by Egon Grimes
“Get in here, come on,” D’Souza said.
Throwing his arms in the air, Maurice followed the command. The captain gestured toward an empty seat. Maurice flopped down, his body vibrating and fidgeting with impatient anger.
“Now, just listen, you are taking a minimum of two weeks off, no arguments, and I want you to go talk to your doctor. You look like someone ate you up and then shat you out. Nobody here can begin to imagine your anguish, but you can’t be here. We don’t know where your head will be.”
“Bullshit,” Maurice muttered.
“Shut up, Detective Genner. This isn’t a discussion. Go home, take care of your family. Don’t argue, just go,” D’Souza said and then, seeing Maurice’s mouth opening to object, he added, “You look like you haven’t slept in a month. Take a pill, or better yet, get drunk, have a cry.”
—
He drove quickly. The streets had too many reminders of his daughters and if he thought of Ruby, he thought about Rosalind, and unfortunately, it didn’t work both ways. A young mother wheeled a long double carriage across the street. She was heavy into an Amy Tan paperback, ignoring her children while she read and walked.
Pay attention, love them.
Down a few blocks from the Genner home, rejuvenated, yet obviously aged, a mini mall offered doggie haircuts, the convenience of a 7-Eleven, a toy store for the kids, and a shady novelty shop of dark leanings for the local weirdos. A small line of children stood waiting for their turns on the mechanical animals outside the 7-Eleven. Rosalind had loved the elephants. Ruby preferred the ducks.
Like never before, the shady novelty shop stood out, a sign by the road boasted evening palm readings and séances. Maurice looked into the eye in the center of a palm painted onto the tinted glass. He thought about smashing it. A horn honked from behind him, he looked forward the light had switched to green. For a heartbeat, he considered getting out of his car and beating to death whoever honked, but instead hit the accelerator and continued home.
He had to park with the ass of the car overhanging the sidewalk. Edi had parked on a slight angle, blocking entry to the second half of the driveway. For a while, he sat wondering if the satisfaction would be worth the fallout, if he straightened out the little Accord with the bumper of his state issued, unmarked Challenger, what happened then? It wouldn’t take much pressure at all to slide the car sideways. The Challenger had reinforced bumpers and heavy wheels. He didn’t want to move it only an inch. He wanted to run it off his lane, set it on fire, fill it with plastic explosives rigged to blow once the stupid kook mouthpiece hit thirty miles an hour. That would end much of the talk of the afterlife and God.
End it in a goddamn jiffy.
The key clicked back. He walked up to the house. Since he and Rhoda put down the first payment, Maurice had big plans for the lawn while Rhoda manned the flowerbed. It was perfect, but under the new light, it was absolutely pointless, a waste of time he could’ve spent with Rosalind. That time wasted almost suffocated him.
Ruby sat on the couch watching Dora. Maurice took the remote, switched off the program, and sat next to his daughter.
“I was watching that,” Ruby said.
“I’m sorry I got so worked up this morning. I miss your sister,” Maurice said with difficulty, the fury inside him was ready to boil over.
“It’s all right, Daddy, we’ll see her again, she is in heaven with Grandpa.”
Maurice stood, feeling worse than when he came in. He stormed into the kitchen, Rhoda sat sobbing, again, and Edi cradled her head against her shoulder. Rhoda lifted her head and made a point to show that she didn’t want to look at him, her eyes focussed on a vacant spot of the linoleum flooring.
Edi smiled at Maurice. He reached over, took her head in his hand like a cantaloupe, and began to slam her face into the corner of the table. Blood spurted from the wound like a foundation crack in a monsoon. The old woman’s dentures fell to the floor, breaking into a dozen pieces. Under his strength, Maurice felt her feeble attempts to resist the next strikes, fuelling him to continue the pounding. Eventually she stopped fighting it, a puddle of red swelled, and a smile grew over his lips.
“Are you doing all right Maurice?” Edi asked. “Think of something funny?”
