Purgatorium (73 page)

Hey! That was Envy, not me!” I say with a grin.

“He was mirroring you at the time! That was your voice screaming!” she says, going red in the face from laughing so hard.

“That’s how a demon screams,” I began to laugh. “Never have I once screamed like that, ever.”

“Oh you lie! Remember that time in the coffee shop?” she tries to cover her mouth from not laughing so hard.

“That was not me, that was Gabriel, mirroring me.” I now can’t stop laughing.

“That was totally you! Gabriel was stuffing his face with the special cupcakes I made for him. The ones that gave him severe diarrhea, remember?!” she states, laughing till she can’t breathe.

Continuing to laugh, I say, “That reaper came out of nowhere. I couldn’t help but scream. It made Gabriel shit his pants.”

We laugh till it hurts as the elevator doors slide closed. We continue to laugh, not letting it bother us.

“Remember the time we first ran into each other?” she says to me, squeezing a couple laughs out.

“You seemed very lonely and very crazy,” I say, smiling at her.

She laughs in between her teeth. “Now I am just crazy.”

We both laugh out of exhaustion.

“Remember when you finished your book? You read it to me every night?” she says with no laughter, almost as if she was serious.

“Yea, we only had five minutes each night to get a chance to read the thing. It took us years till we actually could finish it,” I say with a chuckle.

“Still worth it,” she says with a smile.

Still staring at the fire, she says, “Remember when I said that I am going to miss you?” She turns to me with tears in her eyes. “I’m gonna miss you very much.”

I look at her and say with disappointment, “I guess you made up your mind then?” I watch the tears fall down her face as she nods, not able to say the words. She wipes her eyes and bends her head down, probably not wanting me to see her like this. I soon realize that I never have seen her open up like she is doing now. Not once. She was a woman that acted more like an adventurous kid that just wanted to play and have fun. She was very different when I first met her. A lost soul that didn’t believe in hope, faith, or love for anything. Just like how I was a long time ago.

After taking her under my wing, I could see that childlike way about her start to come out. She found the line between never getting too serious to never getting too mad. She always said to me that time was too short to stay serious for too long or getting mad every so often. I would ask her after, if she meant mad as in crazy or mad as in angry? She would always answer, ‘Does it make a difference?’ Stephanie always knew how to cheer me up. I probably would have gone insane if it wasn’t for her. We more or less saved each other.

Her tears run across her face as she tries to laugh it off. She points at my necklace. “So…are you finally going to tell me what that means?” I look at the coin that I made in my time here, and think back to that special day.

“I was around six.” I stop, remembering the sun hitting my face in the back of my father’s pick-up truck. “My family took me on our first real vacation, the beach. I remember my mom always taking photos with her old Polaroid camera. I would try and build snow castles in the sand, my father would be trying to fix it,” I laugh.

“When we got to the last day, I begged my Mom to let us go out to the beach just one more time. I knew if I told my father he would say no, but Mom had her way to talking him into things that he didn’t want to do. She said that she was interested in grilling out fish for supper and wanted to know what brand to buy at the grocery. The man’s man that my father was, couldn’t stand frozen food. My mom knew him all too well. My father got his fishing equipment together and we went back out. I remember the nice breeze hitting my face as I ran to the water. I remember the warm sand in between my toes and then I felt something else in between my toes. For a second, I thought a crab had gotten hold of me. I screamed out and my father ran to me. He got on his knees, lifted my leg, and pulled this out.”

I show her the coin. “I thought he was gonna tear my butt up for not acting brave enough, but instead he did something else. He took some leftover fishing line from his fishing box and made a necklace out of it. He put it around me, said it looked good on me. Maybe it was the hourglass around it that he liked so much about it, or he thought the coin was part of a hidden treasure that was lost at sea that rolled up to shore. Who knows? But when I saw him smile after he put it on me, it made me smile as well. My mom instantly took the picture of the father and son moment. She always claimed it to be her favorite picture she ever took.”

I look into the fire as my memories turn into a slideshow in my mind.

“On the drive home, my family tried guessing what the hourglass meant and what it could possibly stand for. My dad said that the hourglass stood for time and how time was precious, never to take it for granted. My
mom, the always positive thinker,
said it would keep me safe from wrong decisions and point me only towards the right ones. She said that’s how my father caught the bass we later ate that night. That was the last vacation we ever took together; the following summer my mom got diagnosed with brain cancer. The picture she took of me and my father got lost along with everything else that was hers since my father didn’t like to be reminded. All that I had left to remind me was the coin. Years later, I run a race that I don’t finish. I lay there, hating myself for giving up too early. Out of my rage, I throw the coin. Once I did it, I tried looking for it. Spent a week searching for it but I never could find it again. Till this day I don’t even know why I even did it,” I confess, tears falling from my eyes.

I wrap my hand tightly around the necklace and hold it against my chest. “Afterwards, I made myself a new one, but it wasn’t the same. It was just another lie to add on to a list of lies, I tell myself. Every time I looked at it, instead of remembering the moment I shared with my family and the last summer I got to spend with my mom, I remembered my cowardliness for not finishing a stupid race.”

I lean my head down in anger and shame as Stephanie puts her arms around me. She whispers in my ear, “Time is too short to stay serious for too long or getting a little mad every so often.”

I look back into her soft crying eyes. “Do you mean mad as in crazy or mad as in angry?”

“Does it make a difference?” she responds, smiling at me.

