by Lee Thompson
Sebastian’s lips hadn’t moved but Jacob was certain he heard the man say: I’m going to kill someone, remember? Are you ready for it? I got what you need. I know what will fix you up right, what will keep the rushing darkness at bay. You need this, son, this simple sigil…
Jacob told himself it was all taking place in his head, yet he had a hard time believing it now. Santana had deserved a guardian and, regardless, he needed to deal with something he could not put into words, and he considered that his subconscious was probably leading him in a direction that would mend his heart.
Victor squeezed Jacob’s shoulder. It hurt. He said, “You all right?”
“That guy was waiting for me on the porch of your house, at dawn the other day.”
“What guy are we talking about? You lost me.” Victor chuckled.
Jacob’s face reddened. “It’s not funny.”
“Is from where I’m sitting.”
“Come with me. I really want to know what this guy’s deal is. Do you have a gun on you?”
“No, I never carry one on my person unless I’m on the job. I have two police issued pistols, but they’re back at the house in the kitchen.”
“Fine,” Jacob said, “you could break him like a stick with your bare hands if it comes to that.”
“You never told me what guy we’re talking about.”
Jacob pointed at Sebastian and asked Victor who he saw next to the entrance.
“Isn’t anybody standing there. I’m ready for a drink though and we walk by your invisible friend and he says something to you, or tries to get close, just ignore him, he isn’t going to be able to hurt you. You ask me, I think you’re working on hurting yourself. Maybe you should quit it, think about how my sister would react if she saw you tripping out.”
Jacob thought about it, sighed, then said, “Okay. Maybe you’re right. Let’s go.”
Sebastian shifted his stance and waited for them. Jacob felt like every step he took he was sinking deeper into muck. Ten paces away from the entrance he doubled over, sick to his stomach. Victor grabbed his elbow and said, “When’s the last time you ate something?”
Jacob couldn’t remember. He could barely think. Whereas Santana had once had that effect on him in a frighteningly beautiful way, he thought Sebastian’s influence was like that of her dark soul twin.
“Earth to Jake.”
“I’m here, Houston,” he said, “but just barely.”
“Let’s skip the drinks. You need to eat. I got some stuff at the house. Bet you didn’t know I’m a great cook. Come on.” He turned Jacob, who involuntarily, but successfully, pivoted on the balls of his feet. Jacob hunched over, unable to stand erect, felt Victor snake an arm around his waist to support him and together the two of them drew close to the Lincoln.
At the passenger door Jacob felt his strength return to his legs, his stomach began to settle, and his thoughts cleared. Victor held one meaty hand on his back. Jacob chanced a glance at the door and saw Sebastian’s eyes were alight with a soft, ember glow that flickered on and off and Jacob thought, Here is a man burning alive…
Sebastian said: You need to get out of here in a hurry, son…
Victor said something and pulled his hand from Jacob’s back, pressed the tips of his fingers gently against the center of Jacob’s spine, urging him into the car. The seat seemed to appear beneath him, and there was a false sense of safety he’d acquired once seated in the Lincoln.
But then he heard a man yell, “Hey!” and he thought it was Sebastian, only it wasn’t, the strange son of a bitch hadn’t moved. It seemed as if he was rooted there, only now his smile was gone; he wore a frown and his forehead was creased. The names tattooed on his arms seemed to shift like serpents winding themselves up two small branches.
Victor looked back over his shoulder at whoever had hollered and he blocked Jacob’s view of that side of the parking lot. Jacob heard the man standing out there on the other side of Victor, the man still faceless, until he yelled, “Throw down the gun!”
And Victor was raising his hands out to his sides to prove to the world that they were empty, and that he wasn’t a threat, but three shots rang out, one of them pinging off the hood of the car, and Victor stumbled back a step, banging his lower back against the roof of the Lincoln. He placed a hand over his chest and one hand, now covered in blood, slapped the right fender and set the entire car vibrating from the force of the strike.
He sank to one knee and coughed a red mist and he glanced over his shoulder and mouthed, “Get out of here,” and Jacob, his hands tingling, his heart feeling as if it would explode from his chest, saw Officer Friendly fifteen feet away, his pistol still aimed at Victor’s struggling form and the cop yelled—Drop the weapon!—then fired again.
Victor screamed, wetly, hoarsely, as the bullet tore into his neck.
Blood splattered Jacob’s knee and his right hand.
All he could think was: Victor didn’t have a gun…
Friendly approached, taking slow, measured steps, his weapon trained on Victor, who lay flat on his back on the hot parking lot, his gaze locked on the leaden sky so far away. And Jacob felt himself sliding across to the driver’s seat, his heart hammering, and tears hot on his cheeks as he started the car, pulled the shifter into gear, and floored the Lincoln.
7
After Detective Reeves had left, and Nina had wasted another hour in the game room trying to get her mind off everything, which wasn’t working, she wondered where Sebastian was and how the police were going to find him in time when they didn’t know his last name or even what he looked like.
