by Sean Platt
The pieces were settling into place — until this morning.
Until John sensed the thing in the woods, watching them.
It was human, but not like the others. It was something more. Something John felt he should comprehend, but didn’t, couldn’t, even though he clawed inside his mind searching for the answer. Though the answer laid hidden, he had no more time to search. That something was standing in the snow, waiting at the gates of his death camp. That much John knew for certain.
A knock on his door confirmed what he knew.
“Brother John,” Brother Rei called from the other side of the door, “We have a visitor.”
John stood, allowing the morning sun to warm his nude shell, then slipped into his pants and shirt, then a robe over both. Humans felt the need to wear so many clothes, almost as if the layers could disguise the lies inside them.
John opened the door and saw the red fear brewing in Brother Rei’s eyes, “He’s still outside the gate; Brother Linc hasn’t let him in yet. The man just showed up out of the blue this morning, saying something about God calling him here. I don’t like the look of him.”
John walked past Brother Rei, then descended downstairs, out the front door, and over to the wrought iron gate, where Brothers Linc and Ed stood guard with their rifles. The thing John had sensed stood calm behind the gate; this man who was not quite a man. The voices had said it was coming. Was this it? Was this the thing that would usher in the darkness?
“Hello, brother, my name is John. What brings you to The Sanctuary?”
“God sent me,” the man said. The lie was revolting. But it was a different stench from the delusion the rest of The Sanctuary’s willing prisoners had been telling themselves about a so-called God who cared about them. The “man” at the gate held no such illusions. He was smart enough to use God as the golden key to gain access. The question was, why?
Was he what John had been waiting for? Or was he another obstacle?
Though John wasn’t quite ready for someone to jeopardize what he’d so carefully built, perhaps this was exactly how it was supposed to be. He never questioned the voices. They’d yet to steer him wrong.
“And who might you be, Brother?” John asked.
“The name’s Boricio,” he said with such boldness that it seemed he were waiting for applause.
“Welcome to The Sanctuary, Brother Boricio,” John said, his plastic grin upon his face, then directed the men to let Boricio inside. “You’ve arrived on a rather unfortunate day. We’re having a funeral.”
“That is most unfortunate, indeed,” Boricio agreed without a whiff of agreement, stepping through the gate and into The Sanctuary.
John bristled. Another piece of the puzzle had slid into place, but he had no idea who the piece belonged to.
And the voices weren’t telling.
Forty-Four
Will Bishop
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Nov. 10, 1995
8:40 p.m.
Will sat behind the counter at Hidden Wonders, one of the last decent bookstores downtown, staring at the calendar on the wall. He couldn’t believe tomorrow was a year to the day since he found the loophole.
For the four months prior, Will had been dreaming of Sam’s accident happening on Nov. 11, last year. He couldn’t tell Sam, of course. For one, Sam would think he was crazy. For two, fate — or whatever it was that pulled the strings, yet also tormented Will with glimpses into the future — didn’t appreciate mortals like Will trying to intervene.
Will spent months searching for a loophole — a way to save Sam, without telling him what was going to happen. According to the dreams, which always had the same ending, no matter how they started, Sam was injured badly in a car accident. He was struck by a drunk driver at 2:15 p.m. on his return trip to the bookstore they owned together. Sam would cross the street three blocks away and be in the path of an out-of-control car that drove straight into a restaurant and struck three diners, killing two of them instantly. As a result of the accident, Sam would wind up being a paraplegic, spending the rest of his years in almost constant pain and misery.
Considering Sam never missed a day of work, and would never take time off on a whim, no matter how compelling Will might make the whim sound, he would have to get creative if he expected to get Sam away from the bookstore and into a safe place.
Will ran through a hundred ideas, but none seemed like they would work, at least not without raising suspicion. With Sam, suspicion led to reservation, and reservation was often a brick wall between them.
He tried to order pizza for lunch, convince Sam to dine in. But Sam was a man of routine and only broke it when forced. He did the same things, day in and day out. Ate at the same diner every day for as long as they’d owned the bookstore. He was obsessive-compulsive about everything, and a break in routine was disaster in his personal world. Every day, Sam left Hidden Wonders at 12:30 p.m. on his way to the bank for their daily deposit. He ate lunch at the diner next to the bank, where he scribbled in his notebook, working on a novel he’d been writing every day for as long as they’d known one another.
A rhythm like clockwork.
So, Will would have to get creative if he were to successfully meddle with time.
Just before lunch, Will accidentally locked Sam in the storage room while he was counting the daily receipts and preparing the deposit. They had two locks on the door, one that locked and opened from the inside and another that locked and opened from the outside. That was how the door had been installed, for reasons only the last tenant knew. It was odd, but nothing Will or Sam ever bothered to change considering the million and one other things that needed their attention. There were always more things to fix than money to fix them. And besides, what were the odds one of them would actually get locked into the room from the outside? While parts of the city had gone to hell, their section of downtown had remained relatively safe.
