“You’ll know because I’ll tell you.” She set her jaw. “Anything
more is unnecessary.”
Another stinging shot hit my defenses. Why was she being so mean?
What had I done that was so bad?
“So that is all you got to say to me?” It ripped right through me.
I could barely breathe with it. “After everything we went through?” The tears
blurred my vision so that her face swam in front of me. “You fill my head full
of lies for fun, was that it?”
My hands shook and the room felt like it would crash on top of me
at any second.
“You find it funny?” I asked, stepping closer. “Just like Sam
did?”
Betrayal still haunted my dreams and probed at me every minute I’d
been stuck in a hellhole with the CIG ice troopers.
Renee’s face went pale. Her eyes wide. She got to her feet,
reaching for me. “Aeron, I would never—”
“No, you ain’t.” I backed away, knowing that I had to get out or
I’d end up exploding or imploding. “I’m done with you all.”
She stepped toward me but I stumbled away from her. Away from this
nightmare. “Aeron . . . please—”
I unbolted the door and fumbled with it, my mind as ragged as my
breath. I closed the door, conscious of the sleeping Zack, and slipped down the
steps. I landed heavily on my already sore leg and winced. The tears sobbed
from me. I glanced back at the house, knowing Renee was going to open the door
so I broke out into long strides. I had to get away from the agony of even
being near someone who had fooled me so badly.
As if life hadn’t taught me nothing. As if I hadn’t been shown
time and time again that nobody really cared. Folks only wanted to know me when
I was useful and they needed my “skills” or they found me entertaining. Why
hadn’t my dumbass heart realized that I was a freak and nobody was ever going
to see past all the burdens and want to know who lay inside.
And why did it hurt so much, every damn time?
I kicked the crap out of a fallen log as I stood on the deserted
lane. I was stupid, a stupid, snow-for-brains, lumbering—
“Not in front of you,” a voice muttered.
I spun around at the odd tone. I spotted Joyce standing opposite
me, her eyes wide.
Something was wrong.
I forgot my troubles and headed over to her. “Is Charlie okay?
What’s wrong?”
“Not in front but behind . . . some scars too deep . . .” She
giggled and her energy shot around her like fireflies. “One, two shots . . .
not so clear as day.”
“Joyce,” I said, reaching for her. “You must be freezing out
here.”
“Reasons are unclear, but angles change perspective . . . never
the same . . . only the heart can guide.”
I wrapped her up as best I could and she repeated the same things
over and over to me as I took her back to the hotel acting as a field hospital.
The warmth was a blessing by the time we headed inside. I hadn’t put on a coat
and I was pretty sure that I’d lost the feeling in my toes. As if one encounter
with the shivers hadn’t been enough.
“Joyce!” Charlie called out as he saw her. “Where were you?”
Joyce shook her head, blinked a couple of times, and then looked
at me like I’d just appeared out of thin air. “Where did you—?”
Charlie guided her away from me before she could ask her question.
I stood there in awkward silence until he wrapped her in a blanket and limped
back over to me.
“You must be freezing,” he said, offering me another foil wrap.
I shook my head, I was too wired to sit and huddle.
“She was outside the cabin,” I told him. “She seemed pretty
worried.”
He sighed. “Joyce is unwell. The winter always makes her worse.”
“Unwell?”
He nodded. “The doctors prescribe her things but it never really
works.” He looked at Joyce who had curled herself up on his bed. “She’s been
that way since . . .” He shook his head as if he wanted to shake his memory
right out from his brain.
There was nothing like the kind of things I saw afflicting the
folk back in the institution. There was no weird fluctuations or nasty hanging
leaches above her head. She seemed drained and sad.
“Is there anything I should do if I see her out again?”
He was expecting an inquisition on the state of Joyce’s mind I
could tell because he stopped and looked at me much in the way she had, as if I
had just appeared. “Just bring her back here or maybe the sheriff’s office.”
“Will do,” I said. “Guess I should be getting back. Just glad that
you managed to be on that road this afternoon considering.”
He frowned at me.
“Zack,” I clarified. “The little boy you rescued.”
“
You
rescued,” he corrected. “I wouldn’t have been on the
road if the sheriff hadn’t sent me for the emergency briefing.”
“Sounds bad,” I said. “I’m guessing the weather is really working
out the emergency responses, huh?”
“Course. But that isn’t why I was there.” He yawned, rubbing a
bandaged hand over his face. “Some breakout somewhere,” he mumbled. “Like
anyone would come here.”
“Why didn’t they just radio you?”
He laughed. “In this weather?” He waved a hand around at the hotel
lobby. “Up here, unless you got a great big satellite stuck to your property,
you’re on your own.”
