The Donors

by Jeffrey Wilson

  The heavy breathing beside him told him his mom finally slept; her hand across his chest a warm comfort. The pictures of Steve in his head—Steve with all his guts torn out and lying beside him in the dirt—kept him from real sleep. He could see the blank, empty eyes in his brain, looking up but not seeing, the pale face spattered with drying blood. He wanted the pictures to go away, but they just kept coming back every time he closed his eyes.

  He heard something, far away, kind of, but still like it was in his head. It sounded like a stirring, followed by a tremendous wet thump, and he knew immediately what the sound meant.

  Someone just got dumped in the cave. Wanna go check it out?

  “No,” he said softly and pushed the voice away. He couldn’t go right now, and not without Jason. He knew, somehow, that it wasn’t Jenny who got dumped and Jason would call him in his head if he went there.

  He decided to dream-build like his Mommy taught him when he got scared at night. He just needed to picture a happy place and then relax and fall asleep. Then, if he did it right, he would dream about the story he made up. It worked pretty well when he was little. He pictured Jason and Jenny and his Mommy all playing with him at the park.

  In his imagination he ran around and Jason chased him and played tickle-me tag. Everyone looked so happy. Mommy and Jenny watched them and drank juice from juice boxes. Every now and then they would see him look over and they would smile real big and wave. He would giggle and wave back, then dash away from Jason, jumping down the slide. In the dream his hand had no bandage and didn’t hurt or anything.

  He smiled as he drifted off to sleep and into the dream he’d built. He hardly even heard the grunt of the Lizard Men as they returned to the cave with the new person they had taken there.

  Hardly heard it at all.

  * * *

  Jenny couldn’t fall back asleep and didn’t really want to anyway, so she stared at the ceiling and waited for Jason. She thought about getting up to get a drink—her throat burned with dryness—but she really wanted to be snuggled under the warm covers when he arrived.

  Jenny stretched her back and let her eyes travel around the dancing lights on the ceiling and walls. She watched them sway across the room in rhythm to the gentle motion of the towels that moved across the windows. She would be back on day shift tomorrow so the towels could come down. Lately, her laziness resulted in them being up all the time, but now that she might have company in here regularly… she smiled at that thought.

  Her gaze fell on the nightstand on the far side of the bed where a picture frame laid face-down for some reason. She rolled on her side and pulled the five-by-seven picture over to her and then lay on her back and clutched it to her chest. She knew the picture well—it showed her parents, her brother, and her all smiling in front of the giant Mickey Magician’s hat at Disney’s MGM studios. They went only a few years ago, when she still had only college to worry about. They had laughed all week at being a family with grown kids who could think of no better family vacation than Disney. They had been surrounded mostly by families with kids fifteen years younger, but she doubted any of them were having more fun.

  The week had been wonderful. They had spent hours and hours at all four parks, and at night, laughed and played board games or dominos, sipping wine in their rented condo. The picture held so many great memories—so why had she placed it face-down and why could she now not look at it? She took a deep breath and pulled the picture from her chest and held it up. She looked at the happy, smiling faces of her family—and then burst into tears. Dark images again exploded in her mind, and she shook her head violently back and forth to shake them out.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Am I losing my mind?

  She reached for the phone, suddenly overwhelmed by a need to talk to her mom. Then the other voice came to her and spoke, but she knew couldn’t possibly be her own.

  Why would you talk to that whiney bitch? Where was she when her bastard husband raped you until you couldn’t walk? Where was she when your brother had his spine shattered?

  “God, just please shut the hell up!” She threw her hands to her face. The right one still clutched the picture frame, which struck her forehead hard enough to cause white flashes of light in her closed eyes. She felt the pain, but not enough to let it rise above the anguish that spread out like heat from the center of her chest. She wanted her mom and dad—no, for now she really wanted Jason.

  A knock at the door, just barely audible through the screaming in her head, brought her back and she opened her eyes. Jenny stared at the ceiling, her breath stuck in her throat. For a moment she thought perhaps the Lizard Men –

  What the hell is a Lizard Man?

  Oh, come on, girl—like you don’t know.

  –but then the sound of her door chime followed the knock and she knew Jason had finally come.

  “Coming,” she hollered louder than she meant to. The hysterical sound of her voice bothered her a lot.

  Halfway into her sprint across the living room, she remembered that she wore only an American Heart Association Fun-Run T-Shirt and a pair of thong panties, but she couldn’t make herself care. She tore open the door and wrapped her arms around Jason’s neck, who looked both ways down the hallway of her apartment building to see who might catch a glimpse of his girlfriend in her panties. His arms hugged her back and she felt warm relief as he half carried her back into the apartment and closed the door.

  Jenny clung to him tightly and breathed in his scent. She realized that Jason seemed the only reality she could be certain of right now. She felt him lean into her embrace and it seemed like maybe he needed it every bit as much. She pulled her head off his chest and looked up at him. His eyes were dark and heavy and she felt her relief slide away and the cloak of dread replace it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked and put a hand on his cheek. “Are you okay? Is something wrong with Nathan?” The panic inside her grew. “You don’t have to leave do you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere and Nathan is fine. It’s just—there are things we have to talk about.”

