by R. G. Oram
‘Where did you choose her?’ Lewelyn asked.
Jerome sat sideways in the chair, having to turn his head to one side to look at Lewelyn.
‘Grand Park. I was in the city that day for a doctor’s appointment. After I was done I went looking for my dad. He dropped me off at the doctor’s office and said he’d pick me up after I was done. On the street outside there was this homeless guy sitting on the floor with his mutt. I didn’t think anything of it at first so I just ignored him and moved on. Then I heard it bark and I looked back at it. She turned up – the whore. She stops by him. Strokes the dog and hands the hobo some food. You don’t see that every day – most people just walk past them without saying hello. When she leaves the guy with the dog I see her face. She couldn’t see me but I sure could see her. That conniving manipulating smile. I bet she practised it in the mirror a hundred times before she went out. My mom always gave me that smile when she looked at me, making me feel special,’ a snort and head jerk from Jerome – as if a particular aroma was not to his liking, he continued. ‘That’s when I decided she was the one. Then dad got Frank to watch her.’
‘You’re delusional,’ Lewelyn retaliated.
Jerome liked that, as his face became ridged when he smiled.
‘The truth hurts.’
Lewelyn ignored what the kid had said.
‘I hear their looking to put you in a hospital. They say you need help from a professional. I say that’s an understatement,’ Lewelyn squeezed his hands tightly together under the table.
‘Doesn’t matter where I go. I’m famous. People’ll be swarming in to come see me. Wanting to know why I did it. There’ll be books written about me. Maybe a movie,’ there were lumps forming on Jerome’s cheeks as he continually wagged his tongue. ‘I don’t know about the movie though… I can’t imagine anyone playing me. I wonder if they’d let me play myself.’
Lewelyn pushed his chair back, thunder scraped on the floor. He stood up, casting a shadow over Jerome.
Pretending not to care about Lewelyn’s impending departure, Jerome tried to stay resolute but failed miserably. Jerome Harris couldn’t keep his head against the side wall any longer as he fought in vain to achieve control over his body – emotions ultimately dominating, drawing him to focus on Lewelyn leaving.
Lewelyn didn’t give the man as much as a passing glance, knowing and unwilling to fuel the source of Jerome Harris’s pleasure. The spotlight; whatever kind, fame or infamy – as long as his name was spoken.
His back was to Jerome, David imagined the man-child fuming, showing his back to Jerome felt appropriate.
‘Did you see the photo?’ Jerome shouted across the interview room. Lewelyn was at the door, he heard the desperation in Harris’s voice, craving for Lewelyn’s attention. The body language expert wanted to go supernova, shout: ‘You spoilt, selfish brat!’
Lewelyn thought of the chair, grabbing it, putting it up against the door handle, prohibiting outside interference – reminding him of a movie he’d seen once.
Something else came instead.
‘Hahaha,’ Lewelyn said at the door. He let it stream on. Loud enough for Harris to hear, Lewelyn‘s head looked down.
‘What?’ Jerome said to his back.
Lewelyn went on with the chorus, ‘Nothing, it’s just so funny.’
‘WHAT’S so funny?’
‘You sitting there, it’s hilarious.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jerome’s body arched over the interview room’
‘Hahaha. You think people want to talk to you. Listen to what you have to say. It’s just so cute you think that.’
‘Be quiet,’ Jerome hissed through closed teeth.
‘You act like you’re the star of all this. Ha! Sure you were close to doing it. But you froze. What kind of wannabe killer gets stage fright halfway through? I bet you forgot your own name too,’ Lewelyn forced more air out of his lungs.
‘Shut up!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lewelyn pretended to wipe a tear from his dry eye. ‘But what the hell happened. Hahaha. Why did you let Childs finish it for you? Were you really that afraid? Hahaha.’
‘SHUT UP! SHUT UP! FUCKING SHUT UP!!!’ Jerome screamed with a mouth full open Lewelyn could see his wisdom teeth.
‘Sorry I can’t help it. Hahaha!’
‘AHHH!!!!!’
Harris’s handcuffed wrists pounded at the table. He hacked at it like a butcher cleaving a bone. The table’s metal legs screeched. Jerome, oblivious to the red colour spreading over his hands. The table slewed away from him and Jerome went for the metal legs which quickly displayed the blunt scars of his fury. A metallic leg Jerome had targeted with a series of vicious kicks started to give way. Then, as the limb detached the table tumbled over. The coffee cup and can of soda spilled their contents onto the floor. It was flipped upside down and Jerome went for the table’s base, trying to break it into pieces. He began to tire and eventually stopped when enough sweat began to cool down his blood-suffused face.
Lewelyn gazed wistfully at the red masque of Jerome. He didn’t smile, he let his eyes convey the message. The aqua blue rims thinned as the pupils dilated. He opened the door and left behind a rabid Jerome Harris.
The subject of the photo was Lewelyn, that first day he and Tom first went to visit Malcolm Harris. The flash he’d seen in the crack of the door. The image of Lewelyn in the hallway zoomed into his face. His skin etched white, the background black; mouth wide open with no teeth or gums. Sockets without eyes and feverish darkness within; Jerome had certainly spent time ‘shopping’ Lewelyn’s face. Admitted into evidence one detective said to him: ‘Don’t worry we’ll make sure to show your good side to the jurors.’ Others laughed along, Lewelyn did so too. What else could he do?
