Instead, it would be another place that he would feel like he didn’t belong, one in which he was always looking up at people. People wouldn’t make fun of him to his face. That was the sort of hit you might see in eighties movies, but it didn’t happen in real life. No, instead, they would do something far worse. They would feel bad for him behind his back, constantly wanting to “help” him and make his life better. They would reward him for meager things.
Oh, look at the disabled kid, thinking that he was as good as everyone else.
The world wasn’t a friendly place, and to Matt, it never seemed to get any friendlier. He didn’t miss the moment when Danni ruined it when she slipped the attendant a bill so that he’d be able to go home with a prize. He didn’t win that lizard, didn’t want any part of it. He wanted it to be quiet, and for once, for people to stop looking down at him.
The earth seemed to revolve below him, and Matt wondered if others ever felt like this too. Normal people, though he hated thinking of them as such. But perhaps there were no normal people. Perhaps everyone was trying to get by.
The yelling in the living room seemed to intensify. It was a different sort of yelling. This wasn’t the same yelling that had happened for the last ten minutes or so. No, this one had a frantic edge to it. Matt slipped back into his wheelchair and made for the door. He opened it by sticking his foot through the crack and then slowly moving the chair backward. The yelling was even worse. He started to roll down the hall when the front door opened.
Becca and Peter were there, and for once, they seemed to ignore Matt. He wheeled himself down the hallways.
Robbie was standing over his mother. Nigel was in the corner, his nose bleeding. Jolie had her hand in front of her mouth and was leaning against the wall next to his mother.
Matt was about to ask what happened, but he never got the chance. Instead, he looked down at his mother.
There were lights moving under her skin. She opened her mouth and eyes, and they were pure light.
And then there was darkness.
****
“I need to think this over,” Walter said.
“Sure you do,” Matt said, watching Walter depart. He thought about calling after him, trying to explain more of the situation to him before he went back to Becca, but didn’t. Instead, he watched.
Danni continued to shove her head into the field, which rebounded it; it was all broken, then would then heal instantly.
“What do you think?” Matt said, looking back to Jolie.
She shrugged, but her eyes told a different story, and not one he would have liked.
Walter walked back up the walkway to the office. Matt saw Becca poking her head out. It made him want to scream.
Did they think he wanted to do this? Did they think he wanted any of this? Sure, life wasn’t fair, but the hand that had been dealt to Matt had been one of pure torment and pain. And it only got worse. It always got worse.
And now they thought he was the villain. He turned away from the field and moved over toward the woods. No one tried to stop him.
I’m sorry, Matt.
That’s how the letter started, the one that he had read almost three days ago and had sent his life into turmoil.
He had found Danni and regrouped with the girl. Ever since she killed Peter, Danni had been in self-exile, living out of the woods and trying to stay away from everyone. Only Matt could find her, and find her he did. They were friends, after all.
He was looking forward to telling his mom and Robbie. They had known for a while that Danni hadn’t been the most conscious of mind, and now with two NaUs, there would be double the damage, if not more.
And besides, Matt didn’t like the way he had left things with the two of them. Last time they had all been together, Matt hadn’t exactly been very happy and forgiving of what Becca did.
Time had cooled his anger, and he wanted to be a part of the family again.
But when he got home that night, it was to an empty house.
He couldn’t feel them anywhere, and when he opened the door, he wasn’t sure what he would find. Why would they leave? Had something happened? Had the police caught on to what happened to Nigel, and they had to leave in a hurry. If that was the case, then why didn’t they call him? Why not let him in on the plan. They were supposed to be a team. There was a cure on the way, and all of them were trying to figure out a way to rid themselves of these curses, or at least the bad parts. Matt didn’t like dying, but he really liked not having to sit in a chair all the time and to finally be able to do stuff by himself, without having to rely on other people.
The only sign of them in the house was a letter on the dining room table. It was addressed to him.
I’m sorry, Matt, it started, all of it in his mother’s clear as day handwriting.
Robbie and I have decided it would be best if we left for the time being. I wish I could tell you more, or where we are going. But we don’t trust you anymore.
Rebecca is your sister, and I’m sorry, but I have to choose one child over the other. There is no cure. The relocating, as Robbie calls it, is only temporary. Even as I write this, the tumors that plagued my head are starting to reappear. If I allow the NaU to run through my veins again, it will only speed up the process.
You were and are nothing like your father, and so I hope that you don’t try to find us. There is no cure. I’m sorry that all of this happened to you, and that I couldn’t give you a better life.
Love, Mom
Matt had read the letter a few times over, each time disbelieving it only the more.
They had left him, but that wasn’t what hurt him most.
Instead, it was the empty house, the tone his mother had used throughout the letter—the entire atmosphere.
They were afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. The people that were supposed to love him unconditionally, his mother, Robbie, and even Becca, were afraid of him. He thought about doing nothing, but he couldn’t. His family had abandoned him, and why would they do that? Why would they do all of that?
Becca.
