by L.C. Barlow
* * *
Five days later and at the appointed time - about an hour and a half before we set out for the Havingers' farm - I watched Alex clean the hand. It surprised me just how together the skin and tissue was, despite the fact it looked like it had been inserted into a shredder and ripped back out. Of course, the doctors had done their best to save it; it was now our turn to bury it.
The smell was terrible and amazing. Nothing hits the nose like decay. It was such a full and pungent stink - the smell of the living amplified and perverted. There's not much like it.
The hand itself was black in places. The nails particularly interested me, because they had been cut through, but still shone bright with pink fingernail polish.
Alex took the hand out of the box and put it on a cutting tray he had taken from the kitchen. He retrieved cotton swabs and alcohol from the bathroom and set them around the hand. He pushed blackened and dried skin down and pulled skin up to put it where it was supposed to be, and after he was done, he washed it with alcohol, blotted it with the cotton swabs. To finish, he wrapped it in Ace bandages. The hand looked quite normal when wrapped, like it could still be alive.
Cyrus presented to Alex an oak box with a green velvet lining. Alex put the hand in. Then, he led the way out to the garage, where we followed. Cyrus dumped the cutting board in a black garbage can as we left.
The car ride there was absolutely silent, and the darkling night on the empty roads leading out to land, pebbles, horses, and forests pervaded everything. Alex sat shotgun, and I sat behind Cyrus in the cool leather seats.
I always remember the drives with Cyrus as pleasant ones. The experiences and smells of wealth were calming. The sounds of it - its clinks and V12 engines and squeaky materials and deep bass - were cathartic. It was like all else could be washed away and everything could be material, even us.
When we got to the Havingers' house, Cyrus drove past its right side and deep into the land, until we arrived near a red barn. There, I could see two figures standing beneath the barn's front dim light. We exited the vehicle and walked to them, sliding in the gravel beneath our feet. It was Mr. Havinger and his wife, Evelyn.
"Thank you, Mr. Harper, for coming out to help us tonight," said Havinger. He had an extremely deep voice.
"It's no problem," said Cyrus.
Havinger was obviously taller than Cyrus, which means that he was taller than six foot three, but he was not as thin, and his stomach protruded over his silver buckled belt that shone in the dim light like a star. He was wearing a plaid, long-sleeved shirt and a baseball cap, but it was so dark that, apart from a few reds and yellows, I could not read the colors. The lines of his face were indivisible in the dark, but Evelyn was there beside him, and I could distinguish the bun on top of her head from the rest of the night.
She was wearing what appeared to be a cream or white dress. The moonlight resonated with it, and she looked like a ghost.
"So what can we do to help?" asked Havinger.
"You can show me where she was attacked," said Cyrus. He glanced at me and Alex. "And carry the shovels," he said to them.
"Righty-O," said Havinger. I watched them stroll with Alex to the trunk of Cyrus's black SUV, and I stood where I was, close to Evelyn.
While they were dragging out the tools, she said to me, "Your name is Jack, right?"
I nodded my head. "Yes."
"If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?"
"I'm ten," I replied.
"Ten. Wow. And you live with Cyrus?"
"Not all the time."
She paused and said, "And you're not his child, correct?"
"No," I said. "But Alex is."
"Oh. How interesting," she replied with a silky, low voice, and I peered at her in the dusky air. She stood beside me with her arms clasped in front of her. She was not a fat woman, not large, but full, and her breasts filled her dress so that there were no lines in the bust. I looked at her from head to toe and noticed she was wearing sneakers. I thought that was a strange mix.
"And what do you do for Cyrus, since you live with him, but aren't his?"
I didn't know what to say to this for a long time, but after a few seconds, right when she started her apology, I said, "I do things like this for him."
I looked towards the SUV, and the three figures of Cyrus, Alex, and Havinger were equidistant from each other. From what I could hear, it sounded like they were discussing the dog's attack.
"If you don't mind my asking," Evelyn said softly, "I just... Usually the members of the group don't ever get to actually talk with Cyrus. I'm just wondering, since you live with him, and know more about him, do you know... Is he capable of all they say he is?"
I thought this to be very interesting. Personally, I had always felt like an outsider in Cyrus's household, and at that age I had not yet considered the idea that there was yet another ring of the community that knew him even less.