In the squad room, Lewelyn saw Forsythe was still at his desk glued to the computer so he decided to leave the man with his report writing. Lewelyn felt awkward with goodbyes anyway. Either they weren’t appropriate or not closed properly. What Forsythe had said to him before had been enough. The word goodbye was unnecessary, it acted more as a definition. As long as you made some time to the possibility of not seeing that person again then that was enough.
Chapter 54
She warmed to his company, nestling her head into his shoulder, their surroundings being taken by the night. The evening sky bright with shimmering stars, Lewelyn watched the few that formed a pattern and ignored the flashers that moved. Reposed on the outside deck chair, wings flapped above their heads, ‘Swimmers of the night,’ Sara called the bats as they negotiated the closed, curtained world.
A pair of desert boots lay as if in disgruntled slumber in front of the chair. When worn Lewelyn noticed they fitted a few inches below Sara’s knees and the dress she had on, seemingly swept down to caress them. Her spiralled, jewelled earrings glistened in the fire’s light. The wedding ring adorned her finger of the hand that fondled his waist. She snuggled up closer to him, her face resting gently on his chest.
Lewelyn was dismayed to learn that she had to be back at the farm by the end of the week. He tried not to think ahead and stay in the present. His journal rested on the arm of the chair, left unattended for days. His one arm was free, but he hesitated to move the pen to the blank page – afraid the motion would wake her?
She often used his chest as her pillow, not bothered about it expanding in and out. Thankfully, he’d put enough wood in the fire pit to illuminate the journal’s page.
Journal Entry: Goodbye
Her funeral was today. I hadn’t organised it. An aunt of Hannah’s took care of it. Offered my help, but she said it was better if it was arranged by family. I didn’t argue, even if this aunt of hers hadn’t seen Hannah or her own sister in years. She dressed nicely for the occasion.
Charlotte and Hannah’s classmates were there. They didn’t have to come but it was nice that they did. It showed what good frie
nds Hannah had made.
Greg attended too, and his mom. Mrs Daniels wasn’t a flower – more poison ivy. Neither mother nor son moved to close their distance between us. His mom had used her eyes to tell me – even from twenty maybe twenty-five feet away– that there was now a hex on me.
Like everybody else, I wished I never had to go to funerals.
It’s not that I don’t understand or respect the purpose of remembering somebody, it’s just that I don’t want to be reminded again that I’ve lost someone I cared about – makes me think I’m going to lose someone else.
Sara asked me if I wanted her to come with me, I asked her if she would mind if I went on my own. She gave me a fleshy closed smile and nodded, waited outside with me a while, for the cab to take me there. I think she wanted to watch me, to make sure I was okay.
Can’t say I paid much attention to the procession. Didn’t even look up to check out the flowers, letting my chin follow the black tie down my shirt. I instead reflected on what had led to all this, rather than what words were said by the grieved at the altar.
Journal Entry: Guilty
I thought about it a lot – who’s to blame?
Why do I need to blame somebody? So I can rationalise it?
Kept thinking it over. Pointing it at one, then the other and finally the other. Who’s actions and who’s consequences?
All of them had contributed to her death (that’s perhaps being mildly insulting). However, it all comes down to how it all started and who started it?
I thought back to that dark place where I listened outside the door – Malcolm Harris unknowingly selling me his confession.
Everything revolved around him. He made a choice and then all this happened.
He executed the order.
His son needed help – the clinical kind. Out of parental love or political ambition Malcolm chose what was easier for him. Decided his own interests outweighed everybody else’s. Only cared what happened to him and his son.
Seeing only himself in all of it.
What about everyone else? How is it he did not even consider the collateral harm he would cause other people?
If I try to write down any more questions, I think I’ll end up closing the book and giving up trying to find a logical answer.
All I’ll say is that honesty and truth were an inconvenience to him. He chose the coward’s option; denial and get somebody to fix his own problems.
Journal Entry: Buried
When I look back at the words I’ve just written I wonder, was it worth jotting them down?
Not exactly a revelation. Happens all the time. Parents want to protect their children no matter what. I know I’m not a father, but is it right to give in to parental devotion and let it ruin somebody else’s life?
I saw pictures of that pool. All the water drained out, revealing all those bags. I feel sorry for those who have to open them and look inside them. All those people. Banished. Expunged. Forgotten.
I remember when I was a teenager at a boarding school in the UK. My mom had thought it important I finish my education in Wales, the land of my ancestors. She paid a surprise visit, all the way from Philadelphia – just her. She’d rented a car and took me to this town. The full name escapes me but I do recall the first four letters. Aber – something.
We walked on the beach. Saw the sea, obviously. But what I didn’t expect to see were huge wooden mounds in the sand.
Turns out an ancient prehistoric forest had unearthed itself – nobody knew how old it was. Of the once full-grown trees, only their rooted stumps remained to serve as a reminder that this was once firm land before the sea advanced. It was called the Banished Forest.