Will managed to clear the storage room of any screwdrivers or tools Sam could use to open the door ahead of time. Sam didn’t seem savvy enough to know how to use a credit card to slide the lock open, so Will’s plan had a shot of success. Five minutes after Sam went inside, Will locked the door, then broke the key off inside.
Sam was pissed, especially when Will told him the locksmith said it would be several hours before he could get to the store and free him.
“Can’t you get some pliers and turn it or something?” Sam asked from the other side of the door, sounding desperate, even though he’d only just discovered his predicament.
“No, it’s jammed good,” Will said.
“Why did you even lock it?!”
“I dunno, I saw some shady looking people walking by, like they were casing the place or something, and I wanted to make sure you were secure.”
“Are they still out there?” Sam said, now sounding worried for Will, which turned up the flame under Will’s guilt.
“No, they got on the bus. Just sit tight; the locksmith will probably be here sooner than he said. He wants to under-promise so he can over-deliver. Good business, right?”
“What the hell am I supposed to do until then? I already did the deposits and books.”
“I dunno, maybe you can do some organizing while you’re in there.” Will laughed. Though Sam was obsessive about many things, organization of the storage room wasn’t one of them, a source of minor bickering between them for years.
“Nice try,” Sam said. “I’ll find something to read. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Will laughed, then went back to the counter up front, happy he’d managed to find a loophole, and hoping it would work. His past experiences at finding loopholes had always blown up in his face, though. But the other times, he’d tried direct methods of intervention, trying to tackle a problem head-on. Locking Sam in a room seemed less direct. He wasn’t trying to stop the accident, but trying to keep Sam from being there. Perhaps fate wouldn’t notice such an indirect method of interference.
Perhaps.
Shortly after 2 o’clock, Will heard the sirens of racing ambulances and police cars. Something had happened, right on schedule. And Will was safe and sound.
After 3 p.m., the locksmith freed a grateful Sam from the storage room. The way Sam carried on, and his level of gratitude, you’d think he’d been a prisoner of war and not a man who’d been subject to a minor inconvenience. Will teased him mercilessly, then called Wong’s and had them deliver chicken fried rice and veggies, and convinced Sam to do the deposit later. He could have a late lunch in the storage room, and write in there.
“Fine,” Sam said, reluctantly breaking routine for the first time in years.
Later that day, they heard from one of their customers about a horrible accident two blocks away. A drunk driver had driven straight into the window of Tony’s Pizza just after 2 p.m. He killed two diners inside the restaurant.
“Wow,” Will said to Sam, “You walk by there every day around that time.”
“I know. Some luck I got locked in the back room, eh?”
Will smiled. Lucky indeed.
Will worried a little that something would happen to Sam in the days or weeks after that. But his fear eventually dimmed when no new dream warnings haunted his sleep. Will had found a loophole. And after that, the prophetic dreams had stopped, and he no longer woke filled with dread. Life had become, for the first time in decades, normal.
But now, a year later, while one stress was gone from his life, another remained – the bookstore.
He needed to convince Sam to sell it while they still could walk away with something other than debt. Will would be 50 next year, and didn’t need this sort of uncertainty hanging like a pregnant cloud above his head.
“We should stop the bleeding now,” he told Sam a hundred times, if not a thousand, after the new café/bookstore opened just down the street. The new bookstore was gigantic: two stories with music listening stations, comfy love seats and sofas sprinkled throughout the store. Bookstores were supposed to be intimate, but this new behemoth was as intimate as a whorehouse with its trendy café serving overpriced coffee and baked goods while hipster music piped through a premium speaker system, sending subtle messaging to their customers that they were in the perfect place to sit back, relax, and eventually buy anything from the books on the shelves to the board games on the end caps.
Hidden Wonders was the antithesis of the giant store – a narrow hole-in-the-wall packed to the rafters with an inventory that was half used books, and almost half titles that had never harbored hope of hitting a bestseller’s list. It looked like an old and messy closet compared to these new spacious bookstores. Will knew there was no way in hell they had a chance to compete. He thought people wanted small, intimate, and friendly. But the numbers didn’t lie. People said they wanted stores like Hidden Wonders, yet their actions told the truth – they preferred corporate-defined trendy, bargain-priced books, and overpriced snacks. Will found it funny that people balked at paying retail price for a book, something that a writer poured his or her heart and soul into, and which you could only find in specific shops, yet they gladly paid premium prices on coffee, something so readily available and at much cheaper prices.
He and Sam had the conversation again after lunch. Will suggested they sell the shop to Sam’s usual eye roll and sigh that said, not this again, without having to say it at all.
There was an investor looking at the property. No, it wouldn’t be a bookstore anymore, but they could get out with a small profit, if they were smart enough to act soon. The investor wasn’t stupid; it wouldn’t be long before he could read the writing written all over the wall. The offer would vanish, and Will would be back to wishing for another opportunity. Hidden Wonders’ days were numbered, and the investor’s offer was generous, considering.
“Our customers love us,” Sam had said, optimism (and delusion) as thick in his blood as ever. “We know what books they like. We know what books to recommend. We know them. We care about them. You can’t get that at these new box stores, and you never will!”