I turned to her more fully. "What do they say?" I asked.
"Oh. Things," she said. "But people talk... and talk and talk. And some of it sounds ridiculous."
"Like what?"
"Well... some say that he can make people disappear into thin air. Others, I've heard, have been locked up with some sort of red box that turns them insane... Others have said they've seen the Devil in his house."
"The Devil?" I asked.
"Or a demon."
"Oh?" I thought back through all the corridors of the mansion, all the places I knew of, but had never explored. I shivered.
"Others have said that he makes brand new people appear from nowhere, but that they're not exactly people per se."
"What are they?"
"I don't know." She laughed. "I was hoping you could tell me. Have you seen any of those things? Do you know... is Cyrus immortal?"
It appeared to me then that the three figures standing near the SUV were starting to stroll deeper into the land, but I stood my ground for a second and legitimately considered Evelyn's question. Was Cyrus immortal? I wondered. And could he lend that immortality to others?
Cyrus called sharply in the night air for Evelyn and me to come along, and I yelled "Okay!" I turned to her.
"Mrs. Havinger," I said, "If you're wondering if Cyrus is capable of helping Lisa, there's no question. He drove out here for you. He wanted to. But as far as these other things people tell you about... I don't know. He keeps too many doors locked."
"Ah," Evelyn said, and she started to walk in the direction that Cyrus and the others went. I walked with her, side-by-side. "You're wrong about one thing. Cyrus doesn't do these things because he wants to. He might for you and Alex, but for us there's always another rationale. Always."
"What kind of rationale?" I asked. She never responded.
When we arrived at the spot where the attack had occurred, a few citronella torches were lit, arranged in a circle around where we stood. Alex set the box on the ground and took the spade and shovel from Mr. Havinger, like he had been told to do. He dug while we watched. Cyrus told the couple that this was to be Alex's job, and so they stood quietly and gazed intently, hands clasped together. I remember thinking to myself that they were most likely expecting magic to sprout from the land, maybe even a new hand.
Eventually, after about half an hour, Alex was done chipping at the earth, and he delicately positioned the wooden box inside the dark hole. He began scooping the dirt on top of it.
With Alex's third scoop, it was then that we heard it: a long and low howl. It was the sound of a dog or wolf. "What the fuck?" Alex said. Then, something hit me.
I landed hard on my back and heard a high pitched yell - Alex's. There was the sound of a scuffle, and when I managed to sit up, the scene had drastically changed.
Evelyn loomed over me with a shovel pointed at my chest. "Just sit there, Jack," she snarled, a monstrous face flickering in the night. "And no harm'll come to you." I heard a shout and looked past her. Cyrus was on the ground, sitting back on his heels. There was a
black ooze pouring from his forehead, across his face like an ebon rain. His hands were up in the air, palms facing forward, and above him towered Havinger with a pistol aimed at Cyrus's face.
Alex was laying on the ground as well, and Evelyn leapt to him, briskly swatted his arm with the shovel until he came and sat beside me. "Don't fucking move," she said to us. I nodded my head at her to show I understood.
"You got the kids together?" asked Havinger. His voice sounded even lower than before.
"Yeah," Evelyn said.
"What are you going to do with them?" asked Cyrus.
"Haven't decided yet," Havinger replied with a slow drawl. "But we know what we're going to do with you. Put your arms behind your back," he commanded.
"Dad?" Alex did not sound himself, and I looked to him, saw fear in his eyes that I had never before seen.
"Don't worry about this," Cyrus said, but he never removed his gaze from Havinger. He licked his lips quickly as he slowly brought his hands behind himself.
"Don't move," Havinger commanded Cyrus, "Or I'll blow your kid's fuckin' head off." He retrieved handcuffs from his back left pocket and knelt behind Cyrus in the dirt. I heard a series of quick clicks like a ratchet at work, then another set.
Havinger stood unsteadily close to the mound of dirt and returned to the front of Cyrus. He squatted to Cyrus's level.
"Cyrus, I'm going to kill you tonight. Right here. Right now. In front of your son and Alice's kid, and I think you know why."
"You are making a big mistake, Mike," Cyrus said, like they were having a simple argument over dinner.
