by Nico Augusto
He was standing in the living room. Just a short time ago this room, the whole house had been filled with Sarah’s decorating charms and the happy sounds of a child playing. It was a place that James craved when he was away and hesitated to leave when he was home. Now, it was nothing but a constant reminder of all that he’d lost. Everything was empty, packed in boxes and waiting out near the fireplace to be picked up by the movers. Even before the things had been packed away, it had been empty. Without Sarah and Thomas it was like a wooden and stucco shell.
James could hear the lonely patter of the rain on the shingle roof. He turned away from the agony of the void that used to be his family’s home and went out on the front porch. The water from the rain was running swiftly down the gutter making a soft metallic sound. It was the only sound on the empty street. There wasn’t even a single car in sight.
James sat down and opened his bottle of bourbon and lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag off the cigarette and a drink of the bourbon straight from the bottle. He sat the bottle down and the corner of his eye caught sight of a dark shape on the left side of the courtyard. James stood up and leaving the shelter of the porch he stepped down the two steps into the pouring rain. He didn’t have to extinguish his cigarette; the rain took care of that for him. Tossing it aside, he made his way deeper into the garden. He couldn’t see anything except the plants and flowers that Sarah had so lovingly cared for now hanging limply from their bushes, trees or stalks. He made his way to the fence where he had seen the shape disappear, and he jumped over it. He could see the strange shape once again. The back of the house faced a wooded area and James followed the shape into the depths of the cold, dark space enclosed by large natural umbrellas made of thick tree branches and leaves. As he reached out to steady himself against one of the big trees, he could feel carvings underneath his palm. He pulled his hand away, and looked at the carving. It was a bunch of small birds that had to have been carved with a tiny little knife. He looked closer and saw that they were ortolans. Ortolans, in the past had been a delicacy in European countries, most especially in France.
James flashed back from his memories. He was once again in the hospital lobby. The tricycle was gone. With another tortured sigh, he continued out the main exit of the hospital. It was dark outside and everything was drenched from the rain. He slogged through the deep puddles left from the down pour. The sirens coming and going from the hospital were like background music to his life by now…he hardly heard them anymore. He made his way to the black SUV he drove, it was sitting alone in the lot. James stopped and looked at it. Alone was the story of his life since he’d lost Thomas and Sarah. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings and he suddenly felt himself bumped in the shoulder. He turned and saw what he could only describe as a creepy looking man, passing in the other direction. James was still on edge and he hadn’t realized it until now, but he was spoiling for a fight.
“Hey!” he yelled after the man, “Can’t you be careful and watch where you’re going?”
The man just made a strange sound and then giggled. That only made James more annoyed.
“Hey jerk! Don’t you have any manners?”
The man stopped then and turned around. Feigning an apologetic look and tone he said,
“I’m sorry, Doc. I really am.”
James wasn’t buying that he was sorry. His anger and the bourbon were fueling his desire to argue the point, “Get lost, you prick before I kick your ass,” he told the other man.
The man looked at him and with the semblance of a smile he said, “I know who you are…James.”
“What did you say?! How do you know my name? I'm a surgeon here, dick head and I also know your name.” James gestured at him then with his middle finger.
“You think you’re so important because you’re a surgeon. You cut people open and some live and some die. Our jobs aren’t all that different, really.”
James looked the man up and down and said, “What are you a butcher?”
The man smirked and said, “Something like that.” He turned and walked away then and James headed on to his own car. He glanced back and saw that his car hadn’t been the only one in the lot after all. The nasty little man hit the unlock button on his key fob and when the lights flashed he saw the other car. He hadn’t seen it before because it was parked in the dark. It too was a black SUV like James’s.
Something about that bothered him. James knew black SUV’s were common, but that guy had really ticked him off. Even if he hadn’t just lost a patient and even if he hadn’t lost his boy…that was when everything started going wrong. The day he lost Thomas, he had proceeded to lose everything. It was like pulling a loose thread on a sweater and watching it unravel.
Once he was finally inside the vehicle and out of the torrential rain, he still couldn’t turn off his thoughts. He reached over to his glove compartment and opened it. Reaching inside, he took out a metal flask that he’d put there earlier. It was filled with Vodka. He took off the top and downed the entire thing in seconds. Frowning as soon as he was done and realizing he hadn’t made anything better at all, he dropped his head down into his hands with his long hair covering his face on both sides, and his whole body began to convulse as he wept. He was weeping for Thomas and Sarah and himself…and for the girl on the table tonight. What a terrible life this was turning out to be. He took his fist and banged it against the steering wheel, hard. That didn’t fix what ailed him though so he threw the flask against the dash and then dropped his face back down into his hands. After a few minutes he was able to pull it together enough to sit up and wipe the tears from his face with his fingers. He took a deep breath and slipped his hand into the pocket of his dark, leather jacket to retrieve his keys…they weren’t there. Sighing in frustration, he slipped the other hand in the other pocket…not there either.
