The Three (8 page)

Ascii
: The term for text art (such as that used by Ryu above). It was popularised on forums such as 2-channel.

ORZ
: A popular Japanese emoji or emoticon that denotes frustration or despair. The letters resemble a figure banging its head on the ground (O is the head; R the torso and Z the legs).

Yuki-Onna
: (Snow woman). In Japanese folklore the Yuki-Onna is the spirit of a woman who died in a snow storm.

Hikikomori
: Someone who is socially isolated to the extent that they rarely (or never) leave their room. It is estimated that in Japan there are almost a million socially isolated adolescents or young adults who have chosen to cut themselves off from society in this manner.

It’s been three days since Black Thursday and I’m sitting in my newly constructed private office, staring at my computer screen in utter disbelief.

Not, as you may think, because I’m still stunned at the horrendous coincidence that resulted in four passenger planes crashing on the same day. Although I am. Who isn’t? No. I’m scrolling through the staggering list of conspiracy websites, all of which have a different–and more bizarre than the last–theory on what caused the tragedy. Just a five-minute Google session will reveal several sites dedicated to the belief that Toshinori Seto, the brave, selfless captain who chose to bring down Sun Air Flight 678 in an unpopulated area rather than cause more casualties, was possessed by suicidal spirits. Another insists that all four planes were targeted by malevolent ETs. Crash investigators have pointed out in no uncertain terms that terrorist activity can be ruled out–especially in the case of the Dalu Air crash in Africa where the traffic controllers’ reports confirm that this disaster was due to pilot error–but there are anti-Islamic websites being created by the minute. And the religious nuts–it’s a sign from God!–are fast catching up with them.

An event of this magnitude is bound to transfix the world’s attention, but why are people so fast to think the worst or waste their time believing in frankly bizarre and convoluted theories? Sure, the odds of this happening are infinitesimal, but come on! Are we that bored? Are we all, at heart, just Internet trolls?

By far the most poisonous are the rumours and theories being circulated about the three child survivors, Bobby Small, Hiro
Yanagida and Jessica Craddock, who, for the sake of brevity, I’m going to call The Three. And I blame the media who are ensuring that the public’s greed for information about these poor mites is fed on the hour. In Japan, they’re climbing over walls for pictures of the poor boy who, let’s not forget, lost his mother in the accident. Others rushed to the crash site, hampering rescue operations. In the UK and the US, little Jessica Craddock and Bobby Small are taking up more front-page space than the Royal Family’s latest gaffe.

More than most, I know how stressful that relentless attention and speculation can be. When I split from my second husband and chose to write about the intimate details of our separation in this very column, I found myself in the centre of a media storm. For two weeks I could barely step outside my front door without a paparazzo popping up to try and snap me without my make-up on. I can empathise completely with what The Three are going through, and so can eighteen-year-old Zainab Farra, who, ten years ago, was the only survivor of another devastating air accident, when Royale Air 715 crashed on take-off at Addis Ababa airport. Like The Three, Zainab was the only child survivor. Like The Three, afterwards she found herself in the centre of a media circus. Zainab recently published her autobiography,
Wind Beneath my Wings
, and has publicly called for The Three to be left alone so that they can come to terms with their miraculous survival. ‘They are not freaks,’ she says. ‘They are children. Please, what they need now is space and time to heal and process what they have been through.’

Amen to that. We should be thanking our lucky stars that they were saved at all, not wasting our time building bizarre conspiracy theories around them or making them the subject of front-page gossip. The Three–I salute you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you all find peace while you deal with the terrible events that took your parents.

You got to be a particular kind of person to do what Neville did for a living. I asked him once if he felt dirty doing it, hiding in bushes waiting to get an up-skirt shot of whichever starlet was flavour of the month, but he said he was just doing what the public
wanted
him to do. He specialised in the dirt, like those shots he got of Corinna Sanchez buying coke in Compton–how he even knew she’d be in that neighbourhood, he never said; least not to me. He was cagey about how he got his info.