  Oh, God. Please don’t leave me right now.

  “Is it me?” she asked. Her voice cracked and her throat burned. “Do you want to be with me?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” he said and his voice clearly told her he meant it. “Yes, I want to be with you, Jenny.” He dropped his hands around her waist and looked at her deeply. She let herself float away in his gaze. For a moment she felt safe. “It’s about all of us—you, me and Nathan. It’s about what’s going on.”

  Jenny felt herself grow heavy in his arms, but his grip on her tightened. She didn’t think she could take anything else right now. Tears filled her eyes and blurred his face.

  “Can we just have a few minutes together first?” she pleaded.

  Jason answered by kissing her, gently at first and then deeper and more urgently. She let her lips part and felt his tongue on hers. Jenny pressed her body against him and pulled him inside the apartment as she walked slowly backward toward her bedroom.

  Jason realized they had slept, legs wrapped around each other in the sweat-soaked sheets, for much longer than he had intended. He’d needed the distraction of their passion at least as much as she had, but there were things that needed to be discussed. Twice now she had run away from his attempts to talk about what was happening. Jason doubted that she even knew how hard she avoided it. For them, all of them, to have a chance he needed to cowboy up and make the conversation happen. He had seen with his own eyes what had happened to Maloney and now Doug, and he had no doubt that this woman he found himself irresistibly drawn to was in immediate danger.

  Jason shivered at the memory of Doug’s lifeless body, the head a gory smear behind the car wheel. He hugged Jenny tight against him, felt the smoothness of her hip against his and the cool wetness of her thigh beneath his own leg. He kissed her neck softly.

  “Jenny?”

  “I’m awake,” she said.

  �
��Can we talk now?”

  Jason felt her stretch out beside him. She pulled him tighter, held his wrists, and wrapped his arms around her like a blanket against the cold. “Yes,” she said. He heard pain and fear in her voice and he kissed her neck again.

  “First, I want you to know that I’m absolutely crazy about you,” he said. “No matter what, I want you to know that, and that I really want us to…” He paused. To what? “To have something, you know? A future I mean.”

  “Me too,” she said warmly to his relief. “It seems weird because we’ve been together so little time, but I feel there’s something real here.” She pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “I don’t want to lose it either.”

  “That’s great,” he said with more gushing than he intended. Then he dove in. “Jenny, I need you to tell me about your dreams.”

  He felt her entire body tense against his. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I want you to tell me about the cave, Jenny. I know it’s scary, but you need to tell me what you remember.”

  “I can’t,” she said and started to sob. “How do you know about the cave?”

  Jason rolled her over to face him and pulled her hands from her face. He caressed a tear away from her cheek and she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Jenny,” he started. “This is gonna sounds nuts, but I don’t think the cave dreams are really dreams.” She scrunched up her face. He kept his hand on her cheek and continued “I’ve been there, too, Jenny. It’s real. I’ve been there with Nathan and he’s been there a few times—he saw you there.”

  Jenny’s face turned white, but she looked like something had clicked. The fear in her eyes disappeared, replaced with what looked like a desperate need to understand.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ve seen him there, I think.” Her hushed voice held a conspiratorial tone. “What the hell is going on, Jason?” Her fingernails dug into his arms, but he stroked her face gently anyway.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know and heard from Nathan, and then you have to tell me what you remember, okay?”

  Jenny nodded, tight lipped.

  And Jason told her. He held nothing back. He started with his strange draw to Nathan in the ER and continued on to his vision, or whatever it had been, of the creatures in the alley. He told her how Nathan had confided in him about the cave and how that had stirred up all of the memories from his past. He skirted around the issue of Steve at first, but then he explained how they had seen Steve—dead and disemboweled—in the cave. Jenny’s face flushed and filled again with tears.

  “Oh my God,” she hissed.

  “What is it?” he asked, both hands on her face now, frightened at the look in her eyes.

  “I think I know how I play into all of this now,” she said. Her eyes, sharp and clear, held his gaze. “I think I might have something to do with what happened to Steve.” Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I can’t clearly make out the memories,” she said. “But, I don’t think it had anything to do with the cave. It’s like a different memory—something at the hospital, I think.”

  Jason considered that a moment. What had happened at the hospital and caused all the pain and death in the cave? Nathan believed that the Lizard Men—the creatures would always be Lizard Men to him now that Nathan had called them that—smelled their fear somehow and that they liked it or needed it or something. Might they be doing something at the hospital to feed that need? He had a flash of his mother’s terrified face in the hospital room and for a moment he nearly had it—something she had said the night she died. But then it disappeared again, like someone dangled a needed piece to the puzzle in front of him and then jerked it away every time he grabbed for it.

  You know what they need. They chased you that night—so many years ago. You tried to help her but you were too scared. Scaredy cat, scaredy cat—and now Mommy’s dead.

  “What is it?” Jenny asked, and this time she touched his cheek.