We try to laugh, holding back any tears that are left to fall. I look to see the fire is now out. The cabin grows silent. No sounds of wind or ocean can be heard.

“Looks like we are here,” she says to me. I nod, standing up, raising my hand for her to grab. She takes it and I help her up.

“Well, we better get going then,” she says. Stephanie reaches behind her, pulls out the lion pistol, and lays it on her shoulder.

“We?” I reply, confused, looking at the gun. “I thought you said you weren’t coming?”

“I just wanted to hear the story behind the necklace. I knew by saying that if I was leaving, you would finally tell me,” she says with an innocent grin wiping off the fake tears from her cheeks. “Besides, I don’t have anything else better to do. Best spend my time doing something helpful than nothing at all. Also, if you say Madi’s demons are ten times worse than yours were, then you are going to need me! And I’m coming because you’re my best friend. Come to think about it, you’re my only friend,” she says smiling.

I step in closer to her, put my cheek against hers, and our lips start to draw closer together. Suddenly I think of Madi. Breathing out and looking down, I step back away from her. She sighs and composes herself too.

I look down at my watch and see that it has started back over to zero.

“David,” she looks at my face and whispers, “I believe it’s time.”

I look down at my necklace feeling hopeful. I walk out the front door and see the ocean is now gone. The cabin looks to be surrounded by a white picket fence that runs adjacent to a long, straight, dusty road. There are no other buildings in sight; it’s nothing but desert in every direction. There’s only rocks, sand, and a single, faded sign for a rest stop. The American flag hangs from the porch, flapping in the wind, reminding me of my dad. I wonder if he would be proud to see all that I have accomplished to get to where I am now. I rest on the thought, hoping that he would have done the same thing if it had been mom.

I step to the fence gate and push it open, out into the road. I walk out with Stephanie behind me, then turn back. The house and the ocean are gone.

“So...any clue where we should start?”

Searching for any kind of clue, I begin checking my pockets and feel a wallet inside my left pocket. I reach in and take it out. Inside, I find the business card. I take it out, look at the picture, and instantly recognize him. This was the man who was in the park the night of Madi’s first concert.

Stephanie looks at it. “Who is Peter J. Cameron?” she asks. I close my eyes and start to remember who the person in the picture really is and then I begin to shake with rage.

“What’s wrong?” asks Stephanie, alarmed by my sudden change.

I open my eyes and, staring down at the card, say, “His name isn’t Peter J. Cameron!” I crumple the card angrily. “He used a false name so I wouldn’t know who he really was.”

Stephanie looks at me, confused.

“When Lily came to see me the first time,” I continue, “she gave me Madi’s snow
globe
, letting me know she was trapped in a comatose state, too. But inside the snow
globe
was a picture of a younger Madi, her mom.” I pause. “And the man who destroyed BOTH their lives. It’s the same man I met in the park that night, but he was using a different name—the name of Peter J
.
Cameron. He haunted Madi’s memories and dreams day and night. I kept that picture that Madi showed me so I would never forget his face.”

I search through my wallet again. Finally locating the old photo of the three of them, I pull it out and show it to Stephanie.

Stephanie gasps and looks up at me. “He looks like
Gabriel
!”

“
Gabriel
only mirrored his image because he thought he was just another random person from my memories, not knowing he was much more than that,” I say, looking at the business card and the old photo.

Looking down the road, I see a barely legible sign. I squint to focus. The sign reads, “Rest Stop.” I look to Stephanie. “That’s where she would be, that’s where he would have her.” As a dust storm comes swiftly over the long dusty road I stand on, I begin hearing someone whispering to me.

“So… what is his real name?” asks Stephanie, as she puts back on her Queen of hearts mask, protecting her face from the dust.

I hear the whispering clearly now. “Red Rover.” I spin around looking to where it was coming from. “Red Rover,” the voice whispers again.

“His name,” I pause, still looking around me, “is Jacob.”

One of Madi’s demons appears to be mirroring Jacob as it brushes beside me. Jacob’s lips move to my left ear and whispers, “Send David right over.”

I look over and Jacob is gone. Thoughts of all the agony she must be going through enter my mind. Her demon will never let her go. She will never be free. I turn to find Stephanie now gone. From far off in the distance, I see her already running towards the rest stop sign, acting as if she were an airplane, like it was all just one big game for her to play.

I look up at the dark black sky looking for any kind of answers to let me know that Madi is still safe. Suddenly, a large line of light appears. It looks like someone cut through the sky with a knife. The light shines through the opening. The light begins to move. It gets softer and starts to look green in color. The lines of light move around the sky. They look like they may touch the ground very far away.

Then, a burst of light appears! There are more colors now. They look like rays of sunshine all over the sky. The lights are changing very fast. They form a large curtain. The curtain moves. The lights dance away back into the dark black sky.

“Madi,” I softly say to myself, dropping Madi’s family picture to the sand.

I begin to hear a familiar song playing in my head. I close my eyes and begin humming the song, “The Light in the Piazza.” A song that once brought me so much pain, now brings me hope. Seventeen years of strategic planning led me here to this moment. Seventeen years with only one goal in mind that still lives true till this day that I will not stop till I find my wife and bring her back home. This I swear to God.

Without hesitation or fear, I open my eyes back up and place the mask over my head, shielding me from the storms I will soon face ahead. I move my legs forward, leaving the picture in the dust. I pick up speed, running down that long stretched-out road leading me towards the rest stop sign, hoping it will finally guide me to my own personal finish line, Madi.

EPILOGUE

The B-Side