by T. L. Hines
He. They. Extreme measures. Becoming. Accepting.
33
CLEANSING
Jude felt perfect the next morning, really perfect for the first time in . . . maybe ever. Alive. He smiled as the word crossed his mind. Yeah, alive. Jude Allman was alive. Imagine that.
Yesterday’s worries, yesterday’s trembling fear, had dissolved like a bad dream. He held up his hand and looked at it. Steady as always. And that conversation with Kristina last night, well, maybe that had been a dream.
He sat in the break room for coffee kickoff. He always called the first fifteen minutes of the day coffee kickoff because Frank called it coffee kickoff. And far be it from Ron Gress, Compliant Janitor, to rock the boat. Coffee kickoff it was, even though he usually stayed away from the stuff. Today would be even more enjoyable, because Frank was gone. He’d said yesterday he was going to take some time off, something about working in the basement.
He even decided to try a bit of coffee today; counting the cups he’d had at Rachel’s and the cafe, it was his fourth in about five years. He didn’t do it because he craved coffee but because he craved something normal. He raised the cup to no one in particular and did a quick toast to Frank and his most important work in the basement.
Yes, normal. That was what he was now. None of the life-after-death nonsense, no imaginary visions or imaginary people. Just normalcy.
Jude took another sip of the coffee—decided to cut it with a healthy amount of creamer, straight black was just too harsh—and opened that morning’s local Carbon County News. The big story was about the search for Kenneth Sohler. Authorities refuse to speculate about Sohler, the article said, but sources have said Sohler had connections to at least two of the missing children. Chief Odum had kept the story quiet for a few days, but evidently it was breaking news now.
The image of Sohler’s bloody face appeared and swam in his vision again. He quickly put down the paper and picked up Frank’s People magazine instead. He smiled to himself. Frank reading People always struck him as such an odd match—like Martha Stewart becoming a wrestling fan, it just didn’t match. One-on-one, Frank was pretty chatty, full of odd turns of phrase. And the young kids seemed to like him; he was always talking to them in the halls. But all in all, Frank, he of the Billy Bob teeth and the Michelin Man physique, just didn’t fit the typical image of a people person. Or a People person.
Jude started thumbing through the pages, trying to find one that caught his eye, when something in his peripheral vision moved. He looked up and saw Kristina in the doorway.
‘‘Sorry,’’ she said, obviously noticing he’d been startled.
‘‘ ’Sokay,’’ he said. ‘‘Guess I jump kind of easy.’’
‘‘Guess so,’’ she said.
Silence.
‘‘How’d you get in here, anyway?’’ he asked.
She smiled. ‘‘It’s a school, not a maximum security prison.’’
Okay, he hadn’t really meant how, it was more of a why question, but he wasn’t going to argue semantics at the moment. She’d probably get to the why soon enough. Jude was kind of glad to see Kristina, anyway. He’d been thinking of her, and he really needed to get some things straight. She clearly had the wrong ideas about him. The superhero thing, for sure. But he also felt like there was something more, like maybe she wanted him to be a last fling in a macabre way.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t, because of Rachel. Not that there was anything there, either. But he’d been thinking a lot about her recently, and he wasn’t about to spend time with Kristina while thinking of someone else. Plus, Kristina scared him, in a lot of ways. Made him uncomfortable. And—let’s be honest here—there wasn’t much of a future with Kristina. She was dying.
Kristina didn’t speak, so he tried to prime the pump. ‘‘What brings you here?’’
‘‘I just wondered if you’d maybe want to have dinner tonight.
Good old Red Lodge Cafe.’’
Well, there it was. No choice now but to spill it all. ‘‘Look, I’m not . . .’’ Not what? ‘‘I just don’t think I should.’’
‘‘Why not?’’
‘‘I need to tell you something. Something kind of important.’’ He motioned for her to sit down at the break table with him. Should he offer her a cup of coffee? No, best not to get too comfortable.
‘‘Okay,’’ she said as she sat.
