Crucifax

by Ray Garton

  He stopped when he saw that she was writing again.

  There's nothing you can do.

  "What do you mean, there's nothing… ? Listen, Faye, these kids seem to think this guy Mace is gonna take them away soon. They don't seem to know where he's taking them, but they want to go. When Sherry was running out of the office, she was shouting something about going away. 'I'm going away, I'm going away,' she kept saying, then she went outside and—" He realized he was speaking faster and his voice was rising; he leaned closer to her and spoke softly. "—and she cut her throat open with that thing. Do you see the connection, Faye? They're all wearing those things, and Mace tells them they're all going away. Do you see why I'm so worried?"

  There is nothing you can do.

  "Why not? I don't understand. Can't we tell someone? Warn someone?"

  The only people who can do something haven't done it.

  "The only… who?" He slowly nodded when the answer came to him. "The parents. But they don't know. I can tell them."

  She closed her eyes again.

  "Can't I?"

  You can try.

  "Faye, I have the feeling you're… well, familiar with all of this. How?"

  From watching. For many years. It happens again and again.

  "You've come across this guy before? Mace?"

  She shook her head and scribbled some more, writing slowly.

  If it wasn't Mace, it would be someone else. Something else.

  "Something?"

  With a long sigh through her nose, she began writing again, filling two pages with her big, wavy script.

  4 years ago—Newark, N.J.—7 kids killed themselves in a garage—carbon monoxide. Left notes saying they "had to leave."

  6 years ago in Wisconsin 12 teens slashed their wrists in a field. No notes, but in previous weeks two other teens in area did same.

  The pages quivered in J.R.'s trembling hand, and he almost stopped reading, almost asked Faye how she knew those things, why she kept records of them, but the next sentence stopped his words in his throat.

  13 years ago in El Cerrito, CA, 22 kids hanged themselves in an abandoned restaurant. In weeks before that 7 individual kids did same. Some left notes saying they were—

  "—going someplace better," J.R. finished aloud. There was more, but he put the notes on the bed and leaned on the chrome railing. "One of those kids was my little sister," he whispered.

  Faye reached for his hand and held it for a moment, then took the pad and began writing again.

  Did you meet John and Dara?

  "John and… how did you know about them?"

  In each case there are accounts of a stranger or strangers in town weeks or months before deaths, hanging around kids, throwing parties, sometimes handing out drugs. Always gets little more than two paragraphs in papers. Strangers are never seen again, and their connection to deaths is always ignored.

  "How long have you been doing this? Gathering all this information?"

  Many years. And it goes on. I go to the library, watch the papers, the news.

  "Who are all these people? Where do they come from? Why are they so powerful?"

  Don't know who or what they are—what it is. They're different each time—a man or a woman or a couple—but always the same.

  "You talk about them like they're not human."

  You don't clean your house, it gets dirty, dusty, windows get grimy. Where does it all come from? Don't know. It comes while you're not watching, not looking for it. They're like that. They come while no one's watching. They're not very powerful—only as powerful as their victims are weak.

  She closed her eyes a moment, breathed deeply, then wrote:

  Sorry. Medication makes me rummy. We'll talk later. Don't let it eat you, J.R. They can't be stopped, only held off. And the only people who can hold them off usually don't notice them until it's too late. There's nothing you can do.

  She patted his hand and drifted to sleep, leaving him to stare at the last five words of her note.

  He didn't agree….

  "I've been calling her all day," Lily said as she tried to maneuver her car through the soup-thick traffic on 101. "There was no answer until about fifteen minutes ago."

  Lily had come to the gymnasium during Jeff's P.E. class and frantically asked him to go with her to Nikki's. He'd cut the class before his teacher arrived and changed back into his clothes.

  "Nikki finally answered," Lily said, taking the Cahuenga exit. "I said I wanted to see her today, but she said she was leaving. Wouldn't tell me where she was going, though. 'I'm leaving, that's all,' she said. I told her to wait a few minutes, that I'd be right over there, because I wanna get to her before she goes again, you know? If I have to tie her up, I will. Anyway, then she said, 'I'm leaving now,' and she hung up." She stopped at a red light and nervously rapped a knuckle on the steering wheel as she waited for it to change. "There was something about the way she said 'I'm leaving now'… something that just didn't sound right."

