It took half a day to make it back to the cabin. It had not been as far as Jack had hoped. Part of him wanted it to be farther, a testament to his manhood that, despite the failed attempt, he had trekked a hundred miles through the wasteland, a story fitting for the annals of jailbreak folklore. It turned out to be about twenty.
Jack was also not in a hurry to confront Laura. Would she be grateful he was back? Or would she torment him with a cold silence that would leave him on edge, refusing to talk to him until right before he would go to sleep, knowing just the right time to torture a tired man. He didn’t know what he was riding into.
He saw the cabin come into view and his heart sank. Back to whatever this was. They trotted into the dust behind the cabin and dismounted the horse.
Boots led the horse into the small pen, releasing the mare to its trough, and walked out.
Silence surrounded both of them.
Jack walked to the front of the cabin and noticed the busted door. Stepping inside, he called out Laura’s name, and saw the shattered table. His gut clenched. He called out again. No answer.
He met Boots in the backyard, the old man standing next to a fence post, gazing west.
“Looks like she’s gone, don’t it?”
Jack looked over the small cemetery at the back of the house. There was a fresh layer of dirt in the back corner, crusted by the sun. He also saw a shovel sitting by the gate.
“Where is my wife?” Jack screamed.
“Maybe she ran off, you know, like you did.” The old man seemed generally unconcerned.
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Look, Jack, you left her here, remember? You’re the one that ran off in the middle of the night like some fool. What? You think she should’ve sat around here waiting for you?” Boots spat on the ground and chewed on his lip as he looked Jack square in the eye. “You did, didn’t you? Ha! You’re a piece of work, Jack.”
“Where is she, Boots?”
“Don’t really know.”
Jack looked back across the small cemetery plot and zeroed in on the back corner. The tilled soil beckoned his gaze, calling at his curiosity, his anger. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered.
“She didn’t need to be here, Jack, never did. She could of gone back day one. She knew it, deep down she did. Nope, that ain’t who she is, is it? Naw, she stayed on because of you, Jack. She thought she was supporting you, being what you needed, suffering for you. Then what did you do? You snuck off in the middle of the night like a coward. You left her here. With me? What kind of man does that, Jack?”
Jack kept staring, gazing at the dirt. Boots’s words twisting his soul, springing forth rage from the deepest parts of his heart. Rage at this hermit who was playing God. Rage at his own selfishness. Rage at Laura for playing the role of the suffering saint.
Twisting, turning, the guilt tore into Jack’s guts with each word from Boots. His life passed before his eyes in one fell swoop. His marriage, his home life, himself, all instantly destroyed by one stupid car ride to nowhere. He wanted freedom from what? Domestication? Support? Whatever at the moment seemed to stand in the way of his boundless ambition?
“She’s a fine soul, Jack. Deserves much better in this life than to be a third wheel in your love affair with yourself. Yes sir, she deserves better than she got!”
Tearing at his insides like fingers through wet paper. He hated her for leaving him here, for going on without him. But didn’t he do that to her? Now she was gone. What kind of twist of cosmic fate was this?
“You’re glad she’s gone? You wanted her gone deep down, didn’t you?”
The corner field called out to him. He could see it in his mind. The story made sense. While he was gone, the crazy man had killed them both. Laura and Molly. He knew what had happened. They were buried in the back, in the plot, together. This truth made sense, it seemed rational to him.
This man wasn’t in the business of saving people; he was in the business of pulling people into his sick whirlpool and putting them six feet under in his own morbid picture gallery.
It made sense to Jack, and that’s all that mattered.
“What did you do to her, Boots?” Jack screamed again.
Boots looked down at his feet and spit between them. He had barely started to respond when the shovel crashed into the side of his face, smashing his jaw into countless pieces and knocking the old man off his feet. He looked up to see Jack standing over him, the shovel wielded like a baseball bat and that same nothingness in the eyes that he had witnessed before. The same nothingness that had driven Boots to the desert in the first place.
“You don’t know what you doing, Jack!” Boots gasped.
Jack swung again, landing a blow to the old man’s side.
The deed was done before Jack could realize what he did. The old Rasputin lay calm on the ground before him. One minute he was there spitting chew and venom and now he was gone. Just a pile of skin and beard. His life was over. Just like that.