‘‘It’s all . . . nothing.’’
‘‘You’ll have to be just a bit more specific.’’
‘‘The whole story: the Into the Light book you loved so much, the TV movie, the talk shows—all lies.’’
He looked for a reaction, but she didn’t move. ‘‘I see,’’ she said.
That made him mad. ‘‘I see’’ was something people usually said when they really meant ‘‘I don’t believe a thing you’re saying.’’
‘‘No, I don’t think you do see,’’ he said. ‘‘What I’m saying is: all three times I died, I remembered nothing. There was something there, yes, but I couldn’t ever remember it. The only thing I ever brought back from the Other Side was this horrible taste of copper, this taste of death. But is that what a dying person wants to hear?’’
She stared a moment, then shook her head softly. ‘‘No.’’
‘‘No. So I went along with the white light, and the warm voice, and the comforting presence. All of it. They got their book. They got their movie. And I got out. But here’s the important thing: I lied about all of it. All of it. So where does that put your theories?’’
He stopped. His brief anger at the ‘‘I see’’ comment had passed, and maybe he’d been a bit harsh. She was, after all, dying. She just wanted answers, and he was blowing apart her ideas about him. Jude Allman wasn’t anyone special, and he could tell her nothing about what waited for her on the Other Side. Already he regretted spilling this; she’d find out soon enough, and there would have been no harm letting her have hope.
He mentally kicked himself but continued. The cut had already been made; best to just take the whole tumor. ‘‘After all that, I just wasn’t . . . right. I couldn’t let anyone touch me. I even . . . do you know I can’t lie down?’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’
‘‘Scares me, so I sleep in a recliner. If I try to lie down, I feel like I’m gonna choke. Maybe even . . . die.’’ He knew how laughable that sounded coming from Jude Allman, the Incredible Resurrection Man, and he half expected her to chuckle. She didn’t. ‘‘Crazy, huh? But now I’m feeling . . . I dunno . . . something’s changed. Something maybe with my son, and I need that. But I also need to come clean with you: I’m not who you think. Or what you think. I’m pretty sure I have a chance of getting better, but all your talk about signs and being special and all that other cryptic stuff . . . well, I think that’s making me sicker.’’
Kristina stood. ‘‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’’ she said, looking at the floor. Then she turned and left the break room.
Great. She had probably come here this morning, scared to open her heart and talk about how she really felt, and he hadn’t even waited. No sir. He’d torn open the locked door and stomped all over her heart with jackboots.
He went to the broom closet and found the dust mop. Coffee kickoff was officially over, and he needed to get to the gym, be alone.
Maybe the gym didn’t need another cleaning.
But Jude did.
Rachel heard the knock on her door, the knock she knew was coming all morning long. She looked out the peephole and then opened the door to let in Nicole.
‘‘Hi,’’ Rachel said. ‘‘I’m running a little late. Sorry. Just need to wash Nathan’s face and put on his shoes.’’
‘‘No problem,’’ Nicole said. She turned to look back at her car; Bradley was in his booster seat, and he waved to her through the glass. Nicole turned back around and smiled. ‘‘We’re a little early.’’
That was the great thing about Nicole: she would do anything to make you feel bette
r. Even tell little fibs like ‘‘I’m early’’ when she was right on time. Rachel stepped back from the door and invited Nicole inside.
Nicole hesitated. ‘‘Um, I think I’ll just stay out here. You know . . . I mean, with everything that’s happened around here . . .’’ She let the sentence trail off, but she didn’t need to. Rachel was a mother; she knew. Rachel immediately thought of the threatening phone call, then pushed it from her mind. Whoever had called her, it had nothing to do with Nicole or Bradley.
‘‘If you need a few minutes,’’ Nicole continued, ‘‘maybe I could just bring Bradley in.’’
‘‘Oh, no, no. Just a face scrub and the shoes. Back in two shakes.’’
