Dennis jumped up, looking around the family room, the clock saying it was close to midnight. This wasn’t unusual, falling
asleep on the plush love seat as he watched a game on ESPN or read a book. He had been reading Ken Follett’s latest and feeling
envious of how the author made it seem so easy when he had drifted off. The beer and the day had worn him out.
For a second, he thought about grabbing something—a baseball bat, a knife, the pistol he stored in the garage.
But instead he rushed to the door, the doorbell continuing to ring.
Maybe one of those bloodsucking zombies from Home Depot would greet him with “Trick or treat!”
But there was nobody.
A brown cardboard box tied with string sat on the welcome mat on his doorstep.
Dennis scanned the area, walking outside and down the walk toward the driveway to see who might have done this. He knew, of
course. He didn’t need to see Cillian’s face to know this was from him.
The guy was too scared to face Dennis like a man. He was too scared of what Dennis might do to him.
“Why don’t you come out of the shadows?” he shouted.
But nobody stepped out.
Dennis stared at the box for a moment, then picked it up.
He already knew what was inside without opening it. He could tell because of its weight, because of the bulky way it shifted
in his hand.
Inside he locked the front door, double-checking to make sure. He brought the box into the kitchen and found scissors to snap
the string.
For a second Dennis wondered if he should continue. Cillian was playing a game with him. Why, he wasn’t sure. To get under
his skin perhaps. To make his life a nightmare before the real reason came out: extortion, blackmail.
Opening this would just continue the game.
But Dennis needed to, even though he already knew what the contents were.
The first thing he saw was the orange paper. A thick stack of orange pages bound by a rubber band.
What was with Cillian and orange paper?
Then he saw the typed words on the cover page of the manuscript.
Brain Damage
A Novel By…
Dennis glanced over his shoulder before touching the manuscript. He wondered if somewhere outside in the darkness Cillian
watched him.
“A novel by…” Very cute. Very smug.
This was an entire manuscript.
He checked the back.
There was even a finish with the words The End.
An entire book, right here.
Just like a year and a half ago when he found the manuscript from Cillian in his closet.
He’s toying with me. Playing. Enticing.
But why?
For a long time Dennis stood there, staring at the manuscript, wondering what secrets lay inside.
And every second that passed, a low deep murmur in his soul whispered back at him.
You’ll never be able to write again.
The constant rattling of the wind outside was the only sound. He swallowed, his mouth dry. The bottle of scotch was on the
table in the family room, and he found himself pouring another glass, then draining it. His eyes watered from the shot, his
skin warm, his nerves blazing.
The pages he had read lay in front of him, resting on the table like a pulsing heart.
All twenty of them.
Chapter One.
Dennis wanted to go back to an hour ago and throw those pages in the garbage along with the rest of the novel. Or better yet,
find a match and burn them. He wished he had not read them and wished no one else would ever read them.
The chapter made him feel dirty.
His legs felt locked in ice, his breathing unsteady. He was about to have another glass of whiskey when he noticed his hand
trembling and decided he needed to get up and go to bed.
“But it’s not going to be that easy, is it, Dennis?”
He could hear Cillian’s voice, the way he emphasized his name as though it were a curse word.
Why is he getting to me?
But Dennis knew why. He closed his eyes, and his mind wandered. That was the beauty and the horror of the creative conscience.
It wasn’t always about what a writer showed. Often it was what he didn’t show that terrified the reader.
And in this case Dennis could only imagine what would follow the twenty pages he’d read.
The manuscript was close to four hundred pages long.
He couldn’t understand where Cillian was coming from— how he could create something so—so ugly.
I’ve written some harrowing stuff, but nothing ever remotely like this.
An image crossed his mind. Bloody feet, bare and slender, running over a gravel road.
It made him sick, the image, what was happening, what would happen.
It’s vile and something’s seriously wrong with this young man.
The rape that opened the story was not just graphic. It was disturbing in its frankness and depravity.
Dennis got up to turn off the lights, but froze when he heard something.
This is crazy, Den. You’re just spooked.
He turned off the final light and headed upstairs to his bedroom. The wind shook against the house. The steps creaked in their
familiar way. The small hallway light illuminated his way as he went. And all Dennis could think about was a bloody hand grabbing
his ankle and yanking him back into the darkness.
He stared at the steps. Just steps. Just feet walking up them.
How could someone imagine such horror and spell out such inhumanity?
He shook his head as if the action might erase his thoughts. But even in his bedroom, even standing in the bathroom washing
his face and brushing his teeth, even looking at his dark closet as he took off his jeans and shirt, even climbing into bed
wondering what might be hiding at the bottom of his comforter by his feet waiting to take a bite out of them, Dennis could
not get rid of the images.
They were vivid and real.
The printed word had power.
Stop this. It’s crazy, man.
But the thoughts wouldn’t go away.
And he pictured the scene he had read once again.
And he wondered what would happen next.
And he felt sick imagining something like that happening in real life.
Knowing that it could.
Afraid that Cillian Reed might be writing from personal experience.
The trees fly past and the windshield bounces and the sky tumbles and the seat belt tears into his shoulder and his chest
as the world swirls and a branch crashes through the glass next to him.
“Get him.”
Cillian still feels spinning, still feels turning.
“Do you hear me? Go open the door and get him.”
He shakes his head. “Why can’t you?”
But then he sees the big guy’s slashed face, the glass on his forehead and cheek, a nice chunk of his jaw ripped open, the
blood oozing out.
“Okay,” Cillian says, not needing to ask.
And he releases his seat belt and falls onto the ceiling of the overturned truck. He cuts his hands on the glass as he crawls
out the window.
