Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

Yes. Richard Drake had said that. And he’d said that Rachael, Lucas and Dad were going to die, too—but he say didn’t how, or when. Rachael’s last word to me as the cell phone died in my hand had been “help.”

My hands trembled as I stuffed the shoebox documents and photo of Alexandrov into my satchel. I spared a moment to look at the fragile cell phone that had saved my life. Hunks of its plastic case and buttons were missing, exposing blackened circuits. A vertical crack bisected its dark LCD screen. I flipped it over and gazed at the exposed battery. It was covered in barnacles of corrosion.

I placed it in the shoebox and closed the lid. The phone— or its caller, I thought—deserved to be, finally, at rest.

And now, I needed to get out of here, man, right now, giddy-giddy. I tore through the earth, reaching the trap door, bracing for the pain that would sweep over me as I would shove open the trapdoor, bolt out of the crawl space and run to the car. God, this was gonna suck.

Wait.

I paused, did as I was told. My lizard brain was growling. I listened. If Daniel Drake were somewhere in the house, waiting to finish me off…

Chill, Z. Take a breath. Go slow, for God’s sake, go slow.

I placed my palms against the door and pushed upward, gently. Its hinges creaked.

My eyes rose above the scuffed linoleum like a periscope. Daniel’s body lay in the center of the room. His legs were splayed across the remains of the shattered kitchen table. The man’s left shin—obviously the leg I’d hit with the hatchet—was wrapped in a blood-soaked dishtowel and cinched tight with a leather belt. The hatchet rested against his belly. Daniel’s glass-shredded face was covered in dried blood. He was snoring.

I pulled myself up through the trapdoor, hands sliding in the tacky blood on the floor, desperate to be quiet.

Daniel blew out another foghorn snore… and then his ass tooted a fart, almost like an exclamation point. I choked back a half-laugh, half-sob of pain. I hated him, but I couldn’t leave him like this. I told myself to call an ambulance when I had access to a working phone.

Seconds later, I was up and gone, hobbling through the back yard, past the grass field. Its tall blades swished in the morning breeze, a thousand-thousand fingers waving goodbye in the eastern sunrise.

Working the Saturn’s pedals was an excruciating chore.

The rotten-tooth house finally sank into the rearview mirror, and I sighed, grateful to be gone.

And when the car hit the interstate, I slammed the accelerator to the floor.

Cell phone reception.

I needed cell phone reception.

Speedometer: 85 MPH. Dashboard digital clock: 7:22 AM.

Nausea swirled in my belly and I dry-heaved with fright. It was a wordless drive, surrounded by the dim roar of the passing road, punctuated by the screams in my mind. The screams of a World Without.

She’s my anchor, my sail, the second half of my heartbeat. She grounds me, electrifies me, excites me, astounds me with her brilliance and talent, and loving her is the easiest thing I’ve ever done… effortless, natural, true. Always there, my cheerleader, my coach, my teammate, my perfect fit.

Kid brother, trusty sidekick, ever-present reminder to bounce, to stay lively and propitious, to never take life too seriously. Pop Rocks for the soul.

Father, the man to whom I owe my skepticism, my rationalism, the Bedrock of Me, the source of my hunger to do right, to fix the world…

Rachael’s tattooed chest gushed blood, flayed by a maniac. Now, her body was bisected on subway tracks, shoved by a stranger. Raped. Worse.

“No,” I muttered.

Lucas’ face flaking black, house fire flames consuming his body. Head crushed on concrete, a parkour move gone bad. Shot, bam-bam-bam, strutting Alphabet City punks back to settle their tenpin score.

“Please, no.”

Dad’s screaming face, dunked in a men’s-room toilet in One Hogan Place, parole violator dead-set on payback.

“God, if you can hear me…”

But He didn’t.

The visions blasted on, kaleidoscopic, tungsten-flares of midnight murder and mania, of my beloveds’ lives ending terribly, quietly, slowly, bullet-train fast. And then, a life’s worth of feeling the gaping World Without, with a new breed of nyctophobia: a darkness of the heart, no reason to keep beating. My fuel, my fire, gone forever.

Forever.

Tears slid down my smashed face. I glanced at the dashboard clock.

7:23 AM.

Nightmare minute.

If they were dead, it was my fault. All. My. Fault.

“Please, God. Please. ”

90 MPH now.

And then, as the car screamed ever-southward, just miles away from Claytonville Prison: skeleton song.

I’d already been clutching my cell phone, watching for reception bars to wink on-screen. My thumb frantically jabbed the “voice mail” button; the thing could’ve dialed in at warp speed and it still wouldn’t be fast enough.

First message. 10:38 PM last night. Rachael.

Z? Lost you. Come back to the city—don’t go up there, please.

Second message. Also last night. 11:07. Dad.

Call me back. We need to work this out.

Third message. 6:30 AM today.

I smiled and wept.

“Z, it’s Rachael—”

“—and Lucas. Bro, you’re—”

“—It’s us. Please call when you can. We’ve been up all night—”

“—dude, Dad’s flipped his shit, you gotta —”

“—shut up, Luc. So yes, please call. We’re in a bad place over here… and thanks to your father, so’s your blind man. Wicked stuff is about to go down, Z. Call back. I love you.”

“’Dore!” Lucas called.

The voice mail ended. I dialed Rachael’s cell. She picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said. I struggled to keep my voice even; I’d been exhaustion’s punching bag—the surge of elation was too much. The tears still came. “You’re… you’re alive.”

“You are, too,” she replied. Her voice trembled, and I realized she was doing the same thing, miles away. I smiled through the tears. We were puzzles pieces clicking home, in sync once more.

“Oh Jesus, Zach,” she said. “You have no idea… you’ll never, ever know.”

I did, a little. A World Without.

“I’m coming home,” I said. “I want… No. Need. I need to see you, be with you.”

“Are you okay?”

I glanced at the ghoul’s eye staring back at me in the rearview mirror.

“No. No, babe.”

And then I said the only thing I could say. It was stupidly inadequate. Words are sometimes like that—failures of our species, hollow caveman grunts strung together to represent things bigger than the world itself.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Z,” Rachael said. “Oh, baby. You should be. You’d better be. I love you, but you’re in the red, don’t think for a minute that you’re not. Listen to me. If. You. Ever. ”

I wiped away my tears, nodding. “Yeah.”

“No, I need to say this. If you ever do anything like this again, we’re through. It’s simple math. We’re together, Z; we’re a couple. That means we’re coupled together, to each other. You can’t just run off. You can’t fight a war by yourself.”

“I thought I was protecting—”

“I know what you thought, and it was chivalrous and noble and selfless… and pretty damned selfish. This isn’t about you, baby. It’s about us. If you want to keep me in your life, then keep me in your life. We’re a team. We fight our wars together. If you want to fight on your own, then have the courage and decency to tell me to my face. I like love letters, Z—but I don’t truck with lone letters. Get me?”