“You must be with her again,” her mother said. “It is the only way.”
Sasha’s naked body had intensified his lustful reaction but her empty face and her mother’s mottled face cooled the blood in his veins.
“I will purify you and then you will purify each other.” She held out the bowl.
He couldn’t step away from the wall.
“This is what you want, yes? You want it to end?”
“What did you do?”
She held the bowl over Sasha. “I did what any mother would. I protected my daughter.” She overturned the bowl and the liquid splashed over Sasha’s midsection, trailing down into her crotch. She made no response, as if in a trance. “This is the most powerful of all spells. You cannot fight it. The only way is to embrace it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“To make my daughter happy.”
“No,” he said almost too quietly to hear.
She turned back to the altar. “That is too bad.” She turned back around with the knife in her hand. “There is no turning back now. The altar has been consecrated and must be purified. There are only two ways. If you refuse, I must use this.” She raised the knife, blade gleaming in the light as if already covered in blood.
“You’re fucking crazy.”
She wasn’t really going to kill her daughter, was she? That made no sense, not if she wanted to protect her. But he couldn’t have sex with Sasha, her mother standing over them with a fucking knife. He had been aroused before but now his dick had retreated almost inside of him. The vibrations in his pocket made him more anxious. Sasha’s mother dropped to her knees next to her daughter. She held the knife in both hands now and raised it over her naked daughter.
“Only you can stop this.”
He ran up the stairs so quickly he tripped on the top step and spilled into the foyer. Then he was up and prying at the door, which wouldn’t open. Locked. Sasha had locked it in her trance state. She had no idea what her mother was doing. From downstairs, the low groan came again only louder this time. It echoed in the house like an earthquake. Tyler found the deadbolt, flipped it back, and was scrambling down the porch steps and the front lawn so quickly he didn’t see Paul coming up the lawn and crashed right into him. They tumbled down the sloping lawn and stopped near the car.
“What the fuck man?” Paul said. “What happened? I was about to bust in there.”
“This is fucked beyond fucked. We need to leave, now.”
“What is it?”
“
Now
!
” Paul got in the car.
The neighbor was still on the porch, the red light of the burning cigarette floating in the dark. Racing over the hills and maneuvering through the parked cars, Paul asked what had happened. Tyler couldn’t tell him yet; it was too confusing. Had it all really happened? Had Sasha been naked before some witch altar? Had her mother really expected him to fuck her right there? Was she really going to hurt Sasha? He should call the police, at the very least.
“Go to the funeral home,” Tyler said.
“I thought you were in trouble. J ton troubesus.”
“Still am.”
When they got back to the funeral home, everyone had left and Dad was still upset. But not about Delaney.
Brendan had been kidnapped.
5
Stephanie had taken Chloe home after the incident. Anthony wanted to apologize to his sons, especially Brendan, who had seen the whole thing, but he couldn’t find them. Neither of the funeral directors knew where he was, either. He figured Brendan was hiding somewhere, scared after his dad’s violence. When he realized Tyler was gone, too, he relaxed. Tyler had taken his little brother home; that’s all. At least someone was acting rationally around here. He didn’t start to worry until Tyler showed up alone.
He was kneeling before Delaney’s coffin, hands clasped in prayer but no prayer actually filling his head when Tyler ran into the room. Anthony had been thinking what a complete fuck-up he was, how he had managed to destroy everything in his life that was perfect. But that was bullshit. He hadn’t destroyed anything. He and Chloe had loved each other more than anything when they agreed to make their arrangement legal and they swarmed their kids with love; they were the best parents they knew how to be. It was bad luck. Nothing but bad fucking luck. It was like a giant, evil troll had stepped into their lives and taken their infant son. But instead of moving on, the troll was still hungry and took Delaney, too. There was nothing either he or Chloe could have done. It was the Bad Luck Troll. When he comes for a visit, sometimes he stays for a long, long time.
“Dad?”
When Anthony turned with blurred vision to see Tyler in the doorway where so many people had tromped through during the day, he thought,
Is the troll still hungry, even now?
