Seconds passed. Kyle managed a sip of his coffee but his stomach protested immediately. The Gray Man meanwhile seemed to be barely containing his joy with the coffee and the scone. “So warm,” he muttered after another bite.
Finally, Kyle couldn’t take it any longer. “What’s going on then?”
Holding up a hand in protest as he finished chewing, The Gray Man shook his head at Kyle and then finally cleared his throat. “Well. First off, you’re a millionth.”
“A millionth? A millionth what?”
“A millionth is a principle, a person, a light of hope for the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine souls that have preceded him.”
“Preceded him in what?”
Folding his hands in front of him, The Gray Man replied, “Preceded him in the same sin.”
Kyle blinked. “This is fucking crazy.”
“No, it’s not.” The Gray Man shook his head, then sighed. “You’re just like all the rest, Kyle.”
“All the rest of what?”
“Of humanity.”
The words sounded like flat notes played on a broken piano.
Looking up to meet The Gray Man’s eyes, Kyle decided to ask the obvious. “Humanity? You say that as if you were talking about a separate species. So what the hell are you?”
Something in The Gray Man’s eyes flickered brightly and Kyle sensed a power, a frightening power, in them. “Hell has nothing to do with me, my boy.”
Swallowing hard, Kyle forced himself to go on. “So, what then? Are you saying you’re an angel?”
The Gray Man simply smiled. “It doesn’t matter what I am. You should be more worried about what you are.”
“Which is?”
“I’ve already told you. You’re a millionth.”
“Fine. I’ll bite. Okay, then. I’ve joined a club of sinners, right? Great. What’s my prize?”
The Gray Man choked on a sip of his coffee and laughed softly. After another sip he managed to speak again. “You’ve won no prize, that’s for sure. A burden? Yes. A mission? Absolutely. But I doubt anyone would call it a prize.”
Kyle downed his coffee. Screw his stomach. He needed the caffeine to jolt alive whatever brain cells he had left to reason his way out of this.
“Reason is a crutch, Kyle.”
Startled at having his mind read again, Kyle blurted, “Fuck!”
For the first time, Kyle saw The Gray Man’s demeanor change. He almost winced at the word. “Please. If you would. Enough of the language.”
Kyle laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You tell me I’ve lost my soul and now you want me to watch my potty mouth?”
A burly man at the counter in a tan jacket and wearing a John Deere hat glanced at them.
“We all have our vices. Swearing was one of mine once. Easy not to say words you don’t hear, so for me, please refrain.”
“Fuck this.” Kyle replied defiantly. Suddenly, the coffee cup in his hand was pulled free. Kyle watched in stunned amazement as it slid away from him across the length of the table, levitating a good inch above the brown glossy laminate, until it came to rest alongside the napkin dispenser by the window.
The Gray Man’s eyes had turned from light to dark blue. “Please, Kyle. I’ve asked nicely. Twice now.”
Kyle nodded and swallowed over the knot jammed against his Adam’s apple. There was no sense in arguing about it anymore; he was into something deep. And yet, oddly, something inside him twitched with excitement. This was all unsettling, but if it was real, then it was an affirmation of things he’d always believed.
The Gray Man spoke, his eyes blurring back to light blue. “You all believe it, Kyle.”
Startled again, Kyle couldn’t take it anymore. “We have to make a deal. You have to stop that. I’ll do my best with the f-bombs, but you have to stop with the mind reading thing. I can’t take it. It’s freaking me out!”
To his surprise, The Gray Man chuckled softly and nodded. “Deal.”
“Good. Okay. We all believe what then?” Kyle asked, nervously rubbing his forehead.
“In good. In evil. In your role between the two. From the very moment you begin to sense them.”
“You mean understand them?”
The Gray Man smiled. “Ah. Understanding. Yes. The beginning of reason. Genesis. Chapter Four. ‘The serpent was subtle.’ You know the story, right?”
