27

 

 

 

David spent his afternoon in the offices of Laray Pharmaceuticals arguing with the legal department and the in-house public relations officers. The sky spat rain against the long paned window, beyond which the sky looked nearly black. His eyes roamed periodically to the darkness as he had struggled to make the men and women in the room realize the delicacy of their situation.

Laray and its parent company, Aldine-West, were facing serious litigation in the form of a class action suit as a result of questionable ethical practices. The action group, a collection of distraught parents, claimed that Laray had released the shipment of a blood product without having screened it properly. Worse yet, they possessed a memo from Laray’s president, Hank Lafayette, that stated that the shipment was to go out regardless of purity to meet their sales demand.

David hated corporate work. Fighting with legal departments and suits all day frustrated him. Laray was screwed. If they didn’t want to protect themselves, that was their business. Besides he had other things on his mind. He was worried about Ken.

He hadn’t heard from him all day, though he imagined Paula’s injury had probably been such that her care was occupying his time. That or he really was looking for Vicki Bach, and David had to admit this possibility made him uncomfortable.

After driving home from the meeting, David opened his front door and felt a wave of light-headedness. He leaned on the jamb for support and saw a small black shape scurry over the threshold. The creature bumped his shoe and then rushed off toward his baseboard.

Flesh Eater.

His skin pimpled and a shudder ran up his body.

As a child he’d hated these creatures, thanks in great part to an Uncle Joe who had stayed with David’s family one summer. His mother’s only sibling, Uncle Joe was a big, classless man with all of the grace and charm of an armadillo. And Uncle Joe called roaches Flesh Eaters.

Even before hearing Uncle Joe’s dissertation on the vermin, the things had terrified David. Their sleek little shells, like some hell-made defensive armor, harbored the ragged and bristling form of their bodies. The things looked evil, and with a child’s imagination the very sight of such an unwholesome-looking creature attested to the presence of monsters on Earth.

Once, when he was seven, he’d been helping his mother cook breakfast for the family. He loved getting up early and helping her in the kitchen. Sometimes she had him stir the hot cake batter or she’d have him make toast while she fried eggs and boiled grits. Just being with her, assisting her, had made him happy, and she always gave him an extra slice of bacon or a few extra berries as payment for his services. Uncle Joe had been in the kitchen that morning, picking at the calluses on his feet and making lewd comments about their neighbor, Mrs. Dillon. His mother decided on oatmeal, and she asked him to get the box of Quaker oats out of the cupboard. This request had always pleased him because when the box was empty, he could take it to school and make a new drum out of it by pasting bright paper and golden trim on the cardboard cylinder.

When David pried off the top of the oat box and found a fat roach burrowing through their breakfast, he’d cried out and dropped the entire box of oats on the floor. His Uncle Joe laughed spastically, but David stood horrified. Several roaches moved in the spray of pale oats, their shells hiding the hideous nature of the bodies beneath. They began to scramble, having survived the shock of the crashing box, seeking dark places beneath the cabinet and under the stove. His mother asked him to sweep up the mess and get another box out of the cupboard as if nothing had happened, but his uncle had something to say on the matter.

“Them’s Flesh Eaters, boy,” his uncle teased. “Once they shove you in a box, the Flesh Eaters start making dinner plans. You just best hope you’re really dead in there. They’ll take you quiet or screaming.”

For weeks after, David barely ate, picking through the food on his plate to see if any of the monsters had returned to invade their meals. And now the Flesh Eaters had returned.

Upstairs, David changed out of his suit and checked his voice mail, but he’d received no calls. He stretched out on the bed, letting his muscles unwind as he gazed at the ceiling. He considered calling Ken and asking the man out to dinner. Then, decided it might not be the best idea. Likely, he was with his family. After all of the terrible things that had happened to them recently, he imagined Ken would be spending a lot more time with Paula and Jennifer.

David thought that was a fine thing. They needed Ken right now, and quite frankly he didn’t mind the idea of having an evening of peace and quiet. He’d had a lousy day and unless his mood made a sharp one-eighty, he wouldn’t be very good company for anyone, especially Ken.

Worn out, David closed his eyes and relaxed into the mattress. He really didn’t know what to make of Ken’s situation. A kid named Chuck had murdered his son and tried to murder his ex-wife. David was even willing to believe that the kid had succeeded in orchestrating the ruin of Sam Martin’s relationship and might have predicted the jealous and violent aftermath. David had no idea why, but it didn’t take much to get a lunatic’s notice these days. For all he knew, Chuck was simply obsessed with Ken and wanted to get his attention with extreme displays of brutality.

Ken’s implication of Vicki Bach struck David as being within the realm of possibility, though far less likely. The stuff about Travis Brugier was just crazy.

Don’t let Ken drag you into this, David told himself.

He wanted to be supportive. He wanted to be there for Ken, hoping that once the man’s paranoia blew away, something good would remain. Maybe they could get back to where they’d been before all of this insanity had begun. If not, David needed to know that he could walk away, because right now, that seemed the most likely outcome.

These thoughts ran in loops through his head as he drifted into a light doze. They broke apart and frayed at the edges, becoming fuzzy and indistinct as he sank deeper into sleep.

“They’ll take you quiet or screaming.”

His uncle’s voice woke him with a start. Heart racing, David searched the room but found it empty. He whispered a curse into the air, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

~~~

Ken woke, uncertain of his location. He blinked several times, wiped the blur from his eyes, and looked around the dusty room, now gloomy with the fading day. When had he fallen asleep? He couldn’t remember exactly. The day had passed while Ken read the storybook. Some of the stories he’d read twice, sensing that he had missed something important in the text.

Throughout, he noted common elements in the tales, subtle threads of observation that linked the seemingly disparate characters from one story to the next. But such filaments of perception were vague in the stories. What stood out were specifics that reappeared sporadically throughout the text. The name “Goldie” (the nickname of Travis Brugier’s lawyer), for instance, showed up in four of the stories.

Even more startling were the references to a piece of jewelry. In one form or another, under a handful of varied descriptions, the Thorn that Ken carried around his neck appeared in every single story.

After his day’s reading, Ken no longer believed that Travis had filled his storybook with tales that happened to appeal to him. Rather, Travis had written or dictated stories about himself, camouflaging his identity with fiction. Hiding behind different genders, different races, and placed in a variety of historic times, Travis’s storybook was really a single story, telling of a man who had become disenchanted with the world and had grown bitter. Though the transformation took place subtly throughout the volume, the end result was a man who held the people sharing his world in such low regard that they amounted to little more than toys. He’d had the book printed and bound and kept it near, just so he could have his life read back to him in an act of unbelievable ego.

Ken stood from the bed, leaving the book resting on the sheets. He returned to the bookcase and the line of journals that formed a neat row, ending at a gap where the storybook had been. He pulled one of the small volumes free, opened it, and read the precise, evenly spaced words, written with a florid yet controlled penmanship: But Passing Cloud begged to be released from him, from the spirit that threatened her soul.

Ken closed the book and reached for another, much older journal with a frayed silk-wrapped cover. The writing in this book was faded, almost illegible. The pages were yellow-gray and warped in pronounced waves. Pages were torn, some missing entirely.

It told the tale of a young woman who had been stolen from her land and sold into slavery, a woman who came to be known as Alice. This story too had appeared in Travis’s book. The book Ken held had been written in the same hand as the journal with White Dog’s tale, but it was at least a century older.

He checked another book and another. All of the stories had been recreated word for word in Travis’s storybook, and all were written in the same florid hand. The clear supposition was that one person had written all of the journals, but Ken struggled with this idea. The journals spanned hundreds of years. His gaze ran over the wall of books as a dark notion took root in his mind. If once, if Brugier were back now, then why not before? What if Travis hadn’t hidden behind the lives in his books but, rather, had lived them?

He backed away from the bookcase, shaking his head. It wasn’t possible, Ken knew. People lived and died in a simple and inescapable cycle of life. Even Travis, with his power and financial resources, couldn’t change such a fundamental element of humanity. Yet, it seemed he had found a way to alter this sequence? Was that what he’d been talking about in the days leading up to Ken’s flight from Wonderland?

In the last two weeks, he’d witnessed a number of impossible things. Though many of these—David’s hanged corpse, Puritan Crowley’s torn visage—could be written off as the delusions of a lunatic, Bobby was dead. Sam was dead. These were truths.

Ken pulled three small journals from the bookcase and returned to the dusty bed he had shared with Travis Brugier. He stacked the volumes on the sheet. He retrieved Travis’s storybook and set it down next to them.

If what Ken believed was true, this being, whatever it might be called, had lived for generations. It had experienced the worst of mankind and very little of the good as it had attempted to find its place among them. Perhaps it had gravitated to darker, unwholesome things, but there could be no doubt that its perceptions had been stained by the least flattering traits of man: greed, perversion, lust, ambition, jealousy, and spite. Not only had it endured these qualities, but it had done so alone.

Ken understood, with absolute clarity, how the monster had been made, and he believed he understood what it was capable of. No one close to him was safe.

So, where are you? Ken wondered.

I’m right here.

Ken had spent the day amid the memories and the dusty ornamentation of Wonderland, thinking he might draw Brugier out. Travis’s penchant for the dramatic would be perfectly served by a confrontation here, where so much misery had been born. Yet while there, Ken had been visited by the disease of memory, made all the more virulent between these walls, and had encountered stories, legends, and myths written by a single hand, suggesting an aberrant being unfettered by the restrictions of mortality, and should he accept the unnatural presence of such a being, then Ken had been reintroduced to his sanity. Travis, however, remained absent.

Gathering the books in his arms, Ken turned for the door, then paused.

A slender woman stood in silhouette halfway down the corridor. From her posture, she appeared to be gazing at the floor.

“Can I help you?” Ken asked, not recognizing his guest.

“I thought you came to see me,” the woman said, walking down the hall toward the bedroom threshold. Framed by the doorjamb, she appeared small, but her eyes glittered with confidence.

Power, Ken thought. Those were the eyes of a woman who worried about nothing because nothing was beyond her control.

“Welcome home, Baby,” Vicki Bach said and stepped into the room.

~~~

Ken trembled. The books in his arms seemed to double in weight, so he put them down on the bed, never taking his eyes off of the round, baby-doll face of Vicki Bach. His chest grew heavy, his lungs aching as if the room’s dust had accumulated and clotted in them.

With slow gliding steps, Vicki walked to Ken, gazing into his eyes with a playful smirk on her lips. “I’ve missed you, Baby. You don’t know how much.”

He said nothing. The woman’s breath touched his cheeks. A gentle scent of flowery perfume came into his nose.

“Can’t you talk to me anymore?”

“What do you want?”

Vicki stepped around him and into the bedroom. “You let it fall apart,” she said with mocking sadness. “I spent a lifetime creating this place, gathering its treasures, and designing it to be the most wonderful home in this city. Do you know I imported the fabric for those drapes from Italy? The bed came from an old hotel in Vienna. You can’t imagine how difficult it was for me to acquire. Everything had to be perfect. Everything was perfect. How could you let it all disintegrate like this?”

“It wasn’t mine,” Ken said.

“I gave it to you.”

“You gave me a lot of things I didn’t want.”

“I told you I could give you anything you ever dreamed of, but you always doubted my sincerity. Can you see it now?”

“All I see is that you murdered my son,” Ken said.

“Flesh rots, Baby. In time, the cells give up, and the cycle closes down. Bobby would die one day with or without me. Everything around you is going to be dead, destroyed in just a few years. Everything except me.”

As soon as the words left her lips, bodies appeared at her feet—Bobby, Sam, Jennifer, Paula—all except for David, who hung at her back. The battered and torn bodies shook, convulsed, and leaked blood onto the floor. Their dead eyes looked up at Ken, pleading.

“On that night,” she said, “our last night together. I understood your youth. When you deserted me, I let it happen so you’d have the time you needed to grow. And when I came back, nothing had changed. I gave you so many years, and you still hadn’t changed. You knew more about the world, but you understood nothing about life.”

“So, you started murdering people to make your point?”

“You have only yourself to blame, Baby. You didn’t listen. I told you there would be choices to make. The first was turning your back and letting me die.”

“That was your decision.”

“It’s not that simple,” Vicki replied. She kicked out at the form of Paula, squirming like a bound lunatic on the floor. The toe of Vicki’s shoe sank into a wound at her crushed temple. “Do you think Paula decided to have her life stop the minute you walked out on her? Do you think she looks forward to a cold empty bed every night, fingering herself to your memory? You didn’t tell her to wait for you, but does that make it her decision?”

Ken ground his teeth. Vicki’s needle-sharp accusation jabbed, stung.

“And, Bobby,” Vicki continued, “trying so hard to please you, wanting to bring Daddy home by being the perfect son. He couldn’t even enjoy his accomplishments, because they all failed to get your attention. The smallest mistake sent him into a self-loathing panic, and day by day he learned to hate himself because you didn’t care enough to be there. You couldn’t be bothered with such a failure.”

“He wasn’t a failure,” Ken said.

“Well, he did have excellent taste in women.”

The bodies at Vicki’s feet writhed and bucked. Their eyes grew wide. Their wounds pulsed fresh gouts of blood onto the grimy floor, pooling and graying with the filth. Ken looked at the battered ghost of his son, whose mouth ratcheted open to a gaping hole. A ragged roar rose from Bobby’s mouth, then from all of the mouths. A chorus of hollow, warbled guffaws filled the room. The dead laughed at him.

“And Sam thought that he’d be next, thought that once you left Paula, you’d run to him, and his love would finally be reciprocated. Oh, how he hated you when that didn’t happen. He carried that hate like a tumor in his chest but kept smiling, hoping.”

“Stop it,” Ken said, tears filling his eyes.

“Don’t you want to hear about Jennifer? In some ways she’s the best of all. The things she wants to tell you, the things she wants to share. I think even you would appreciate the irony of it.”

“Stop it!” Ken closed his eyes, blocking out the grotesque shapes at Vicki’s feet.

“One decision, Baby, and so much damage. I told you that passion and responsibility would try to murder one another as the clock ticked and tocked. There’s only room for so much in a single life. It’s the nature of all of man’s stories, a perfect conflict over the great mortal question: What will I be before the ticking stops?

“I could have spared you that,” Vicki continued. “If you’d accepted my proposal, such decisions would have been irrelevant because the clock would have had no power over you. You could have been anything and everything, a different path with each birth, but you refused. You spit in my face and turned your back.”

Ken opened his eyes. The bodies of his loved ones remained in a heap before him, distracting him with their glassy stares, their twitching limbs. “But they haven’t done anything to you.”

“And they mean nothing to me,” she said.

Vicki walked toward Ken, and the bodies on the floor flickered out as if nothing but refracted light. “I was here a year ago. I showed you what I intended for David, but I didn’t have to be so subtle. I could have taken them all at once: Bobby, Sam, Paula, Jennifer, and handsome David. Every one of them. Believe me, they’d have opened their wrists before facing what I could show them.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“You really shouldn’t tempt me, Baby,” Vicki said, walking past him, touching his cheek lightly.

Ken shot his arms out and grabbed Vicki’s shoulders. He forced her around to face him. His left hand slid behind her head and grabbed a handful of silken hair close to her scalp. He jerked viciously until her eyes were locked on his. His body shook. His only thought was to keep pulling the hair until the woman’s neck snapped.

“You’re going to kill me?” Bach said. “That’s your answer? Go ahead Ken. Do it. Do it a dozen times, and every time I’ll come back. And every time, I’ll take another piece of you with me! This time Bobby and Sam. Next time David. You’ll watch your pretty little man rot in a snake pit, if I let him live. And do you know what he’ll see? You want a little glimpse of what I’ve got for him?” Ken didn’t reply. He pulled hard against the knot of hair in his palm.

