1
“You’re dead,”
three-year-old Michael said.
“Na-unh!”
“I got you!” He
held up a complicated construction of red, blue, and yellow colored blocks,
that, when you thought about it, had a design as universal as any machine. A
long pointed shaft, a handle grip, and a place to rest your finger. Michael
wiped wispy bangs of blond hair from his eyes, and smiled. He pointed his “gun”
at his older brother, J.J. and expressed an equally universal sound effect,
that of a major explosion from a small gentle mouth.
J.J., with a fuller
mane of the same shade of blond hair, tilted his head back, and closed his
eyes. He fell backward onto the carpet. Michael dropped his weapon, and
pounced. J.J. grunted. “Michael, stop!”
The youngest child
grinned wildly, a low-growl of laughter machine-gunning from his throat as he
rolled across his brother. They completed two revolutions across the floor,
before a lower voice announced a warning, “Boys! Settle down.”
Michael popped his
head up, and saw his daddy walking in the front door. He jumped to his feet,
and ran on light feet through the room.
“Daddy!!”
Stephen bent down,
and scooped his son into his arms. Michael wrapped his tiny legs around his
waist and his arms tightly around his neck. They held the embrace for a few
moments, and then the boy wriggled loose. Stephen set him back on the floor,
and announced in his whimsical three-year-old speech pattern, “Daddy, I gots a
gun.”
He displayed the
makeshift weapon proudly. Stephen rolled his eyes, and nodded. He hadn’t
resigned himself to the fact that his boys were prone at such a young age to
create weapons, especially guns, and hoped to wipe out that particular bent
from their playtime.
“Hey, J.J. Bad!” he
called to his oldest son.
The tow-headed lad
didn’t look up from his blocks, but voiced his displeasure at the nickname. “My
name is J.J., Dad. Not J.J. Bad.”
“I don’t think I
should call you J.J. Dad,” Stephen countered. “I’m Dad around here.”
“No … not J.J. Dad!
I’m just J.J.!”
“Okay, Just J.J.”
“No …!” the boy
protested again, finally looking up at his father with a pained expression in
his wide eyes. Stephen marveled again that his two boys could have been so
beautiful to look at. Pure blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and fair skin. J.J., in
particular, had large eyes, and a pale rim of white surrounding the pupil, that
added an extra intensity to them. People had always commented on that feature.
“Come up here and
say hello to your dad!” Stephen invited. J.J. stood, still looking with fervent
concentration at his invention-in-progress, and walked to his dad. He wrapped
one arm around his legs, and then sat back on the floor to continue his project.
Stephen set his
briefcase down, and began extracting his daily objects from pockets: keys,
sunglasses, iPod, and phone onto a common shelf that originally began its
designated life as a depository for his things. Over the last few years, that
shelf had attracted with magnetic proportions things that belonged to every
individual in the house. Why on earth were there broken toys, cast-off rubber
bands, and wrappers without any candy in them up there?
“Hi, honey,” his
wife, Beth, called from the kitchen.
“Hey, babe,” he
responded. A wild screech behind him made Stephen turn his head.
The boys struggled
in a tug-o-war over a lengthy set of blocks. Michael let go, and smacked his
oldest brother on top of his head. J.J. scrunched his face up in pain and
extreme displeasure, and ran to his daddy.
“Daddyyyy! Michael
hit me!” He held his head for emphasis.
“Don’t hit,
Michael. Now, hug your brother and say you’re sorry.” Stephen left the brothers
to amend this latest infraction of house rules, and entered the kitchen.
Beth stood at the
oven, dressed casually in exercise shorts, and a t-shirt. She wore her hair
short, with natural and abundant curls surrounding her head like a halo. She
smiled when she saw her husband, and further greeted him with a kiss and
embrace.
“How was your day?”
she asked.
“Work day was fine,
but my drive home was weird—”
(“J.J., that’s my
toy!” echoed from the next room …)
—and I still
haven’t shaken it off.” He leaned against the kitchen sink as he began
describing his drive home.
Beth listened for a
few moments, and then put down her spatula. “And they were just glaring at you?
You didn’t honk your horn at them, did you?” she asked warily.
“No, but I wanted
to. I just didn’t understand why they were pacing me like that. They had to be
gang members.”
“Just because they were minorities, doesn’t
mean they were in a gang. That’s profiling, honey.”
“Five of them
crowded in a car, like that?”
“I’m sure five
people have never been seen in a car at the same time, before.”
Stephen frowned.
“That’s funny, Beth.”
“I’m not trying to
make fun of you, but I just want you to see that not everything is gang
related. You’re probably being paranoid.”
Stephen shrugged
his shoulders, and left the kitchen. He saw his boys in a huddle on the floor.
He sat down next to them, and stretched his neck and spine. It cracked
comfortably from a long day at work. Absently he gazed out the front window at
the fading daylight. A little while till dinner, and then the nightly ritual of
bathing and teeth-brushing for the boys.
A time yet, to play
with his little guys.
For the next half
hour, Stephen lost himself in an improvisational adventure inspired by every
fleeting and changing thought his ADHD-prone boys could come up with, from
building a far-reaching tower of blocks to the ceiling, to a superhero game of
chase, tag, and chase some more. More often than not, he was the bad guy, while
little scrawny J.J., and slightly smaller Michael, wrestled him to the ground.
