The ship touched down smoothly on the runway and slowed to a stop. He heard the other passengers unbuckling. How many of them had been praying for an accident as well? Ligotti opened his eyes and looked around. A quarter of them? A benevolent creator would have answered their collective prayer and put them out of their misery—all of them, including the boy. A benevolent creator would have spared the boy the sin of growing old. A benevolent creator wouldn’t let his crops grow up and wilt on the vine.
The boy was right about one thing. Heredity is an unforgiving bitch. Genetics guaran-damn-teed that. The boy was smart, but the Dark Side was baked into his soul. Ligotti could see the darkness in his eyes; he could sense it when the boy spoke about his father. He may have shed his dear ol’ dad’s accent, but it was safe to say he wouldn’t be splitting the atom. The Dark Side had a funny way of following you around, no matter what rock you escaped to.
Ligotti knew this because the darkness was in his own DNA.
It had taken him years to scrub all traces of the twang from his voice. He thought he’d escaped the Dark Side long ago. But here he was, returning to his lunar roots like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn. To spawn and die. Was that free will? He didn’t know. He’d taken the only transfer available. He hadn’t been worried where he was going, just that he was leaving Europa. Everything in his home reminded him—no, taunted him—of his loss. It wasn’t enough just into move to a new apartment, either. Even the brilliant blood-orange sunsets reminded him that his wife was gone. No matter how much dirt he shoveled into that particular grave, it was an open wound. The only way to deal with that type of pain was to walk away. Forget about it.
“You okay?” the boy asked, snapping Ligotti out of his thoughts.
“Okay?” he said. “I haven’t been okay for a long time.”
Confusion spread on the boy’s face. “I meant that you look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Then you’d better get back to your own seat, before I get sick on you.”
The boy quickly unbuckled his seatbelt. He shot one last worried look at Ligotti, who put a hand to his mouth as if he were on the verge of throwing up. The boy disappeared down the crowded aisle, passing through the passengers stretching their legs and removing bags from the overhead bins.
“Welcome to the Moon, where the local time is eleven thirty-eight,” the recorded voice said over the intercom. “And if this is your final destination, welcome home.”
* * *
Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective Page 16
