by L C Barlow
"Ghost pains I think it's called," said Cyrus.
"Yes. Yes. I know. But they're terrible. And I can't... I..."
"Take your time," said Cyrus. There was more sniffling and another rustling of a tissue.
"I just can't move on with the pain. I'm terrified of going outside. I'm terrified of the barn. I can't do anything. I just have these panic attacks now. Over and over. It's just..."
"Shhh," said Cyrus. "I think I see. You need me to give you something for the pain."
"No. No," said the girl. "I have things for the pain, and they don't work. They just don't do anything. No, I... I..."
Now the older woman spoke. "Mr. Harper, Lisa and I came here today because we know that you are capable of difficult, and some say impossible, things. We simply want to know if there's any way that you can do something for the arm. Maybe take the pain away for good. Maybe even, well, get Lisa her arm back."
There was a sound of a heavy sigh and some shuffling. The woman continued hurriedly. "It's just that Lisa... she hasn't slept well for weeks now. She barely eats. She is losing weight so fast. If there's something you can do, please. We would be willing to pay you."
"No," said Cyrus. "That's unnecessary." There was a long silence.
"Just anything that you can do. If you would be willing to try. We would be indebted to you forever."
"I think you already are, Evelyn," Cyrus said, and then, "Do you still have the arm?"
"Yes," Evelyn said low. "They gave it to us. We kept it in the freezer, in case..."
"Bring it to me tonight," he said. "I make no promises. I guess we'll find out together... if I can help."
"Thank you," Evelyn said. "Thank you so much Mr. Harper. If there's anything at all I can do for you, anything at all, let me know."
"No worries," said Cyrus. "Exactly when did this event happen?"
I jumped at a voice loud behind me. "What are you doing?" It was Alex.
I missed the rest of the conversation to my left and turned on the stairs to look at him. His blue eyes were open but expressionless, his lips slightly parted, his head turned to the side.
"Listening to your future," I said.
"What?"
"Something tells me that your night is going to be very interesting," I replied and smiled.
Alex opened his mouth wider, drew in a breath, and paused. He looked in the direction of the living room. "What did you hear?" he asked.
Suddenly, Cyrus was in the entryway with the two women, and Alex and I turned to them as though we had never spoken. They nodded their heads to us again, and Cyrus opened the front door. The women's skirts blew back like flower petals before they parted through the opened door. Then, the sunlight on the floor was squelched, and Alex and I were alone again. I heard Cyrus walking them out to their car.
I stood on the stair and turned to Alex.
"What was that?" he asked. "What happened to that woman's arm?"
"You happened to it," I said. I walked past him, climbing the stairs.
"I don't even know her. What the hell does that mean?" he said.
I didn't respond. Instead, I went searching for Roland.
* * *
I was told not to say anything to Alex, and I obeyed. He was left the whole day to ponder. By that night, Evelyn had stopped by with a shoebox tied with twine. Alex peered at it and asked me later what was inside. I said not one word, and he flipped me off.
Cyrus brought the shoebox to the dinner table that night, set it amongst the chicken, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. Mrs. Harper was there, and she sat at the end of the table, opposite Cyrus. She was a thin woman, and her natural expression was a grave, purposeful one. She always appeared to have other things on her mind, and I often did not see her when I was at the house. This may be, though, because she did not wish to see me. She was far from affable, but I was also fairly certain she hated me.
"Would you pass the salt?" she asked, and Alex picked up the porcelain cat salt shaker that sat beside the box. His eyes wandered over the corners of the enigmatic thing before he passed it to her, but he said nothing.
"Have you done your homework for this evening, Jack?" Cyrus asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"Good. And you, Alex?"
Alex looked at his plate, his eyes going back and forth across the food. Finally, he said, "Yes. Yes I did."
"I'll hold you to that," Cyrus said.
Mrs. Harper gave a polite cough. "Well, Alex," she said, "if you have some extra time, how about we watch a movie together? Just the two of us. Mother and son." I thought I saw her eyes flicker to me for a moment.