Stephen took turns one at a time of lifting each boy into the hair above him,
lying prone on his back. The kids kicked their legs wildly behind them, waving
their arms, pretending to either fly, or attempt escape from the villain’s vile
clutches. After each turn, they chorused together, “Again, Daddy!” After
several repetitions each, Stephen finally waved a hand, and slowly stood to his
feet. The boys begged for more.
“No, go on a play
for a few more minutes, guys. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“No!” J.J.
declared.
“J.J., please, go,
and show your brother how to make a tower like we did before. Build it as high
as you can.”
“Okay!” he
exclaimed, and ran to their room.
Stephen took
another breath and flexed his arms from the effort of hoisting his tiny
children. He smiled, and turned to the kitchen.
His cell phone
rang. After a brief glance at the number, he swiped the screen and took the
call.
“Hey, there, I can
see you, so don’t even move, man!”
Stephen’s blood
dropped several degrees, and his eyes darted out the window. A familiar car
idled in front of his house in the growing darkness.
“Yeah, I’m talking
to you, man, so don’t even move. I got you covered from every angle, so get
ready…”
Then he saw figures
pop out from every window in the car, dressed in dark clothes, and holding
weapons, guns, oh, God, guns, were those
automatic weapons?
Bright flares of
orange and red light burst in staccato flashes from the tips of the guns,
followed closely by sharp cracks of explosions. Instantly, glass shattered from
the windows in vivid bursts of razor sharp shards. Plaster turned to small
explosions of dust. He heard the passage of projectiles hurtling through the
air at high speed.
Stephen threw his
body to the floor, and screamed, “Boys, get on the floor, now! J.J. and Michael, drop on the floor and LIE
DOWN!”
Behind him, he
heard Beth shout in distress, and approach the room from around the corner.
“BETH, STOP RIGHT
THERE! DROP, BABY!”
Bullets continued
to spray through the house, the sounds of entry a haunting barrage that rattled
his spine and filled his whole being with fear and flight-impulses.
Then a new sound,
one he’d never in his life entertained hearing came from the next room.
Where his boys had
been playing.
J.J. and Michael …
Then came the most
horrifying crying and screaming they’d ever uttered in their short lives.
When the bullets
continued, and the crying suddenly stopped, the ensuing silence was far worse.
2
The house on
Virginia Avenue was strangely quiet. No one played a stereo loudly from inside
its thin walls. There wasn’t as much as a clatter of voices enjoying a party.
The windows were dark. A metallic, root beer brown ’67 Impala sat in the
driveway. This wasn’t inordinate for this neighborhood. Many houses in the area
had a custom job decorating a driveway much in need of decoration. In fact, in
just about every house on this street, the only expensive allowance you could
find were the cars, tricked out and painted in wild and garish street design,
and big HDTVs.
At 1300 Virginia
Avenue, not even the television was on. Instead, Manny Gutierrez sat quietly on
the broken and worn couch in the living room, nursing a forty ounce beer. In
between sips of the drink, he drew heavily from a roach cigarette. A low cloud
of cannabis hung over his head in the dark. His thoughts sat just as heavily.
He thought of Alicia, and their five year old daughter, Wendy. He didn’t get to
visit her very much. Wendy was quite clear on that issue. They lived three
towns away, on the other side of the county.
Manny pictured
Wendy’s eyes, and her wavy black hair.
The TV news
reported that two little boys had died as a result of a drive-by shooting. The
news stunned the community. Never had such activity occurred in that
neighborhood, or anywhere near it on that side of town. It was a mystery to
everyone concerned, with no clear motive. The parents of the two little boys
had been hospitalized with minor wounds. Neither would speak to the press about
what had happened. The police organized a manhunt. Witnesses who’d heard the
rapid-fire shooting claimed they saw a lowrider type car, but feared
repercussions on reporting what they’d seen. As one eyewitness was videotaped
saying, “If they came here to do this once, I don’t want to be the cause of
them coming back.”
Manny grimaced at
the thought. No chance of that.
None of his guys
had looked in the backseat of the dude’s car. No one had seen a child’s car
seat. Just that gringo, staring at
them on the road. Like the dude was challenging them. Manny remembered
thrusting his chin up at the white guy, as if to say, “What, homie? What you gonna do about it, ese?” Frankie at the driver’s seat paced
the white guy, all the while Manny and Robby in the backseat gestured and
glared. Finally, the white dude speed up and headed into the left lane. Frankie
drifted a few cars behind and followed. They kept within sight of the man’s
car, and followed him to his neighborhood. Once they saw the house the man
pulled into, they marked it—marked it well—and headed off to collect some
friends.
After leaving the
guy’s house for the second time that night, they split off from each other, and
laid low. No doping. No hitting stores for cash. Manny knew better. The cops
were looking out for anyone stupid enough to add to the crime and draw attention
to themselves.
Manny had hid in
his small house on the corner of Virginia Avenue for the last four days. The
first had just been wise caution. Then he’d heard the news. Two little boys. He
pictured Wendy, running through her house, sprayed by bullets. He knew he’d go
after any fool who dared shoot his daughter. White man or no, geek or tough,
those two boy’s dad would come after him. It would be foolish, and probably the
last thing that man ever did, but he’d come looking.
