by Ninie Hammon
Then she noticed a post-it note near the top, stuck there with a smiley-face magnet. She took it down and read it. “Pick up shoes Friday before 5.” Bishop’s handwriting. She held the note tenderly, wondering if she had the heart to go into the repair shop her own self and pick up shoes for a man who wasn’t never going to wear them, a man who was…
Killed by a demon.
And Jack sent that monster screaming back down into the bowels of hell where it belonged. She wondered if Bishop had recognized Jack when he spotted him crouched out in the hallway that morning. Reckon Bishop knew it was Jack gonna kill that bad man and save them children? She hoped so and she smiled a little at the thought. ’Course Jack didn’t recognize Bishop. He didn’t recognize her either, and neither did Daniel. But they would—soon. It was coming back to them. It wasn’t no accident they was thrown together like this. There was a plan at work, one she had better sense than to try to figure out.
But apparently, that plan didn’t include Bishop.
She started up the stairs to the silent bedroom where she’d finally given herself up to tears last night, alone in that empty bed, cryin’ for the man she needed to be there, sobbing so hard she finally exhausted herself and she fell asleep.
She set her purse on the bedroom dresser and wondered what Bishop would think of the man Jack Carpenter’d growed up to be. She didn’t feel the same…disillusionment with him she did with Daniel. Didn’t seem quite so bad to lose your faith altogether as it did to exchange it for a plastic imitation.
“Should I a’told them?” she asked out loud, not sure whether she was asking God or Bishop. “Should I have tried to prepare them for what’s out there sniffin’ around for ’em?”
She sat down on the side of the bed and began to take her shoes off, straining with the effort. Her size had sneaked up on her, getting a little bit bigger ever year. But she was feeling it now. Whatever was coming for them, she’d have to stand her ground and fight it head on because she was too fat anymore to run.
“I didn’t tell them ’cause I’m not sure, I mean maybe it’s not…it could be—” She stopped. Who’d she think she was fooling? “I didn’t tell them because I didn’t think they’s ready to hear it. They still can’t even say the word demon ’thout getting the willies. If I’s to tell them now what else they’s facing…”
She got her right shoe off and her left one loose enough that she could kick it off. It banged against the dresser and fell to the floor and she sat staring at it, physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted.
“I got to tell them soon, though,” she said under her breath.
Pretending a demon didn’t exist wouldn’t make it go away. Ignoring one was dangerous business, particularly one as big and powerful as this one.
“Maybe we’d ought to—” she caught herself talking to Bishop like he was right there and was gonna help her through this awful time. But Bishop was gone. Tomorrow they was going to put him in the ground and say nice things about him…and then walk away and leave him there.
She put her face in her hands then and the tears came.
CHAPTER 13
An awed hush bloomed after Jack pointed out to Daniel the big kid in the front row of the picture of the Little League team. It grew, swelled up too big for the room, was jammed so tight within the walls Jack felt pressure on his ears. But to open the door and let it out into the night was to condemn the whole world to silence.
Jack reached out and picked up the picture carefully, a tiny piece of the top right corner pinched between his fingertips. The two men got to their feet and stood together, looking at it in the glow of Jack’s flashlight.
“Let me see if I’m tracking here,” Daniel said. His voice sounded breathless, but it was steady and firm. “You and I and Jacob Dumas were on the same Little League team in 1985—right?”
“Pictures don’t lie.” Jack paused, then continued in a tone he hoped didn’t sound as eager—as desperate as he felt. “What can you tell me about that team? What kind of kid was Dumas…was I?”
Daniel turned from the picture toward Jack, his face all harsh lines and shadows in the glow of the flashlight.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
Jack felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. “Neither do I,” he said.
They both took a moment or two to absorb that.
“You grew up in Bradford’s Ridge?” Daniel asked. Jack nodded. “I don’t remember you.”
“I think you and I were friends,” Jack eased the words out into the space between them. “Not just friends, good friends, best friends. But I’m not sure.”
“We moved to Nashville right before school started in the fall,” Daniel said, “probably not long after this picture was taken. I graduated from high school there.”
“My father got drunk and drove his truck into a tree that summer—was in the hospital for months and I went to live with my grandmother in New York. Then he died; I never went back to Bradford’s Ridge.”
Silence pooled around them again. No matter how soft his voice, Jack’s words seemed over-loud in his own ears in the stillness. “All my childhood memories are…blurry, the images are vague, like I lived my whole life before I turned thirteen in a fog.”
Daniel shook his head. “You’ve pulled up to the wrong pump if you want to fill your tank with childhood recollections. Mine are lousy. People talk about what they did when they were kids and I can’t…I don’t…it’s like you described—a fog.”
Both men stood quiet for a moment before Jack laid his final card on the table.
“Daniel, I spent most of the day today creating a fuzzy, hazy timeline of growing up. I could come up with blurred scenes from my first day of kindergarten, the time I broke my arm when I was seven, making snow angels when I was nine with—I think it was you—and a little blonde girl. But no matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t…there was something odd about the summer of 1985—the summer this picture was taken. The memories aren’t just fuzzy, Daniel. They’re gone. I don’t remember you, the other guys, the team, the uniforms, practice, games—not one thing between the end of school in June, and when I visited my father in the hospital the last time before I left for New York in August. Not a normal just-can’t-remember void. It’s a big, blank, empty space, a nothing. Like it’d been…erased.”
