Smaller and Smaller Circles (29 page)

Get ready now.

Here he comes here he comes he comes.

51

All the world
quiet—the kind of quiet one only hears underwater.

“Alex?” Saenz calls out, and the sound of his voice seems at once loud and muffled to his own ears.

He takes a moment to compose himself and becomes aware of the sound of heavy breathing with a slight asthmatic wheeze to it.

“Come on. I won't hurt you.”

There is a smell in the mobile clinic—a fishy, rusty sort of smell, and Saenz quickly realizes that it is the smell of blood, and the blood is starting to go bad.

His right foot slides in front of him without his moving it, and he looks down. With his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, he can tell what the wetness on the vinyl mats is; they are awash with blood.

Pulsing along in time with his heartbeat, split-second snapshots of memory flash strobe-like through Saenz's consciousness: a body on a gurney, scribblings like fat blue worms on the big whiteboard in the lab, organs in a freezer.

Sitting in the dentist's chair. Mrs. Bansuy's
turon
, warm and sweet. The raw wound in the place of a dead child's face.

All the little threads and paths leading to this night, this place.

As soon as
the camera is set on the tripod and the focus adjusted, Leo allows Joanna to look through the viewfinder. The thought comes to her the moment she sees Saenz's tall figure framed in the door of the vehicle.

Get the hell out of there, Gus.

Aware of small
lumps he can neither see nor identify squishing and oozing beneath the soles of his shoes, Saenz inches forward carefully. He's so tall that the top of his head grazes the ceiling of the vehicle, forcing him to stoop.

“Alex,” he says again, his voice gentle as the brush of a butterfly's wing. He can make out the outlines of furniture and equipment in the clinic: a desk, a stool on ball casters, a dentist's chair, a filing cabinet. He searches for, but does not find, the irregular shape of someone crouching in the shadows.

At the far end of the mobile clinic is a pleated curtain hung on a series of rings. The curtain is drawn. The sound of breathing is coming from behind it.

Saenz sticks his left foot out and drags the stool toward him. He picks it up and holds it in front of his chest with the leg and wheels sticking out, using it as some kind of shield in case Alex springs out from behind the curtain to attack him.

“I know what happened,” he continues. “What was done to you. I want to help.”

The curtain moves, and Saenz ducks to avoid the object that's been hurled at him: a half-full bottle of ethyl alcohol. It moves again, and a plastic garbage pail lands at his feet. As far as Saenz can tell, it's filled with blood-soaked rags, but he doesn't look too closely. He's almost certain there's something else in there that he doesn't want to see.

“I think I know what he told you,” he says. “That you were his special little boy. That it would be fun. That's what people like him do. They try to gain your trust so that they can do terrible things to you.”

“Go to hell.” The voice is small, frightened, hoarse, and the words hang in the clotted air, in this small space, in the thick dark.

“I think he tried to frighten you too. I think he told you that he would find a way to hurt your mother and father if you didn't do what he asked.”

There is another odor in the tortured air, and the priest recognizes it as the faint scent of urine. A thin blade of fear, cold like surgical steel in the brain, slices through the priest's consciousness. Alex Carlos has never been more dangerous than he is at this moment. Saenz decides then and there that he won't try to move any closer. He's conscious now of movement near the mobile clinic, of shadows scurrying outside the windows.

Extraordinary measures
, the director had said.

There's no time to waste; he has to draw Alex out, fast.

“We talked to them. Your mother. Your father.”

“You stay away from them,” Alex snarls at him.

“They want to see you again. They feel bad that they couldn't help you then. But they want to help you now.”

“Shut up. Shut up.”

“Come on, Alex. Can't you see? You've become a little bit like him already. Is that what you wanted?” Saenz waits for a response; when it doesn't come, he continues. “I don't think so. I think the last thing you want is to be anything like him.”

“I'm nothing like him,” Alex says savagely from behind the curtain.

“I know you're not. So please. Come out with me now. Let us try to help. You can put him behind you, and this will all stop.”

The curtain moves a third time, the plastic rings clacking against the rail as Alex draws the fabric back.

He is shirtless and barefoot, his face, torso and arms stained with blood. His jeans are matted to his thighs.

“I can't put it behind me,” he whimpers.

“Yes, you can. It can be fixed.”

“How can I fix this?” he screams, hurling something at Saenz's feet. Saenz flinches as it lands on the vinyl matting with a wet, slapping sound. “You tell me, Father, how do I fix this?”

Saenz doesn't have to look at it to know what it is.

“You can't bring them back, Alex; you and I know that. But you can heal yourself. Just a little bit, every day. You can regain what he took from you. You can atone for what you took from others.”

