Broken Circle

by J. L. Powers

  CHAPTER 5

  Sometimes when I’m in the middle of The Dream, I pretend my mom’s with us, walking along beside us. Her face is freckled. Her nose is long and thin and she has a wide smile that stretches across her face in a way that might not be called exactly beautiful but is nonetheless beautiful because of how it makes you feel. At least, this is what I imagine her to look like.

  I suppose I went to her funeral but I don’t remember. I don’t know where she’s buried either. We have never gone to visit her grave site . . . unless that’s what we’re doing in my dream.

  Even if I don’t remember what she was like, I imagine she was good and kind and beautiful. And I wish she was still here. One of the reasons I’ve never brought my friends home to visit is that I can’t imagine what they’d think. They’ve never met my dad but his shenanigans are legendary among them. Like the time he suggested I start going to AA meetings. “You can learn something from these people,” he said, a statement that has been a source of endless amusement for my friends ever since. Or the time he signed me up for a dating class. I was twelve. The women in the room were all in their forties. Somehow, I was supposed to learn something from that experience too.

  Last year, just before high school started, he took me to a psychic convention in Manhattan. We visited a dozen booths. Dad would sit in the little psychic chair or on their couch and he’d close his eyes and most of the psychics pretended to read his mind—and I do mean pretend because they didn’t have a clue what kind of person he is or they were liars or both. They kept seeing dice, or one of them said they saw a woman in his future, which is impossible, believe me. One psychic was real, though. She could see that Dad’s shadow is an ancient volcano, like Mt. Vesuvius, constantly erupting, and she spoke breathlessly, keeping her head down, refusing to look him in the eye: “Sir, I don’t know who you are but I’m afraid.”

  Dad smiled at her and said, “You’re an honest one, aren’t you?”

  She kept her head bowed. But when he’d moved on, she grabbed my wrist, yanking me back. Lipstick bled into the wrinkles around her lips, and her green eyes looked haunted, like she’d just seen the atomic bomb dropped on her hometown. “Sweetheart,” she said, “you’re carrying death with you everywhere you go. It’s a ghost inside you, flowing through the blood in your veins. It’s a nightmare you can’t escape. If you don’t release it, you may as well go to the grave right here, right now.”

  She pushed me toward my father’s quickly retreating back, calling out to me in a surprisingly low voice, “Honey, you don’t belong here. I hope you make it where you need to be.”

  I stumbled after Dad, breathing one-two-three, so I wouldn’t faint or pass out. Yeah, I thought, she’s right. I don’t belong here at this stupid convention.

  Within a week, I had the first nightmare.

  But that was still days away. That afternoon, we went to the main hall of the convention center, where a man from the Balkans was addressing a crowd of probably five hundred people. He started doing simple readings—how much money people had in their pockets, or whether they had a picture of a dead relative in their purses, that kind of thing. As the program progressed, he whipped the crowd into a frenzy, hypnotizing different volunteers into doing humiliating things like removing items of clothing or kissing strangers.

  I became more and more agitated, watching him.

  When he asked for a final volunteer, Dad stood up. The instant he was on his feet, the electricity in the crowd flipped off. People under hypnosis snapped out of it and ran to put their clothes back on or take a seat.

  The presenter was ticked. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Dad stepped out into the aisle. “Looks like I’m your final volunteer.”

  The hypnotist crossed his arms and tapped his foot as Dad made his way onto the stage. They stood face to face and looked deep into each other’s eyes.

  Then it happened. The hypnotist’s jaw went slack. In front of five hundred people, his eyes glazed over and drool ran down his chin. His shadow ran for the curtains and stood behind them, cowering.

  His shadow was hiding from my dad.

  It felt like forever that they stood there, even though it probably lasted less than ten seconds. The crowd shuffled nervously in their seats. Finally, Dad harrumphed and turned away. The presenter clapped his mouth shut, swallowed hard, and backed off the stage, keeping his eyes on Dad. When he was a few feet from the closest exit, he turned and fled, the door sighing on its hinges as it closed behind him.

