It didn’t matter. She wasn’t stopping because this place held some secret meaning. She was stopping because there were people here.
Their voices drifted toward her from behind the building. Teenagers. At least two, maybe more.
She ran across the parking lot toward the rear of the building and tried to scream but nothing came out. Her throat was raw. It felt like she might never speak again.
Her feet slipped as she rounded the corner and ran directly into one of the teenagers. The kid was lanky, wearing baggy jeans and an extra-large sweatshirt. He tumbled backwards but moved aside to prevent a fall. Mercy clawed at his sweatshirt but couldn’t find a grip. She hit the ground.
“Holy shit,” someone said.
“What the fuck is this shit?” someone else added.
On her hands and knees, Mercy turned to look at her saviors.
Next to the baggy kid was another teenage boy but this one was wearing tight jeans and an equally snug sweatshirt. It was the same one he had been wearing at the diner so many hours ago. He had not been wearing the heavy bandage across the side of his face then, however.
SIXTY-ONE
Victor had only a handful of memories of his father. Most of these were purely mental pictures, moments his brain had preserved for whatever reason, yet Victor treasured them as if they could convey secret meaning. He recalled fights and the sounds of his parents having sex, loud and furious, but when he dared to recall any of the actual memories stored within him, the same one would always play.
Victor had been seven years old, perhaps not even, when his father came to him and said he had to go somewhere special. He picked Victor up from where he had been playing with his Matchbox cars and set him on the bed, legs dangling off, a million miles from the floor.
His father knelt before him. He was wearing his heavy winter coat with the thick, fury insides that reminded Victor of a dog. It was almost June. He hadn’t shaved in several days and he smelled stale like the fridge did when something went bad.
“Daddy’s got to do something,” he said. “He’s got to go somewhere special.”
“Why?” Victor asked.
His father’s eyes darted to the bedroom door and back to Victor. “Everyone has a calling. A purpose. Something they need to do.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t know what mine was for a long time, but I do now. I need you to know that I’m doing it for you. Protect you.”
“What about Mommy?”
His eyes went back to the door, lingered there this time. “A man has got to do what is right for his son. That is all that matters.”
“Okay.”
His father grabbed Victor around his skinny arms, squeezed. “You need to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that?”
Victor squirmed against the hold but his father’s hands tightened even more.
“Can you do that?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“Good.” The grip loosened. “I have to leave. There is something I have to do and then I’m going somewhere special. I’m doing it for you. I will save you a place, Victor. It is your destiny as it is mine.”
Tears welled in Victor’s eyes and he wanted to scream them out. “Don’t go, Daddy. Please!”
The hands came away and Victor thought his father might slap him even though he had never done anything like that before. Victor tried to wipe the tears from his eyes and something sharp poked him in the stomach. He opened his eyes.
Daddy was holding a knife against Victor’s bloated belly.
“I could stab you right now. Spill your guts all over the floor. That would save you the burden. I could do that for you. I love you enough to do that. Do you understand?”
“Daddy, please. It hurts.”
“Shut up. Be a man. It might hurt, but you’d be getting off easy. What waits for you is so much worse. But it is your purpose. I won’t kill you, but I would. You need to remember that. Daddy loves you so much, he would spill your guts.”
The tip of the knife pushed through Victor’s T-shirt and then Daddy flicked his wrist and tore a gash from Victor’s bellybutton to his right nipple. A streak of blood that sort of resembled a crooked “J” saturated his shirt and then pain rolled in like a massive asphalt compactor.
“Scream all you want,” Daddy said. “But for Christ’s sake, be tough about it.”
Victor aged twenty-five years in a flash and gagged himself out of the shock-coma. He didn’t remember falling. He recalled only Mercy Higgins stabbing him and then running away. Escaping.
This was not the end of Victor Dolor. Daddy had given him all the advice Victor would ever need during that final interaction.
Victor screamed himself to his feet. The handle of the knife jutted from his midsection like a malformed appendage. He took it in his good hand. Scream all you want, Daddy had said. But for Christ’s sake, be tough about it.
He yanked the knife from his gut and relished the toughness in his scream. His legs wobbled and dizziness threatened but he would not fall down again. He willed himself forward, one small step after another, and managed an awkward stumble into the parking lot.
The wound was hot and bleeding but not so quickly that he would bleed out before he could track that bitch down and slice off her fucking head.
His car was parked behind the condemned garbage company. That was okay. He made it to the car Caleb had brought. Something he’d stolen in Pennsylvania a week ago. The door was unlocked. Victor dropped into the passenger seat and screamed again at the eruption of pain in his gut.
“Be tough,” he told himself. “Be tough.”
Just like Victor’s were in his own car, Caleb had stored his car keys in the glove compartment.
SIXTY-TWO
Mercy threw herself at the one in the baggy clothes. “Help! Help!” Her words sounded hollow like her voice might give out any second.
The kid threw his hands up and backed up quickly until he was up against the wall and she was on all-fours again, facing them this time. “Cellphone,” she said.
The boys exchanged a glance. The one in the skinny jeans with the bandage on his face from where Victor had hit him that morning was holding a partially smoked joint. He glanced at it as if he feared this whole thing were a hallucination.
“Please!”
Why the hell were they just standing there, gaping at her like she was some bizarre display in a freak show?
She didn’t need to really ask that though, now did she?
“Please!”
The baggy-clothed kid squinted at her for a moment. “Wait. Didn’t we see this bitch somewhere? Oh, shit. She was at the diner.”
“Oh, yeah,” skinny jeans said. “She looked a hell of a lot better then. Fucking looks like she got raped by a gang of gorillas.”
The other kid chuckled. “Maybe she did.”
“That what happen to you?” Skinny jeans asked.
“Fuck!” Mercy yelled. “Help me!”
She expected some kind of humiliating comment about how they wouldn’t fuck her if she begged, maybe she should go fuck a dog or something, but the boys were silent.
“Please!”
The boys exchanged another glance and then they were running past her deeper into the big lot. She watched them disappear through a collapsed chain fence at the far end. She almost surrendered then. Maybe she could find a way inside this building and hide into some long-forgotten corner until the sun came up and she dared to go outside again. Giving up would feel so wonderful.