“That’s not what people care about anymore,” Will said, feeling more defeated than ever. The recent months had beaten and battered their bank account. “How long are you gonna ignore the numbers?”
“I’m not ignoring the numbers,” Sam said, offended. “But I’m not willing to give up on our customers. People like Mrs. Williams, Mr. Jenkins, and Vince Patrella – just some of the people who rely on us, who come in every day, or every week. People we’ve come to know over the years who have made this place feel like a second home and them like family and friends. There are a few dozen more just like them. These people are loyal.”
Will didn’t have the heart to tell Sam that two weeks ago he’d seen Mrs. Williams, the same woman who said she’d rather die than step in one of those big soulless stores, walking out of the new bookstore with a bag full of books. Fortunately, she hadn’t seen Will. That would have been awkward. But he had seen her, and the writing wasn’t just on the wall, it was in every book on every shelf in the bookstore down the street. When someone like Mrs. Williams, a loyal customer for years, was buying books in bulk from the competition, Hidden Wonders would have to fight with both fists for a snowball’s chance in hell.
And Will was getting too old to fight losing battles.
Their argument, if it could be called an argument at all, ended as it always did, at a stalemate, neither side willing to surrender or even back down an inch. Sam seemed destined to sink with his ship, making Will more or less stuck, unless he could change the captain’s stubborn mind. Sam was fiercely loyal. Though it was one of his best qualities in most areas, it clouded his business thinking and decision making. A little over a year ago, the town’s favorite bagel shop next door exploded in popularity. The owner needed to expand, and offered Will and Sam an extremely generous amount to sell their shop so he could knock the walls down, increasing his square footage. Will thought it was a no-brainer. But Sam wanted to stay put. The owner of the bagel shop decided to move when his lease was up, opening shop a half mile away. The opportunity, along with a lot of the bagel shop’s customers, would never return.
And now, as closing time – 9 p.m. – inched closer, Will wanted to get to the bar, meet with Sam for some drinks, and hope like hell the conversation wouldn’t come up again. Tonight, he just wanted to drink, forget, and have a good time. Tomorrow was his day off, and he intended to sleep in late. Really late. Maybe all day, if he could get away with it.
As Will began cleaning up and getting ready to close, the phone split the silence and sent a shiver down his spine. Before the first ring finished its chime, Will knew something was wrong.
Little did he know he’d wind up spending the entire night in the hospital.
Will sat in the hospital waiting room waiting forever for Trudy, Sam’s mom, who had to drive from Boca.
Trudy arrived, as she usually did anywhere she went, as a full-on spectacle. She raced over to Will, already half crying, “What happened?”
“A cop friend of mine called and said some men jumped Sam. Beat him up pretty bad. They’re not letting me see him though, since I’m not family.”
“Oh God,” Trudy wailed, “How can this happen?! Where did this happen? Why did this happen?”
“According to my friend, the men were calling him ‘fag’ and ‘homo’ over and over as they beat him, lots of blows to the face.”
Trudy looked around and demanded to see Sam’s surgeon. One of the orderlies said she’d get someone. Trudy’s eyes bored into Will, “Where were you? Why didn’t you stop them?”
“I was at work,” Will said. “I was about to close shop and meet up with him. Happened just outside the bar where we meet every weekend. We’ve never had problems before.”
“Is it one of those . . . gay bars?” she asked, barely able to push the words from her mouth. Though Trudy had accepted her son’s lifestyle when he came out to her two years ago – or at least claimed she did – she could rarely utter
any words associated with it. It seemed as if she felt ignoring that part of her son’s life would somehow make it go away, returning her life to how it used to be, before she knew.
“Yes, but it’s not some seedy joint,” Will said, “It’s a nice place, with a friendly atmosphere and the drink prices to prove it. We’ve never had anything like this happen before. There’s a few gay-friendly businesses in the area, and this just doesn’t happen in these parts.”
“So, you go there, all the time?” Trudy asked, her voice thick with accusation.
“Like I said, it’s a great place to unwind,” Will said, growing impatient and defensive.
“I always knew you were bad news for Sam,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“What?”
“It’s your fault. He didn’t go to places like . . . that, before . . . until you came along!”
Will wanted to scream.
Do you think I made your son gay? That he wasn’t that way before he met me?
But what was the point? That’s how Trudy thought, and how she always would. To her, being gay was a choice, and the wrong one. So she needed someone to blame for “making” her son gay. For his entire 40 years prior to meeting Will, Sam had been straight as an arrow. Then BAM!, Will turned his preference like some sort of gay vampire. It was ridiculous, but no easier to change than the weather.
Will bit his tongue, as was custom with Trudy. He’d let her have her drama, then wait for her to calm down, as she always did. Anything else would only make matters worse. Trudy was barely polite to Will on the best of days, even though Sam claimed she really did like him. There was no way he was going to get into an argument or try reasoning with her today. Sam could’ve been jumped outside of a church, and Trudy would find some way to blame his lifestyle on Will. Besides, some part of Will understood her anger. She was afraid. Hell, Will was afraid. Civility sometimes went out the window when you were afraid, especially when a loved one’s life was in danger.