Maurice blinked and his fantasy washed away. “Fine.” He walked out to the backyard and sat in his canvas recliner. The sun beat down on his face, but he didn’t notice. His exhaustion rendered his body virtually inutile, but a racing mind kept him awake. No matter what he did, sleep refused to visit, and he replayed the five years of his daughter’s life over and over, fast forwarding over the good times, slowing during the bad. His brain, piling it on.
4
Rain pelted the hot, dirty sidewalk. Cracks made way for murky streams to swell into puddles until they overflowed and continued onto new planes. Sweltering air rode low and thick, promising a storm. The Bantam Family Circus would have to close up early, no matter what. The crowds weren’t like they used to be. Nobody cared to see a woman who could grow a beard, or man with flesh of scales who ate glass, or a two headed goat. As the world connected virtually, so did the ease with which the regular looky-loo found horrors.
The Bantam Family Circus did all right once they instilled the use of rides and purchased some exotic animals from some shady channels, but it wasn’t as it was in the old days, the better days. The plentiful buck days of big bands, big families, and tiny television sets, those were the days when a freak show shined.
Phil Bantam didn’t want to alarm his handful of freaks and performers, but it was going to be the last season. It wouldn’t even make its way back to America. Final days on foreign land made it doubly sad, worse than failing. Falling apart. For more than a century, Bantam Family Circus terrorized the dreams of anyone who dared to look and it wasn’t all for show. They had the real thing when it came to freaks. Deformities offered a view into life when nature falls asleep.
Windsor was a bust. North the day after.
—
Vadrossa stood under a heavy, hand-made cloak watching the only freak that interested him: the wolf man. The wolf man probably didn’t even know the power lurking within him, or rather, behind those eyes. In fact, Vadrossa didn’t really know how it all worked himself, but his brother needed the brain, so he’d get it. The brain worked like a glue that expelled death and brought to life something long considered a myth or fable. The La’aklar would be powerful once again and soon.
Rain dripped down Vadrossa’s face from his thick black hair. His bushy eyebrows kept clear his eyes, and he watched. The circus was quickly shutting itself down, hoping for better weather tomorrow no doubt. It didn’t make a difference, it was only a matter of time before the wolf man died, he had to. It was impossible to be so any other way.
Destiny.
A little more than one hundred years earlier, right around the dawn of the twentieth-century, Vadrossa was doing his part for their people—under the watchful eye of his brother. Dhaksa, nineteen years his senior, had two chores, gathering wood and easing his dim-witted brother into being of use to the small society. Vadrossa knew it then that he needed a keeper, didn’t need to be told.
Winter only a handful of moons away, all thirty of them worked toward keeping the peaceful harmony in nature aligned.
Somewhere around the time Christ claimed a throne, yet was nailed to a stand, the La’aklar people sought asylum from the outstretching of man’s curious arms. In a small clearing formed amidst a rain-forest—a space now designated Northern Spain—the La’aklar people claimed home. From the onset of their existence, the knowledge was there, they were more than man had become, more than man could achieve. Evolution demanded procreation. The La’aklar saw the flaw, the draining of powers in muddying blood. Centuries of inbreeding kept them pure, or almost so.
Sometimes nature demands a flaw.
Vadrossa was a flaw.
In the beginning, all held the powers that coursed through the La’aklar bloodlines, but on
ly a few understood the meaning. The act, the need to spill, the need to catch the spill; the humans, and the barely humans, and the almost monkeys, all mated, distending a powerful bloodline thin.
As man civilized, he stretched his legs and slaughtered in the name of a thousand gods. The La’aklar watched, waited, and eventually moved. Pisa stood straight, soon to lean, and the tribe moved further west, the next five-hundred years they flourished on what is now Sao Miguel Island. No good. The Spanish kept going, kept reaching.
Rather than hide, the La’aklar used their nature to arrange for transport to the new world, a place most only assumed existed, but without proof weren’t sure. The Spanish were an obsessive lot. Fame and glory. It didn’t matter if many died, as long as history texts read: The Spanish: Great Explorers and Victors.
