The Donzerly Light

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Of course you do,” the bum continued, standing again and stepping away from Mari, who stayed on her knees sobbing into her gag, her blue, blue eyes pasted on Jay, as if begging him. Begging him to make this stop. “Well, young fella, out there on that interstate right now, coming this way, is a bus from the Great State of Kansas, or the ‘pisshole’ state, as I’ve heard it called...”

  Jay ignored his knowing, his almighty knowing, and kept the gun on him, his finger on the trigger, trying to make it pull, willing himself to make it pull, but...

  “...out there tooling east on good ol’ I Seventy is a bus. A school bus.” Mari looked the bum’s way now, and Jay stopped his shuffle out of the light. “Forty little kiddies off to a summer camp in Arkansas. Fun, fun, fun. Except....” And he pointed again, somewhat easterly now toward the north. “Except coming the other way is this big ol’ gasoline truck. And you know what? Gasoline is flammable. And you know what else? The driver of that truck must really like his job, because he’s getting this big ol’ smile on his face. And you know what smiling drivers of gasoline trucks do, don’t you?” His hand came down. “They cross the median and hit school buses full of little kiddies head on. Can you say...barbecue?”

  Jay shook his head. “Why are you doing this? Why did you do all of this?”

  “Because you stuck your damn nose into my fun, that’s why!” the bum exploded, stabbing a finger at Jay. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? I was having my fun, bus crash here, a midair collision there, and you had to ruin it! You had to stick your donzerly light out and snatch life out of certain death! I gave that to you to pick stocks, boy, not interfere with me!” Now the bum gestured at Mari. “And this! All of the little people you saved. Picking the ones that would somehow bring us together again. How you did that I have no idea, but that you even tried pisses the hell out of me! Who do you think you are?! You are not running this show. I am running this show.” And his arms spread wide toward the sky, as if in his grasp the universe could be held, and held close. “The whole damn show!”

  “You are running nothing,” Jay said, the gun pointed at the bum, dead on now, but still...still he couldn’t pull the trigger. Still he saw...

  5

  ...blaring in his head.

  “You are only partly correct,” the bum said to him. “Because you, young fella, are controlling a part of this show. You, you see, have a task to complete, and if you do not, there’s gonna be a hot time on the interstate tonight. That is what you are controlling now, young fella. The lives of those children and a few inconsequential adults. Shoot me, boy,” the bum challenged him, spreading his arms wide as if nailed to a cross. “Shoot me and cook up some babies.” One of his fingers straightened at Mari. “Shoot her, and they live. She has the sign, boy, and you know it. You know it. That finger won’t pull that trigger if it’s pointed at me, ‘cause I ain’t got the sign. It’s not on me anywhere. Do you see it?” The bum mocked checking himself, then pointed harshly at Mari again. “Do it, you spineless little child! Put those six bullets through that five on her chest! Every one of them! Do it! Save those children, because that gas truck is getting closer, and closer, and that driver’s grinning up a storm. Do it! Now!”

  Mari’s eyes pleaded with Jay, but what did she want him to do? What?

  “Do it!”

  Fits of tears flooded Jay’s eyes, and he inched the gun toward Mari. She began to nod.

  The bum wanted it. Even Mari wanted it. Their reasons divergent, to be certain, but all to the same end. Shoot the mark, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and save the children. Children Jay could not see, but that he knew would be there. The bum, or whatever he really was, was beyond the measure of cruel necessary to conjure such an act. That bus was out there, and the gasoline truck too, and here was his target, a target begging with her eyes to be sacrificed so that the children might be spared. And Jay stood there beneath the dark heavens and hated himself for what it was he feared he might do. Might have to do. But...

  ...but still could not.

  The bum saw this, sensed this, and went back to Mari, kneeling at her side and gripping her hair once more. “He’s having some trouble, me thinks. Don’t you?”

  Her puppeted head concurred with a nod.

  “Well, let’s see,” the bum said, mocking thought on the matter. “Maybe we can make the choice a bit easier for him. Throw in a bonus. Sweeten the pot.”

