Lance Brody Omnibus

by Michael Robertson Jr

  2015 (II)

  (The Reverend and the Apostle Surfer)

  Three days before Centerfest was when Lance saw the Reverend for the first time.

  The Hillston Sporting Authority had been very busy for a Sunday afternoon, but Lance hadn’t been surprised. The last few days before the official start of the PeeWee and Rec League football and soccer seasons were always a madhouse in the store as procrastinating parents rushed in on their lunch breaks and piled through the door after work to quickly buy all the supplies their son or daughter needed for the first game or first practice. Nick Silverthorne always loved it. “A rushed shopper is a shopper who doesn’t care about the price,” he always said.

  Lance had seen the evidence to support this claim.

  But as Lance had left the store at just past six thirty on that Sunday evening, leaving Nick alone to finish out the day and lock up, he’d seen something else. Someone else. Someone he’d never seen in Hillston before.

  A block east of the Hillston Sporting Authority was a small café that did big business. Lance knew the owner—Mary Jennings—and had graduated with her daughter, Kate. Mary had started Downtown Joe ten years ago with a menu that consisted of coffee and croissants. Now she ran an operation that employed a dozen people, had a full-service breakfast and lunch menu and cozy indoor or outdoor seating. It was the only spot most Hillston residents thought about when they wanted to go out to grab a cup of coffee. Being as close as it was to the store, Lance had spent much of his own money at Downtown Joe, and every time he said hi to Mary, he told her to tell Kate hello.

  Kate was away at college, just like most of the other kids Lance had grown up with, and probably had a hard time even remembering Lance’s face when—if—Mary ever actually delivered his greetings.

  Lance wondered what his life might be like right now if he’d left Hillston. What would he be doing right this moment if he’d accepted one of those basketball scholarship offers? Would he be at the gym, working on his game? Would he be at the dining hall with friends—new friends—devouring plate after plate? Or maybe he’d be at the library with the cute girl from his History of Western Civilization class, supposed to be going over notes for the next day’s big quiz but both really just flirting and waiting for the other one to suggest they hang out again sometime, somewhere other than a library with open notebooks in front of them.

  But he hadn’t gone.

  Couldn’t.

  It was too unpredictable. His gifts, his curse, they’d developed over the years, and while he might never fully understand them, at least in Hillston he’d grown to learn what to expect from them. And in Hillston—sleepy, tiny Hillston, Virginia—things had already been bad enough.

  Lance had grown up seeing the lingering spirits of the dead—some nice and well dressed and seemingly at peace, despite their continued presence among mortals, but others … others appeared in a form resembling the moments of their deaths, or worse. Car crash victims with dented faces and necks that hung at unnatural angles, arms and legs twisted and snapped with bones popping through skin. Murder victims with knife wounds gaping open between shredded bits of clothing, or bullet holes—small and black and sometimes so innocuous-looking it was hard to believe it was enough to end a life—peppering their torsos or marking their temples. Cancer patients who’d finally succumbed to that deadly disease, their bodies emaciated and always heartbreaking.

  Lance had seen more than just the human spirit. He’d also seen the evil beyond the veil. He’d seen things from a world that was not ours, a place where suffering and pain were the fuel on which entities thrived. Call it Hell, call it Purgatory, call it Walmart on Black Friday—the things that came from this other place were things that no person should ever have to see.

  He’d seen all these things—endured all these things—and he’d never even gone any further from home than away games with the basketball team and a few short day trips with friends.

  Friends that were gone now. Friends that had moved on to real lives that stretched beyond the Hillston county lines and had infinite possibilities.

  And then there was his mother….

  How could he ever leave her?

  It wasn’t that she was incapable of taking care of herself—far from it! She was one of the most capable and strong women Lance had ever met in his life. Yet … there seemed to be some bond between them that was deeper than just your normal mother/son variety. It was as if on some deep-down level, some place that existed far beyond anything our human minds were meant to comprehend, Lance and Pamela Brody coexisted. They survived because of each other.

  Or maybe it was because she wasn’t just Lance’s mother, she was his best friend. A best friend who knew everything that he was.

  A friend who would never leave him.

  The Reverend derailed Lance’s regretful thoughts of what-could-have-beens.

  He sat alone at one of the wrought-iron patio tables outside of Downtown Joe. He was tall and thin and sat ramrod straight in his chair, a black dress shirt tucked neatly into black dress pants. Dress shoes, scuffed and worn, flat on the ground, his knees bumping the underside of the table. Lance could see the white collar insert peeking from beneath the shirt’s fabric as he came upon the man from the rear, and as he passed by and turned to look at the man’s face, he saw the single white flash on the man’s otherwise completely black outfit, right there at his throat.

  He’s a priest, Lance thought. Some sort of minister … or reverend.

  His face was clean-shaven and smooth. Pale, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a year’s time. Despite the man’s thinness, loose skin drooped around his neckline, and wrinkles dissected his forehead and grew from the corners of his eyes. His nose was large and curved, like a crescent moon. He could be forty, he could seventy. It was hard to tell with the thick crop of gray hair he wore parted on the side.