The full weight of what he had just done flooded Jack’s mind. He had murdered someone. Him . . . Jack . . . the businessman from Chicago. He shouldn’t be here; he should be catching a flight to the East Coast to close some deal. How did he get caught up driving through the desert, stranded, kidnapped, widowed, and then murdering someone? Just last week he was a different person.
The rage left him, and he saw with clear eyes again.
He looked at the old man on the ground. It wasn’t like the movies. It only took two swings, not a hundred.
“Boots . . . ,” he said, throwing down the shovel. “Boots!”
He got down on his knees and tried shaking the hermit, but to no avail.
Boots was gone,
Jack was all alone.
A single speck in a sea of nothingness.
Suddenly, Jack could feel the wind shift at his back, and he could see his own shadow on the ground fade as the sunlight dimmed by degrees. The desert silence behind him was broken by the sound of a single pair of hands . . . clapping.
“Bravo, Jack . . . bravo,” Seth whispered.
Jack spun on his heels and saw the man in the black shirt and pearl buttons, the same man from the canyon, leaning on one of the fence posts. Still wielding the shovel and half crazed, he pointed it at the man. Boots’s blood dripped from the blade.
“You . . . you stay away from me!” Jack yelled.
“I ain’t going to harm you, Jack. You did me a favor. That old man done outlived his welcome out here. You’re a hero, Jack.”
“He killed my wife . . .”
“Are you sure about that?”
“He . . . over there . . . buried her . . .” Jack’s mind glazed over and he fought to fit two ideas together.
“Where? Over there, Jack? Ain’t no one been buried in that place for a long time.”
Jack looked back across the old cemetery plot. The far corner looked as even and smooth as the rest of the ground. But he saw it . . . he saw it before. He knew deep down what had happened.
“Looks like you might have messed up again, Jack. Trying to be John Wayne for a day, huh? Well, one thing’s for sure. You killed old Boots dead. Ain’t no doubt about that.” The man started to walk slowly toward Jack, who raised his weapon again.
“I told you to stay away from me!”
“You shoulda realized, Jack . . . only a few things kept your life in order. Now they are gone. Vanished. You’re on your own now.”
“Get back!”
“You always thought you were a self-made man—”
“Stop . . . Get back!”
“Well, here you are, standing on your own.”
The sky behind the man began to swirl in hues of black and gray. The shadows began to materialize and begin their slow dance of doom. All of them looked at Jack like a tasty morsel, a shell-shocked deer in the headlights of the devil’s monster truck.
The shovel dropped from Jack’s hand as the first shade grabbed his face. He could feel them pelting his body like hail. Gnashing at his nerves, driving him slowly into madness. They swirled around his body, creating a vortex that lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the side of the cabin, knocking the wind out of him.
Swarms of shadows raced over his body, absolute zero shocking his sweat-soaked skin. He could feel his muscles constrict and then relax again uncontrollably. He felt like he was being gutted from the inside out . . . his head ready to explode.
Jack fought for breath, gnashing at the air with bared teeth. His soul feeling the creeping death of nothingness.
The chaos halted and Jack fell to his knees. His lungs, now free, sucked in the hot desert air. His body left powerless, as if he’d just run a marathon. His muscles still short-circuiting, winding down.
The shadows around him parted and Jack could see the man standing in the breach.
“You really want to see who you are? You want to see the reward you’ve been earning all these years? Well, get ready, Jack . . . here it comes!”
The man’s laugh echoed across the desert as the shadows swarmed over Jack in unparalleled rage. He could feel them slipping in and out of the pores of his skin, constricting his bones. He felt himself carried, twisted and contorted, into limbo, moving at breakneck speed through his own mind. Tumbling through a wormhole of desperation, clawing at his conscience in unrelenting punches to his psyche.
He could see Laura quietly weeping at home while he slept soundly in the bed next to her. He saw the old employee at work resting in a pine box on his desk in his corner office. He saw the stalled car on a deserted highway.
Visions of everything and nothing he ever did fired off from every synaptic nerve in his brain. He saw himself beating the bully from his early school days. He saw himself mourning the death of his colleague. He saw his parents mourning the death of the infant they named Jack.
His mind fought for sanity. He knew these visions made no sense, but he could do nothing to ward off the chaos. The assault on reason was too great. His hands were useless to defend against the beasts ripping at the fabric of his soul.
He screamed in agony.
He screamed for relief.
He screamed for help.
And in an instant, all was quiet as Jack floated through blackness, drifting into unconscious oblivion.