Vicki Bach’s face began to melt before his eyes. The skin rippled and puffed. Behind her, the doorway and wall disappeared. A sheet of tiny black bodies bubbled from floor to ceiling. The insects—roaches, beetles, millipedes and maggots—blanketed the portal, and the dusty walls came alive with the tiny forms. The face before him continued its slow disintegration, and the entomological blockade fell forward, covering Vicki’s head, just as her face split apart, revealing the creatures burrowing beneath her skin.

Ken jumped back, repulsed by the touch of a thousand mandibles on his wrists. He cried out, recoiling. His ankle caught a hitch in the tattered rug, and he went to his knees. The climbing tide of creatures crested near the ceiling, and then the curling wall came down on him.

He threw an arm over his face as the bugs rained down. Their sheer volume pushed him to the floor. They burrowed under his collar as he writhed to dislodge or crush his attackers. His skin itched ferociously as the insects clamored over him. A fat cockroach pushed its head into his nostril. Its antennae tickled the membranes of his sinuses as it climbed into his nose.

Then silence. The terrible itching disappeared. Ken opened his eyes. He sneezed repeatedly, certain that the roach still bore its way into his skull. He frantically slapped at his neck and shoulders, but the creatures had receded back into his head. Distantly he heard the front door open and slam.

Ken stood. He scanned the room with hurried sweeps of his head, but Vicki Bach was gone. And so was Travis Brugier’s storybook.

~~~

Ken staggered along Royal Street until he was able to flag down a taxi. He gave the driver David’s address and collapsed against the backseat.

Once he got to David’s, he had to call Paula to make sure she and Jen were all right. He would have had the driver take him there first, but Vicki had aimed her threat at David, and Ken didn’t want the man to be left alone and unaware.

After Vicki left him in the filthy room, Ken had searched for the storybook, but it was gone, along with several of the smaller journals. As a result, he suspected that there was information in those books she didn’t want him to have. In fact, he felt certain everything he needed to know was in the account of the Native American couple, but as Ken tried to recall the tale of White Dog, he found the story broke apart. He remembered Passing Cloud’s panic and fear and the ritual involving her finger, but when he tried to follow the story to its conclusion, his memory of it shattered.

He was just exhausted, worn from too many painful revelations and burdened by Vicki’s ongoing threat. He would have to try piecing it together later.

At David’s house, he asked the taxi to wait for him while he checked to see if David was in. He jogged to the porch and rang the bell. After several minutes, David opened the door, blinking and rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken up. When he saw Ken his eyebrows arched.

“What the hell happened to you?” David asked.

Only then did Ken consider how he must have looked. His clothes were rumpled and covered in filth; he’d spent the entire day in a room with no air conditioning so a good layer of grit had formed around his neck. Perspiration stains circled the fabric under his arms and across his chest. He was a mess, but David looked disheveled as well.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Ken asked.

“You look like you just got done wrestling a mummy.”

“Can I come in?” Ken asked. “I mean, is everything okay? Are you busy?”

David yawned widely, covering his mouth with a fist. When it passed, he said, “Why don’t we see if we can’t have the same conversation? You are not interrupting. You can come in, and what the hell happened to you?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Ken said. He jogged back to the cab and paid the driver.

Once he was inside David’s house, the door closed and locked behind them, Ken asked for a glass of water. Now that his tension was eased, seeing David unharmed, he was becoming aware of his body’s needs. Not only was he parched, he was starving, but for now, the water would do. He followed David to the kitchen and caught a plastic bottle David tossed at him while standing beside the open refrigerator.

“So,” David said, making a squiggle line in the air with his finger. “What happened here?”

“I was at Travis’s today.”

“Alone? Are you nuts?”

“No,” Ken said. “As it turns out, I’m not.”

David scrunched his face, apparently trying to make sense of what Ken had just said. Having failed this, he settled for “You used to be a lot easier to talk to.”

“I thought I might be able to figure some of this out if I went back there. And I did.”

David leaned against the refrigerator, wearing an expression of cautious interest. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What did you find?”

“I was right,” Ken said. “Travis is behind what’s been happening.”

David’s eyes lit up. “He’s alive?”

“No.”

“I don’t follow.”

Ken didn’t know what else to say. He was at a loss to explain the being that was both Travis Brugier and Vicki Bach. Even if he had managed to bring the diaries, he doubted that he would have been able to convince David of something so strange. He knew he couldn’t finesse this kind of information. The truth was his only option, but even before he spoke he realized how ridiculous his explanation would sound.

“Travis died that night in Wonderland. He didn’t fake his death, but he didn’t have to. He knew he could come back.”

“Okay,” David said. He rubbed his eyes again. “I’m going to beg you to not do this to me tonight. I have had a shit day, after a shit night, after a shit week. Now, they caught that kid. He’s in jail. So, for tonight, give it a rest. Tomorrow, we can wake up to a banquet of crazy if you want, but right now, I’m stuffed.”

“David, there are some things you need to know.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” David said, his tone sharp and sarcastic. “But tonight that’s not an option. The options tonight are pizza, television, martinis, conversation about anything except Travis Brugier, and fucking. You mix and match those any way you see fit, or we can call that cab back here right now.”

“I’m serious.”

“So, am I,” David replied, his voice a barely audible growl. “And I’m sick of you making me miserable.”

The kitchen closed in on Ken. Fresh sweat popped up on his neck.

“Look, I’m sorry,” David said. “But I need a break from all the Edgar Allan Poe crap. Everything has been too dark since you got back, and I’m tired of it. If we can’t have a quiet evening together and enjoy each other’s company, then you have to leave. And I’m not just talking about tonight.”

Ken knew David well enough. He wasn’t making a hollow threat. In fact, he was surprised David didn’t just throw him out, because at the moment, he looked angry enough to chew nails. So Ken had to back off. At least if he was there, David wouldn’t be alone. Maybe that would be enough.

“Whatever you want,” Ken said.

“That is a phrase I need to hear a hell of a lot more often.”

“You will,” Ken said.

“Thank you.” David crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Ken’s neck. He kissed him lightly and pulled away. “I care a lot about you. You know that. You just have to quit making it so difficult.”

Instead of replying, Ken leaned forward and kissed David hard on the mouth, pulling him tight. Familiar emotions—comfort and desire and so much love—welled in his chest. He clutched David tighter and let the taste of the man settle on his tongue.

After a minute, David stepped back and put a hand on Ken’s chest. “Slow down, Buddy. Let’s get some drinks and a little supper.”

“I could use a shower.”

“And brushing your teeth would be a bonus,” David said with a smile. “I’ve got some work to clear up. It won’t take long. You know where everything is.”

Ken nodded, already unbuttoning his shirt. As he pulled it open, he noticed the Thorn around his neck, the chain catching light, the charm all but glowing. Opalescent and perverse, the bauble dangled teasingly.

Lifting the chain over his head, Ken crossed the room to the credenza. He dropped the Thorn amid the tangle of keys and paperclips on its surface.

Upstairs he called Paula while the water ran. He was grateful to hear her voice, though a pang of guilt, sharpened by Vicki’s recent accusation accompanied it. Vicki had wanted to hurt him, and she’d succeeded, but only because her attack had become part of an ongoing battle: Ken versus his guilt. He’d often thought that Paula was holding on to an unrealistic hope of reconciliation. She’d never admit to it, of course, but the certainty had been with Ken for years.

Feeling awkward but trying to disguise it, Ken attempted a casual, even pleasant conversation with Paula. They’d released her from the hospital that morning as they’d planned, and her friend Esther, a perky and overly flirtatious woman, if Ken remembered correctly, had spent the day with her.

“She’ll be here tonight,” Paula said. “Burt is in Biloxi at a meeting, so we’re having a girl’s night.”

“Is Jen there?”

“Yes. In her room, pouting again.”

“What now?”

“She wanted to go out, and I thought it better if she stayed in. I’m feeling a little paranoid just now, and I want her where I can see her.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ken said. “I’m going to want to talk to you both in the morning, if that’s all right? Can I swing by?”

“I can’t see why not. What’s this about?”

“Vicki,” Ken said. Again, he was faced with the fact that he’d never be able to explain, with any clarity or to any real effect what he’d discovered in Wonderland. “She’s as involved as we thought.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Ken said.

“What happened?” Paula asked.

“I can’t explain right now.” You have to see my face and know I’m serious. Then, I can answer your questions, maybe make you believe. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, but she is dangerous. So, be careful.”

“We’re not leaving the house.”

He was surprised that Paula didn’t demand more information, but she seemed to be in the same state of mind as David: She needed a night of relative peace. So, Ken said good night and hung up the phone.

Ken walked into the bathroom, which was thick with steam and stepped under the shower’s spray to let it wash away the day’s sweat and filth. He worked the soap into his skin and combed it through the hairs on his body, working up a thick lather while the hot water massaged his back.

One decision, Baby. And so much damage.

The voice filled his head, clear and crisp like the rapping of the water on the shower’s tiles. The scent of the soap became sharp and pungent as if its floral perfume had been distilled from a rotted bouquet. Ken returned the soap to its holder and rested his head against the tiled wall.

How much of what Vicki had told him was true? He might never know. She’d needled his guilt, burdened him with mistakes he could no longer make right, but was it all just another layer to her cruelty, or had there been truth there? Despite the accuracy of what she’d said about Paula, Ken wasn’t so easily convinced of her other charges. Had Bobby excelled for Ken’s benefit, driven by a misguided sense of inadequacy? Had all of his boy’s accomplishments been invalidated by Ken’s absence? No. That was ridiculous. Bobby was a smart and talented kid. He would have been exceptional under any circumstances. She’d told him that Sam had expected a romance from him. When it went unrequited, he had fashioned a hatred for Ken, but there was no evidence to suggest this. They had always been close friends. Hadn’t they?

The doubts Vicki raised made Ken furious. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d lost two remarkable people from his life? He already wore the guilt of their deaths like stones on his shoulders. Did he have to believe he’d failed them at every turn as well?

He scrubbed his face harshly, bringing a sting to his cheeks. He lathered his jaw with shaving cream and then reached for the razor David kept in the shower caddie. Changing the blades and setting the old head on the shelf, Ken gazed into the small round mirror attached to the wall by the showerhead. In the reflection, he saw David’s body swinging behind him in the tiny shower stall. Ken spun, nearly losing his balance, barely catching himself with a palm against the tiled wall, but no corpse dangled at his back.

He pushed the image away and set to shaving, but the longer he stayed in the shower, the stronger his fears grew. He dragged the blade over his chin with a shaking hand. David is standing on a ladder, attaching that wire to his ceiling. He scraped the whiskers from his neck and rinsed his face hurriedly, ignoring the rough places. David is slipping that glimmering cord around his neck. He’d do anything to stop them. Anything. Ken reached for the knob with quaking hands to turn off the shower’s spray. He had to stop this, had to stop…

David kicks away the small ladder. See how his weight crashes downward and the garrote tears through his throat. Blood splashes the room. Those beautiful eyes are fading, darkening, dying. His body is shaking. His bloated tongue pushes against dead lips. Remember how those lips tasted? How would they taste now?

Frantic, Ken pulled aside the shower curtain.

David’s gone. And there’s nothing you can do. Nothing.

“I thought I’d come up,” David said, pulling his shirt over his head and draping it on the doorknob. “Dinner can wait a while.”

His panic disappeared as if caught beyond a slamming door. So powerful was Ken’s relief that he found himself leaning against the wall for support.

David’s chest flexed as he unbuttoned his slacks and let them fall to the damp floor. His muscular legs, covered in a fine brush of hair, stepped free of the garment at his feet. White jockey shorts gleamed against his dark skin. Already erect, his cock made a significant ridge in the fabric. David stepped forward and removed a towel from the rod by the shower. He ran the cloth over Ken’s shoulders, chest, and belly and then dropped it on the floor. A moment later, his lips followed the same path, over the pectorals and to the stomach and then upward. He caught a nipple in his mouth and teased it gently with his teeth and his tongue, wrapping his arms tightly around Ken’s back.

Ken returned the embrace and coaxed David upward so they could kiss and Ken could feel the weight of his body, alive and undamaged, against him. Ken stepped forward, guiding the man toward the vanity. He slid the underwear from David’s hips and pushed forward, pinning David against the sink. The hair on the man’s chest padded Ken as he leaned in to taste David’s tongue, his hands sliding along the muscled back. He pulled David away from the counter and cupped his ass as his tongue explored the panting mouth.

When they reached the bedroom, they fell on the bed. Ken pinned David, rubbing his erection along the man’s belly and burying his face in the warmth of David’s neck. Strong legs wrapped around his hips, and Ken pushed David’s head back into the pillows for another chance to kiss him.

In no hurry for release, they held each other, tasted and teased each other’s skin. Every shifting of their torsos and reaching of their arms was anticipated and exciting. Ken became wholly lost in the familiar shape and tone and texture of David’s body, the scent of fresh perspiration on the man’s skin, the low groans of pleasure rumbling in his throat.

When he entered David, David’s eyes closed. Ken pressed forward and kissed him again. His lips were met with a gasp, and Ken remained perfectly still until David’s eyes opened and the man’s hands pulled strongly against his back. Ken began a slow rhythm with his hips, and together they eased their way toward climax.

Afterward, he held David. Neither man moved, hoping that the moment wouldn’t be driven away by motion.

~~~

They sat on the sofa. David had cleared away the empty pizza box and the plates, refreshed their drinks, and now reclined against Ken’s chest.

For Ken, it was a warm and long-missed intimacy. Sitting there with David’s comforting weight against him, he could almost convince himself that their past had been mended. It wasn’t, of course; it couldn’t be that simple. They were on the right track, though, and Ken thought they might actually have a chance.

“I’m not going to leave again,” he said.

“I don’t remember inviting you to move in,” David replied.

“Don’t be a smart-ass. You know what I mean.”

David didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he measured his words carefully. “Take it slow, Kenny,” he said, rubbing his palm over Ken’s stomach. “You’ve got a lot of things to work out, and who your next boyfriend is going to be should be pretty low on that list.”

Maybe David was just being flip; Ken didn’t know for certain. He hoped that he wasn’t alone in the way he felt.

“I love you, David.”

“I love you too.” David patted Ken’s stomach. “And right now, alone, that’s easy to hold on to. Tomorrow, when everything else comes rushing back, it might not be. We’ll see. Just take it slow. There’s plenty of time. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

 

 

~

28

 

 

 

Vicki hated the end of things. After so many years, the passing of people and events still had its melancholy sting. She was nearly through with Ken. By this same time tomorrow night, she’d have finished his lesson, and then it would be time to move on. He might hunt her, try to exact some pitiful revenge, but she doubted he’d make the effort. He’d be too busy pitying his lot and burying his loved ones.

She walked through the dark and quiet streets of the Bywater, a district of Orleans Parish that didn’t benefit from tourist dollars. She looked over the crumbling façades of homes and felt the river moving very near. A light breeze shook the treetops but stayed too high above to cool her neck. Two men walked behind her. They were trying to look casual but were clumsy and obvious. They’d do just fine.

In thinking about Ken and the end of things, she was reminded of a woman named Charity (a trait that was so lacking from the woman’s countenance it was laughable). This was long ago, before this country was even a country. Vicki had been a man then, named John, like all around him had been named John. Charity was his wife, and her cruelty had often confused John, even when it was directed at others.

The woman, a plump hag, found no greater joy than spreading mischief and misery. Being Charity’s husband, John knew this all too well as his pain had amused her on innumerable occasions, from her insults about his manhood to her disdain at his meager landholdings.

