The Loon

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Then Paul's own universe tilted as comprehension came into Vincent's eyes and the younger man screamed back at him, "Fine, you jackass! Next time I'll just let dumb Donald blow us up!"

  Paul felt his grip loosen of its own accord. "What?" he said.

  Vincent pulled his jacket out of Paul's slack fingers with a too-violent jerk. Paul felt one of his fingers twist, and grunted. It felt like Vincent's explosive movement had probably just sprained one of Paul's fingers.

  But Paul didn't have a chance to say anything. Vincent glared down at Donald, who was still cringing on the basement floor. Then Vincent murmured, "Idiot," before turning to a large red valve on the side of the heater that Donald had been about to start working on. Marcuzzi turned the valve a quarter turn. "You turn off the gas before you work on the pipe, Don," he said in a quietly angry voice.

  "Sorry," mumbled Donald, clearly cowed by his friend's anger.

  "More sorry if a spark flew down here," answered Vincent. Then the young man turned to Paul. "Or didn't you know that, Mr. Ph.D.?"

  "Know what?" snapped Paul.

  Vincent pointed at the red lever. "I'll say it in Smartypants language so you can understand: gas main. Gas main plus spark on main heater equals ka-boom."

  Paul glared back at Vincent for a moment, but his heart was no longer in it. The sudden rage that had gripped him had passed as quickly as it came. Leaving behind only...

  (Grief. Sadness. Pain. Sammy is dead. I killed my son.)

  ...a sense of exhaustion. He didn't want to deal with Vincent. Not now. Especially not when the man had just stopped Donald from potentially blowing them all to pieces. Vincent-as-hero was not an image that Paul wanted to contemplate.

  Paul turned away from the two men.

  "What, leaving so soon?" snapped Vincent. "Why don't you stick around for a while? Maybe you and dumb Donald here can find some new and interesting way to kill everyone. Whaddya say?"

  Paul sighed. "Not today, Vincent," he said.

  "'Not today' what?" retorted the other man. Without waiting for a response, he turned to Donald and pulled the man to his feet. "Get up, Don," he hissed. Then turned back to Paul again, demanding a reply with an impudent, "Well?"

  "Just not today," said Paul again.

  He walked away from the two men, ignoring Vincent's whisper of "Thanks for the visit, Dr. Smartypants" and Donald's too-quiet-to-hear reply.

  The men went back to their work as Paul tramped back up the metal stairs to the main level. Warm air suddenly began blasting out of the nearest vent as he reached the hallway. But Paul didn't feel warmed by it. A chill crept through his bones, as real and as cold as the collected snow outside.

  I killed Sammy.

  LATE

  Jacky Hales cursed as his tires lost traction for the umpteenth time. The wheel spun beneath his hands and the car lurched sickeningly to one side before he was able to tighten his grip and regain a modicum of control. Not for the first time, he wished he could afford a big four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicle. Maybe a Lincoln Navigator or a Ford Expedition. Instead, however, he was stuck in his 1995 Toyota Corolla, which weighed about seven pounds when wet and provided almost enough traction to stay on the road. Almost.

  It wasn't snowing, not yet, but in spite of that fact, snow was all the Jacky could see. The featureless terrain stretched endlessly from horizon to horizon, nothing apparent on this wasteland but single shroud of snow, which coated everything and left all hidden and mysterious.

  Jacky checked the tiny clock built into his dash. It said ten twenty a.m.

  "Perfect," he muttered to himself. "Wonderful way to make a first impression."

  Things had been going from bad to worse over the last few days. He had arrived in Stonetree a few days before to discover that his apartment was without water: the pipes had not been properly blown out in preparation for the winter season. That meant that water had remained in the pipes, and as the temperature had dropped it had frozen and expanded, leading to a system of destroyed water lines throughout the neighborhood.