"Fuck you. I'm doing what needs to be done. You have gotten away with too much. Fucking wives. Sacrificing children. Expecting more. Making us pay your way. It is over now. We don't need you in our lives."
"That's very interesting," Cyrus said. "Because I remember you needing me very much when you were caught violating that boy in Tucson years ago. And I was there for you. Wholly. What has changed, Mike? What happened to our very special agreement?"
Havinger threw a right hook at Cyrus's face and knocked him to the ground. Cyrus coughed in the dirt.
Mike reached his big claw down and jerked him back up to sitting. Cyrus's head lolled, but then he shook it violently and looked at Mike with glittering eyes.
"You don't get to own me and my family forever!" Mike yelled.
"Then don't agree to it for fucking forever! And don't expect people to bail you out of shit for free that you deserve to pay for with your own damned blood in the first place!"
Mike grabbed Cyrus's shirt and brought their faces a breath apart. "I didn't even know if my own daughter was mine for months! Months, Cyrus!"
"Mike," Cyrus coughed. "I don't give a shit. You don't even deserve a child after what you've done. She should've been mine. You shouldn't even be alive. This is mercy. All of this is mercy."
Havinger stood up, and he slid something that reflected the flames onto the backs of his fingers. "You're dead," he said. "What you say... they're words from a fucking corpse."
Without waiting for a response, Havinger hit Cyrus in the mouth and blood flowed from Cyrus's lips, dripping down his chin and neck, into his shirt. It mixed with the blood from his head on the left side of his face. Then, Havinger hit him again in the stomach, the arm. He kicked him with his pointed black boot while Cyrus was down. An animal-like wail sprung in Cyrus's throat, and when I heard it, I could feel it coil in mine.
I looked up at Evelyn who was standing next to us with the shovel. Her eyes were fastened to Harvinger and Cyrus. I looked to Alex. He was weeping, saying softly to himself, "No no no no," again and again, and he stared at the ground.
That was when I felt in the back of my jeans for the .38 - my only .38 - the one Roland gave me. I brought it out calmly and quickly and stood to my feet. Evelyn didn't even notice me for the first few seconds. I knew she wouldn't, for the scene in front of us had captured her.
The next few seconds were the easiest in the world. It was like riding a bike downhill. I walked up behind Havinger, whose back was to me as he kneeled on the ground. He was hitting Cyrus with alternating punches.
I watched his fists fly as if in slow motion, taking one step with each punch. Left. Right. Left. Right. In no amount of time, I had the gun to Havinger's head, almost touching the base, where the skull protrudes. I rapidly squatted to aim right, so that the bullet would not pass through Havinger and into Cyrus, and I pulled the trigger.
BOOM! The sound surprised me. It was like there was a cannon in my hand, not a gun. Then, I could only hear ringing. Havinger's body fell upon Cyrus like a door unhinged. I never even touched him.
"No!" Evelyn's high-pitched scream stabbed its way through the bells in my ears, and when I looked to where she had been, I saw the tip of the shovel flying at me.
I shifted my body to the right, and it slid against my back with enough force to knock me over. On my knees and hand, I raised the gun, and I shot her twice in the stomach and chest. She fell forward, face down in the dirt, and didn't move.
I stood, walked to where Evelyn lay, and shot her in the head to make sure. Then, it was just silence and calm. I breathed in, tasted sweet on the back of my throat from the fired gun, and noticed the wind for the first time that night.
I looked at Alex and said, "Help me," as I motioned to where Havinger's body lay atop Cyrus. He did.
It took both of us pushing hard and Cyrus's squirms to get Havinger's large form to roll off of him. When we finished, Cyrus huffed ragged breaths, saying, "Find the key."
Alex removed his jacket and wiped away some of the blood on Cyrus's face, while I searched through the fresh corpse's blue jean pockets, then his shirt pockets, then finally his shoes, until I discovered what I needed beneath his left sole insert. "Found a key," I told Cyrus, and I gripped it in my hand tightly so I wouldn't drop it in the dark.
"Good," he said. His face was only smeared with blood now, and Alex was pressing his jacket against Cyrus's head wound.
I crawled behind Cyrus and tried the key in the lock. It turned, and the cuff came free. Cyrus brought his hands to the front of himself. "Give me the key," he said. I handed it to him. He undid the other cuff and stood.
