Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy, page 8
As Claire brought up Alice again, this time in a roundabout but matter-of-fact manner, I found myself still bothered by the lackadaisical way in which she chose to do so. I crossed my arms to display my discomfort. If she’d noticed, she didn’t let on.
Claire instead revealed the third card, and as her hand withdrew, I saw a young man merrily on his way to walking right off a cliff, his attention momentarily stolen by a bird in the sky. “It’s The Fool,” she said.
“And, let me guess, that’s me,” I retorted, trying to smile but failing miserably.
“Yes,” Claire agreed. “The Fool himself is clumsy in all his show-full confidence. And, despite his vast potential, he suffers from impossible dreams of grandeur, and his naive misunderstanding of the real world.” She stopped to look up at me.
Our eyes met for just an instant before I lowered mine back to the table and back to my presumed fate, the very fate unfolding in those flimsy pieces of colored cardstock.
“But, do you remember what I said about these cards and how you can’t always take them at face value?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“Well, in this case ... ”
I caught a sudden shuffle of movement off to my right and turned to see three men emerging from behind a curtain on the far wall. The first man was holding a gun as the second was steadily unwrapping a length of rope from his wrist. The last man was harder to see, but judging by the amount of space that he took up, he seemed to be a formidable weapon all by himself.
“In this case,” Claire continued, “there might be an exception.”
10
TERRIBLY DARK
I shot to my feet, but the first man already had his gun on me. “Now don’t go and do anything stupid there, Loverboy,” he snarled.
“Loverboy?”
“That’s right, now keep your hands where I can see ’em.”
The man with the gun stayed about five feet from me as the man with the rope came to pluck the 45 from my waistband. I kept my hands in the air and my eyes on the first man.
“I’m disappointed in you, Claire,” I said without looking at her. “I thought you were someone I could trust.”
“A lot has changed, Miles.” There was no joy in her voice, only a saddened twinge of regret. I’m sure she’d rather I had stayed away after all.
“You’re right, Claire.” I turned to her, but could see only the top of her head. She couldn’t even look at me. “A lot has changed. You don’t know just how right you really are,” I went on, “but when you find out, I hope I’m there to see it.”
The man with the gun was suddenly in my face, jabbing me hard in the chest with his index finger. He was bulky, but still smaller than the last man. His shoulders were set low, like that of a linebacker, and he looked like the kind of guy who used to wander through bars, lifting skirts and pinching bottoms, just to get himself into a bit of trouble.
The squareness of his forehead, and the way his beady eyeballs had sunk into his skull, made me believe in the bleak nature that must have been his intelligence. He was simply big enough to be intimidating.
“Who the hell are you to talk to her like that?” he huffed. “You’re lucky you’re still breathing, Pal. If it weren’t for her we’d a shot you dead before you even walked through the door.”
He then spat something out in Spanish—something I couldn’t understand. And as strange as it was to hear a grown male Caucasian speaking that language, it made me wish I’d paid more attention in school. But, after all, it was my lackluster performance in academics which led to my four year spurt in the military and ultimately to a career in maintenance.
Immediately after those harsh syllables had slipped from the man’s tongue, the guy behind me grunted an acknowledgment, grabbed my wrists, and shoved them into the small of my back. He proceeded to tie them together, working swiftly and with such speed and precision that I was thoroughly bound in just a matter of seconds.
“Whatever it is that you guys are doing here, this is a mistake.” I tried to reason with them. “You should just let me go before this gets a whole lot worse.”
The man’s eyes seemed to sink even deeper. He lifted his lip to bare his teeth in a yellow snarl. I could tell before he even spoke that my words hadn’t had the effect I was hoping for—quite the opposite, actually. I had to think of something slightly more drastic to get through to them.
“Now you’re threatening me?” His breath was just as fierce as the manner in which he chose his dialect. “You’re in no position to make—”
“What happened to your nose?” I interrupted.
“What?” The man’s box-like brow crumpled inward like a car wreck, compressed partly by confusion, but mostly by agitation.
“Your nose, what happened to your nose?” I smirked, only slightly.
“What the hell are you talking—”
I smashed my forehead hard into his face, feeling the nasty crunch-like pop of busting cartilage, as I heard the man yelp in pain and surprise. There was then a sudden flash of bright red light—which signified the end of this particular confrontation. After that, everything went terribly dark.
What happened next isn’t going to make much sense, but bear with me. I found myself drifting out in the middle of some impossible ocean. The waves were lifting and descending steadily around me as I looked up at the glorious night sky above. I could see the mighty brushstroke marking the brilliant edge of our Milky Way Galaxy, as millions of pin-pricked stars helped to illuminate the scene.
I was flat on my back, my body resting on something sturdy and buoyant—a raft made up of logs, strung together with some crude form of twine—and, even though I’d never turned to inspect it, I somehow just knew it was there.
