Hold the Light

by Ryan Sherwood

  The whole house erupted into waking mumbles and groans as Betsy raced over. Her anxious eyes scanned over her daughter, looking for oddities, as Randy held the infant in his arms. He couldn't peel away from Kara, cradling her, exaggerating his every move just in case she would awaken. Lips puckered against his teeth, Randy gently combed over the wisp of hair that curled on her forehead. Betsy reached out and scooped her from him, hollering for her husband. Betsy's baleful outburst stunned the family as they gathered.

  Betsy ran out the door. Her husband followed with the children, and they headed for the hospital. Once there, the doctors tenderly exchanged the limp, doll-like body for promises and prayers. The family followed the child except for Betsy and Randy. The hallway was silent.

  Betsy turned to Randy, desperate for some sign to her baby's condition.

  The space between them ate at their hearts. He sat penitently with his head buried in his hands. Tears crept from his palms and down his wrists until they met with their bloodshot eyes.

  "What happened?" She asked, taking one of his hands.

  "Get away!" He leapt back, pushing her away.

  She held back tears, expecting the worst, but still hoping that her youngest child wasn't lifeless.

  "Don't touch my hands," he trembled, "They did this."

  "Randy..."

  "I ...I ...I saw her, Bets. I saw her there, all sweet, and I took it away. I don't know how ...I didn't want this. I just took it away!"

  "Took what?"

  "I saw it ...I did it. Something made me," Randy looked at his hands, "It was here tonight for Kara and for me."

  "For God's sake, stop it! You're scaring me," Betsy pleaded.

  The white door banged against the hushed hallway, and her husband appeared.

  "Betsy, come quick."

  Her husband went through the doors and Betsy followed. She paused before the doors swallowed her and turned back for Randy.

  "Come with us..."

  His chair was empty.

  "Randy? Randy. Randy!"

  Her cries echoed through the hallways and Randy's head as he ran through the hospital. The sterile walls closed in on him as he stumbled through them, the clean air burning his nostrils. Slipping about the maze of corridors, shoes squeaking along slick floors, he ran as fast as possible.

  Among the blur of his retreat, something stopped him in his tracks; something dark and cavernous. An open doorway beckoned at him. Bewildered by why he even thought to stop there, Randy peered into the vacant room with curiosity. With contorted fingers, he pushed the door aside and unveiled a gloomy chapel. The atmosphere was stale and sacred. Curtly passing through the shadows dancing about the room, he came to a small cross jutting out of a stout altar. He glared then genuflected before it. His torso collapsed over his leg. His hands folded together atop the crown of his head as he wailed.

  "Lord, what am I?"

  The room was silent.

  "God, help me."

  Branches brushed up against the outside of the window. Random beams of moonlight sneaked through the glass and splashed the wooden cross.

  "How could you hate me so much?"

  Dead calm.

  "Am I an abomination? Will you chase me through the ice and snow after I destroy all my loved ones? I am a prophetic soul bound for an unhallowed fate of tears and remorse?"

  The tiniest squeak arose from a distance down the hallway.

  "Am I to sulk in the night's shadows, pilfering little children?" Randy slung infuriated accusations at his God.

  The cross sat in the mellow night, moonlight fluttering around the wooden surface like a misshapen spotlight. As the illumination waved around the room, turbulent as an ocean storm, a sickness tampered with Randy's stomach and created a queasy swirl. He rubbed his palm into his right eye and shook his head. Confused and jilted, he craned his head towards the icon, squinting at its shape. Something wasn't right.

  "It's crooked. No, it's moving. Must just be the shadows."

  The sound of wood creaking made Randy's heart pound bloody panic in his throat. A chaotic dance of light and shadow made the cross appear like it was bending towards him, bowing before him. Bowing to him. The head of the cross leaned closer to him as Randy scuffled backwards.

  "This can't be happening..."

  He scooted further away from the cross in fear as it bent itself at a right angle, creaking more and more. Everything empathic within his soul snapped apart as splinters from the genuflecting cross exploded about. Shards of wood shot over his head, but the cross was still whole. Before him, the stout top of the cross stared him down. Terrible thoughts flooded his body and soul and a haunting decision made itself apparent.

  "Or am I a vigilante?" Randy asked the cross. "Am I your unwilling tool to take life? You choose, I kill, and you sort them out when I'm done? And I'm supposed to live with that?"

  The shadows shifted with the branches as the cross nodded.

  Randy began to cry as he realized what he had become. Not everything made sense right away, though clarity came with time. The sacred and the secular resided all within him.

  Randy rose from his knees and turned his back on the cross forever.

  Walking out the sterile halls into the living night, Randy existed within that decision for the next sixty years, sitting in solitude and holding the light.

  PART THREE

  George

  Chapter 24

  "Your turn, sir," I told my father, fingers pinching the smooth rook.

