The Crimes of Orphans

by Obie Williams

  But the sidewalk was only so wide, and as the two parties passed each other, Rain felt the toddler’s arm brush against his leg. Without thinking, he abruptly stopped and turned halfway around to look down at the young boy, his brow furrowing. At the same moment, the child stopped as well and turned back to look up at Rain with an identical mix of curiosity and concern. For a moment their eyes locked, and Rain noticed that the boy’s were so light that they appeared to be grey, and were staring out from under a neatly cropped head of the fieriest red hair he had ever seen.

  In that odd moment of connection, Rain formed one very clear thought that he neither understood nor would recall later, despite his uncanny memory. Water. A vast wall of water swallowing everything in its path. Then it was gone as the boy’s father, who had advanced another ten feet before noticing his son’s absence, turned and barked, “Aiden!” punctuated with a commanding point of his finger at his unoccupied side.

  The boy jumped and wheeled around, running to stand where his father pointed. When he arrived, his older brother reached around behind their father and smacked him upside the head. The younger boy began to whimper, but was silenced by a single snap of his father’s finger. However, the father wasn’t looking at the boy. He was staring at Rain in much the way a dog might stare down another dog who has trespassed in his territory.

  Upon their initial approach, Rain hadn’t taken much notice of the man, disregarding him as a threat when he saw the children in his company. Now he realized the man was clad in full Irish Army fatigues. But though it was combat attire that any IA soldier would wear, Rain knew their rank insignias, and this man’s indicated he was a Lieutenant-General. Rain also took particular note of a strange patch on the man’s left arm, near the shoulder. It was a dark green circle, inside of which was embroidered a complex interweaving tangle of black lines. It was some kind of symbol, one Rain had never seen before.

  And as Rain stood there taking stock of the man, the man moved his hand to his sidearm with the stealth of a trained killer.

  “Rain,” Lita said. He looked back at her and she beckoned with her hand. “Come on.”

  Rain nodded, paid one last glance back, and then went to catch up with her.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Just fine,” he replied. Behind him, he could hear the trio walking away, the father chiding the younger boy for falling out of line.

  “Alright…” Lita said, eyeing him. “Well, anyway, there are a bunch of alleys on both sides of the road up here. Stitch usually hangs out in one of them. You keep an eye to the left, I’ll check out the right.”

  Rain did so, peering down each alley from across the road as they passed. He saw a number of vagrants—some children—but nobody that matched Stitch’s description.

  They crossed another road, and just after the next building they passed, Lita stopped. “There,” she said. Rain turned and followed her gaze, seeing Stitch immediately. He was a gaunt man dressed in rags. Crouched near a wall halfway down the dead-end alley, he rocked back and forth on the balls of feet clad in leather shoes that were all but falling off. His coat was in tatters, his knitted cap full of holes, and he wore several winter scarves around his neck, their frayed ends dangling down near where his two hands played with the air between his bent knees.

  “Wait here,” Lita whispered, and headed into the darkness of the alley. Rain nodded. Though he could see every inch of the area she was entering, he was sure she would have to squint to find her way. He produced a cigarette and turned away from the mouth of the alley as he lit it, mindful of what she had said about Stitch startling easily.

  Approaching Stitch with the same caution she always used, Lita came within five feet of him before slowly dropping to a crouch. She looked over his haunted, battered form and felt a wash of sadness just as she had many times before. Though she hadn’t thought much of Stitch when they worked for Cleric, seeing any man reduced to such a hollow shell was enough to pull at the strings of even the most seasoned of cold hearts.

  “Hey, Stitch,” Lita said gently. “Still keeping in style, I see.” It was an ongoing joke she offered him, and though he never responded to it directly, its familiarity eased her tension.

  “Already ate today,” Stitch said, his voice dry and raspy, his eyes not leaving those nervously fiddling hands. His fingers wiggled and flicked against one another. “Don’t ask the rats, though; shhhh, they lie. Gamey this fall. Pick ’em through my teeth. They’ll plump winter days though. Christmastime feast.” He giggled.