Daniel looked deeply shaken. No, Daniel looked afraid.
“If you’re holding your breath for me to produce a list of my activities from the summer of 1985, you may proceed with your regularly scheduled respirations.” Daniel was obviously straining for levity but couldn’t pull it off. “A couple of years ago, we took Andi to the twelfth birthday party of a neighbor kid and Andi asked what I did the summer I was twelve. I couldn’t tell her a thing, not one thing. That freaked me out, so I got serious—looked up world events that happened that summer, songs that were popular, movies—anything to spark my memories. Nothing. It’s this weird, empty spot. Like I’m walking down a foggy road and it just ends. The bridge that’s supposed to be there in front of me has washed out. I can see the rest of the road, but there’s nothing but air between me and the other side.”
* * * * * * *
Emily went to the window in Andi’s hospital room to lower the blinds so the streetlight outside wouldn’t glare on the television screen.
Andi pointed to the cord in her mother’s hand and teased, “Ride the rope back up, Mommy.”
One of Andi’s favorite activities at church when she was younger was to “ride the bell rope.” A two-inch thick rope extended from the oversized bell in the church’s belfry to a small room off the sanctuary. Andi would stand on a chair beside the rope, waiting while Dan shook it free from the clasp high above. Then she’d leap out, grab the rope and her weight would pull it down until her feet were only inches off the floor. Then she’d ride the rope high into the air when the bell swung back. Back and forth like a seesaw. Andi would have rung the church’s bell for hours
if Dan had let her.
When Emily turned on the television, set high on the wall opposite Andi’s bed, the first image that appeared on the screen was the Dread Pirate Roberts hopping from one rock to another, in a sword fight with Inigo Montoya, who was looking for the six-fingered man to tell him “you keeled my father. Prepare to die.”
Andi literally squealed with delight. The Princess Bride was her all-time, forever-favorite movie. She had seen it so many times she could quote the dialogue along with the characters, but she never tired of it, begged to see it again and again.
Emily studied her daughter’s rapt face, lit by the flickering images on the screen, and felt that horrible tightness grip her chest, the terror she’d felt when the doctor said…
No! If she went there, if she let her mind travel down that dark road, she might start screaming and never stop. She tucked Andi’s brown curls behind her ears and asked if she wanted some juice. But neither her presence, nor her question ever got to the higher centers of her daughter’s brain. The child sat enchanted, mouthing the words along with the characters on the screen.
Then Emily’s phone chimed. It was an ordinary chime, not a special ring tone. But as soon as she heard the sound, she knew it was Jeff.
Her heart began to hammer in her chest. She turned from Andi to her purse on the bedside table, took out her phone and walked to the window with her back to Andi. Her hands were trembling when she touched the message icon and his words blinked alive on the screen.
“Em, are you all right? I’ve been so worried about you. I wanted to call, to come to the hospital, but—” The sentence ended there. Auto-correct must have eaten the final words. “Tell me how I can help you. Anything! It breaks my heart to know how much pain you’re in and I’m not there to hold you. What can I do?”
The words were suddenly blurry, swimming in the tears that had pooled in her eyes. Jeff! She had not given him a moment’s thought since…
She started to write a response, hesitated, then stood reading the words over and over. So worried about you…breaks my heart…there to hold you.
“Mommy, are you crying?”
And Emily realized she was. She wasn’t making a sound, but her shoulders were shaking so hard Andi could tell even from behind her. Emily punched the “off” button on her phone and put it in her purse, then drew in a deep breath and faced the child, a big smile draped across her face between tear-slathered cheeks.
“No, Honey, I was laughing—just trying to be quiet about it so I didn’t disturb your movie. Did you ever do that—laugh so hard it looked like crying?”
“Uh huh—when Donkey told Shrek, ‘I’ve got a dragon and I’m not afraid to use it,’” Andi said and giggled. “What was so funny?”
“You’re not old enough to understand.” Emily crossed the room and planted a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. Then she hugged her, held on fiercely for a moment. “Just a joke, Sweetheart, that’s all.” She drew in a shaky breath. “And the joke’s on Mommy.”
* * * * * * *
Daniel stared at the picture, tried to look through the blurred images to the reality captured there with dark and light, shadows and shade. No memory formed. Nothing. His mind turned, instead, to the first—actually the last—memory he had from his growing up years.
When Daniel slides into the front seat beside his father, he’s grateful for the rush of cold in the air-conditioned interior of the big sedan. He slams the door and shakes his head, tries to get his bearings. He feels…dopey. Kind of like he’s wrapped in cotton. Sounds seem to come from a long way off. There’s a gentle roaring in his ears, the way he feels when he has a fever.
But Daniel doesn’t realize something is wrong, seriously wrong, until his father asks the question.
“What’d you and Jack do today?”
