Washington D.C.
Peter Gregory studied the glossy magazine photo. Ever since he’d discovered the five-page article, he’d spent hours reading over the information and examining all the accompanying photos. Originally, he’d found it on-line then immediately hunted for a physical copy. Not a simple task these days when very few places still sold magazines.
Every time he sat and read and scrutinized, it surprised him how much emotion he did not feel. It was as if he was staring at a stranger, a life and home he couldn’t relate to no matter how much he tried.
To be fair, it had been almost eight years since he had visited. And that was only to stand on a hilltop in the cemetery and watch them put his brother into the ground.
Oh, there had always been invitations after that. Though they came less frequently these days. However, one arrived about a month ago. It came via email to an account he rarely checked. He didn’t need to pull out a copy to remember. He had the words memorized:
The holidays are coming.
It would be nice if you could join us.
The holidays.
Wasn’t that sweet of her? The email came about two weeks before Thanksgiving. How kind and sentimental from a woman who was neither.
Christmas music played overhead in the diner. He’d taken a booth in the back where he could stare at his magazine, eat his sandwich, drink coffee and not be bothered.
Their last Christmas as a family, his father had given him a Jedi lightsaber and a stack of Marvel comic books. He smiled at the thought of his ten-year-old self running around the backyard in the dark waving that lightsaber. He loved his father. Still did.
His mother didn’t approve of the gifts. She told his father he shouldn’t encourage the boy to make up stories and enjoy so much fantasy. It would make him a liar, or worse—a dreamer like his father.
It didn’t matter what she said. His father embraced what he called their creativity and inventiveness.
“You can’t silence a soul.” That was one of his favorite comebacks.
He and his father were the geeks of the family, direct contrasts to his mother and little brother. They’d quote lines of movies or books to each other. His father quoted Emily Dickinson to him when he suspected his son was feeling down about being different:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
Gregory remembered climbing into the treehouse his dad had built for his sons. Mickey rarely used it, off to football practice or baseball or whatever the season. So Gregory had it all to himself. He’d read for hours. Spiderman dancing under the flashlight beam. Sometimes he pretended he didn’t hear his mother yelling for him to come in.
Holidays after his father passed were just hollow attempts, a sad ritual of going through the motions. To compensate, his mother showered them with gifts. None of them were close to anything he wanted or cared about. They were always something she believed he should want: an expensive leather baseball glove; a chemistry set; or collared, button-up shirts to replace his Star Wars and Marvel T-shirts.
She added more tinsel to the tree, fancier meals, and then one year she even added a stepfather.
She still didn’t have a clue.
He wondered why the holidays invoked an invitation. Why was that the only time of year that anyone out of sight seemed to come to mind? Did she not think about him for the rest of the year? If it wasn’t for the money, she would have lost track of him long ago.
Maybe his father had known that all along. Why else would he leave his oldest son such a fortune? Had he realized that if he was gone from their lives that his wife might need extra incentive to take care of the son she didn’t understand? The son she really didn’t even like.
He looked at the photo of his mother in the magazine. Stared into her eyes, and silently asked, “Is that it, dear ole mom? Are you running low on cash? Are you still after dad’s money? My money?”
He glanced out into the falling snow. It was supposed to have stopped by now. Maybe his mother was right. Maybe it was time for a family celebration. If nothing else, it’d be nice to feel warmer temperatures. Distract the loop in his brain. The nightmares had been showing him new and compelling details, teasing at a truth he never imagined.
He’d spent the last several years trying to dismantle the images that haunted him by setting the record straight. By trying to kill proxies of the man who had killed his father—that transient pretending his old pickup was stalled on the side of the road.
It wasn’t until the last few weeks he started to realize those homeless men were insufficient proxies. His brain was unleashing new information. Maybe the killings were the catalyst. Something had dislodged the revealing details. His subconscious began showing him more and more of who that man was. The man who bludgeoned his father on the side of the road twenty years ago.
Just as he looked back from the window, a familiar figure walked by down on the street. He watched as if mesmerized. The snow formed glitter on everything it touched. Steam rising from the sidewalk grates set it swirling. So frickin’ magical, even the homeless plodding along and swaddled in thick layers made it look like a scene out of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
And that reminded him of his father, too. He had taken them to a live production at the Saenger Theatre. Gregory was only seven and completely captivated by the costumes, the lights, the sounds. Every time he glanced his father’s way, he saw him smiling at him and nodding, knowing his oldest son would be as delighted as he was.
Christmas, happiness, joy...they all died along with his father. And yet, he had to be bombarded with songs of yuletide cheer. With fat snowflakes that glittered and twinkled and stuck to every surface.
Yes, he needed a change of scenery. But maybe he also needed one more killing to nudge his subconscious into finally showing him the face of the man who murdered his father.