Nathan sat at the table, watching cartoons on the small television. She wasn’t a huge fan of television, save one time of day: mornings, when she was getting ready for work. The television kept Nathan occupied and let her map out her battle plans for the day. Sometimes she would even sit down with the paper and a cup of coffee while Nathan watched his cartoons. But not usually. Not often. The guilt precluded her from sitting and enjoying herself while her child must surely be rotting his mind in front of the boob tube. So most days it was just an hour of television while she showered and dressed. An hour wasn’t so bad.
Rachel looked at the breakfast in front of Nathan. At least he’d eaten most of his cereal. ‘‘Take one more bite of banana while I put on your shoes,’’ she said. He didn’t take his eyes off the television as she put on his shoes, but he did what she asked: he stuffed the rest of his banana into his mouth.
‘‘I said a bite of your banana, not the whole thing. That’s too big.’’
He shrugged his shoulders and finally looked at her. He smiled a big banana grin at her, and she brushed at his hair. ‘‘Okay,’’ she said, ‘‘just one more thing.’’
‘‘Waa my fay?’’ he said through a mouthful of banana.
‘‘Yes, wash your face.’’ She pulled his washcloth off the counter and ran it across his cheeks. She kept a washcloth for him in the kitchen, just for such occasions. He suffered the daily face washing ritual with more dignity and grace than usual, and she finally finished by giving him a kiss on the nose. ‘‘Okay, bucko. Bradley and his mommy are here to pick you up.’’
‘‘Awright!’’ he said, the TV now entirely forgotten. He ran toward the front door, and she followed.
When Nathan opened the front door, Nicole wasn’t on the front steps. Rachel peeked outside and saw Nicole was back at the car, making faces at Bradley through the window. She couldn’t hear Bradley, but she could see he was squealing with laughter inside the car.
‘‘All ready to go,’’ Rachel called to Nicole as Nathan negotiated the steps and ran over to the car.
Nicole turned around. ‘‘Okay, Rachel. We’ll see you this afternoon.’’ Nicole grabbed Nathan’s hand and walked with him to the other side of the car.
Rachel waved and closed her front door. She was late, way late if she wanted to open the shop by nine o’clock.
34
SWITCHING
Accepting and becoming. It had been so much easier than expected. They were two, and they were one. Always had been, probably. But they had been so careful to separate the two before, afraid not to separate the two. The Normal needed to mix in, the Hunter needed to be invisible. And that was a quite satisfactory arrangement for some time. The two coexisted peacefully, and their rigid intolerance for blurring the line between them—well, that was what the treatments had been all about.
Still, these past few weeks the Normal was hungry to be there when the Hunter was working. And the Hunter had enjoyed wearing the Normal’s skin. It was new, fresh, different. Exciting. Really, did they need to be so careful about making the Hunter appear different? They had tracked Quarry for years, and no one had ever been able to put them together. They were too smart, too careful for anyone to catch them; that much was patently obvious. So why not hunt as the Normal? Did they not deserve to do so, as a reward for all their careful work over the years?
They had been working on it for the last few days now, toggling the switch in their mind. When they had become, the switch turned one of them off, while activating the other. But with the accepting, it was much more subtle: one merely came to the forefront, while the other stayed in the background. Both still there, participating.
They called the image of the light switch into their mind again, concentrated on the black lever. It clicked down, and the Hunter was in the driver’s seat while the Normal rode shotgun. They concentrated on the image again and the lever flipped up. Switch. The Normal took over.
They had decided they really didn’t need to travel to do their hunting. Nor did they need to rub dirt on their body to mask their scent. They probably never had; both had merely been precautions. But such precautions were indeed frivolous now that they had accepted. All those years of becoming perfected the technique. With the technique now honed to a hard, steel edge, precaution was unnecessary.
So this morning, when they had driven down the same neighborhood street they had driven hundreds of times, they saw everything with new eyes. They saw a car in the driveway of a home they hadn’t paid attention to before.
But they paid attention today.
Inside the car was a young boy, probably no more than six or seven. And just getting into the car, with some help from a woman, was another boy of about the same age.