All that time under water and nobody knew. Seeing that pool without the water, those bagfuls, like that forest – buried.
Hannah was only one victim, in some way it was lucky she wasn’t down there. I just find it difficult to think that other people could somehow consider that somebody’s life was irrelevant.
Do we have the right to decide whose life is more important?
He closed the journal, not wanting to revise what he had written. Lewelyn let it fall onto the patio floor; realisation wasn’t always enlightenment.
He didn’t hear it fall, but it must have because coincidently Sara manoeuvred her body to rest on his shoulder.
‘Any swimmers?’ she asked looking above. He wrapped himself around her. If he could, he would never let go. She slid her hand over his, interlaced their fingers as they enjoyed the lavish touch of each other’s skin.
‘Promise me,’ she said. But, Lewelyn did not reciprocate.
‘Don’t let it mark you,’ she said, placing her hand on his cheek.
Lewelyn squeezed his grip on her hand. She looked up pouring her deep seeking eyes into his.
‘Easier said than done.’
He knew she wouldn’t leave it at that.
‘You can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known.’
‘I know, but for some reason you still find a way to blame yourself.’
‘Stop over-thinking. You’ll make yourself worse.’
‘Yeah… I guess… I should probably stop talking.’
‘By all means, keeping going. It’s quite entertaining to throw sense into your face.’
As he quietly forced a chuckle her warm lips met his. Their touch, addictive, replenishing – soothing his body, releasing the pain in the shoulder. The living, breathing noises of life from the city howled in the distance.
He watched her rise from the chair they both shared, walking past the radiant fire, stopping to gaze up at the bright twinkles in the sky.
Lewelyn didn’t follow her gaze to the stars. He watched her.
She wasn’t there to be ordered around, she was there because she chose to be and nobody would ever coerce her into doing something she didn’t like – not even Lewelyn.
Lewelyn did not need a perfect memory to remember her words to him when they married: ‘If you cheat on me I’ll cut them off.’
The fire was getting drowsy, all he could see was blood orange glow in the ash, Sara was still on her feet looking at the stars. David looked into the low flickering flames, imagining that if the fire had a face, what it would look like.
The memory of the face etched in his head, the one who had led him to walk on split tiles and rat droppings, on a dark path, illuminated only by a torch in his hand. A killer with a calculating mind, always planning his next move, never reacting on impulse.
Lewelyn didn’t care who Frank Childs was. Characterising the man as a predator, manipulator, no soul – it didn’t matter to David. Nailing a label on his head didn’t change anything – he was the enemy, that’s all that mattered.
David Lewelyn knew he wasn’t telepathic, but he could see Childs’ face and now he had begun to understand his mind. The facilitator of Malcolm Harris’s power-lust, the enabler of Jerome Harris’s desires, the man with a face but no real name, the greatest form of fear – a question without an answer.
Childs’ existence was not forgotten. Lewelyn didn’t know where he was, but realised ‘the enemy’ was still out there. If he ever had the chance to face Childs, Lewelyn would say this to him:
‘You took somebody I cared about. My friend. Someone who’s every day existence reminded you that success is not the size of your wealth or how many people adore your presence. Hannah was happy because she was surrounded by good people and she had found something she enjoyed doing – to write. Her death may not have stopped the world turning or prevented money being produced, but you did change something – me. I don’t know if the play she had written was good. Personally I think it was. She loved to write and you took that away from her. If you can hear this and I’m not just thinking to myself…
‘You think someone’s life is a statistic. I can’t accept that. Now I’m
mad. That’s the only word I can think of right now. Let me assure you, I’m much worse. There are others I still care about. I’m not going to explain to you how much I care about Sara. I’m sure what I’ve thought or said already is enough. If you touch her I’ll kill you.
‘After thinking that, I wonder if I’m really a good person? I guess time will tell.’
Sara gazed upwards with her neck inclined to the dark above, her hands together at her back, the fingers freely flickering in his direction. He got up from the chair, using the one free arm, passed the fire’s dying flames, brought his arm around her. She took hold of it.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked him.
‘Because I don’t want to be anywhere else.’ he said.
‘What makes you stay?’
‘I wonder.’
She turned to face him, wrapped her arms around him, he did the same with his one good arm.
‘What’s for dinner?’ she asked him.
He realised suddenly that food existed and he hadn’t eaten anything today.
‘Well… I’ve been very busy and…’ Lewelyn started rubbing the back of his head, then scratching it impatiently. It was his way of demanding it produced the answer for him.
He noticed now that clouds had stolen across the sky, concealing the stars above. A drop of water patted his forehead. Water fell from the sky, cutting into Lewelyn’s thoughts. The first patter of rain drops began to fall upon the dusty soil.
Epilogue
‘I’ll order something,’ she said.
Lewelyn replied, ‘Okay. I’m just going for a walk. Let me know when the food gets here.’
‘Take your phone,’ Sara stated.
‘Good idea.’
‘Make sure it’s on.’
‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
The rain had stopped falling from the sky. That one watery shower had brought back memories, when most of his childhood had been spent at a boarding school in the UK – how the weather there could be as predictable as the stock market.
