The Keeper

by Barr, Clifford

  And Walter believed that to be true. If his characterization of Matt was worth its salt, then he believed the boy was troubled and really not in a good state of mind at the moment. He came after his sister and Walter because he wanted to save Jolie, to save his unborn and innocent child. Now, though it was pretty macabre to think in such terms, the girl was dead, meaning that Matt’s reason for acting was dead as well.

  “I know my brother more than you do,” Becca said. “He’ll come up with a reason.”

  “Perhaps,” Walter said. “But who knows if it’ll be enough to sustain him and his anger. The boy wanted one thing, and now he can’t have it. People who have been through trauma, especially the kind he’s been through, often don’t try to make the world worse.”

  If that was true, then why was Walter still sweating? Why was he afraid that the house he built with Beth all those years ago was about to be covered in green light, and that Rebecca and himself were about to face something neither one of them was remotely prepared to deal with?

  “You’re putting a lot of faith in someone whose girlfriend was just killed.”

  “By accident, I’m sure, and I’m sure he will see it that way as well.”

  Their voices sounded loud in the quiet house. Rebecca turned away, a clearer sign that the conversation was over than just about anything else she could have done. She walked over to the wall and looked at the photos.

  She scraped a good amount of dust off of them. Walter liked to keep things at least marginally tidy in his house, but he didn’t take care of everything. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to see the inside of his house lately—just him. He didn’t have that much in regard to personal effects anyway.

  She picked up a picture and looked down at it.

  “How old are your kids?”

  He almost didn’t answer. How could she have known? It wasn’t her fault that she had simply looked at a photo and had a question. Perhaps she was just trying to veer her and his attention away from the whole Matt scenario that was probably, more than not, racing right toward them. Walter almost wished that her brother would arrive, that he’d show up right then and there so that Walter wouldn’t have to think about his kids anymore.

  But heaven and almighty God above didn’t answer his prayers, and Walter found himself having to talk about it anyway. He could just let the conversation die, but that would have been worse than never talking about it at all.

  “They would be in their thirties now.”

  Rebecca turned.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . ..”

  “No, no, it’s alright,” he said. “I’m not going to break down in tears in front of you. Happened a long time ago to a Walter that was very different than the one that stands in front of you right now. He was weaker, stupider, and had more than just one monkey on his back, if you know what I’m saying.”

  The wind howled slightly outside of the house. Though he knew they weren’t there, he was almost afraid to speak their names, lest his kids opened up the room down the hall and crawled out, finally glad to see their father again, with Beth behind them to boot.

  “They died in a tubing accident,” Walter said. “I wasn’t watching. I should’ve been, but I didn’t. Their tube went off a slope and into an oncoming truck. But like I said, it was a long time ago, and there’s not much more to be said.”

  Rebecca just nodded, the kind of nod that someone does when they know that they should have just kept quiet on an issue, and we're glad that everything was over and resolved.

  Walter’s heart was beating. He turned and walked into the kitchen. He brought out a gallon of whole milk and poured himself a glass. He asked if Rebecca wanted any, but she just shook her head.

  Growing up on a dairy farm, there really was nothing like a nice glass of cold milk to help calm someone down. Walter had been drinking milk most of his life, and despite what any fancy-pants doctor from downstate told him, milk was good for you. And the real deal, he meant, not the stupid hippy shit that was popping up. Almond milk, soy milk, rice milk. For God’s sake, if anyone just wanted milk, then why not just drink milk? What’s the whole point of drinking milk if it’s not really milk?

  Here we go again, Walter thought as he drank, thinking about something else as soon as we start to lose it slightly. It always happened, but this day in particular seemed fraught with those kinds of occurrences. Rebecca didn’t want to drink milk.

  He sighed and closed the fridge.

  The girl seemed like she had something on her mind. Whatever it was, though, it didn’t have the wherewithal to crack the membrane of her self-conscience, so she kept it to herself.