It kinda goes without saying that Neville was a little weird. A loner. I guess his work suited his personality. I met him when he was moving into the unit downstairs from me. The place where we lived at the time, it’s this split-level complex in El Segundo. Lots of people who lived there worked at LAX, so you got people coming and going at all hours. I was working for One Time Car Rental, so the place suited me. Convenient. I wouldn’t say we were close friends or anything like that, but if we ran into each other, we’d shoot the shit. I never saw anyone visiting him and I never saw him with a woman, not once, or a guy. He kinda came across as asexual. A couple of months after he moved in, he asked me if I wanted to come over and ‘meet his roommates’. I thought maybe he’d asked someone in to help share the rent, so I said, sure. I was curious to see what type of person would get along with him.

I almost puked when I went into his unit the first time. Shit, man, it stank. Don’t know how to describe it, guess you could say it was kinda like a mix of rotten fish and meat. It was hot and dark in there, too–the curtains were drawn and the A.C. wasn’t on. I was like, what the fuck? Then I saw something moving in the
corner of the room–this large shadow–and it looked like it was heading straight for me. I couldn’t take in what I was seeing at first, then I realised it was a massive fucking lizard. I yelled and Neville laughed liked crazy. He was waiting for my reaction. Told me to chill, said, ‘Don’t worry, that’s just George.’ All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there, but I was trying not to be a pussy, you know? I asked Neville what the fuck he was doing with a thing like that in the apartment and he just shrugged, said he had three of the fucking things–monitors from Africa or whatever–and that most of the time he let them run around, rather than keep them in their cages or aquariums. He said they were really intelligent, ‘Clever as pigs or dogs.’ I asked him if they were dangerous and he showed me this jagged scar on his wrist. ‘Big flap of skin came off it,’ he said, and you could tell he was proud of it. ‘But they’re usually cool if you treat them right.’ I asked him what they ate, and he was like, ‘Baby rats. Live ones. Get them from a wholesaler.’ Imagine that being your job, huh, baby rat merchant? He went into this whole spiel about how some people were against feeding rodents to monitors, and all that time I just watched that thing. Willing it not to get too close to me. That wasn’t all, he kept his snake collection and his spiders in his bedroom. Aquariums everywhere. Went on and on about how tarantulas make the best pets. Later, they said he was an animal hoarder.

Couple of days after Black Thursday, he knocked on my door, told me he was going out of town. Most of his work was LA-based, but occasionally he’d have to go further afield. That was the first time he asked me to check on his ‘buddies’. ‘I stock ’em up before I go,’ he said. He could be gone for as long as three days and they’d be fine. He asked me to check on their water levels and swore the monitors would be locked up tight. He was usually cagey about his assignments, but this time he told me where he was going, as there was a chance he’d get himself in deep shit.

He said he’d called in a favour to get on one of the charter helicopters, planned on heading to Miami, to that hospital where they’d taken Bobby Small, see if he could get a shot of the kid. Said he had to do it fast, the kid was being taken back to NYC soon.

I asked him how in the hell he thought he was going to get anywhere near there–from what I’d seen on the news, security at that hospital was tight–but he just smiled. He said he specialised in this kind of thing.

He was only gone three days, so I didn’t need to go into his place after all. I saw him climbing out of a cab just as I was getting home from my shift. He looked like crap. Really shaken, like he was sick or something. I asked him if he was cool, and if he’d managed to get a picture of the kid. He didn’t answer me and he looked so bad I asked him in for a drink. He came right over, didn’t even go into his own place to check on the reptiles. You could see he wanted to talk, but couldn’t get the words out. I poured him a shot and he knocked it back, and then I gave him a beer because I’d run out of hard liquor. He downed his beer and asked me for another. He downed that too.

