Callista didn’t know what to say. The venom in Lucas’s mom’s words seemed to paralyze her vocal chords. She took another step back toward the street while the lady pointed her shaming glare.
Inside the house, Morgan led Lucas down the stairs, toward the back door that met with an alley. Once they were outside, Morgan helped him down the block, until they were far enough away.
Callista was still out front of the house with Lucas’s mother. She said once more, “Please. I just need to talk to him for a minute.”
At that moment, Lucas’s mother wound her hand back and slapped Callista across the face. “You don’t get a minute,” she told her. “You don’t get a second with my son. None of you whores do.”
The strike was hot on Callista’s cheek. She grabbed at the spot before running away.
Just before she was out of earshot, Lucas’s mother yelled, “Stay away from my son and don’t ever come back!”
Callista just ran, until she reached the meeting spot by the cable car station, where Morgan and Lucas were waiting. Morgan was sitting on a bench next to Lucas, who was slumped over and pale. She asked him what was wrong and he just mumbled something.
“Something’s wrong,” Morgan told her. “He’s been getting worse since we left.”
Lucas leaned over and his stare went from distant to totally blank. His eyes started to whip around in their sockets. His hands grabbed at his shirt while his whole body started to shake.
“It’s Nox!” said Lucas, his eyelids completely peeled back. “I can see him! I can hear him! He’s talking to me.”
“We should take him to a doctor or something,” said Morgan. “He’s seeing things.”
“Doctor Lorrance,” Lucas went on, “He’s here. Hi, Doctor Lorrance. Who are you talking to? Oh I see him. It’s Strix. He looks different. He’s flying around. Who’s that with you?”
Lucas jerked back to reality. His eyes scanned his surroundings, Morgan and Callista’s faces. “What’s wrong with me?” He asked them. “I’m losing myself. Oh no. It’s happening again…” His eyes shut and his body began to squirm like a broken high voltage wire.
“We need to take him to the hospital,” Morgan said. “This is more than sick.”
Callista agreed but as they started to scoop him up, Strix interrupted them.
“The hospital can’t help him,” Strix said from Callista’s backpack. “He’s going to die unless you do as we tell you.”
While Lucas lay unconscious, they followed Strix’s instructions. The owl told them to look for a special species of seaweed that frequently splashed over the Bastion. Mozuku Digitata, as Strix called it, contained an unusual plant alkaloid, one that had powerful effects on the brain.
Callista turned up some first. She found the branch of slimy green berries left on a low-hanging tree limb. The stuff smelled like oily death, a mixture of musk, salt and organic decay.
“I found it!” Callista shouted. “This looks like it’s it!”
She brought over a handful of the briny berries, pulled four of them from the stem as Strix suggested, and burst them between her fingers inside Lucas’s mouth. Morgan patted him on both cheeks, telling him to wake up.
“The plant alkaloid won’t cure him,” said Strix, “but it will block the action of the other drugs he was given and keep him alive.”
“Who did this to him?” Callista asked the owl.
Before Strix could answer, Lucas’s body sprang up. His eyes were totally wide, as though he had just awoken from a nightmare. He started gulping for air with panicked gasps.
Shaking like someone dredged from the bottom of an icy lake, he reached for Morgan and held on to his shoulder. “Morgan,” he said, “Brian. Your brother. Brian. Brian!”
“What about my brother? What’s wrong with my brother? How do you know something’s wrong with my brother?”
Lucas tried to answer but had difficulty finding the words. “I’m…I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t know what I saw.”
…
Morgan didn’t bother to think before he charged away on foot, running like a man escaping a lion. Without turning back, he was gone within a few seconds.
He crossed the bad neighborhoods, the grey and sooty blocks growing darker under the shade of the nearing Bastion. There was a serious ocean spray alert that day. The salt stung his eyes as he ran, tears turning the neighborhood to a kaleidoscopic blur.
By the time he made it to his front door, his face was bright red and he was wheezing. He flung the door open and found his father asleep on the couch. Morgan launched himself up the stairs, nearly falling over his feet as he got into his bedroom.
His brother Brian was awake, sitting up in bed and reading a history book about the Twentieth Century.
“Are you OK? He asked Morgan as soon as he saw him. “You’re breathing real heavy.”
“Are…Are…You…OK?” Morgan asked as he struggled to catch his breath. “I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“I’m safe,” Brian smiled. “I’ve been reading about the second world war. It’s really scary, Morgan. It’s like humans have always been at war. We really can’t help ourselves.”
…
Back at the cable car station, Callista sat next to Lucas on the bench. He was beginning to get some color back and the hallucinations were becoming less intense. She put her palm to his cheek to check his temperature.
“You’re still pretty warm,” She told him. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?”
Lucas wouldn’t even consider it. “I’m feeling better,” he said. “Besides, I like it better here.”
