Alex

by Adam J Nicolai

  God damn it. They should have been going through this together.

  His heart twisted, and he started writing.

  Alina -

  I'm so sorry I hurt you. I didn't mean to. I wish I could have been stronger about this. You needed me as badly as I needed you, and while I leaned on you so hard you nearly broke, I gave you nothing back. I see that now, and I want to change it.

  I said terrible things that must have killed you to hear. They weren't true. They weren't fair. I would take them back if I could, and I wish to god I could.

  I'm not asking you to come back. I know I can't. I just wanted you to know that I understand, now. If you do ever want to call, and talk about Alex, I think I can do that now. We don't have to dance around it anymore. You've dealt with it much better than I did, to your credit, but I know you are still hurting, at least as bad as I am. I don't want you to have to go through it alone anymore.

  I've done some things to try to come to terms. I've been dreaming about Alex, a lot. Good times, and bad times both. Some dreams about how he might have been hurt. But also dreams about reading books at night, or about playing hide and seek, or sitting on the couch watching Law And Order :) They've helped. Yeah, they make me miss him even harder. But they also make me think that just maybe he doesn't hate me, wherever he is. If he can forgive me maybe I can forgive myself. I'm trying.

  I've also set up some appointments with a doctor that Shauna recommended. I'm going to be seeing him once a week. And today I finally went through Alex's things.

  I know we went through them together, but I wasn't ready then. I was ready today. It really hurt, but I went through all the boxes in his room. I'm ready to get rid of most of it, but I saved two things: Mr. Tuskers and Mowsalot. I was hoping you could take one, and I'd keep the other. If by some miracle you are ever able to forgive me, maybe our next child could get them both. If not, we will each have something to remember our family by.

  I'm sorry to drop it off in the middle of the night like this. I know it's weird. I just felt like it was important to finish this task, and I don't want to leave it until the morning. I've been putting it off too long.

  I love you.

  - Ian

  119

  He printed the letter, folded it up, and wrote her name on it. He'd told a lot of lies in it. But somehow, at the same time, it was the most honest of the tries he'd made.

  Outside, the night sky was one of those endless winter slates: grey and featureless in the haze of the streetlamps. His breath curled from his lips in short, fierce bursts. Halfway down the sidewalk, he stopped.

  It had sounded like Eston was killed in Alex's room, but his threats against Alina had been too pointed to ignore. That was why Ian was bringing the toy to her father's house now. But if he left Tuskers with Alina, what would keep Eston from coming after Ian again?

  "Fuck," he muttered, chewing it over, trying to figure out a way to make it work. Nothing came to him.

  I could keep Tuskers, just until Alex is gone, he thought. But what if Eston went after Alina before that? Or -

  Oh god.

  If Eston could make Ian have a heart attack, how easy would it be to kill their baby?

  The thought left him pale and shaking. No. If it meant letting Eston kill him, so be it. But he would rather that than risk any harm to his wife or his second child. He would kill himself if he had to before he would allow Eston to hurt another of his children.

  He finished his walk to the car. As he grabbed at the door handle he thought of the other toy Alex had always slept with. Mowsalot. Not the guardian against monsters and bad animals - that had been Tuskers. But still a powerful symbol, at least. A well-loved companion. Ian had used to give it a voice, in the dark when Alex couldn't see his mouth moving. "Good night, Alex! I love you!" "Oh, Alex, I missed you today! Will you give me a hug?"

  He glanced down at Mr. Tuskers, whose beady eyes glinted righteousness in the lamplight. The cat wouldn't be as good.

  But shit, it was worth a shot.

  120

  He pulled out twenty minutes later, Mowsalot and Tuskers perched importantly in the passenger seat. He drove carefully, watching the limit and the road, on guard for a sudden jerk of the wheel, or a slip of his foot, or an abrupt traffic light change that would put him in the path of an onrushing semi. It didn't happen.