The liquor helped, and slowly he told me what he’d done. I thought he was going to say that he’d disguised himself as a porter or something to get into that hospital, maybe sneaked in through the morgue, B-movie style. But it was worse. Clever. But worse. He’d moved into a hotel just down from the hospital, had this whole cover story and fake ID and accent that he’d used before–a UK businessman in Miami for a conference. He said he’d done the same thing when Klint Maestro, the lead singer of the Space Cowboys, OD-ed. That’s how come he got the shots of Klint looking all wasted in his hospital gown. It was easy. He just took extra insulin to make himself go hypo. I didn’t even know he was an insulin-dependent diabetic, well, why would I? He collapsed at the bar and let the barman or whoever know that he needed to be taken to the nearest hospital. Then he passed out.

In Casualty they put him on a drip, and in order to get admitted, he pretended to have an epileptic fit. He could’ve died, but he said it wasn’t the first time he’d done it, and he always kept a couple of little baggies of sugar in his sock to sort him out. It was his modus operandi kind of thing. Said it was a bitch to move around in that condition (they’d given him valium after the fit and he still felt like shit after making himself hypo).

I asked him if he managed to get to where the kid was and he was like, nah, it was a bust. Said he couldn’t get anywhere near Bobby’s ward, security was too tight.

But when they found his camera later, it showed he’d managed to get into the kid’s room after all. There’s a shot of Bobby sitting up in bed, and he’s smiling straight at the camera, as if he was posing for a family shot or whatever. You must’ve seen it. Someone from the coroner’s office leaked it. Kinda creeped me out.

He turned down a third beer and said, ‘There’s no point, Stevie. There’s no point to any of this.’

I was like, ‘Any of what?’

He acted like he hadn’t heard me. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Then he left.

I kinda got wrapped up in work after that. That puke virus was going around, and it seemed everyone at work was off sick. I was working double shifts and dead on my feet half the time. It was only later that I realised it had to have been a week since I’d run into Neville.

Then, one of the guys who lived in the section on the other side of Neville’s place, Mr Patinkin, asked me for the super’s number, said there was a problem with the drains. Said he thought maybe the smell was coming from Neville’s place.

I guess I knew right then something was up. I went down, knocked on the door. I could hear the faint sound of the TV, nothing else. I still had the key, but I wish to Christ I’d called the cops straight off. Mr Patinkin came with me. He needed trauma counselling afterwards; I still get nightmares. It was dark in there, but I could see Neville from the front door, sitting slumped against the wall, legs outstretched. His shape didn’t look right. That’s because there were bits missing.

They said he died of an insulin overdose, but the autopsy showed that he might not have been completely dead when they started to… you know.

It was big news, ‘Man eaten alive by pet lizards and spiders’. There was this whole story going around that the tarantulas had spun webs all over his body and were nesting inside his chest
cavity. Bullshit. Far as I could tell, the spiders were still all in their spiderariums or whatever you call them. It was the monitor lizards who ate him.

Funny that he became the news. What do you call it? Ironic. There were even guys like him sneaking round the apartment trying to get a photo. The story pushed all that stuff about the The Three miracle children off the front page for a day. Later on it all got dredged up again when that preacher guy went on about it being another sign of the apocalypse or whatever–the animals turning on humans.

The only way I can deal with it is to think that maybe that’s how Neville would have wanted to go. He loved those fucking lizards.

JANUARY–FEBRUARY

Stephenie told me about it first. She was crying on the phone, couldn’t hardly get her words out. ‘It’s Pam, Reba,’ she said when I finally got her to calm down. ‘She was on that plane that crashed.’

I told her not to be silly, that Pam was in Japan visiting her daughter, she wasn’t in Florida. ‘Not that plane, Reba. The Japanese one. It’s on the news now.’ Well, my heart just about plummeted into my feet. I’d heard about the crash in Japan of course, as well as the one in that unpronounceable place in Africa, and the plane full of English tourists that crashed into the sea in Europe, but I hadn’t for a minute thought Pam was on it. The whole thing was just
terrible
. For a while there, it was as if all the planes in the world were dropping out of the sky. The Fox anchors would be reporting on a crash, then they’d flinch and say: ‘And we’ve just heard another plane has gone down…’ My husband Lorne said it was like a never-ending punchline.