“Yes,” Kyle replied with a look of disbelief. “I went to Sunday school.”
“I know you did. So you can imagine how sensing good and evil is a much simpler thing than trying to understand them, right?”
Kyle shrugged. He didn’t like where this was going.
“In the former, my boy, you accept them for what they are; you gravitate to the one and avoid the other. It’s simple. It’s only when you begin to trivialize the instinct, or rationalize it and determine to understand it… only then do you take the very first step towards playing God instead of worshipping Him.”
“That’s not true.”
“But it is.”
“Please, how can one ‘sense’ evil?”
“Kyle. Come now. Let’s see. How about an example? You knew it when you were eight. The way the grocery bagger looked at you in the market. You remember right? His eyes were full of an unnatural lust. It’s why you clung to your mother’s skirt. After a while you even dreaded going to the market at all. You even volunteered to do yard chores with your dad to spare yourself any more trips there.”
The diner grew eerily silent. Kyle thought maybe his ears were playing tricks on him, but if so his eyes were in on the same gag; the room grew darker, as a room can do midday when swift-moving clouds blot out the sun. But it was evening now, with no such sun in the sky.
“All of you sense it, Kyle, from time to time. You come home late one night and something in your home feels off, as if someone is there. You chuckle about ghosts and turn on the lights as quickly as you can, but you don’t really sleep well that night until the memory of it goes away. A woman can feel it in the way a certain type of man looks at her, as if she senses that he’s not in control of his wants and desires, as most men are, and therefore he is more likely to violate her space, or violate her.”
Kyle shifted in his seat. The Gray Man continued.
“But if we talk of demons then it’s like silly child’s play, right? Yes… no… because you’ve seen it when you’ve watched the evening news, right? Perhaps it’s a crazed leader in the bowels of Africa who allows a million people to starve to death beneath a hot desert sun. It is beyond comprehension, but you know… only something evil could do that. Just as you know that only evil could crawl through a bedroom window at night and carve out the eyes of an elderly couple with a spoon. They caught that particular demon, didn’t they, Kyle? Then one night you bump into a person on the corner who looks at you with eyes absent a soul and your gut drops, because something tells you that you’re in trouble. You wait for the light to change so you can cross the street as soon as possible and get away. You count the seconds, Kyle, and deep down you know that evil thing next to you is doing the same. Counting. One. Two. Three…”
Breaking eye contact, The Gray Man looked out the window to the parking lot beyond. “Later, when you’ve gotten home safely, you’re thankful for a few minutes before another part of you will try to reason it all away, blame that whole feeling on a horror movie you recently saw. But that first part of you knows better, the part of you that sensed it.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“It’s God-given, Kyle. That sense of evil? It’s knitted into you before birth, woven into the very fabric of your being. And reason, Kyle? Reason is a biting moth.”
For the first time Kyle really studied The Gray Man. There was a stillness that seemed to emanate from him, to the point that Kyle seemed enclosed within his aura. They were in the diner, yes, but they also weren’t. Tammy the waitress and the other patrons were real and present, but somehow separate, like
double images in a photograph.
Kyle sighed. “I didn’t know this would happen.”
“Don’t, Kyle. No lies. Not to me. I’m here to help you. If I can.”
“No. I mean it…”
“You planned the whole thing for months. You were on the hunt for this misery the first day you saw her. Let’s just cut to the truth here, okay? We don’t have time—”
“That’s not true. It isn’t,” Kyle argued.
“You spent hours imagining how she would look in lingerie, Kyle, of the things you would do to her when you got her alone…”
“Hey.”
“You knew it was wrong. You sensed it, didn’t you, Kyle? Ah. But then reason set in and the excuses came like snowfall: your wife wasn’t satisfying you anymore, or she was barely trying to, she didn’t love you the same anymore, no one had to know, it would be fun, everyone does it, most wives almost expect their husbands to do it sooner or later, and so on until the snowfall began to pile up and bury you.”