Late in their relationship, John had forged a brittle truce with his wife by showing her his talent for thought pictures. He’d toyed with the gift for years, for lives in fact, but had never quite managed its subtleties. Still, in order to direct his wife’s energy away from persecution, he had taken to entertaining Charity with fanciful scenes.

He’d conjure for her flights of pink birds, swirling and dancing in the rafters of their house or make a field of daisies sprout from its floor. He enjoyed these simple images, but Charity’s predilections ran to darker subjects. She demanded perverse amusements like seeing Minister John sobbing on his hands and knees, being raped by the biggest, ugliest men in the village. Charity wanted to see Frances Goode bleed out from her privates and crumple on the floor, at which time Charity would stand and cross the room to kick the illusion’s head, laughing and demeaning the figment with each cruel stomp of her foot.

Were this the extent of Charity’s unwholesome behavior John could have endured it, but his wife was never satisfied. She insisted he paint thought pictures, terrible and nightmarish images, for their neighbors. At first, he refused, offering instead to manufacture their torment in the confines of their home whenever Charity requested. The bargain had no validity, of course, because he was already doing this very thing for her.

In the end, he relented. At her direction, he sent madness to the village in the form of grotesque beasts, devil’s spawn, and rampaging animals. Men saw their wives dancing naked under moonlight, and children saw their parents coupling with demons.

When the trials began, Charity was the fourth woman to be charged as a witch. On a night of God’s wrath storm, with the trails and roads already flooding, the court came for John’s wife. He did not fight them, nor did he say any farewell to Charity. She tried to put the guilt on him, where in fact it belonged, but the court was deaf to her words, lest she cast them under a spell.

John hid in the shadows beside the blacksmith shop, saturated to the bone by beating rain. The court stripped Charity and bound her to a post, foregoing a courtroom façade for her. They whipped her unconscious, lacerating her breasts and belly, feeding the storm with her blood. They passed their sentence then. Amid flashes of angry lightning, they cut her from the post and dragged her out of the square, toward the hanging tree in the wood. John followed.

Charity regained consciousness when her binds fell and cried out, scratching at her captors and begging for her husband to use his magic to lay them low. But John had had enough of his wife. He turned his back on her, and returned home to spend the remainder of his life in peace.

Vicki paused on the sidewalk. The men behind her were getting braver, less cautious about the volume of their voices and the rapping of their footsteps; they intended to rape her. How amusing.

Resuming her stride, she made a right at the intersection, knowing it would take her to a vacant plot of land separating the neighborhood from the Mississippi River. No streetlights here. No interruptions. A black stretch of ground rose up to become a low hillock.

As she led the young men away from the street, grass shushing beneath her shoes, Vicki wondered what had brought Charity to mind. She’d been thinking about Ken, and without warning Charity had been there. Odd. The two were near opposites in every way: gender, social status, aesthetics, temperament. In fact the only trait they seemed to share was a covetous nature. Maybe that was what linked them in Vicki’s mind: Charity coveting the comfort and happiness of her neighbors; Ken coveting a pristine duality in which he sought the best of both worlds, while proving himself worthy of neither.

Vicki wanted to explore this thought further, but the boys at her back were moving toward her rapidly. It would have to wait.

She turned to face them. The boys were obviously college students from good homes, out for a wild night and a bit of felony to make them feel alive. They wore expensive shirts with horse logos and khaki shorts—clothes that were more appropriate for a clambake than a night of violence—but Vicki knew that they’d been out drinking. She also knew that they’d reached a point of harmonic malevolence. Neither boy left to his own devices would have presented the slightest threat, but when brought together, something dark catalyzed and engulfed them. This union spawned a dangerous creature with a single mind focused on base and destructive ambitions.

As she’d suspected, they’d do just fine.

“Can I help you boys?” Vicki asked, running her eyes up and down their bodies. First she checked the taller boy, the one with the brown hair and the white-as-snow smile. The other boy, not nearly as attractive but made more ambitious for it, licked his lips.

The taller boy spoke first. “We want to get our dicks wet,” he said.

“Charming,” Vicki replied.

The other boy, the unfortunate one with the porcine features and kinky, rust-colored hair, snorted a laugh. “And we chose you for the honor.”

“I’m flattered, Gentlemen,” Vicki said, “but this isn’t about getting your tiny little rocks off, is it? This is about showing off, challenging your entitled existence with a shot of mischief. Just angry little boys trying to prove they’re men, trying to show who’s the boss.”

“Fine,” the taller boy said, losing his smile. His hands reached down to the button of his shorts. “You want me to show you?”

“Oh, no,” Vicki said, stepping forward. “Me first.”

 

 

 

~

29

 

 

 

David drank his coffee hoping the caffeine would charge his exhausted system. He heard the water forcing itself through the pipes in his wall upstairs where Ken was showering. His second meeting with Laray had been postponed until two that afternoon, so he had the morning to kill, and he might even be able to grab a quick nap around noon if his fatigued mind required it.

Though Ken had kept his word and had made no reference to Wonderland or its owner, David’s dreams had been filled with the place. He pictured himself in Brugier’s Parlor, dismal and reeking, and walking through the infested remains of Brugier’s home, avoiding the roaches and beetles that scurried at his feet. When he’d awakened in a panic for the third time around four thirty, he’d felt the tiny creatures dancing over his skin. They had gotten caught in the hair on his chest and pubis. He’d brushed himself frantically, but a quick survey of his body revealed no hungry insects. He was only touched by remnants of dream.

The water stopped moaning through the pipes. David stood and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He filled a mug for Ken and dropped in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. He sat the mug across from him at the dinette table and waited.

A few minutes later, Ken came into the kitchen dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a black Polo knit, clothes he’d left at David’s over two years ago. He kissed David and looked around the kitchen as if someone had just called his name. His eyes settled on the table. “This mine,” he asked indicating the mug.

“I’m not expecting anyone else.”

A heavy silence hung between them then. The two made eye contact and broke it quickly as neither seemed able to find a suitable topic of conversation. Finally, Ken grasped his mug with both hands and caught David’s eye. “What’s your morning like?”

“Wide open,” he said as he tried to decipher the strange look in Ken’s eyes. “I’ve got a meeting in the CBD at two. Beyond that, I’m free. What’s going on?”

“I have to see Paula this morning. I spoke to her last night.” Ken seemed uncomfortable with the words. He looked back into his mug and then tapped a finger rhythmically against its side. “I’d like you to come with me.”

“Are you sure?” David asked.

“Yes,” Ken told him. “You said you’d be ready for a banquet of crazy today, and I’ve got one for you. More importantly, I’ve got to stop trying to juggle everything. If I don’t, something terrible is going to happen, again.”

~~~

David turned the Mercedes into the drive of Paula Nicholson’s house and parked in front of the garage. His stomach crept into his throat as he killed the engine. Ken hurried from the car and met David at the bottom of the stairs leading to the back porch.

“Are you okay with this?” David asked. “I can come back and pick you up later if you’d rather.”

“You don’t want to come in?” Ken cocked his head to the side. He squinted as if trying to see David through some sudden mist.

“I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with this.”

“Well, David, I’m not comfortable.” He delivered the information with a calm resolve in his voice. “If this were a comfortable prospect, I would have done it a long time ago, but you were right the day of Bobby’s funeral: My life is in pieces, and I’m the one who’s kept it broken. That’s stopping today.”

David nodded his head and followed Ken up the back porch. Paula Nicholson came out of the kitchen. Her right arm was in a sling, and she looked tired, but beyond that she didn’t seem too badly hurt. When David came into sight, Paula slowed. A thin smile flashed over her lips as a precursor to the confusion that quickly replaced it. David wondered what mask covered his own face? He felt himself smiling, but did the expression appear silly, kind, or just awkward?

“Paula,” Ken said, “this is David Lane.”

“David,” Paula said. Her eyes ran back and forth between the two men almost as if waiting for them to attack. “Pleased to meet you.”

As for himself, David felt a weight drop into his stomach. He’d often wondered what this moment might be like. Now that the event had come to pass, it proved just as awkward as he’d always imagined.

Ken hugged Paula gently, accommodating the slung arm. “You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. “You just missed Esther, but I’ve got coffee on. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

They passed through a small mudroom and into a slightly larger laundry room that opened into the brightly lit, well-maintained kitchen. Black and white tiles checkered the floor and disappeared beneath gleaming modern appliances and sleek white cabinets. David took in as much of the room as he could without appearing to pry.

“Where’s Jen’?” Ken asked, leaning over the threshold to peer into the dining room.

“Still in her room,” Paula told him. “Apparently, the world sucks, and I’m its queen. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s serve yourself today.”

“What?” Ken asked.

“The coffee.”

“I’ll get it,” David said locating the pot on the counter. He found mugs in the cupboard above and reached for the small sugar bowl next to the coffee maker.

“At least she’s home,” Ken said. “I don’t like the idea of her roaming the streets with Vicki out there. In fact, when we get done here, I’m going to make some calls. If the police won’t take this seriously, I’m going to hire a couple of off-duty cops or find a personal protection agency to keep an eye on your two until this passes.”

“Do you really think Vicki is going to try anything else?” David asked. “I’d think she’d be running to the hills now that her accomplice is in custody.”

“She’ll try something,” Ken said without hesitation. “The police don’t scare her, and she isn’t done with us.”

“Why?” Paula asked. “What did we do to her? What does she want?”

“To get to me,” Ken said. David watched him stand and circle the dinette so that he faced both Paula and himself. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“What?” Paula asked, shooting a curious glance at David as if relinquishing her answer to him.

“Not really,” David replied.

“Can you accept the idea of reincarnation for argument’s sake?”

“I suppose. But what’s this all about?”

“In a minute. Let’s say reincarnation exists, and let’s say that every time you come back, you remember your previous lives, not in a New Agey kind of way, where you get impressions or memory flashes, but complete and total conscious recollection. Just like you never died at all but rather went to sleep one night and when you woke, you were a baby, newborn, with a completely different body.”

“So basically, you could live forever,” David said. “Not immortal in body, but still immortal.”

“Exactly.”

“Having assumed this, then what?” Paula asked.

“I know who Vicki Bach is. I knew her years ago, and I know what she wants.”

“You knew her?” Paula asked. “And you never said anything?”

“It didn’t make any sense at the time,” Ken said. “Travis Brugier killed himself thirty years ago, and now he’s back as Vicki Bach.”

“Insane,” Paula replied, her voice thick with derision.

“Absolutely,” Ken said. “But it’s also true. Everything that’s happened to Bobby and Sam and you is part of Brugier’s plan, a plan he’s been committed to carrying out for over thirty years.”

“Impossible.”

David listened to the exchange but added nothing to it. Ken had promised a banquet of crazy and was certainly delivering on his word, but David wasn’t ready to write him off just yet. He’d scoffed at Ken’s conspiracy theory before, only to arrive in front of this very house and see that, indeed, something dangerous was at work.

“It’s not impossible,” Ken said. “It should be, but it isn’t. I thought Brugier was insane when he told me about all of this years ago. And don’t get me wrong, Travis is insane, but he’s also powerful. He killed himself because it meant nothing. He knew he’d come back, knew that he could find me. He’d made enough arrangements to assure finding me, but he didn’t count on me moving to Austin. So, Vicki Bach dated Bobby, even accepted his marriage proposal. Then, she had Chuck Baxter attack him so I would have to come back.”

“Why?” Paula asked. “Why not just track you down to Austin, finish things there?”

“Because I don’t care about anything in Austin.”

“And this doesn’t strike you as the least bit nuts?”

“Fuck,” Ken said, exasperated and growing angry. “When I was eighteen years old, I offended this thing. I left it at the altar, so to speak. Now it’s paying me back.”

David shook his head and finally joined the conversation. “Okay, why now? Why you? After so much time, wouldn’t he have found someone before if he had wanted to?”

“He did,” Ken said. “I found a book, and I think that it tells the story of his first attempt to change someone. I think it might also tell us how to stop him. But there’s more. He’s able to do things, to make you see things. He can get inside your head. It’s a game to him.”

“Him?” Paula asked. “I thought we were talking about Vicki?”

“We are but…” he let the sentence drift off. “But we’re also talking about Travis Brugier.”

Ken’s conviction needled at David. He could see how easily Ken’s fantasy had formed, particularly in light of his earlier relationship with Brugier. It took only a simple twist of the facts to arrive at Ken’s conclusions. Still, impossible was impossible.

“Let’s take Brugier out of this,” David said. “For now, let’s just stay focused on Vicki Bach. You’re telling us that she’s dangerous. Fine. I think we can accept that.”

“Okay,” Ken said, sounding dejected. “Ignore everything else. Vicki is dangerous, and she isn’t likely to be alone.”

Paula made a small throaty sound next to him. Ken and David both looked at her.

“Will you accept that?” Ken asked of her. “Put the rest of this out of your mind. Will you at least believe Bach is capable of serious harm?”

“She’s already proven that to me,” Paula said coolly.

“So,” David said, “what are we going to do now?”

“I’m going to find her.”

Jennifer’s voice startled them. They’d all been so focused on each other, they hadn’t noticed her enter the room.

“Why can’t you leave her alone?” she cried.

David’s heart jumped into his throat, and he turned to see a rather plain girl, her features twisted with rage, standing in the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. Ken spilled coffee down the front of his shirt as he spun, and Paula jumped to her feet next to him.

“She didn’t do anything,” Jennifer continued. “She loved Bobby. She loved him a lot more than you two ever did.” Jennifer’s face burned red. “You two think you know so much, but you don’t. She was as afraid of Chuck as anyone. He threatened her! Said he’d kill her. Maybe she just wants to be left alone. Did you ever think of that? Just leave her alone.”

“How do you know this?” Ken asked.

“None of your business!”

“Jennifer,” Ken’s voice rose. “Do you know where she is?”

“Fuck off,” Jennifer screeched.

Then the girl spun around and ran through the dining room, tearing a path across the house to the front door, which opened and slammed behind her before any of the adults in the room could move.

Ken’s paralysis broke first, and he set off after his daughter. Paula, turned to David, “I’m so sorry you had to hear that.” But David was already on his feet and chasing Ken out of the kitchen. He followed Ken through the living room and forced himself to run faster. In a full sprint by the time he reached the front door, David came to a stumbling halt as he tried to understand the scene before his eyes.

A thunderstorm raged beyond the porch, but it wasn’t like any storm David had seen before. The raindrops pelting the ground were silver cast and dangerous looking, like shards of metal. These silver drops played against a screen of charcoal-gray mist that climbed through the storm toward pitch-black skies. Dark forms, men in black coats and broad-brimmed hats, trudged down the center of the street, which was already flooding, the metallic water running like a river of mercury. Lightning flashed over the house across the street, and its electricity rode the rain, spreading out in a brilliant aurora that covered the houses, the yards, and the road in blue-white light. The thunderclap that followed exploded in David’s ear, and he leapt back, a sharp curse flying from his lips. The air crackled with static and sizzled, raising all of the hairs on David’s body.

“David!”

He snapped his head around and saw Ken at his side, wearing an angry expression and a sweat-beaded brow.

The next bolt of lightning zagged into an oak farther down the road, exploding the tree into a thousand burning twigs, which were quickly extinguished by the downpour. But in its flash, David saw the figures in the road. Six hard-faced men, dressed in the black of puritans, dragged a stout woman through the silvery river. She was naked, exposing her ample breasts and belly, which were torn with the deep gashes of a lash. Her tangled white hair fell over her face like a tattered cowl. She kicked at the rising tide and clawed at the men hunched over her. Her screeching protests rode the crackling air before the second bolt of thunder deafened David to her pleas.

Strong hands came to his shoulders, and Ken shook him. “David?”

“You were right, weren’t you?” David muttered. Even without the pilgrims and their witch, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The skies had been blue and clear when they’d entered the house less than twenty minutes ago. A storm, regardless of its peculiar and disturbing elements, just wasn’t possible.

“Yes, this is his doing,” Ken said. “We need the car, now, before Jennifer gets too far away. Where are the keys?”

“How are you going to drive through this?”

“Just give me the keys.”

He dug in his pocket absently until his fingers wrapped around the key chain. He pulled it free and handed the keys over to Ken. The awesome and violent storm continued to draw his attention.

“Oh, my Lord,” Paula cried from the door. “Ken, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

David caught movement from the corner of his eye, turned, and saw Ken running back into the house. He’s going to get the car, David wanted to say but couldn’t force himself to speak. With her face full of frantic expectation and questions, Paula looked at him. She really is an incredibly beautiful woman, David thought. He had no answers for her, so he turned back to the pelting mercury, the gloom, and the dark figures moving within.

The six puritans and their captive were far down the road, now barely visible, merely smudges against the gloom. The gush of water and the rapping of the drops feeding it filled his ears so he could no longer hear the panicked woman. He smelled the moist air, tinged with the fecund odor of a forest and the scent of salt as if they were near the ocean.

David walked across the porch, reached out from under its shelter and felt water tapping his fingers, his palm, and his wrist. The cuff of his shirt turned dark with absorbed liquid.

“It came up so fast,” Paula said, standing close to him. “And Jennifer ran right into it. My God, she’s going to be soaked.”

“Sure,” David said, seeing no benefit in challenging the woman’s denial. She might not have seen the pilgrims and their witch. She could have attributed the metallic tinge of the rain to any number of meteorological anomalies, but David suspected it was fear that drove Paula to rationalization. “We’ll go find her.”

“Thank you,” Paula said quietly. “She couldn’t have gotten too far in this.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

His Mercedes rolled into view from the side of the house, and Ken honked the horn. David said good-bye to Paula, hunched low against the brutal weather, and ran down the porch stairs toward the car.