I asked Stephenie if she’d told Pastor Len, and she said she’d tried the ranch but Kendra had been vague as usual about when he’d be back, and he wasn’t answering his cellular phone. I hung up and ran into the den to see the news for myself. Behind Melinda Stewart (she’s my favourite Fox anchor, the kind of woman you can imagine getting coffee with, you know?) were two huge
photographs, one of Pam and one of that little Jewish boy who survived the Florida crash. I didn’t like to think what Pam would have said about her photo, which must’ve been from her passport and looked for all the world like a mug shot. I hate to say it, but her hair was a mess. Along the bottom of the screen, they kept repeating the words: ‘526 killed in Japanese Sun Air disaster. Sole American on board named as Texan native Pamela May Donald.’

I just sat there, Elspeth, staring at that photograph, reading those words until it finally hit me that Pam really was gone. That nice investigator man, Ace somebody, from that air crash show Lorne likes, came on the line from Florida and said that it was too early to be sure, but it didn’t look like terrorism was involved or anything like that. Melinda asked him if he thought the crashes might have been caused by environmental factors or maybe, ‘an act of God’. I didn’t like that, I can tell you, Elspeth! Implying that our Lord had nothing better to do than bat planes out of the air. It’s the Antichrist who would have had a hand in
that
. I couldn’t move for the longest time, then they showed an overhead shot of a house that looked familiar. And then I realised it was Pam’s house, only it looked smaller from the air. It was then I remembered Jim, Pam’s husband.

I never had much to do with Jim. The way Pam used to speak about him, with a kind of hushed awe, you’d think he was a six-foot giant, but in the flesh he’s not much taller than I am. I don’t like to say this, but I always suspected him of being free with his fists. We never saw bruises on Pam or anything like that. But it was just strange, her acting so cowed all the time. My Lorne, if he even raised his voice to me… Well, I do believe the man is the head of the household of course, but it’s a mutual respect thing, y’know? Still, no one deserves to go through what that man went through, and I knew we had to do something to help him.

Lorne was out back, doing the inventory on the canned fruit and reorganising our dried goods. ‘You can never be too careful’ is what he says, not with those solar flares and globalisation and super storms everyone’s talking about, and no way were we going to be caught unawares. Who knows when Jesus will call us up to
join him? I told him what had happened, that Pam had been on that Jap plane. Him and Jim worked together at the B&P plant, and I said he should go over and see if Jim needed anything. He was reluctant–they weren’t close, they worked in different sections–but he went all the same. I thought I’d better stay home, make sure everyone else knew.

I called Pastor Len on his cellphone first; it went straight to voicemail but I left a message. He called me right back and I could tell by the way his voice was shaking that he’d only just heard the news. Pam and I had been members of what he called his ‘inner circle’ for the longest time. Before Pastor Len and Kendra came to Sannah County–we’re talking, oh, fifteen years ago now–I was a member of the New Revelation church over in Denham. It meant a half-hour drive every Sunday and Wednesday for Bible study too, because no way was I going to worship with the Episcopalians, not with their liberal views on the homosexual element.

So you can imagine how cheered I was when Pastor Len arrived in town and took over the old Lutheran church that had been standing empty for the longest time. Back then, I hadn’t heard his radio show. It was his billboards that caught my eye at first. He knew how to attract attention to the Lord’s work! Every week he’d put up a banner with a different message: ‘Like to gamble? Well, the devil deals in souls’; ‘God doesn’t believe in atheists, therefore atheists don’t exist’ were two of my favourites. The only one I didn’t care for showed a picture of a Bible with one of those antennas old cellphones used to have coming out of its top and ‘App for saving your soul,’ which I thought was little too cutesy. Pastor Len’s congregation was small at first and that’s where I really got to know Pam, although I’d seen her at PTA meetings of course–her Joanie was older than my two. We didn’t always see eye to eye on everything, but no one could say she wasn’t a good Christian woman.