“I didn’t… It wasn’t… Shit, I dunno what was wrong with me.” Kyle felt tears welling up in his eyes and his hands were trembling.
“Yes you did, yes it was, and yes you do.” The words cracked like dry wood on a fire.
“Fine,” Kyle replied, growing defensive. “So be it. I screwed up. What about forgiveness?”
“You’ve asked and it’s been granted, Kyle. That’s how it works. But in a sense, you are forgiveness now, if you succeed. It’s what makes you a millionth.”
“I can’t take this… this whole… What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that those who came before you have lost their souls too. But, unlike you, they have not repented. And God’s reply is to choose one person amongst their million to serve as a possible catalyst for their repentance.”
“That’s crazy! Whatever happened to free will?”
The Gray Man sighed and closed his eyes and whispered, as if in prayer, “You never told me he was going to be this difficult.” He stayed silent a few moments before opening his eyes again. “If you succeed, you will be a simple glimmer in the periphery of their consciousness, and that tiny spark of hope that they can be forgiven can trigger them to freely choose their salvation. It’s still their choice.”
“Why me?”
“Because you are capable.”
Rubbing his hand over his mouth and chin, Kyle felt a boiling dismay provoking his frustration. “How did this happen to me?”
“You defiled your vows.”
“That’s between me and my wife.”
“Oh, no.” The Gray Man shook his head firmly. “No it’s not, Kyle. When you make a vow of love, even if you leave the word ‘God’ out of it, you make a vow to that very force that created you, because God is love Kyle. And tonight you betrayed Him, too.”
Kyle was speechless. His legs felt weak, and a childlike sense of abandonment came over him like it used to when his parents would leave him at daycare and he would be afraid that they’d never come back to get him.
“But God has come back for you, Kyle.”
Kyle glared at him.
“Sorry,” The Gray Man offered. “Force of habit. You owe me a few anyway.”
The waitress looked over at The Gray Man when he motioned for the check.
“How has He come back for me?”
“Through the mission you will be given.”
“How is that fair to the other nine hundred thousand-plus people who don’t even know me?”
“Because given the choice, they themselves would gladly choose you. None of them, Kyle, are strong enough to do this. Only you are. You’re one in a million.”
“Jesus.” Kyle began to weep softly. Burying his hands in his face, he spoke in a muffled voice. “Please, man, you gotta help me. This is crazy. Say something on my behalf. Get me out this. I can’t do it…”
“Save the pleas of forgiveness for the only one who can do anything about them, Kyle. When you do, please don’t forget her.”
“Who?”
“The girl who was the object of all your lust earlier tonight, the one who slipped up too, a long time ago, before you, and chose the other side as it were.”
Like a splash of cold water this seemed to shock Kyle back into the moment. He wiped his eyes. “Are you talking about Caitlyn?”
“Yes. She’d taken up company with evil and then, I surmise, something went wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You weren’t supposed to see her like that, the way you saw her in the end. She broke character; something in her couldn’t quite do it, I guess. Maybe the misery in her life, her anger at God, was sufficient for a time. But in the end she hesitated, and her punishment… That poor girl.”
To Kyle’s astonishment, there were tears in The Gray Man’s eyes now. Putting his hat back on, he said, “We should pray for her.”
“She tried to kill me and you want me to pray for her?” Kyle asked.
The Gray Man looked at Kyle with disappointment. “You would have me pray for your forgiveness, but you refuse to pray for hers?”
Kyle avoided his question and looked around. “Where’s the waitress with the check?”
“She won’t be coming back,” The Gray Man said, finishing his coffee. “By the time we leave she will have completely forgotten that we were even here. And we have to leave now. They’ll be looking for you soon.”
“What? Who?”
“All of them. But our immediate concern is the police.”
Kyle felt his hands go cold. “The police? Why would—”
“As we were traveling here, Kyle, the girl you knew as Caitlyn was thrown out the window of your hotel room by the forces she failed.”
Kyle’s jaw dropped.