And what Sebastian had told her—I’m an angel—really annoyed her; how a person so apparently evil could pretend to be something holy. She knew it shouldn’t surprise her, she’d read in the Bible that the Devil paraded in sheep’s clothing (which strangely brought to mind Anthony, who so easily fooled everybody at church into believing he was some kind of saint), and she’d seen enough movies and television shows to know that people usually thought more highly of themselves than was their lot.
She wandered out to the main entrance and sat on the steps, and behind her, in the dorm, she could hear girls chattering and laughing and enjoying themselves.
A half hour later Patricia came out and sat down next to her and said, “I can’t get a hold of Dad.”
“Good.”
“Not good, I told you that you can only stay here for a couple days and that’s not going to change, Nee.”
“Big whoop.”
Her sister was quiet for a minute, hanging her head, until she said, “You don’t think much of me, do you?”
“I already told you what I think of you. Why don’t you leave me alone? I just want to sit out here and listen to the girls inside your dorm having a good time.”
Patricia said, “Isn’t that your boyfriend?”
She pointed at the parking lot and Nina looked in that direction and saw Clint parking his Camaro. She noticed how ragged and unwashed he appeared as he climbed out. And as he walked closer she could see that his eyes were bloodshot as if he had been partying hard for a couple days. He also stank of body odor and there was dirt under his fingernails and Nina imagined him in the forest outside of town, burying the little girl he had thrown in his car.
He stopped five feet from them and said, “Are you okay, Nina?”
“I’m wonderful,” she said. “Did your dad get a hold of you?”
“My dad? No, why?”
“He’s looking for you. He stopped me on the street yesterday right before I met some weirdo and somebody murdered my mom.” She was surprised at how matter-of-fact she sounded, and how devoid of emotion the words had left her. She hoped that numbness would last at least a little while, but wasn’t counting on it. She said, “What are you doing here?”
Clint shrugged. He said, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay,” she said. “And nothing is going to make me okay.”
Patricia stood and said, “I’ll leave you guys to talk in private,” and she retreated back into the dorm but Nina figured her and some other girls would probably be listening through an open window. She waved her off. Clint watched her go and when she was gone he said, “Nina, I’m really sorry.”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “Me too.”
“Is it all right if I sit by you?”
“I don’t care.”
He sat, but not closely like he normally would have, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he could sense her anger and distrust of him, or if it was because he, like many people, did not want to touch her and have some of her horrible luck rub off on him.
She said, “Where have you been?”
“Don’t you want to talk about your family?”
“My family is all I can think about,” she said, “and I want to think about something else, and that something is where you’ve been.”
“Just around,” he said, “like always.”
“No, it’s not just like always. What’s up with you?”
He shrugged. “Not much.”
“You look like you slept in a gutter. And you smell like it too.”
He looked away. “I can’t really talk about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. But I am really close to figuring it out. Super close, Nee.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s pretty bad,” he said, then, “Well, really bad.”
“Is it something your dad can help you with to get you out of trouble?”
“I’m not in trouble.”
Not yet, she thought.
They were quiet for a second, and then he said, “Do you want to ride around the block with me? I feel like someone is listening to us and I do want to tell you what’s going on, I really do, but I don’t want anyone to overhear it.”
She studied him. There was a desperation in his eyes that both frightened her and made her pity him. She thought about it for a second, thought about that little girl he’d put in his car, and she whispered, “I will go for a ride around the block with you, but you have to tell me why you were putting a little kid in your car first.”
She waited for him to lie and say that he hadn’t done any such thing, and if he denied it, she would just tell him to get lost because the last thing she needed right now was to be lied to. But Clint surprised her when he said, “You saw that, huh?”
Nina swallowed and nodded and said, “Who was she?”
“Just some kid.”
“And why were you putting her in your car?”
“She was lost.”
“So you put her in your car?”
“I took her to the police station.”
“Your dad never mentioned it,” Nina said.
“I never told him.”
“Why not, Clint? It seems like something you’d tell your dad.”
“That girl shouldn’t have been out on the streets alone.”
“What does that even mean?”
“She was too young to be out wandering around is what it means,” he said. “You don’t agree with me? Not even after some other kid was taken from the park by your house a few days ago? And that girl had her dad with her, didn’t she? Well, this little girl didn’t, and I don’t know, I think I wanted her parents to get in trouble.”
Nina took a minute to soak up what he was telling her and he gave her that time as he looked off at the buildings in the distance, all the red brick aglow with the dwindling daylight. He cleared his throat and said, “I don’t care if you think it was stupid of me to put her in my car or not. Something might have happened to her out there by herself.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, “that’s why I asked. And I think you did the right thing.”
“Her parents are deadbeats. They had her taken away by Child Services for a year before and they acted like they straightened up their act to get her back.”
“So you know them?”