So, Manny lay low a
bit longer. But while the day passed into two, and then three, he thought
again, of the little boys. He couldn’t get his daughter’s face out of his mind.
He kept picturing a fresh-faced five year old girl in that guy’s house, instead
of the little boys.
“Stop it, man,” he
chided himself. He took another hit off the roach, reached the end of the clip,
and threw it on the table in frustration. Manny stood up, and put on his grey
fedora.
In minutes, his
Impala roared. He raced down Virginia Avenue to 21st Street. He
squealed to a stop in front of Frankie’s house. Frankie was the only one he let
drive his car. Frankie had driven that night. He never had a gun.
Frankie stepped out
his front door. “Man, where have you been?”
“Keepin’ low,”
Manny answered. His friend nodded, and gestured to the house. Frankie was
watching a movie on TV. “Where’s Joe?”
“Out at Lisa’s.
It’s jus’ you and me, man. Wanna beer?”
Manny accepted one,
and bummed a cigarette from Frankie. His friend threw him a pack. Flicking open
a lighter from his pocket, many drew deep on the fag, and exhaled slowly. He
flopped down in a chair.
“What’s eatin’ you,
Manny?”
“Nothing.”
“You worried about
the pops coming?”
Manny regarded his
friend, and thought about his answer. Anyone else, he never would have admitted
his fears. But Frankie had been around since they were little kids. No one else
could understand him as well.
“Maybe.”
“I hear he’s still
in the hospital. He ain’t coming out here. No one in that rich white
neighborhood will talk if they even think they saw anything. We’re cool, man.”
Wendy, running,
laughing, down a hall, her dress fluttering around her little legs, a doll in
each hand. Suddenly falling, her head exploding open from the force of a high
caliber bullet. Her body hitting the floor, spraying blood on the carpet and
walls.
Manny shivered.
3
An hour later,
Frankie and Manny split; Manny headed off to find Robby, while Frankie hit the
liquor store for a drink and some chips. Frankie stopped his car in the
farthest slot from the front door, checked his hair in the mirror, and
sauntered into the store. His denims hung low, boxers exposed, a gray
sweatshirt opened loosely over a L.A. Kings jersey. The store clerk gazed with
a long stare as he entered the joint. Frankie shrugged, and gestured to the
aisles with the food. He hovered, staring at the chips for a moment, and then
selected a sizable bag that should last him all night. Then he slowly shuffled
to the back row of refrigerated coolers. Frankie glanced once over his shoulder
back at the clerk, and saw an older woman enter and stop at the counter. Good.
Should keep that old fart busy. Frankie opened a glass door, and pulled out a
tall bottle of beer, and slid it into his jacket’s deep pocket. Then he slid
over two doors, and grabbed a large 1-liter plastic bottle of soda. With the
large bag of chips and soda in front of him, he headed across the back of the
store, to the farthest aisle, but didn’t stop his progress. He didn’t want the
clerk to suspect that he might be working the merchandise into his clothes
somehow.
As he turned the
corner onto the aisle, Frankie stopped when he saw the kid staring at him.
“Hey, didja loose
your mommy?” he said low. “She’s over there, little dude.”
The kid only
stared, with big eyes and a frown on his face. The kid had dirty, matted hair.
The kid’s mom was probably buying lottery tickets and booze, and would likely
have no money left over to get the kid a good shampoo.
“Get going, man,”
Frankie said. “It ain’t polite to stare.”
The boy tilted his
head down, and seemed about to cry. Frankie knelt down. “Hey, I didn’t mean to
scare you.”
The boy looked up
again, sluggishly. He tugged at his red shirt.
“You gotta go to
the bathroom?” he asked the little boy.
The kid turned his
head back towards the front of the store. As he did, Frankie saw something wet
stuck to the kid’s hair, like he’d fallen in the store’s cherry syrup for the
soda fountain.
But nearly half of
the kid’s skull was missing, ending in scraggly edges of red-stained bone, and
crispy hair.
“What the—” Frankie
whispered.
The kid looked
back, and Frankie saw that the kid’s eyes were pale, gray almost white in
color. His mouth and jaw hung askew, as if it had been partially ripped away,
but left attached to the boy’s face. That mouth opened, and a high, screeching
wail came out.
Frankie skidded
backward, and fell on his backside. The stolen bottle of beer in the sweatshirt
pocket slid behind him as he fell, and he landed on it hard enough to shatter
it. The cool smell of hops and barley wafted up from the floor. He dropped the
chips and soda, and tried to get back up, but the floor was suddenly slick with
spilled alcohol.
The boy took
several staggering steps forward.
“I waaaannnn …”
Frankie gripped the
edge of the shelf beside him, and pulled. His foot slipped once in the puddle
of booze, and then he was running back the way he’d come, by the coolers.
Distantly, he heard the clerk at the front shouting at him. Frankie saw the
woman drop to the floor, fearing a holdup and gunfire.
His gun. He’d kept
it in the car. Manny had said not to draw any attention to himself, but he
wasn’t going out unprotected. It was just under his front seat.
As he neared the
front door, he chanced a look behind, and saw the little boy slowly plodding
his way after him.
Frankie burst out
the doors of the convenience store, and ran to his car. He reached into his
pocket for his keys, and panicked when his hand got stuck in the pocket. Of
course, he’d had to reach down low to grab them, and suddenly, the height of
his pants waistline was a detriment. Bent in half, he struggled in an awkward
angle to grasp the keys, and get in the damn car. As he pulled his hand free,
the keys tumbled from fingers slick with beer, and clattered onto the pavement
under his car.