The trip didn’t end at the discovery of a new land mass. The weather-beaten and haggard Spanish followed the strangely preserved group inland. One by one the men died. The captain watched the strange people feast on his crew, but could not fight. It took more than a year and the captain saw the new world, saw the harsh winter and the cool summer, and saw death, long before Columbus.
In Spain, it was just as common, if not more common, that a ship didn’t find its way home, and Captain Gasper Corte-Real was another lost at sea.
The La’aklar lived unbothered for close to two-hundred years, waiting for humanity to cease and their tribe to stand, rightfully inheriting Earth’s bounty as their own and bringing about peaceful harmony. The first visiting groups caused no trouble at all, as if they saw the danger, saw into the power of the La’aklar and fled, allowing the settlement to continue unharmed. The peace did not last.
Dhaksa and Vadrossa weren’t typically on gathering duty, but a rare death occurred and the old woman’s chores were divvied. As each death was so rare, only happening once a person long outlived a century and were creeping toward a second, the La’aklar held a customary feast, a thing of show and memory. To ensure the souls of the deceased and all of their powers stayed within the tribe, the La’aklar picked clean the bones and drank the fluids. Although transfer began at a bite, it wasn’t there way to waste.
Vadrossa and Dhaksa argued, the wiser often becoming flustered about the constant questions. He struck off and sent his brother in the opposite direction. Uncertain of why his brother wanted him away, didn’t keep him from following orders. He walked and walked, looking for the largest naturally felled tree he could drag home. Close to five hundred pounds, sat in the snow sat the tree Vadrossa sought. He grunted and tugged the tree. Damp and cold, it slid around his hands until he finally fell into cradle.
“My goodness would you look at that?” a man in a long pelt coat said, standing feet beyond Vadrossa’s sightline. “The strength, ‘tis incredible.”
“Hollow, it must be,” one of the man’s party said.
Vadrossa’s attention peaked and he was frightened. The strange language and pale skin was unlike anything he’d seen in his tribe. With the log in hand, he moved as quickly as capable, fear adrenaline pumping his legs into slow motion trot as he dragged the wood.
“Solid, a solid tree, goodness,” a third man said. “Core’s wet, hard and heavy red.”
In silent awe, the trio followed Vadrossa. Wishing them gone did nothing. Vadrossa was born without the power to will away the unwanted—he was little more than an idiot, almost human mentally, when compared to the others. His mother forbidden from ever creating another life due to his impurity.
The men kept up and stopped on the edge of the small community, fearless and readily armed. They took in the dark brown faces, similar, yet somehow different, from the savages they’d slain already. Their eyes held so much more, all seeming to burn into the unwelcome visitors. From face to face to face the trio watched until all finally coming upon the pit in the center of the communal circle. There was an old woman, stripped naked and shaved, perched on a spit.
Fear bubbled.
The trio consisted of two guides and a priest. The guides drew their weapons and aimed, the priest shouted about the Lord’s will and all against Him would feel His wrath, that the savage tribe took solace with Satan. The priest knew God rolled through him, through his tongue and his hands.
Vadrossa slinked away from the tree and the trio, watching as the magnate of the La’aklar approached the men. The guards shook, losing all color from their faces. The priest hollered on and on, paraphrasing his favorite text. “You must put to the sword to all these heathens who live in this way. Destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock.”
The shaky men lost their grimaces and turned ghostly in expressions. They faced each other, taking three steps apiece, until the barrel of both rifles rested in one another’s open mouths.
“This is the work of Satan,” the priest hissed and forfeited his duty, tearing into the forest. The double blast carried echoes in his wake.
As to preserve and not waste the land’s offerings, the La’aklar added the men to their feast and carried on the remainder of the ceremony as if destined and regular. The following morning they went to work with shovels and axes. A long rock face rose only a thirty-minute walk from camp. They climbed. The men and women dug, working twenty straight hours, boring through the rock into a chasm of shadowy caverns. Vadrossa experienced great guilt over the mistake of leading the interlopers home, but it wasn’t his fault, not completely. Prior to consuming the flesh, he was an idiot, born without the necessary tools to fend off the visitors. It was only after dining anew on the great elder that any insight seeped into mind.