  The gun jittered in Jay’s grip, pointing just away from Mari.

  “I know. I have a good idea.” The bum twisted Mari’s face toward him. “We’ll give him what you’ve already got...if he just does what he has to do.”

  “What are you saying?” Jay demanded, shouting.

  The bum kept Mari looking his way. “Now, by now you know why your family died.” He nodded mock sympathy as her wet eyes raged at him. “Yes, me. Might as well give credit where credit is due. But...” And now the bum looked to Jay, and turned Mari to face him as well. “...I wonder if the man with the gun would like to know why his family died. Hmm?”

  Jay swallowed hard, his nostrils flaring with each gasp of breath that passed in and out them.

  “How’s that for a bonus, eh?” the bum asked. “You can save a busload of little kiddies, and have your greatest question answered. How’s that for a deal?” And again he released Mari roughly, letting go of her head with a shove that almost toppled her. “And all you have to do is put one, two, three, four, five, six little bullets into that five on her chest. That’s all.”

  But how could he? How? How?

  “Do it,” the bum told him. Ordered him. “Do it. Save them. Get your answer. Do it.”

  Once again, Mari began to nod, and Jay leveled the gun at her, looking through tears at her. At her plea, her silent plea to do it. To save the children.

  “Yes!” the bum cheered, and then glanced to his rear. A thin glow was skimming the rise between them and Traction. “Now! Kill her!”

  Jay’s finger began to press against the cold curve of the trigger, his muscles working but his mind, he was certain, ready to spilt into as many pieces as there were stars in the sky. He wanted Mari to live, wanted those children to live, wanted to know what the bum could tell him. He wanted it all, but he would trade it right then for a piece of the nothingness he had known not so long ago. Just to not be. To not be capable of this, party to this, a slave to this.

  But he was, and his finger pressed that much more.

  “Good,” the bum said, his voice coming down, coaxing now, urging now, the skim of lights now a half oval of brilliance almost atop the rise. “Go ahead, brother, you can do it. Let those children live. Have your answer. Go ahead. Yes. Go ahead.”

  And Jay saw it now, from the glassy corner of his eye, headlights coming over the rise and at them. One set, two sets, three and four sets, coming fast.

  “Gotta be soon, brother,” the bum urged him gently, and Mari was nodding, and Jay’s finger flexed off then back onto the trigger, ready to do what he had to do. Ready to kill the bearer of the sign. The sign that was five.

  His finger began to squeeze down, the headlights racing at him, the whole lot aglow now, and Mari nodding and the bum nodding, too, saying, “Yes, brother, good, brother, save those children brother, yes. Know. End the mystery. Know why they had to die.”

  Saying that yes, and bringing his hand up as he had so many times in front of Trinity Church. Bringing it up and smiling his smile and saying those words as the peace sign flashed. “Peace brother.”

  Peace. The two fingers. The V.

  V!

  With quick and precise speed the gun moved with the motion of Jay’s upper body and swung at the bum, taking dead aim, Jay smiling now, the bum’s grin withering, and each of them looking at those two fingers that were spread to a V.

  Jay squeezed the trigger fully once, the gun bucking in his grip and the cylinder spinning a fresh round to the ready, and twice, sending that killing spot of lead on its way, and three times, hittin
g the bum with each shot and sending him reeling, backpedaling onto the hood of the Honda, and as he slid down to the ground at its front, Jay stumbled over to him, looked down upon his gasping form, and put the last three bullets in his head.

  And then the lights were upon him, and all around him, and he was thrown to the ground, the gun ripped from his hand, and he looked for Mari as a knee smashed his face to the hard asphalt, splitting the inside of his lip, but he could not see her, only feet, dozens of feet, and he heard radios crackling and things being said as cuffs were put on him and a blindfold put on him, and the whole of his body was tossed into a trunk that shut out the noise and made his world double dark and convinced him that he was going to die.

  Final Interrogation

  August 15th...daybreak

  The room was still and quiet but for the hum of the lights. Jay’s gaze settled toward the table, while his captor’s could not be dragged from him at that moment.