~~~

Ken stared out the windshield searching the neighborhood but could see little through the thick storm. A car rode his bumper, the horn bleating in rapid bursts. Of course, the driver of that car was not caught in the same squall as Ken. He reached across the seat and touched David’s shoulder. David jerked slightly at the touch and then sighed deeply.

“What’s happening here?” David asked.

“Travis,” Ken said simply.

“So, it’s not really raining?”

“No,” Ken told him. “I told you, it’s one of his talents. He can get in your head. This is what he was doing to me a year ago. He made me watch you die more than once. Since I’ve been back, he’s done a lot worse.”

“But I felt the rain.”

“I know, but it isn’t there.”

“He can create any fucking nightmare he wants, and it’s all real to whoever goes through it?” David sounded beaten and tired.

“Yes.”

“So,” David said, “I might not even be sitting here. I could still be at home in bed, and the whole morning has just been a little skit your friend is running through my head. Or, you’re still in Austin, and everything that’s happened in the last week has all been a mind fuck, a virtual reality game without an Off switch. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“David, don’t,” Ken said, hearing the panic in David’s voice. “He can’t alter things indefinitely; there’d be no way for him to sustain it.”

But did Ken believe that? Even he had begun to wonder how much of his life, how many of his thoughts, were actually his own. That morning, he’d woken up and seen David, and his first thought had been how completely fortunate he was that something so unlikely as their reconciliation should happen. From that wonderful thought, nagging doubts began to grow, but he had quelled them, put them away. He had to have some control over his life, or else nothing he did mattered.

“Any chance you feel like taking the family on a vacation, really far from here?” David asked.

Ken shook his head. “Not now. Not with Jennifer gone. But you can leave, David. You can get away from here until this is settled. Go to my house in Austin, go to London or Florence, just name the place, and I’ll send you.”

“He wouldn’t let me leave if I wanted to,” David said. “Besides, I don’t want to.”

“Look around, David,” said Ken as he twisted the wheel to pull the car to the curb so the anxious driver behind him could pass. “Do you really think there’s anything you can do? I’m not sure there’s anything I can do at this point, but I have to stay. You don’t.”

“Shut up and drive,” David told him.

The beating rain stopped. The mist and gloom, the river they’d been driving through dried up and faded. The sun burst bright on the hood of the car, illuminating the yards and homes of the Garden District. The street before them was dry, and the spatters on the windshield vanished.

“Thank God,” David said with a sigh.

Ken pulled away from the curb. He wasn’t as pleased about the sudden cessation of the weather. If it had come to an end, it meant that Vicki saw no need to continue with its distraction. Though the idea made him nauseous, Ken couldn’t help but believe that Jennifer was already with Vicki, somewhere that Ken was unlikely to find them.

Ten minutes later, they drove into the Quarter, and fifteen minutes after that, they wandered through the musty atmosphere of Brugier’s Wonderland.

In the upstairs hall, David paused in front of a painting, squinting to make sense of the image beneath the dust. “Is that a Gauguin?”

“Yes,” Ken said, keeping an eye on the door at the end of the hall.

“And it’s just been hanging here for thirty years?”

“David, come on.”

Their footsteps shushed along the carpet runner on the landing. Next to him, David wore an expression of awe as he took in Brugier’s treasures. Every few steps, though, David would pause, look down, and search the floor.

“How does he do it?” David asked.

“Do what?” Ken asked, poking his head into the master bedroom. The chamber was empty, just as he’d left it the previous evening.

“Get into your head?”

“I don’t know,” Ken admitted. The tales he’d read in Travis’s storybook only referenced the growth of this skill, not its mechanics. “He used to call them thought pictures. A long time ago, that may have been all they were.”

“Did you ever wonder why he chose you?” David asked.

Ken let the question roll over him. He stood across the room at the doors to the balcony, holding the handles. Unsure of his response, he whispered, “All the time,” and pulled open the French doors to reveal the balcony and courtyard below.

The concrete fountain, its cracked basin filled with scum the color of cooked spinach stood in the center of the flagstones. Overgrowth crept along the stones. Across the court, the smaller building, Travis’s Parlor, stood dark and ominous.

David walked to his side and leaned forward on the wrought-iron rail. When he spoke, his tone was matter-of-fact, without a hint of false consolation. “You can’t blame yourself for what’s happening. No matter what Vicki does, it’s not your fault. There’s nothing you could have done to deserve this.”

Ken wanted to believe that but couldn’t. Travis had to have seen something—ambition, hunger, hubris—that had set Ken apart. There had to have been some element, perhaps deep and dark, that had drawn Travis to him.

“Hey,” David said, snaking his arm around Ken’s waist. “You didn’t ask for this.”

Unable to agree, Ken said, “We should keep looking.”

With heavy concern in his eyes, David nodded and stepped back from the rail. He patted Ken’s back with three light raps and returned to the bedroom.

They searched the remaining rooms speaking little. Ken’s thoughts drew him inward, away from David and his consolation. Each new room, abandoned and empty, layered in filth, reminded Ken of a decision, a failure. His life was filled with such rooms. Once occupied by friends, family, David, and a host of forgotten romantic partners, the house Ken had built for himself looked hardly different from Travis’s dilapidated estate.

By the time they ended their search back in the foyer, despair had ensnared him. His daughter was missing, and he could spend days searching for her. Who knew what manner of horror she’d endure as he wandered impotently through this house, this city? A lifetime of faults accumulated on his neck and shoulders, driving shivs into his back to pierce his lungs and heart. The search was futile.

“Where to?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” Ken admitted. Vicki could hold up in any hotel, or she might have bought a new house. The possible locations were overwhelming. “She could be anywhere by now.”

Something he said triggered a look of surprise from David. He jerked his left arm up to read his watch. His face relaxed immediately.

“Forgot about my meeting,” he said. “But I’ve got a couple of hours yet. I’ll get you back to Paula’s before I head home.”

~~~

For the second time in three days, the sight of a police car greeted David as he made the turn onto Paula’s street. It sat, lights dead, in the drive of her house. He pulled to the curb and left the engine idling.

Next to him, Ken said, “She called the police.” He stated this information as a banal fact, like driving directions.

He doesn’t think they can help, David thought, making his own sense of unease tingle and spark.

Despair had hung over Ken since they’d stepped onto the grounds of Wonderland and had intensified with every step they’d taken through the filthy place. Ken felt guilty for bringing Travis Brugier into the lives of his family, and though David considered this guilt misplaced, he understood, but there was more at work. David sensed that Ken had given up, had finally crumbled; this sense covered him like a magnetic field, drawing his own hopelessness to the surface.

“I’m going to head out,” he said. “I don’t have time to talk to those guys, and I really don’t have anything to tell them.”

“That’s fine,” Ken said.

“Jennifer is going to be okay.”

“Thank you,” Ken told him, wrapping a warm hand around David’s wrist. “I hate you running off like this. Can you cancel the meeting?”

“I could, but I won’t. Once this is over, I’ll still need to make a living. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done. After that, I don’t have anything else scheduled for the week.”

“Be careful,” Ken told him.

“Consider it done.”

Back at his house, David showered and changed into his favorite gray Armani suit. He ran a brush through his hair and left the bedroom. Downstairs he searched the living room until he came across his briefcase. He set this on the credenza and noticed the strange necklace Travis Brugier had given Ken. David lifted the ornament and dangled it in the air. He’d have to get this back to Ken, he thought. David shoved the Thorn into his pocket and returned to the contents of his briefcase. Having all of the papers he needed for his meeting, David closed the case.

A thick roach ran across his hand, rushing for the shadows at the back of the credenza. David slammed his fist down painfully on the smooth surface, but he’d missed the creature.

“Gonna have to spray,” he whispered to himself.

They’ll take you alive or screamin’. Thanks Uncle Joe.

David lifted the case off of the furniture and walked into his kitchen. He retrieved some cold cuts and a jar of mustard from the refrigerator. He slapped some salami on a slice of wheat bread, gave it a thick frosting of mustard, and squished the top slice of bread onto the meat. He poured himself a glass of cranberry juice and sat at the dinette table. He’d have to clean the crumbs off of the counter before he left. He didn’t need to be feeding any unwanted houseguests. David lifted the sandwich to his mouth and stopped before taking a bite.

How many Flesh Eaters you think fall into a commercial sausage press?

He considered the texture of his sandwich meat. God only knew what those little specks were. They were supposed to be pork and spices, but what else might have slipped in?

“Marvelous,” he hissed and dropped the sandwich on the plate. He finished his cranberry juice and stared at his unappealing lunch. “Screw it,” he said. He lifted the sandwich and carried it to the disposal. After grinding away the questionable meal, he sprayed his counter and the tabletop with disinfectant and wiped up all sign of crumbs with a wad of paper towel.

David hoisted his briefcase from the table and left the house.

 

 

 

~

30

 

 

 

Ken found Paula pacing in the living room. She was speaking with the two detectives who had handled Paula’s and Bobby’s attacks while a uniformed officer looked on from beside the television set. His arms were crossed, his face blank. The slender detective—Ogilvie, Ken remembered—stood behind the sofa, and his partner, the stockier Reilly, took notes beside him. They all looked up, startled, when Ken entered the room.

Ken nodded to the men and raised his hand in a low wave. Paula turned on her heels and rushed to him. Her skin, always pale, was now white. Trails of tears stained her cheeks beneath pink eyes.

“You didn’t find her?”

“Not yet,” Ken said. “Did you try her cell phone?”

“About fifty times; it goes directly into voice mail.”

“Mr. Nicholson,” Ogilvie said, breaking away from his partner to round the sofa. “Can you tell us which direction your daughter was headed when you last saw her?”

“I didn’t see her once she left the house,” he said. He reached out an arm and wrapped it around Paula’s back, giving her a tight hug and feeling the tremble of her body beneath his hand. “David and I searched the blocks around here, and we drove into the Quarter, but we didn’t find anything.”

“Why did you go to the Quarter?” Ogilvie asked.

Ken hesitated. He didn’t know how much Paula had already told the men. Had she told them that he knew Vicki Bach? Worse still, had she told them Ken’s improbable story about Travis Brugier?

Before a functional lie formed in his head, Paula rescued him by saying, “She always goes there when she’s upset.”

Ogilvie nodded, and Reilly scribbled on his notepad.

“Does your daughter have friends there, anyone we can speak to?” Ogilvie asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Ken said.

“Mrs. Nicholson,” Ogilvie said, “you called this in as a kidnapping. Isn’t that correct?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s no real proof of a crime. Your daughter ran away after a family dispute.”

Paula tensed against Ken. He felt her prickling energy course through his body like a charge.

“That’s correct,” Paula said, using the measured voice she reserved for her family when she was furious. “But Detective Ogilvie, Jennifer has been in contact with Vicki for weeks, maybe months. Somehow, Vicki was able to convince Jennifer that she had nothing to do with Chuck, that she was just an innocent bystander who happened to know a psycho with a lead pipe. I don’t know what lies Vicki told her, but Jennifer believed them. That makes my daughter naïve and foolish. She’s a child, so she has that right. You do not. You have known about this woman since my son was attacked, and you haven’t done one damned thing about it.”

“Mrs. Nicholson,” Ogilvie said with a tone meant to soothe.

“I am not finished,” Paula said, pulling away from Ken and marching toward the detective. She was crying again, but the tears made her seem no less imposing. “You haven’t done anything, and now I have a second child at the mercy of that woman. So, don’t read me passages from your rulebook. Jennifer is with Vicki Bach. Now, you go find that bitch and bring my daughter home!”

Both Ogilvie and his partner flinched. Ken looked at the uniformed officer by the television, but his expression had not changed.

Reilly, who Ken imagined was rarely given the chance to speak during such interviews walked around the sofa, approaching Paula. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this is impossible for you.”

“Do you?” Paula snapped.

Reilly dropped his arm so that his notebook hung at his side. “I lost my daughter four years ago.”

The detective’s eyes weighed with compassion, but it wasn’t a performance meant to comfort hysterical loved ones. It was warm and sincere. Ken was touched to see it.

“I’m sorry,” Paula said.

“Thank you,” Reilly replied. “What we know about Vicki Bach is that she’s using her real name. She’s twenty-nine years old and originally from Phoenix. Her father was a prominent banker in the Southwest, and her mother was a physician. Both parents were killed in an automobile accident ten years ago. Since then, Victoria Bach has held no employment outside of heading a philanthropic organization she created called The Wonderland Foundation…”

Ken’s focus on the stout detective intensified when he heard those words.

“The foundation provides food, shelter, and counseling to runaways and homeless children. She has no criminal record, yet. Her last known address was here in New Orleans, where she rented a house on Burgundy Street. She let the lease expire eleven months ago, and her whereabouts since then have been unknown.” Reilly paused and tapped the notebook against his leg. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you all of this before, but considering the nature of our investigation we thought it best.”

The information seemed to calm Paula. Though not at ease, she appeared more controlled with the knowledge that the police were not sitting idle.

“We have two problems here,” Reilly continued. “The first is that Victoria Bach, up until now, has been a model citizen. Her foundation has donated over a million dollars and helped a lot of kids.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Paula said.

“Maybe not. But outside of you and your husband’s statements, we have no evidence linking Vicki Bach to Chuck Baxter. I’m not saying they weren’t working together; we just can’t find anything to prove it. We’re doing what we can to track her down, but it’s going to take some time.”

“You can’t expect us to sit around and wait,” Paula said.

“No,” Reilly told her, his voice warm and measured. “I can ask you to let us do our job, and I can suggest you try to stay calm until we find something. But I don’t expect you to take that advice. I know I wouldn’t.”

“Hey,” Ogilvie said, disturbed by an obvious breach of procedure.

“Give it a rest, Mort,” Reilly said. He turned back to Paula and clasped the notebook in both hands so that it hung just below his belt. “I believe Vicki Bach is dangerous. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. So, I have to trust that neither of you is going to do anything rash.”

Ken watched this exchange. He saw the expression on the burly detective’s face flicker from concern to earnest warning and back to compassion in a matter of seconds. The man was showing Paula that he took this seriously, even personally. The approach was not only kind, it was effective.

Paula’s posture eased. She nodded her head and wiped her eyes with two graceful sweeps of a finger.

“We’re going to go,” Reilly said. “You have my card, and I want you to use it if you hear anything. We’ll check back with you later this afternoon.”