"Alex will be busy tonight," Cyrus replied, taking a drink of wine and setting the crystal glass down. "I have a project for him."
"What is that?" Mrs. Harper asked. I looked at the box. So did Alex.
"Just an experiment of sorts." He swallowed with a smack of his lips. "And it must be done tonight."
"Cyrus... I haven't had any time with Alex for the past month or so." She coughed politely again. "When will I be allowed to?" She smiled exaggeratedly.
"Marie, when are you going to spend time with Jack?"
"Jack?"
"Yes. Jack. The other member of this household."
I instantly looked at my plate, but I could feel her eyes upon me. I froze, afraid to move.
"You always bring that up when you want to change the subject," she said.
"I think you'll find that they are the same subject."
I looked to Mrs. Harper, and her eyebrows were puckered. Lines were furrowed into her forehead. Her eyes looked teary.
"I don't want to spend time with Jack," she replied. "I want to spend time with my own son."
I felt a sudden flush on the back of my neck, and I rose from my seat. "I'm going to my room," I said quickly, but Cyrus rose when I began to walk, and he stopped me.
"Sit down," he said.
"I don't think..."
"Sit down."
I looked at his cold eyes and slunk back into my chair like a gassed snake, stared at the box on the table, and swallowed. I touched my plate and then put my hands in my lap and then tapped the table's edge.
"The whole point of this is to make sure that whatever Alex has, Jack, so do you. That has always been the point... Marie." Cyrus took his seat again. "Raised one and the same. I told you from the very beginning. If Alex has martial arts lessons, so does Jack. If Alex gets beef tar tar, likewise. And if Alex gets attention from his mother, Jack gets attention from you as well. And if Jack doesn't get it, neither does Alex. That is the point."
"Jack has a Mother."
"That's not a mother."
"Well... love doesn't just grow out of thin air. You can't force it from me." She was weeping now.
"Maybe not, but there will be equality here."
"Sometimes..." She shook her head back and forth. "I hate you."
I heard the squeak of wood on wood, and I saw out of the corner of my right eye Marie's form rising out of her chair. I heard the click clack click clack of her heels on the floor until she almost walked past Cyrus, but at that moment I heard a slap of skin against skin and a quick intake of breath that drew my eyes to them. Cyrus had grabbed Marie's arm and he held her there while he stared at her with piercing eyes.
"You and I both know that's not a safe thing to do," he said. "And not just because of who I am."
She pulled her arm away from him and wiped both of her eyes.
"I know, I... I apologize," she whispered, and I swear in that moment all the tears instantly stopped flowing. She stared at the wall for a moment, walked to the small wine rack that sat on the buffet to the left of the dining room table, grabbed a bottle of wine, and exited through the door, leaving a wide girth around Cyrus.
Cyrus looked at me and then Alex. "Don't ever mistake a power play for love," he said to Alex. "I know the woman I married."
Alex stared at his Father and nodded his head. Cyrus said nothing to me.
"Alex, I want you to pick up the box that Evelyn brought today and open it." Alex's head flipped back and forth between Cyrus and Roland, landed on me, and fell like a ball towards the box. He sighed, swallowed, and picked it up with unsteady hands. He set it gingerly on his lap as though it might explode. It took him half a minute to undo the twine, and then he lifted the box's lid, but I could not see what lay inside. Nevertheless, I saw it in my mind.
Alex clapped the box shut. "It's a hand... I think," he said. Was that a shudder or excitement I saw in him? I can't recall.
"Yes, Alex. Tell me, though, was it right or left?"
Alex's eyes slowly fell to the box again, and he lifted the lid for a brief second. He closed his eyes, scrunched his nose, and swallowed. "Left," he said.
Cyrus grinned. "Does that mean anything to you?"
"No," Alex said quickly.