Alex sits down on his haunches, clutching his bare stomach with one hand. “You really think they will let you help me, Father? That's not how this world works.” He begins rocking back and forth on his heels. “I tried to tell people, but nobody listened, nobody wanted to know. They wanted me to keep quiet. I didn't matter. None of us mattered to anyone.”

“You matter. Here and now, I am telling you: what happened to you still matters.”

But Alex goes on, as though he hasn't heard Saenz. “That's what's going to happen, too, when I walk out that door. Nobody wants to know the truth.”

“I want to know.” Saenz holds out a hand to him. “I will listen.”

Saenz can tell that Alex is torn between staying and taking the hand offered to him. “Let's go,” he says, as if it's a foregone conclusion, allowing a bright note of optimism to creep into his voice.

Alex rises to his feet and begins to walk toward him. Saenz waits until he is inches away and looks first at his hands—both empty—and then at his face, streaked with blood and tears, the features delicate as a bird's. And he's filled with an irrational anger: at Gorospe, at the parents, at the school—surely someone must have suspected or known something—at everything that has brought Alex Carlos to this place.

“Let me walk ahead of you, okay?” Saenz says, and Alex nods meekly.

It's only a few short steps to the door, and Saenz shouts, “We're coming out!”

He's only taken one step down from the bus when he feels it: a puff of air against his ear, followed by a burning sensation.

He turns around in time to see Alex staring down at a hole
in his own left side, below the breastbone, the wrath blooming in
his face, the sudden flash of a blade in a hand that was empty just seconds ago.

“What the hell
is going on?” Valdes shouts into his two-way radio, dragging Jerome behind one of their cars for cover. “Who fired that shot? Arcinas, that'd better not be any of your boys!”

The radio crackles, and then it's Arcinas, breathless, panicky. “It wasn't us, I swear! Not with our own men moving around that bus!”

“Well, who was it, then?”

Jerome looks up in time to see Saenz tipping backward into the mud and Alex Carlos falling upon him in a fit of rage.

“Gus!” Jerome shouts, and tries to get back on his feet, but more shots are fired, and Valdes drags him back down to safety.

Alex's shrill cries
fill Saenz's ears, and he feels a cold slashing pain, first on his arm, then on his shoulder, then in a diagonal line down his chest. He falls backward out of the mobile clinic, into the mud, and sees Alex's thin figure leap out after him.

He flops over on his stomach, tries to crawl quickly away, but he feels the other man's weight on his back.

“I told you! I told you this would happen!” Alex screams, his mouth close to Saenz's ear. He's straddling Saenz's back, pulling his head up off the ground by grabbing a handful of his hair.

As he tries to push Alex off his back, Saenz can hear other voices around them shouting, the staccato popping of guns being fired.

“Stop,” he tries to shout, “stop firing!” But he can only manage a strangled cry.

Joanna drags Leo
forward, grabbing the rest of his equipment, battery pack and extra tapes so that his hands will be left free to manipulate the heavy camera. They find a clear spot, set up their gear quickly. They hear the sound of gunfire and now angry voices. “Leo, what's going on?” she asks him.

Leo steps aside so she can look. She sees a flurry of motion near the school gates. She pans to the right and spots what she believes to be a number of plainclothes NBI agents swooping down on the mobile clinic. A small adjustment and now she's looking at the door of the clinic, where two figures seem to be struggling with each other. Everything is happening so fast.

When she zooms in to get a closer look, she finds herself staring straight into the face of Alex Carlos, the hatred on it so powerful and terrible that she feels it almost as a kind of heat, sucked up through the viewfinder and blasting on her own face. Saenz, crawling on his belly in the mud, is trying to claw away from him, but he's very strong. He flips Saenz on his back and raises his hand high above his head.

“Jesus, no,” Joanna says when she sees that he's holding a knife.

. . .
beast you
beast
you animal
. . .

Saenz hears this unnatural, high, hoarse shriek again and again as the blade flashes above him, stark against the night sky, slashing once, twice. He tries to fight him off, to shield his face and body with his arms. He manages to grab Alex's wrists, but his hands are slippery with blood, and Alex twists easily out of his grasp.

I told you but you wouldn't listen! I told
you
I didn't like it. I didn't want any of it. I. Didn't. Want. It.

The face above him is contorted with fury. The world begins to slow down, and Alex's screams slide lower and lower down the scale to a mere rumble in his ears.

He tries to see if help is coming,
help me now help quick
, sees a pale blur moving fast and close to the ground a few yards away from his tilted head: Jerome rushing toward him, and then a few other men, their heavy feet spattering mud.