The last thing he remembers is driving down the remote street in the woods, Bob tossing a lukewarm Budweiser back at him,
listening to the two men talk in the front of the car. Bob met the drunk twenty-something guy at the run-down bar in Elgin
and told him about a party. A party that doesn’t exist. At a place that isn’t there.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. But it will be the first time that it’s all left up to Cillian.
Until now he’s only watched and taken notes.
This time his hands will be used for something else.
Cillian stands next to the car that has flipped and slammed against a tree.
He remembers the drunk guy asking questions and not liking the answers Bob gave. The guy abruptly jerked the wheel and forced
them off the road.
Up ahead the man staggers down the road.
Cillian starts to run after him.
What are you going to do when you get to him?
But he just keeps running, his hands and arms bloodied. He feels dizzy, maybe from a concussion.
“Get him.”
He can hear Bob’s words.
“Get him.”
The stranger turns around, then stops. His eyes say everything. He stumbles and bolts over the ditch and heads into the woods.
They’re still barren since it’s mid-March. The man trips over a log and gets back up, locking eyes with Cillian.
This time I’m the monster. This time he’s running from me.
And for a few minutes they run through the labyrinth of trees and limbs and bushes until the man looks back and nicks his
right foot on a root and falls face-first into the leafy, muddy ground.
Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. You know what waits back there at the car if you do.
Cillian finds himself acting quickly. Bob has taught him well. His knees force the man down. His hands find the man’s neck
and squeeze. And as the man jerks away, clawing, fl ailing, he remains on top of him.
He puts the palm of his hand on the man’s forehead, driving him in the soft ground, his other hand deep into the guy’s taut
neck.
Then his palm goes over the man’s mouth, and he shoves the air out of the man until his tossing and turning and flapping body
finally stops convulsing.
But he doesn’t let go. And as Cillian keeps one hand clenched over the man’s neck and the other jammed over the man’s mouth,
he can feel his own tears dripping down his cheeks and his hands and body shaking.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a smile on his face.
Because it’s the most glorious moment of his life.
Dennis walked along the river on a small path that led to a forest preserve. It was late in the day, and it was nice to be
able to walk uninterrupted while most people were stuck in their cars in traffic trying to get home. There were many things
he enjoyed about being a full-time writer, and this was one of them.
A strange knocking sound got louder as the path fed into a parking lot. There was one car in the lot, a beast of a blue Chevy.
It sounded like someone was inside, banging to get out.
Dennis looked around as he discerned a muffled cry.
Someone was screaming from the car, but screaming with their mouth closed.
He dashed to the car and peered into the front seat. As he did, he heard the pounding from the back. Somebody banged against
the trunk, their yells stifled.
Dennis examined the trunk but couldn’t find a way to open it.
“I hear you—I’m going to get you out,” he called, tapping on the trunk.
Whoever was inside wailed away as if they didn’t believe him.
“Okay, hold on,” he yelled.
He tried to open all doors, but they were all locked. The screaming and bashing continued. Dennis sprinted over to the woods
nearby and found a rock. He used it against the driver’s window, bashing the glass and finally opening the door.
The keys were still in the ignition.
But the driver is nowhere to be found. Right?
He grabbed the keys and opened the trunk, assuring whoever was inside that everything was going to be fine.
But when he opened the trunk and saw what was shrieking and kicking and fighting inside, he knew things weren’t going to be
fine.
The young woman—what was left of her—would never be fine, no matter how long she lived.
Bleeding eyes bore into him, the tape around her mouth almost chewed off. Similar tape was wrapped around her wrists and ankles.
She screamed and jerked and as he tried to pull off the tape. She fought and convulsed violently.
She was terrified of him.
Whoever had done this to her—and he could imagine what had happened—wanted her to be found.
But she was already dead.
As Dennis reached to pull her out of the trunk, he woke up. Not with a jerk, but rather opening his eyes and seeing the darkness
around him.
He wasn’t in a forest preserve.
It was his bedroom.
He reached over but didn’t find anybody.
He breathed in deeply and looked toward the ceiling. His hand brushed the sweat off his face.
He didn’t need to wonder why he had dreamed that.
It was from the second chapter in Cillian’s novel
Brain Damage.
Grief was sometimes like listening to an approaching war in the distance. The tanks and the armies and the destruction had
not yet arrived at Dennis’s doorstep, but he had heard the rumblings for eleven months now. And every now and then they sounded
closer.
As he drove toward downtown Geneva, the October day bright and still, Dennis reflected on these rumblings. Perhaps he had
been able to squelch the winds of war simply by running away from them. The eleven months had been so busy, with Audrey’s
final year of high school and then sending her off to college. He hadn’t had enough time to really, truly write. And he certainly
had not been able to grieve effectively, however that was supposed to be done.
Dennis knew he’d been so focused on helping Audrey grieve that he hadn’t allowed himself any time to do so.
Perhaps writer’s block is part of my grieving process.
Sometimes he wondered if it would hit him like a tsunami you could see approaching on the horizon. He remembered the stories
of the tsunami that hit Thailand back in 2004, and how people initially thought it was just a nice, fun wave coming at them.
But once it hit they realized it was deadly and they were in dire trouble.
Dennis felt Lucy’s absence every day, yet it didn’t prevent him from moving on without her. He stuffed the emotion aside,
confined it in a box, and left that box to drift with the rushing tide while he went the other way.
But the wound was still there. And sometimes like this morning when he awoke from a terrifying nightmare only to find another
one—a lonely house and himself aimlessly attempting to work on a story day after day after unproductive day—he found himself
missing her. Just her sweet spirit and her smile, there to cheer him up, there to make him feel alive.