I didn’t get phones or computers or anything that had circuits and
so I quite liked the thought that St. Jude’s carried on life without so-called
modern conveniences littering up their day.
“Talking of being on my own,” I said. “I guess I’d better head
back before Re—Serena blows a valve.”
He chuckled. “She looks feisty.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to go back to the cabin and face
her but I did want to keep my promise to Zack, and if I was going to quit the
CIG, like I was certain I was doing, I needed to talk to her like an adult
about it.
It was a freeing thought that I’d made my choice and I would talk
to Martha in the morning and ask if she’d maybe take me on. I could fix up the
cabins in return for staying in one. That way I could stick around for Zack and
make sure he wasn’t trapped in his head like Nan had been.
CIG didn’t really need me and my mother could do her job without
me there. The only person who I would miss would be Renee but—I stopped myself
with that thought.
Renee was just another face, another name to add to the layers of
identities that she possessed. Renee didn’t exist, not really, not anymore.
I sighed. I’d start again, like I had so many times. I’d be alone
but when had that ever been different. Illusions didn’t count. Here was as good
a place as any. Besides, Lilia had taken my home from underneath me. Lilia was
the reason why I was hurting now. Maybe she just liked making my life
miserable. Why else would she send in someone who would make me think they
actually cared?
I could have followed Renee anywhere. I’d trusted her. Look where
it had gotten me? I’d have followed her into any deep dark secret that she had.
Problem was with that, it was clear she didn’t want me there.
YOU SEE THE snow beneath your feet, it crunches under your heavy
boots. Damn the stupid slop. A whole day wasted when you could have been
rejoicing in the chaos.
Whistling cuts through the night air and the wet soaks through
your knees as you kneel beside a tree. It’s too soon now, you must wait, wait
until you know how to herd them, how to meld them to your will.
Patience, you remind yourself. If nothing else, you have patience.
You linger, hidden from the road as a woman approaches. Your lowered stance
making her appear like a giant. Perhaps she is. You laugh to yourself, such an
ogre of a woman. Look at her. What man would want her, certainly not you.
The muscles, the unrefined brute ugliness of her overly masculine
form. She’s enough to make you sick. Women like her are good for nothing but
isolation. Disgusting creature.
The people of this town will agree when you can sway them. It’s
easy to fill small minds with your views. It’s easy to play with their
insecurities until there is nothing but hate and fear.
It feels so good, so right that these cretins learn their place.
You will start with the ogre, no doubt she will lead you to the beauty of Tess.
Tess has always been drawn to the grotesque. Tess, that blonde sweeping hair
falling into her delicious stone eyes, that skin so soft and warm, she smelled
so much like a delicate flower. Yes, that sweet fruit was continually lured by
the uneducated, by barbaric dirt-leaden ogres.
It’s time that she learns her lesson.
You watch the cumbersome, graceless troll disappear up a narrow
road and turn your eyes from the offensive sight. She will have to go, you
cannot even bear the memory of her. You get to your feet and walk to her tracks
in the snow. Her feet dwarf your own. It is an insult to you, to your status as
a man.
You turn from the bear print and look to the distant twinkle of
the town. It is not long before you reach its painted wooden welcome sign. The
name provokes a roar of laughter from you as you stare at it.
It’s just too perfect. St. Jude’s.
You know that Tess, your glorious, delightful Tess, will
understand the irony of the name. Hopeless causes, yes, so hopeless, her
existence is hopeless, meaningless without you.
You will change that. You will win her back. She will submit.
After all, you own her.
Chapter 11
AS I GOT to the door of the cabin, it burst open and Renee’s
wide-eyed look of panic had me jumping and yelping all at once. She hauled me
inside without a word and her angst flipped to anger before my eyes.
“Where have you been?” She grabbed her hair with her hands. “You
have any idea what could have happened?” She gripped me by the arms then
stalked into the living room. “I couldn’t leave Zack, I couldn’t come and find
you.” She spun around, walked over to me, and slapped me clean across the
cheek. “You could have been hurt!”
I blinked a couple of times and touched my hand to my stinging
cheek. It wasn’t as though she’d landed me with a right hook or anything but
more the fact that she’d raised her hand in the first place that shocked me.
She put her hands over her mouth as she registered her assault and the tears
bubbled over and down her cheeks.
“Aeron, oh God, I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” She
reached out for me but I was still kinda dumbstruck.
She’d hit me.
“I was so worried, you could have . . . I was so scared . . .”
Then I saw it. Above her head was a dark swirling mass, not like
the leaches that I saw above some people but dangerous all the same.
Fear.
You see, there’s one thing that I have learned since I left the
institution and that is fear is the greatest enemy of all. It stops you seeing
what is really there and making a decision based on logic. Fear likes to
distort your thinking, distort the world around you until all you can see is
black and hopelessness.