~~~

Ken met Paula on the porch. She appeared calmer. She sat on the padded bench beneath the window, a mug of coffee clutched in her good hand. The front door stood wide open, and Ken imagined it was so Paula could hear the phone should it ring.

“She’ll be all right. At least, for a while,” Ken said. He wasn’t attempting to ease Paula’s mind, though he hoped he might. He really believed that in the short term their daughter would not be harmed. If he understood the gist of Jennifer’s tirade, then Vicki had had numerous opportunities to hurt his daughter over the last few weeks, and yet Jen remained certain that Vicki was her friend. Jennifer was obviously more valuable to the woman as an ally. “Travis—I’m sorry. I mean Vicki is using her to manipulate me. I don’t know how yet, but it won’t be too long before we find out.”

Paula leaned back against the windowsill and cocked her head at him. Ken squirmed under her appraisal. She was reading his face again. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you lived in the Quarter before you started school in Texas?”

“Because I couldn’t handle what happened here. I wanted to bury it.”

“So why did you move us back here?”

“You know why,” Ken said. “I was recruited by…”

“You were approached by a lot of companies Ken. And only one of them was in New Orleans. Why’d you come back, and why did we stay? You could have put your company together anywhere. In fact, Texas was a much better place for it from a business standpoint. You could have gone anywhere in the country, but you came back here.”

“What are you trying to say? That I planned all of this?”

“No,” Paula said. “I was just thinking about everything that’s happened and the story you told me about Travis Brugier. I’m wondering if maybe he planned this.”

“What?”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe Brugier accounted for your future? They offered you far more than even you were worth.”

“No,” Ken said. This much he couldn’t believe, and yet he did; the truth of it sank in like a doctor’s prognosis of malignancy. Brugier had done his best to ensure that Ken came back, back to the beginning. He had wanted finding his betrayer to be an easy task. A few choice requests of Gordon Lawless, and the rest was simply money.

“I’ll bet if you look back in the records that name is going to show up. He might have had someone else arrange it, who knows? But if he’s capable of everything else you’ve described, then…”

“So you believe me?” Ken asked.

“I’ll believe what I have to right now. Jennifer’s gone, and that’s all I care about. I’ve already lost my son, and I’m not going to lose anyone else. If this is what I have to believe, then I’ll believe it. So, I’m asking you again, What do we do?”

And the truth was Ken had no idea. That depended on Bach and Jennifer. It depended on a lot of things that he had no control over.

“Why don’t you stay here?” Paula asked. “I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”

“We’re not the only ones in danger,” he said.

“You mean David?”

“Yes,” Ken replied.

“How come you never mentioned him before?” Paula asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He knew about us though, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Paula sat her coffee mug on the arm of the bench, rubbed her injured shoulder and kept her hand over it as if she were cold. “I don’t understand. Two years, Ken? You spent two years with this man, and you never once mentioned his name.”

“At the time, I honestly believed that you didn’t want to know.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, Paula. It isn’t. You were wonderful and practical, but you weren’t being realistic. I know you tried to be, but you weren’t. Somewhere in your head, you thought we’d get back together. You were holding on to a piece of me that wasn’t there anymore, and I didn’t do a very good job of giving you anything else to hold on to. I saw how much my life was hurting you and the kids, and as a result I felt like shit for putting you through it. That’s why I stopped talking about all of this. That’s why I never mentioned David.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you didn’t, and I’m not blaming you for anything. We both know that the problems here were mine. You said you wanted to understand, and I’m trying to help you understand.”

“We probably should have talked about this a long time ago,” Paula said. “And David’s welcome to stay if he’ll be comfortable here. We’ve got plenty of room.”

“Okay,” Ken told her. “Thank you. I’ll ask him.”

They sat quietly then. Paula sipped her coffee. Ken looked over the neighborhood, his thoughts with his daughter and Travis Brugier. Ken knew that Travis was taking his misguided revenge slowly; he could have easily killed them all in a matter of days or hours or minutes. He was giving Ken the time to think and suffer, because hurting Ken wasn’t enough. No. Travis wanted more. He wanted Ken to discover the moral of this fable.

While in Wonderland, reading Travis’s stories, Ken had followed the descent of this being, from a soul with hope and innocence to a monster of abject hatred. The most dramatic change occurred after the story of White Dog. It was then, having been forsaken by a lover, that this being had turned completely dark. Ken tried to recall that tale; it had relevance, but he could only recall a few minor events that befell the young lovers. His mind wouldn’t allow him to access its details. But there was something important in that story, something he couldn’t quite grasp.

Despite his cloudy remembrance of the Native American legend, all of the other stories came clear to him. They all contained tragedy and disappointment. Many contained revenge. We’re just characters in a new tale for Travis’s storybook, Ken thought. He’d accounted for so much of Ken’s life, even during the years he’d been incapable of manipulating it. Travis had seen to it that Ken returned to this city more than once. His first job. Bobby. Who knew what other, subtler, plot points Travis had sketched for Ken over the years?

Wonderland’s lunatic master was writing their lives. Everything that had happened to Ken, to his family, to David: another tale to be written down and perhaps, one day, spoken back to the aberration that had penned it.

Just a story.

And Ken knew, Travis didn’t believe in happy endings.

 

 

 

~

31

 

 

 

David parked in the lot beneath Laray’s offices. By now, Jennifer might have returned home. He found himself wanting to call, but he was already late for his meeting, so he gave a quick prayer for Ken and boarded the elevator.

While checking his watch, he saw a roach out of the corner of his eye. It crouched in the corner of the car beside a gum wrapper and a few grains of dirt. The creature’s little legs worked furiously, and David noticed that it was emerging from a hole in the bottom of the car.

They’ll take you quiet or screaming.

He grew cold and nervous as the fat bug pulled its way out of the hole.

The elevator opened, and David nearly leapt into Laray Pharmaceutical’s lobby. The receptionist, a pretty woman with platinum-bleached hair and a black body-tight dress, asked what he wanted. After he told her, she pointed him down the hallway toward the meeting room he’d sat in only the day before. As he set off down the hall, he heard her announcing him over the telephone.

When he entered the room, the first face he saw was Antoine d’Aquin’s. d’Aquin was the vice president in charge of corporate communications, so his presence was mandatory. Beside him was a blonde woman with candy-apple lipstick. Four other people, three men and a woman, David immediately recognized as lawyers.

“David Lane,” d’Aquin said, already commencing the introductions. “These folks are from our legal department. They’ll be joining us this afternoon.”

Lovely, David thought. Another three hours wasted.

~~~

Two hours passed, and they were still haggling over what could and what could not be disclosed. Still, the clock was running, and Laray would be receiving a bill whether they took his advice or not, so he sat in the comfortable chair and argued his points, which had not changed. Full disclosure, he’d told them, was the only way to salvage the company’s reputation. Apologize and map out a course of action that clearly reflected the company’s concern for the families of the victims. Then pay up and don’t fuck around with people’s lives in the future.

Honestly, David didn’t know why Laray had called him back. His dislike for corporate public relations showed vividly in his work history. He knew the processes from his early days in the corporate structure, and he kept up on the current literature, but he certainly didn’t have a reputation in the field.

So, he sat there and fought a losing battle, haggling over the use of words like guilt and sorry.

Antoine d’Aquin, the heavy man with the perpetual sheen of perspiration, eyed him cautiously. David raised his eyebrows quickly for the fat man’s benefit. Like a shrug, the gesture was meant to say: I’ve told you what I think. If you don’t like it, then we’re wasting time. The lawyer’s voice droned on, and David pretended to pay attention.

He shot a glance at d’Aquin and noticed something moving in his shirt. At first it might have been the flutter of a passing draft, but the movement came from beneath the cotton material. David lifted his pen to his lips and cast his eyes down, so the sweaty man wouldn’t notice him staring. The shirt bubbled near the right breast, and the movement unnerved David. What was the man hiding in there? The bump moved, and when a large roach appeared through the opening between two buttons, a shiver ran through David’s body.

Quickly, the insect dashed into the shadow beneath d’Aquin’s jacket.

“Mr. Lane?” The blond woman was speaking.

“Yes?”

“Are you with us?” she asked, her lips wrinkled and pinched.

Even now the insect might be crawling through the swamp of d’Aquin’s armpit. David’s throat tightened. He wanted to check himself out, brush through his own clothes.

“Mr. Lane?”

“I’m trying to find a middle ground, but none seems plausible,” he said. “I realize your concern with the lawsuit, and I’ve heard the bullshit before: ‘If we say we’re sorry, then we’re admitting guilt.’ But the facts remain: You have guilt; there is sufficient evidence of that guilt, and even if there were not, people rarely side with a corporation in these things. Having said that, it isn’t my job to pass judgment one way or the other. I’m not suggesting that you disclose to look guilty. I’m suggesting you do it so you look concerned. Whether you are or not is your own moral dilemma, but from a media standpoint, your only chance at shutting this thing down is to get it out of the papers and off the networks as quickly as possible. That means an apology and a sincere effort to make restitution to the families. If there’s no conflict, then there’s no news.”

“And we’ve told you, Mr. Lane,” the youngest lawyer said, “that isn’t possible.”

Such a shame, David thought. The lawyer could have been quite attractive were it not for blatant ambition and cold eyes.

“Then,” David said, standing up from the table, “I guess I’ll see you on Sixty Minutes. It’s been a pleasure.”

David packed his papers back into his briefcase. He shook the hands of the lawyers and the blond with bright red lips and met Antoine d’Aquin at the door. The heavy man followed him into the hall.

“I know you’re right,” d’Aquin said. “We’re up to our asses in this one.”

David just wanted to leave. The building gave him the creeps. God only knew how many insects crept through the man’s clothing, hid beneath the water cooler, and fed in the corners of the break room.

“This isn’t going away,” David said.

“That’s what I’ve been telling them. I thought if I got an outside source to confirm my position, they might take it more seriously.”

“Well,” David said, “this is the Big Easy. If it ain’t gonna make you flower food, then it ain’t a problem. It’ll keep.”

“Thanks for your time,” d’Aquin said, extending a moist, meaty palm.

“You’re welcome. You’re screwed, but you’re welcome.” David replied, tentatively shaking the hand, keeping his eye on the jacket cuff so that no unwelcome visitor crossed onto him from d’Aquin’s body.

When he looked back up, a plump roach was pushing its way along the flab of the executive’s second chin, fighting and bumping the wave of fat as it struggled to emerge from the man’s collar. David closed his eyes as a wave of nausea rolled up his throat. He turned and hurried down the hall. In the elevator, he brushed his clothes and scanned the floor.

Quiet or screaming.

Back in the Mercedes, David wiped the film of sweat from his brow, thankful that he would be away from the building in moments.

Once he was on the road, he called Ken, who picked up after one ring.

“Any word?”

“No,” Ken said. “Nothing yet. The police were here. They know a lot about Vicki, but they still can’t find her. Paula and I went back out, checked some of her friends’ houses, the Riverwalk, anyplace we thought she was likely to go, but nothing. How was your meeting?”

“Fine,” David lied. “Look, I’m on my way home to change clothes. Is there anything I can do?”

When Ken suggested that David pack up a few belongings, his initial response was to refuse, imagining that, again, Ken was asking him to leave town, but instead, he wanted David to spend the night with him at Paula’s house. David didn’t like the idea. Not one bit. He’d just met Ken’s ex-wife and hardly considered it appropriate being her houseguest. But Ken insisted and delivered a compelling argument for them to stay together, made all the more profound by the thunderstorm-that-never-was he’d witnessed earlier in the day. So, despite misgivings and considerable unease, David agreed.

“Good,” Ken said. “Then, I’ll need a ride into the Quarter to pick up some things from the house. Once we’re all settled back here, we’ll figure out what to do.”

David agreed and ended the call.

 

 

 

~

32

 

 

 

At the house in the Quarter, Ken led David through the dining room to the kitchen. He checked his voice mail, but no one had called. Why he’d held any hope that Jennifer might try to reach him, he couldn’t say. That was simply the nature of hope. If his daughter was with Vicki, it was unlikely he’d have any news that Vicki didn’t want him to have.

So far, her only failure had been with Chuck. He’d been dispatched to kill Paula and had, instead, been captured, which afforded Ken some minor relief. Vicki wasn’t omnipotent; she could fail. But could she be stopped?

Ken didn’t know. The answer was in the storybook, specifically the legend of White Dog. He was sure of it. Reading that story, he had experienced an epiphany, which had quickly dulled and died. Every time he thought about that tale, his mind grew cloudy. He could not remember its ending. More and more he believed that he couldn’t remember it because Vicki didn’t want him to remember it.

“Have you got anything to eat?” David asked.

Ken was startled by such a practical request. He turned away from the phone. David leaned on the counter, looking around the kitchen floor as if he’d lost something.

“Sorry,” David said. “I haven’t eaten all day, and my gut is rumbling. It’s actually making me kind of light headed. Just some crackers or something until we can get dinner.”

“I’ll see.” Ken searched the cupboards. He found a box of shortbread cookies. He’d kept the box in a Ziploc bag to deter pests, but the cookies had to be over a year old. “They’re probably stale, but it’s about all I’ve got.”

“Fine,” David said, taking the plastic shrouded box. “You better grab your things. We shouldn’t leave Paula alone.”

Ken was watching David tear open the bag and reach in for the cardboard box when the phone rang. The sound startled them both, and David nearly dropped the package of cookies on the floor but hastily snatched at it, retrieving the box in midair.

“Ken, it’s Paula.”

“Any news?”

“I’ve got her,” Paula said, sounding frustrated. “She called right after you left. Turns out, she decided to spend her afternoon at the movies.”

“The movies?”

“Apparently so,” Paula said.

“Okay,” Ken said. “She’s with you?”

“Yes, we’re on our way back to the house now.”

A wave of elation crested in him and then crashed.

“Good. David and I will be along shortly, but Paula…” Ken said, suddenly unsure of how good this news was. “Are you sure it’s her?”

“What?” Paula asked. It took her a moment to realize exactly what Ken was saying. “Of course it’s her. I picked her up at the theater not ten minutes ago. Now, do you think I should call Detective Reilly and have him meet us?”

“Maybe I should talk to her first,” Ken said. “As long as she’s safe.”

“Well, I’m not too happy with her, but she’s fine.”

“See you soon.”

Ken hung up the phone, relieved, but it didn’t last.

He turned back to David, intending to tell him the good news, and saw him trembling, staring at a morsel of cookie, pinched between his fingers. David’s eyes were wide with revulsion. He threw the box of cookies away from himself, and it clattered across the floor. A shudder ran through his body, and he flicked away the half-eaten cookie as if it had come to life and bitten him.

“God,” he said, his voice garbled.

“David?” Ken asked.

But David didn’t reply. His body hitched with sickness. Covering his mouth, David fled the kitchen.