  Instead, Walter took the wheel.

  “This lab up in Toronto. Do you know where it is?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “My father told me the address before he died,” Rebecca said. “And they’re expecting us, even if our plane didn’t show up. They are at least expecting me.”

  “Do you think they can be trusted?”

  “More than not. They were close friends with my father. If there’s anyone who might be able to take the NaUs away, it’s them.”

  Just ask her, Walter thought.

  “How long do I have?”

  Rebecca just frowned and shrugged.

  “It’s hard to say,” she said. “The degradation of all of the other members of Matt’s gang didn’t start to fully come into effect until a few months later. However, having more than one NaU in our body seems to push the RNA and cell decay into overdrive. You might have a couple weeks or two.”

  Not exactly the optimistic answer he was hoping for, but it was the only one he had at the moment. It’d work for the time being.

  Seeing that talking wasn’t going to happen, and that Matt still wasn’t attacking them, Walter walked down the hall. Becca didn’t stop him, though he wished she would. He didn’t want to walk down the hall, to go to the room he hadn’t been in years.

  But he did anyway.

  He reached Jack and Annabelle’s room and placed his hand on the knob. For all he knew, the door would be locked. Maybe Beth, before she died, felt the need to open the door and see the room, the empty and lifeless room for one last time before the blood clot inside her head made darkness the new norm in her head. She could have locked it behind her, perhaps not wanting to ever go in again, or to allow Walter to go in—to protect him most likely.

  But the knob turned easily, albeit a little rusty, and the door was opening to their room.

  Their beds were how he remembered them, only not really. Jack and Annabelle were nice and good kids, but they were terrible at making their beds. No matter how many times he and Beth told them to make them, come every morning before they set out for school, their beds would be crinkled up messes, with a pillow or two on the ground, the comforter hanging from the ceiling fan, the winter blankets rolled up in a ball on the ground next to their pillows.

  After a while, he and Beth stopped telling them to worry about it, that they’d take care of it. Of course, once the hormones and other aspects of teenage years took over, the kids would be responsible for making their own beds.

  Their beds were made now. Beth, after their room was shut off forever, must’ve made their beds all those decades ago. A good amount of dust and cobwebs covered everything. It might have been a fire hazard, but no electrical outlets ran or worked in this room anyway.

  They had floated the idea of having more kids for only about a minute or so a few years after the fateful accident. It would have cleaned their palate, more or less, allowed them to have a second chance. They would only need one, and statistically, Walter didn’t think that it’d be twins again.

  Beth did get pregnant, and their plan went into motion. Neither one of them cleared out Jack or Annabelle’s things, though. It just didn’t feel right, and perhaps would only feel right when they would be forced to clean out that room, their wants and wishes be damned.

  But then Beth miscarried, and the whole not
ion of having more kids was put to rest forever. They never cleaned out that room.

  Time had done a number on it.

  Their bedsheets were faded and covered with dust. The lamp, one that had different characters from Disney movies on them, was faded and covered with spider webs. It might have been better for Walter had he just left this room alone and not bothered to peek in. But time was on his heels, and nothing really puts your life in order and gives you perspective like being able to see the clicking tick-tock of your lifespan count down in front of you.

  No wonder all of Matt and his gang were desperate. Walter had already resigned to his own impending death (you had to, once AARP learned your name and mailing address), but to actually see it coming made him nervous. He was shaking slightly. Peter’s NaU could heal him from any injury, but it would do nothing to quiet the thoughts rushing through his head. In fact, if what Rebecca had told him was true, then that meant that in fact, his mind would only dull over the next couple of weeks, turning him eventually into nothing more than Danni had been back at the rest stop.

  He sat down on Jack’s bed.

  He might have been a good father. If he had just given up the drink when Beth suggested it to him and took the wagon, he could either be on or off with the seriousness it deserved, then things would have been different. He would have grandkids at this point, and even if he wasn’t a good father, he would have been a good grandfather. That’s how it always worked anyway; when you’re a bad father, the grandkids provide you a chance at redemption, and Lord only knew how much Walter wanted some redemption.