Pastor Len said he’d organised a prayer circle for Pam’s soul the following evening, and, as Kendra was down with one of her headaches, he asked me to call around and tell the Bible study
group. Then Lorne came huffing into the house saying that Jim’s place was surrounded by TV news trucks and reporters and there was no answer from inside the house. Well, of course, I told all of this to Pastor Len, who said it was our Christian duty to help Jim in his time of need, even though he wasn’t a member of the church. Pam had always been a bit tight-lipped about that. My Lorne came with me every Sunday, although he didn’t join the Bible study group or the healing prayer circle, and it must have been just terrible for Pam knowing that her husband would be left behind on earth to face the wrath of the Antichrist and burn in hell for all eternity.

Then I set to wondering if Pam’s daughter Joanie would be coming home. She hadn’t been back for two years; there’d been some trouble between her and Jim a while back when she was still at college. He didn’t approve of this boyfriend she had. A Mexican. Or half Mexican, I think he was. Caused a rift right through the family. And I know that hurt Pam. She’d always look wistful when I spoke about my grandchildren. Both of my girls got married straight out of school and settled just minutes away from me. That’s why Pam went to Japan. She missed Joanie something awful.

It was getting late, so Pastor Len said we should go and see Jim early the next morning. Oh, he looked smart when he picked me up at eight the next day! I’ll never forget that, Elspeth. A suit and a red silk tie. But then he always did care about his appearance before he let the devil in. It feels wrong to say this, but I wish I could say the same about Kendra. She and Pastor Len didn’t look like they belonged with each other. She was skinny as a rake and always looked washed-out and dowdy.

I was surprised Kendra came with us that day; she usually has some sort of excuse. I wouldn’t say she was snooty… she just kept her distance, this vague smile on her face, had trouble with her nerves. Is it true that she ended up in one of them places, those… asylums? They don’t call them that any more, do they? Institutions, that’s the word I was fishing for! I can’t help but think that it’s a real blessing they never had children. At least they didn’t
get to witness the pain of their mother giving in to her weak mind. I guess it was the gossip about Pastor Len and his fancy woman that sent her over the edge–but let me make it clear, Elspeth, no way, whatever I may think about what he did later, do I give any credence to
those
rumours.

After a quick prayer, we shot straight over to Pam and Jim’s place. It’s out on Seven Souls road, and the press was lined all the way along it, reporters and those camera people standing outside the gate, smoking and jabbering. Oh glory, I said to Pastor Len, how are we going to get up into Pam’s driveway?

But Pastor Len said we were on Jesus’ business and no one was going to stop us doing our Christian duty. When we pulled up next to the gate, a swarm of reporters came rushing up to us, saying things like, ‘Are you friends of Pam? How do you feel about what’s happened?’ They were taking pictures and filming and I knew right then what those poor celebrities must go through all the time.

‘How do you think we feel?’ I said to a young woman wearing too much mascara who was the pushiest of the bunch. Pastor Len gave me a look as if to say, let me do the talking, but they needed to be put in their place. Pastor Len told them that we were on a mission to help Pam’s husband in his time of need, and that he’d come out to give them a statement as soon as we’d ensured Jim was coping. This seemed to appease them, and they drew back to their media vans.

The curtains were drawn and we banged on the front door but there was no answer. Pastor Len went round back to the yard, but he said it was the same story. Then I remembered that Pam kept a spare key under the plant pot next to the back door just in case she ever locked herself out, so that’s how we got in.