~~~

David ran, trying to beat the sickness rising from his belly. He’d been listening to Ken on the phone, absently devouring the stale cookies, which didn’t taste as bad as he’d imagined they would. He’d been so hungry, ravenous to the point of aching. The hunger was so great that he kept pulling the snacks out of the box and crunching them down to quell the pangs.

After Ken hung up the phone, David reached into the box for another of the shortbreads. He crunched it in half and waited to hear the news. Then, he’d felt the tickle on his fingers.

Looking at his hand, David grew hot with disgust. Between his index finger and his thumb, the lower half of a roach squirmed, its remaining legs kicking for purchase against his fingertips. He slammed the bathroom door open and leaned over the toilet as his nearly empty stomach convulsed and expelled. His body shook with nausea, sweat popped out on his neck and face. Again he heaved and again, his eyes squeezed shut from the violent sickness.

When his stomach refused any further exodus, David opened his eyes. Strands of meat hung from the lid and floated in the stained water of the toilet. Hundreds of tiny creatures filled the bowl. Beetles, worms, roaches—the Flesh Eaters had already come for him. Their bodies, shiny from his bile and the water in the bowl, writhed and fought for the pink morsels. Their numbers increased as they foraged. Bubbling and growing, the ravenous creatures pushed at the rim. They covered the porcelain, cascaded toward the ground, and flowed over the shiny tiled floor. David backed away. Suddenly he was covered with ice, and he trembled, swiping at his mouth and chin to make sure none of the creatures remained on him.

David turned to the mirror running over Ken’s sink. Nothing wrong. His face, untouched, stared back at him. A sheen of sweat over the pale skin glimmered in the harsh white lights, but he was okay. Alive, he thought. Still alive.

~~~

Ken sped onto Canal Street. He tried to blink the strange fog from his eyes, he rubbed them viciously with his fingers, but everything they touched fell under the haze.

“He got into my head,” David told Ken.

“It’s not real. It’s like a movie you can’t turn off.”

“I felt them inside of me,” David said. “I tasted the goddamned things.”

Ken’s chest tightened as he felt the man’s fear and anger creep over the seat. David shuddered visibly and pushed deeper into the leather upholstery as if he could become part of it and hide from whatever horrors came for him. Ken’s fingers strangled the steering wheel. Their anxiety increased by twos with every second that passed.

The strange haze grew thicker as he drove along St. Charles Avenue. The streetlights cast no illumination but rather glowed like weak candles in the night air. The headlights of approaching vehicles came at him as if from under water. All of the homes oozed a ghostly aura fed by table lamps and porch lights.

“You said you thought Brugier’s storybook might give clues to his weakness,” David said. He twitched and slapped at his arm before a pained smile spread over his lips and shame filled his eyes. “Have you thought about that anymore?”

Of course he had. He thought about it endlessly, but there seemed to be a wall that kept him from seeing the answer. He knew it had something to do with Travis’s first attempt at creating a lover. White Dog had taken Passing Cloud’s finger to perform a terrible ceremony, but, as Ken thought about the story, even though he’d freshly read the piece only a couple of days ago, the details were gone.

“Is there any chance we can find that book?” David asked.

“We don’t need the whole thing. It’s that damned Native American legend. I’m sure of it,” Ken said, “but none of it’s clear. I think Travis knows I can use the information, and he’s keeping it from me.”

“Do you really think he can do that?”

“Considering everything else he’s capable of, yes.”

“Okay,” David said. “So, let’s go over what you know. We’ll piece it together.”

“I don’t see the point. I only remember the beginning.”

“Ken,” David said, stern now, “tell me the story.”

Ken’s wet palms throttled the wheel as the words came from David’s mouth, but there was no story to tell. He could not remember the ending. No matter how he tried to see through the haze, he could only make out a few vague images. “All I remember is,” Ken began. He licked his suddenly dry lips and loosened his grip on the wheel. “There are these two kids: White Dog and Passing Cloud. They were very much in love and were about to be married. White Dog took the girl into the woods and cut off her little finger to use in a ritual that was meant to fuse her being with a spirit’s so that she could be with him always. Life after life, they would be together.” Ken bent his head forward to break some of the tension out of his neck.

“And what happens?” David asked. “Do they get married?”

“No,” Ken told him. “Passing Cloud believed that she was possessed, and she returned to her village in a panic.” This is where the story always ended in Ken’s mind. He could almost see the poor child frantically begging her people for help against this outsider, but they did not know White Dog was an outsider. They couldn’t know. He’d been born into their tribe. He had grown up with them. None knew what lived within him.

“Does she have family?” David asked. “Does she try to get help from her family?”

Ken was about to remind David that he couldn’t remember when part of the haze broke, and he remembered Passing Cloud’s mother. She had joined her daughter in the longhouse. “And she told Passing Cloud to pretend to the elders and to White Dog himself that nothing was wrong, but it was too late. White Dog had returned, and the elders warned him that his wife-to-be had gone mad. And then…” The haze grew thick again. Ken fought to keep the window of recall open, to keep the mist at bay, but it rolled in to obscure the mental landscape.

“Did White Dog play along? Did he laugh it off or seem concerned?”

“No,” Ken said. “He got angry.” Another curtain of mist pulled away. White Dog burst into the longhouse. Lame Bull, Passing Cloud’s mother, charged him with a knife but fell victim to one of the being’s hallucinations. “He killed Passing Cloud’s mother. He got into her head, and she died instantly.”

“Did he try to reason with Passing Cloud?”

Ken shook his head as the mist thinned and became transparent. He watched White Dog run his knife into Passing Cloud’s belly. “He murdered her. He stabbed her with a hunting knife and then pushed his fist into the wound.”

“Why?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” Ken replied as the fog settled heavily over the memory.

“Was he trying to take something out of her? You mentioned a ceremony. Did she have to eat or drink something?”

Ken shook his head. “The only aspect of the ceremony he wrote about was the taking of the finger to make the charms. The rest followed Passing Cloud as she witnesses a vision from the river: a man with a bear’s head. There’s nothing in there about incantations or…” Ken stopped himself. What had he just said? Something about the charms. White Dog had made a necklace and two rings from the severed finger. And… “Christ he was putting them back.”

“What?”

“He didn’t cut Passing Cloud open to take anything out. He was putting something in. He pushed the charms he’d made from her finger into her stomach.”

“Making her whole again?” David asked.

That was it, Ken realized. The fog had pulled away and left the perverse image of White Dog’s fist lodged in his lover’s belly. “He made her whole again, yes.”

“Were these charms like Brugier’s Thorn?”

“Yes. They were exactly like that.”

“Did Vicki make one? Is there any chance we’d even find it?”

“No,” Ken said. “We don’t have to. You’re seeing Vicki and Travis as separate beings. They aren’t. Vicki wouldn’t need to make a new charm. Travis hadn’t needed to. The Thorn came from this thing’s first incarnation, a woman named Alice. A part of her essence or soul is held within the Thorn along with a piece of the spirit that possessed her. I think if it’s with Vicki when she dies the cycle ends.”

“So, we can use the Thorn to stop her?”

“We can use it to stop her from coming back.”

“You left it at my house,” David said. “I picked it up this morning but forgot to give it to you.”

“Okay,” Ken said. “We’ll make sure that Paula and Jen are safe, then I’ll go back to pick it up.”

~~~

The lights on the first two floors of the painted lady burned. Ken pulled into the drive, relieved when he saw Paula passing the dining room window. For the first time since Bobby’s attack, Ken had a sense of control. Brugier had been in his life and in the world for too long, but with his new understanding of the Thorn and its role in Brugier’s resurrection, Ken found hope and a swelling sense of determination. He could stop this thing. He could salvage what remained of his life. All he had to do was keep his family and David safe for a little while longer.

“They’re okay,” David muttered.

“For now,” Ken told him. He unfastened the safety belt and opened his door. “Let’s try and keep it that way.”

Inside, Ken made a beeline for the kitchen, which was where Paula had been headed, and David made his way to the sofa in the living room, where he took a seat and stared at the floor.

Ken found his ex-wife leaning on the kitchen counter and shaking her head.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Paula replied tersely. “I swear to God, I am two seconds from shipping that kid to Switzerland. Running off that way and then having the gall to call me for a ride.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, Ken. She won’t talk to me, as usual. I sent her to her room, and right now, I’m thinking she can stay there for the next two years until it’s time for her to move out.”

“She knows how to find Vicki,” he said. “If she won’t talk to us we’ll have to call the police back here. In fact, you’d better call them anyway.”

“That’ll cause quite a conniption,” Paula said.

“I don’t give a shit,” Ken said. “We’ve tiptoed around her feelings for the last eight years, tried so damned hard not to wound her, and it’s done more damage than good. She walks all over us, and we flatten out hoping she’s good and comfortable with the stroll. But after today’s stunt? Running off and looking for Vicki after what that woman’s done to this family?”

“Well, we don’t know she went looking for Vicki. She told me she’d been at the movies all day. I know that doesn’t mean much. She might have tried to find her. I’m just glad she didn’t.”

Only because Vicki didn’t want to be found, Ken thought. The storm she’d created, the diversion that had allowed Jen to escape in the first place, proved she’d been nearby. Why she didn’t take the opportunity to ensnare Jennifer, Ken didn’t know. Maybe having Jen gone was enough. Another petty torment before her real plan was set into motion.

“I still think you should call Reilly,” he said.

“And tell him to bring a rubber hose?” Paula asked.

“If that’s what it takes,” Ken said earnestly. “I have to run to David’s for a few minutes. When I get back, we all need to sit down and talk this through. And I need to know where to find Vicki. I may have a way to stop her.”

Paula pushed away from the counter. Her face scrunched inquisitively. “You actually think you can stop this?”

The surprise in her voice was not flattering. In fact, little she could have done, short of laughing in his face, would have hurt more.

Wounded and mystified by what he took as cruelty, Ken stepped back into the doorway of the kitchen. “We’ll talk about it when I get back.”

“Fine.”

In the living room, he leaned over the back of the sofa and put his arm around David’s shoulders. “Are you feeling any better?”

David looked up, dazed, as if he’d just been woken from a deep sleep. “Yeah. I’m just…” he let the sentence die. “Are we ready to go?”

“I need you to stay here and keep an eye on Paula and Jen. I don’t know what Vicki’s planning, but I don’t want any of you alone until we’ve taken care of this. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Okay,” David said, a great distance in his voice.

He’s falling apart, Ken thought. “I’ll need your house keys,” he said.

Once he had them in his hand, Ken leaned over the sofa and kissed David’s neck. The man jerked away and threw a hand to his collar, rubbing fiercely at the skin Ken’s lips had just touched. David’s face went red, and he looked up at Ken with an expression so hopeless that it cut.

“I’ll fix this,” Ken said around a knot of emotion lodged high in his throat.

“You better hurry,” David said.

 

 

 

~

33

 

 

 

Ken had just left, and David sat on the sofa thinking about sunsets, not that he pictured brilliantly colored skies or held the notions with a single ounce of romance. Sunsets

were an end, the death of a day, and at the death of this day, David saw nothing but darkness. The future was a ridiculous thing to consider with everything going on, but he couldn’t help himself. His priest, Harv, had been right. There won’t be any riding off into the sunset.

Something moved along his arm, tiny legs scurrying through the hairs there. David slapped the place and the sensation stopped, only to reappear on his shin. He breathed deeply and exhaled a trembling sigh. He knew that nothing crawled on him, knew that it was just a trick being played with his mind, but the deception was maddening and immune to any balm of logic. He told himself again and again that there were no Flesh Eaters, but they were everywhere.

The sound of his car backing out of the drive snapped him from his reverie. He gazed at the television screen sitting across the room like a black window looking out on a motionless void.

David’s reflection hovered at the center of this void. Then, the darkness surrounding his reflection began to move, to separate and crawl.

For one lunatic moment, he felt a thousand tiny legs, covering every inch of his body. They tickled his face, his neck, his back. They squirmed against the fabric of his pants and shorts, scratched at his legs, his buttocks, and the warmth between his scrotum and anus. He bolted from the sofa with a muffled cry, slapping and wiping at his arms and legs, spinning in a frantic circle.

Paula Nicholson stared at him from the arch of the dining room. Embarrassed, David managed to regain his composure, but when he looked up at the woman, the ex-wife of his lover, he felt it slip again. Her face was as blank and cold as a corpse’s. Her eyes were icy pits without a bit of humanity in them.

“Paula?” he asked.

“Not even close, Darlin’.”

An illusion, David thought. They’d been so caught up in the vile, obvious mind games, that neither he nor Ken had considered Brugier could easily re-create the mundane as well. Paula was a figment, but what about her daughter?

“Jennifer!” David called, backing away from the sofa, working his way toward the front door.

“Not home,” Paula said. “Hasn’t been for a while now.”

“Where is she?” David asked, stumbling over his own feet.

“With me,” the apparition said. “Where she’s always been.”

David turned and bolted for the front door. Behind him, the illusion of Paula Nicholson’s voice roared, “Do you really think he loves you?”

David yanked on the front door, pulling it back with enough force to send it crashing against the wall. What waited for him on the porch sent him back a step.

Two young men in polo shirts and khaki shorts, arms crossed, faces stern, blocked the threshold. David threw a glance over his shoulder to see where Paula had gone, but the room behind him was empty. Desperate and half mad, David made a fist and buried it in the pig-snout nose of the boy on the right, throwing his body forward with the motion, propelling himself out of the house. A third man stood on the porch, he noticed, but whoever it was stood far back out of the light spilling from the doorway. Strong hands locked on David’s shoulders and spun him around, while the man he’d hit rolled on the porch, cupping his injured face. David swung again, landing a glancing blow on the second man’s jaw, but the guy had moved fast, and David’s punch had done no harm. The boy responded by burying a fist in David’s stomach, doubling him over and forcing the air out of his lungs. Then, he shoved David backward into the house. He lost his footing and crashed to the floor.

“Da’ fugger broke my node,” the man on the porch cried.

