“I’m not here all the time and neither is Mickey. You need to know this. Olivia too.”
Poor Olivia; the gun shook in her delicate hands. She cried, saying she could never kill anything. Michael sternly insisted she learn, even though his heart hurt to see her pain at the thought of it.
Chapter 11
Every year in June, on the weekend of their wedding anniversary, Michael and Glory took a trip to the White Mountains. The kids were given their instructions while they were away. After all, who knew what kind of trouble two teens could get into without their parents’ prying eyes?
The beauty of the mountains relaxed them. This time was about just the two of them. It was a time to meander through the town of North Conway, holding hands, going back to their tiny bungalow to make love, sit by the fire with a glass of champagne and talk. Both of them felt this much loved ritual was vital to keeping their marriage healthy.
This time, however, something was distracting her. An intuition of sorts; something was going to happen. She had no idea where, when and to whom, just that it was something bad.
Then she saw it, in the pool, where she sat reading a book while Michael napped. A foggy substance was emerging from the water!
It turned smoky gray, just hovering above the water. Glory ceased to breathe, her eyes opened wide. Now, the smoke was iridescent black. All at once, it made its way into the water itself, turning the aqua color to pitch black. There were a few other sunbathers lounging in chairs on the other side of the pool. They never stirred, which meant, this “vision” was meant for Glory’s eyes only. She got up fast, causing the lounge chair to tip on its side.
People were looking at her now, but her eyes were on the water. She ran toward the bungalow, holding in a scream, not wanting to cause a scene. From behind her, right at her very ear, came a voice; its voice! “You can run, but you cannot hide…” It was chasing her!
She slammed the door of the bungalow hard, shutting it out. Thankfully, she hadn’t woken Michael up. He slept like the dead, just like always.
She curled up in a ball beside him, shaking all over, her scalp wet with sweat.
“Glooooo-reeeee.” The voice was a mere echo of a whisper.
“Leave me alone!” Glory shouted, putting her hands over her ears to block out the horrid sound.
“Babe?” Michael turned over. “What’s wrong? You’re soakin’ wet and shakin’.”
“It…happened again, Michael. I saw the blackness, and he spoke to me. At the pool…the water turned black and it…chased me back here!”
“Who chased you?”
“Death. The thing I saw at my mother’s funeral. It’s been haunting me on and off for years, Michael! It’s the Grim Reaper himself and he…wants to take away the people I love.”
Michael sighed with impatience.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Look, I love you, always have, always will, but this whole Grim Reaper thing has gone way too far. You need to talk to someone and I mean soon, like when we get home.”
“And how the hell is a shrink supposed to make this thing go away? I don’t think the Thanatophobia has anything to do with this. It’s…something else.”
“Like what?”
“A warning maybe? That someone is going to die. This time was different than the other times. He’s appeared after someone died or in my dreams.” She failed to mention the creature had been in bed with her. “It felt like a premonition or somethin’.”
“Okay, that does it. You will see a doctor when we get home. That’s not a request, Glory.”
“Who the hell made you my boss?” Glory was angry that he assumed she was under his command. Treating her like one of his subordinates, being a police sergeant now. How dare he?
Heading for home now, Glory wasn’t speaking to Michael. She was furious with him.
As they approached their driveway, the sight awaiting them caused Glory to feel physically ill. She heard Michael take a sharp intake of breath, his eyes wide. A police car sat with lights flashing. It wasn’t a vehicle with the familiar Cliff’s End emblem on the side; it was a Boston police car!
Two men dressed in tidy suits stood at the back doorway to their house as Mickey paced with head down and hands in his pockets. Haley stood beside him, sniffing at the men’s slacks, tail wagging hesitantly.
All eyes turned toward Michael and Glory. Quickly, they exited the car, meeting the grim-faced men and their frantic son.
“Thank God!” Mickey exclaimed. “I have been trying to reach you forever! Why didn’t you answer your cell?”
“No reception in the mountains, and by the time we were in range, I realized the battery had gone dead,” Michael said. “What the hell is goin’ on?
The two men approached them.
What kind of trouble are Olivia and Mickey in? Glory thought. “Ma’am, Sir. May we come inside and talk?” the older of the two men asked. He had a kind face and gentle smile, which did nothing to calm Glory’s apprehension.
“I’m sorry to have to inform you that there’s been an incident involving your daughter.”
“What incident? Where is she? Why didn’t you bring her home?” the questions tumbled out of Glory’s mouth in rapid succession. “Mickey?” Her eyes begged with him to quell her fears.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Mickey said quietly.
“No, I’m fine, just…somebody tell us what the hell is going on.”
“We found your daughter on the church steps of Saint Mary’s early this morning,” explained the younger of the two officers.
“Is she all right? Where is she?” Michael reached for his wife’s hand. His palm was sweaty in hers.
“I’m sorry…no, sir, she’s not all right. She was…pronounced dead at the scene. Cause of death was an apparent overdose of heroin,” replied the young officer.
“That can’t be! Olivia doesn’t do drugs. How do you know it wasn’t someone else?” Glory’s voice was high pitched; she was virtually pleading with the officer to take his words back! She was near to hysterics in her misery and disbelief. “Has to be someone else…not…her…no way.” She shook her head violently from side to side. It just didn’t make sense.