  Then Jacky discovered that one of his suitcases had gotten lost on his flight in. It was a small one, and in the crush and press of getting out of the airport, he hadn't even realized it until he got to his (waterless) apartment. And of course, the bag had been the one to hold his most important possessions: his journal and his scriptures. He had called the airline, and the person on the other end of the line had assured him that everything possible would be done to recover his luggage, but under the polite words, Jacky heard "Get used to loss, kid." He had little hope of ever seeing his journal or his own personalized copy of the word of God ever again.

  But he tried to take it all in stride. Even tried to shrug off disappointment when he discovered that the movers had nicked his only semi-expensive piece of furniture, a two-piece hutch that his grandmother had left him when she died. He had had dreams of using it one day as a China cabinet or something like that, perhaps after he got married, assuming he could ever find someone who could stand him enough to marry him.

  Now, with the nicks, the hutch probably couldn't serve as a China display, but would no doubt be relegated to a back room somewhere, holding dog-eared paperbacks or old phonebooks on its dilapidated shelves.

  The final straw came this morning. It wasn't enough that he hadn't been able to contact his new place of employment. It wasn't enough that he wasn't sure how he should dress on his first day. It wasn't enough that he hadn't had a bath in three days.

  No, none of that was enough. So on top of it all he discovered that morning that the reason he hadn't gotten any calls was because his answering machine was erasing messages before he got them. His mother had called from Idaho that very morning, asking how he was and wanting to know why he hadn't called her back. He told her he hadn't gotten any messages on his machine, and after she insisted she had left several, he investigated and found that the device was malfunctioning. It would answer the phone all right, and callers could leave their messages after a beep, but as soon as they hung up the machine deleted them.

  That was why he was wearing the Crane Institute uniform that had been sent to him, but also had packed blue jeans and a T-shirt, because he didn't even know what he was supposed to wear to work on his first day. He figured a uniform would probably be provided to him, but didn't have any idea if he was expected to bring anything with him. There was a storm brewing, too, a pretty serious one if you believed the weather reports, and so Jacky had never been able to get through the switchboard to call the prison.

  Or rather, to call the Crane Institute. It wasn't, technically, a prison. But as his mother liked to say, "If it looks like a turd and smells like a turd, it's a turd no matter how many idiots call it a rose." And the Crane Institute certainly looked like a prison, to judge from the information packet he had been sent.

  As if to confirm his thoughts, he saw something on the horizon: a small gray dot that slowly grew in his field of vision until at last he was able to confirm his suspicions: it was the Crane Institute, and it was most definitely a prison.

  FIGHT

  Rachel stared in horror at the doorway that Tommy had just gone through.

  She smelled Tío's breath.

  She might have stayed there forever, in a paralytic state of fear and memory, had she not heard the noise.

  Thump. A cry.

  Rachel bolted upright and was through the doorway without her feet touching the floor more than once. In the small "living room" in the hovel they called home, she could not help but see everything: her daughter, cowering against the front door, clawing at the lock, trying to get out. Tommy, swinging his belt loosely in his hands, drunken eyes feverish and too-bright, his pants starting to fall down.

  Rachel ran, but she was too late.

  Tommy reached their daughter. Reached Becky, and in a move far too fast for a drunken man he reached out and slapped her.

  But no. Not slapped. At the last second Rachel saw her husband's thick hand curl into a tight k
not of a fist. Becky was knocked into the wall, the breath whooshing out of her as Tommy's fist hit her square in the chest.

  "Don't look at me!" screamed Tommy.

  Becky was trying to cry, Rachel could see, but the little girl couldn't draw in even enough breath to do that.

  "Don't . . . look . . . at . . . me!" Tommy shrieked once more. Madness crawled over his face like a centipede, one hundred different ugly emotions playing across what had once been handsome, good. Strong.

  His hand raised again.

  It turned into a fist.

  Rachel wasn't sure how what happened next occurred. She only saw the fist, its slow crawl upward, hanging over their daughter – over Becky!­ – like a wrecking ball.

  He was going to kill her.

  The fist.

  Hanging.

  Becky – somewhere, she couldn't see her, could only see the fist – screaming and crying.

  And then more screaming. And blood. Too much blood.

