by T. S. Mann
She snarled and leapt down to land on the floor near him. “Don’t you mock me, little boy! I haven’t even gotten started with you yet!”
He shrank back reflexively but then sneered.
“Do you really think you can break me with spiders, Lindsay? I’m a nec-ro-the-urge now, remember.” He emphasized each syllable with the same condescending tone she had used earlier. “I’ve been to the place where Death lives. You think you have anything to show me that’s scarier than that?”
Lindsay’s face twisted in anger. She leapt from the chair and gestured towards Luke, whose body flew up to meet her. She caught him easily with his head between her hands.
“Maybe nothing scarier, sweetie, but I bet I can show you something worse!”
Luke screamed as he felt Lindsay’s fingers dig into his skull. All around, he could hear a cracking sound that he thought must surely be his skull splintering. The pain grew and grew, until suddenly ...
It stopped.
***
Gingerly, Luke opened his eyes. He was sitting in the back seat of a car. Next to him was a young boy with black hair wearing an X-Men t-shirt and a surly expression. He seemed engrossed in a hardcover book. Luke recognized it instantly. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
“Oh no,” he said, very softly.
Luke looked around wildly. In the driver’s seat was John Sullivan, his father, sporting his prized Red Sox cap. In the front passenger seat was his brother Matt, aged ten. He was wearing an identical cap, as well as his lucky Pedro Martinez jersey. After today, Matt would never wear that jersey again. Indeed, he would never cheer the Red Sox again, not even for their World Series victory. Strange, really, that Matt would hold a grudge against a baseball team when the real cause of their father’s death was so much closer to home.
“Come on, Dad! We’re gonna miss the opening pitch!” said Matt.
“Like hell we are. You just leave the driving to me.”
John Sullivan punched the gas and pulled the car into the other lane. Behind them, Luke heard the squeal of brakes and the insistent horn of some other driver angry at being cut off. There was a soft tinkle from the sound of his father’s seat belt dangling from its holder, unused. To Luke, it sounded like a death knell.
“Where are we sitting, Dad?” asked Matt, excitable as ever. He was always hyper on game day.
“Heh. You’ll love this. I scored us tickets on top of the Green Monster. Ain’t it great?”
“Awesome. Hey, Luke, you’ll like that. You’re into monsters and stuff!”
Matt laughed, but young Luke just snorted contemptuously and returned to his book. The older Luke flinched at the sound. He’d replayed this day so many times in his head, but to relive it in real time – and from an outside vantage point! – made it even worse.
“Matt, don’t pick on your brother. Now when we get there, stay close and don’t go wandering off. We’ll get some grub and make it just in time for the National Anthem. Oh, and Luke, when we get there, leave your book in the car.”
“But Dad!” The boy’s whine felt like a dagger through his older self’s heart.
“No ‘but Dad!’ okay? We’ve been planning this for a week. I’ve got great tickets, and we’re all going to have a great time together. So no, you’re not going to sit there lost in a book and ignore everything. You can read it when you get home.”
“Please.” The older Luke willed his younger self to stay silent. “Please, just let it go. Leave the book in the car and spend time with your father. Don’t whine.”
The boy didn’t let it go. “Why did I even have to come today anyway? I don’t even like baseball!”
Luke could see Matt’s head bob in the front seat, and he could imagine his brother rolling his eyes. He felt his own heart race. Anxiously, he looked up at the passing street corner signs and realized that they must be close. His father spoke up, and Luke cursed the fact that their last conversation had to be this childish argument.
“Dammit, Luke. You’re here because I never get to spend time with you and your brother, okay. I got a day off, it’s opening day at Fenway, and we are all going to go watch the Red Sox together.”
Luke closed his eyes, silently praying that he would not have to hear the hateful words he knew were coming.
“Why is it that whenever you want to spend time with us, it’s always something that you and Matt want to do and never something that I’d like?”
“Now what is that supposed to mean?” asked their father angrily.