For a long while, he was silent. He looked at Mike and Evelyn, his long jacket flapping in the wind, and he surveyed us and the land as though a man just waking from a baptism. He looked calm, and in the profile of his face his eye looked both furious and blank. The smeared blood on his face reminded me of an animal with splotches of black fur amidst white.
I opened my revolver and went to dump the shells, but thought better of it, left them in, and put the gun in its place in the back of my jeans.
"Get in the car," Cyrus said, and he walked outside the circle of torches. Alex and I followed, running quickly to keep up, and when we reached the vehicle, Alex did not climb into the front seat with Cyrus. I did.
I thought Cyrus might drive us back to the road, but he did not, instead turning his SUV towards the house less than a mile from the barn. He didn't say anything, and had it not been for the cool calm that came over me while shooting Havinger and Evelyn, he would have frightened me. I could not tell just what he was anymore.
While Cyrus was driving, his speed hit fifty miles an hour on the dirt road, and Alex and I were rocked in our seats so that I was forced to find my seatbelt. I peeked at Cyrus's bloody face, and his eyes were furrowed, his lips pulled back in what could have been a snarl.
Then suddenly we were at the Havingers' house, and Cyrus reached into the box between the driver and passenger seat. He retrieved two pistols. Without a word, he opened the car door, exited, and marched to the back door of the house. In the headlights of the car, I saw him turn the handle and open the door, and then the bright gleaming lights of the indoors were cast upon him. The black on his face shined bright red, and he stepped forward. The door shut once he entered.
I looked behind myself at Alex, and he shook his head.
I
stepped out of the car. Alex emulated me, and we approached the house slowly, but stopped when a scream hit our ears like a hammer. It sounded like Cyrus was yelling, and along with him, there were high-pitched noises. Both these roars and screams seemed to dart all over the house, so that I looked at all the windows, upstairs, downstairs, and could not decide from where they were coming.
What followed was the pinpoint sound of a few gun shots. Minutes later, there were more blasts, and I saw in one of the windows Cyrus's form dart past.
Then, finally, when I began to question if I should investigate, Cyrus opened the house's back door so hard it slammed the side, and both Alex and I jumped, electrocuted by the sound. In seconds, we were all back in the car and on the main road. Cyrus handed me the guns.
When we returned to the house and stepped in the blue velveteen room, Roland asked from the soft orange and silver divan, "So how did it go, boss man?" and Cyrus never responded. Instead, he retrieved his cell phone and started making calls.
The time was ten fifteen, and for the next forty-five minutes, men began to trickle into the house, entering the large room where we were.
By eleven o'clock, I counted twenty of them - some of whom I had seen once or twice before, some of whom I had never known existed. I was amazed at the quickness in which they came. Many of them talked with Cyrus, and many of them looked at me, but only when they believed I didn't see.
Roland asked me while Cyrus was making calls, "What happened?" I enlightened him. He didn't respond, except to grab a soft white blanket and wrap it around me, and then he found one for Alex and left for the kitchen. When he returned, he had glasses of hot chocolate and food. I gobbled everything down, only then realizing the reparative powers of sugar. I sat and stared while the men filed in.
Cyrus had yet to clean his face, and he looked like a demon in daylight.
"Things are going to need to fucking change around here," he said. He had acquired a glass of liquor and held it in his hand, while he sat on the solid oak table with his legs crossed. He swung his left arm out while he talked, as though he was a happy drunk, but there was fury in his eyes and in the sway in his tone of voice.
"From now on, the twenty of you live in this house, and, except for certain occasions, wherever I go, three of you will.
"Tonight, as you now know, the Havingers tried to kill me. Mike put a gun to my head and proceeded to try to beat me to death. But could he do it?" He shook his head. "No. He could not. Because something wouldn't let him, as it always does. And tonight, that something took the form of Jack." He turned to me and pointed. "A ten year old child," he said to them.
He looked to me with a smile and a tiny sliver of vulnerability in his eyes. He raised his glass towards me. "Thank you," he said, and he took a drink. I looked round at all the other men in the room, and they nodded their heads to me one by one. Cyrus turned back to them.
"So, in case there are those of you who doubted me, or were even perhaps in on what happened tonight, here you have it. It doesn't matter if it's even a fucking child, something will defend me, and you will lose. Always." Cyrus finished his drink.