"Alright," said Cyrus. "We'll see if this rings any bells. That arm belongs to Lisa Havinger, and she lost it because she was attacked by a dog on the night of June twelfth." Cyrus squinted his eyes and looked at Alex, but Alex simply sat there and shook his head. He lifted the box and set it gently on the table. He pushed it away from himself.
"The night of June twelfth you should remember. After all, that's the night you killed Shakespeare and dug his grave. Oh, no, I apologize. That's the night that you shot him to pieces, failed to put him out of his misery, and were forced to dig a grave to right what you had done."
Alex swallowed but said nothing.
"Apparently, things have not been righted," Cyrus said.
"It was a coincidence," Alex replied softly, eyes averted.
"You think that because you are young. But as one gets older, and especially if one lives in this house, you learn that there are no coincidences.
"You, Alex, purposely tortured our family pet. You set out to enjoy it. In the process, you blew off his left paw. I saw it. As did Roland... and Jack. You did, too. Then, the very same night, the daughter of one of my greatest supporters is attacked by a dog, Alex, which bites off her left arm, mauls it to pieces. You see no connection in that at all?"
"No," Alex replied.
"You're responsible for that arm," Cyrus said.
"No, I'm not. I didn't do a damned thing to that woman."
"I say differently."
"You're wrong."
Cyrus rose quickly from his chair with the look of a psychopath ready for a kill, but Roland interjected with, "Wait Cyrus, wait," and he leaned forward with his hands clasped together and pointing towards Alex.
"I would like to tell you something, and though you may not want to hear it, it is as true as what Cyrus is saying to you now. It will be good for you.
"When I was a boy there was a man in my hometown by the name of Jim Connor. When he was young, his old man died, and Jim told me about his Father's death. Said it was a strange day because the night before one of his cats had died. It was the same night a famous actress had died, actually, and that was how he remembered the specific day.
"The day after that cat died, though, Jim's Father set about to burying it. Jim said his old man got a shovel, started digging a grave, and fell to the ground. He died right there on the spot from a heart attack.
"Now, move ahead twenty years. It's a different cat that dies. Still Jim's, but a different one. Jim leaves the dead thing in his house for days, because he's afraid. He remembered what happened to his old man.
"Eventually, though, a few days later, he tells me that he's going to bury it because he got his affairs in order. I said to Jim, 'You're crazy. You're crazy to think that burying a cat has anything to do with you or your Father dying.' But he just looked at me, smiled, and said, 'Roland, you may not be able to feel it, but I can. There's something waiting for me.' And he was right. The man died the next day - just a few hours after burying the damned furball.
"Now, as I got older, I saw more and more of that stuff happen, and it doesn't matter that it's illogical. Life is illogical. Random isn't ever random. Ever. Ask a gambler in any casino, and he'll tell you. You don't leave a machine when it's just started paying, and you don't stick with one that's sucking you dry. And deaths... well, they always come in threes. So does bad luck. Often, so does the good.
"And sometimes, just sometimes, when you fuck something up, like shooting the family dog on purpose to watch it suffer, going against your Father's wishes, that brings about something else in the world. I don't expect you to feel it. Not everybody can. But I can... that equaling. And let me tell you, that woman's blood is on your hands. And it matters this time. That woman is one of Cyrus's, and after all we have done, and all we are going to do, we can't afford a few loose ends. We are always about to run out of the leniency this world has to offer. We've got to do a little good to keep doing the bad. That includes you."
Alex seemed to consider what Roland told him, for he looked to Cyrus and said, "What is it that I have to do?"
Cyrus sat back down and spread out his hands. "We wait until a full moon," he said. "We wait, and you keep the arm in your room. It will be about five days from now. When that day comes, you'll clean the hand with alcohol and wrap it in cotton. You'll place it in an oak box and bury it out on the Havingers' land in the night. I'll drive you out there. Jack, you'll come, too."
I nodded in assent.
"What will that do?" asked Alex.
