Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  “So, my brother—the one I’ve never met and wasn’t even aware existed until this morning—and I are similarly polarized psychic magnets. We can’t coexist in the same space.”

  “That was the theory your father and I were working with, a theory backed up by centuries of real-world history. That was why we knew we had to surrender the two of you for adoption. We had literally no choice.”

  “But why do it illegally?”

  “Because it was the only way to ensure the two of you would end up in different areas of the country, thousands of miles apart. We never knew where either of you went after leaving our house that horrible night—that was part of the agreement—but we were promised you would be separated by a minimum of one thousand miles, so the odds of you ever settling down close enough to each other to put you at risk were infinitesimal.”

  The conversation dragged to a halt, three people lost in their own thoughts. Cait felt overwhelmed, like she had been exposed to Einstein’s theory of relativity in one grueling session and now had to figure out how to absorb and understand it. She glanced at Virginia Ayers, the mother she had spent a lifetime wondering about, and the woman appeared lost in a sea of regret. She also seemed to have aged appreciably during the conversation, which clearly had taken a heavy toll on her.

  Cait didn’t remember having sat back down and wondered how long ago that had happened. She lifted the ceramic cup to her lips automatically, more to occupy her time than because she was thirsty, and was surprised to discover the tea had grown stone cold.

  Virginia stood and bustled around the kitchen in a false display of energy. She lifted the teacups off the table and carried them to the sink, where she made a show of rinsing them out in one basin and dropping them in the other with a clatter.

  Cait realized the woman’s hospitality had reached its end as Virginia said, “Well then, I don’t believe I can be of any more help to you. I’ve answered all of your questions and undoubtedly raised many more in your mind. Unfortunately, the questions you are left with are ones you will have to puzzle out for yourself.”

  Cait and Kevin stood and began walking down the short hallway toward the front door. She grabbed his arm and held on tightly as he punched the cab company’s number into his cell phone. They reached the door and turned around to discover Virginia Ayers had followed and was now standing right behind them.

  “I have just one more question,” Cait said.

  Virginia said nothing so she continued. “How did you know when we showed up here today that I was the twin that had been blessed with the good polarity and not the evil?”

  Virginia laughed out loud, despite appearing ready to break out in tears. Her eyes watered and she blinked hard. “It’s as plain as day, sweetheart. Your goodness is written all over your face. I could see it the moment I laid eyes on you. You are no more capable of evil than I am of running the Boston Marathon.”

  Cait had no idea how to respond, so she took half a step forward and wrapped her arms around her mother’s frail body, holding on tightly and squeezing until she was afraid one of the older woman’s ribs might snap.

  After a second’s hesitation, the hug was returned fiercely and in that moment Cait knew everything she had learned today was true. This was a woman who had torn her family apart and lived with an overwhelming sense of sadness and regret every day for the past thirty years, but she had done it to preserve the lives of her two children the only way she could think of. She had sacrificed everything for two people she barely knew.

  As she pulled away after an instant and a lifetime, Cait realized she was crying soundlessly, tears running down her face. She looked up at Kevin and he was crying as well. So was Virginia.

  “Well,” she said with an awkward laugh. “Aren’t we a cheerful bunch.”

  They opened the door and walked onto the tiny front landing. The door closed behind them and through the screen Virginia sniffled and said, “I have one request before you go.”

  “Anything,” Cait said.

  “You see this number?” she asked, pointing at a tarnished, brass-plated “7” screwed into the faded vinyl siding next to the front door.

  “Of course, it’s the address of your home—Seven Granite Circle.”

  “That’s right,” Virginia answered. “Now please forget you ever saw it. Forget you were here and don’t ever come back. I don’t think I could survive if I had to go through this again.”

  Cait opened her mouth to reply, with no idea what words might come out. Her face flushed and tears filled her eyes again and before she could say anything, the storm door closed and she was left listening to the sound of her mother’s footsteps moving slowly down the hallway. They faded and then disappeared. She looked at Kevin in utter brokenhearted bewilderment as their taxi pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway.

  22

  The amount of blood that could spill out of a relatively small injury was impressive, Milo thought. He had seen it before, but it never ceased to amaze him. He stood next to his homemade torture chair watching Rae Ann squirm and cry and beg for mercy into her duct-tape gag. Her words were indistinguishable, of course, but their intent was clear, as was the desperation behind them.

  Just for fun, Milo had taken his pliers and smacked their heavy metal jaws against the backs of the fingertips on her right hand, where the nails would be if she still had any. The freshly crusted scabs had broken open immediately, and the blood once again began to flow, dripping in thick globs off her hand.

  Each time he introduced himself to a new girl, he celebrated the occasion by using a fresh tarp, unstained by the blood and bodily fluids of another. It was an expense he couldn’t really afford, but certain rituals demanded observance and this was one of them.