“She’s dead, Kyle, and by tomorrow morning you’ll be wanted for her murder.”
The air around Kyle grew thick and his vision tunneled.
The Gray Man stood to leave. “You have to get it all in your head first, Kyle.”
“But… my kids…” Kyle finally managed.
The Gray Man put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my boy, but the life that you knew? It’s over.”
A bright light engulfed Kyle and he felt as if his body were somehow being tightly wrapped in something before he was transported away.
But where to next?
CHAPTER 4
“I TRIED TO KEEP them up for you, but they’re already asleep,” Juanita said with a faint smile.
They stood in the kitchen, the dim light of the oven range casting shadows across the tile floor. It was just past 10:00 p.m.
Tamara shrugged. “I figured. It’s okay. I’ll catch them in the morning.”
A pot of albondigas soup was on one of the burners, still simmering. “I saved you some. It’ll help you sleep,” Juanita said.
“Thanks so much, Juanita” Tamara replied before asking the question they were both waiting for: “And the cake?”
Juanita gave a tiny grimace. “I put it in the refrigerator.”
Tamara exhaled and put her purse on the counter. “What a bummer.”
“I know. It’s okay, though. I explained to them that sometimes these things happen.” She was wearing jeans and a faded blue shirt with her hair pulled back into a ponytail as she fumbled with a dish towel.
Tamara suppressed the urge to tell Juanita that child counseling was not part of her job description, but then she realized it actually was. It had been Juanita’s resume, filled with previous clients who sang her praises for just such a gift, that had made Tamara hire her in the first place.
“Thanks, Juanita.”
Juanita hesitated and then continued. “It’s okay. I was actually more worried that they would hear Mr. Fasano’s call.”
“What call?”
“It’s on the message machine. I didn’t get to the phone in time, but I heard it. Janie had her headphones on and, thankfully, the little one was in his room…”
“What did he say?”
/>
Juanita wouldn’t look her in the eye; instead she looked down at her hands as she folded and unfolded the dish towel. “That he wouldn’t be coming home tonight.”
“What?”
Juanita shrugged. “He said something about staying with a friend who was having some sort of problem.”
Tamara felt her jaw stiffen. Juanita was looking at her with a sense of pity. A slightly jaded look that seemed to say, “Hey, we’re both girls here, I mean, seriously, a friend?”
To her surprise, Tamara’s growing rage gave way to embarrassment. A message from a husband spending the night somewhere else to help a buddy for the night was not an immediate cause for suspicion in a normal household. But this wasn’t a normal household anymore, and even Juanita had picked up on this now.
Tamara lowered her head, removed her heels and crossed the kitchen, the coolness of the travertine floor bleeding into her feet as she got to the answering machine—a relic from a bygone era that Kyle refused to let go of, citing the annoyance at the dialing-in process of normal voicemail. A red number one flashed on the analog display. She pressed play.
Kyle sounded like he always sounded when he was lying: way too smooth. That, and Tamara could tell he was drunk. She knew her husband well. One too many drinks and he immediately sounded like a frat boy again. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Tossing a few with a “friend in need,” is what the message said, “who was way too drunk to get home now.” Kyle was going to get them home to this… “Tim’s” house… to sleep it off. That was the worst of it. Tamara knew all of Kyle’s friends, and none of them were named Tim. Most of her didn’t believe that Kyle would ever hurt her. But a small part of her was taking note of the past three months, his impatience with her and, worse still, his indifference towards her.
Now this. On her birthday.
She could hear Juanita behind her, pulling out a bowl and spoon for the soup.
“Well, it looks like you had to carry the whole load tonight, Juanita. Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. I’m sorry you missed your cake, but they will be so happy to see you in the morning.”
“Yep,” Tamara said vacantly. She was playing the message over in her head. He had cared enough to lie, but only barely. Tamara was bound not to buy it, and maybe that was the point. She felt tears welling in her eyes.
One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Page 3
