John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

The image startled Ben awake, and he lay there in bed, sweating lightly, bunching the sheet into matted balls with his hands. Finally, he got up, walked across the bedroom in the darkness, opened the door, and slipped quietly into the hallway. The house was silent, except for the subtle pulse of the grandfather clock in the living room below. On the left side of the hallway stood the closed door to Joel’s bedroom, and beyond that on the right, lost in the shadows, was the door to Thomas’s room. No noise emanated from behind either, and after a moment’s pause Ben started down the hallway in the direction of the stairs, thinking he’d go to the kitchen to get some—

Suddenly, he stopped. Up ahead at the end of the hall, sitting there in the shadows, was the wolf. Ben could hear its panting, could just make out the outline of its body in the darkness, its long tongue lying flat and slightly protruding through its partially opened jaws. Ben took a step backward, his right hand grasping blindly for the light switch on the wall. Then the thing came for him, rising up from its seated position on its haunches and padding heavily down the short, dim corridor. Ben stood frozen in position, unable to move, bracing himself for the impact of the animal’s teeth on his thigh, for the weight of its body pulling him to the ground. His breath came in quick, hurried gasps, the sweat that had begun to dry on his skin now awakening once again and coalescing into tense, tight beads on his arms and back. A small sound escaped him—something between a whimper and a half scream—and although his fingers had finally located the switch on the wall he now felt both unable and unwilling to use it, knowing that to flip it on and to see the wolf in its full form would be too much for his mind to handle.

The creature came to a halt in front of him, and then suddenly and inexplicably, its tail began to swish back and forth in a friendly sign of greeting. The broad head pushed insistently against his left hip, and Ben’s hands went reflexively to the sides of its head to ruffle the ears and stroke the long, broad neck.

“Alex, you scared the shit out of me,” he said, exhaling slowly, then patting the canine’s right shoulder as the dog leaned into him in his usual fashion. The bony tail whipped enthusiastically from side to side, striking the wall with a loud crack.

The second door on the left opened, and Thomas’s head poked out into the hallway. “Hey.”

Ben looked up. “Hi,” he said. “Sorry to wake you. Alex just about gave me a heart attack.”

Thomas looked at the two of them without speaking.

“I was going to head down to the kitchen for something to drink,” Ben told him, glad to have someone to talk to. “Feel like coming?”

“Okay,” Thomas said with a shrug.

“Great,” Ben replied, leading the expedition down the stairs, through the living room, and into the kitchen. He flipped on the light, opened a cabinet, and pulled two glasses from the shelf. “What’ll it be?” He smiled.

“What’ve you got?”

Ben opened the refrigerator and perused the options. “Let’s see: milk, grape juice, water, Diet Coke…” He frowned. “There’s half a pitcher of unidentifiable pink stuff in here.”

“How about a beer?” Thomas suggested.

Ben turned and looked at him. “You want a beer?” he asked. To be honest, the option didn’t sound half bad right about now.

Thomas shrugged noncommittally.

“Okay,” Ben replied, retrieving two bottles from the back of the fridge. He looked at Thomas. “You need a glass?”

The boy shook his head.

“Good. Neither do I.” He returned the glasses to the cabinet, retrieved an opener, popped off the tops, and handed one of the bottles over to his son. “Cheers,” he said, smiling broadly, as he sat down at the table. The bottles clinked together.

Thomas lifted the beverage to his lips and took a long slug, and Ben followed suit. “Ahh,” he told his son, “nothing like an ice-cold beer at two-thirty in the morning, eh?”

Thomas smiled thinly and took another sip. “How is she?” he asked.

“Monica?” Ben let the second swallow of alcohol slide down his throat. The bottle felt light in his hand, and when he looked down he was surprised to see that it was almost empty. “She’s pretty banged up,” he replied, realizing as soon as the words had left his mouth that the euphemism didn’t nearly do justice to what he had witnessed today.

“Will she die?” Thomas asked, and Ben was struck by how similar the question was to the one Joel had asked him earlier that day.

“I don’t know,” he answered for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He wondered how many others would be looking to him for the answer to that question, as if holding a medical degree somehow enabled him to look into the future, to retrieve the likely outcomes of people’s lives like rabbits from a magician’s hat.

Thomas finished off his bottle, and Ben rose from his chair to retrieve another two from the refrigerator, placing one in front of each of them. There was no cheerful salutation or clinking of glasses this time, and they sipped their beverages in silence. Unlike Joel, Ben realized, there would be no questions about God or heaven from Thomas, no discussion regarding forgiveness or salvation. Ben didn’t doubt that the questions were there, but his oldest son guarded his inner world much more tightly than Joel, keeping his thoughts and feelings mostly to himself. Over the years it had only gotten worse, the connection between them becoming increasingly distant. It was as if Thomas were standing on a boat that was slowly, almost imperceptibly, drawing away from a pier on which Ben stood and watched. He could still bridge the gap, he thought, if he needed to . But one day he worried that he would look down to find that the space between them had grown too wide for him to cross.

“I want to see her,” his son said suddenly, his eyes focused somewhere beyond this room that they shared.

“Sure,” Ben replied. “I’ll ask her parents if it’s okay if we visit her in the hospital. I’m sorry, son. I know she was a friend of yours.”

Is, Ben thought, correcting himself. She is a friend of his.

Thomas nodded, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood up. He walked to the counter and placed his bottles in the sink. “Good night, Dad,” he said.

“Good night, son,” Ben replied. He rose from his seat, intending to place a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, maybe even to give him a hug if the boy would allow it. But when he turned around, Ben found himself alone in the room—his oldest son already gone.

“Thanks for showing us in,” Detective Schroeder said as he and his partner followed the psychiatric unit manager down the corridor toward the elevators.

“I’m sorry he bothered you,” she said. She was well dressed and attractive, and she walked briskly along as she talked. “Patient confidentiality laws prevent us from providing you with any clinical information.” They stepped into the elevator and she leaned forward and pushed a button.

“It’s our job to follow up on these things,” Carl told her. The Sheriff’s Department had received a 911 phone call from the hospital’s psych unit yesterday. The man, who’d identified himself to the emergency operator as Harold Matthews, had wanted to talk to the detective in charge about “that girl they found in the woods.” Carl wasn’t particularly hopeful, since the call had originated from the psych unit, but he was at least willing to come here to see what the man had to say. It wouldn’t be the first unproductive lead they’d investigated in the last few days. Since the second assault, the Sheriff’s Department had been inundated with calls from civilians regarding suspicious characters and irregular goings-on within the town. None of these tips had led to anything fruitful. The truth was, there were simply a lot of weird people out there. Usually they settled into the background noise of everyday life. It took something horrific to recalibrate people’s tolerance for the odd and eccentric.