The Keeper

by T F Allen

  Her paintings disappointed him no matter how hard she tried. Despite his lectures, his warnings, his screams, and even the cuts from his knife, it always ended the same way it started, with another beating. She fought back not with flailing arms and screams of her own but with indifference, suppressing her emotions to the point Donnie began to think she couldn’t feel them anymore. The battle took years, as Donnie proved nothing if not persistent, but over time she convinced him she was a lost cause, both as an artist and a source of inspiration.

  The beatings eventually stopped, but the damage was already done. Her deepest wounds took root in her mind, and she began to see herself the same way as her captor. Years of negative reinforcement had distorted her thoughts, and she no longer considered herself a person worthy of freedom. When he finally removed her shock collar and unlocked her cell door, she didn’t try to escape. It just wasn’t worth the effort. He’d ruined her inside and out. And even if she was still capable of finding enough anger to get even or run away, it was too dangerous to try.

  Jolene swallowed her thoughts as Donnie circled his sculpture again. He folded his arms and locked into a staring match with the jungle cat. “What will Cole say about this? You think he’ll like it?”

  She didn’t know what to say. Cole was Donnie’s best friend, as near as she could tell. He was the only visitor Donnie allowed inside his house. Sometimes he stayed overnight in a bedroom down the hall. But she’d never seen him, not even once. She assumed Donnie was keeping them apart to hide his crime. The door to Cole’s room was always locked. She didn’t even know his last name. Donnie never mentioned it. Cole always seemed to be just out of reach, his voice just out of earshot. But he was a constant presence in Donnie’s life. Important enough that Donnie seemed worried about whether this jungle cat lived up to Cole’s standards.

  “God, it’s so obvious.” Donnie pulled out his knife. “It’s just like all the rest. He’ll hate it.”

  Jolene clasped her hands together and backed away slowly until her heels touched the wall. She aimed her gaze toward the wood floor, safely away from Donnie’s eyes.

  “You useless piece of shit,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was talking to the jungle cat or Jolene. It didn’t seem to matter. She fought to keep her stare blank even as a jolt of adrenaline rushed through her body. She knew what was coming next but wouldn’t let her mind picture it. I had to watch to find out.

  Donnie dropped to one knee and grabbed the jungle cat’s throat with his free hand. “I hope you feel this.” He stuck the tip of his knife into the corner of its eye socket and dug until the eyeball popped out. He stared at the pupil and shook his head. “I promise I’ll find a better place for you.”

  Jolene didn’t dare move, much less point out that Donnie was talking to lifeless objects. She knew better than to react to anything he did when he was like this. She doubted he’d act any differently if she wasn’t in the room. She was an emotional and physical wreck, but Donnie was certifiably crazy. And she never confronted crazy when it was holding a knife.

  He dug out the other eyeball and slipped them both into his pocket. He sheathed the knife faster than she could blink and stomped to the far corner of the room. He came back twirling an aluminum baseball bat.

  “All that I gave you, everything I put into you. And somehow you wasted it all.” He aimed his stare toward the ceiling. “I bet you think this is funny. But don’t worry. Your boy’s time is coming.”

  I didn’t know what to think about Donnie talking to his sculpture, but I didn’t agree with Jolene. Crazy was always too simple a word. Everyone carries a filter that controls how they see and experience the world. Formed from their earliest memories and shaped throughout their lives, this filter is necessarily different from person to person. Diversity of perception is part of what makes each person unique. But sometimes it can blind them from seeing what’s really happening.

  When viewed through Jolene’s filter, Donnie’s actions seemed crazy. But through his, they probably made perfect sense.

  Donnie swung the bat over his head and slammed it across the jungle cat’s spine. Pieces of stainless steel broke free and scattered in every direction, and the echo from the metal-on-metal impact rang in her ears. The next strike landed on its head, crushing its metal skull. Donnie swung again and again, beating the beast across the room, mangling it with every blow, until it tumbled into a corner. It no longer looked anything like a cat.

  “That’s what you get for being average.”

  Though she’d trained herself not to show it, everything Donnie did both scared and confused Jolene. Her filter wouldn’t let her see what I sensed to be true: Donnie was having a two-way conversation, and it wasn’t with her.

  Donnie dropped his bat and waited while it clanged across the floor. “There’s not enough time to start over,” he said. “It’s up to Delacroix now.”

  A huge tide of emotion swelled inside Jolene at the mention of Michael’s name, but she fought to keep it hidden. She stayed perfectly frozen, though she couldn’t draw her stare away from Donnie.

  “He’ll help me, no matter what you do.” Donnie aimed his voice toward the ceiling again. “Do you hear me? Are you still here?”

  I left Jolene but stayed in the room, watching Donnie as he sounded his threats. I didn’t need a filter to know exactly what he meant.

  He gathered the ruined sculpture into his arms, looking as defiant as he seemed certain someone he couldn’t see was listening. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Nothing you can do.”

  CHAPTER 11

  I left Donnie’s studio and ran back through the vineyard to Michael’s cell. I’d seen more than enough to know why Jolene thought she could never leave him. And I couldn’t let Michael end up the same way.

