherfuckers, he’s fourteen years old, for Christ’s sake. Goddamn freshman in high school.”
A gentle breeze blew through the distant trees, and Seth could smell alcohol on his father wafting toward him now and then. Visions of Raymond running across the field in terror came to him quickly then retreated back into darkness.
Where was all this anger and cries for justice when Eddie Brock and his friends were terrorizing Raymond every day at school? Seth wondered.
“Ray needs help, Dad. He’s—”
“You think I don’t know that?” He swallowed back emotion, quickly wiped the tears from his cheeks as if he’d only just then realized they were there. “But all these big-shots with their fancy degrees and dime store crap don’t know Raymond, they don’t understand him and they don’t care to. We’ve been down this road before; they don’t want to help him, not really. They want to turn him into some zombie that’ll do everything they say, make him into some fucking houseplant. All they want to do is punish him. Nobody ever wants to help, but start talking punishment, and oh, they line up, don’t they? People love that shit. We got no help, no prevention, but break a rule or step out of line and we got more punishment than you can shake stick at. We love it, can’t punish people enough, it makes all the self-righteous pricks out there feel better about themselves.”
Out where? Seth wondered. “Is Ray going to go to jail, Dad?”
“They offered us a deal Eddie Brock’s parents had already agreed to.” He took another drag off his cigarette then flicked it out onto the grass. “Ray’s going to have to go away again for a while, get his head straight. If we play along and pay Eddie Brock’s medical bills no criminal charges will be brought against your brother.”
Seth reached out awkwardly, touched his father’s shoulder then let his hand drop.
“So, The Man pulls the strings and we dance for him,” his father mumbled. “Because it’s a fixed game and nobody gives a streaming pile of dog-shit about justice. Long as there’s some punishment, a little coin to cover expenses and peace and quiet, they’re happy. They don’t care if a bunch of witchdoctors are gonna fuck with my boy’s head, long as they make him a robot like everybody else they’re happy.”
“Where’s Raymond going, Dad?”
He looked at him, eyes bloods
hot and glazed. “Where the hell you think, son?”
His father left Seth standing alone on the steps and walked across the field to the edge of the forest, hands in his pockets and face turned to the sky.
“He’s had too much to drink,” his mother said from behind him.
Seth turned and saw her standing in the back doorway. He could tell she had already shed her tears, and now resolve was setting in.
“He’s feeling like he’s failed Raymond,” she said. “Failed as a father.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“No, it’s not.” Her large eyes blinked at him slowly. “But sometimes feeling something’s enough. It hasn’t been easy with Raymond for any of us, but we have to be as strong as we can, for him and each other. You have that strength, Seth, you always have and you always will. Unless you give it away no one can take it from you. It’s God-given, your strength and faith. It’s what makes you, you. It’s just like in the Bible with Adam and Eve, only in reverse. My hope—our hope, came first, in you. It’s why we named you Seth.” She joined him on the steps. In a rather frumpy, casual cotton dress, she looked thin to the point of frailty, like she was in need of a good solid meal. “In the story, Seth was Adam and Eve’s third son. Eve gave him the name Seth as she put it: ‘For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.’ Amidst the bad that had come before him, Seth was her hope.”
“I’m no better than Raymond, Mom.”
“No, you’re not, just different. You’re his pillar.” She smiled, as if this should have pleased him. “Raymond’s afflicted with things he can’t control, burdens or crosses—whatever you want to label them—that none of us asked for, least of all him. But remember, Seth, blessed are the afflicted.”
“What about the unforgiven?” he asked. “Are they blessed, too?”
She raised an eyebrow, startled by the question. “God forgives everyone, Seth.”
“But only if they seek His forgiveness.”
“Yes, only if they seek it.”
“Otherwise God just looks down with anger?”
“No, Seth, with sorrow.”
The memory left him, swallowed by swirling snow just beyond the windshield and the flash of memories more recent. Memories unlike those from so long ago, that played out across cold and distant landscapes, these were growing stronger and more vivid with each passing moment. Memories of that night at the cabin—the sounds and smells and feel of that dark night were calling him again, beckoning him—drawing him back to the secrets and horrors they held and the spells of black magic they cast.
Christy running through the snow…blood…the cabin…screams.
“You’re remembering,” Raymond said suddenly. “Aren’t you?”
Sounds of things tearing, ripping…
Seth found him in the mirror, nodded slowly.
Cold winds and labored breathing…and then a shift…that night and the dark forest gone, replaced by the hospital Louis had been taken to…the child beyond the glass twirling the umbrella in the rain…its face…what—what had happened to its face?
“The child at the hospital,” Seth said, “we all saw it, Ray, we—”
“Wasn’t a child.”
A small being on the steps dressed in a dull yellow raincoat and matching hat.
“Why was it there?”
Where its eyes and sockets and nose should have been the skin was smooth, flat and blank. Its mouth was impossibly small, but it opened wide then wider still until the sides tore and began to bleed.
“What did it want, Ray?”
The twisted, unfinished face froze in a soundless scream of inhuman fury and horror.
“The thing we have that they don’t.”
Had he seen it before—or something like it before?
“Tell me, Ray.”