Up ahead, the light over the intersection turned yellow, but his father seemed not to notice. Luke’s body tensed, and he felt light-headed, as if his heart was about to burst. Like an animal caught in a trap. Like a bug in a jar, madly beating its wings against the unyielding glass.
“Just admit it!” snapped young Luke. “You don’t want to spend time with both of us. You want to spend time with Matt, but Mom makes you feel guilty about leaving me behind, so you just drag me along! You’ve always liked having Matt as a son more than me!”
Older Luke stopped breathing. Everything around him seemed to fall into slow motion. His father, shocked at the accusation, turned around to look over his shoulder at his petulant son.
“Luke Sullivan, how can you even think that?!?”
The car barreled on towards the intersection. Finally, the older Luke snapped and screamed at his father.
“WATCH THE ROAD!!!”
Even if the other passengers could have heard him, it would have been too late. The light turned red a full two seconds before the car passed under it, but it might as well have been an hour at such a busy intersection. As the car passed through, an oncoming vehicle rammed them broadside.
Young Luke screamed in agony, and his older self could somehow hear the boy’s arm breaking over the sound of rending metal. Watching it from outside, he still remembered how much it hurt, and he clutched his own arm in sympathy.
The car spun around and landed in the intersection facing oncoming traffic. Ahead, its airhorn blowing maniacally, was a semi-truck coming right for them. Matt screamed just before it hit, while their father bellowed a loud curse. The force knocked the car back nearly fifty feet before it came to a stop.
Luke looked around the ruined vehicle. His younger self was crying hysterically in fear and pain. The front windshield was smashed, and Matt was struggling to get free of his seat belt. Their father was impaled on the steering wheel and didn’t move. Luke watched, tears pouring down his cheeks as Matt gingerly touched their father’s body and saw that he was still alive, barely. Matt ripped off Pedro’s jersey and tried in vain to staunch their father’s bleeding.
“So that’s how it got so bloody,” Luke thought to himself dazedly. “I always wondered.”
So many nightmares about this accident, and yet there were so many things Luke never realized before now. He watched as Matt tried to rouse their father, and he strained to hear the man’s final words.
“It’s okay, Dad. Just stay with us. You have to stay with us.”
“Matt, listen. You’re gonna ... gonna to have to be strong now. For your mother. For Luke. You’re gonna have ... have to be the man now.”
“Dad! Daddy, please! I can’t ... I’m only nine. I can’t....”
“I’m sorry, Matt,” he coughed. “I’m so, so sorry. But you have to. Look after your mother. Look after Luke. He needs you now. He ... needs ....”
For the very first time, Luke heard the final gasping words of his father’s life. As bad as all his memories of this day had ever been, the unvarnished truth of it was worse. His father’s dying words had been to urge Matthew to watch over him and protect him. And for eight years, Matt had looked after him, had protected him, had put up with his biting sarcasm and his pretentious hipsterism.
And how had he repaid Matt? By dragging him along to get laid at a witch’s coven that turned into a horror movie. Sickness washed over Luke, and he couldn’t imagine how he could feel any worse.
&nbs
p; And then, as if in response to that thought, there was a flash of light and a sudden sense of vertigo. Luke blinked and looked around. He was still in the backseat of the car, but it was undamaged and in motion. He glanced around in confusion, and then, he heard his brother and father speak once more.
“Come’on, Dad! We’re gonna miss the opening pitch!” said Matt, again. “Like hell we are. You just leave the driving to me,” said his father, again.
“No. No, no, please stop this.” Luke shook his head.
“Where are we sitting, Dad?” “Heh. You’ll love this. I scored us tickets on top of the Green Monster. Ain’t it great?”
Luke tried to cover his head with his hands, but the magic that brought him here compelled him to watch the same events unfold over and over again. And so, he sat and watched and sobbed uncontrollably, as the worst five minutes of his entire life settled into a continuous loop. He lost count after the first few repetitions; it seemed ... obscene to keep count off the number of times he had to watch his father die.