The memory weighed on him, bringing him round to the point at which he stood, watching the circus close for the night. Angry at the world as well as himself. He slinked back to his deserted alleyway. He leaned against a wall, the rain continued to rinse through his clothes with almost torrential force. The light overhead flickered, trying to brighten the area. He stared at it, curious. A drunken voice stumbled along in the darkness. Vadrossa shot his eyes back to the light, the bulb burst, and the drunken woman continued toward him. On the skin, she reeked of cheap perfume, but underneath her flesh smelled spoiled yet edible. A whore no doubt. Vadrossa smelled men on her as well, semen and sweat. It wasn’t necessary, but it had a nostalgic feel and one never knows what might lurk within and he needed to eat. What the humans ate didn’t tempt him in a way hot flesh did.
In a liquid stammer she drew near. His hands wore skinny twigs where strong fingers once rested, and he wrenched a scraping of meat from her shoulder, exposing bone and muscle in a shower of blood. The blood was warm on his face and neck, bathing him internally as well as externally. The woman started to scream in pain and horror, his mouth latched over hers, sucking out her air. She pushed and fought, trying to drink the sweet oxygen of the piss filled alley. She freed her mouth enough to gasp. Vadrossa had already feasted on her lower lip and sipped the blood from within.
“Hel—!” she attempted to say.
The twig-like fingers jabbed into the back of her throat, pulling away her uvula like an elastic band until it broke free. She gargled, the fluids running down into her belly and lungs. Vadrossa pinned her shoulders and watched her drown on her own river of life. There was always something so fascinating in the eyes of creatures mid-demise. He smiled a full set of glistening teeth.
Once her shakes, gasps, and tears stopped, he feasted on her raw flesh, mostly from her mid-section: her breasts, her fleshy stomach, and once inside, he munched his way through her organs, searching for any power hiding. Nothing. A simple human whore.
He’d hoped for more. More would impress Dhaksa.
He continued to nibble through much of the night, nobody would see him without the light and if someone somehow did, he would take care of the problem when it arose.
Had his fill, he strolled with the careless leisure of a rich man on a Sunday afternoon, out of the dark alley, the rain cleansing the evidence from his hands, face, and cloak. The four thick braids in his long hair left
pink stamps on everything they touched, despite the rain.
Following a new smell of waste and piss, he found another suitable alleyway, a single tenancy. The light overhead shot a bright gleam over him and like the last, he focused and the bulb exploded within its cover. This power was new and a revelation. It did not belong to him. He grinned at the sensation.
It would only be a couple hours before the sun poked its ugly face and movement began at the circus, only hours until he gazed upon his prize anew. Only a few more pieces and he’d bring the La’aklar back to life.
“Vadrossa the hero, not Vadrossa the imbecile,” he mumbled, his lips stained red.
5
Lou looked out the window to an unfamiliar view. Since Maurice took leave, he’d helped out the Safe Streets task force; in layman terms, the war on gangs. Hotheads. They were young, inexperienced, and wild. In time, they might prove as good as his partner, but definitely not today or tomorrow and probably not next week. Every day bared fruit from the same tree. Although it could be a rush of adrenaline, he preferred his old desk, his old partner, and the slow variety of everyday crime. Young men with guns chasing children with or without guns was a tough place to be when you had something to lose.
He picked up the multi-lined phone from his desk and dialed Maurice’s cell. It rang once and then immediately went to voicemail. “You’ve reached Detective Genner, leave a message. If this is an emergency call—”
He dropped the receiver into its cradle. He dialed the house and after three rings an answer. “Hello,” the tiny voice said.
“Hey, Ruby, how are you holding up?”
“Fine. You want to talk to Dad?”
“Yeah, he available?”
“He’s been in the backyard all day,” Ruby said, an indistinguishable feminine voice called from the peripheries.
“Hello,” Edi said.
“Hey, I’m calling to check in on Moe,” Lou said, uncertain of whom the voice belonged to on the other end.