  Ham Lake was nearly an hour's drive from Hopkins, especially driving cautiously as he was, but his vigilance and fear for his wife kept him awake. He hadn't been to Alina's parents' place since her mother died last year, so he had to backtrack several times trying to find it. Eventually he wound up rolling slowly through what he thought was the right area, brights on, peering through the window looking for landmarks. When he finally found it, though, he knew he had the right place. Alina's mother had been a lawn gnome lover, and the lawn was still festooned with them, shoveling, planting, waving, and of course, Alex's personal favorite: mooning.

  He killed the lights and rolled up onto the shoulder. The houselights were dark. Feeling like a thief, or a peeping tom, he grabbed the two stuffed animals and stole up the long driveway toward the house. A pair of brilliant garage lights flared to life, and he froze in place, thinking he must have been seen - but it was nearly midnight now, and after a second he remembered the lights were simply motion-activated.

  Still, they made him feel exposed. He trotted across the driveway and up on to the porch, expecting at any moment to see the front door open, and dropped Mr. Tuskers - letter taped to forehead - behind the screen door. For a long, agonizing moment, he considered ringing the bell. But the fact that he was here in the middle of the night was already weird enough - and besides, if he actually spoke to Alina he might say something desperate, something that would prompt her to reject his gift. He had to hope that Tusker's position on the stoop would be close enough to keep her safe until morning. He heard a dog bark inside, and fled.

  On the way home his caution doubled. He heard a train whistling, and even though the signals hadn't dropped yet, he stopped and waited it out. As the train screamed past, he reached out to Mowsalot. Its fur was nearly brittle with cold, despite the heat blasting from the vents, and the reflected crimson from the train signal lights burned deep in its eyes.

  121

  He tried to sleep, but there was a coiled spring of live wire in his mind, sparking and flexing when he closed his eyes. He wanted to pace, to talk out loud, to check the mirror and make sure Eston wasn't behind him. He wanted to open his document, to find all the tornado sirens in the state. Alex was leaving soon. He'd said as much. Ian couldn't waste time sleeping.

  The transition from thinking about these things to doing them was frighteningly smooth. He didn't even remember making the choice to get up. Part of him wondered if he was dreaming it.

  He went over everything again - what he knew about Kelly, what he knew about Eston. Every clue Alex had given him, whether Ian had deciphered it or not. He hunted for tornado sirens and black hats, daycares or preschools with girls named Delilah; he read through More More More, Said the Baby. Alex slept on the couch behind him, curled like a kitten against a pillow, and Ian remembered covering him with a blanket on the nights he had fallen asleep watching his dad play computer.

  He'd had the idea before of checking out Eston's employers, so he paid special attention to that - gathering as many details of the man's work history as he could.

  A sea of empty pop cans grew on the desk as the hours passed, threatening to spill over the edge. The sugar and caffeine helped him keep working, but forced him to the bathroom several times. He went upstairs for these trips instead of using the basement toilet, because the upstairs bathroom was cleaner, the movement kept his legs awake, and he wanted to make sure Eston still wasn't there.

  He brought Mowsalot with him. The toy felt normal again, not like it had been sitting in the freezer as it had briefly in the car.

  As he emerged from the bathroom on one of these trips, he saw the first dreamy glimmer
of dawn leaking from the living room curtains. His enthusiasm - running unbridled for hours - burned out. It was the same old story. A whole night spent investigating, and he was no closer to figuring anything out than he had been.

  The clock said 6:41. He had an hour and twenty minutes to get to work.

  Suddenly, he longed to go to sleep.

  "Fuck," he whimpered. "God damn it." Last night, he had been attacked by his dead son's dead murderer. The event should have changed his life, illuminated everything, made him certain what to do next. Instead, it had left him feeling even more powerless.

  He could go to Shakopee on Saturday maybe, try to see if anyone had seen Kelly. But that was a thin thread at best, and he still wasn't sure he even wanted to do it. It seemed like a great way to end up getting committed.

  He turned toward the shower, fighting back a yawn, and started getting ready for work.

  122

  Mowsalot sat on the sink; Ian sat in the shower. The water pummeled him like hot rain. He wanted to disappear in it.