After an unknown number of repeats, he began to wonder if he would be trapped here, forced to watch his father’s death and recall his own part in it– again and again and yet somehow fresh and new each time – until he went mad. Did time even pass back in the real world while he was stuck in this loop? Could he watch the accident play out a million times while only five minutes passed back in the basement? Was there any way out at all except by offering himself to Lindsay’s chaos gods?
Luke’s head swam as he sought to withdraw from the nightmare in which he was trapped. Even that escape was denied him; the more he tried to ignore what was happening, the more acute his senses seemed to become.
***
Finally, after what felt like days, the nightmare suddenly ended as abruptly as it began. Luke realized he was back in the basement with Lindsay, and he was so relieved that he sobbed in relief at the sight of his torturer. The clock said it was 5:30, but it could be the same evening, the next morning or a week later for all he knew.
He looked up at Lindsay with red, shell-shocked eyes. She seemed strangely sympathetic as she knelt beside him and brushed the hair out of his eyes. He flinched at the touch and wiped his nose with his hand. But when he looked up at his captor, there was steel in his eyes.
“I’m gonna kill you for what you’ve put me through,” he said with as much hate as he could muster.
“Yes, I’m sure you’ll try,” she replied casually. “Maybe you’ll succeed. But your father will still be dead, and it’ll still be your fault. Why don’t you think about doing something about that?”
She rose and moved to a chair which she’d pulled over next to where Luke sat. She looked down at him with what she pretended was compassion. Luke knew better.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked sullenly.
“Luke, chaos is so much more powerful than you could possibly imagine. All things are possible within the Beyond, even victory over death. You could undo what happened and restore your father to life. If you wanted, you could ensure that the accident never even happened in the first place and rewrite history so that you father was there for you these last eight years.”
She leaned in closer, almost conspiratorially. “You could even, if you wanted, make him better. Make sure that he liked you best. See how Matt likes being the outsider. Just give in to chaos, and all that guilt you’ve been shouldering can be lifted away. What do you say to that?”
She smiled down at him, almost beatifically.
Luke stared at her blankly for what felt like an eternity. Then, he started to laugh. Not the mad braying of his earlier torture, but genuine laughter, as if she’d just told the funniest joke he had ever heard.
The smile faded from Lindsay’s face. “Why are you laughing? Stop it!”
Luke wiped tears from his eyes. “I, hehe, I’m sorry. Really, I, heh, am. It’s just ....”
He took a deep breath and looked at Lindsay with something strangely like pity.
“Well, I just thought it was funny how completely and totally you botched this whole torture-brainwashing thing. I mean, hehehe, really, you did this whole thing completely backwards!”
He laughed again a few times while Lindsay fumed.
“What are you talking about?” she snapped angrily.
“Come on! You torture me for hours and hours, and then you turn good cop and offer to bring my father back from the dead! You know, if you’d started with that, I might have fallen for it, but not after everything else you put me through!”
“I’m not lying to you Luke. With chaos magic, we undo the accident that killed your father. We can save....”
Luke cut her off. “Oh, I’m sure you can save him! But what sort of father should I expect now that I know what sort of diseased freak you are? Would my dad come back to abuse my mom? Would he be a child molester or a serial killer or just some soulless zombie? I don’t know. But I do know that I wouldn’t trust you to raise a roadkill squirrel from the dead, let alone my father.”
His face was a mixture of defiance and manic intensity. Strangely, despite everything, he’d never felt so alive and in control.
“Seeing him die again made me realize one thing: that as much as I want him back, I want to be worthy of being his son, and that means not selling myself to a ridiculous cartoon character like you!”
Lindsay bolted up from her chair in a fury. “Cartoon character?!?”
“Yeah, a ridiculous cartoon character! With your magical tortures and your Hannibal Lector mind games and your deadly Joker pranks! And then you offer to bring my father back from the dead if I’ll just sell you my soul, which is only the most the most cliched premise ever! Like I’ve never heard of Faust or anything!”