Jack! He and Jack! There it was. A memory from his childhood that had Jack in it! But the boy who’d been asked the question couldn’t answer it.
Daniel doesn’t know what he and Jack had done! He doesn’t remember.
But that’s crazy. How could he possibly not remember what he did five minutes ago?
His heart begins to thump in his chest, pounding so hard he thinks you might be able to see the movement of his shirt. What’s wrong with him? His fear grows, balloons. Fear of this…not knowing…and fear of something else, too. Something…He doesn’t remember what!
His father isn’t looking at Daniel, but back over his left shoulder, checking for traffic before he pulls out onto the road in front of Jack’s house, so Daniel has a moment to compose himself.
“Oh, you know, the usual stuff,” Daniel says. He can hear a tremor in his voice, but apparently his father is too preoccupied to notice. Big surprise there.
“We shouldn’t be gone long,” his father continues, as if Daniel hasn’t said a word. “An hour and a half—two tops.”
His father babbles on about Daniel’s babysitting job at their rustic cabin high in the hills above Blue Ridge Lake, what a big deal it is that his parents trust him to take care of precious Marianne there all by himself while his father conducts an outdoor wedding on a houseboat in the marina below. Daniel barely hears him. He is concentrating, focusing his every mental faculty on remembering today—anything about today. Getting out of bed. Brushing his teeth. What did he eat? Anything!
But there is nothing in his head where the memories should be but…fog. Or smoke billowing off a campfire, thick and gray. Impenetrable. Worse, it seems to be spreading. It’s like it’s flowing out into his memory banks, blurring and obscuring everything it touches. Yesterday is…what did he do yesterday? And Monday? Marianne was playing in the sprinkler on Monday. He remembers unscrewing the hose from the sprinkler head and he sees himself putting his thumb over the nozzle and spraying the water into the air to fall on her like rain. Then he watches in horror as the fog rolls in, blotting out the back yard, Marianne’s shrieks of delight, flowing over him. Then all he sees is the fog. The memory—he had remembered something—but the memory is gone now.
Is he having a stroke? Does he have a brain tumor?
“Dad!” he cries, terrified. “I can’t remember…”
“Can’t remember what, son?”
“Sunday,” is all Daniel can force out through his lips.
“Sunday? Oh, I preached on the ten lepers that Jesus healed but only one came back to thank him. I said…”
Daniel scrambles backward in his mind, looking for something, anything—Christmas morning! Yes. The smell of the spruce tree. The sound of Marianne’s giggles as she rips off wrapping paper. His mother, taking pictures of Marianne from every possible angle, one after another. He remembers it all, crisp and clear—no fog! He grabs the memory and holds on with the fierceness of desperation, clasping it to him as if his life depends on it. Which, of course, it does.
“I grabbed hold of Christmas and held on,” Daniel said.
“What?”
“My father came to pick me up—at your house—when the memory of that summer…left, was wiped out—whatever. I was afraid I was losing all my memories—my whole mind!—so I concentrated on remembering Christmas.”
Jack made a humph sound in his throat. “At least you remember that much. I don’t even remember forgetting. Did it happen all at once? Do you remember anything else that happened that day?”
Daniel went rigid. Sudden horror stabbed a frozen ice pick into his belly. When he spoke, his voice sounded as hollow as the void of that summer in both their minds.
“I don’t want to talk about that day!”
Jack backed off. Neither man spoke again. Jack put the picture back in the box where he’d found it, then they turned without speaking and left the carriage house. Jack stuck the police tape back in place, and they walked in silence to the car. When they got in, Jack didn’t start the engine, merely stared sightlessly out over the steering wheel.
“Something’s all wrong here.” Jack’s voice was quiet.
“‘Industrial strength’ wro
ng?” Daniel asked. He knew, but didn’t know how he knew, that that was something Jack used to say when they were kids. Apparently Jack remembered, too, because a small smile skittered across his lips.
“Yeah. Wrong on steroids. I don’t know what it is.” Jack turned to face Daniel, a determined set to his jaw. “But I will find out. Trust me, I will find out.”
CHAPTER 14
“Give me a call if you find out anything else,” Jack said to the man on the other end of the line. Then he sat holding the receiver in his hand for a long time, staring. If he was thinking anything at all, he couldn’t have said what it was.
The hits just keep on comin’!
He slowly replaced the handset in the cradle and struggled to find some place to put what he’d just found out. But his mind had recently become the passport of a world traveler—so many stamps from so many different places, there was not a single empty spot to put anything new. Needed to order a new passport with additional blank pages and until it arrived, Jack would just have to stay home—get up in the morning, brush his teeth, burn his breakfast toast, pick up his laundry, go to a movie—Ok, so he never went to movies—get a little drunk—do life!
Shoot, even the crazy media attention for the last week was easier to take than this. Cameras snapping his picture, a microphone shoved in front of him every time he stepped out of the station. He’d suffered through dozens of inane questions with remarkable patience, he thought. All except the ones that contained the word “hero.”
“You want to meet a hero? I can introduce you to dozens of them—some of them are missing arms and legs, and all of them carry battle scars you can’t see. Combat soldiers are heroes. I was only doing my job.”