All of the pieces clicked together in his mind right then and there. He was so angry that he almost ripped that house to shreds.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he levitated to the door and out into the open air. There was snow falling, and perhaps a blizzard on the horizon. He looked forward to the cold darkness. If they were going to make him the bad guy, then he might as well be what they thought he was. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to lay down and die for them, that he would go away and be quiet so as to not disturb them. They had started something. Robbie had started something, had dragged them all into eternal domination, and now he wanted to claim that he was the victim, that Becca was the hero?
Matt had called his friends then, and they came up with a plan. They broke Kent out of the Argyle Research Laboratory. By then, the boy was without arms and legs, but Matt carried him. Besides, they would need him if they wanted to find the McCarthys.
But that was a few days ago.
In the present, Matt levitated out into the open field next to the rest stop.
The snow fell all around him, and he felt the flakes around him, all of their originalities and beauty.
Rage, hot and more powerful than any NaU, raced through his veins. He felt it coming then. His veins turned blue as his mother’s NaU coursed through him.
He exhaled.
A bright light shot out into the sky, burning and melting the snowflakes it came across. The light was like a beacon in the darkness, turning all of the other snowflakes blue. The sky above them cleared, but only slightly.
He kept the blast up for as long as he could until it was gone, and he was screaming. He fell to the snow on the ground below him and felt all of it. He felt everything. But all he wanted to feel was why this had happened to him? Why could nothing turn out right?
He felt a few tears start to run down his cheeks, and he welcomed them.
I
’m sorry, Matt, the letter had said.
Well, I’m sorry too, he thought, feeling all of the snowflakes around him fall in their intrigue ways.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough.”
Chapter Nine
Jolie was next to Carol when the NaU was released. This doesn’t seem to have affected her NaU, though. Her powers are strong, but all of them are powerful in their own right. I have wondered what the girl told Carol that night. My wife says she gained full access to her memory, but whenever I try to bring it up, Carol only shakes her head and walks into another room. Does it have something to do with the fact that there is no cure? The relocating was only a temporary measure.
What would make my wife cry?
-Robbie’s Journal
Jolie watched Matt saunter off into the field behind them. She almost stopped him but stopped short. He wanted to be alone, and when Matt wanted to be alone, it was as clear as night and day.
Walter was walking back up to the rest stop. Jolie saw Becca as well, waiting for him. Danni continued to shove her head against the field. Jolie didn’t try to stop her. The only person who could get her to stop would be Matt, and the boy wanted to be alone.
“That didn’t go well,” Kent said.
Kent was looking in her direction, though not at her. The boy no longer saw. He only heard and spoke, and the second part of that was starting to fail.
When it comes to that, Matt had said, then I’ll do it.
“It went as well as it could have,” Jolie said.
Snowflakes fell all around them, and Jolie wished she felt them. She zapped a couple of them with her green lightning, but it wasn’t all that satisfying.
“That’s the problem,” Kent said. “Let’s be honest here, Walter isn’t going to hand Becca over. He said he would, but I doubt that there’s anything we could say or do to him to get him to pull forward with his side of the bargain.”
“He can’t stay in there forever,” Jolie said.
“He doesn’t have to,” Kent said. “All he has to do is stay in there until this blizzard is over. I can’t hear any cars in the immediate distance, but who knows, in a few hours if it stops snowing, maybe a plow or two will come by? How the hell are we going to explain this to them? I mean, look at me! I don’t have any arms or legs!”
“We can kill anyone who interferes,” Jolie said. The words felt like hot grease in her mouth.
“Oh right, like you honestly want to kill anyone else,” Kent said. “There’s only one person who needs to die tonight. Anyone else is more collateral.”
Behind them, Jolie saw bright blue light shoot up into the sky.
Matt shouldn’t have taken his mother’s NaU, but who else could have? If it went to Kent, then it would have accelerated the boy’s rotting. Jolie couldn’t take it, since it might hurt the baby. If Robbie had stayed and perhaps tried to figure some of these things out first, then none of them would be in this situation. Instead, he took his daughter and wife and more or less told these kids the news that he had essentially cursed them, and said that they didn’t matter. He didn’t even give an apology.
But Robbie did things without any caution. It doomed them all in the first place.
****
Jolie felt Matt’s wheelchair start to escape her grasp. She should have let him wheel himself in, but she was concerned that he might have another attack. Sure his father might think that he was weak for not being able to wheel himself into the house, but Jolie was confident that Nigel would think even less of his son if the boy had another episode or attack right in front of him.
She didn’t call after him as he made his way down to his room. He opened it and shut the door behind him, leaving her there.
Nigel was on her first.
Although the man had to look up at her, Jolie smelled the alcohol on his breath, laced with the despairing that seemed to seep into every pore of the man’s exterior. She almost pitied him, if she didn’t hate him, and of course, if he didn’t hate her.
“What happened?” Nigel said, crossing his arms.
Jolie looked down at him and shrugged.