“Ma’am, it was her. We’re sure of it.” The young officer, tried desperately to look Michael and Glory in the eye. He couldn’t do it. Instead, he fixed his eyes down at his feet.
“Was she with…her cousin, Sean?” Michael asked, his voice taking on a hard, angry edge.
“No sir. She was found when the parish priest went to open the doors to the church this morning. The needle was still in her arm. She was alone.”
“That bastard left her there? To die alone?” Michael was furious. “Did you at least find and question him about what happened? I know he had to be there. I know it.”
“Yes, sir, we were able to locate him. Olivia had a letter in her jacket pocket, had his name and address on it. Sean claims he got scared when she wouldn’t wake up and he didn’t want to be there when she was found,” explained the older officer, looking Michael directly in the eye even as the young officer stood slightly behind him. “I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry we are for your loss, Sergeant Solomon, Mrs. Solomon. I hate to ask, but it’s standard procedure, as I’m sure you’re aware of, Sergeant. We need you too…identify the, um, your daughter. She’s at the Suffolk County morgue.”
“Oh nooooo!” Glory sank to the floor, her cry sounding foreign, guttural, like a wounded animal. She grabbed hold of Michael’s shirt sleeve, pulling him down with her. Both of them now slumped up against the kitchen cabinet doors. Mickey stood beside his mother, his hand on her shoulder, jaw clenched, his face wet with tears.
Haley whined, low in his throat, tail down, licking first at Glory’s face, then Michael’s.
On the terrible drive to Boston, which may as well have been hell, Glory thought, surely, this is a nightmare. Because if it wasn’t, she wondered how they’d be able to go on after this.
> Even while the thought of seeing Olivia in death was sickening, still, she wanted to see her face, touch her hair, and kiss her cheek.
When they passed the Welcome to Massachusetts sign, Glory turned to Michael and said, “This is the last time I will ever step foot in this fuckin’ state as long as I live. I’m done. Done with all of them!” She blamed Ted and Sean for this; and to think, they’d moved to Maine to get away from crime, drugs, and her family. Bitter anger mingled with heartbreak. Glancing over at Michael, she saw these same emotions etched upon his face.
As they drove up to the Suffolk County morgue, flowers of all kinds and colors were planted, the ground covered with red hued mulch. The plantings did nothing to take away from the worn out, ugly, dirt covered red brick of the building itself.
Michael silently handed Glory one of the Xanax her doctor had prescribed without hesitation before they left Maine. She took it without any water.
Michael shook his head when she’d asked him if he wanted one.
“No,” he said. “I needa be alert to see this the way it is. I need to hang onto my anger right now.”
They walked into the cold building. The institutional pale green walls and the workers with their white hair caps and sterile latex gloves made it all the more ominous.
They were led down a dreadful windowless corridor and into the room with all the stainless steel drawers and tables, the very heart of the horror. Which drawer had they put their baby in? How many other parents had been here, their sorrows forever lingering in the place where nightmares resided?
A drawer numbered two-twenty-two slid easily on greased rails, revealing a shrouded figure lying on the table.
The medical examiner’s assistant looked at both of them until they nodded that they were ready. He pulled back the cover, revealing the beloved face of their daughter.
Her lips were blue, her skin a sour gray, but her hair shone with its intricately laced golden strands, as always.
As the medical examiner went to cover her up, Michael grabbed his arm. “No. I wanna see where the needle was in her arm. I need to see it.” His tone was almost as harsh and cold as the room itself.
“No, Michael. I can’t look at it. I can’t!” Glory said in anguish.
“I wanna see how that son of a bitch left our child like a bag of trash on the steps of a church.”
And there it was, a grotesque purple bruising all around the point of impact; a tiny needle mark, that was all, and yet that tiny mark had ended Olivia’s life.
Glory had known much loss in her life, but this…she didn’t think that this could ever happen in her own family. It was a tragic and wasteful death, one that many a parent had suffered in this country, but surely they should be spared this. They’d left the inner city with its poverty and drugs and crime to give their children a better life in Maine.
Yet, here they were, looking at the most dreadful heartache of all, with funeral plans to make for a teenage girl. Glory blamed herself. She’d turned a blind eye to what Mickey had been trying to tell her.
She blamed Michael for not protecting her. She blamed God for, surely, how could he allow this horror on the very steps of his own house?
Most of all, she blamed her brother Ted and his son for all the evil they’d brought, trespassing into her family’s world. She shouldn’t have allowed Olivia befriend Sean, should have forbidden her to go there. Poor Michael; she’d kept him in the dark about some of it, leaving him to be completely blindsided. She’d never forgive her brother for this or his piece of shit son.
Just how much can this family take before it breaks? Glory thought.
That night, Glory fell into a drug induced albeit fitful sleep. Even in sleep, she couldn’t find peace. The nightmare was worse than any she’d ever had.
She was on a train, but in the visage of a small child. A deluge of rain pummeled the train in fat, heavy drops, and she could hear the deafening sound it made as it hit the roof. As the train made its stops, she saw her parents.