His voice dripped with contempt. “Is that what did it for you, Lindsay?”
“Shut up!”
He laughed. “What happened, Lindsay? Did some chaos-magician tickle your lady parts with magic feathers and then promise to resolve your daddy-issues? Is that all it took to turn you into the hot mess you are today?”
“I said SHUT UP!!!”
She gestured angrily, and pure kinetic force jerked Luke off the floor and into her waiting hand, the chains falling away as he flew. She gripped him by the throat and held him off the ground in a rage.
Despite it all, Luke still managed to keep laughing, at least until she tightened her grip enough to stop him from breathing. But still, he maintained a contemptuous sneer on his face. With a snarl, she turned around and slammed Luke’s body against a wall.
“Are you still so eager to die, Luke?!? Just like you were when I found you?!?”
She put her free hand to his temple and suddenly he screamed in agony as she ripped her way through his brain. After a few seconds, though, she abruptly dropped him to the ground and stepped back to stare at her captive in wonder for a long moment before she spoke again.
“No. No, I’ve misjudged you, Luke Sullivan,” she said softly, almost reverently. “You are trying to provoke me. Only it’s not suicide in your heart, it’s self-sacrifice. You want me to lose my temper and kill you so that you can’t be made to fall. You’re willing to die to stop my plans.”
She gazed down at him with a strange look of admiration on her face. He could only cough and try to hide his disappointment that his last desperate gamble hadn’t worked.
“For what it’s worth, Luke, I think your father would be very proud of you.”
Then, she gestured harshly, and kinetic force lifted Luke once more and hurled him across the room. He landed right in the center of the sigil she’d drawn on the floor and then yelled in pain as his arms and legs were stretched out and pulled taut once more. Lindsay slowly walked over to look down at him. She beckoned the knife and it flew to her hand.
“Congratulations, Luke, you win. Plan C it is.”
CHAPTER 11:
THE DEATH OF JOHN SULLIVAN
A Plane Flying Somewhere Over the Midwest ...
Mickey St. An
gel reclined in his First-Class seat with a sleep mask over his eyes and a homicidal stapler on his lap, and he dreamed. Like most of his dreams, this one wasn’t very dreamlike. Although he was considered a master karmatrophian, he was also an adept of psychic magic, and Strangers so skilled rarely dreamed at all unless they wanted to.
Consequently, his dreams were typically used either to review recent events or to reminisce about happier days. Presently, Mickey wasn’t dreaming of anything recent or happy. He was dreaming about the last time anyone called him John Sullivan.
***
“Dammit, Frank, I put in for this personal day a month ago!” John barked into his cellphone.
Behind him, his ten-year-old sons were eating quietly in the breakfast nook. John was a rising associate at Falcone and Edwards, a small but growing boutique law firm that had been operating in Boston for nearly thirty years. Frank Edwards, a founding partner at the firm, was speaking on the other end of the line, and he was apologetic but implacable. While John was on track for a full partnership, he was nowhere near the point at which he could tell his boss where to get off, no matter what the provocation.
In this case, one of the other associates had taken ill, and someone was needed to sit in at a deposition which some idiot had scheduled for Opening Day at Fenway. It wasn’t even an interesting deposition, just a corporate rep who would be testifying about how many copy machines the company sold in Rhode Island during fiscal year 1996. A summer law clerk could probably handle it, but the client wasn’t paying the firm $300 an hour for a law student.
John sighed in exasperation. “Okay, Frank, but somebody owes me for this.”
He hung up the phone and then looked over at his ten-year-old twins, both of whom were sitting quietly eating their morning cereal. Matt was already trying to cover up his disappointment with a brave face. Luke looked strangely satisfied, as if he’d expected John to let them down.
Matt spoke first. “It’s okay, dad. We can go some other time.” He glanced at Luke. “Honestly, Luke didn’t really even want to go, did you Luke?”