  The Reverend was taking a delicate sip of coffee, steam rising from the cup, visible in the cooling evening air. His other hand was placed flat atop a small leather-bound black book that rested on the table, as if he were about to swear an oath.

  Lance kept walking and then turned the corner at the end of the block, taking one last peek at the man before he disappeared from view. The Reverend placed his coffee cup back on the table and reached for the little black book, flipping to a specific page and starting to read.

  See you soon, Lance.

  The words invaded Lance’s mind and disrupted his thoughts like an alarm waking him from a drowsy morning sleep, a sudden burst of awareness that snapped awake the brain in an instant state of confusion. Lance came to a stop on the sidewalk, his sneakers nearly skidding on the concrete. He stood silently and looked all around, checking for anybody, looking for any possibility that the voice he’d just heard had not originated inside his own head.

  But he knew it had.

  There was no question. Lance knew better than to try and explain the unexplainable. Some things were just better left accepted and unquestioned. His entire life, for example.

  Somebody had just sent him a message—See you soon, Lance—and there was no mistaking the voice’s tone.

  It had been a threat.

  And then, there on the sidewalk, a slow trickle of dread grew and spread through Lance’s body. He breathed in deeply, gathering his resolve, then turned and walked back toward the street he’d turned from. He rounded the corner and stared back down the block toward Downtown Joe. The patio table was empty. Just a white ceramic coffee cup with a couple dollar bills pinned beneath it, loose ends flapping in the breeze.

  Lance stood there on the corner of the block for a full minute, watching the faded green bills do their dance in the wind, and then he heard the motor—a slow, whining purr of an engine making its way slowly closer, echoing along the walls of the buildings near the other end of the block.

  And then it emerged, slowly revealing itself bit by bit as it appeared from behind Downtown Joe, crossing the street perpendicular to Lance. An antique Volks
wagen bus—something Lance had only seen in movies and TV shows. It brought to mind grainy film and faded colors and waves and sand and shirtless guys who said dude and totally and had long hair and didn’t own a pair of shoes. Something from the seventies, maybe sixties.

  The bus was two-toned, the majority of its body a Creamsicle orange, with white accents along the windows and top. And sure enough, as if the universe was playing some sort of cosmic joke with Lance’s thoughts, in the driver’s seat was a man with blond hair down to his shoulders. The skin on his arms, protruding from his sleeveless t-shirt, was the deep reddish-brown color reserved for only a select few groups of people—lifeguards and construction workers among them.

  Also surfers and your general variety of beach bum.

  The van disappeared after crossing the street, swallowed by the downtown buildings. Its low-whining engine faded away into nothing.

  Lance stood still long after the bus was gone.

  See you soon, Lance.

  The Reverend had been riding shotgun.

  Dread followed Lance home.

  He walked the streets and sidewalks he’d walked hundreds of times in his life, a path home he could practically follow blindfolded, but he wasn’t alone this time. This trip home was different. This trip home—in a way Lance could only recognize as the part of his brain tuned into the things unseen, unspoken—seemed to carry some extra weight to it, as if it were somehow important … or maybe final.

  But the dread was there, for sure. Lance felt it there, growing in his chest as his sneakers beat the concrete and asphalt. Felt its coldness spread through him along with the soft breezes rustling the treetops as he approached his neighborhood.

  Things had changed.

  Changed in a way Lance knew could mean nothing good.

  See you soon, Lance.

  The voice, the tone, the underlying threat. All three of these things would be worrisome enough, but they weren’t what bothered Lance, weren’t what had him swiveling his head back and forth with each step, eyes scanning for the Creamsicle Volkswagen bus.

  Lance had read many peoples’ thoughts throughout his life, caught glimpses of their memories and secrets and current state of mind. Often, it was accidental. Even more often, it was as if the universe, or whatever power controlled the universe, granted him these access key cards into peoples’ minds when it was needed the most. Lance didn’t know why—just another item on the unexplainable list that was his life—but figured it was that a full-time pass into the minds of others would perhaps be too great a power—too great a temptation—for even the strongest-willed human to handle.

  Lance had always been the fisherman in these thought-retrieval episodes. Casting his telepathic reel and seeing what he could hook.

  Today was the first time in his life somebody had ever found their way into his head—other than his mother. With his mother, he’d always assumed it was the mother/son bond that sometimes allowed them to communicate with each other. And even in those instances, which had become fewer over the years, it still seemed to Lance more like his mother simply sent him an invitation to read her mind, a mental text message that Lance could retrieve and read if he desired.

  Today with the Reverend had been different. Today, it felt as if his mind had been invaded, as if the man outside of Downtown Joe had sliced open Lance’s brain as easy as a hot knife through butter, had pried open a gap and shouted his message. No resistance, and no waiting for approval. He’d kicked in the door and stomped into Lance’s mental house.

  And he’d done it from nearly a block away.

  All of this brought Lance to two terrifying conclusions.

  First, the Reverend was extremely powerful. Lance didn’t know how far the man’s gifts reached, but his ability to deliver his message into Lance’s mind spoke volumes.

  Second, the message itself, with its tone and the manner in which it was delivered, along with its implications, meant that the Reverend—and possibly the Surfer—knew what Lance was. Maybe not completely, but enough.