He dived down, and searched.
On the other side
of the car, Frankie saw a small set of bare feet running up the passenger side
of the vehicle, towards the truck. He stood, and faced the weird kid. He never
questioned his fear or the irrational situation. He never had time.
Frankie waited, and
waited. The kid didn’t show from around the car’s truck. Slowly, keys
forgotten, Frankie stepped toward the back of the car, meaning to dropkick the
kid, and send him crying across the parking lot.
He jumped and
landed at the back bumper.
The kid was gone.
Frankie, turned
quickly to look behind him. No kid. He made a quick circuit of the car, and
found nothing. Had he just imagined it? All that guilty talk with Manny had him
spooked. Man, he needed some sleep.
Frankie slowly bent
back down, and reached under the car, half expecting the kid to grab his arm
from underneath. He found the keys, but no tiny hand, and breathed a sigh of
relief. Quickly, he ducked into the car, and locked the doors.
After buckling his
seatbelt, he started the engine, thrust the car in reverse, and turned around
to check the parking lot behind him.
The little boy
knelt in the seat in the back, holding a length of bungee cord. The kid whipped
the cord out, and the metal hook slammed into Frankie’s left eye. He screamed.
His foot slammed down on the gas. The car shot out into the parking lot.
Frankie grasped the cord in a reflex action, and jerked. His eye popped out,
stuck on the end of the hook. He screamed again, arms flailing. The boy stood
on the back seat, a high whine building in his throat. “I waaannnnt mmmyyyy mmmooooommmyyy …” The whine turned into a cry
of pain and fear. Then the kid began slamming his fists down on Frankie’s head
in a petulant manner, grunting in displeasure every time he landed a blow. It
almost had the appearance of the kid throwing a tantrum for not getting his way
at play.
The car smashed
into a street sign, and continued backward into the street. A speeding taxi
didn’t see Frankie’s car until it was too late to turn or stop. It hit
Frankie’s vehicle broadside, throwing Frankie across the seat, slipping out of
his seatbelt. His head smashed the glass on the door, and a spray of blood shot
out in all directions.
The taxi driver had
been alone in the car, on his way to a pickup point, and running low on fares
all night. He was severely injured, too much so to exit the car after the
impact.
Frankie didn’t
move.
Emergency
responders arrived later, after the clerk from the convenience store called for
help. They found Frankie slumped dead in the seat, the bloodstained bungee cord
with his eye still hooked on the end lying on the floor of the backseat.
There was no sign
of a kid, nor any reason to look for one.
4
If Robby had known
that Manny would come looking for him, it might have changed the course of his
life that night, for he might have gone running around town with him, instead
of shacking up with his lady. But, life holds no guarantees, and Robby’s future
was too much in flux to say for certain which way his path might have taken.
Robby had gone to
see Jackie. Unlike Manny or Frankie, he hadn’t paid attention to the news the
last few days. He hadn’t heard that two little boys had been killed at his
hands. He had not seen the pictures of the little blond boys shown for the last
three days on TV and in the papers. Therefore, he would never know the danger
he was in.
After bedding
Jackie, he shuffled across the room to the shower.
“Are you coming
back to me?” Jackie asked.
“Not like we just
were, otherwise why am I cleaning up? Stupid girl.”
He turned the
faucet, and waited several moments while the water warmed. The shower was
hardly more than an echo chamber for torture. He pushed the door nearly closed,
and stepped inside.
The doorbell rang.
Jackie slid out from the sheets, and covered her nude body with a robe. As she
approached her front door, she cinched the belt tight. Jackie peered through
the viewfinder set in the door, but didn’t see anyone standing there. As she turned
away to go back to bed, the bell rang again. Frowning, she peeked out the large
window set next to the door, first up, and then down.
A little boy stood
staring in at her.
“Oh, my gosh!” she
said. Jackie turned the locks open, and pulled on the door.
A short
blond-haired boy stood in the glaring light of her porch.
“Little boy, are
you okay?”
Dried tears tracked
dirt on the boy’s cheeks. He held his hands clasped together in front of him,
and he knocked his knees together, almost shy. He rocked slowly back and forth.
“Where’s your
mommy?” she asked him.
At the mention of
his mother, he looked up, and stared straight into her face. What she saw sent
her taking several steps backward into the house. The boy’s eyes were bloodshot
in the whites, and pale of all color in the irises and pupils. What she’d
thought were vivid freckles was actually spots of dried blood. He opened his
mouth to speak, and goopy blood dribbled slowly from his lips.
Jackie screamed.
She turned to run, but felt the belt of her robe catch on something, a chair,
maybe. She reached down to grasp the ensnared belt, and instead, felt a tiny
hand. It let go of the belt and grabbed her wrist. The boy squeezed tightly,
with unnatural strength. She felt and heard bones snap in her arm. Jackie cried
out, and fell forward on her face. The robe tore open. Jackie tried to roll
onto her back to face her attacker
(a little boy, it’s
a freaking little kid!)
head-on. As she
did, the boy fell on top of her, and dropped his knees into her soft stomach.