Well, I cared too much about Renee to let that cloud suck her soul
from her.
I walked to her and wrapped her up in the biggest hug I could
manage. Unlike afflictions or leeches or any kind of nasty wounds that the
world could inflict on a person, fear was not something I could displace or
heal just by touching. No, fear was a personal monster that each one of us had
to face and conquer but it didn’t mean that I was gonna leave her to fight it
alone.
“I’m here,” I told her. “Joyce was out in the road and I needed to
help her get back to Charlie.”
Renee burst into sobs. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I kept my decision on the CIG to myself but my heart wanted me to
tell her that I’d follow her anywhere should she need me. A dumb notion that
was nothing but lip service and no matter how much she needed me to lie, I
wasn’t going to.
“I’m not exactly small,” I told her. “You can’t miss me.”
Renee buried herself into my shoulder, her pain and worry hitting
me like I was tied to a rock in a storm. “I wish I could go back to Oppidum
with you,” she whispered. “I wish I could just live by the river.”
Oh, did that dig a knife into my heart. One minute she was
pretending she pretty much despised the sight of me and now she wanted to tend
fields and make wheat. My own confusion started to muddy my determined focus to
stay in St. Jude’s.
“But you can’t,” I told her. “You have people to save.”
Her eyes met mine as she looked up at me. “You were serious about
leaving CIG, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, hating the pain in her eyes. “We both know that I
ain’t cut out for lying and hiding and all the yes sir and no ma’am stuff.”
“It’s not lying,” Renee said. “We are protecting people.”
“And I guess my view of protecting people is that when you’re
honest, there’s a lot more trust.”
She sighed as she clung to me. “Aeron. What if I had told you who
I was and what I knew in the beginning. Would you have believed me?” She raised
her eyebrows. “Would you have sat back and let me do my job?”
“No. I would have thought you were crazy.” I held up a finger to
stop her speaking. “But, I would have trusted you a lot quicker.”
“And what if you had been the killer?” Renee said, something
flickering across her eyes. “What if the next person that I protect is actually
the monster I’m trying to stop. What then, Aeron?”
What the heck was I supposed to say to that? “I would guess it
would freak them out and their inner lunatic would be revealed. Would make the
whole process a lot quicker.”
Renee frowned. “Or they could hurt me . . . or someone else.”
There was a hidden truth peaking its way through her words, her
aura shimmered with her honesty.
“That’s what happened, didn’t it?” I asked, gripping her to stop
her from turning away. “You trusted someone and they turned out to be the bad
guy.”
Renee tried to look away but I grabbed her by the chin.
“The scars you fight, they’re from back then.”
She tried to fight it. Her energy was a screaming tangle of
desperation. The real her inside threw herself against the barrier she’d
erected all around her for protection. She was determined to hold on but the
barrier shuddered. I kept staring into her eyes. I wasn’t letting her go. The
real her hurled everything she had at the wall. The barrier shook and rumbled,
then buckled under the weight of the truth.
“Yes.”
The release of the word was like an opening door. Glitter pulsing
from her lips.
“They hurt you?”
“Not just me.” She buried her head in my shoulder. Her voice lost
and scared. “Please, don’t make me go back there.”
I held onto her as she sobbed and felt a need to shield her.
Whoever she had tried to help had torn her inside in more ways than I would
ever understand. So where was my place now?
Did I just leave Renee to wander around in life and lose herself
bit by bit or did I abandon a kid who needed my help before he gave up
completely. What was I supposed to do?
“Keep on keeping on,”
a voice whispered through the air, faint enough that I wasn’t
sure if I’d imagined it or if Nan really had spoken.
Renee cried herself to sleep and I put her into bed. I felt
restless and frustrated. So I did the one thing that I knew would help me to
forget everything for a while, the one thing that seemed the most constant
thing in my life. I sat on the weight bench and got ready to go through my
usual routine.
Blob came and sat on the edge of the treadmill.
“Aren’t you big
enough already?”
he asked in his normal bored-sounding tone.
“I got to do something,” I said. “Besides, I can’t sleep.”
“Why?”
he asked.
“I’m over-tired. If I sleep now, I’ll get visions.” I gripped hold
of the handles, getting the right feel before starting my set. “I
really
don’t want visions.”
“Why?”
Blob asked again.
“For once,” I said. “I really don’t want to know the future.”
I started my set and let the thoughts fade away. The future meant
decisions, the future meant that someone who needed me was going to get hurt.
Getting stuck in St. Jude’s had delayed the inevitable. Anything that would
delay that was just fine by me. I breathed through the strain, counting the
reps as I did so.
As far as I was concerned it could keep snowing . . .
indefinitely.