  “Her story,” Jay said, looking up now. “The happy moment she shared. Roman numerals. I wouldn’t have made the connection if she hadn’t told that story. I wouldn’t have seen the V as a five. He wouldn’t have had the mark.”

  “He always had the mark,” Mr. Wright suggested, but Jay did not react to the awesome truth of that fact. Instead, he posed the question he’d waited through the hours to ask.

  “Who was he?”

  “Who?” Mr. Wright shrugged. “As far as I know he had no name. He took them on and shed them like hurricanes do.” The man’s blue gaze sparkled at his choice of words. “I guess that’s actually a good way to think of what he was—a psychic hurricane. Popping up somewhere with one name, playing his insane games with peoples’ lives, doing some damage and then disappearing. And then he’d show up in another place, with another name.”

  “He did things before?” Jay asked. “Before he did all this to me?”

  Mr. Wright nodded. “In places like Sandymount, Tennessee. McCone, Nevada. That beauty pageant in Louisiana.”

  “The clippings,” Jay said breathlessly. “But that was...”

  “A dream?” Mr. Wright wondered. “A pretty dead on dream, because those things happened. Those people got hurt. That Miss Louisiana contestant, she slit her wrists that night. And the lottery winner, well, the clipping you ‘dreamed’ had it pretty close, but like the paper you can pick up and read it didn’t tell the whole story. That bum gave a man named Theodore Spivey a gift something like what he gave you, only it had some unpleasant side effects.”

  “He killed his family,” Jay recounted aloud. Recounted from his ‘dream’.

  “And tortured. Only the papers didn’t say what kind of torture.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, his wife, he tied her in a chair and poured drain cleaner down her throat, and his kids, well, he cut them to bits and fed most of the pieces to stray dogs at the town dump.”

  Jay grimaced, then the grimace went slack as a mental connection fired. “He asked me about that. About stuff like that.”

  “Side effects of the medicine he was dishing out?” Mr. Wright nodded. “Wondering if you’d hacked Carrie to bits and all. He might have been surprised that you hadn’t. Or maybe not. Who knows.”

  “Him,” Jay said, and Mr. Wright could not disagree. “But how do you know so much about him? Why do you know so much about him?”

  “It was my job,” Mr. Wright replied. “I’ve been hunting him for going on twenty five years.”

  “Hunting? You mean chasing, don’t you?”

  “You chase what you want to catch,” Mr. Wright explained. “You hunt what you intend to kill.”

  “Why were you hunting him?”

  “You know all that he is capable of, and you have to ask that?”

  Jay shook his head. “Why were you hunting him?”

  Mr. Wright took a moment, it seemed, to craft his reply. “It was my job.”

  “To kill him?” Jay reacted, the murky truth of what this man was, and wasn’t, coming clear now. “You aren’t anything like a police officer, are you?”

  “You saw him put smiles on New York City cops’ faces and steer them around him. Do you think the boys in blue were up to the task of shutting him down?”

  Jay didn’t, and he understood. Without comprehending, he understood. “What are you then?”

  Mr. Wright considered the question before answering. “Your guardian angel, some might say.”

  “But you were ready to do away with me and dump my body in a ditch,” Jay reminded him. “Why? Why me? Why did you have me restrained and thrown in that trunk?”

  “Grady, I’ve been on this bastard’s ass since he played one of his funny games on the wrong person and the powers that be told me sic em! I’ve seen the aftermath of the damage he can do, and every time but this one he’s slipped away just before me and my team could flip his switch. What he did, what he was capable of doing, was impossible, Grady. Im-possible. But somehow he made it all happen.” Mr. Wright leaned closer to Jay, laying his stout arms upon the table. “I tell you, I wasn’t sure he wasn’t the devil, Grady, and then I see you kill him. And that made me wonder just what the hell you were.”

  Jay digested this through a few breaths. A few breaths that seemed more precious now that just minutes ago. “You would have killed me.”

  “In a heartbeat,” Mr. Wright confirmed.