  Everyone stared at Dad like they’d just seen an Angel of God descend from heaven.

  “What was that, Dad?” I asked as we left.

  “When a person mistakes their ability for privilege, they sometimes use it against others,” he said. “Most people are weak. And people who have power—even a little power—sometimes use it as a weapon. To control people. Or just for fun. That’s what he was doing to the people he hypnotized. Power is seductive that way. You have power too, Adam. I hope you are never that kind of person, the kind who abuses it, who uses it against others instead of for them.”

  It was strange, what he said. It filled me with a sense of—I don’t know—destiny maybe. It’s hard to describe what I felt in that moment, but if you pushed me to the wall, I guess I’d say it felt like an Old Testament kind of anointment—Samuel coming to say the young shepherd boy David was going to be the next King of Israel. Something like that. Like maybe I had power, but I could be a good person and use my power for goodness instead of evil.

  Most of that feeling is gone now. I feel powerless instead.

  And then I wonder: maybe that hypnotist was abusing his power, but didn’t Dad do the same thing when he turned the tables around? That’s something I wish I could ask him but we just don’t communicate very well using words.

  Sometimes, Dad looks at me and my shadow rises up, I feel him calling it up, and I know that unless I block him, I’ll be naked in front of him; he’ll be able to see my every thought. So I pull back, I hide my shadow away from him. Maybe I’m powerless, but I can keep my thoughts private at least.

  When I finally started fighting back, he liked it.

  The first time I grasped his shadow with my mind, it was like falling out of my head and into somebody else’s memories and thoughts and dreams. I couldn’t believe what was going on in his head. A war, but like no war I’ve ever seen on television—women and children huddled together in enclosures, soldiers setting fire to farmhouses and the land. Fire ripped across the earth, leaving a scorched, blackened wasteland in its wake. The earth split in two—an earthquake, perhaps—and gold spilled out of its insides. A torrent of people, like a rainstorm, battered a land so hot, you could see the heat squirming toward the heavens like small silver worms. A woman in a yellow dress, her back turned to him, shoulders shaking with sobs. A hand—it must have been his hand—reached out to touch her shoulder but she shrugged it off.

  There was something familiar about that last image. Like I wasn’t just seeing it in his head. Like it was my own memory too. I had this feeling that maybe the woman in the yellow dress was my mother.

  I expected Dad to be angry when I fought back. But instead, he put his arm around my shoulders and smiled. He actually smiled.

  “You have talent, my boy,” he said. “And you’re going to be just fine.”

  Chapter 5.5

  An aide brought him water and he drank the whole cup in one long gulp before continuing:

  The Grim Reaper and her lover-husband awoke one morning a week or a month or maybe a year later, unsure of how much time had passed. The red dirt was caked in their hair, their fingernails rimmed with it, like dried blood. They laced hands and did not speak. At long last, the lover-husband stood and held a hand out to her. “Escape cannot last forever,” he said.

  Elder #3 snorted.

  I assume my son shared these details with you, dear, dear John? Her Excellency asked.

  No, it’s all conjecture, my dear, he said. If you
would rather ask your son . . . ?

  “It should,” the Grim Reaper said. Her fingertips grazed his young-old face, skin smooth and unfettered by the passage of time yet somehow ancient too. “What is wrong with forever?”

  “Darling,” the lover-husband cried. He clasped her in his arms.

  “We of all people should understand the inevitability of endings.”

  She laid her head against his chest, feeling safe within his strong, manly arms. She could hear his heart beating within his chest. The sound comforted her, even though it reminded her of the terrible secret she was keeping from him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Once Dad tells me what’s going to happen to me, he wastes no time “making the arrangements.” Apparently, I’m to be in my new school bright and early Monday morning! Which means I’m leaving Sunday. Yeah, you heard right. Sunday! Three days to say goodbye to the only life I’ve ever known.