Her neck bulged as she tried to scream so they could hear her, yet no sound emanated from her throat. Even her mind was a soundless vacuum.
“I’m lost, please…please find me. Take me home!”
They looked through her with lifeless eyes, like those of a shark. It dawned on her that they couldn’t save her because they couldn’t see her. They were just as incapable of hearing her cries for help.
The train moved onward, to what destination Glory didn’t know. But there they were, again and again, her parents, now both deceased. Their sallow, gray skin sagged about their face and neck and hollow eyes; they looked dead.
The doors wouldn’t open. She was trapped here with no one knowing where or who she was!
Finally, her mother burst into flames, grabbing onto her father who ignited as well, and they vanished into nothingness. In the very spot where they’d just stood, a misty substance much like fog began to take shape. Oh God, no! Not him, not the reaper! As the mist cleared, a figure came into view. But, it wasn’t the reaper at all. It was her…Olivia.
“My God…Olivia,” Glory whispered, incredulous.
Her face, her eyes and hair were as beautiful as they’d ever been and she was surrounded with an ethereal light, appearing as an angel sent from Heaven itself.
She held out her hand for Glory to take. Although, she reached and reached, she couldn’t touch her through the train windows or doors. The image of Olivia was dissipating, becoming blurred and misty. The mist seeped through the doors, moving upward, obliterating the doors from sight. And then it took form.
Glory gasped! The shape was no longer that of Olivia. Glory looked down as a cold, rotten hand had latched onto her own. She gazed in terror into the very face of death itself! Putrid and rotten flesh was sloughing off the face as well as the hand and no matter how hard she tried, it would not let go. She couldn’t escape! She felt the cold creep into her hand, her arm, and watched helplessly as her flesh disintegrated. Muscle, bone, blood and tissue were now visible as death attached itself to her, eating her alive before she’d died. It did not want to wait.
“This is the only way home there is,” the Olivia-thing hissed at her.
Glory awoke gasping for air, her hair soaked all the way down to the scalp. She felt dirty. For a brief moment, she didn’t know where she was. The sound of the screeching wheels of the train followed her as she awoke, finally fading into the distance, as did the dream itself.
It was then that she remembered that her little girl with the hair of silk and eyes of a doe was gone. She’d cried all the day it seemed, weeping silent tears of despair and loss. Now, though, she sobbed and shook and pulled her entire body up into itself. The tears wouldn’t stop.
She hoped they never would because there was no other release from this agony.
Haley came up from his vigilant post at the bottom of their bed and pushed his snout gently up to her face and licked at the tears, his tail softly swooshing on the soft down comforter. Glory grabbed him, holding onto him for dear life. It must have hurt him a little because he whimpered but withstood it.
He stayed with her all the long, dark night, comforting even though there was no comfort to be found because he knew she needed him.
Michael was not in the room, nor was he in the house. Glory heard Mickey roaming around, muttering to himself and crying. Michael must be out, probably driving around aimlessly like he did when he was really upset.
The next morning came. It made no difference to Glory. Only the dawn itself knew day time had come into their home.
She literally had to drag herself out of bed. She took a Xanax with her coffee and hesitated for a minute or two at the doorway to Olivia’s room. She had to choose an outfit for her to be buried in.
She chose a simple white linen summer dress laced with embroidered flowers along the neck and hemline. She chose her favorite earrings, a pair of delicate white feathers embellished with small baby blue stones running parallel with the feathers.
/> Her heart broken, she did all this numbly. That is, until it was time to choose her undergarments. Glory never knew that undergarments had to be put on the dead until she’d chosen them for her mother when she died.
The intrusion into Olivia’s private garments brought her to tears, simple, quiet tears. She did all of this alone. She didn’t hear or see Mickey or Michael until it was time to leave for the funeral home. She’d gently touched each garment before putting them in the car.
“Hey,” Michael said from the open doorway. “How are yah holding up, Glory?”
“I took enough Xanax to put down a horse and still my heart and soul ache like nothing I have ever known.”
“I know, Glory, me too. Jesus Christ, we…lost a child! This ain’t supposed to be how things go; she was innocent!” He’d been drinking, which was very unusual for him, but totally understandable under the circumstance. Sometimes, even someone as strong as Michael needed to become numb, she thought.
They held each other wordlessly, sharing the immense weight of their loss, locked together in lost love and grief most unbearable. There was nothing either could say to the other right now to make it better.
If it weren’t for Michael, Mickey and Haley, Glory would have been happy to die right there in her daughter’s room. She thought of how much she needed Joan right now, but she was gone too.
The wake was beyond traumatic; it was like a nightmare without end. Michael had insisted they release butterflies at the end of the sermon before Olivia was put into the ground, forever out of their reach. It was poignant and beautiful. Glory hoped the butterflies would follow Olivia’s soul into Heaven, if there was such a place. She forced herself to believe there was because the alternative was too horrific to contemplate.
Later, Glory would remember some odd things she hadn’t noticed before.
For one thing, Sean wasn’t there. She didn’t know if he was afraid to face them or if he was home wallowing in a drug induced pity party.
The Wisdom of Evil Page 8