“Where’s Brendan?”
“What do you mean?”
That’s when worry morphed into panic, and Anthony was up, moving towards his son as rapidly as a running back hits the defensive line. He grabbed Tyler’s shoulders. “You took him home. You left here with him because of what I did. Right? He’s in his bedroom right now playing with his action figures or writing in his damn composition book.”
“I left with Paul. I just got back.”
“
Paul?
What the fuck for?”
Tyler was shrinking away from his dad, genuine fear in his eyes. “I had to get away.”
“You left your brother here?”
“He’s almost thirteen. What happened?”
“
He’s
gone
!
” Anthony shouted. “Someone took him.” He pushed his son away, and Tyler nearly toppled to the floor. Anthony fell instead, collapsing again to his knees, hanging his head.
“Kidnapped?” Tyler said it so softly that the word was almost lost itself.
“I thought he was with you.
Ah, shit
. Get the funeral director. Call the police.
Ah, fuck
.”
The police arrived within ten minutes but it seemed like an hour or longer. Anthony stayed on his knees in the doorway of the viewing room. Tyler kept his distance and the funeral directors never appeared. Maybe they had grabbed Brendan and were stowing him away upstastam away irs in one of the tiny rooms that filled this Victorian house. Or worse yet, they had taken Brendan downstairs where the bodies were embalmed. They had put him on one of those shiny metal tables, tied him down, tilted the table, and sliced his throat so his blood would drain into a funnel where they could collect it in gallon jugs and look at it later.
Two cops, one with reflective sunglasses and black hair, the other with a chubby face and his hand stuck to his gun, asked questions as if this was the millionth time today a child had vanished.
“When was the last time you saw your son?” the chubby one asked.
The last time. He didn’t mean it to sound so final, but that’s what it was and could be:
the last time
. Last time alive, anyway. Anthony was shaking his head. “A few hours ago.”
“And you only just called us now?” the cop with the sunglasses on said. His name tag read: Joseph Toller.
“I thought he was with my other son.”
“I left with my friend,” Tyler said from the other room. “I had been talking to him and then I left.”
“Talking about what?”
“Nothing. Just stuff. Our sister, you know.”
Toller nodded. The chubby cop was staring at Delaney, fingers adjusting their grip on his gun in case the corpse suddenly stood up. Anthony hadn’t caught his name tag. Were they even real names? Anthony had read somewhere that cops never carried their real badges for fear of losing them, so maybe they wore fake names, too.
“Back in the old days, this wouldn’t be much cause for alarm,” Toller said, “we’d tell you to contact friends, relatives, whoever, and wait through the night. Kid probably got spooked by his dead sis and ran somewhere to hide. He’ll come back. But nowadays, we do things differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Amber Alert, you heard of it?”
“You think he was kidnapped?” Anthony’s reflection was distorted in the man’s shades. Why was he wearing sunglasses inside? Hell, why was he wearing them outside in the dark?
“Do
you
think he was?”
“I don’t know, I just need to find him.”
“What was the last thing you said to him?”
Anthony had been punching that Jesus freak and screaming,
What did you do to my daughter? What the fuck did you do to my Delaney?
“I freaked out.”
Toller raised his eyebrows and Chubby Cop turned toward Anthony. His name was, if tags were to be trusted, Craig Fineman. If Anthony suddenly jumped up, Fineman would probably put two in his chest before he realized what he had done. That might not be a bad way to go, if he could get Tyler to leave first.
“I overreacted.”
“You hit him?” Toller asked.
“No, God no.”
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for your swollen knuckles. Punching walls? Frustration, perhaps?” Toller had a crewcut of short white hair; perhaps he had kids, even grandkids.
Yet, Anthony’s dead daughter lay only a few feet away and Toller was being a prick. “No, I hit someone, this guy . . .”
. . . walked in with his arm I ith hisaround my son and I freaked out. He’s a dangerous guy, trust me. He came to my house Saturday and he told me my daughter was pretty and now she’s dead and his eyes were wrong, uneven or something, don’t you see what I’m saying—that Jesus worshipper STOLE MY SON!