  When they got to Nikki's apartment building, they hurried through the rain and up the stairs, where Lily pounded on the door.

  There was no answer.

  "Damn," Lily hissed, knocking again. When there was still no answer, she removed the key from the porch light and opened the door. "Nikki?" she called.

  Jeff followed her through the living room reluctantly. The apartment was dark, all the curtains were drawn over the windows, and the only light came from the hall; somewhere in the apartment a clock ticked loudly and the refrigerator hummed.

  "Wait!" Jeff snapped.

  She stopped at the entrance to the hallway and turned to him. "What?"

  Jeff remembered Sherry Pacheco's last words: I'm going away, going away….

  "I'm leaving now," Nikki had said.

  Jeff felt a chill and stepped forward, saying, "Let me go first."

  The light was coming from Nikki's bedroom, spilling through the half-open door and onto the tan carpet. The door creaked slightly as Jeff pushed it.

  Nikki was lying on top of her neatly made bed, her back to the door. There was a sheet of notebook paper on the pillow behind her head, and Jeff sucked in an involuntary gasp. He stood in the doorway for a moment, waving his hand behind him at Lily, trying to speak but finding no voice for several seconds, until finally he said in a dry and hoarse voice, "Wait, just… wait a second."

  He entered the room, slowly walked around the bed, his knees feeling weak, saw Nikki's arm hanging over the edge of the bed, saw the Crucifax on the floor inches below her hand—

  —and the blood.

  It had soaked into the white bedspread and run onto the floor where it darkened the carpet; streams of it glistened on Nikki's forearm and ran to her fingertips.

  "What?" Lily called from the hall. "What's wrong, dammit, what's happened?"

  "Call… an ambulance."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Just call an ambulance now, Lily, now!"

  He heard Lily's frantic voice fade down the hall and into the living room.

  Jeff turned away from the blood and swallowed again and again, trying to hold down the thick lump he felt rising from his stomach. He went to the other side of the bed and picked up the note. After staring at Nikki's still body for a moment, he read it once, twice, three times….

  I'm going away to someplace better.

  Jeff's phone call stunned J.R. into silence.

  He'd been on his way out of the office for the day. Except for the two he'd postponed that morning, J.R. had met all of his appointments, but not without difficulty. As he talked with his students he'd had to fight the urge to warn them about Mace, but he wasn't sure that would be wise, considering what had happened to Faye. Instead, he watched their necks for leather cords concealed by shirts and jackets.

  Of the eight students who had entered his office that day, five of them were wearing Crucifaxes.

  By the end of the day, J.R. had worked himself into quite an unsettled state.

  "Para
noid," he'd mumbled to himself as he put his things into the briefcase. "Something's going on, but you're taking it too far, you're too damned paranoid." He'd planned to go home, take a hot shower, pop a frozen lasagna dinner into the microwave, read the paper, watch "Moonlighting," and think of nothing but relaxing.

  Then Jeff called.

  It wasn't Nikki's death that so disturbed him, although that was horrible enough. What made him clutch the telephone receiver in a white-knuckled grip was the note Nikki had left.

  Licking his suddenly dry lips, J.R. asked, "What… did that… note say again, Jeff?"

  " I'm going away to someplace better,'" Jeff replied.

  J.R. lowered the receiver from his ear, put his face in his hand, and muttered, "Oh, God." He felt a rush of emotions, a sickly, dizzy feeling of emptiness, helplessness, that he had not experienced in years. Not since Sheila had died.

  Killed herself, a silent voice reminded him.

  "Hello?" Jeff said.

  It happens again and again….

  "J.R., you still there?"

  … again and again…

  J.R.'s mother had kept Sheila's note near her for days after the funeral, reading it over and over, staring at that single, neatly written line as if it might change. But no matter how many times she read it, the note remained the same: I'm going someplace better.