“Nothing,” she said. “We had a fun time; that was all.”
“See,” Robbie said. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Why is there blood on your shirt?” Nigel said.
“We murdered a guy,” Jolie said. “Short guy too, had too much to drink. Danni and I cut his throat and threw him in the pigpen. You a fan of pigs, Nigel?”
“That’s Mr. Torres to you,” Nigel said. “Just like my son is a Torres and not a McCarthy.”
“Names aren’t that important,” Robbie said.
“Yes, pigs certainly don’t mind,” Jolie said.
Nigel squinted his eyes and turned away.
“He was out too late,” he said.
“It’s only nine,” Robbie said.
“Well, I felt a draft coming in,” Nigel said. “He’s never going to get better if you keep letting him go out this late.”
“He wanted some time with his friends,” Robbie said.
“Plenty of people,” Nigel said, “have done stupid things to hang out with their friends over the years. My son is no different. What if something happened?”
“If anything happened,” Robbie said. “Then I’m sure Jolie here would tell us, or at least ask for help on one thing or another . . ..”
And on and on their conflicts would go.
This wasn’t the first one of them that Jolie had been privy to over the years, and unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last. She liked hanging with Matt and being with him, and perhaps he felt the same. The two of them would go to the University of Albany together, and who knows? Maybe down the road, there would be a marriage in their future and a family.
Jolie had been coming to Matt’s house for years, back when they had only been friends with one another before the special “girl” and “boy” were added to the beginnings of those words.
The house was old, as Carol’s family had been old members of this town. Robbie was new, but he was a welcome change, even if he didn’t know how to change a tire or replace a calibrator in the middle of winter. He was an educated man who spent most of his time at his research facility. How Carol had made the shift from Nigel to Robbie, a doctor who did odd experiments up at his lab in Argyle, she might never know. It was a good change, to be sure, but Jolie was impressed at the woman’s flexibility with her preference for men.
Though the woman didn’t have much of a preference for anything at the moment.
Her hair was gone. If not for the photos around them, Jolie wouldn’t have been able to remember what exactly her hair had looked like.
Instead, scars railroad crossed around the top of her head to down the back of her neck. Her eyes had a glazed-over look, staring ahead at the TV, which was muted. It looked like a rerun of a sitcom from the nineties or perhaps even older. A small puddle of drool was dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Every time that Jolie came over, she tried to talk to Carol at least once or twice. If her mind really was mush, then there couldn’t be any harm in talking to her. She wouldn’t remember or even understand any of it and would forget it the second that Jolie was out the back door.
But if her mind wasn’t gone, then perhaps Jolie’s words can provide the woman some comfort.
“Hey, Mrs. McCarthy,” she said. “I brought Matt to the fair tonight. We had a good time, me and him, and our two friends, Danni and Peter. Matt won me a stuffed lizard, and I won him one as well. He had a fun time and really enjoyed himself.”
Jolie didn’t know what more to say. She couldn’t comment that Carol’s son had vomited up blood, which had seeped through Jolie’s shirt to her bra. Something told her that while Carol might not find that all that interesting, the two men in the room would.
There was another topic to talk about. Jolie almost didn’t want to bring it up. She wouldn’t have to deal with the major repercussions of it until much lat
er, close to the nine-month range.
But Carol might not live to see that. If the woman was in there, then she deserved to know before she died.
Jolie leaned over and got close to the woman’s ear.
“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly. “Matt’s the father. I haven’t told him yet but plan to. I hope you’ll get to see the baby sometime. It was an accident, of course, but I hope something good can come from it.” She leaned away from the woman’s ear. The men in the room were still yelling at one another. Who knew how Nigel would take that type of news.
Jolie was about to say something else, perhaps goodbye, or another message about the woman’s son, when Carol’s head turned.
Both of the men behind Jolie stopped talking.
She looked directly into Jolie’s eyes. There was something there, some deep semblance of consciousness that was disoriented by the woman’s glazed-over eyes. Her throat moved up and down.
Rasping noises that were the closest thing to speaking for the woman came out of her throat.
The noises, quiet as they were, seemed to speak volumes in the empty house. Matt should have been there, not off in his room sulking. How could he miss the moment when Carol McCarthy had a sentient thought?
Foam poured from her mouth.
Whatever semblance of conciseness that had been floating in the back of her eyes disappeared, her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
She fell to the back of the chair, her body shaking as though it were hooked up to electrical cables.
“Carol!” Robbie said, moving past Jolie. He was trying to get her to stop. He had a flashlight up to her eyes.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” Nigel said.
Yes, nine one one, that would be right, that’s what people did when there was a medical emergency. Why the hell was Jolie sitting there doing nothing? She should be helping, this was Carol for God’s sake, and she had to do everything in her power to—
“No.”
Robbie was no longer looking down at Carol. Instead, he seemed more interested in the wall behind her and was deep in thought.
Before Jolie or Nigel said anything, Robbie was running across the room. He went up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The Keeper Page 8