  But still, we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about what it means to be part of a “contract” that you can’t get out of, like, ever. Or what I’ll actually be learning to do at this boarding school. What this mysterious “business” of my father’s is. When all’s said and done, I’m guessing his business isn’t exactly legal. That it’s not something you small talk about at polite parties.

  * * *

  The next morning, Dad comes running out of his office at breakfast time, all excited, saying we have to leave right now, there’s something ultra-extra-important he has to do immediately.

  You might think that this ultra-extra-important task involves getting me school supplies, or some new clothes, or something school-related, but no. Because Dad only spends money on or gets excited about one thing: old, rare books.

  “I just heard a report that a bookseller in Manhattan may have a real find,” Dad says, the breath wiped out of his voice. My impossible-to-excite father is that in love with books.

  All over the city, prestigious book dealers recognize him on sight and take him to the back of their stores to show him items that aren’t even on display for “regular” customers. He never bargains. They pass him a piece of paper with the price and he either hands them an envelope of cash or walks out.

  I used to think, There goes my college tuition, every time he came home with a new book. Now that college is apparently off the table, I don’t know what to think.

  “And I need to be the one to get it, son. Other people searching for it would not handle it properly. We have to go now and get it before anybody else—” He stops as if the thought that somebody else might get to this book before he does is too difficult to bear. “I thought we’d combine a visit to your grandfather so you could say goodbye.”

  I groan audibly, not caring what Dad thinks.

  He chooses to ignore the real meaning of my groan. “The bookstore stop will take only a minute, I promise,” he says, “and then we’ll have lots of time to visit with your grandfather.”

  I have to laugh. Good one, Dad.

  * * *

  So we go to this strange old storefront in an alley a couple blocks from Grandpa’s place. It’s not your usual book dealer’s place. The sign says they sell liquor and cigarettes and “groceries,” which probably means a couple of sad-looking oranges and packages of chips.

  I get a horrible heebie-jeebie vibe as soon as we walk in and this older gentleman with bluish-silver hair scurries toward us. He slinks to a stop and holds out a hand.

  Dad doesn’t take it. He doesn’t smile—or grimace, which is what Dad’s smile actually looks like. His eyes flit to the man’s feet, where his shadow is sliding around like Peter Pan’s, trying to escape.

  “And how may I help you, gentlemen?” the man asks.

  “I’m looking for a particular book,” Dad says. “A book I’ve been told I might find here.”

  A swath of hair falls over the man’s face into his eyes. He sticks out his lower lip and blows the hair out of the way. “And which book would that be?” His weasel grin suggests he already knows, and he knows Dad knows he already knows, but he’s going to play this game to the letter.

  Dad leans forward and whispers in his ear.

  The man’s whole body springs upward in one sudden jolt and then he’s gesturing for us to follow him. We pass through a swinging door into a back office, then down a short passageway. The man gets out a huge key ring, with probably a hundred keys on it, and unlocks a door, the keys jangling in a loud and satisfying way.

  We step inside a small, crowded storeroom. The man squats in front of a safe, hiding the combination lock with his back as he twirls the dial to unlock it, glancing back at us, furtive, like we’re trying to spy on him. It opens with a muted pop. The guy pulls out a package wrapped in heavy cloth, then carries it over to a small table, his motions slow and reverent.

  Dad leans in, peering over the man’s shoulder as he slowly unwraps the cloth, then elbowing his way forward until he’s standing just in front of the book.

  They both breathe in at the same time, deep intakes.

  “One hundred percent authentic,” the man says. “A verified summary of the original book.”

  Dad opens the cover, delicately riffles through the pages, and shuts it carefully. “This is a very good copy,” he states, admiration in his voice.

  “Some people think it is the original,” the bookseller says.

  Dad barks a short, gruff, “Ha.”