  And they were coming for him.

  Lance walked up his porch steps and opened the front door. Stepped into the living room.

  His mother was in the kitchen, singing softly, her voice meshing with the occasional clang of a pan, or the whipping of a spatula. The smell of apples and cinnamon and sugar wafted throughout the house. The windows were open, and the house was almost chilly, the curtains flowing in the breeze. A row of candles were lit on the mantel above the fireplace, autumn scents like pumpkin and leaves.

  God, Lance loved his home.

  Loved his mother.

  Which is why, when he walked into the kitchen and said hello, finding her folding a crust atop a pie they would likely share together later tonight, along with coffee and tea, and she asked him how his day was, he lied.

  “It was fine. Busy day at the store, but nothing unusual.”

  It was the first time he had ever lied to her.

  It would also be the last.

  Lance and his mother had each had two slices of pie as they read together in the living room, and Lance had washed his down with two cups of coffee.

  But it wasn’t the caffeine that was keeping him awake now. It wasn’t the fear of the Reverend, either—at least not completely.

  It was guilt.

  Lance had lied to his mother for her own protection. That was how he was looking at it. That was the only way he could somewhat justify his actions in his mind. Yet his dishonesty sat uneasily on his heart, churned in his stomach. His mother had always been there, a helping hand held out and a voice of reason waiting to speak, throughout all the dilemmas and discoveries and outright bouts of confusion and anger Lance had displayed throughout his life. And he would be eternally grateful to her. At times even felt he was undeserving of her patience and perseverance with him.

  So why lie? Why now?

  He didn’t want to upset her, that was one reason. No child ever wants to send their parents into a panic. Parents are extremely protective beings, ready to fight and claw and scrap and find solutions. Lance simply didn’t want his mother to begin to dread and worry about his situation until he perhaps understood it in greater detail. Maybe Lance was overestimating the magnitude of what had happened on the street outside of Downtown Joe. Maybe the Reverend was in Hillston to help Lance. Maybe he knew of others with Lance’s gifts and was ready to lead Lance to the support group he’d desperately desired his entire life.

  Unlikely.

  But there was one thing of which Lance was certain—mostly certain, that is. Whether the Reverend was out for blood or out for peace, his interest was in Lance. Not Lance’s mother. If things did get bad, if things did turn toward the darkness that Lance knew all too well roamed the earth, it was better that he be the one it came after, not Pamela. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to her because of him.

  It's not her fight, Lance thought as he finally slipped off to sleep. It’s mine.

  Lance did not sleep well, his slumber disrupted by a nightmare of him running through a dense crowd. A street, downtown Hillston, packed tightly with people who were all smiling and laughing and not even noticing him as he plowed through them. He could smell fried foods and sugar in the night air, could hear a band somewhere close by, speakers blasting electric guitars and the thump thump of the drummer’s bass. The hair on the back of Lance’s neck was prickling, electricity running through his veins. He ran through the masses, no idea where he was going, a strange, terrible emptiness filling his chest as he went.

  He woke up sweating, his sheets twisted and his pillow half off the bed. The sun was up, slipping through the blinds, and Lance smelled bacon cooking and coffee brewing.

  He smiled. His mother always brewed him coffee, even though she never touched the stuff.

  This small token of his mother’s love sent a fresh wave of guilt through him as he stood and dressed and went out to the kitchen.

  He’d taken three steps into the livi
ng room when he froze. He heard it first, the familiar whining purr of an engine. A noise he would never forget in a million years, though he’d only heard it once before. And once the sound reached his ears, his head jerked toward the front windows, which his mother had open, the chilly morning air enough to make him shiver. He caught just the tail end of a vehicle turning at the end of the street, headed back toward town.

  A bus.

  Creamsicle orange.

  “Lance? Everything all right?”

  He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice. She stood in the entryway to the kitchen, a fluffy white robe wrapped tightly around her, those ridiculous toe socks on her feet. Rainbow-colored. “You look like you’ve seen something.”

  Most folks would have said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” but not Pamela Brody. She knew better. With Lance, the answer could very well be “I did.”

  Lance did his best to smile. “I’m fine,” he said, walking toward her. “But I can definitely use some coffee.”

  Lance did not leave the house all day. Instead he stayed in and tried to read and tried to watch TV and tried to take a nap. But he was only half-committed to any of these tasks. His mind was always on lookout, always checking out the windows, waiting to see Creamsicle orange. Waiting for the Reverend.

  See you soon, Lance.

  Aside from the Volkswagen sighting early Monday morning, nothing else had happened to set Lance on alert. His day had been a miserable mesh of paranoid hours, his mind racing, searching, trying to dissect and make some sense of what he’d seen, what he’d been told. He’d been incredibly unsuccessful, and after the uneventful day, by Tuesday morning he was ready to go out, determined to try and get some answers, find some clues.

  His shift at the store started at nine thirty, but after saying goodbye to his mother, he was walking through the door of Downtown Joe at just past eight fifteen. By then, the before-work coffee grabbers should be gone, and he was hoping to have a chat with Mary Jennings without a lot of eavesdropping ears.