  He’d help Rebecca.

  That’d be his redemption, but what could he really do at this point? He could drive her up north to the lab in Toronto, bring her out where she needed to go in order to get this NaU business figured out.

  But what if they couldn’t do anything about it then? He’d just roll over and die, or have Becca kill him, since they wouldn’t want the NaU coursing through his veins at the moment to go and latch itself to someone else, dooming them to the same fate that had befallen all too many of these people over the last couple of months.

  Robbie should have just let Carol die, left his NaU in the syringe, and then just up and dealt with the Parkinson’s himself. Walter didn’t know jack shit about diseases like Parkinson’s, only having a vague understanding from any commercial he saw with Michael J. Fox, but he knew a thing or two about addictions and people whose lives are headed down a path that they didn’t want to be on. And the only thing that people shouldn’t do is act out on it, to try and change the course of things. Now, addiction to alcohol was one thing, because much to the displeasure of a younger Walter, people can give it up. It hurt like hell, but when you dig yourself a big enough hole, then dirt seems like a solid enough foundation for life. The only problem being that as soon as it rains, that dirt turns to mud, and you get swallowed up in that hole you dug.

  Robbie acted out against the grain, and in doing so, drowned everyone else around him rather than just himself. And now Walter was involved in all of it as well, much to his displeasure. This wasn’t so much out of a need or desire for redemption as being thrust into the narrative of someone else’s life and playing a part. It was a good part to be sure, but it wasn’t a story that Walter ever wanted to be a part of.

  Not like there was much of a story for him to begin with. What else would he be doing? Playing out the tired old man with a lot of secrets in his past and no mystery or excitement for the future, to slowly wither away and die to become nothing, and have no one care about him?

  He put his head in his hands. Was it still redemption if he didn’t want to do it? But he did want to do it . . . didn’t he? Why else would he have jumped in front of Jolie’s bolts and allowed himself to almost die? Almost die for Becca of all people, a girl who had threatened to kill him a few hours prior, her, the girl who had killed not only her own father but Nigel as well? There wasn’t much redemption in saving her, and even if there was, Walter couldn’t find himself to see it.

  Yet he jumped and protected her all the same.

  Why?

  He looked around his children’s room. They had died much younger than Becca was now. They didn’t deserve what happened to them. And neither did Becca.

  He stood up off the bed. Whatever he had been hoping to find in that room, he must’ve found, since he never wanted to be in it ever again. Beth probably felt the same when she went in. No wonder she never wanted to talk about it.

  He walked back to the door, turning back one last time. It was a nice room underneath all the dust and webs. It could only have been better if there had been two people to live and grow up in it.

  He heard something.

  It was quiet at first but quickly got louder. He called out to Becca.

  And then the windows shattered.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Becca has been blessed by all of this. I feel that. She has a lot of power inside of her, not only the NaU. She was able to take down Nigel with a pencil. I think that if any of us should have the strongest NaU, it should be her.

  -Robbie’s Journal

  Walter’s house was old and dusty, much like the man himself.

  Matt hadn’t come after them yet, but even if Walter believed that her brother would put all his rage and anger aside because of Jolie’s death, they both knew that it was only a matter of time until he came after them. It would have to be soon too, since, with four NaUs in him, Matt wouldn’t survive the night. He’d need to come after them.

  Even if it wasn’t for her NaU, he could still try and find them. Once his body finally deteriorated and the NaUs had nothing left to consume and destroy, they would go on to find the nearest person to latch themselves to. Possibly all four of them, or they would spread out and attack four people at once. That would just be more people to add to the death count, and Matt wouldn’t want that.

  He didn’t want anyone else to die, but then he killed Jolie.