Oh, the smell! Just about slapped you in the face. Kendra went white, it was so bad. And then Snookie yipped and came running down the passageway towards us. Pam would have near had a heart attack if she’d seen her kitchen like that. She’d only been gone two days, but you’d swear a bomb had hit it. Broken glass all over the counter and a cigarette butt dumped in one of Pam’s
mother’s best china cups. And Jim couldn’t have let Snookie out once, there were what my Lorne calls doggy landmines all over Pam’s good linoleum. I have to be honest here, Elspeth, as I believe in always speaking the truth, but none of us really liked that dog. Even if Pam bathed her a hundred times a day, she always smelled just awful. And her eyes always had this film over them. But Pam doted on her, and seeing her sniffing at our shoes and looking up at us all hopeful that one of us was Pam… well, it near broke my heart.

‘Jim?’ Pastor Len called. ‘You there?’ The television was on, so after we’d checked the kitchen, we headed to the den.

I almost screamed when we saw him. Jim was slumped in his La-Z-Boy chair, a shotgun across his lap. The curtains were closed, so it was dark and for a second I thought he might be… Then I saw that his mouth was open and he let out a snore. Bottles and beer cans just about near covered the floor and the room stank of alcohol. Sannah County is a dry county, but you can get alcohol if you know where to look. And Jim knew where to look. I don’t like to say this, Elspeth, but I wonder what he would have done if he hadn’t been passed out. If he’d a tried to shoot at us. Pastor Len opened the curtains, cranked a window, and in the light I could see that the front of Jim’s pants was wet.

Pastor Len took charge as I knew he would. He gently took the shotgun off Jim’s lap, then shook his shoulder.

Jim jerked and stared up at us, his eyes redder than a bucket of pig’s blood.

‘Jim,’ Pastor Len said. ‘We’ve just heard about Pam. We’re here for you, Jim. If there’s anything we can do, you know you just have to ask.’

Jim snorted. ‘Yeah, you can eff-word off.’

Well, I just about
died
. Kendra let out a sound that could have been a laugh–probably shock.

Pastor Len wasn’t at all put out. ‘I know you’re upset, Jim. But we’re here to help you. See you through this.’

And then Jim just started sobbing. His whole body heaved and
shook. Whatever they say about Pastor Len now, Elspeth, you should’ve seen how he handled Jim. With real kindness. Took him into the bathroom to get him cleaned up.

Kendra and I just stood there for a while, and then I nudged her and we got to work. Cleaned the kitchen, scooped up the dog poop and gave that La-Z-Boy a good scrub. And all the time Snookie kept following after us with those eyes.

Pastor Len led Jim back into the lounge, and though the poor man smelled a whole lot better, his tears hadn’t dried up none. He was still sobbing and sobbing.

Pastor Len said, ‘If it’s okay with you, Jim, we’d sure like to pray for Pam with you.’

I was expecting Jim to curse at him again, and for a second, I swear, I could see that so did Pastor Len. But that man was broken, Elspeth. Just about tore in two, and later Pastor Len said that was Jesus’ way of showing us that we needed to let him in. But you got to be
ready
. I’ve seen it a thousand times. Like when we were praying for Stephenie’s cousin Lonnie, the one who had that motor neurons disease. It didn’t work because he hadn’t let the Lord into his heart. Even Jesus can’t work with an empty vessel.

So we knelt right there next to the couch, surrounded by empty beer cans, and prayed.

‘Let the Lord into your heart, Jim,’ Pastor Len said. ‘He’s there for you. He wants to be your Saviour. Can you feel him?’

It was a beautiful thing to see. Here was a man, so smashed by grief that he was crying fit to break, and here was Jesus, just waiting to take him in His arms and put him back together again!

We sat with Jim for a good hour at least. Pastor Len kept saying, ‘You’re now part of our flock, Jim, we’re here for you, just as Jesus is here for you.’ It was so heart-warming, I’m not ashamed to say I cried like a new-born baby.