“No,” he said. “That’s what the Desk Sergeant told me. He’d seen her before and he pulled the file on her before he put in a call to the parents and social services.”
“It’s a good thing you did.”
He smiled a little and that made some of the darkness in his eyes retreat. Nina stood up and offered him her hand. He took it and she helped him to his feet and they both kind of tottered, holding on to each other. She said, “I’m glad you told me that.”
“What did you think I was doing?”
She shrugged and started walking toward his Camaro. “I didn’t know,” she said. “It just looked funny is all.”
“Huh,” Clint said, and she could see from his expression that he knew what she had been worrying about, what she had imagined, and she knew it didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together, but she was glad she’d been wrong.
He opened the passenger door for her and she slid into the seat. She had a sudden, almost overpowering, urge to ask him to take her to the Stark family’s house so she could see if they were doing okay, and to find out if they’d heard anything during the day, but she clamped down on the impulse and took a deep breath and watched Clint climb into the driver’s seat, his frame appearing as if it had lost some of its flexibility in the last two days.
She said, “Have you been sleeping in your car?”
He nodded and put the keys in the ignition and started the Camaro. As he backed out of the parking space and turned the vehicle toward the road, he said, “I really didn’t have much choice.”
“What did you do?”
He turned on the radio, a little too loudly at first, and Nina turned it down and said, “I thought you wanted me to ride around the block with you so you could tell me what was going on?”
“I’m going to,” he said, “it’s just not easy and I don’t know where to start.”
Nina could relate to that. Detective Reeves had asked her to start and she didn’t know where to begin either, and he’d made her more comfortable when he’d told her to start at the beginning. But like she had excluded Jacob and Victor from her story to Reeves, she feared Clint would also exclude things that might get other people in trouble. And she was still thinking about what he’d done for the little girl he’d taken to the police station, so she lost the focus of their conversation for a minute as she realized Clint was talking.
“What?” she said.
“Were you not listening?” He sped onto the street.
“I’m having a hard time with everything,” Nina said.
He frowned. “I know, I’m sorry for being a dick.”
“What were you saying when I was not listening?”
“I’m a nervous wreck.”
“I can see that. Welcome to the club.”
“Nobody knows what I’m going to tell you,” Clint said.
She suspected that he might know her well enough that his muttering those magic words would definitely make her blood sing. She waited for him to continue, to share the actual secret, even though she was terrified that what he would share was not something she should hear on top of everything else that had happened in the last couple days. But she told herself, You can handle it because whatever he’s going to say isn’t something you’re experiencing…
But she knew she would experience it, or at least the sting and gutting emotional weight of it, because she had something now, her own experiences that she had neither asked for nor wanted, and other people’s pain had grown more relatable, more concrete instead of remaining the ethereal, temporary nothingness it’d always been to her before.
Then she noticed that he hadn’t turned onto the next street to go around the block, but was driving down North Ocoee and approaching 1st Street. She tried not to read too much into it, but when he took a left onto 1st Street, Nina said, “What happened to around the block?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, his eyes on the road.
“Take me back. I only agreed to around the block, and I don’t like that you lied to me.”<
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“It’s for the best.”
“What is? Clint? Turn around. Right now.” She was surprised how much the tone of her voice sounded like her mother’s had, and it felt like something was rattling around in her soul as she realized it. “Where the hell are we going?”
“Relax, Nee.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, “not right now. And answer my question.”
“I don’t think I can tell you. It’d be better to just show you. But you have to promise not to hate me. Okay? Can you promise me that?”
“I’m not promising you anything,” she said. “Pull the car over and let me out.”
“I can’t do that. I’m committed to seeing this through now.”
“Seeing what through?”
The sense of dread she felt was palpable and her flesh felt as if hundreds of insects were crawling all over her. Without thinking it through, she grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it, hoping that would force him to hit the brakes and allow her time to open the door and jump out and yell for help… but Clint yelled, “Stop or you’re going to kill us both!”
Nina gripped the steering wheel more firmly, and she tried to claw at his face, but his face seemed smeared through her tears, and he backhanded her in the mouth.
She tasted her blood and the heat spreading through her body and she felt suddenly dizzy. He shoved her into the passenger door and said, “Don’t ever do that again. I’m trying to open up to you and you’re ruining it.”
Shock smothered her anger.
She wiped the blood from her lip and hated herself for cowering against the door. Clint was mumbling to himself and that only made her more nervous, and she wondered if everything he’d told her about the little girl he’d supposedly taken to the police station was pure and utter bull. She guessed it was and didn’t see how it could be anything else.
Nina squeezed her arms tight around herself, wondering if he had killed her mother and Rick and trashed her bedroom. It didn’t make any sense to her. What reason would he have for doing something so insane? But her imagination got the best of her, like it often did, and she could imagine Clint as a little boy, barely six years old, and she thought it possible he had accidently killed another six year old, a girl, and to his surprise, he found that he liked it.