  Every few minutes he peered around the curtain, to make sure the stuffed cat was still there. One time, steam curled from its fur like a hot coal thrust into a puddle.

  He could have stayed in the shower all day, but he forced himself out and brushed his teeth, went through the motions. He didn't hear Alex playing in his room. He didn't see Alex at all until he threw on his coat at the front door.

  "Goodbye, Daddy."

  Ian looked at him, yearning to reach out, desperate to understand. "This weekend, Alex. We'll drive down there, okay? I don't know what else to try. If there's anything else you can tell me -"

  "I love you."

  Usually, Ian said it first. He nodded, tightly, several times. "I love you, too." Then, because it was so important, he said it again.

  "I love you too."

  123

  It had snowed again, lightly, during the night. He scraped off his car as the engine warmed, the voices from MPR mumbling behind the windows like bodies moving beneath a blanket.

  Inside, he stripped off his gloves and rubbed his hands in front of the vent, relishing the heat. From the passenger seat, Mowsalot stared out the front window, its mouth caught in a familiar and perpetual grin.

  He pulled away slowly, double-checking for someone slipping out of control on the ice behind him, and rolled around the corner, angling gradually toward 494. The street was quiet. The taut vigilance he had struggled to maintain since the trip to Alina's father's house last night began to relax, dulled by fatigue. He blinked, long and slow, then slammed on his brakes, his eyes riveted to his rearview mirror and his heart screaming in his chest.

  Leroy Eston's van was parked at the curb behind him.

  The van's rusting sides were the molding white of an old basement wall. Its lights were off, and the cabin was dark. It crouched at the street's edge like a gorged, pale maggot, waiting.

  Ian slipped the car into reverse and rolled carefully backward, watching the van's cabin. There was someone inside, but he couldn't make out a face.

  Then Alex was on the sidewalk, his red turtleneck brilliant as a blood spot against the empty snow.

  Ian heard his thoughts gibbering. He had seen too many horrible things happen to his son, but this....

  This!

  The boy was singing, or talking to himself; Ian could see his lips moving. He trailed his backpack along the ground behind him by one long, broken strap. He stopped just as he passed the van's front bumper and looked up, as if someone had greeted him.

  Ian's heart wrenched. Run, Alex! he screamed in silence. Run!

  And he did. He did run. Just like Dad had told him to. He pounded up the sidewalk, his song forgotten, his backpack capering after him, and then his arms were yanked back. He opened his mouth to scream, and his eyes widened. Ian couldn't see his attacker - it was like the night he'd seen him being raped in the cellar pantry - but Alex was fighting for breath, kicking, and then his eyes rolled into his head and he sagged downward. He hung like that for a few seconds, limp in his kidnapper's invisible grip. Then he was lifted into the air, carried like a baby behind the nauseating grub-like wall of the van and out of sight. The backpack went with.

  Alex hadn't been tricked. He was too smart for that. He had run. He had tried to cry for help. They hadn't fooled him.

  Ian was screaming.

  The van's back door swung into sight as it gaped open to swallow his son. Just as quickly, it slammed back shut and the passenger door spasmed. It opened, then closed, and the van sidled casually forward, the maggot bloated and slow from its meal.

  As it rolled past, Ian saw Leroy Eston in the driver's seat.

  124

  He shuddered and whimpered, at the mercy of his visions. He had always been powerless while watching Alex replay his life, but to be powerless then, at the one instant when his involvement could have changed everything, broke him. He heard a guttural wail gurgling from his own throat. His stomach, his heart, were ash.

  Maybe Alex would re-live these moments again and again, forever. Maybe Ian's failure to figure out what the boy needed was damning him.

  I should have been there.

  His shoulders shook as if some giant beast had grabbed him in its jaws and was toying with him. Heaving sobs wracked his chest. His arm bumped the car horn, which protested absurdly on the silent street.

