Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Peck was nodding, impatient to begin the procedure. Still staring at Sweeney, he reached down to a table, grabbed a sleek, black-on-black bone saw, and slapped it into Kerry’s hands in a theatrical gesture. As Kerry stepped to the head of the table, Sweeney tried to scream and run to her. But voice and legs both failed him, went numb and useless. And so he sat, embraced by Nadia and Alice, embracing the fetus, watching, unable even to close his eyes, as Kerry cut into Danny’s skull, made a small, round hole, and removed a covering of bone as if it were the top to a cookie jar.

What saved Sweeney was the fact that Danny remained fully conscious during the sawing and that he did not cry out. His eyes blinked and glazed, but there were no screams, no convulsion.

Kerry ran her fingers along the edge of the new cavity, and then, in a calm and clinical voice, she said, “We’re ready, Doctor,” and Peck took a long breath and once again addressed Sweeney.

“I know,” said Peck, his words clearly rehearsed, “that you question my methods. And that is appropriate. Many have doubted me before you. But I am here to lead, not to follow. And when the doubters have turned to ash in some forgotten boneyard, my work will live on.”

Without looking, he reached down and lifted a cup into view. It was clear plastic and oversized and decorated with line drawings of the Limbo freaks. The kind of thing given away as a promotion at a fast-food joint. It had a purple, crazy straw protruding high above its rim, twisting and looping to its end. For a moment, Peck lifted the cup above his head, like a chalice or a trophy, then he passed it to Kerry. When he spoke again, there was no sense of a prepared speech.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked Sweeney, staring.

“I’m here to help my son,” Sweeney said.

“Do you think you’re a good father?” Peck asked.

“I’ve tried my best,” Sweeney said.

“But your best wasn’t good enough,” Peck said. “Was it?”

Sweeney shook his head.

“Where do you think you went wrong?”

Sweeney tried to wet his lips but found his tongue void of fluid.

“I didn’t protect him,” he said, and Peck yelled, “Speak up.”

“I didn’t protect him,” Sweeney repeated. “I couldn’t keep him from harm.”

Peck nodded. Sweeney brought a hand up and covered his mouth.

“I had a son once,” Peck said. “I understand your troubles.”

Sweeney nodded, unaware that he had begun to weep.

“You want to be forgiven,” Peck said. “You want the boy to forgive you.”

Sweeney’s head was bobbing faster now, his throat on fire and his lungs forgetting any sense of rhythm.

“But to be forgiven,” Peck said, “you must forgive. That is an absolute.”

“I forgive you,” Sweeney yelled.

Peck bit down on his bottom lip, then said, “You have no reason to forgive me. I’ve done nothing to you or your boy.”

“You have to forgive Kerry,” Alice whispered.

“And Danny,” Nadia said.

Peck wasn’t pleased by their interruption.

“Do you know what grace is?” he asked, his voice too loud, and Sweeney nodded. “I’m giving you a gift today,” Peck said. “You didn’t ask for it and you’ll never be able to repay me.”

He looked to Kerry and gave a small nod. Kerry held the Limbo cup in her right hand and manipulated Danny’s head with her left, tilting it back until a thin, slow stream of murky pink liquid began to pour from the hole in the skull and fill the plastic tumbler.

“Today you’ll know what the child knows,” Peck said. “And you’ll feel what the child feels. You’ll know and feel these things without loss or distortion. Without the corruption of language. You’ll know the truth. And then you’ll have to decide if you want the truth to set you free.”

When the last of the fluid dripped from the boy’s skull, the tumbler was nearly full, and the liquid gave color to the skin of the freaks, whose bodies were outlined on the plastic. Kerry positioned Danny’s head back onto the surgical slab, crossed the room to Sweeney and extended the cup to him.

Sweeney stared up at her, unsure of what he should say or do. And in the absence of any plan, he lifted a tacky hand to his wife and they traded fetus for cup. Kerry smiled at him, brought the flesh in her hands to her chest, up high, near her neck. Sweeney wrapped both of his trembling hands around the cup, which was neither cool nor warm. He lifted it slightly, noticed what seemed to be tiny bubbles popping just above the rim. He brought his head down, fitting his mouth around the end of the straw as he closed his eyes and began to suck. The fluid wound its way through the looping track of the straw and flowed into the father’s mouth, over the tongue, down the throat and esophagus. It tasted like milk with a hint of molasses, and Sweeney drank until the straw made the slurping and sputtering that indicated the cup was empty.

He let the straw fall from his mouth, lowered the cup and opened his eyes to the phosphorescent display of a thousand Roman candles arcing across a deep blue sky. When the fireworks faded, he found himself staring at the back of his own head. And then the picture opened out, and his head was boxed in the rear window of the Honda. He was backing out of the driveway. He was headed down Oread Street on his way into work. He honked twice, his standard goodbye to his wife and his son.

He knew this moment, but not from this perspective. This was Danny’s viewpoint. This was the last time that Danny had seen him. This was the last glimpse of the father by the son. This, Sweeney knew, was what happened at home on the night of the accident.

While Sweeney was turning onto Williams, cranking up “Betcha by Golly Wow” and hoping that it would lull him out of a sour mood, Danny was watching the Honda disappear. Everything that Sweeney was about to witness, he realized, would be through the boy’s eyes. And what he saw was a dash back into the house, from a shaky and low-to-the-ground angle. Upon entering the kitchen, carpet changing into linoleum, the sprint transformed into a glide, as the Limbo slipper socks carried the boy almost across the length of the room, where Kerry was chopping produce for a salad.

Danny’s eyes came to rest on his mother and Sweeney saw Kerry smile.

“Did you say goodbye to Daddy?” she asked.

Danny nodded and the picture tilted forward and back.

“Can I have some Oreos?” the boy asked.

Kerry glanced at the wall clock.

“Dinner’s in a bit,” she said, but Danny was already at the low cabinet where they kept the cookies. “Just a few, okay?”

A nod, a tilt, and the boy pushed his fists into the bag that held the cookies and retrieved three, four, and one in his mouth made five. Kerry let it go and Danny departed the kitchen, climbed the stairs to the second floor, singing around the Oreo, “I Don’t Look Like a Hero,” the theme to the last Limbo movie.

When he got to his room, he stacked the cookies on the night table next to the bed, opened the drawer beneath the stack, and lifted out, gingerly, the issue of the comic that he and his dad had purchased earlier in the day. He hoisted himself up onto the bed. Kneeled and balanced and turned on the lamp. The bulb illuminated its Limbo shade. Threw shadows onto the far wall, across the Limbo poster and the Limbo wallpaper that stretched beyond the poster.

Danny sat back and then lay down. Not quite comfortable, he put the comic on the bed and stacked a second pillow atop the first. He grabbed two cookies off the top of the stack, put one on his stomach and took a bite of the second. Crumbs rained down on his chin. Now that he was ready, he lifted the little magazine, its cover overloaded with colors, the gloss glaring a little in the light.