  “The original is impossible to get, absolutely impossible. There’s only one copy in the world and god knows where it is, although I’ve heard—” The bookseller looks nervously behind himself, then leans in and whispers, as though somebody might be listening, even though it’s just the three of us in this tiny stale storeroom. “I heard that the original surfaced in Rome last month.”

  A swarm of snakes slithers crassly in and out of his mouth as he talks but it’s the symbol adorning the book’s cover that catches my eye. A half-circle nestled inside a complete circle, like an eye, pointed shards of wavy light radiating away from it. I shudder involuntarily. Unlike the Broken Circle medallion dangling from my neck, this symbol makes me want to run far, far away.

  Dad squints at the symbol on the book, his nostrils twitching.

  The man observes him noticing the symbol. “Ah,” he says, “I can see that your son is already well on his path to enlightenment and perhaps that has made you a true seeker then? If that is the case, I can—”

  That’s when Dad puts out his hand, with the same gesture he uses in my dream right before he tells the woman in rags to stop, before She disappears in a pool of black liquid.

  But the bookseller doesn’t disappear. He freezes, his tongue poised in the middle of his mouth, almost as though Dad has grabbed it. Sweat pops out on his brow and his eyes bulge. His shadow slides out from under his feet and begins to rise through his body and then out his mouth, floating toward the ceiling like smoke.

  I have this sudden sick feeling that I want to get out of here, that even if I wanted to stay, I should go, I should get the hell out of here and fast, but my knees are locked and I’m just . . . I’m just watching.

  “You fool!” My father’s voice booms and echoes in the small room. “Do you not understand that somebody could have tried to kill you for this book?”

  “Dad,” I whisper. Because somebody is killing him for this book and it’s my father.

  The bookseller makes odd gasping noises. He shrinks a million times, suddenly on the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

  I know that feeling of your soul choking your throat as it leaves your body. You see everything for just a few minutes, your whole life, whatever has happened to you, even those things you don’t remember. Later, when you know your shadow’s back in place, it’s hard to settle things again. You realize there were things you knew just minutes ago that have now receded back into the dimness. It leaves you with this terrible feeling of losing something you had, but you don’t quite know what it was, and you know it was incredibly important and more precious
than, well, than anything. But at the same time, and I don’t even know how to explain this, you’re a little relieved to have forgotten.

  “Dad,” I say again, louder this time.

  “Go on, son,” he responds, eyes trained on the bookseller. He’s getting bigger and bigger, a mountain chain rising from the ocean floor. “I want you to get out of here.” When I don’t move, he utters a single word: “Now.”

  I run down the narrow passageway, through the dusty grocery store, and out to the street, where I wait for him, heart beating fast. The whole world looks uncertain, as if a gauzy film covers everything. I imagine this is the way drunkenness feels, and while I’m imagining that, I also start imagining what it would feel like to be an enormous mountain just tumbling endlessly into the raging sea. Because the thing about being a mountain is that you’re big. You’re so big. You’re bigger than big. But the sea can still claim you.

  Dad strides out two minutes later, the tails of his coat flapping behind him. “Come on,” he says, “time to go to your grandfather’s.”

  “Did you kill that guy?” I ask, except it comes out as, “Did you buy the book?” Wondering if my wobbly legs are going to hold me up.

  Dad pats his coat pocket. “Paid twice what he was asking for,” he says. I almost pass out with relief until he adds, “But he won’t do any more business in this town.”

  “Why? What happened? Is he . . . okay?”

  He puts one hand loosely on my shoulder. “He’s fine. Nothing that a stiff whiskey won’t take care of.”

  “I could use one myself,” I say, wanting to just sit down in the street and weep with relief.

  He laughs. Dad has one of these skeleton-y laughs, a big bunch of bones shaken in dry dirt. “Not on my watch.”

  “So what’s so important about this book?”

  He bares his teeth in what, for my father, passes for a grin. “The Book of Light contains the most important secret of the universe. The thing everybody wants to know.”