“Well,” his companion said, “that ought to make this next part a lot more fun.”

~~~

Paula stood on the corner, impatient and growing angry with detectives Ogilvie and Reilly. Jennifer had called to demand a ride home in an infuriatingly casual tone before giving Paula an address in the French Quarter. Though her daughter insisted that Vicki wasn’t with her, claimed to not know where Vicki was, Paula was taking no chances. She called Detective Reilly the second she’d hung up on her daughter.

The street lamp on the far sidewalk lit, then another ignited a block down. It was getting late, and Paula felt ridiculous standing on the corner half a block from where her daughter was. She’d been waiting for twenty minutes, because Reilly had insisted she not approach the building until they arrived. Well, where the hell were they?

Frustration drove her to dig the cell phone out of her purse. She flipped it open and then searched its memory for Detective Reilly’s number. Once she had it, she hit the SEND button and put the phone to her ear. A piercing siren tore from the earpiece, startling Paula into dropping the cellular on the sidewalk. After the surprise passed, she reached down for the device as if it had teeth, with great caution and unease. Lifting the phone, she hit the END button and tried calling again but with the same result. She searched the memory for Ken’s number. This time she held the phone well away from her ear in case the shrill interference was a defect in her phone or service.

She waited for a few seconds, anticipating the sharp tone, but it didn’t come. Relieved, she rested the earpiece against her head.

At first, she couldn’t be certain what it was she heard. It sounded like little more than static. Then a sharp hiccup broke the hiss, followed by a sniffle.

“It hurts,” her daughter cried through the phone.

“Jennifer?” Paula said, her heart thrown into a rapid beat.

“You never came,” the pained voice said.

“Jennifer, I’m right here, Honey.”

“Why didn’t you come, Mommy? Why didn’t you…”

A high scream cut the line, slicing into Paula like a lash, setting her skin alight, forcing her to move. She ran up the block toward the address Jennifer had read off, her head full of panicked cries. Paula’s frayed nerves made her clumsy. She stumbled, then righted herself. “Mommy!” Desperate, her gaze darted into every doorway, through every wrought-iron gate, hoping to catch a glimpse of her child.

“Why didn’t you come?” Jennifer pleaded in her ear.

The phone went dead. Paula threw it on the sidewalk in frustration. She charged forward until she arrived at the house Jennifer had described. Peering through the wrought-iron bars and down an alley between the fence and the slave quarters, the house beyond the courtyard loomed. It looked miserable in the late evening gloom. Dilapidated, filthy, and deserted. Worse still, it looked dangerous. But her daughter was in there. Something terrible was happening to her little girl in that house. Paula gripped the metal gate and pushed it open.

 

 

 

~

34

 

 

 

Ken opened the door to David’s house and hurried across the living room. He went immediately to the credenza where he’d left the Thorn, but the smooth surface was

bare. He opened each of the drawers in turn but they held only papers and the odd household gadget. Then he remembered that David had said something about bringing him the Thorn. He’d taken it that morning and then forgotten about it. It could be anywhere in the house.

He walked to the kitchen and scoured the countertops. Nothing. Ken ran upstairs and pushed open the door to David’s bedroom. The sight of the bed chilled him. Cold moisture came up on his neck.

Never again, a thin voice teased.

David had thrown his suit on the bed, probably to rush over to Paula’s that afternoon once his meeting had ended. Ken went to the nightstand on the near side of the bed and rifled through the papers and packages of condoms he found within. Nothing. He went around to David’s side. Nothing.

Ken checked his watch. He’d already been in the house ten minutes.

Noticing David’s suit on the bed, he yanked the jacket into his hands and checked the inner pockets but came up empty. He tossed the garment back on the bed and went for the pants. He dug into the left-hand pocket and pulled the lining out with his fist as he hurriedly searched the clothing. He flipped the trousers around and shoved his hand deeply into the opening of the other pocket.

A sharp pain stabbed his index finger. Ken’s hand recoiled. A thin bubble of blood welled over the fingertip. He shoved the digit in his mouth and then retrieved the Thorn from David’s pocket. Looping the charm around his neck, he dropped the pants on the floor and raced out of the bedroom.

~~~

Paula’s house was dark when he returned. No lights burned inside or out. Amid the other houses on the block, all lit with chandeliers and televisions, the place looked deserted. Spiders of anxiety scrabbled in his stomach. This wasn’t right. They wouldn’t have left, not on their own. The place wouldn’t be this dark unless someone had cut the power.

Ken’s dread intensified. He ran to the porch, and then forced himself to approach the door with caution, twisting the knob gently and easing it inward. He slid his hand along the wall, found the switch, and toggled it up. The foyer fell under a bath of light. Ken crossed to the living room and slid the rheostat up, bringing illumination to this room as well. No one had cut the power, but he could already feel the emptiness of the place.

What had happened? They’d all been here less than thirty minutes ago.

Ken searched through the first floor, calling, “David? Paula? Jen?” On the second floor, he listened for any sounds of life and called Paula’s name again. Bobby’s room was empty, and so was Jen’s. Ken stopped before the master suite, the only closed door on this floor.

When he pushed it open, he saw a familiar shadow in the gloom. Another of Brugier’s hanging men dangled over Paula’s bed. Ken flipped on the light, barely taking the time to look at the body.

“Is this the best you can do?” he whispered. He crossed the room and stood at the edge of the bed. The legs dangled beside him. Where the hell had everyone gone?

“You still think you can stop this, Baby?” the corpse said.

“You need a new act, Travis,” Ken said, swinging his arm to break through the latest illusion.

His arm cracked against the shin of the hanging man, sending him spinning on his wire, and though he knew Brugier could easily create the sensation of contact for him, he also felt certain that this time, he was not in the presence of a trick. Ken stumbled back, forcing himself to look at the one thing he had hoped to never see again.

David Lane, his eyes vacant and stained with broken blood vessels peered down at him. Still swaying and turning from Ken’s blow, the blood that had accumulated on his shoes spattered the violet duvet of Paula’s bed. Gristle or vertebrae snapped under the constricting wire, and Ken’s stomach rose, threatening to expel its contents on the floor.

“They were never here, Ken. They never came back because no one comes back from Wonderland. You left me alone…again.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ken backed away, tears filling his eyes, spilling over his cheeks. The pain in his chest sent him to his knees. This couldn’t be real. Not David. Not like this. He’d thought Paula’s tone suspicious, but he’d still left. He hadn’t gone upstairs to check on his daughter, and even if he had, Travis would have provided another illusion. They’d never come back, because no one comes back from Wonderland. He’d been so arrogant, thinking it would all end to his favor.

“Oh, I’m not going to make it that easy for you.” This timethe voice was Travis Brugier’s. His thick honeyed tone, as clear and calm as the night they’d met, rolled over Ken’s shoulder. He didn’t look up, instead he continued to mourn and pray against his palms. “You’ve always been torn, Baby, between who you are and what you think you should be. Now, look what that’s gotten you. You lied and hid and played all manner of games because you thought you’d keep the folks you claim to care about from getting hurt. And that just didn’t work out worth a shit.”

“Shut up, Travis.”

“So, here’s my deal. You get to choose. How’s that? Do you keep Paula and Jennifer, or do you keep David? It’s a fun and simple game, Baby.”

“David’s dead,” Ken said.

“Look again.”

Ken did as he was told. Wiping the tears from his eyes, clearing the scene before him, he looked up at the hanged man and saw Jersey Fleagle’s weathered, gaunt face staring back at him.

“He was going to eat a bullet after poor Sam got his head split against that curb,” Travis said. “That would have been a damned shame. A complete waste. I think this worked out much better for everyone.”

“Jesus,” Ken hissed.

“Now, you come on and see me. You know where I’m at. We’ll have us a nice old-fashioned reunion.”

 

 

 

~

35

 

 

 

Ken raced David’s car dangerously through traffic. The horns of the other drivers blared their discontent, but he didn’t care. On Decatur Street, a mule-drawn carriage

pulled out in front of him. He slammed on the brakes and flew forward against the wheel. The driver waved a gloved hand in the air as Ken watched the worn wagon with its cheap brass fixtures and sconces of desiccated flowers pull away. Jackson Square stood to his left just past a row of a dozen similar carriages. The river rushed beyond the embankment to his right. A true fog had come up in the thick, hot air. The strange haze he had experienced all evening had left him, but now nature had stepped in to blur the night.

Throngs of tourists still roamed the street despite the late hour. They wanted to suck as much enjoyment as they could from the city to feed disbelieving neighbors when they returned from vacation.

Ken gave the carriage in front of him a few more feet of space and then punched the gas. The traffic was maddening: one lane in, one lane out. Just as he passed Dumaine Street, not six blocks from his home, the traffic came to a dead halt. He climbed out of the Mercedes and looked over the row of motionless cars. Up ahead, near Ursulines a silver Ford Explorer had crossed the line and smashed into a delivery van.

He fell back into the car and shifted into reverse. The car behind him blared its horn, but Ken swung the Mercedes sharply and retreated down the wrong lane. No cars approached because of the accident. He slid past Dumaine, then cranked the wheel to make the turn. Halfway through the turn he slowed and brought the car to another agonizing stop.

Brilliant lamps and the open tails of massive cargo trucks informed Ken that the film they had been shooting near his home had moved further down the street. Everything between Chartres and Royal on Dumaine had been barricaded. He looked back at the street he had just left, and a line of cars stretched back as far as he could see. Ten yards away, a shadow peeled itself away from the deeper shadows behind it. A policeman moved across one of the blinding lights as he waved for Ken to back up.

He couldn’t waste any more time. Ken got out of the Mercedes and threw the keys at the startled officer, who caught them against his chest as Ken sprinted toward the barricade. The policeman yelled something, but Ken was already jumping over the wooden beam, which was meant to keep the curious at bay. The scene around him seemed little more than a blur as he raced along the sidewalk. Characters moved under the false daylight of the set. Shouts came up as he passed, but then just as quickly he was consumed by shadows, the sounds receding beneath his insistent heartbeat.

He turned right on Royal Street and slowed his pace only because he could not seem to catch his breath. The fog came on thick past Ursulines Street. The few lights on the distant block were worn and exhausted. The street before him was empty. He could still hear the traffic and frivolity on Decatur, but the noise came as if it were a memory to offset the utter silence of this stretch of road. His side kicking with pain, he slowed to a fast walk. Sweat slathered his face, dripped into his eyes, and blurred the already fuzzy scene. His heart tripped manically in his chest as he gasped the hot night air that burned along his tongue and throat. Ken reached for the bauble around his neck and felt the cruel point of the charm.

He gazed back over his shoulder. He’d passed St. Phillips Street, but he still had a long way to go. He forced himself to stop for a moment to regain his breath. All he needed was a moment, a moment to breathe.

Ken pushed away from the wall and settled into a slow jog. After a blind series of turns he stopped a block from Wonderland and again forced his aging system to catch up. He tried to imagine Travis’s home and where this final confrontation might occur. Travis’s flare for the dramatic almost assured Ken that they would meet on the balcony as they had all of those years ago, only instead of the pretty Vassals putting on a show in the courtyard, it would be Ken’s family, Ken’s lover.

Would Travis have them tear each other apart? A shudder, like a rivulet of ice water, ran down his spine.

He resumed his slow jog and crossed the intersection. Wonderland came up on his left. He noticed the sentries at its gate only as he stepped onto the far curb. They were both well groomed young men with casual attire and angry expressions. The taller man stepped away from the gate. The shorter man with the stained white shirt and swollen nose waited a moment before following.

And look at you, right back where you started.

He pushed the voice away. The boys moved quickly to meet Ken in the middle of the foggy street. The taller man with the blue knit shirt reached for his arm. He twisted away from the grasp. “I know the way,” Ken growled.

After a deep breath, Ken walked through the gate and back into Wonderland. In the distance he heard the clicking of hooves on the pavement: a carriage being drawn toward the noise on Bourbon Street.

The long alley beside Travis’s parlor engulfed him. Even the fog had not seeped into this murky corridor. As he entered the courtyard, Ken noticed the reek of burning oil. No blossoms this time. No electric bath of illumination. Just the dancing flames and the dead foliage. The house before him was carved from the darkness. His eyes immediately lifted to the balcony, but he saw nothing there. His escorts moved to either side of him. “Travis,” he called, his voice echoing back.

A light came on in the upstairs room. The doors opened, and two figures walked onto the balcony.

“What is this,” he heard Jennifer say. “Vicki?”

“Come on up,” Bach called. “The view’s better.”

He started across the courtyard, and for a moment there were blossoms. For the tiniest of seconds, flowers bloomed around him and a fountain sparkled, its plume glittering amid colored lights. The rich perfume tingled in his nose. The house before him, monstrous and beautiful, had not yet fallen to indifference and time. But the image passed, and Ken once again walked toward the worn wood of Brugier’s house.

Inside, he went directly to the stairs, climbing them quickly to the landing above. The dusty atmosphere caught in his throat, and he coughed the accumulation free. There was no going back now.

And what have you decided? David? Paula? Jennifer?

Ken walked along the corridor, stopping at the master suite’s door. He pushed the door open and stepped into the chamber. The mattress had been thrown from the bed, and the room was in complete disarray. Wallpaper had been shredded on the far wall and now dangled in strips to the floor. Dust danced in the gloom. A large document had been torn to scraps and the pieces littered every surface of the lifeless room.

Ken crossed the dismal chamber and stopped in front of the French doors. He pulled the curtains aside, and a sharp ray of light burned into his eyes. Shadows moved within shadows, and a dull haze held them all together. Only the searing beam of the spotlight cut the fog. Ken grasped the silver handles tightly and twisted them to free the latch. Slowly he pulled the doors open. As if his action had kindled a fire, Ken found himself awash in light.

Floodlights bathed the stagnant fountain and the overgrown courtyard walls.

He stepped onto the terrace. Jennifer ran to him and threw her arms around his back. “I want to go home,” she cried. “Can we go home?”

“Soon,” Ken said, patting her hair.

Over his daughter’s shoulder, Vicki Bach leaned against one of the wrought-iron posts. Then he saw David, and his throat clenched.

“Yes,” Bach said, “he’s nearly gone. Not nearly as far as Chuck, but it won’t take long at this point.”

David crouched in the corner of the balcony. His handsome face was twisted. Curled up as tightly as physically possible, the man whimpered and cried as he tried to keep Vicki Bach’s horror at bay. He stamped his foot and rubbed an invisible bug into the flaking wood. His eyes darted back and forth.

Dangling from the eaves across the rail from him, a wire noose shimmered.

“Have you made a decision?” Vicki asked. “Take your time. I’ve got plenty of it.” The woman laughed lightly and ran a hand over Ken’s cheek. “Gentlemen,” Vicki called, “would you please escort our other guest into the courtyard?”

Ken couldn’t take his eyes off of David’s twitching figure. He held his daughter tightly, stroking her hair, but his eyes were with the man in the corner.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Jennifer said. “I thought…”

“Shhh,” he said.

Vicki said, “How wonderful.”

“Shut up,” Ken warned.

“Be nice, Baby,” Vicki said. “I have them all here, and promises were made to be broken. But I’m feeling generous, so you go ahead and pick.”

“You know I can’t make a decision like that.”

“Then they all die,” Bach said easily as she paced along the balcony. “Poor, poor Ken. You still want to have it all, don’t you? You want your happy family, and you want to suck dick, and you want the whole world to revolve around you. And even when it does, you’re miserable. A clean slate is what you need to put yourself together.”

“Damn it, Travis,” he said. “It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it is. Just turn your back, and let one die. Like when you turned your back on me. That decision came easily enough. So, here we are again. You’ve lived two lives, Baby, and now you’ve got to decide between them.”

“And how many have you lived?” Ken asked. He pushed Jennifer aside lightly. “You’ve lived a dozen lives. More. And what have you accomplished? After all of this time, you’re still a bitter and angry child, wasting your lives and the lives of those around you, creating meaningless fables.”

Bach turned her back on him. She walked to the shivering heap at the end of the balcony and pointed at David. “Him?” she asked. “Or them?” Vicki turned and pointed into the courtyard.

Paula stood next to the fountain, looking around in confusion. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a thick strip of black tape wrapped around her head. The last Vassals stood by the exit, blocking escape. Next to him Jennifer made a sound deep in her throat.

“You lied to me,” Jennifer said. “We were friends.”

“In time,” Vicki said, “you’ll grow accustomed to the lies.” She faced Jennifer and rubbed the girl’s cheek lightly. “Whether you have that time is in your father’s hands. It’s his choice now.”

In the courtyard below, Paula spun rapidly, trying to keep her eyes on the men guarding her escape and the scene playing out on the balcony above. The thick black tape covering her mouth played in counterpoint to the bright white of her perfect skin and large terrified eyes. He looked at Jennifer, who was crying, struggling with something of her own. David had grown motionless on the balcony.

“David?” Ken shouted.

Vicki stepped forward. One hand traced along the rotting iron and the other went to the lapel of Ken’s shirt. “Decide,” she whispered.

Before he could stop them, Ken’s hands flew up and wrapped around Vicki Bach’s slender throat. In his mind, he saw himself plunging over the balcony, his arms securing the body of the creature that had manipulated and destroyed his life. But that didn’t happen.