The air gusted from her, and she gasped. The boy looked down at her, and spoke
softly. It almost sounded like he’d said, “I
see your booties …” The boy smiled mischievously. Then he placed his tiny
hands on her face and shoved them into her gaping mouth. Jackie still hadn’t
gained her breath back. Her eyes popped open wide as the boy grabbed the edges
of her mouth, on each side, and began to pull. The seam at the corners of her
mouth ripped upward into each cheek. Blood sprayed and ran in warm rivulets
down her face into her ears and down her neck. She tried to call out to Robby,
but choked instead on blood and saliva. The boy shoved his hand deep into her
throat, and lodged it there. Jackie struggled and thrashed beneath the kid, but
soon lost the battle, and fell limp. Her eyes remained open, staring emptily up
at the ceiling.
He frowned, and
turned back to the bed. Someone was in the house. He didn’t want to wake
Jackie, but he thought she should be awake, in case something had to go down.
He stepped around to her side of the bed, and reached down for the blanket.
He grasped the edge
and pulled it back.
Empty.
“She’s in the
kitchen,” he murmured. “Hey, babe. You getting something to eat? I’m hungry
too, after what we did.”
He left the
bedroom, and walked down the hall. When he reached the living room, he stopped.
The front door was
hanging open.
“What the hell …”
Robby stepped closer to the door, and looked outside. There was no one there,
but that didn’t mean they weren’t in here right now. He turned, and looked back
into the kitchen.
Jackie wasn’t
there.
He took a step
toward the next room, and stopped when he heard his shoes squish on the carpet.
There was blood on the floor beneath his foot.
Robby looked all
around him quickly. There was no sign of Jackie, other than the blood on the
floor … if that was her blood at all. Something had happened. Suddenly, he felt
sick. He rushed to the sink in the kitchen, and filled a glass with water. He
drank deeply, almost choking on the liquid. He gasped for air loudly as he set
the glass down on the counter.
A deep-throated
giggle sounded behind him, sounding as if in a pool of water.
Robby turned back
to face the living room.
It was empty.
“Jackie?” he
called. He followed his voice into the next room, and stood waiting. “Baby?”
“Baby!” a tiny
voice shouted from his left. Robby turned in that direction, and saw a small
blond-headed kid running toward him. The boy’s hands were soaked in blood. He
smiled as he ran.
“Oh sh—” Robby
started, and then turned to the front door.
It was closed. He
grasped the knob, and twisted. Locked. He fumbled on the lock set in the
handle, and then turned. The door wouldn’t budge. The deadbolt, then. He turned
it, but it was too late.
Something sharp
shot into his leg, sending white-hot flares of pain up into his brain. He
screamed, and looked down. The kid held a long butcher’s knife with both hands,
like a…
“Sword!” the little
boy cried out. He pulled out the knife, and then swung it mightily. It cleaved
into the side of his thigh with a muffled thump. Blood sprayed in a fountain. Oh, God, he cut my artery … The boy
tugged, and then pulled the knife back out again. The flood was enormous,
running down his leg in a crimson fall, and pooling around his feet. Waves of
dizziness washed over him, as Robby stumbled to the floor, and tried to crawl
away. He collapsed near the back of the couch, and saw through steadily dimming
eyesight Jackie’s still body stuffed behind, her face staring out, her mouth a
sprawling rictus of horror.
Robby tried to
scream, but felt himself fading too fast to do more than gasp a whisper. He
flopped over onto his back, in time to see that the boy was gone, the door to
the front of the house open, and he was alone.
Then he was no
more, for the dark had taken him, too.
5
A few hours had
passed since the death of his friends, (he didn’t know that part yet), and
Manny cruised aimlessly down the main drag on his end of town. There were a few
hookers still walking the street, bumming business in a town that knew better. Ain’t no way I’m catching some skank’s
disease, he thought. That’s no way to
go out.
The all-too
familiar pulse of flashing blue and red behind him made Manny groan. Cursing,
he pulled over. Better that, when wouldn’t find anything on him, than to try to
run, knowing how gun-happy the cops were around here. He would never survive a
car chase. He eased his Impala to the side of the road, and waited for the cops
to walk up.
The officer stepped
out, drew his gun, and hid behind his car door.
“Manny Gutierrez!
Get out of the car! Slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“What the—?” Manny
hesitated, looking in both his rear and side mirrors. The officer wasn’t
messing around. Then, in the background, he saw another police vehicle park
behind the first. They meant business. Had they somehow linked him to the
shooting? Impossible. He’d wiped that slate clean, as far as he knew.
Waiting any longer
was likely to get him shot, as well. Manny nodded his head once in
acknowledgement of the instructions, and then opened his door. He put one leg
out of the car, hands near his head. Then with practiced ease, ducked his head
as he stood up out of the car. He turned and faced the car, his hands laced
behind his head.
The officers moved
quickly. As one spread his hands on to the roof of the car, and patted him down
for any weapons, the second officer read him his rights.
“I also have a
right to know what I’m being arrested for,” Manny said in a low voice.
“We’re going to
determine that when we get to the station,” the first officer said. They walked
him back to the police vehicle.
“Hey man, don’t
just leave my car out here like that! Somebody’s gonna steal it!”
“Payback’s a b—”
the first officer started to come back, but the second waved him off.
“We’ll secure it
before we leave.”
They shoved Manny
into the back of the car, and made him wait while they did as they promised.