  "What . . . what . . . ?" said Tommy.

  He turned to Rachel. To his wife. She felt the knife she had just plunged into his back rip from her fingers, remaining stuck in his body. He tried to pull it out. Couldn't reach it.

  Becky was not trying to cry any more. Just looking at her mother with a shattered gaze that was so much worse than crying.

  Something broke in Rachel. A thin, brittle veneer of civilization cracked and fell away. "You never touch my daughter!" she shrieked.

  If she could have found another knife, she would have stabbed Tommy again. But she had no knife. Indeed, now things were worse than before, as Tommy somehow managed to reach around his thick chest and yank the blade out of his own back.

  A gout of blood splashed across the walls and floor.

  I'll have to clean that, thought Rachel crazily. He'll kill me if I don't clean that.

  Then Tommy rushed her. His large body bore down on her like a jumbo jet, his arms spread wide, the knife in his hand as he collided with her. They went down in a heap, Rachel kicking instinctively as she fell, trying to free herself from the horror that her husband had become.

  She was only partially successful, pulling all but one leg free of him. But he grabbed that leg and slashed it with the knife. The cut was long, but superficial. Still, the pain acted like a cleaning agent, clarifying her thoughts and focusing her mind.

  This is it, she thought. This is the day he kills me.

  She almost succumbed to the idea. It was Tío all over again. She was a little girl, helpless. Good for nothing.

  Worthless.

  Then a small cry jolted out of her near-suicidal self pity.

  Becky!

  Rachel was not a little girl. The real little girl was looking at her with terror, clutching at her hands the way she had done more and more as Tommy had slowly turned from a good man and good father into . . . whatever it was he had become.

  Tommy had flipped Rachel over. He was fumbling with his pants with one hand, the other holding the knife loosely, almost as an afterthought.

  "Shoulda done this years ago," he mumbled. His breath was fetid.

  Tío.

  Rachel almost froze again. But she shook herself free of the pain of the now, and the worse pain of the past. She reached behind her blindly, wildly feeling about for anything that might serve to stop her husband.

  He was on top of her now.

  She felt something. A heavy vase that had been a present from Tommy's mother.

  Tommy saw her reaching. "No way, kid," he sneered, and yanked her backward. Then, as though to reassure himself, he repeated, "Shoulda done this years ago."

  He reached for Rachel's pants.

  Then he stiffened. Blood ran over his face in a sudden torrent, bits of crystal in his hair. She had managed to grab the vase and had crashed it over his head with all her strength: the strength of a lifetime of abuse and horrific pain.

  He coughed, a blood bubble popping on his lips, his eyes suddenly somewhere very far away.

  "I shoulda . . . I shoulda . . . ," he said, his voice strangled. His head turned, and she saw that part of it was caved in, a convex angle where before it had been a perfect sphere.

  "No," said Rachel. She kicked Tommy off her with hysterical strength, her voice quivering with rage, disgust, horror. "I shoulda done that years ago."

  But her words were a lie. Because the rage, the disgust, the horror . . . they were not directed at Tommy. Not even at Tío. They were directed at herself.

  I deserve this, she thought. I've killed someone, and I will burn forever en el infierno.

  Murderess, her mind whispered at her. And she had no answer for it.

  Her daughter saved her again, though.

  "Mommy," said the little girl.

  Rachel almost cried. She's safe, she thought. Becky is safe.

  "Mommy," said the girl again. "What are we going to do?"

  Becky was looking at her father. At her father's body. And Rachel could tell in a glance that her daughter knew exactly what had just happened.

  Murderess.

  GONE

  Ten minutes later Rachel had packed a pair of bags: one for her and a smaller one for Becky. She had thought it would take longer to pack, but was quickly surprised at how little she needed, and how much less she wanted. She was not a part of this house. Not now, perhaps not ever. So the things she packed were few.

  She buckled Becky into the backseat of their small car, a VW bug that had been broken down and rebuilt so many times that its age was a question of open and loud debate between Tommy and his friends.