  “Nothing,” he said and looked away. “There’s something back there—something in my past—but I can’t get to it.” He looked at her with a sad smile. “Tell me about your dreams. Not just the cave, but all of them.”

  Jason listened with the dull chest ache of empathy at the anguish Jenny felt from fragmented memories of the cave and the hospital. She told him of waking by the coffee kiosk and the strange feelings she’d had in the parking garage. Then she stopped for a moment. Jason watched her face as she searched for something.

  “There is something, I think,” she said. He waited patiently for her to try and get a grip on whatever it was. She looked at him and continued. “The night we first met—I went to my car the next morning and I think something happened.” Again her eyes searched in vain around the room for the answer. “There was this horrible smell—and then—damnit, why can’t I get to it?”

  Jason hugged her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I have that too. It’s like they put a wall around the memories somehow.”

  Jenny looked more than a little frightened. “Do you have any idea how insane this all sounds?”

  He sure as shit did. Jason wrapped his arms around her and pulled her soft, naked body back against his. She laid her head on his chest and sighed. Jason remembered the picture, face down on the bookshelf.

  “Can you tell me about your family?” he asked.

  Her arms tightened around his chest and he heard her sob. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s like I have two sets of memories, or something. Like a terrible fight is going on in my head, two voices trying to tell me which memory is true.” She cried harder and Jason could do nothing but hold her.

  “Can you tell me about both?”

  It tumbled out of her in confusing bits, much the way he guessed it must be inside her head. Two competing pasts—one of a happy, close-knit family and the other a horrible story of rape, assault and broken lives—spilled out of her. As he listened, one more piece seemed to sort itself out in the puzzle of their shared nightmare. He remembered the pictures of the happy family, of a young man who must be her brother, smiling at the camera from beside her, both parents hugging her and beaming with pride at her graduation. They sure as hell looked happy. And her brother didn’t look in any way crippled.

  “They must create memories, somehow,” he said softly, more to himself. “They insert nightmares of a past into your head—maybe to control you.” For a moment he wondered about his own memories. Were they made up as well? He unconsciously rubbed his thigh, touching the scars where the pins had been driven through his little boy flesh. No—that had been real.

  He looked over at Jenny who studied him closely now.

  “Can you call them?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Your parents—your brother,” he said. “Call them and see which reality seems right when you’re talking to them. Call your brother and just ask what he’s up to. See how he sounds.”

  “We don’t really talk,” she said and her face clouded. Then she stopped. “Do we? I mean I think we do—or don’t.” Her face scrunched up again, almost like she was in pain. “I just don’t know.”

  “Call them,” he said simply.

  She laid her head back on his chest. “Okay,” she said. Her voice seemed more resigned than agreeable. “I’ll do whatever you think.”

  A few minutes later, Jason lay alone in the bed and listened to Jenny as she talked to her brother on the phone. Her voice sounded strained and her brother must have thought so as well, because Jason heard her tell him that she was just tired from working nights.

  “Really, I’m fine,” her voice said from the other room. “Just tired—I love you, too. I will, I promise. I’ll call you this weekend.”

  Jason listened to silence for a moment and then he heard her voice again.

  “Mom? Hey, it’s me. No, no, I’m fine.”

  Jenny small talked in the other room with her mom and Jason’s mind drifted to Nathan—a grown man in a five-year-old body (almost six—a Nathan voice reminded him
). Little Nathan whom he now believed held the key to the whole thing.

  Unless he turns out to be a scaredy cat like you were.

  “Whatever, dude,” Jason mumbled. He would protect Nathan and Jenny from whatever the hell this was if he could.

  Like your mom?

  Jason pressed the heels of his hands hard into his eyes which set off little lightning flashes. He saw his mother’s face—thin and pale. She looked at him from the hospital bed and tried to smile. He remembered a stale smell about her. After a few years in medicine, he knew that smell very well—that death smell.

  “When they come for me, I think I’ll just go,” she had said.

  Even then, Jason thought he had known she meant the Lizard Men. He just hadn’t been able to admit it to himself.

  Jenny plopped down on the bed beside him and put the cell phone on the end table. Jason took her hand.

  “Everything alright?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said, and she seemed a little more confident. “They’re fine—and I know them. The real them, I think. The other pictures are still there, not the cave ones but—the others. I’m pretty sure I know they’re lies.” She looked at him and smiled weakly. “At least for now I feel that way. Can you help me understand what this all means?”

  Jason shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll try real hard.”

  Jenny laid her head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around her. He knew they should head to the hospital soon and check on Nathan, but he would give Jenny a few more minutes. After only a moment, Jenny’s breathing turned heavy. I’ll just let her sleep for thirty minutes.

  Jason stared at the wall beyond her and held on tightly.

  Chapter

  16

  Nathan didn’t exactly decide to go; he just got to the point where he felt it might be okay. The other-him voice told him to head to the cave, taunted him really, and Nathan gave in, like when your friend on a play date had a game they really wanted to play and even though you didn’t think it sounded fun, you did it because that’s what friends do. He didn’t feel sure the other-him voice was a friend, but “kind of sort of,” like Mommy liked to say.