Richard Montanari: The Devil_s Garden

Good night, my little nupp.

It was something that lived in Michael’s heart, his memory: his mother on the fire escape, a warm, summer evening, the skyline of Manhattan before them like a glittering promise.

Next to him was his mother’s knitting basket. The basket with the Estonian cottage embroidered on its side.

Michael felt the knife tip nearing his Adam’s apple. With all his strength he pushed Aleks away from him, buying seconds. His hands still cuffed, he tore the knitting bag open, groped inside, felt the needle, the vintage twelve-inch Minerva steel needle his mother used for lace.

As Aleks came in for the kill, Michael summoned the final vestige of his strength. He did not have time for thought. He swung the needle up with all his power, plunging it into Aleks’s left temple.

Aleks screamed and staggered back, blood gushing from the wound.

Michael tried to stand, to cross the room to Emily, but his legs would not hold him. A darkness began to descend. The last image Michael had was Aleks staggering across the room, red eyes bulging in their sockets, spinning wildly, blood spraying the walls, his voice a rutting animal sound.

I’m sorry, my love, Michael thought as the last of his strength left him, the light wavering, then falling dim. I’m sorry.

Abby pulled furiously at the copper pipe. The tape had dug deep into her wrists, and she could barely feel her hands. But she could not stop. The rusted pipes moaned and groaned under her efforts, but she could not seem to break the welded fittings.

She recalled her training, the resource of how to face crises, how to pull a twenty-four-hour shift, from where to summon strength and energy and focus. She closed her eyes, saw Charlotte and Emily in their little cribs on that day in South Carolina, the look on Michael’s face.

With one last burst of force she broke free. The severed copper pipe sprayed water high into the air. She pulled the duct tape from her wrists, her mouth, ran across the room searching frantically for something, anything she could use as a weapon. She spotted Aleks’s shoulder bag in the corner. She fell upon it, tore it open. At the bottom were four loose bullets, the rounds Aleks had taken from the magazine of Kolya’s gun. Abby pulled them from the bag, then began to search the nearly dark room for the weapon. She crawled on her hands and knees, more than once slipping in the blood. The sounds had ceased coming from upstairs, and the silence was even more terrifying than the sounds.

She soon found the. 9 mm pistol underneath the old oven. She tried to remember where Michael had thrown the magazine. She couldn’t recall.

Think Abby.

Think!

Michael had thrown the weapon to the right, the clip to the left. Abby stood where Michael had been standing, followed the trajectory with her eyes. To her left was a stack of wooden moving pallets. She ran across the room, began lifting the heavy pallets, pushing them to the side, her fear and frustration coursing through her like an electric current. When she lifted the last pallet she heard the metallic clank. In the dim light she saw the magazine. She fell to her knees, loaded the bullets into the magazine, her fingers slick with blood and sweat.

“Isa!” Emily screamed again from upstairs.

“Oh, my baby!” Abby said. She jammed the magazine into the gun, chambered a round, ran up the steps.

When she reached the second floor, and looked into Michael’s old bedroom, she saw a tableau she knew would haunt her forever. The room was covered with blood. Emily sat in the corner, just beneath the windows, her hands folded in her lap. She was shaking. Aleks was slumped against the wall near the closet, a long needle protruded from his temple, leaking blood. His eyes were closed.

Then there was Michael. Michael was on the floor, face down. The back of his shirt was covered in blood. Abby ran over to him, put down the gun, and tried to put pressure on the wound, but it felt too deep.

Oh God, Michael! Please don’t die! Please!

From somewhere in the distance she heard sirens, shouting. Perhaps it was in another world, another life.

The phone, she thought. Aleks had a phone. She crossed the room, began to rummage in Aleks’s coat pockets. She went through them all, found nothing. It must have fallen out downstairs. Before she could get to her feet Aleks opened his eyes. He rocked forward, struggled to his feet, lifted her high into the air. He threw her into the wall. Plaster crumbled, exploding into the room in a cloud of dust.

“Tutred!” Aleks screamed as he fell back to his knees, and began to creep across the room, toward Emily. He crawled on his stomach, using the knife, sticking it in the floor, pulling himself forward in a sheet of glossy blood.

“Em!” Abby shouted. “Come to Mommy. Run!”

Emily was frozen. She did not move. Abby looked around frantically, found the gun in the morass of her blurred vision. She picked it up as Aleks edged ever closer.

“No!” Abby yelled. “No!”

Abby held the gun out in front of her, hands trembling. Sweat salted her eyes. Aleks was now just a few feet from Emily.

“Stop!”

Aleks brought himself to his knees. Choking back blood, he raised the knife over his head.

The booming roar of the gun shook the room, stealing all sound. The bullet slammed into Aleks’s back, blowing a large hole in his chest. He fell to the floor, driving the long needle deep into his skull. The metal snapped. He rolled onto his back, his eyes wide, feral, disbelieving.

At the moment his eyes drifted shut, Abby saw something creep over his face, something dark, like the passing of a violent storm.

He was crossing over, becoming. He smelled the wet fur, felt the warm breath on his face. He turned his head. The grey wolf sat next to him – young and strong and full of life.

Behind the wolf was the gate to his home. The gate was open, the road to the house covered in pine needles, the air sweet with the fragrance of cornflower. He knew that if he could just get inside, Anna, Marya, and Olga would be waiting for him.

He saw a shadow near the gate. A man in a black leather coat, a garment a few sizes too large. The man was young, but not so young that he had not already crossed the devil’s path. There was a finger missing from his right hand. In the dying light Aleks could just make out the young man’s face, and in it he saw himself.

In it he saw eternity.

Abby sensed someone else in the room. She spun around, gun raised. Behind her was a woman in an attack stance, holding an automatic weapon. From the barrel of the woman’s pistol curled a thin ribbon of smoke. Abby pointed the gun at the woman, but the woman did not back up, did not recoil. Neither did she lower her gun.

The woman spoke to her. In the aftermath of the thundering echo of the gun blast, Abby could not make out the words.

Somehow Abby knew the woman, the voice, but she could not place her. All she knew was that this was not over. The woman was there to take her daughter.

“No,” Abby said. She cocked the pistol. “You can’t have her!”

“It’s okay,” the woman said. “You can put the gun down.”

A man stepped up behind the woman. Abby could see the man, too, had a weapon in his hand. He held it at his side. He was nervous, and his eyes shifted back and forth.

“It’s over,” the woman said softly, lowering her weapon. She slipped it into her shoulder holster. “Please, put down the gun.”

The sirens drew closer. More footsteps. They were coming up the stairs.

“Please,” the woman repeated. “Put the gun down, Mrs Roman.”

Abby looked at the woman’s eyes, heard her words.

Mrs Roman.

Detective Desiree Powell took a few steps forward, never taking her eyes off the pistol in Abby Roman’s hand. To those whose only experience with a moment like this was watching Law amp; Order or reading about it in a book, Powell had a message. The longer you stare into a steel barrel, the worse it gets. No one ever takes it in their stride.