  He fumbled for something to cling to. His wife loathed him. His son had died. But he craved their touch, was desperate with longing to hold them. His fingers closed on Mowsalot, and he pulled it to him with a ragged wail, clutching it like his son must have clutched it in the blackness of his room. There was a place in his mind that was ashamed to cling to a stuffed animal like a child, but he was far beyond it. For him there was nothing but raw, blistering pain, and the screaming need for comfort.

  But the cat felt as if it had just been pulled from the fridge. It wasn't caustically frigid, as it had nearly been last night; but it could have been, recently. When the van had still been near, maybe. Something analytical began to speak in Ian's mind, wondering if the toy's sudden turns of cold were a sign that Eston was near, or that it was holding him at bay.

  Slowly, the thought dragged him back to himself. As he fought to correct his breathing, wipe his face, find a tissue, he realized he had seen Eston driving.

  If Eston had been driving -

  Kelly had snatched Alex from the sidewalk. Kelly had smothered him. Kelly had lifted him into her arms, bore him into the van while he was helpless. Kelly had.

  Right then, at that very instant, she was out there, somewhere, alive.

  His hands tightened until his nails dug into the meat of his palm. Slowly, carefully, he put the car into gear and turned toward home.

  125

  He printed his document, in case he needed to check his notes, and while it rattled out of his old bubblejet he pulled up and saved a map of each of the places on his list where Eston had probably worked. Once he had them all he printed those too, and threw them in a folder.

  Then he went into the bedroom and carefully loaded a clip before pulling the .22 from its shelf in the closet. He flicked the safety, refamiliarizing himself with how it worked. Off, then on; off, then on. How quickly could he do it? Could he remember? Could he do it too quickly, or might this miniscule obstacle prevent him from doing something stupid, like shooting the wrong person?

  It was only a .22, but it weighed as much as a corpse.

  His hands shivered with cold sweat. He shook his head once, tightly, and set the gun back on the shelf. He stalked out of the room. He was passing under the threshold when he remembered Alex's eyes rolling back, his body drooping in the invisible grip of his attacker before he was scooped into her arms and carried like a baby.

  Ian had carried him that way: swaddled him to make him feel secure, anchored him against the crook of his arm, and paced with him in a circuit from the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room, and back again - over, and over, and ove
r. He had gazed into his fathomless eyes, waiting for them to close, wondering what they were seeing, falling in love with them. When the boy had grown older, too old to be carried that way, Ian had sometimes done it anyway. "I used to carry you this way when you were a baby,” he'd say, and Alex would close his eyes with a silly but deeply contented grin, and play along, and Ian's heart would sing.

  He halted in the doorway, fingers curling and uncurling, lips and eyes twitching.

  Then he went back and grabbed the gun.

  126

  It went in the glove box. The folder, he tossed on the passenger seat. Mowsalot followed suit, grinning vacantly at the front window. Ian glanced into the backseat, expecting to find Alex there, but it was empty.

  The first place on the list was Todd's Gas, just off 169. He stared at the words, at the address, imagining that Kelly was working there right now.

  If you find her, what then?

  It was an old question, and it didn't matter. He pulled out.

  It was 9:27. The morning traffic on 169 had cleared, and the highway flew past. He missed his exit, unsure of where the place was, but turned off at the next one and angled back. The path took him to Main Street, a quaint through-way that reminded him of growing up in Monticello: little, single-owner shops and restaurants with names like Corner Cafe and Peterston Antiques.

  The street was quiet and uncrowded. He crept along at five miles under the 30 mile-per-hour limit, combing the buildings for a sign of his destination and watching the street names roll past.

  At the next corner he saw it. It was a little place, like the other shops around here, and even still had a full-service lane. The garage was just big enough for three cars at once. A sign in the front promised $19.95 Oil Changes - 30 minutes or less.

  He parked across the street and double-checked his notes. When he finished, he saw that Mowsalot had tumbled to the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  "Shit," he muttered. He hadn't thought about what to do with the toy. Eston might attack him if he left it in the car. But there was no way anyone would talk to him if he brought it with.