  “Yeah, I hear those winter rats are the best,” Lita said, crinkling her nose. “But I didn’t bring any food this time. I was hoping maybe you could help me.”

  “Help, hehe. No help. They want to, tying you up with chains and locks and soft walls. Tell you it’s help. But they don’t have the rats to keep you company. Just pills. White and blue and red-green. Seventy-three times seven is five-hundred eleven pills. Colorful stars, but they make you swim. No, no, no, no! No! Pills! On! Holiday!” His voice began to rise, and he punctuated each of the last four words by slapping his hand down on the cobblestone ground. But then he lifted his eyes to meet Lita and he seemed to calm immediately. His hands went back to fiddling with one another. “Not you. You bring company for the belly and the ears. Give the rats their own bloody holiday. You need help?”

  Rain quirked a brow, watching the scene curiously from a distance.

  “Yeah, Stitch, I need some help,” Lita said. “Help finding someone. Like the old days, you know? You think you can do that?”

  “No one’s lost. Not ever, really. Someone knows, just maybe not you. And they’re not lost for someone, but for you they are, but not really. Because someone tells, tickle tickle on the ear, and then you know, and they’re not lost. Found like a hound.” Stitch giggled again.

  “Can you be that someone?” Lita asked calmly. Rain was impressed by her patience, and at a loss as to where she drew it from. “Someone’s lost for me,” she went on, “can you be the someone who tells me? The someone who knows?”

  “I’m always the someone who knows,” Stitch said dejectedly. “But I play, and I’ll whisper, psst psst psst, into your…” he trailed off, and suddenly his eyes shot past Lita and landed on Rain. “No! Too pale! He sees me, but I’m not his rat!” He began waving his hands in a ward-off gesture. “You’ve had your fill! Chick-chick-chickens! My rats here, and I’m not your rat!”

  Rain blinked, unsure of what to make of that. Lita looked over her shoulder and made a shooing motion with her arm. He nodded, pointing across the street to indicate where he’d be. She nodded back and shooed him once more, so he left them to it.

  “There,” Lita said, “he’s gone now. But he wouldn’t have hurt you, Stitch. He’s different.”

  “Not me,” Stitch whispered, “my rats. I have seven, but two make six and then it’s thirteen, and Sunday is brunch.”

  “I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt your rats either,” Lita reassured him.

  “Make sure you stay inside the white fence, too. The woods are out there. You can’t escape that way.”

  Lita frowned. Though Stitch’s rants were usually indecipherable, they sometimes touched random places inside her where she’d rather not go.

  “No, no. Not random. Mathematical lie!” He reached back and gave the brick wall a quartet of loud smacks. “One, two, three, four. Walls all around. But I can hear you whispering. Better tell it right, and mind your modifiers!”

  “Stitch,” Lita said, and snapped her fingers. His glassy brown eyes jerked to her and he leaned forward. With her own eyes finally adjusted to the dark, Lita could see the nearly inhuman semblance of a face Jonas had left him. His lips were peeled back into a perpetual snarl, his nose mostly gone, his cheeks and forehead a mottled roadmap of burned flesh. A thought surfaced that she could have looked the same had Amelie not rescued her from that fire, but she pushed it away. “I need you to focus.”

  Stitch mimicked the noise of a camera shutt
er, but Lita didn’t get the reference. He seemed to be listening though, so she went on. “I need you to tell me where I can find Jonas.” Stitch hissed and pulled away.

  “Come on, Stitch, I need this. He’ll never know it was you.”

  “Hot, too hot. It burns. Not again, no no.” Stitched murmured.

  “I promise it’ll be okay. We’re gunning for Jonas right now. By the time we’re done with him, you’ll be the last thing he’s worried about. Please, Stitch.” She loathed the taste of any plea on her lips, but she meant what she said. She needed this.

  Stitch sighed and resumed his rocking back and forth. He was silent for a while, but then finally said rather poetically, “Thirteen of fifty-two; death above kings and below twins too.”