My wife was there also, lying beside me; I could feel her face pressed gently against my neck, and her arm draped over my chest. By the rhythm of her warm breath on my skin, I could tell she was asleep. Curled up to my left, sleeping just the same, was our little girl. I squeezed them both—very solid and very real—beneath the glimmering moon, which hung in its perfect assortment of pastels.
It was a picture I’d seen a thousand times, a page torn from one of my daughter’s favorite storybooks. It was the tale of a boy whom, after running amuck and threatening to devour his own mother, finds a magical passage to a hidden world within his room. There he sails off to live on an island full of wild creatures.
The boy comes to rule the brutes as they grow to love him for the mischievous child that he is. But, despite the fact that he is surrounded by a beastly breed of equal nature, he returns home shortly after discovering that which he’d found to be most important.
It had been one of my daughter’s favorite bedtime stories, and out of some miracle I’d found the three of us on our way to that distant island of wild creatures. It was there that we would be living—happily ever after.
11
SAINT JOHN
This, of course, was not the case. As the reverie began to slip away, and that vivid night sky washed out like a cold drizzle down a storm drain, I found the only waves left were the ones caused by the immensity of my throbbing pulse. It splashed against my temples in a painfully consecutive manner, as though my own head had been busily cleaving itself in two.
I tried to sit up, but this only intensified the pain. Dropping back down, I again found my arms fastened together. This time they’d been wrapped around something metallic—like a thick pipe, perhaps part of a waterline. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I lifted myself again—much slower this time— slumping up against whatever I’d been tethered to, and let my head droop forward like that of a poorly stuffed scarecrow.
Wherever I was—it was dark, and yet I still held the lids of my eyes closed quite forcefully, shielding them from another intense burst of pain, as if that might help. Needless to say—I was in some serious trouble.
I could hear the voices of men as they spoke, greatly muffled beyond the thick walls of my enclosure. The tender epicenter resonating at the back of my skull, a screaming patch of flesh that marked the spot where I’d been knocked unconscious, seemed to be reaching out with talon-tipped fingers, etching sharp circles into the surrounding tissue. It did so with nauseating persistence. Saliva poured readily into my mouth as I was struck with an overwhelming urge to regurgitate—and then did so, quite violently.
I wanted to wrap my whole head up, stick it under my arm, and carry it home like an injured puppy. I instead twisted my wrists, not so much in an attempt of freeing myself, but to understand the level of difficulty I’d be up against soon enough. I found the knots to be tight and expertly woven, like the work of a bosun’s mate, or farmhand. I twisted again. Maybe I could wrench a hand free if I struggled hard enough. I didn’t have much else to do at the time.
A few moments later, a stream of light flooded the area about me. It came with the creak of an opening door as I stopped my maneuverings and forced myself to look up and into the brightness.
My vision was hazy, almost like staring through a pane of glass that had been coated with penetrating fluid, but the blur that I saw eventually formed itself into a somewhat familiar silhouette as the figure entered the room.
A new sound of footsteps sent a peculiar kind of echo ricocheting off the vertical surroundings. Being quick and shallow, the noises told me two things. One: my visitor was a woman, and two: my confinement was made out of some kind of metal.
As she approached, slicing the darkness with the door she’d left open, I noticed a few grated racks on the far wall. It looked as though I’d been tossed into an old walk-in freezer—which made sense because I’d been at the diner. It was starting to come back to me. I was still at the diner. They must have put me in the kitchen, inside a very large freezer, and tied me to one of the racks. At least I had an idea of where I was. Perhaps, with this realization, my situation was improving.
The woman came and sat next to me, dodging the puddle I’d recently created. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I felt something cold on the back of my neck— wanted to believe it was only sweat, but knew it was the clammy sensation of drying blood. “What do you want, Claire?” The words fell from me and dropped lifeless to the floor, as hollow as snakeskin. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“I’m really sorry about this, Miles. I wish we could have met again ... under better circumstances.” She put a hand on my shoulder, a gesture meant to be comforting. Instead it felt more like an arachnid coming to inject an acidic enzyme. “But did you really have to break John’s nose?” Claire continued, “You don’t know how hard I had to fight for you, just so they’d put you in here.”
“Yeah, you’re a real hero,” I spat.
“Come now, Miles.” The spider leapt from my shoulder and settled atop my head, spreading its spindly legs through my damp hair. “You don’t believe I wanted this for you, do you?”
I said nothing, only exhaled deeply.
“Miles, look at me.” She lifted my chin so I would have no choice but to oblige. “I’m really sorry you had to get mixed up in all of this.”
“What is ‘all of this’ exactly, Claire?”
She turned to look back at the door she’d entered through, making sure we were still alone, then leaned in to place her cheek against mine. She then began to share with me a little secret, her lips brushing against the rim of my ear as she spoke. “Listen, there’s something you need to understand about John.” She paused for a moment, then started to whisper: “He doesn’t take too kindly to—”
“That’s enough, Claire,” a voice called in from the opening as a new figure emerged there—one she hadn’t been expecting. Startled, Claire tore her hand from me and rose to her feet. She spun on her heal and immediately walked out of the large freezer.