“What happened to you before?” She asked him. “You were seeing things. You said something about Morgan’s brother and he took off.”
“I don’t know what I saw. It was a dream, sort of, but it seemed real. In a way, it seemed realer than real life. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
Callista had an idea. She decided to ask Strix about it. “Can you explain,” she asked the owl, “what was it Lucas saw? Was it a dream, Strix?”
“There are so such things are dreams,” Strix told them. “Anything is as real as anything else. What you saw, Lucas, was an artifact of sorts, something normally outside of human perception. Human brains have evolved for hunting and procreation, not for perceiving the universe for what it is.”
“What was I seeing?” Lucas asked. “Was it something from the past, present or future?”
“In a way, what you saw existed in all three,” said Strix.
“Can I do it again? I want to see more.”
“With extreme sickness or practice,” said Strix. “There are some aware of the total reality, but care must be taken and time must be limited.”
“Why?”
“The effects are difficult for humans to deal with. Your minds don’t handle it well.”
Lucas asked Strix, “Is that what happened to Doctor Lorrance?”
“Yes, Lucas. We’re afraid so.”
“Why was I able to see?”
Strix told him, “Because death was very close. At this time in your life, it is hovering near.”
“What happened to him?” Callista interrupted the owl. “Why can he see? What made Lucas sick?”
For a moment, Strix kept silent, his eyes beaming red, while Callista waited for an answer. Lucas just lowered his head, turning away as though he had no interest in finding out.
Then Strix said, “You can tell her, Lucas. Say it out loud. There is no sense in hiding from the truth.”
“Stop it!” He said. “I get sick from time to time. It happens. I feel better now.”
Callista asked him, “What does Strix mean by that? What happened to you?”
“It’s complicated,” Lucas told her. “I’m not sure about anything yet.”
“Did someone make you sick on purpose?” She asked him.
Lucas didn’t answer her. Instead, his expression turned sad, a kind of heaviness beyond his age, like a sol
dier coming home after witnessing atrocities. He looked haunted.
Somehow Callista knew not to push him further. She moved Strix to her lap and pushed herself closer to him. While he stared out at the giant wall that held back the hissing darkness, she rested her head on his shoulder.
She told him she liked being there but he didn’t respond.
“Do you think there could be a better world ahead of us?” She asked him.
“No,” he whispered. “I don’t think so.”
He looked at her the way her father did sometimes when he explained something she didn’t understand.
After a while, he said, “All we can do is be better ourselves.”
“You remind me a lot of someone.”
“Oh yeah,” Lucas said with a smirk. “How’s he doing by the way? Your Dad?”
For a moment she smiled and giggled hot air into his neck. “You seem to know what I’m thinking.” Then, the past months elbowed their way into her head and she remembered exactly how her father was doing.”
“I know he’s going to die. I just know it.”
Lucas wrapped his arm around her shoulder just as a small rogue wave, just a hundred footer, sent a splash over the Bastion. Strix’s feathers began to glow softly, sending out the warm colors of a fire through the fabric of their bags.
…
That night, while he was getting Brian’s last round of pills ready in the kitchen, Morgan’s father stumbled in and sat beside him on the floor. For once Killian didn’t appear angry or even annoyed and there wasn’t a trace of tension in his face. He was considerably intoxicated but that didn’t explain it. It looked like he had been crying.
When Morgan asked him what was wrong, Killian had trouble speaking.
Eventually, he started mumbling with his voice slurring, “I think you’re a good man, Morgan.”
Killian had said something nice and actually referred to him as a man. So Morgan didn’t have much experience with how to respond. He set the pill tray on the counter and sat on the floor next to his father.
“Thanks,” Morgan said after a while.
“Don’t think that means I like you. You’re too damn stubborn and crazy. There’s no sense being like that.”
“Thanks, again.”
“I used to be a good man,” Killian whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“Life poisoned me,” he went on. “I don’t think I was built to handle what your mother did to us.”
“Stop it,” Morgan whispered. “Brian will hear you.”
“I know it isn’t his fault.”
Killian didn’t say anything else. A few minutes later, he started snoring.
…
Morgan found Lucas at school the following morning. He told him he was happy to see him feeling better and on his feet. “You scared the hell out of me twice last night,” he said. “I can’t tell you how happy I was when I realized Brian was OK.”
Lucas still looked pale and seemed unsteady on his feet. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of dream or hallucination that was. We tried to ask Strix about it but he was no help.”
“I thought the worst. Thank goodness you were wrong.”
“Yeah, thank goodness.”
Morgan asked him how his mother had reacted when he got home the night before. “She must have been mad as hell to have you sneak out like that,” he said. “Did you get in bad trouble?”
“I didn’t go home,” Lucas said. “Slept at the cable car station. I don’t think I can ever go back.”
…
That evening, Callista knocked on her father’s office door. For the first time she could remember, the bolt was locked. She could hear vague traces of his voice inside. It sounded like he was whispering. When she knocked, it took him a few moments to hang up the phone and open the door.