They smiled as they drove by, then looked into the rearview mirror. That was the most delicious part of accepting: the world around them opened up in new possibilities. Hunting grounds heretofore off-limits— too close to home, mustn’t hunt there as a precaution— became rich and vivid with possibility. Where once there had only been landscape, buildings, and homes, there was now Quarry. Lots of Quarry.
Switch.
Five minutes, tops. That was how quickly they had bagged two Quarry. Three Quarry, if they wanted to be technical about it; the woman certainly could be counted.
They breathed deep as they sat in the front seat of the car. Their supercharged senses let them smell the chloroform in the air, just the slightest tinge. Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever they heard a bell; the Hunter and the Normal began to salivate whenever they smelled the chloroform.
In front of the house they turned off the car’s engine, then sat listening. Most would hear only silence, but the Hunter and the Normal enjoyed sounds unheard by human ears. They listened to the pines and aspens growing. They listened to the earth breathing. They listened to the clouds gliding overhead.
Beside them, the woman began to stir. She was larger, so she would naturally metabolize the chloroform faster. But no worry. They pulled out the soaked rag and put it over her face. A few breaths, and she faded into the Land of Nod again.
They turned to see the Quarry in the back seat. Both were still, their bodies limp and lifeless. Not for long, of course. In another fifteen minutes or so, they would be in storage, wrapped in burlap bags and safely tucked away in the basement root cellar.
The top of their head tingled in anticipation as they opened the car’s rear door and dragged out the bodies. They thought of the smell of burlap, earth, and faint chloroform, mixing together in a delectable combination. They paused, snaked a key into the front door, pushed it open.
The latest dose of fumes would keep the woman unconscious for another thirty minutes, so the Hunter and the Normal carried both Quarry down the stairs to the basement, individually this time because the staircase was narrow. They put both Quarry on their worktable, pulled burlap bags from beneath the table, and enjoyed the burlap aroma for a few seconds, actually closing their eyes and inhaling.
First, they shoved one Quarry into the burlap, a specially made casing stitched together from a few old potato sacks. Then, a length of knotted rope to secure the top of the bag. Finally, the bagged package went on one of the ceiling hooks. Soon the Quarry would wake. It would struggle, cry, maybe scream a little as it tried to work its way free. But, hang
ing in the air and surrounded by darkness, the Quarry would be deliciously disoriented. That was the appetizer: listening to the begging and pleading, the crying. The Hunter and the Normal desperately wanted to be around for that, but they would have to return to the Normal’s life for the rest of the day. That appetizer would remain untasted until tonight when they returned home.
Satisfied, they turned to the second Quarry and began bagging it. Now they realized for the first time they were whistling. No tune in particular, but whistling. Whistle while you work. Yes, indeed. They concentrated on the burlap, noticing the intricate pattern of its weave.
Then their world exploded in a bright flash of red, followed by a hot, stinging clamp of pain at the back of their head. Suddenly, somehow, they were on their knees—maybe they had even hit the table as they fell—and confusion spilled through their mind.
The world came into focus again.
The woman they had kidnapped with the Quarry—the wretched, unwanted woman—stood above them with a shovel in her hand.
They scrambled to their feet quickly. She raised the shovel for another blow, but they sidestepped, then grabbed the shovel’s handle to stop her. She was strong, certainly stronger than the Quarry they were used to capturing, but they were far, far stronger. They wrested the shovel away, letting it fall to the floor with a hollow, empty clang. Her smell changed then, from the soapy smell of rage to the familiar, acrid smell of fear. A smell they knew and loved.
She turned to run, actually making it up a few steps before they caught the leg of her jeans. She worked her leg free and kicked hard; her foot hit them in the forehead, then began scrambling up the stairs again.
Calm. They were calm now. They had shown a lapse in judgment, but they would soon have the situation under control again. They mounted the stairs after the woman. Ahead, the sound of the front door slamming came back to them.