  “But you didn’t. Why?”

  “Your story. Certain information that became available.”

  Jay motioned to the file. “What you put in there. That paper that made you order the handcuffs off.”

  “Among other things, yes.”

  Jay shook his head, the void left empty by the tale he’d told filling very quickly now with things equally fantastic. “You had one hell of a job, mister.”

  “Well, it started out a job,” Mr. Wright began. “Twenty something years ago when I started after him it was just that: a job. After a few times seeing the wreckage of lives in his wake, it became my crusade. Then, eight years ago, it became personal.” Right then the man put his massive, work-chiseled hands to the table’s edge and pushed himself away from it. But there was no sound of chairlegs squeaking across the floor, just the whisper-smooth rustle of thin tires on concrete as the wheelchair that bore him rolled into view. He gripped the large rear wheels and maneuvered himself around the table until he was facing Jay from just a foot or two away, nothing between them but the atrophied twigs that were his legs. Black straps held the useless limbs together and to the chair. Jay gawked at them openly. “One night I was coming into Manhattan in a van that was rammed off the Brooklyn Bridge by a tour bus.”

  “You...” Jay said with wondrous doubt. This was too much. Too...perfect. Almost as though events had been scripted to this incredible convergence.

  “I was the only one of my people to survive,” Mr. Wright told his savior. “Broken back and noodles for legs, I made it out of the wreckage and to the surface of the river. It was inconceivable that I lived. Until now.”

  The water, Jay remembered. Cold, cold water that had stung his throat, his lungs, and had choked the life from him as he writhed on the ground. The first death to befall him. The death meant for this man.

  “I was coming for him,” Mr. Wright went on. “Might have finally gotten him if he hadn’t thrown that bus at me.”

  “He knew you were coming,” Jay said, still in awe at the power that had shaped his world. Yet with that power there was still some mystery. “But how did you know to find him?”

  Mr. Wright reached back to the file and retrieved a single page, a photocopy of a New York Times article and the accompanying picture, this one taken the day the bald man had been run down. The photo taken by surprise, the one that caught Sign Guy’s face in the shot. The one that had ripped the smile from his mug like a scab. “We kept our eyes on the papers, usually just to pick up on out of the ordinary happenings that he might have caused. Imagine my surprise when one of my people brought me this the day before we we
re chucked into the East River.”

  Jay was quiet for a moment, then all he could say was, “My God.”

  “Then for eight years he dropped off the radar. All the things he was doing then, just accidents. Tragedies that people get used to hearing about. No one would ever wonder why that pilot flew his plane into the ground, or why the bus driver drove into that quarry. Hell, until you started talking I thought I was in an accident on that bridge. I never saw the driver of that bus, but now I’ll bet he was smiling. That pilot, too. And Astrid’s bus driver. You see, none of these things pointed to him. I was beginning to think maybe we had gotten lucky and the bastard had stepped in front of a train, or something. Then...” Now it was Mr. Wright that quieted, all that had passed seeming due a reverence of sorts. “Then, on Wednesday, I’m sitting in a Denny’s in Baltimore, having breakfast with some boys from the office, and in the next booth I hear this guy talking to his brother about a trip he just got back from. He’s talking loud so I can’t not hear. I mean loud loud. Anyway, he’s showing his brother pictures, and he’s telling him what each one is, and I guess this guy has a thing for small towns and stuff, and he likes to drive through them and take these artsy kind of blurry black and whites from his car as it’s going by, and so he starts saying, ‘And this one, right here, Mikey, this is some bum in this town in Missouri, and I got this great shot of him sitting on this five gallon bucket just playing his harmonica, and did this guy have a smile! Whew!’ I tell you, Grady, I nearly shit right there. I remembered the Times picture that had brought me to New York, him on that bucket, just smiling away. It was incredible. Too good to be true, we thought, but when we got the pictures from this fellow we could see it was him. Blur and all, it was our guy. And that fellow in the Denny’s...”

  “He had a mark,” Jay said, and Mr. Wright nodded confirmation of that mystical addition to the mix.