"The person who caused the ruin of that girl's arm will finally be taking responsibility for it. Once you clean it and bury it, it will finally be at peace. It won't hurt her anymore. I might even be able to grow it back."
I don't know if he truly believed them, but, "Fine," Alex nevertheless said. He wrapped the box up in the twine again.
"You can't fuck this up," Cyrus said. "There's no second chance after this."
"I know."
"Good," Cyrus replied. "Now take the damned hand to your room."
* * *
Five days later and at the appointed time - about an hour and a half before we set out for the Havingers' farm - I watched Alex clean the hand. It surprised me just how together the skin and tissue was, despite the fact it looked like it had been inserted into a shredder and ripped back out. Of course, the doctors had done their best to save it; it was now our turn to bury it.
The smell was terrible and amazing. Nothing hits the nose like decay. It was such a full and pungent stink - the smell of the living amplified and perverted. There's not much like it.
The hand itself was black in places. The nails particularly interested me, because they had been cut through, but still shone bright with pink fingernail polish.
Alex took the hand out of the box and put it on a cutting tray he had taken from the kitchen. He retrieved cotton swabs and alcohol from the bathroom and set them around the hand. He pushed blackened and dried skin down and pulled skin up to put it where it was supposed to be, and after he was done, he washed it with alcohol, blotted it with the cotton swabs. To finish, he wrapped it in Ace bandages. The hand looked quite normal when wrapped, like it could still be alive.
Cyrus presented to Alex an oak box with a green velvet lining. Alex put the hand in. Then, he led the way out to the garage, where we followed. Cyrus dumped the cutting board in a black garbage can as we left.
The car ride there was absolutely silent, and the darkling night on the empty roads leading out to land, pebbles, horses, and forests pervaded everything. Alex sat shotgun, and I sat behind Cyrus in the cool leather seats.
I always remember the drives with Cyrus as pleasant ones. The experiences and smells of wealth were calming. The sounds of it - its clinks and V12 engines and squeaky materials and deep bass - were cathartic. It was like all else could be washed away and everything could be material, even us.
When we got to the Havingers' house, Cyr
us drove past its right side and deep into the land, until we arrived near a red barn. There, I could see two figures standing beneath the barn's front dim light. We exited the vehicle and walked to them, sliding in the gravel beneath our feet. It was Mr. Havinger and his wife, Evelyn.
"Thank you, Mr. Harper, for coming out to help us tonight," said Havinger. He had an extremely deep voice.
"It's no problem," said Cyrus.
Havinger was obviously taller than Cyrus, which means that he was taller than six foot three, but he was not as thin, and his stomach protruded over his silver buckled belt that shone in the dim light like a star. He was wearing a plaid, long-sleeved shirt and a baseball cap, but it was so dark that, apart from a few reds and yellows, I could not read the colors. The lines of his face were indivisible in the dark, but Evelyn was there beside him, and I could distinguish the bun on top of her head from the rest of the night.
She was wearing what appeared to be a cream or white dress. The moonlight resonated with it, and she looked like a ghost.
"So what can we do to help?" asked Havinger.
"You can show me where she was attacked," said Cyrus. He glanced at me and Alex. "And carry the shovels," he said to them.
"Righty-O," said Havinger. I watched them stroll with Alex to the trunk of Cyrus's black SUV, and I stood where I was, close to Evelyn.
While they were dragging out the tools, she said to me, "Your name is Jack, right?"
I nodded my head. "Yes."
"If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?"
"I'm ten," I replied.
"Ten. Wow. And you live with Cyrus?"
"Not all the time."
She paused and said, "And you're not his child, correct?"
"No," I said. "But Alex is."
"Oh. How interesting," she replied with a silky, low voice, and I peered at her in the dusky air. She stood beside me with her arms clasped in front of her. She was not a fat woman, not large, but full, and her breasts filled her dress so that there were no lines in the bust. I looked at her from head to toe and noticed she was wearing sneakers. I thought that was a strange mix.