“This guy what?” Toller was waiting.
“I know where he is.”
Fineman backed up a step, expecting a trap, perhaps. Toller leaned in, unafraid. “Oh?”
He told them as calmly as he could about the two nameless Jesus Empowerment guys who had come to his door on Saturday, how bizarre they had been. He explained how the one guy had insisted that Anthony would
need
the pamphlet, almost as though he knew something was going to happen. He explained the way the other one, the short stocky one, had looked, how something seemed off about him, the loose hairs, the wrinkled suit. He didn’t tell them about the eyes, maybe because he couldn’t see Toller’s eyes and Fineman’s were squinty like those of a hog, but mostly because, though he hated to admit it, he was starting to sound hysterical.
“Never heard of them,” Toller said. Fineman shook his head. “You say you have a flier from them?”
“At my house.”
“Perhaps we should go get it.”
“Why would they take him? What do they want with my son?”
“They probably didn’t take him, Mr. Williams. But we should check it out. Though I’m sure it’s some type of non-threatening entity. Bunch of disenfranchised Catholics. Probably find them in a basement eating donut holes and drinking instant coffee.” Toller laughed. Anthony wanted to see his eyes so badly that he almost asked Toller to remove them and then he stopped himself. He had done more than enough to appear crazy for one night.
“And if they don’t have him?”
“You have a picture of your son? We’ll Amber Alert it right now. Someone will spot him. Have him back to you in an hour, maybe sooner.”
Anthony fished out a school photo of Brendan from his wallet and handed it over. Toller appraised it for a moment, said nothing, handed it to Fineman. A few minutes later, Tyler was driving his father back home while Toller and Fineman followed in their cruiser.
“You didn’t see anything?” Anthony asked his son.
“No, Dad. I left with Paul. I didn’t see anything.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just driving around. Clearing my head.”
“That my beer on your breath?”
“Sorry.”
“Fuck it.”
When they arrived at the house, Stephanie stood on the porch, waving her cell phone. Anthony hadn’t even turned his on. Something had happened. Chloe overdosed. The ambulance was on the way.
Anthony jumped out of the car before the car came to a complete stop and Anthony fell to his knees. He wouldn’t notice the torn holes in the pants until later after his knees stopped bleeding. He almost tackled Stephanie on the porch.
“It’s Brendan,” she said, eyes heavy. “He’s back.”
“What? Where?”
Anthony pushed past her into the house and, sure enough, there was his youngest son standing in the doorway to the kitchen, glass of milk in hand. He raised re . He rait as if in a toast. “Hi, Dad.”
Rage, pure and red-hot, flared through him so immediately that he could have torn his son’s head clean off and kept beating the corpse until it was tenderized, but a wave of relief washed away the rage and he went to his son, took him his arms, and hugged him as if the boy had returned from the dead. In a way, he had. Milk spilled over Anthony’s back and splattered on the floor.
“Where were you?” he asked after he broke the hug.
“I’m okay.” Brendan stared at the half-empty glass as if the milk had disappeared magically.
“But
where
were you?”
His son stared him dead-on. “I was in the woods. I ran away. I’m sorry.” The boy’s eyes watered and Anthony couldn’t stop himself from hugging him again and even more fiercely. It was okay, he told him over and over. Brendan had gotten scared at his father’s freak out, simple explanation with no harm done. It was okay. Everything was going to be okay. Anthony felt a crazed laugh threatening in his throat: how many times had he heard or said that everything was going to be okay?
“Cancel the Amber Alert,” Toller said from the front door. “Kid wasn’t nabbed. Everything’s A-Okay.”
If Shakespeare was right and all that is past is prologue, then everything was not going to be okay, not even close.
* * *
Sometime later when the boys were in their rooms, maybe sleeping but probably not, and Stephanie had collapsed next to Chloe in his bedroom, Anthony found the flier from the Jesus freaks. It was on the kitchen table where it had been since Saturday.