“What the hell?” he yelled out loud inside the empty vehicle. “They were just there when I left the hospital.” He checked his pockets again…still not there. “Fuck!” he yelled as he slammed his fists into the overhead of the SUV. Sometimes even the small things were just too much to bear when it felt like the rest of your life was dangling precariously over the edge of a cliff.
James sat there, not wanting to have to get out of the car again. It had started raining again. It was pounding like tiny little metal beads against the exterior of the car and the windows had all fogged up. He sat in the small space with the smell of leather and alcohol in his nose and once again felt completely removed from the rest of the world.
He just sat there like that for the longest time. He was like a zombie without conscious thought or reason. Then suddenly the rain eased up and something about the change in the tune of the heavy drops to the drizzle that barely resonated brought him back to reality. He reached over next to him and felt around on the passenger seat. His hand touched something metal and he picked it up, he’d found the elusive keys.
James slid the key in the ignition at last and cranked the engine. He drove out of the parking lot, leaving only a beam of light in his rear view mirror. He was still wrapped up in his thoughts. It seemed that tonight more than others he’d been unable to shake them. He began to wonder about the senselessness of life. If he was going to continue down this path and nothing was ever going to get better, what was the point?
It had been a terrible day. He reached up as he drove and flipped down the sun visor. A little picture fell out and he caught it in his fingertips before it fell to the floor. The picture was of his son, Thomas. Looking at the boy’s sweet face caused him to once again become overwhelmed with emotion.
“I love you son,” he said with a deep sob. “I miss you. Send me a sign...”
After a few seconds he sighed again, swallowed the tears that had begun to well back up and slipped the picture inside his jacket pocket.
********
Frank Lewis stood and watched as James sat alone in his car. Before the windows fogged up, he saw him throw back the flask and the
n beat the steering wheel with his fists. James was not doing well. Frank smiled. The only thing that made him happier than watching, causing or being a small part of a rich, uptight American’s misery was that final breath he got to watch them take, right before he killed them.
Frank turned and walked past the other black SUV that James had thought was his. He tossed the keys into the gutter and walked several blocks before he was picked up by one of his “colleagues.” As Frank slid into the red Camaro the other man asked,
“How’d it go?”
Frank nodded, “As planned. He was drunk and miserable when I left him.”
********
Still drunk, upset and lonely, James made it to the highway heading out to the John F. Kennedy airport. The road in front of him seemed to stretch out in an infinite line. It was poorly lit and there were few cars out tonight, probably because of the rain. The landscape was dotted with buildings and billboards, but because of the poor lighting, James couldn’t really see anything other than a few feet of black asphalt in front of him.
His thoughts continued to return to Thomas and he couldn’t help but wonder if Sarah had seen him. The loss of his wife had been devastating, but it was still a drop in the bucket compared to the emotional upheaval that the loss of Thomas had caused him. It tormented him night and day. At first, the alcohol helped. It numbed the feelings and took the sharp edges off of the memories. But the more used to the anesthetic his body and mind became, the less it worked its magic.
As much as James loved his son, and as much as he still held out hope that he’d see him again someday, he almost wished that he could forget that day two years ago when Thomas had disappeared. Instead, it was the clearest memory his mind held onto. It was there when he woke up and when he went to sleep, even when he finished off a bottle of bourbon. He truly knew what people meant now when they referred to a memory as “haunting.”
James, Sarah and Thomas had been living in Little Rock at the time. It was a peaceful little town with friendly people and good schools. It was the perfect place to raise a family…or so he and Sarah had thought. Not long before they’d lost Thomas, strange events had begun to take place in the town, causing panic and paranoia to run rampant amongst its normally contented residents.
James hadn’t been raised in a small town. He was well-educated and he had written off the ramblings of his neighbors as simply rumors fueled and spread about by uneducated people. The jest of their complaints was that they were being visited at night by a strange man, not once but several times. Some of the accounts told of the man sneaking into their children’s bedrooms. Although the inhabitants of the entire county were terrified by these stories, at that point, there was no concrete evidence to back up what they were saying. James was a facts kind of guy, so he chose not to concern himself with any of it. He had a career and a family to spend his time worrying about. He didn’t have the time to waste on fantasies.
Hindsight however was turning out to be a bitch. After Thomas was abducted, James and Sarah were relentlessly interrogated by the police. They thought the child was dead and that one of his parents had killed him. Luckily, the lead investigator was good enough at his job to realize that wasn’t the case and he ultimately linked Thomas’ disappearance with a child molestation case he was working on.
It was the largest case the county had ever been hit with. It happened at a local Children’s outdoor center where kids went for day camp and learning activities. At first, the perpetrator had begun taking only their backpacks…seemingly mesmerized by stealing and touching their things. As these things go, however that had escalated to molestations. Like the investigator, James was convinced that Thomas disappearing in the midst of all of that wasn’t a coincidence and the cases were linked somehow.