  He watched the small dark maroon rivulets spread slowly across the clear plastic and contemplated his next move. Breaking fingers and tearing off nails was enjoyable—he could do it all day long and on more than one memorable occasion had done exactly that—but he felt in this case it was time to move on. There were incisions to be made, flesh to be torn, impromptu surgeries to be performed on his cute little friend, and it would be nice to accomplish some of those things before she was so far gone from the pain she was unable to participate satisfactorily in the process.

  Removing one of her pert little breasts might be nice. It would be a relatively simple procedure, not terribly time-consuming either, and would allow him to get his feet wet, so to speak, before moving on to more complex surgeries either tonight or tomorrow.

  Rae Ann whimpered quietly, still recovering from the most recent explosion of pain in her mangled fingers, and she watched him with fearful eyes as he wandered into the kitchen to retrieve his surgical supplies. It was almost as if she could read his thoughts. Or maybe she had already reached the conclusion that all of his guests eventually tumbled to: Milo Cain was one crazy motherfucker, not to be trusted, and it behooved you to keep a close eye on him at all times.

  Whatever the reason, her eyes were still trained on the kitchen door when he returned, clutching his supplies. He had assumed she would fail to immediately grasp the significance of the tools he was holding, but he was wrong. The moment he reentered the living room she began the now-familiar process of thrashing in her chair, straining against her duct-tape bindings and screaming—if it could be called that—into her gag.

  Milo was impressed. This girl was sharp, especially for someone who made a living selling her body to strangers. He almost wished he could get to know her better before killing her and dumping her body, but realistically, knew that would not happen. Impulse control had never been one of his strong points, especially where his unique hobbies were concerned. His enjoyment of Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker would proceed at its own pace, more or less regardless of his intentions.

  He had crossed roughly half the distance from the kitchen to her chair when another intense vision, similar to the one he had experienced earlier this morning, crashed into his head with a vengeance, wa
lloping him like a baseball bat to the skull. He crumpled to his knees, this time managing to avoid smacking his forehead on the wooden chair. His surgical supplies—knives, bandages, more pliers, clamps—fell from his hands, scattering around him like snowflakes during the first winter storm.

  Milo’s eyelids blinked rapidly as he struggled to maintain consciousness, the vision pounding in his brain. In it were the same group of three people he had observed earlier, except now they stood clustered at a doorway, presumably the front door of the same house. The two younger people—probably a couple but it was impossible to say for sure—were outside the house standing on the landing, while the older woman, the one who had done most of the talking in the first vision, remained inside in the foyer, speaking to them through the screen door.

  And once again his attention was drawn to the younger woman like metal to a magnet. Now that she was standing, he could see her more clearly and, as he had thought earlier, she was breathtakingly beautiful. Milo Cain had a keen eye for the female form and even in this moment of pain and confusion, could not help but admire the young woman’s physical gifts.

  But despite her beauty, or perhaps partially because of it, he hated her. As with the first vision, the very sight of the woman caused an instant, visceral rage to well up inside him, a pulsing to begin behind his eyeballs, a feeling like his optic nerve was going to explode, which of course was ridiculous because he wasn’t really “seeing” her, at least not with his eyes. A blood-red shadow seemed to outline her form as she stood on the landing, a development new to this vision and one that did not extend to the other two people in it.

  Milo watched her and hated her. The animosity he felt toward this young woman he had never met was far beyond anything he had ever experienced. He wanted to reach through his brain, fasten his hands around her pretty neck, and choke her and slam her to the ground. Then he would kick her and stab her and slice her, do the sorts of things he had planned for Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker, only in the case of this unknown woman it would not be to achieve any kind of satisfaction, sexual or otherwise; it would be for one purpose only: to destroy her, to tear her apart and stomp on her and crush her delicate bones and watch her blood spurt and her flesh rip, to turn her into a rotting dead shell of a human being and then spit on the carcass.

  He watched closely—not that he had a choice—as the trio interacted. He forced himself to bring his roiling emotions under control, at least enough to pay attention to the conversation. It was as if he was standing on the stoop next to the young couple, inches away from them, but completely invisible to them. He was close enough that had he actually been there in a physical sense, he could have reached out and begun strangling the girl at whom all his hate was directed without even fully extending his arms.

  But of course he wasn’t there physically, so he watched and listened, drinking it all in, already having come to the conclusion he would not rest until he had hunted this girl down and snuffed the life out of her, and in the most painful manner possible. Somewhere in the back of Milo Cain’s racing mind—he kneeled unmoving on the filthy floor of his shabby hovel, eyes glazed over, tongue lolling, drool oozing from the side of his mouth, yet he had never felt so alert, so alive in his entire life—he wondered why this beautiful woman he had never met generated such incredible animosity inside him. But it was a detached curiosity, similar to how a scientist might wonder as he performed experiments on an animal how much pain he was causing: the question was there, but the answer didn’t really matter.

  Milo observed the conversation with rapt fascination. None of the people were happy, that much was clear immediately. A sense of despair enveloped the older woman like a cloak, like she had been living with whatever heartbreak was eating away at her for so long it was second nature, like she would not know how to get through her daily routine without it.

  The man seemed agitated. It appeared he wanted to protect the young woman from something that he knew was bothering her but had no clue how to do so.