In the woods, running, screaming, had he seen it there—or others like it?
“What do we have that they don’t?”
With an intuitively devilish smile, Raymond looked back out the window and watched the snow. “Souls.”
CHAPTER 25
The dark drop hit the pool and immediately began to dissipate, turning the previous clear water an inky maroon. A second drop splashed into the toilet, followed by a third, and within seconds the blood had overtaken the water, running in finger-like strands and veins across the bowl, alive and swimming for the edges where water met porcelain.
Standing above the toilet and bent slightly forward to allow the blood dripping from her nose to fall directly into it rather than onto the floor and nearby carpet, Nana reached for the roll of toilet paper on the wall dispenser and carefully removed several sheets. Folding them into a single small pillow, she brought them to her bloody nostril and held it there, then applied pressure to the bridge of her nose with her free hand.
Her heart raced, and, despite the chill in the old house, her skin had become clammy, leaving her feeling sticky and unclean. Two doors down the hallway her grandsons were waiting. Prior to all that was happening, she hadn’t seen either of them in months , but now they had come to her for the second time in just twenty-four hours, as she knew they eventually would, seeking her out like moths to flame in an otherwise dark void.
Though she could do them little good, still they had come.
At least for Raymond, it made perfect sense.
The end—his end—would come here with her, where they could face the final chapter as they had all those chapters before it since he’d been a child: together. Even when they were apart, separated by miles or oceans or prison bars or locked hospital doors, they had been together.
But the same had not and would not be true for Seth.
Alessandra pulled the paper from her nose and inspected it. A circular stain filled the center of the wad but the bleeding itself had stopped. She dabbed her nose a few times with the paper and it came back clear, but she knew what was happening in her now. She was no exception to the rule, no safe harbor, just another of the infected, one more victim in an endless circle of many. For so many years the disease in Raymond had remained dormant, coming alive to attack only when those responsible for it chose to do so. But now the sleeping period was over, what lived in her grandson had awakened beyond the borders of his own tortured mind, able to reach out and slip into the dreams and thoughts of others. The end result could not be stopped, and as she understood it, only Raymond and those like him would remain free of transformation, though even he would pay further penance. While he carried their sickness and spread it for them, they would never gain his body and soul. But they already had dominion over his mind, or what was left of it, so there could be no end for him but to live the remainder of his life in some padded cell, deemed insane, dangerous and beyond repair, a useless machine tossed aside and forgotten, just another carcass on humanity’s junk heap. The only choices that remained for the rest of them were submission, persecution until insanity or death ensued, or suicide. Odd, she thought, how subtle this all was, how similar it was to normal, everyday reality, nothing at all like prophecies and nightmares depicted such things.
People were running now, as they had for centuries, but in these days of horror, conquest, infiltration and occupation, they were running into the flames rather than away from them; embracing the twisted and sick values that these things fed upon while hiding behind rigid social and manipulated religious fears camouflaged as morality. The things that made them strong and the human race weaker, like a narcotic that initially induces bliss but eventually brings only death, helped to bring even the common man to the trough to feed without even fully realizing all they were ingesting and forfeiting.
Sad, she thought, how cheap, expendable and ultimately irrelevant the human soul and all the potential it possessed had become to so many. A commodity, for sale or even given away for mere illusions of happiness, like all else, it held little or no enduring value.
And what of Rolf, she wondered, poor, dear, oblivious Rolf, tinkering with his models or watch
ing his news programs and sipping his tea? What a magnificent, loving and selfless companion he’d been these past years. For him it would be quiet and peaceful. She would see to it.
Alessandra wiped the remnants of the nosebleed from her face, and, mostly from habit inspected herself in the mirror over the sink. Her instincts were to fight, but it all seemed so futile now. “You’ve still got backbone, haven’t you?” she asked the mirror and those that watched her in it—those ghostly apparitions writhing in her head like maggots and worms swimming behind her eyes, squirming deeper and deeper, gnawing, nibbling like termites, slowly eating their way into her brain.
She squeezed shut her eyes. The visions and nausea weakened, and she steadied herself against the sink until the feelings passed. She had excused herself moments earlier, when she felt the wave of dizziness and the beginnings of the nosebleed, and had escaped into the nearby bathroom down the hall. But she knew she would have to return to them soon. Time was short for them all now.
Alessandra opened her eyes, stared at her reflection with sadness, and then defiance.
* * *
In those rare instances over the past year when he’d allowed himself to daydream, some separation from the nightmares that plagued him in both light and darkness, Darian always dreamt of a grand ballroom similar to the one where he and Cynthia had celebrated their wedding reception. Only in the dream it was far more glamorous than it had been in reality.
Arched high above the glossy dance floor, a ceiling covered in sprawling paintings with a medieval motif of heroic angels and great bountiful clouds looks down upon him with equal parts majesty and menace. Surrounded by tables draped in white linen and set with expensive silverware and beautiful crystal centerpieces, each holding a white lighted candle, the dance floor is occupied by only two people: Darian, in a sleek black tuxedo, and Cynthia in a strapless white gown.
Sitting in a chair near the edge of the dance floor is Debra, in a beautiful little gown of her own, watching with an excited and favorable grin.
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