James was not only an intelligent man, and an excellent surgeon; he was also the son of one of the most brilliant detectives of the Paris Criminal Squad during the ‘50s. He’d listened to his father speak about cases for hours on end as he grew up. He was predisposed to weighing the facts and based on those facts, making assumptions. James thought about his father then. He missed him too. At the close of his career, his father was working a murder case. It was a strange case and one that local police had failed to gain any leads on. Unfortunately, his father was killed for his efforts and the case was never solved.
James finally made it to JFK. He pulled into the parking lot and parked in long term parking. Jumping out, he slammed the door and headed inside. His feet felt heavy and his legs wobbly. James was smart enough to know he was drunk, but he was stubborn enough to not admit it.
Once inside he began looking for the flight board to see if his flight was on time. The overhead announcements seemed louder than usual and James was tempted to yell,
“Shut-up!” at the top of his lungs at all of the loudly chattering people. He didn’t though. This one time today, good sense prevailed.
CHAPTER FOUR
“THE QUEST BEGINS”
A Bright, Majestic Mountainside
1991
Yann opened his eyes slowly. He’d heard a loud bang and his eyelids could feel the heavy light pressing against them. He sat up and looked around, everything was a little blurry and the blinding light made it almost impossible to adjust. He couldn’t tell where he was, but he suddenly knew who he was with. He felt a long, wet, rough tongue brush against his cheek once and then again. Ani’s black coat stood out brilliantly against the hot white of the light all around them.
Ani was running around in circles, taunting the boy, wanting him to get up. When Ani wanted something from Yann, he told him what he wanted with his eyes. They communicated that way, no words needed. It was mind to mind, or as Yann liked to think of it, soul to soul.
All animals communicate through telepathy. It is the most basic form of communication and an ability we are all born with. Unfortunately most humans learn to rely on verbal communication and telepathic skills get pushed to the far recesses of the brain, becoming inefficient over time; Descartes and Judo Christian changed everything.
Yann was different than your average human, and Ani had recognized that right away. His mind was wide open to the possibilities of magic and mystery and all of the things one couldn’t see or touch. When Yann asked Ani a question, in return he would receive pictures, feelings, words, thoughts and emotions, and the same were true in reverse. It was a much more effective way of communication than the verbal route, giving the boy and his dog a virtually unbreakable connection.
Yann laughed, the message from Ani received loud and clear.
“Okay Ani, I’m getting up,” he said. Stretching his arms and twisting his torso he finally pushed himself up with his arms. “Where are we? I feel like we have traveled. It’s a really strange sensation, don’t you think?” Ani was watching Yann’s eyes, listening to his friend. When Yann finished speaking, Ani spoke back to Yann through his own eyes.
“You don’t know either, boy? I’m sure I’ve never seen this place before.” It seemed like a nice place, quiet and calm. There were no other people, or dogs or cars or buildings around. It was like they’d just been dropped onto a beautiful mountainside. The sky was a brilliant cobalt blue and the sun was the source of the blinding light that had been burning Yann’s eyes. The trees, the meadows and the sky were completely different from anything Yann had ever known, he was sure of it. The light here was also much more brilliant. This place possessed a beauty beyond any comparison with anything he could draw a memory of. Once his eyes finally adjusted to the dazzling light, he enjoyed basking in its comfortable rays. The perfectly fluffy white clouds floated slowly across above their heads and as Yann watched them a flock of gulls appeared off in the distance, flying in perfect formation.
Yann reached down and pet Ani softly on his head.
“Maybe we’re on an expedition to discover a new land,” he told Ani. Ani seemed to be happy with that theory. The two best friends began to walk forward, hoping to discover where they were. The c
ool soft breeze felt wonderful on Yann’s face. Ani walked with his tongue out to the side and his mouth cracked open. It was his smile face.
The hill sloped gently upward and they followed it that way. They were surrounded by nature and both Yann and Ani were enjoying the sights and smells of it. They were encircled by a lush meadow and a forest of trees stretched out behind that. Yann was surveying the scene when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
“Do you see it Ani?”
The dog had been watching Yann’s eyes but now turned towards where the boy was looking. There, he could see a huge, gray geometric shape jutting out above the line of the horizon. It looked odd there, and both Yann and Ani wondered about it. But the oddest thing wasn’t that it was stuck here amidst all of this natural beauty. The oddest thing was the blue light that radiated from its surface. Neither of them could think of any logical explanation for either the structure’s presence, or the light.
They continued to follow the gentle slope of the hill. It became steeper as they went and they found themselves surrounded by an opulent field of green and yellow grass that danced softly around them in the wind. Yann watched in delight as the soft ripples transformed into waves and the field began to look like a deep, green ocean. Yann reached down and picked up his canine companion. Holding him in his arms, against the backdrop of the brilliant blue of the sky they began to dance. Both of their faces radiated with warmth and happiness and they swayed along with the motion of the grass.