The back seat of
any police vehicle, for the uninitiated, was never made for a comfortable ride.
In fact, it was more of a hard plastic bench, than a cushioned seat. There were
seatbelts, of course, and Manny had been buckled into one, but sometimes, if a
suspect was violent, the officer had the option and right to just throw the
arrested person into the back unsecured to the vehicle. Of course, there was a
steel mesh separating the backseat from the front, and no access to door or
window handles. It was basically a box. Manny had been in a few from time to
time. It was never cool, but for the first time tonight, he thought he just
might escape further jail time and conviction.
Out of the corner
of his eye, he saw movement to his right, on the sidewalk. Looky-loos, trying
to peep at the latest criminal. The officers were both at his car, turning it
inside out. Oh yeah, securing it. Thankfully, he’d stashed the guns and dope.
The car was as clean as it could be. Not even a beer bottle.
Manny looked up to
tell the onlookers what to do with themselves.
He only saw a short
boy, standing on the sidewalk, staring right back at him.
A little boy with
blond hair.
“Hey kid! Get out
of here! Get going! You shouldn’t be out here—”
The kid launched
himself at the window of the police car. The boy’s hands splatted on the glass,
and red stuff, dark and oily, sprayed and oozed off the kid’s fingers. Manny
jumped back, but was tightly belted, and couldn’t scoot over. The boy started
banging on the glass with his fists. Hollow echoes accompanied each thump, but
Manny knew that the glass windows in these vehicles were pretty strong. The
little kid continued slamming the window, which shook visibly each time. He
wouldn’t stop.
Manny’s guts felt
like ice. Who was this kid?
“Hey!” he shouted.
“Officers! Hey, stop this kid!”
He looked up at the
two cops, who lazily glanced back at him, saw nothing amiss, and went back to
their search. Manny looked back at the window.
The kid was gone.
The window was clean. No blood, if that was what had been on the boy’s hands.
Manny turned in his
seat, searching as well as he could all around the back of the car. There was
no one standing around.
A few minutes
later, the officers returned to the car, having completed their search. They
locked the Impala, and one officer got into the driver’s seat in front of
Manny.
“You look a little
freaked out before,” the cop said. “Something you want to say?”
“Just take me to
the station,” he muttered.
At least there, he
would be safe.
6
For the last hour,
Manny sat in silence at the table, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was
stunned, to say the least. Frankie and Robby, both found dead. Robby’s girl,
too, whatever her name was. Murdered.
And the police
thought he’d done it.
Hence the silent
treatment. Manny knew better. If he had any hope of getting out of this one, it
was to zip it up, and wait for a lawyer. The cops in this town knew how to
twist your words, and trick you into saying something you didn’t want to say.
The best way to combat that was a closed mouth.
After hearing about
the deaths of his friends, it was difficult to think of anything to say.
Then he saw the kid
… again.
This time he was
sitting on a chair down the hall, near the front desk. Just swinging his legs
back and forth like kids did when sitting on a chair too tall for them to touch
the floor. Only once, had the kid looked up at Manny and stared. It was a strange
look, like the kid knew him or something. How had that kid got to the police
station so fast?
These things
inspired Manny to shut his trap. He waited out the cops, until they’d lost
their patience. A detective stood him up and walked him to a cell. Only after
the cell door closed did Manny breathe a sigh of relief.
7
The hours drew long
after his incarceration, and for Manny, sleep was fleeting. His thoughts
dwelled on his homies, murdered, the blame laid solely at his feet.
How had it
happened? Who was the culprit? Someone in the East Highland Kings? For years,
they had been rivals with his gang, and it wouldn’t surprise him to discover
that someone had found a way to frame him for murder, and get him out of the
picture.
But that didn’t
make sense. He never crossed with the East Highland Kings. He stayed in his own
territory. Frankie and Robby were too smart to let something like this happen
to them by a rival gang. It had to be something so shocking, that they couldn’t
recover enough to gain the upper hand.
It seemed as though
an hour had passed in the cell, and though Manny didn’t remember slipping
silently into sleep, he now sat up on his cot, and stretched. It was still
dark. The police had stripped him of all his belongings when they booked him,
including his cell phone and his watch. Manny had no idea what time it was.
There was light in the hall. He stood, and walked to the door of the cell. He
leaned down to the tiny hole set in the door for food, and looked out.
Frankie was lying
on his back on the floor, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. His
head was gashed wide open, and his left eye was missing.
“Frankie,” Manny
hissed. “Oh man, what is this?”
At the sound of his
voice, Frankie slowly sat up, and gazed with his remaining eye at his old gang
leader.
“Manny,” he
whispered. “Why’d you do it, man?”
His bowels twisted
in a knot, and then dropped like a bag of rocks into his abdomen. “Do what,
Frankie?”
Then Frankie moved,
fast, and shot his arm through the opening in the cell door. He wrapped his
hand around Manny’s throat, and began to squeeze. Manny gasped, and then began
to choke. He pried at Frankie’s fingers, but his former friend’s grip was far too
strong.
“Why’d you make us
shoot them?” his friend asked.
Shock and panic
fogged his mind. “W-who?”
Still squeezing his
throat in a vice, Frankie turned his head to look down the hall. Manny,
fighting unconsciousness, opened his eyes, and followed the gesture.