  Or you did, Rebecca thought, staring out the window in Walter’s house. The two of them had ceased conversation for a bit, and Walter had walked down the hall to some room. He made a big deal out of it, and as much as Rebecca liked to snoop, this time, she felt it best if she stayed where she was. She had, after all, unintentionally ruined his life.

  But how could she have known that the old man would get NaUs inside of him? Killing Danni had been no small task, and the NaUs should have gone to her. As much as Jolie and Matt claimed that they didn’t want anyone else to die, they didn’t want to make Rebecca’s life any easier.

  Sure, they justified it by saying that they wanted to save Walter, that Jolie hadn’t intended to attack him. She hadn’t even meant to do that, since the energy bolts that raced across the snow at him were supposed to hit either Danni or Becca herself. She could vaguely remember hearing her brother say to stop him, and not her, but she might just be giving the man the benefit of the doubt. The bolts might have been to stop Danni, or they might have been to kill Becca. Who knows for sure, since the only woman who could answer that question was dead with a gaping hole in the middle of her chest.

  Becca hadn’t been the one to use Carol’s NaU that night, nor was she responsible for it reflecting. It could have gone any which way, and it was only by chance that it directed itself right at Jolie. Neither side was responsible for that, nor that it only made it worse.

  Becca could only imagine what it was like for her brother when that happened. The boy had immediately stopped what he was doing and raced over toward her. At that moment, he didn’t look like a monster. He didn’t look like some cartoon comic book supervillain at that moment, clutching the body of his dying, if not dead, girlfriend and child. Oh, that poor child, whoever was responsible for all of that was also responsible for what happened to it (he or she, no one would ever know).

  Your brother isn’t the same, she reminded herself. She still saw him as the helpless boy in the wheelchair from all those months ago, the one who needed help with almo
st everything, regardless of how he felt on the subject. He wasn’t that kid anymore.

  Instead, he could rip open buildings if he wanted to, and now with Jolie’s and Kent’s powers to boot, the man could do some serious damage. He had also killed someone, and even if he didn’t want to do it, he did it, all the same, sending a message as clear as crystal to Becca and Walter. He might not like what he was doing, but he’d do it anyway.

  And now Jolie was gone, the rock that more or less kept him in line was now gone. As much as Matt had grown a lot since getting his NaU, he still very much cared about what Jolie thought and did. He loved her—if the two of them were old enough to even know what that fully entailed. He would have died for her. Underneath it all, his rough exterior, he would gladly have laid down his life in order for Jolie and the baby to live. Without that, and without anything, there wasn’t much tethering him to the path of sanity.

  I killed Danni, Becca thought, thinking back to that moment.

  It had happened so fast that she hadn’t even thought about it. She had been holding her. When Jolie’s arcs hit Walter instead of her, Becca felt the girl’s grip loosen. She turned on her father’s NaU at that and shoved Danni against the side of the rest stop. Bones cracked behind her as she did so, and her arms flew off of her. She activated Nigel’s NaU and sliced the girl’s head off.

  It was only for a moment, but perhaps that was all the girl could muster before the darkness came. Danni smiled. And then her head fell off its body and the girl’s torment, all of the pain she might have been feeling, all of the misplaced anger and range, was gone. She had quieted the voices in her head.

  The plan then had been to take Danni’s NaU. She expected Matt or Jolie to try and stop her from taking it.

  But instead of feeling Matt’s touch on her, she saw it go to Walter. Before Becca could even understand what her brother intended, it was too late, and the NaUs had found their new host with almost no problem at all. She tried to stop it, but Matt held her back.

  And Walter was infected with the NaU.

  There was a chance that Walter was going to make it out of all of this somewhat unscathed. No real reason to kill him. Matt might have threatened to kill him before, but based on Jolie’s reaction to said event, Becca didn’t put much faith in either one of them pulling through on that promise. It was just to keep Walter in line, at least until he got in the way. Now that he had a NaU, perhaps they had figured he’d go over to their cause, that he’d be as desperate as they were, and just as likely to join their side against Becca.