Before he slips into the soft, welcoming dark, he sees a flash, then two, then more, in rapid succession like lightning, hears two loud, muffled explosions and Jerome's voice shouting
no, stop, wait
, and then all sound and pain and scarred yellow moon fall away.

 

This really hurts.

But I've killed you at last, haven't I? All of you. I know all your faces.

Can't you see? You all look like me. We're all the same to him, to all of them. After we're used up, we're thrown away.

And you were wrong, all of you.

I didn't like it. I didn't want any of it.

I. Didn't. Want. It.

That's right. Go back into the shadows now. Stay quiet. Give me the

peace I deserve.

It's so cold. I'm really sleepy all of a sudden. The pain should keep me awake, but I guess not

not this time

mama papa so sorry

so sleepy so quiet it's about

time

52

Saenz drifts in
and out of consciousness. He hears hushed voices, can tell when he's alone in the room and when he's not. He struggles to wake, but in the infrequent moments when he does wake, all he wants to do is fall back asleep. His limbs feel weighted with lead, and there is a large, numb ball of
nothing
where his stomach and chest should be. Night, day—he can't tell which is which. The blinds on the windows are always drawn.

He dreams uneasily. Father Ramirez visits in one of those dreams, his bald head gleaming under the light of the ceiling lamp. In the dream, Ramirez is talking to him, kindly and reassuring, but there's something in his eyes that frightens him. The monsignor lifts up the blanket, his fleshy hands clammy, and he's still talking, talking, friendly and gentle. Saenz kicks and flails, but his limbs are heavy, so heavy, and the monsignor whispers in his ear:
It's all right. It's going to be all right. This will make you feel better. This will be our secret.

And Saenz shouts,
Not in my Church! No secrets in my Church!
he protests, as he feels hands crawling up his legs, up his thighs. And he realizes that he is screaming in Alex Carlos's voice.

The good monsignor only laughs.

In another dream, it's Cardinal Meneses who comes to visit. He is wearing a scarlet
magna cappa
and seated on an ornate chair too large for Saenz's small hospital room. There is a fat orange cat lying at his feet, licking the toe of his shoe. Like Ramirez, the Cardinal, too, is smiling at Saenz, but it's not a very friendly smile.
Oh, but I can assure you that I sleep just fine, Father Saenz; it's
your
dreams that are troubled.

“Hey.”

When he opens his eyes, the blinds are open, and the wall across from the bed is lined in alternating strips of sunlight and shadow.

“What day is it?” he asks, his voice hoarse from disuse.

“Wednesday. Four days after.” Jerome holds up a drinking glass half-filled with water. “Drink?”

Saenz takes a sip of water through a straw in the glass. He swallows, then allows his head to fall back on the pillows. It's not pain—he feels pain, but it's blunted by what he believes to be massive doses of drugs—but fatigue, a sense of crushing heaviness. He looks around the room and sees a bank of monitors that are attached to him with wires and tubing.

“Alex?” he asks.

Jerome shakes his head sadly.

Saenz frowns. “I asked Valdes
. . .
no shooting. What happened?” His thoughts, his speech are slowed by the meds.

“Not the NBI. An over-eager policeman. Started shooting as soon as he caught sight of Alex. He took four bullets.”

“Four? Four bullets?” Outraged, frustrated, Saenz tries to lift his head and shoulders above the pillows, but the pain from his wounds forces him to stop.

“Hey, hey. Take it easy.” Jerome lays a hand on his shoulder and eases him back carefully to a resting position. “It all happened very quickly. The NBI agents couldn't even get close to the two of you because of the gunfire. An investigation is underway—Director Lastimosa insisted on it.”

“So—all useless?” He asks the question as though he cannot wrap his mind around what has happened. “All that effort—useless?”

Jerome can't think of anything good to say, so he keeps quiet.

Saenz pounds a fist ineffectually into the mattress at a spot beside his right thigh. “But what—what to tell parents? What to say?”

A high-pitched beep goes off, and they both stare at the source of the sound in alarm. It's emanating from one of the monitors.

“Take it easy,” Jerome says, just as the door opens and two nurses rush in.

“What happened?” one of them asks Jerome.

“We were just talking.”

“Heart rate and BP are up,” the other one says to her.

“I think we should let him rest, Father,” the first one tells Jerome.

Jerome nods. But Saenz's eyes are wide, questioning, insistent. “Who's responsible?” he asks, trying to sit up and failing. “Jerome?”

“Not your problem right now, Gus,” Jerome says gently. “Your problem is to get as much rest as you can. You understand me?”

“But—”

“No buts. You're not well yet. Far from it.”

The first nurse checks his IV drip. “He's right, Father. You should get some more sleep.”

“Jer—”

“I'll be back tomorrow. We'll talk about it then. But only if you promise to rest.”