Two boys, both
blond, walked down the hall hand in hand. Their bodies were coated with
splattered blood, oozing from various wounds on their tiny bodies. Like twins,
they walked in unified steps, halting and stiff, and yet resolute and
continuous. Part of the shorter boy’s head was missing. The taller boy had a
gaping hole in his chest, the telling result of an exit wound by a high caliber
bullet.
Manny slipped
backward, and pushed against the door with his feet. He managed to slide out of
Frankie’s grip, and backward into the cell.
He bumped up
against someone stiff and cold.
Manny looked up
into the pale face of Robby, seated on the edge of his bed. Robby slowly tilted
his head down to look at Manny.
“You doomed us,
Manny,” Robby said.
The corpse on the
bed reached down and grabbed Manny’s hair. He pulled with inhuman strength, and
yanked the gang leader off the floor.
Manny pushed
against him, and felt his hand sink into a wound in his thigh the size of a
toaster oven slot. His fingers sank deep into cold, unyielding tissue, slick
with coagulated blood. Manny cried out, and fell back onto the floor. His hair
ripped out by the roots, hanging in Robby’s outstretched hand.
The cell door
slowly opened. Manny looked up. Those boys stood there filling the doorway,
this time accompanied by a young girl near Robby’s age. His old lady? She stood
between the little boys, holding their hands, as would their own mother. One of
her hands hung at an awkward angle, and didn’t seem to grasp the boy’s hand but
sat in his little fingers. Looks broken,
Manny thought. Then he saw her face. Her jaw hung straight down to touch her
neck, the sides of her mouth ripped open wide to her ears, lips and cheeks
stained a dark black color that could only be crusty, dried blood. She wore a
robe laid opened, exposing her pale, bloodless body, that should had held some
interest for him under better circumstances—that Robby always knew how to hook
up with the hotness—but this time disturbed him to the core. That she appeared
neither concerned by her nudity, nor even aware of it, was frightening in a way
that seeing her walk around with her injuries had failed to do before. This was
somehow real.
They entered the
cell, followed by Frankie. They crowded around him in a loose circle. The boys
stepped forward. The older and taller one began to cry. Only instead of tears,
his eyes dripped blood. His voice quivered, and his mouth stretched open. His face
distorted into a combination of pain and need that any parent would recognize.
“Owwie …” he
whined, touching his chest wound. “ I want my mommy …”
Then he reached
down for Manny, fingers slippery with blood tracing his cheek, marking him.
Manny screamed …
8
… then jerked
awake, fighting phantoms that were not there. The cell floor had dissolved into
the mind, replaced by a fabric seat cushion. The cold, hard accusing fingers of
the boys became the steering wheel, pressed up against his face. What dimly
felt like blood running down his chin was only drool from his sleep.
Then he remembered,
sort of. Driving, aimlessly around town. Fatigue. He’d pulled over in his
neighborhood, found his driveway, and fallen asleep in his car. Why hadn’t he
gone on, stepped out of the car and into his house?
Manny stretched
stiff, sore muscles, and recalled the dream that had haunted him so vividly.
Frankie and Robby dead … and those boys.
No doubt, those
news reports had fueled his mind with guilt, and the rest was explainable,
though far from sensible.
He opened his car
door, and walked quickly into the house. He stopped just inside the doorway,
and listened. All was quiet. He turned on every light switch in the place, and
searched in every corner and cabinet. There was no sign that anyone had been at
the house.
Manny went to his
closet in the bedroom, and pulled out a loose board above the top shelf. From
the hole, he withdrew a short stack of tabloid style newspapers. He thumbed
through yesterday’s, and found what he needed. The obituaries for the little
boys.
Yes, the pictures
matched how he’d imagined them in his nightmare. He re-read the text, and saw
where they had planned to bury the kids earlier that day.
There was only one
way to confirm that he had nothing to worry about. He pulled out his phone and
dialed Frankie and then Robby. Neither one answered, and for a long moment,
Manny entertained the thought that perhaps his nightmare had some truth to it.
No. Not possible.
He shook his head to clear away the creeping insanity, and went back out to his
car.
Then he gunned the
engine, and screamed down the street.
9
The night was quiet
at Ridgeview Memorial Cemetery. Manny parked his car near the east gate, not
caring who saw it there. He had to know, and he didn’t have time to waste on
details like someone discovering his car. He quickly scaled the gate, and
slipped down on the other side.
It was a large
property, and served a great many in town, one of four cemeteries for a
population of over five hundred thousand people. If statistics were to be
believed, this place had to have been the resting location of at least three
people just this week. All he needed to do was find the most recent plot of
ground disturbed. If the grass were still in place, then he would know that
he’d only imagined the boys out of fear and remorse.
But where to begin?
The land sprawled
out for dozens of acres in every direction, full of gently rolling hills and
dotted with wide-reaching trees that by day certainly would look soft, and
inviting, providing shade and comfort at a time of bereavement, but now in the
thick of night, looked threatening, as sentinels guarding an asylum of the
damned. Sounds carried far way out here on the edge of town, but Manny heard
neither traffic nor animal. Yet something occasionally made some sound, a
creak, perhaps, or the soft, whispering suggestion of a footstep.
“Just your nerves,”
Manny scolded himself. His voice was barely discernable to even his own ears,
and yet it seemed to crack loudly as the rock that dislodges the avalanche on
the mountainside. He stopped walking, and waited to see what the avalanche would
be in this lonely place.