  Lita regarded him quizzically. “Thirteen out of…wait, The Spade? The Spade Tavern over on Witch Hazel?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Thank you, Stitch,” Lita said, and reached out to lightly touch his shoulder. When she did, his head snapped up and he looked first at her, then at Rain, who had just reappeared in the mouth of the alley to check up on things.

  “You and you. One plus one is four. The road started already, but you don’t have your maps. You’ll get lost but you’re on your way, the road, the miles, the years. Midway is half-score, but first there’s one into two…” He was speaking to both of them at once now, looking frantically back and forth. Then he reached out suddenly, his hand going for Lita’s midsection. She smacked it away.

  “Hey, watch it,” she warned.

  “Watch the road,” he shot back. “There’s four going this way and that, but they’re tied together tight. One will fight and one will die and one will see and one will dig, then one will go so far, shimmering lights all around, and two will return and four will go on…on to something…something more…something…” As he repeated the word “something” he broke his gaze from both of them, looking up in the air and reaching out for something there that neither Rain nor Lita could see. It was as though he was trying to grab hold of a drifting bit of fluff floating before his eyes. Then, as soon as he closed his fingers on whatever it was he saw there, he let loose with a terrified scream.

  They both shot to their feet, Stitch pushing himself back against the wall, Lita taking two steps away from him. Rain hurried to Lita’s side. But Stitch wasn’t making a move to do any harm. Quite the opposite. He looked petrified.

  “Children!” he shrieked. “Warring hearts of light and dark!”

  “What is he talking about?” Rain asked.

  “I don’t know. He was fine a second ago and then he snapped,” Lita replied. Her hand moved to her firearm.

  “Light and dark!” he screamed again. “Warring hearts of light and dark!” As he repeated this over and over, he inched away from them along the alley wall. “Light and dark! Light and dark!” Presently, he came to a service ladder near the back of the alley. It led up to a wrought iron balcony beneath a window one story up. “Light and dark! Light and dark!” He began to climb the ladder.

  “What is he doing?” Rain asked, mildly alarmed. Lita didn’t respond.

  Near the top of the ladder, Stitch stopped and hooked his foot into one of the rungs to steady himself as tied his scarves into a knot around his neck. He then went to work tying the other end of them around the rung directly above him.

  Rain started towards the ladder, but Lita put a hand on his arm to stop him. When he looked to her, she simply shook her head, her eyes never leaving Stitch.

  “Light and dark! Light and dark!” he kept screaming over and over the whole time. Then, finally, once his scarves were tied firmly at both ends, he seemed to break free of his stupor as he looked down at both of them. In a small, sad voice, he said, “She’s coming. God help you all.” Then he stepped off the ladder.

  At last breaking her gaze as she heard his neck snap, Lita looked down to avoid seeing the life twitch out of his body. She stared at her feet for some time before she said quietly, “Goodbye, Stitch,” and then turned to leave the alley. Rain followed close behind.

  Stepping back out into the glow of the streetlights, Lita started back towards the car. Rain stopped her half a block up. He took her forearm gently and turned her towards him.

  “Why didn’t you let me stop him?”

  When their eyes met, Rain saw sadness in hers, but also a strange wash of relief. In a very rational, collected voice, she said, “Sometimes a person can be so lost that death is a sweet alternative. Stitch didn’t deserve to live the way he did. We did him a kindness by letting him go.”

  Rain nodded, and not without a sharp pang in his still heart. He knew that feeling of displacement more than he cared to admit. He released Lita’s arm, and though he very badly wanted to kiss her right then, he hesitated too long and the moment passed. They both turned together and continued back to the car, walking in silence the whole way.

  Pulling out his keys as they approached the vehicle, thankful to find it as they had left it, Rain said, “So you found out where Jonas is?”

  “The Spade Tavern,” Lita replied.

  “And you know where that is?”