  But the young woman was without a doubt the most miserable of the strange trio, and it seemed to Milo that he wouldn’t have needed any strange psychic ability to sense it. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying and her face was bloated and puffy and she seemed unable to stand still.

  Good, Milo thought. Serves you right, you stupid fucking little whore. Wait until I get ahold of you, then you’ll find out what it really means to cry.

  He tamped down on his once-again rising tide of anger and forced himself to pay attention. Whatever drama was playing out here seemed to be drawing to a close. The older woman was talking, albeit reluctantly. In a voice choked with emotion she said, “You see this number?” She pointed next to the door.

  “Of course, it’s the address of your home—7 Granite Circle.”

  “That’s right. Now please forget you ever saw it. Forget you were here and don’t ever come back. I don’t think I could handle it again.”

  The young woman looked like she had been kicked in the teeth by a mule and Milo felt a sense of vicious satisfaction spread through his body. Yes, he thought. Give it to her good, make her suffer! Get her ready for me!

  And then, as quickly as it had thundered into his head, the vision disappeared and the three people vanished. His eyes cleared and he found himself back in his ratty condemned tenement, crouched on the dirty floor three feet from the torture chair, Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker watching him closely, a mixture of fear and curiosity in her eyes. He wiped the drool off his cheek absently with the back of his hand, lost in thought.

  7 Granite Circle.

  Interesting.

  He had no idea in what city or town 7 Granite Circle might be located, but that minor point didn’t concern him. Milo Cain was nothing if not resourceful. He searched around on the floor until finding a scrap of thin cardboard, a packaging insert for the chocolate snack cakes that so often made up his dinner. Grease and stale chocolate cake crumbs crusted one side of the cardboard, but the other side seemed relatively dirt-free.

  He rose to his feet and wandered into the barren kitchen and rooted around in a drawer, eventually locating a pen. He jotted the address down on the clean side of the paper. It seemed important and he didn’t want to forget it.

  Then Milo returned to the living room and began gathering his surgical supplies off the floor, his interest in Rae Ann waning, his mind on other things.

  23

  “What the heck was that all about?” Kevin shook his head in bewilderment inside the dirty yellow taxi as they braced for another thrill ride back to their hotel. “Is it just me or does it feel like we just spent the last two hours inside some bizarre LSD trip?”

  Cait was silent for a long time, her head turned away from Kevin as she watched the traffic roll by. Finally she said, “Do you think she really meant what she said about never coming back? Could it really be possible that I’ve finally found my mother after thirty years, only to lose her again forever?”

  “Try to look at it from her point of view for a minute,” Kevin said. “For the last three decades she has dealt with what was obviously a very traumatic event—giving her children up in an illegal adoption just hours after their birth—by pushing the painful memories away and locking them up in some rarely visited corner of her brain. When we showed up on her doorstep today, those feelings of guilt and loss came rushing back.”

  “But still,” Cait persisted. “How can I simply forget my mother when it took so long just to find her?”

  “You can’t force yourself upon her, and if what she truly wants is to be left alone, you’re going to have to respect those wishes. But that might not necessarily be the case. Maybe what she needs right now is some time to absorb this new reality, where she suddenly has the potential for a relationship with her daughter. Maybe after a few weeks or months she’ll be able to open herself up to that reality.”

  The cab driver made a quick lane-change, accelerating past a slow-moving produce truck and then cutting the wheel sharply
back to the right. The car crowded into the nearly nonexistent space inches in front of the truck’s bumper. The momentum pushed Cait against her seat belt. She unsnapped the buckle and slid over, leaning into Kevin’s bulky body. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “And that’s another thing,” she continued as the cab rocked on its springs. “I have a brother! Not just a brother, but a twin brother! How am I going to go about finding him?”

  “Well,” Kevin answered. “We can go back to Arlen Hirschberg in Tampa. He’s a little pricey, but he was able to locate your birth mother quickly and without too much trouble. He can probably do the same thing for your brother. The problem is…”

  “I know,” Cait said. “Bad things will happen if the two of us get together. Are you really buying that mumbo-jumbo? Does it make any sense to you?”

  “It’s more than just a question of ‘bad things happening,’” Kevin said firmly. “You heard your mother. Bad things will happen to you. Really bad things, like you getting killed.”

  Cait waved her hand as if shooing away a pesky mosquito and Kevin said, “No, no, you’re not allowed to disregard what she said just because you don’t like it or it’s inconvenient for you. You know me, I’m naturally skeptical. Suspicious, even. All cops are. But this woman knew, before you ever brought it up, about your Flickers. She described them perfectly, even admitting to possessing exactly the same ability.

  “That being the case,” he continued, “I think we have to give credence to what she said about how much danger you would be in if you found your brother. We may not understand what’s going on yet, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore your mother’s concerns.”

  “But none of it makes any sense. Why would twins, each of whom have inherited the same unusual genetic ability, be somehow incompatible based solely upon their geographic proximity to each other?”