  "You there, J.R.?"

  "Yeah. Where are you now?"

  "Nikki's. They took the—uh… took her away. We're waiting for Nikki's mother to get home."

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  "No, I just thought you'd want to know."

  "Yeah, thanks for calling. I'm going home soon, so if anything comes up, call me there."

  "J.R.?" Jeff suddenly sounded years younger. "Do you know anything about this? Because Lily and I are—" There was a nervous fluttering sound in his throat, a sort of chuckle that came out sounding like a whimper. "—we're pretty scared. Nikki's note, Sherry's words just before she killed herself… what's he doing to them, J.R.? My sister's with him!"

  "I know, Jeff, and we're gonna get her away from him. Call me tonight. We'll get together and talk, okay?"

  "Yeah. Okay."

  After he hung up, J.R. ran his fingers through his hair and wished he was already home.

  "Nope, not yet," he sighed, picking up his phone and dialing.

  "Principal's office."

  "Hello, Mrs. Lehman, this is J.R. Haskell in counseling. Is Mr. Booth still in?"

  "Well, he's on his way out. Is it important?"

  "Yes. Very important, I'm afraid…."

  Twenty-Four

  The TV room in Ward C of the Laurel Teen Center was closed at ten o'clock every night, and everyone was in bed by eleven. The early bedtime was Kevin's least favorite rule. Before being admitted to the center, he'd seldom gone to bed before two am. Now he went to bed but did not sleep.

  Instead, he lay in bed listening to the rain or the sounds coming from the desk just down the corridor or the occasional outburst of shouting or crying from other rooms on the ward. Sometimes he closed his eyes and listened for the whisper of Leif's breathing, tried to separate it from the other sounds.

  And sometimes he listened for Mace's eyes.

  He'd heard them during his second night at the center. He'd been lying in bed staring into the darkness, thinking about what he would do to Larry Caine once he got out, when he heard the first movements in the wall behind his head. He'd sat up and turned to the small poster over his bed that read your life is in your hands—don't sit on them. He'd pressed his hand to the poster and tilted his head to listen.

  He'd heard them again—felt them, too, scurrying within the wall—and he'd smiled, suddenly much more at ease in that strange and unwelcoming place knowing they were there, knowing that Mace was watching over him.

  He'd heard them each night after that.

  Except for tonight.

  He lay back on the bed with a sigh and clasped his hands behind his head. Maybe he'd been wrong; he'd heard nothing from Mace since he'd been admitted. Maybe he'd been wrong to put so much faith in Mace and wouldn't hear from him.

  Mr. Haskell had been his only visitor so far. Kevin had enjoyed the man's nervousness and had flopped onto his bed laughing after walking out on the conversation. Haskell was worried about Mace; that meant others were worried, too. Kevin liked that. If they were worried, that meant they thought Mace was important in some way, and their concern gave him power.

  Kevin's parents called but never talked to him. Luke came in each afternoon and said, "Well, Kev, your parents just called to ask about you. They're very concerned, so I hope you'll cooperate with us and make them proud."

  One day, Kevin had said, "I can't make 'em proud when I'm at home; what makes you think I can do it here?"

  "Now, Kevin, buddy," Luke had said, slapping him on the back, "that's not the attitude we're after here."

  A psychiatrist named Dr. Blanchette had visited him that day. He was a soft-spoken black man with speckles of gray in his hair and thick-lensed glasses. He asked Kevin a few questions about his problem and examined him briefly, then told Kevin that he would be put on medication starting tomorrow.

  "Your problem seems to stem from depression, Kevin," Dr. Blanchette had said. "With the help of your group sessions and private counseling, we'll eventually get to the root of that depression, but in the meantime, the medication will lift your mood and, at the same time, calm you down."

  "What medication?"

  "Elavil."

  Elavil, dude… Elavil all the way…

  Kevin looked across the room at the long sleeping shape beneath the blankets in the other bed and thought of the way Leif shuffled around with his eyes half-closed, the way his jaw hung open, the long pauses between words as he spoke…

  I won't be like him, he thought. I won't.