Seconds after he decided to carry them both over the balcony, Ken’s mind erupted in color. Nausea rose in him so quickly that he pulled his hands back. Reflex brought his palms to his mouth as his head swam for a cohesive thought. Lightning flashes of orange and purple blinded him. The balcony was gone. Vicki Bach was gone. David and Jennifer and Paula—all were gone. In their place were the bolts of color and the pain.

And then he was alone on the balcony. The pain vanished so quickly that it left him swooning. A cool breeze blew over his face, filling his nose with the scent of jasmine. The quiet, so intense, so soothing. He gazed over the courtyard at the magnificent blossoms: reds and whites and greens blended into a tapestry of floral perfection. The fountain gurgled; a plume of water sparkled, lit by the numerous bulbs, shining from the ground.

How beautiful it was again… Again?

~~~

“Lovely night,” Travis called from the bedroom.

Ken couldn’t answer; he still reeled from the strange dislocation he’d just experienced, and everything felt different. He was staring out at the courtyard, expecting to see something there beside flowers, stones, and the fountain. The mellow notes of a rag played in the building across the way. Men moved past the windows of The Parlor, drinks in hand, smiles on faces. Looking down, he saw that he wore only pajama bottoms, but it was too early to go to bed. Confused, he ran his gaze over the railing of the balcony to where it met the side of the house and then down to the shadowed boards.

Hadn’t he left something there?

“I told you it might be difficult,” Travis called. “Come back to bed, Baby.”

Ken did as he was asked. He turned away from the balcony. Travis lay naked on the bed, looking as handsome as he always did, but he also looked concerned, his deeply tanned face twisted with fret.

“You wanted to see what it would be like,” Travis said, sounding ashamed. “I know it wasn’t easy for you, but at least you know now.”

Names and faces, the ghosts of dreams, floated in his head. Someone named David and a woman named Paula. He couldn’t get it all straight. He’d been married. He had had two children, but one of the children had died. The only thing he could remember with any clarity was the constant feelings of dread and a pervasive misery, extending year after year.

At eighteen years old, Ken had the history of a much older man. But how?

“You’ll need a second to let it all sink in,” Travis said. He ran a hand over his belly, upward to scratch his chest.

“I made you a monster,” Ken whispered.

“No, Baby,” Travis said. “I made me a monster. There was so much to show you that I wanted to make sure you understood, so I made it a bit of a haunt.”

“Understood what?”

“Where shame would lead you.”

“I’m not ashamed.” Ken sat on the soft, silk duvet. He reached out and grasped Travis’s hand where it lay on his chest. The skin beneath his touch was warm and familiar.

“But you want to leave,” Travis said. “You have everything you could ever need or want, you have love, but you refuse it. Why would an intelligent man run toward misery? Why would someone so exceptional choose the mundane? You don’t have to answer. We both know the answer. He wouldn’t. He would not run toward those things. He would, however, run away from something. So, you have to ask yourself what is here that you are so eager to escape? Is it me?”

Ken tried to respond but was interrupted by Travis’s thick chuckle.

“Did I suddenly get too ugly, too old?”

“No,” Ken said. He leaned forward and put his head on Travis’s chest, listened to the soft beating of his heart while his ear warmed on the skin. “Not even close.”

“So what else is there? The food isn’t good enough? The company is dull? Again, we both know the answers. That’s why I created Vicki for you. You wanted a second life, so I gave you a villain that had lived two and three and a dozen lives and as you, perhaps naïvely, pointed out, wasted them. Because that is what you can expect, Baby. That’s where shame will take you. It will break your life into unmanageable shards that cut every time you try to juggle them.”

“But it’s not that simple,” Ken said.

A soft tearful voice drifted in from the balcony. Crying. No words. Just sorrow.

Ken pushed away from Travis’s chest to get a better sense of the noise. “What’s that?”

“One of the Vassals, I’m sure. Likely, he found a less-than-kind suitor for the evening. It’s nothing.”

Ken nodded his head. Now that his mind was settling, details began to emerge from his muddled thoughts. He’d woken that morning in a kind of panic to be away from Wonderland and Travis. He couldn’t say exactly what had sparked this desperate emotion. Maybe it was Crow’s death. Puritan was just a kid, Ken’s best friend. For him to die so arbitrarily in the middle of the street was just too much to fathom. Sam had died nearly the same way, but Ken didn’t know any Sam except for the one he had imagined.

That morning, when he’d told Travis about his sudden urge to leave, the man had tried to console him. “I understand,” Travis said, embracing Ken. “But before you go, there’s one last story you need to hear.”

Ken had made to protest, but Travis shushed him and walked to the bookcase against the wall of the bedroom. Lifting the leather volume down, Travis said, “Do you want to read or should I?”

Confused and feeling anxious, needing to move, to go, to put distance between himself and Wonderland, Ken had told Travis that he was done with stories. He didn’t want anymore of those haunted tales in his head.

“I need something real,” Ken had said.

“Just one more,” Travis had said evenly. “One last story and then you can gather your things and go.” The man had walked to the bed, stacked pillows against the carved headboard and lay down. He opened the book, thumbed through its pages. “Now, shall I read or would you rather?”

Ken had been in no mood to sit. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the needling desire to leave.

“Tell me a story,” he’d whispered.

So Travis had. Even hours later, late in the evening Ken remembered how startled he’d been by the first line of the tale, how quickly it had woven into his thoughts and pulled him down and into himself.

“Kenneth Nicholson stood at the window of his home and watched the sky darken as he struggled with the news that his son might not live through the night,” Travis began. “Like the evening light, his son’s life was fading and perhaps would soon flicker out…” Another sharp sob from the balcony pulled Ken back into the present. Who was out there? Travis smiled up at him from the bed. “Must’a been quite a heartbreak,” he said with amusement, nodding his head toward the open balcony doors.

“Maybe I should check on him,” Ken said.

“Oh, he’ll be fine. Don’t bother yourself. Young hearts break easy, but they heal fast enough.”

Something about the voice was familiar, and the more Ken heard it, the less it sounded like a boy. It had the timbre of a girl’s voice. He thought about the daughter he’d had in the story Travis had told him. Jennifer.

“I’m going to go check,” he said and rose from the bed.

“Always so concerned,” Travis said.

“Sounds really upset,” Ken said, withholding the pronoun because he was not sure which gender to identify. The cries were decidedly feminine, and they sounded more frightened than sorrowful.

As he crossed the room peering into the night beyond the threshold, Travis said, “Tell me who you would have chosen.”

Ken paused and looked over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“If you had to decide between David and your family, who would you have chosen?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“Oh, but I have to know how the story ends,” Travis said, his voice teasing.

The girl sobbed a final time. Her voice faded from a guttural hiccup to silence.

Ken continued to the doorway. He crossed the threshold onto the balcony and said, “I suppose I would have chosen…” But his declaration was interrupted by a shriek so sharp and feral that it made his skin pimple and his muscles turn to ice.

“Decide!” Travis roared from the bed.

The piercing cry blended with Travis’s baritone command. They wove and knotted. The night air wrung with their clashing.

On the balcony to his right, a plain girl of no more than sixteen screamed, holding her hands to her ears in a pose of unqualified hysteria.

Jennifer?

~~~

“Decide!” Bach commanded.

Ken stepped forward out of reflex, turning in time to see his daughter charging forward. Arms outstretched, Jennifer hit Vicki Bach in the chest, her momentum throwing the woman backward.

Vicki’s hand fumbled over the fabric of Ken’s shirt. Nails tore at his chest seeking purchase. Finally a fist locked around the Thorn.

Vicki Bach teetered on the balcony rail. The banister caught her just behind the knees. Only the pillar and the Thorn grasped in her hands kept Bach from toppling back. Arms wide and legs kicking, she looked like a child on a swing. The Vassals at the gate stepped forward and then froze. They were also curious about this new development, and without instructions, they waited for resolution. The necklace’s chain dug into Ken’s neck. He stared at Vicki Bach, who closed her eyes. Farther down the balcony, David Lane moaned.

When Vicki opened her eyes, she looked at Ken. “Forever,” she said.

With one hand, he grasped the slender golden chain at his neck; with the other, he clutched the back of Vicki Bach’s head. Ken broke the chain to which Vicki clutched. He pushed The Thorn forward as he pulled Vicki toward him, burying its pointed stem deep in her throat.

“No,” he said, releasing the woman from his grasp.

Vicki Bach emitted a wet gargle as she fell. The support of the pillar was no longer sufficient to maintain her balance, and she toppled backward. Her form almost ceased moving. The body seemed to hover endlessly in the air. Her eyes never left his. Ken had expected to witness a different expression on the coldly beautiful face—rage, maybe even relief—but what he saw was nothing less than absolute terror. Then the legs pulled up, sending the body into a headlong dive. Vicki Bach’s face crushed on the flagstones below, her torso and legs slapping the pavement in turn.

Ken stepped away from the railing. Jennifer, sobbing wildly next to him, eased up to his side and wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her head in his chest. Below, Paula spun on the two boys by the corridor, but they’d had enough sport, and their meal ticket lay broken on the ground before them. The last Vassals backed away into the corridor and were gone.

David?

Ken looked over his shoulder, into the shadow at the end of the terrace. David lay propped against the siding, staring at the floor of the balcony. His features were difficult to read amid the shadows, but he didn’t move. That was clear enough.

With great care, Ken separated himself from his sobbing daughter. Still charged with prickling adrenaline, he approached David quickly and knelt down at the man’s side. He spoke his name and reached out a hand to touch the handsome face. His fingertips were met with moist, cool skin.

David continued to stare at the boards, not responding to the voice or the touch.

“David?” he whispered.

Still, no answer.

 

 

 

~

~Epilogue: Tomorrow

 

 

 

One morning, Ken woke to the familiar décor of his bedroom in Austin. He didn’t want to get out of bed yet. The light filtering through the shades was gray and weak, the

sun again obscured by clouds. It was the third such overcast day in a row. Hardly the kind of weather one wanted on his birthday.

He slid his palm over the sheets. The fabric was still warm, and he rolled over into the recently vacated space. He lay on his back, looking at the ceiling.

Fifty-two, he thought. Today, he was fifty-two years old. Usually, his birthdays came and went, marked by a celebration or a fine meal, some gifts, but he never felt any sense of change. They were days fundamentally like any other, made important by the space they occupied on the calendar, not by any identifiable change in him. Just coins to be collected in a jar, eventually adding up to whatever sum he was owed.

Today was different. He was different. In a few hours, he’d be getting on a plane, flying back to New Orleans. Paula had apologized a dozen times for her oversight, scheduling her wedding so that he’d have to fly on his birthday, but her husband-to-be had to accommodate the itineraries of a large family. Apparently, the Reilly clan was enormous.

Ken didn’t mind the trip at all. He was happy for Paula, glad she’d found someone to share her life with after all of these years. Detective Reilly was a good man, and since he’d retired from the police force to write a crime thriller, Paula wouldn’t have to spend her days driving herself crazy with worry about the well-being of her second husband. When she spoke about Dan Reilly, she sounded happy, and Ken was grateful for it.

Jennifer would be at the wedding. She had flown in from Spain last week.

After that last night in Wonderland, she’d gone to see her grandparents in El Paso, and she’d never really come back. These days she preferred the vistas of foreign cities to home, but she called and wrote long e-mails. He’d spoken to her the night before. Jennifer wished him a “Happy, happy birthday.” She gushed about the cottage she was renting in Madrid. Her partner, Leslie, a young woman she’d met in Austria, was still with her. Leslie also wished him well and told him that she couldn’t wait to finally meet “my beautiful J’s father.”

Finally, unable to excuse any further laziness, Ken swung his legs out of bed. He pulled on his robe and walked downstairs to the kitchen, where he was met by the scent of coffee. He poured himself a cup and read the note, sitting next to the pot: Back in a minute. Birthdays demand donuts.

Ken smiled and replaced the sheet of paper on the counter. He walked through the living room and down the hall to his study. He set his mug on the desk, booted up his computer, then turned away. He crossed to the bookcase and lifted a silver frame from the shelf, his gaze drawn, as it always was to the handsome face and the crystal-green eyes. Ken looked at this picture every day, knowing that things could have ended so differently.

The paramedics had gotten David’s heart beating again; they’d brought life back to his eyes before taking him out of Brugier’s damnable estate. The relief that flooded Ken had sent him to his knees, weeping. They lived together. They were happy. They made love like teenagers, frequently and passionately. They traveled and invited friends over for dinner parties, but most nights, they lay curled up in each other’s arms on the sofa, watching television or chatting or reading. Just being together. That was enough. Or, rather, that would have been enough.

It didn’t happen. That was just a story Ken told himself whenever he looked at the photograph.

David died that night. Neither Ken’s initial attempt at resuscitation, nor the more professional efforts of the paramedics had gotten his heart beating again. So, Ken had held him tightly to his chest, stroked his hair.

Even then, on that balcony, with Jennifer sobbing at his back and policemen shouting in the courtyard below, Ken had begun to write this happy ending. Devastation gnawed at his chest, sickened him with its scrabbling claws. To escape this beast, he’d retreated into his mind, where he could imagine David’s arms returning his embrace.

This tale and others like it, stayed with him for the months following his last night in Wonderland. Ken drank. He slept. When awake, he looked for answers and told himself stories about what might have been. The hours and days stretched before him, blank pages needing to be filled. Alone in the Austin house, secluded and aching, he let questions and fictions distract him, committing them to the empty leaves of his life.

What if ? Maybe… If only I’d… We might…

So many white sheets requiring something, anything, because the pages never stopped turning.

Four months after his son’s death, Ken found a gold money clip Bobby had given him as a Christmas present. He’d stared at it for three hours before passing out in a chair. When he woke, the clip was gone.

Its disappearance panicked him. After all that he’d witnessed, Ken couldn’t be sure that he’d ever held the clip at all.

The cleaning woman found it two days later. The gold trinket had fallen out of his hand during the night and bounced under the chair. When it was returned to him, Ken felt foolish but oddly better. He wrapped the gift in a tissue and placed it in the bottom drawer of the cabinet he kept in his study’s closet. It rested there still, undisturbed, for over a year.

Now, holding the picture of himself and David, Ken walked toward the closet. The pang this picture brought to his chest was vague now. Present but not powerful as it once had been. Opening the door, he looked at the cabinet standing against the back wall amid the closet’s gloom.

Three months ago, he’d met a man named Ed Schroff at a cocktail party held in celebration of Ken’s retirement. Schroff, a bull of a man with a square face and a deep, resonant voice, had come as the guest of Ken’s former assistant Donna. They’d chatted and laughed and ended up in bed together a week later.

They hadn’t spent a night apart since.

Ken knelt down and opened the bottom drawer of the cabinet. His gaze landed on a white tuft of tissue sitting atop a small gold-leafed box. The money clip—the gift from his son. He looked at the picture again and knew he would never see it the same way. From this point forward it would be a token of memory, a bit of pleasant history. The story it told belonged to another time.

Tell me a story.

In the photograph, he and David stood arm in arm on a grassy hill outside a small village twenty minutes from Florence. Behind them, the sunset painted the sky, casting oranges and reds onto their shoulders as the two men smiled into the lens.

From the front of the house, Ed’s voice boomed, reaching for him. They’d have breakfast, then pack for the trip to New Orleans, where Paula was getting married. He’d be introduced to his daughter’s girlfriend, whom he already liked. Ed would fuss over his bow tie and crack jokes about Paula’s father.

Ken put the photograph in the drawer and slowly slid it closed. The time for stories was done.

~~~

 

 

 

~

Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Stained, The Dust of Wonderland, In the Closet, Under the Bed, and The German. Recent and forthcoming releases include Torn and Like Light for Flies. Find him on the web at www.leethomasauthor.com