He twisted his head to the side, looked at his empty glass, slammed it down, and said, "I would also like to mention that I talked to Lisa before I, well, shot her in the head, and it appears as though Mike and Evelyn cut off their own daughter's arm to trick me. Their own daughter." He winced.
"They cut her arm off to appear as though they genuinely needed my help." He looked at the men around him. "Let this be a lesson to you. When you harm your own," he turned to Alex, "you're done for."
Cyrus was silent for a moment, and his head sunk low. Quietly, as though speaking to himself, he said, "But the arm did grow back... what a waste."
As though suddenly stabbed with adrenaline, he hopped off the table. "Alright, boys, you know what to do. Get the quick lime, and get the bodies. You ten... you clean up. And don't worry. Whatever is on my side is on yours, as long as you're on mine. And we are on the same side, aren't we?" He smiled and laughed. "The best in the goddamn world, right?" He laughed again.
"Yes sir," said one man, and the others gave their vocal assent.
Cyrus stopped laughing. "No, wait, wait. I want the Havingers' heads. Chop off their heads and arrange them in a semi-circle on pikes in the east basement. Do that for me, won't you Eldrid? Charles?" A few of the men shook their heads.
"Good," said Cyrus. He looked at the grandfather clock. "I want this finished by daybreak."
The men nodded and spoke quickly, filing out of the room. Finally, it was just Cyrus and Alex and Roland and me.
Roland filled Cyrus's glass, and he drank it completely down. Roland filled it again. "How are you doing, Jack?" Cyrus asked.
"I'm fine, Cyrus," I said. "I'm glad you're okay."
Cyrus came and sat beside me, held me close, and he pulled Alex to him.
Roland said softly, "Would you like anything, Cyrus?" Cyrus swung his head round on the back of the divan and said, "Yes, Roland. Could you dim the lights? Put on a little music?"
"I can do that." Soon there was just the light of the fire on the walls, and that reminded me of the torches in the dirt on the farm. Seeing Cyrus in that flickering light reminded me of how close he had been to death that day, how I had killed two people that Cyrus would not bring back. Not ever.
I remarked that I felt nothing, and I wondered if this was different than it was supposed to be.
Cyrus said to Roland who had claimed a chair across from us, "If they had killed me, Roland... I know they can't, but if they had, they would have taken Alex and Jack."
"No sir, they wouldn't've. I would have made sure of that."
"What could you have done?" Cyrus took a long swallow from his glass with the arm that was holding me. "I need... we need more power."
Roland smiled. "I would have driven to that farm and tore those people to shreds. Alex and Jack would have come back. No worries there."
"Don't you think they would have thought of that? Don't you think they would have packed already, loaded the cars, and that the daughters and sons were waiting for them to come home so they could leave?"
Roland laughed a low, jazzy laugh. "It takes a lot more than simply running to stop me."
Cyrus nodded his head. "I'll give you that. ...Do you think anybody else was helping them?"
"No. No, I figure that if there were others, they would have been there tonight to help partake in beating you to death. Nobody could resist getting a chance to hurt you if they really wanted it."
Cyrus chuckled quietly. "I think Jack has become one of my most trusted advisors, Roland." I looked up to him, and he smiled. I could smell the sweet alcohol and blood in his breath.
"Yessir," said Roland. "But I could have told you that from the beginning."
Cyrus furrowed his eyebrows and asked me, "Jack, do you still have that gun?"
"Yes," I said, and I retrieved the uncomfortable metal from behind me. I handed it to Cyrus, and he handed it to Roland. Roland twisted it round in his hand and smirked thoughtfully.
"God made all men, but Smith and Wesson made them equal," Cyrus said, and then he started to hum. "Hmm.. hmm.. hmmhmmhmm." He went in time with the music - a soft piano piece that made me feel as though the night was finally drawing to a close. Cyrus's voice became softer and softer, and the reverberations in his throat seemed to travel down his arm, so that I felt them resonate in his whole being as I settled more comfortably against him and closed my eyes.
"Better," he said in a whisper, "Stronger. That's what we have to be. Even if it kills us." Then he chuckled again as though finding one of his thoughts extremely entertaining, and he continued to drink and hum.
I nestled still further beneath his wing, and without a second thought, I slept.