  The door opened, and light spilled in from the corridor, but only briefly. Someone stepped inside and quickly closed the door.

  Kevin sat up on the bed and squinted through the darkness.

  "Who's there?"

  Footsteps crossed the room.

  "Hello, Kevin," Mace said quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "Mace!" Kevin whispered. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came for you," Mace laughed. "We've missed you. And we can't perform without you tomorrow night, can we?"

  Kevin swung his legs over the bed and stood. He was so excited, it was difficult to keep his voice down.

  "Jesus, I didn't think I'd see you again, I didn't think… well, I thought maybe you…"

  "You said you trusted me, Kevin."

  "Well, I did, but… but I was scared."

  "Don't blame you. This is a scary place. But I've been watching you. You knew that, didn't you?"

  Kevin nodded. "How did you get in here? They don't allow visitors at night."

  "I'm fast and quiet," he whispered mischievously.

  "So how're we gettin' outta here?"

  "Trust me. Just wait a few minutes."

  Mace patted the mattress, and Kevin sat down again.

  "How's your roomie?"

  "Quiet. A zombie. I think it's the medication they give him. They were gonna start giving it to me tomorrow."

  "Mm, I'm just in time. We'll wake him before we go. Maybe he'd like to come with us."

  "Come with us? But he's—"

  "Trust me." Mace turned fully toward Kevin and said, "So. You've probably been thinking about Larry Caine a lot. You must be eager to see old Larry again, huh? I know I would be if I were you."

  Kevin made a bitter snorting sound.

  "Yeah, thought so. Well, I've got a plan, my friend. You can see him tonight, if you want. Give Larry and his friends a surprise, sound good?"

  "Where? How?"

  "Don't worry about that, let me take care of it. All you have to do is promise me something."

  "Sure."

  "We're all going away soon. All of us—you, me, Mallory, all the others.
Some have already left. Others will go before me. I can't leave until everyone has gone. The others look up to you, Kevin. They respect you." He gently placed a hand on Kevin's cheek; his large palm and long fingers covered half of Kevin's face. "Will you go with them? Ahead of me?"

  "Go where?"

  Mace leaned closer to him, so close that Kevin could feel his breath on his face.

  "A place where no one will ever let you down again. Where no one can disapprove of your achievements, a place where everyone is equal and there are no lies. You'll know it when you find it, but you can't find it without this. This is your key."

  He held a Crucifax up to Kevin's face.

  Someone screamed in the corridor.

  "I lost my other one," Kevin said, "when I was—"

  "I know. This one is yours. If we have a deal. Will you go?" Mace breathed.

  "My parents will just… they'll have me put back in here."

  "Your parents will never find you. You have my word."

  Maybe it's someplace out of the country, Kevin thought, someplace safe and away from here, away from them.

  "Yeah. I'll go."

  Mace leaned back, lifted his arms, and put the Crucifax around Kevin's neck as another scream tore through the corridor, followed by running footsteps and a male voice shouting, "Holy Jesus, what the fuck is—grab her arms! Get 'em off, get 'em—Christ!—get 'em off her!"

  "Get dressed," Mace whispered. "Hurry."

  Kevin stood and felt around in the dark for his clothes as Mace went to Leif's bedside. As he dressed Kevin heard Mace whisper something. Leif stirred and mumbled, "Wha-huh?" More whispering. "Oh. Yuh… yeah. Yeah." Leif got out of bed and began to dress, too.

  "Stay close to me when we leave the room," Mace said. "The power will go off soon, and it'll be dark."

  A woman screamed, "It's—God, it's biting me, biting me, Jesus, somebody—"

  Glass shattered.

  A door slammed.

  A peal of bitter, hateful laughter—Kevin recognized the voice of the jittery, chain-smoking boy two rooms down— rose above the noise, and someone shouted, "Look at her run!"

  "Ready?" Mace said calmly once the boys were dressed.

  They said they were, and Mace went to the door.