The man she’d previously referred to as John entered as she walked past him. But his face did not display the disdain I’d been anticipating. His eyes were a bit glossy, but didn’t appear to harbor any contempt.
His mouth, a simple gash above his chin, looked as though it had been idly carved from clay—the shoddy workmanship of some inexperienced artist. Its indifferent angle was quite visible, even beneath the spotted napkins he’d shoved up into his nostrils.
The man’s nose, quite dark and swollen, had come to a nasty bump below the ridge of his brow where I’d broken it. The discoloration there had spread and scooped upward, showing the early signs of two bruised optical sockets.
“Are you comfortable?” the man asked once Claire was out of earshot. I took an extra second to ponder my present situation and how it might be affecting my overall mood. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my wrists. “I’ve been better,” I admitted.
The man took a step closer. “Look ... Miles, right? I think we got started on the wrong foot back there.” He paced, looking more at the floor than at me. I could see the blood stain on his shirt now, the blotches of red below his neckline where it had leaked out his face.
“I tend to agree,” I nodded.
He stopped moving and locked eyes on me. “I’ve just got a couple questions for you, and if I like your answers, I’ll have you home before the sun goes down. Sound good?”
“Great.”
He pulled a piece of paper out from his pocket, unfolded it, and stuck it out so I could see. “Do you recognize this?” It was the paper with Tim’s cross streets on it, the one I’d copied from Zeke’s satellite imaging. They must have searched me while I was out.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Good so far,” the man called John encouraged. “What is it?”
“It’s where I get my dry-cleaning done,” I smirked. “I’m gonna be a little late today, though.”
The man attempted to grin, his lips zig-zagging themselves upward until a defined crease developed at each side of his face.
Something switched in his eyes just then, something almost luminous, like the ignition of a stove light in his brain. But his expression remained stiff and fixed, reminding me somewhat of the irreversible onset of rigor mortis. It was the first real glimpse I’d had of the man within the shell.
What was Claire trying to tell me? What was she trying to warn me about? He doesn’t take too kindly to what? I suddenly recalled a group of individuals who’d suffered from a severe neurological disorder. From birth they had displayed an abnormal lack of empathy and incapacity for love; they also suffered from an extreme lack of conscience and compassion.
And, seeing that there was no medication capable of instilling empathy, their amygdalae and prefrontal cortexes were forever destined to pump just a few cylinders short of a mentally stable individual. It was said that these people had made up about one percent of our entire population—up to the end of the world, that is. Who knew how many of them were left? It was then that John began to speak.
“That cute shit might work on Claire, but it’s not gonna work on my boys.” He let that fictitious smile melt away. “And it’s certainly not gonna work on me, either.” He raised himself and walked toward the entrance of the freezer, placing a hand on the wall and putting his weight against it. “Claire tells me you served in the military. That true?”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t facing me at the time. “Yeah.”
“You ever go to Iraq?”
“No.”
He turned to thrust a thumb at himself. “I did. I was part of a special unit—real off-the-grid kinda stuff.” He took another step toward me, leaning over, genuine glee peeling his lips apart. I could see his bottom row of teeth now, positioned slightly inward, as if designed to detain his venomous tongue. “I even did a little work in an interrogation unit,” he added.
“Is that right?”
John nodded. “That’s where I got the nickname Saint John. Do you know why they called me that?”
I shook my head.
“Well, let me ask you this. Do you know what someone needs to do in order to become a saint?”
“Perform a miracle,” I answered.
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“That’s right,” he laughed. “And it’s the damndest thing, during that time in the unit, how many Iraqis could miraculously speak English when I was done with them.”
And, there in the freezer, his laugh rose to nothing short of a menacing cackle. He threw back his head as I watched the lump in his throat nearly bounce out of his mouth. It was like listening to the soft tendrils of white matter—the glue that holds our sanity in place—snapping with each of his cackles. I can honestly say now that there’s nothing more frightening than a man who enjoys the sound of his own laughter.
“Good thing I already speak English,” I said, trying to interrupt the man’s maniacal commotion. He managed to restore a bit of sanity to himself as he stepped forward, lowering back to my level.
“So start speakin’ it,” he said, lifting the paper again. “What is this? What’s here?”
“A friend,” I answered.
“You have friends at this address?”
“Just one,” I corrected.
“How do you know him?”
“He broke into my home.”
John looked puzzled. “Some friend.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why do you have his address?”
I shook my head. “No more questions. Not until you answer one of mine. What’s this all about?”
John took a moment. He didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond. His fists tightened and his jaw clenched.
I readied myself for another onset of pain, were he to start swinging on me. Instead I found his posture softening within a few short seconds and his fingers uncurling from the knots they’d previously formed.