  Or, at any rate, it had been. Tommy would not be debating any more.

  "Where are we going?" asked Becky. The girl's voice was small, smaller than her tiny frame demanded. It was as though a shadow spoke from within her: a piece of what she should have been – could have been – if only she had been born to a better place.

  To a better mother.

  Rachel shook off the thought. She glanced behind her. Thick clouds were gathering, a storm that hung over the flatlands beyond the small town like a shroud. They didn't have much time. And even if they had had all the time in the world, it wouldn't have mattered. There was only one place Rachel could go, only one person in the world she still trusted.

  "We're going to visit Uncle Jorge," Rachel said to her daughter.

  "At his work?"

  Rachel nodded.

  "That's a bad place," said Becky, her voice even quieter.

  Rachel hesitated. Then nodded again. "I know, sweetie." She looked at the house that she was about to leave forever. "But it's better than here."

  She kissed her daughter on the forehead, then flipped the front car seat forward and climbed in. Started the car. Pulled out of the driveway.

  And headed into the storm.

  INTERLOPER

  Jacky Hales pulled off the highway, noting with satisfaction that he had managed to slide only minimally this time, and turned onto the mile-long path that led to his new place of employ.

  The Crane Institute.

  Even a mile away, it was an imposing structure, a patch of impenetrable gray hunched in a field of forever white. And the closer Jacky got, the more ponderous and somehow . . . serious . . . the place became.

  It was a prison. That was clear. A fortress. Gothic, huge. A world apart from a place that was already so desolate that it was almost alien. A high-voltage chain link fence surrounded the entire facility, razor wire wrapped in loose, ugly curls atop the fence.

  Jacky could see several vehicles within the fence.

  Staff's cars, he thought. He noted that snow was piled up as high as the windows against several, and wondered how long the shifts were at this place.

  Just beyond the cars was a thick poured-concrete wall that Jacky guessed was forty feet high if it was an inch. A gate in the chain-link fence sat directly across from a matching gate in the concrete wall, reminding Jacky of nothing so much as a fortress from some King Arthur movie. Except that medieval fortresses
didn't usually have a thick steel door built into the concrete. The purpose of the smaller door was clear: quick and secure entrances and exits, closely monitored and easily halted if need be.

  Jacky had found out something of the inhabitants of the Crane Institute in the process of getting his job, but even so, he had to wonder looking at this place, just what kind of people the building held.

  If they even are people, he thought.

  He pulled up to the first gate – the one in the chain link fence that marked the outer limits of the Crane Institute. And the last edges of the sanity and safety of the outside world.

  A noise sounded. Tinny, whispering, like an alien broadcasting its interstellar message of menace into Jacky's fillings. Jacky looked around for a few seconds in bewilderment before he realized where the sound was coming from. He rolled down the window and faced a closed-circuit camera that was pointing directly at him.

  "Sorry?" he said into the speaker below the camera.

  "You should be," said the voice, a deep bass that sounded as though its owner liked to chew rocks as a hobby. "Who are you?"

  "Uhhh, Jackson Hales. I was supposed to report at ten this morning for primary orientation." He looked at the clock on his dashboard again, closing his eyes as though if he couldn't see the numbers they wouldn't say what they did. "I'm a little late," he said lamely.

  Jacky was braced for an angry retort, perhaps even a summary dismissal for his tardiness. But he was not prepared for the next words: "Your orientation? Didn't you get Dr. Wiseman's message?"

  "Uhhh . . . what message?"

  "Dammit. Hold on." The intercom turned off with an audible click, leaving only the whine of the wind and the feel of the first snowfall on Jacky's left arm. He shivered, not sure what to do. Was he fired? Should he just leave? Wait?

  "Park next to the other cars," said the intercom voice suddenly. Jacky almost jumped out of his skin as a loud claxon sounded and the chain-link gate started to slide to one side on oiled rollers. "Walk down the path to the steel door in the wall," continued the voice, adding with audible wryness, "I hope you brought a change of underwear."