His cheeks and neck were covered in stubble and the bags around his eyes looked swollen enough to burst. The wrinkles in his grey pants and white button down shirt were set so deep they looked permanent. He had been had sleeping at his desk.
“Who were you talking to?” She asked him. “Who was that on the phone?”
“It was just business, honey. Things have been busy.”
“Were you talking to Belasi LaCrone?”
Her father’s face chilled until it was frozen. “Don’t say that name,” he said. “Ever.” It was perhaps the most serious sounding order he had ever given his daughter.
“Why? I know all about him.”
“You know NOTHING!” Her father shouted as he charged toward her. “Leave it alone. This is your father telling you to leave this whole thing alone. As far as you’re concerned, there is no why.”
“Did you even notice that I didn’t come home last night?”
Her father turned away with a look of shame. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “For everything. You don’t deserve this.”
“No. I don’t deserve it. Now why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“You were out with that boy, Morgan, again?” He asked her.
“It wasn’t Morgan I was out with last night. If you want secrets between us, fine.” She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.
Her father didn’t seem to know what to say. He struggled before telling her, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the man and father I am.”
Callista abandoned her stern expression, her resolve wilting like a rose in salt water. “You’re not a bad father,” she said. “Don’t be sorry.”
The phone rang on the desk and he stood up quickly to answer it. “I’m sorry, Callie,” he said. “I’ve got to take this.” He held the office door open for her to leave.
“Fine,” was all she said before she left.
…
She met Morgan an hour later at the cable car station near her house. They sat at the base of a big tree, with Callista stretched out on Morgan’s lap.
The thought of kissing her was alive in his brain but something about the way she looked at him made him retreat.
All she seemed to want to talk about was how worried she was about her father.
“He’s never been like this,” She told Morgan. “I have the worst feeling. You know what,” she went on, “I keep thinking that he’s going to die. Isn’t that crazy?”
Morgan didn’t know what to say at first and just played with her hair.
“I worry a lot about my brother,” he told her after a while. “I don’t think it ever stops. Every time my dad is alone with him, I worry.” He told her about his father’s recent attempts to get Brian hospitalized. “He hates him,” said Morgan. “Even before he found out he wasn’t his. I think somehow he knew the day Brian was born.”
“Do you think Lucas is OK?” She asked, changing the subject. “I don’t think he’s been home since we kidnapped him. His mother really scared me. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me.”
“I’ve been worried too,” said Morgan. “But Lucas is a hell of a lot tougher than I used to give him credit for. He’s just tough in a different kind of way. Somehow, I think he’s going to be fine.”
“I tried to ask Strix to get in contact with him.”
He leaned in to kiss her and she turned away.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I just don’t know how to feel right now.”
He was disappointed and the rejection registered in his face like a slap. “It’s OK,” he said. “I guess I know how you feel.”
She went to her bag and brought out her cigarette rolling kit. After she started spinning together some crushed anxiety pills along with the tobacco, Morgan tried to stop her.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “It isn’t good for you.”
She laughed before lighting the end. “Is anything really good for me?”
Morgan didn’t know what to say. So he asked her if she wanted him to leave.
“I don’t know,” she answered without looking at him. She just let the smoke dribble out of
her lips and stared out to the Bastion. “I’m sorry, Morgan.”
…
Chapter 23
The Emptiness
Morgan walked all the way home that night, down the miles of looping streets. The salt spray in the air stung his eyes and smelled his clothes with brine. The crowds of homeless in the neighborhood had taken to their burlap and canvas tents. The streets had become nearly impassible due to all the tents and campsites. Even with all the people around, it was the quietest night Morgan could remember.
When he got a block from his house, he spotted something strange out front. At first it looked like a statue by the mailbox. Naked and rust-colored from layers the iron-rich mud, the naked figure pointed toward Morgan’s house, right at the front window.
Morgan realized when he got closer the figure belonged to Nox.
Naked, coated by every natural substance in the area, Nox stood seemingly frozen. He looked like a sculpture of human flesh, right arm stretched out and pointing like a road sign.
“Morgan Battle. Morgan Battle. Morgan Battle,” Nox said his name over and over again. “Morgan Battle. Morgan Battle.” His lips seemed to move too fast.
“What is it, Nox?” Morgan asked him.
“Morgan Battle. Danger. Inside. Morgan Battle. Danger.”
Morgan threw the door open to find his father in the middle of hanging up the phone. As Killian set the receiver down, it appeared that he had just received the worst news a person could hear. He looked at Morgan, his face paralyzed in the death of hope.
“What is it?” Morgan asked him. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Hospice,” said his father, looking heartbroken. “They refuse to take your brother. They say he’s too healthy, that he should be at home with his family. His family, they said.”
Break the Bastion Page 23