  “I do. And even better, I have a plan.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Alex had been sitting in silence for some time, trying to think what they might do to get themselves out of their present predicament. A few incomplete ideas had come to mind, but nothing that seemed like it would really work. He was actually contemplating a faked a heart attack when he felt Amelie’s fingers wiggling around near his hands.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I can feel one of the knots in your rope. I think I might be able to loosen it some,” Amelie whispered.

  “Do it,” Alex replied. “But don’t move around too much.” As he felt her go to work, he watched Michael, who was halfway across the arena examining one of the stone pillars, comparing its inscriptions to a book in his hand. Cleric had disappeared a few minutes earlier, heading through a second door in the coliseum opposite the one he and Michael had entered from.

  “Okay, that’s the best I can do,” Amelie said after a time. Alex’s face scrunched up as he began wiggling his hands, finding his left to be just a little more mobile than before. His right, however, was still firmly secured. After a while of twisting and turning his arm, trying all the while to avoid Michael’s detection and to ignore the burning pain the rope created in his wrist, Alex finally managed to wrestle his hand free of its bond.

  He quickly went to work on his other hand, but as soon as his first had come loose, he realized that his hands hadn’t only been tied together, but also to the post and to Amelie’s as well. He tried prying at the various knots he found back there, but they all refused to budge. Furthermore, with his right hand still tied, there was no way he could reach his ankles to release them.

  “I can only get one hand free,” Alex whispered.

  “What are you going to do?” Amelie asked.

  “Make the best of it. Michael’s Catholic, right?”

  “Yes, we both are. Why?”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Calderwood. Why does any of this matter?”

  “Just stay quiet. I have an idea.” Alex cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was shaky and timid. “L-Lord Calderwood? Sir?” Michael’s head shot up from his work and his wide eyes made Alex think of a puppy looking for a treat. He had to clear his throat in order to suppress a nearly irresistible impulse to laugh. “May I have a moment of your time, sir?”

  Michael glanced towards the coliseum door where Cleric had departed, then placed a marker in his book and closed it as he approached Alex. “What is it, young man?” He asked, warily keeping his distance. There was a long rapier sheathed on his left side, and a short dagger on his right. He rested his hand on the hilt of the rapier.

  “Well first, sir, I’d like to apologize for the way I spoke to you earlier. I-I was very distraught and I didn’t know who you were.” Alex bowed his
head sorrowfully.

  “Well then, I forgive you, of course,” Michael said.

  Alex raised his head slowly. “Y-You do?”

  Michael smiled gingerly and nodded. “Yes, of course I do. I’d be just as angry and confused in your position. I had no idea you would be a human being, let alone one so young. I wish it weren’t so, but it is clear to me now that your age and innocence is a test of faith, and I must proceed no matter how much I’d like it to be different.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alex said. “Proceed with what? What do you need me for?”

  “All will be made clear soon, but do take solace in the knowledge that your sacrifice will usher our world into a time of untold faith and prosperity. Your story will be cherished for generations.”

  “S-So, you intend to kill me then?” Alex asked shakily.

  Michael’s eyes softened, but he nodded slowly. “I am terribly sorry, but it is necessary. I do not wish it, but it is what I must do in the service of God.”

  Alex took a deep breath and nodded. Then, looking around, “You have a priest then? To read me my last rites?”

  Michael blinked and his brow knitted. “No…no, I’m afraid not. As I said, we weren’t expecting…”

  “You can do it,” Amelie said quietly.

  “Pardon?” Michael asked, walking over to where they could both see him. “Did you say something, Amelie?”

  She refused to look at him, but she sniffled and spoke a bit louder. “I said you can do it. The Lord of Chicane is granted certain powers by the church. Performing last rites is one of them.”

  “Oh,” Michael said. “But I’ve never done it before. I don’t know that I—”

  “Please,” Alex said. “I cannot die without absolution. Whatever you can do, I’m sure God will understand.”

  “A-Alright,” Michael said with a nod. “I think I remember how it goes.” He approached Alex and lowered himself to his knees by his side. “Now, close your eyes and bow your head.”