  "Humph," he mumbled, staring at the board and assessing my move.

  Resting my elbow on the mahogany table, cupping my chin in my palm, I looked into my father's cold, blue eyes. With a raise of his thin eyebrow, folds of skin bunched atop his wrinkled nose, and he smirked, creating an age-old dimple in his cheek. It was a look I had seen time and time again that often preceded my defeat. He chewed on his bottom lip, still pondering his next move.

  We both sat staring. I was fixated on him, thinking about how old he was. I never noticed it before, but my father was rather old to have a son as young as me, being over fifty and myself in my mid-teens. I think he was born in 1945, but I can't remember if that's right. The life within him never matched his age though, whether he seemed older or younger at any particular time. He was a tough man and even harder to pinpoint; the only true thing I could ever get from my father was criticism.

  "I'll have to find out his age from Mother," I thought.

  Through all the bad times, he often found a way to calm the throbbing of my youth, even if he was the one that usually started the problems. He became so good at dissecting me that I grew to see him as a genius, versed in the world; combined with his charisma, I believed he had a plan to show me how to prosper as a man.

  Being no slouch myself, on high honor roll and the best on the chess team, I realized that no matter how stubborn and unbreakable I could feel, his help was always necessary. My father fixed everything from scrapes on my knee to when a friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver. In my young eyes, he knew everything and shared it all with me, giving me a huge jump-start on life. I felt I could do everything quicker and faster, but I had grown up too quickly. Age stirred inside of me too early, twisting and weaving out before my eyes could handle the images of adulthood.

  "Checkmate," my father gloated, clinking the ivory knight on the marble chessboard and leaning back in his chair.

  "Awh, we just started. Can't you win slower?" I said, gazing over the board in disbelief.

  "Maybe this will teach you a better strategy."

  The room grew a cold layer every time he said something demeaning, and that sentence gave me a shiver. My gaze wandered about the den, hopping from trophy to trophy, remembering all the rewards I earned over the years that my father kept on his shelves. Dull artificial light bounced off the gold painted plastic and I wondered if I ever deserved any of them. The only reason I won them was because of him. They would all be mine if I could beat my father one of these days.
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br />   Without breaking his tradition of never smiling, Father cracked the corner of his mouth without an iota of amusement.

  "That's amusing," he said.

  I'd pay him a million bucks if he'd actually laugh, but I always play along.

  "What is, Dad?"

  A frown quickly killed his pathetic smirk, and then he tried to squeeze a sentence past his lips. Heaven forbid if for once his father's words would just be said and he could actually connect with his only child.

  "Your fly is down," he said pointing.

  "Yeah," I said embarrassed, zipping up.

  "Yes what, son?" He said condescendingly, adjusting his pendant pipe into the corner of his mouth.

  "Yes, sir," I reluctantly corrected myself.

  The room was cold with his compassion. An awkward silence loomed. His emotions quickly climaxed into a small coy cough and then he scratched his arm. All I wanted to do was to deck him. How the hell could my father be so blind? I was bigger than he was, but I could never match his strength. All those years behind him, all his knowledge, all spurting off like radiation that burned within, ceaselessly feeding off his energy. The day I was stronger than him was the day I was going to leave.

  The doorbell chimed and my father began to rise, but I wanted to get away.

  "I'll get it."

  I rushed into the hallway with enthusiasm and looked up the stairs, past the teardrop chandelier, to see if my mother had emerged from the bedroom. Not a sound stirred, so I turned back and ran to the big, brown, oak door, loaded with decorative carvings that covered every square inch. I could sit and study it for hours, but I never really gave it much thought until then. It always seemed to be a waste of time.

  Stepping onto the throw rug in the hallway, I made an awkward run for the door, slipping on the polished hardwood floor like always and smashing my scrawny body into the wall. And, like always, when I hit the wall in this way, a loud clank sounded against the floor from the other side in the living room. Speeding into the dark room, I picked up the sheathed sword that my dad kept and hung it back in place gently, trying to cover up any evidence of the fall. It was a sword from the 18th century that Dad purchased in an estate sale. It was his pride and joy. I could just see him in my mind, shaking his head disapprovingly every time I knocked it down.

  Once at the door, I flipped the outside light on for the visitor. The stoop illuminated and through the small glass portal, I saw a head of frizzy black hair. Slowly I opened the massive door and saw Carl politely standing with a box of candy bars and an envelope in his hand, with green bills peeping out. Just seeing the money, I knew that he would have a smile from ear to ear.

  Carl was in the chess club and also in my history class, plus we were pretty good friends. He looked up from his envelope and his thick glasses glided down his nose but his chubby pointer finger shoved them tightly back in place.

  "Carl, what ya doin' here?" I chuckled.

  I often giggled when people from outside my family talked to me. I always thought other people had a way of living that was more fun than mine.

  "Selling candy for band. The winner gets lots of prize money," he said, his eyes shining.