Nothing moved, not
even a breath of wind. Manny’s own breathing was shallow and low. He sucked in
a sudden gasp of air, as his nerves tingled up and down his spine. He whipped
his head around, and continued to see nothing but endless rows of headstones, and
trees.
“Come on, Manny,
get this done,” he murmured.
Swallowing his
fear, he stepped off the asphalt drive, and started to work his way deeper into
the gloom of the cemetery.
10
Stephen sat up in
his hospital bed with a loud gasp. The nightmare, oh God, the nightmare, please
let it be over. His mind reeled. The boys.
His little boys. Oh, what had happened to them? Not his tiny, precious boys. He
closed his eyes, and then opened them again, when he heard the noise just
outside his room.
Stephen gasped
again when he saw them standing at the door.
11
Manny wandered the
cemetery for an hour, until he’d found a shovel. It was small, and the handle
rough with splinters. It didn’t matter. He needed an end to this madness. Manny
continued on through the burial grounds, stalking up and down row upon row, stumbling
in his fatigue over each headstone, each divot or depression in the grass.
A faint fog
filtered through the air just above the ground, lending a surreal quality to
the night. Manny chuckled despite himself. How typical. He rubbed one hand
across his eyes, trying to smear the tiredness that threatened to collapse him
in the center of this place of the dead. He couldn’t stop. He mustn’t! There
had to be an answer here, buried and safe.
Finally, he saw a
deeper darkness in the ground ahead. Manny tripped over feet like lead weights,
and nearly pitched down into the soft, loose dirt. The grass hadn’t been
replaced yet, just a large square plot of brown soil.
“Ya better be in
dere,” he drawled.
He drew back, and
pushed the shovel into the dirt. It went easily enough.
As he threw the
small amount of dirt to the side, he wondered that this was the first time he’d
done any hard work by himself. His body wasn’t used to the effort.
After five
shovelfuls of soil, he doubted that he could go one any further. It was so late
at night. Sleep hovered over his brain, seeking to devoir him.
“No, Manny,” he
chided himself. “Finish it. Finish it now.”
With a resolve he
didn’t know he possessed, he put in the digging instrument again, and continued
to remove the soil.
In the sky above,
dark clouds drew together to form a blanket of cold. The moon and stars had
disappeared. It wouldn’t rain this night. That might almost be a relief.
12
On this night,
which seemed to last forever, Manny had collapsed into the hole he’d dug in the
middle of the town cemetery. He couldn’t remember passing out, or how long he’d
been out of it. All he knew was the disappointment and frustration he’d felt when
he saw the massive concrete block that stood between him and his goal. In
agony, he’d slipped away into the black fields of his subconscious.
It was the grinding
sound of cement rubbing against itself that awoke him.
He sat up, and felt
himself slide a little on the sloping sides of the hole he’d opened. Many
looked down into the concrete box, now shockingly pulled apart, to see two
small brown coffins.
Manny coughed,
spraying dust from his lips and face. He slipped down, and stood on the ground
between the boxes.
Swallowing hard, he
slowly pried open the first box.
Lying peacefully
inside was the older of the two brothers, J.J. His blond hair was matted down
with the sudden exposure to the humidity of the ground and cemetery. Eyes that
had been bright blue in the pictures he saw on TV were now forever sealed shut,
never to open and gaze upon the world again.
Manny turned, and
opened the other box.
It was the younger
brother, Michael. He looked very much like his older brother. Same blond hair,
same faint skin color, and body build. Eyes closed.
They were here
after all! Both boys, sealed in their coffins for all time.
Many felt his
initial guilt melt away.
Satisfied, he began
the arduous and slippery climb back out of the hole. He stood on J.J.’s coffin,
and tried to jump. He almost landed on his leg in an awkward manner. Manny took
a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and bent his knees.
He jumped.
A hand caught his
wrist, and pulled.
13
Manny stared face
to face with a dead man.
Two of them.
Frankie hissed low
at his former gang leader. “It’s time.”
A thin trickle of
urine ran down Manny’s leg. He hardly noticed. His skin had gone ice cold.
“F-Frankie!” he
said.
“We buried them
again,” Robby murmured through a throat filled with dry blood.
The leader looked
back and forth between his two friends, hardly believing his eyes. Frankie
pointed down into the hole. “The price is yet to be paid.”
“They deserve to
rest.”
Frankie took up one
arm, while Robby bound the other, and held up Manny between them.
“Guys, please, let
me go.”
“Not here,” Frankie
said.
They dragged him
across the grounds a short distance, and then stopped. From behind a tree, a
pale figure stepped out, walked up behind the trio, and raised a long object
high into the air.
Stephen brought the
shovel down on Manny’s head. Once. Three times. Six.
He slumped against
the tree a moment, and looked to the two young men warily.
Frankie nodded
once.
“It’s done, now. Go
and be with yours. We’ll take care of ours.”
Stephen waved at
them, and then turned slowly. He brought the shovel up over his shoulder, and
shuffled carefully over the ground to return the dirt and dust from whence it
came.
Frankie and Robby
pulled the limp body of Manny through the cemetery, pausing near the mausoleum
just in time to watch the slight glow of the sun beginning to rise over the
distant mountain range.