  One glance at his cell and I knew he hadn’t given up yet. He’d torn the sheets from his bed and thrown them into a corner. The twin mattress stood on one end leaning against the two-way mirror, blocking most of the light from inside the mirror and the entire view of his painting. Michael sat on the floor with his back against the mattress, his forehead resting on his knees, and his hands folded together like he was praying. He hadn’t touched the breakfast tray. I rested my hand on the back of his head to let him know I was there.

  I decided not to tell him about Jolene. I didn’t think it would help, and it might send him deeper into a depression he was still fighting against. Besides, he would only use it against me in an argument we’d been having for years.

  For as long as I could remember, I’d tried to convince Michael someone other than me truly cared about him. It started when he was young and in foster care. Childhood is the most dangerous time in a person’s life, and no one escapes unmarked. Back then, my best argument was Sister Mary Elizabeth and her monthly visits. But no, he said, what she felt for him wasn’t love but pity, the sad result of what she’d seen the morning after someone tossed him into a dumpster behind a church.

  In the street kids of San Francisco he’d found friends who accepted him as he was, but Michael thought of that time as a period of transition more than anything else—teens and twentysomethings who’d opted out of the mainstream for a few months or years until they moved on to something else. A warm sense of freedom accompanied him during that time, but it wasn’t sustainable. The people he’d met then didn’t truly care for him, Michael argued. They only wanted him to join them to perpetuate the myth that a worry-free childhood could last forever.

  It didn’t seem to matter that his love and trust were enough for me. Every quiet moment when he called out to me in his mind, each time he waited for my opinion or asked me to show him the way—that was what I lived for. But those things weren’t enough for Michael. He needed someone else to love him, too.

  I knew the topic of Jolene was a losing argument for me. Each time her name came up it led to a fight about unrealized potential and how unfair this world had been to them both. Michael’s millions of fans counted for nothin
g. They only cared about what he could create, not about who he was. None of them remembered the Jolene Anderson who didn’t get to graduate from SFAI and start her own career, the woman who never knew he loved her. They only knew her as the woman with the horribly scarred face in his most famous painting. All of it proved he’d taken advantage of someone else’s tragedy, and no one could ever love a person who’d done something like that.

  I closed my eyes and listened while Michael’s mind raced in circles. He was busy reinforcing how terrible his circumstances were. Donnie Harkrider, a man he barely remembered from his days at art school, must have been aiming all his envy and hatred at him for months or even years, and for the life of him, he couldn’t guess why. He also couldn’t imagine the depth of planning it had taken to steal and replace his painting with a forgery. He wondered if Donnie knew how Jolene affected him. Was he trying to torture or inspire him? Fitting a shock collar around his neck and locking him in a cell was the clincher. It proved Donnie didn’t care about him at all—another damning piece of evidence in our ongoing argument.

  Seeing those frail hands push the breakfast tray under the gate only convinced Michael that someone else also had it out for him. That’s why I couldn’t tell him about Jolene. He wouldn’t take it as a sign there was hope for rescue, that however broken and weak she appeared to be, she could play a part in helping him escape. He’d only count it as a confirmation he was doomed to suffer the same fate as the woman he once loved.

  “I’m going to die here,” he said.

  I won’t let that happen.

  “No one knows where I am.” He raised his head. “Even I don’t know where I am.”

  I knelt and wrapped my arms around him. But I do. And I’m doing everything I can to get you out of here.

  “What does that mean?” He pointed toward the locked gate. “Can you bend metal? Can you pick locks? Can you break through walls?”

  I was only making it worse by putting those words in his head. He couldn’t see any hope right now, and why should he? All I’d done was convince a nun to travel to San Francisco and find a nosy reporter who was already on her way. It wasn’t exactly SEAL Team Six, but it was the best I could do.

  If you can stay strong, I promise I’ll get someone here to find you.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stay strong. But hurry.”

  A crackling sound erupted from somewhere near the ceiling, and a squawk of electronic feedback filled the room. A familiar voice echoed through a speaker we couldn’t see. “Delacroix, who are you talking to?”

  “Nobody, asshole!”

  Out from the speaker came another crackle of static, then the sound of Donnie’s laughter. “I wish Cole could have heard you say that.”

  “Who’s that?” Michael said.

  “You’ll meet him soon enough. Until then, tell your nobody I hope he’s watching when we start our experiment later. We’re running out of time. So you’d better be ready.”

  Michael jumped to his feet and shouted at the ceiling. “Ready to do what?”

  “The only thing you can do better than me. I want you to paint another masterpiece.”

  CHAPTER 12

  When Donnie’s voice blasted from the speaker, I knew I’d better get busy. He seemed to have a deadline looming—one he hadn’t shared with us yet. Michael could never break out by himself, and Jolene didn’t seem willing to risk another beating to help him try. The key to Michael’s rescue waited somewhere in San Francisco.

  Focus. Lock. Pull.