  "Let me get my dad. He'll probably hook you up. Hold on, Carl."

  Leaving the door open, I went back to peek in the den.

  "Um, Dad, sir, um, one of my friends is here selling candy. Could you?"

  Clanking his heavy wood pipe in the crystal ashtray, he slowly rose and walked to the door.

  "Hello, Mr. Gabney," Carl loudly engaged his sales pitch.

  I stayed in the den looking over the chessboard in disbelief. Nimble gray smoke from the pipe curled about my head and hovered throughout the brown den.

  "How could I loose so quickly?" I whispered over the board, "Could he have cheated? No. He had to have won fair and square. I have to beat him one of these days."

  "No, no, no!" Dad barked and slammed the door shut so hard, the chess pieces danced and the sword clanked against the ground in the living room. Slowly making my way to the hallway I looked at him in the doorway. Anger swathed his face, the only emotion he knew how to show.

  "No more of that, son."

  "Um, but?" I asked in confusion.

  "But what, George?" He demanded, "Are you disputing me?"

  "No sir."

  We stood still for a minute in yet another awkward silence, both wondering what the other was thinking. How could I dispute him if he wasn't making sense? Easy, tell him he's a stubborn jackass.

  "Well, yeah, I'm going upstairs," I shuffled my feet the rest of the distance of the den submissively and then bolted up the stairs to my room. It was getting late anyway and I had school the next day. Going to school tired was something I never liked. It interfered with my studies too much; and that's me talking, not my father.

  I laid down on my bed and punched play on my portable CD player, put the headphones over my ears, and let the first few minutes of Hey Jude take me. Paul's voice washed around in my ears. Most times I listen to this song my mind immediately wanders to the little conspiracy that my uncle revealed over Christmas dinner. All I remember are snippets of his tale, but he said,

  'Mr. McCartney died in a car crash and a guy who won a look alike contest took his place in the Beatles. The new Paul broke up with his girlfriend and started dating Linda.' He also had a little scar but, hey, no one ever gets scars from car crashes. My family can be pretty stupid sometimes.

  Resting atop of my covers, I wondered why my dad acted so strangely towards Carl. There must be a hundred different reasons for his reaction, but he still could have helped out like he had done in the past for my other friends.

  After skipping to I am the Walrus and listening closely to the end of the song, trying to hear John Lennon say 'I killed Paul,' I ripped off my headphones. I felt bad for Carl, and I was enraged for the way my father treated me like a child.

  I pounced to my feet and strode over to the wall and punched it harder than normal. My fist sunk hard and fast into the drywall with crackles and snaps. Flinching in discomfort, I gazed curiously at my hand in the wall, as pain began to surge. Slowly jiggling my hand out of the plaster crevice, I walked over to my closet. Little maroon droplets oozed from my knuckles as I slid open the closet door. Fidgeting deep in the mess of hanging clothes I pulled out a Cure poster. On top of my desk was the double-sided tape and I hung the poster over the hole. Smiling, I felt like I was actually fooling someone. I looked around at the multitude of posters hanging in my room, then back at my hand. Strangely enough, the noise of punching through the drywall never alerted my parents. It's hard to make a noise louder than their yelling.

  Tired of the day, I hopped into bed.

  Chapter 25

  In the morning, my alarm went off late. I rushed to dress and barely made it downstairs in time to grab a sack lunch and out to catch the bus. Onboard, I rummaged through my bag to see what I had crammed in. I knew I had had a dream that kept me asleep through the alarm, but I couldn't remember it for the life of me. The dream seemed violent somehow.

  I felt angry and wronged; though I knew it was an important dream, and I hoped I would have it again. My hand began to throb and I was distracted so I began to talk with the other kids.

  The bus arrived at school and the day was the same as any other. After my third class, I saw Carl passing the mural by my locker, heading for the band room.

  "Carl," I yelled and waved my bruised hand. "What happened with my dad?"

  From the distance his face looked different. He was frowning and his right eye looked darker than his chocolate skin. A cheerleader passed in front and blocked my view of Carl and glanced at me. I smiled at her and she scoffed and frowned in response and scurried off. When Carl was within arms reach, my jaw dropped.

  "Man, you need to send your dad to anger management or something,"

  Carl barked at George.

  "What did he do to you?" I nearly yelled.

  "He friggin' slapped me!"

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sp; "Slapped you? You're kidding." But bubbling in my gut was my subconscious nagging that Carl could be right.

  "No, I'm not kidding. I asked him if he wanted some candy. I told him what it was for and all that stuff. He just looked through me frowning like I wasn't even there! He refused a few times. After that I asked again, saying something like 'Hey, don't ignore me, its rude.' He said something like 'The day I take that from someone like you boy,' and slapped me in the eye! In the eye! And hard. I was stunned. He slammed the door in my face before I could say anything. What a giant asshole!"