  When I opened my eyes, I was back in the city, standing in the living area of Michael’s apartment. This unit was nicer than the one his SFAI scholarship paid for but much more modest than he could afford, even though it was in a nice location—on Golden Gate Avenue near the University of San Francisco. Michael’s one-bedroom was on the third floor of a building built nearly a hundred years ago, though no one could tell. The apartment had been remodeled so many times that every board and nail had been replaced at least twice.

  And no surprise, Michael was a terrible decorator. He’d pushed in an old couch and recliner from his previous apartment, a dusty entertainment stand with a television he’d found on a curb, a box spring and mattress to furnish his bedroom, and nothing else. The rest of the apartment was dedicated to painting. Frames, finished and unfinished, leaned against every wall. His miter saw stand was tucked into a corner of the living room, a mound of sawdust gathering in a pile beneath it. Three staple guns hung on nails he’d hammered into the fireplace mantel, which also held a towering stack of folded canvas sheets. Flecks of oil paint splattered the walls and the wide plank wood flooring near his easel. No way would Michael ever get his security deposit back.

  Only now that he was gone did I realize how depressing Michael’s daily routine had become. He never felt any pride for anything he created. Once he finished a painting, he’d set it down against the wall and pick up another blank canvas. He rarely spent more than a minute looking at what he’d made, and he never paused to enjoy it.

  Someone pounded on the front door. They waited a few seconds and pounded again. The handle rattled, then turned. I held my breath. The door swung open, and a woman dressed in a habit walked into the room.

  Sister Mary Elizabeth must have rushed here directly from the airport. Her face was red, probably from running up the steps, and sweat coated her forehead. But I couldn’t have been happier to see her. I jumped into her head while she paced around the living room.

  Worry clouded her mind. Something about this wasn’t right. She shouted his name, “Michael? Michael?” but no one answered. She ran into his bedroom, checked the bathroom, then circled through the kitchen. The boy was supposed to be here. The trouble that voice in her head had warned about surely happened in Chicago, and she was supposed to meet him here to help fix it.

  But he wasn’t here. Maybe that meant the trouble had followed him home.

  She shook her head. He was probably just out somewhere. She sat on the couch and tried to calm her mind. She always reacted this way when it came to Michael. The boy had already suffered too much in this life. She couldn’t bear to think he was headed for more. But she shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions just because he wasn’t home.

  His car wasn’t in his parking spot. Maybe that was a good sign. But it was still early. She couldn’t imagine what would keep Michael out of his bed at this hour. Something must be wrong. She rocked back and forth on the edge of the couch.

  The cab ride from the airport had cost almost sixty dollars. Already she was running out of money. She couldn’t afford to crisscross the city in taxis searching for Michael. People were generally nice to her because of her clothes and her smile, but she knew that would change once her coin purse was empty. She had only two options: wait here or find someone willing to help who didn’t expect to get paid.

  I grew restless inside her. If Sister Mary Elizabeth stayed in Michael’s apartment agonizing over her options all morning, she’d never realize he was missing. Each passing second brought us closer to Donnie’s deadline. If he killed Michael, everything would end—for him and for me. Without him I had no reason to be here.

  Look at his easel. If everything was okay, he’d be painting.

  Sister Mary Elizabeth jumped from the couch. My voice had sent a chill through her entire body, but she wasn’t as scared as before. She ran to the easel and brushed the back of her hand across the canvas. The painting was nowhere near finished, and dry as a brick.

  She decided the voice was right. If Michael wasn’t painting, he was in trouble. That was the rule with this boy. She didn’t want to admit it, but exercising his gift seemed the only remedy against his chronic self-hatred. The news article said he’d flown back to San Francisco two days ago. That left more than enough time to start painting again. But he hadn’t. Something was definitely wrong.

  She needed to find someone who would believe her, someone who’d help. But she didn’t know any of his friends. Simply put, there weren
’t many to know.

  I didn’t have time for this. Michael didn’t have time for this. I had to interrupt her again.

  What about his art dealer?

  Sister Mary Elizabeth shivered. She could never get used to that—God or an angel shouting questions in her ear. She tried to remember his name: Grant something…Grant Thatcher. She never liked that man. She could tell he was helping Michael for all the wrong reasons. But he might have been the one Michael had gone to. As the owner of most of Michael’s work, he’d probably care more about Michael’s whereabouts than anyone she could talk to.

  She reached into her pocket and felt for her rosary beads as she walked toward the door. Whether it was an angel talking to her or not, going to Mr. Thatcher’s was a smart idea. It might cost another thirty dollars to get there. She’d have to find a bargain hotel if she didn’t find him by tonight. But taking the risk would be worth it. She had to believe that. God and the voice He sent wouldn’t lead her all the way to San Francisco just to make her chase her own tail.

  She grabbed the door handle. “I’m coming, Michael.” Her words brought tears to her eyes. She wiped them away, then ran down the stairs to hail another cab.

  CHAPTER 13

  I still wasn’t comfortable with my new ability. It felt like I was tampering with Sister Mary Elizabeth’s faith each time I pretended to be God. Maybe He existed, maybe not. I had no way of knowing for sure.