“He couldn’t sell you out. I knew he wouldn’t, no matter what I offered him. He’s one of the few good ones, Tom, so I broke the rules for him. I gave you the pennies. Both were his. I gave you time to save him.”
Sweat trickles down my neck even as a chill dances across my back. “How much time?”
From the room directly overhead, something crashes to the floor. The light sways slightly. Grains of plaster float down between us like sand from a cracked hourglass.
I feel a vibration in my bones, terror twisting my gut.
Helpless, I look at Cadaver.
“That much,” he whispers.
Chapter Sixteen
I run, taking the steps two by two though the sweeping angle of them seems designed to slow me down. As my feet make sounds like gunshots on the steps, I feel a part of me rip away, a part of me that wants to go in the other direction, back downstairs to Cadaver, to kill him, so there’ll be nothing left to face when I return. In the split-second instances when my mind cuts away from the sight of my own filthy boots pounding polished wood on this fucking endless staircase, I can almost feel his body come apart beneath my hands, blood and bone, or maybe just dust and oil spattering the walls, wet and satisfying beneath my shaking hands. I’m ripping that box from his throat, taking no care with it, just yanking it free and delighting in the sight of the gaping void it leaves behind as his head lolls atop withered shoulders. I’m hurting him. I’m showing him agony. I’m showing him how I feel, how I felt long before I first stepped foot in that goddamn tavern.
I’m tearing him apart. Returning the favor.
But then the steps run out and the landing isn’t nearly long enough for me to get my thoughts in order, to force myself to be calm. Three strides and I’m at the door I’m guessing is the one from which that thumping sound came. I don’t wait a second longer.
I throw open the door.
It’s a bedroom.
Bed, neatly made.
Sink in the corner, dripping.
Sunlight making shadows that lay flat upon the floor.
Window overlooking the yard.
There’s no one here.
Cursing, I head for the next door, the echo of that sliding thumping sound bouncing around my brain. I know what that sound was, but I’m going to dismiss the certainty and tell myself I’m letting terror mislead me. But deep down inside where reality is a small dark plot of land under an indifferent sky, I know the truth. I feel it. Right now, there is no tiny dirt road I can sidle down to avoid that big sprawling highway that runs only one way—straight into the mushy black heart of truth, the true nightmare of this situation. I can’t get away. Never could. But I could have gotten Kyle out of this and didn’t.
Still, Be there; be alive. I won’t let you down. Not again, I repeat in a mantra inside my head, a head that feels as if it’s become a porcelain vase dropped from a height.
My hand finds the door knob.
Please. Just a little more time. One more chance. One more penny.
I open the door.
The hinges shriek.
There’s light coming in the window.
My mouth’s dry.
There’s light coming in the window.
I can’t see for the tears.
There’s light coming in the window.
And there’s a long thin shadow swinging in front of it, touching my own feet, which I let drop me to the floor. They’ve held me enough, held me longer than that creaking rope is going to hold my boy.
I can’t look at him. Won’t.
Then I do.
Help him down, goddamn it. He’s still alive.
I’m back on my feet in an instant, hugging my boy’s legs, my arms tight, lifting, lifting. Trying to unbreak his neck; trying to unchoke him. He rises, but doesn’t make a sound. Christ…he doesn’t make a sound.
No words, no breath. No life.
He’s dead and gone.
Slowly, so slowly, and gently, I let him go until the rope is tight once again and his body twists in a breeze that isn’t here.
Another man, another father, might persist, try to free him, try to save him, wailing and moaning all the while, crying out to God, promising retribution for this heinous injustice.
But I’m not another father.
And God isn’t listening.
I find myself looking at my son’s shoes, note that they are cleaner than mine, though we’ve walked the same paths tonight. Guess that probably means something. All I take from it is the fact that they’re cleaner, and that the laces are untied, same way they always were when he got done with a day’s work. He never could tie laces right, but he sure did a hell of a job with that noose.
His belt buckle is silver, a rearing horse locked inside an oval, and it glints in the sunlight, until the body swings around to the shadows again, then that silver mare turns black.
The floor hurts my knees as I let it draw me down again. Bare wood. I want to claw it to splinters, but I’ll wait. I have to wait to see if I choke to death like my boy because the feeling in my chest makes me believe that’s what’s going to happen. Someone has their hands around my throat, but there’s nobody here but us.
Just me.
Just me, and my boy, who’s wearing a brown noose pulled so tight it’s sawed almost clear through the skin.
Just me and my boy, who’s sticking his tongue out at me like he did when I teased him about the girl he used to walk home when they were in second grade. How many years ago was that? What was her name? Nancy something. Ellis, maybe. Damn it. Pretty girl too, but she moved on. She didn’t want to, and I guess Kyle didn’t want her to either. But wish in one hand…
“Shit in the other,” I say aloud, wondering if my voice is enough to make Kyle swing some more, because aside from that creaking rope, the room is deathly quiet, deathly still, which I suppose is only appropriate.
On the floor, there’s a chair, lying on its back, one its runners broken. I wonder if Kyle changed his mind as he stood atop that chair until the chair decided for him. Sorry, son. Too late now. Your old man hasn’t spent your time wisely.
I won’t look at his face, though it begs me to.
I won’t.
I’ve taken the blame for my wife’s death though I wasn’t even in the car. I got out, she drove away, and two hours later we pulled my Lexus out of the Milestone River. I never told Kyle that. Never told him that we found Alfie Tomlin, the banker, in the passenger seat either. No, I kept that stuff to myself because once she was gone, I was all he had left. I was what he needed. A target. Someone to blame, to hate, and I let him.
I let him.
You’re the victim, Cadaver said. Not Kyle.
He lied, of course. For all his sympathy and confessions, he lied to me. I’m not the victim. I’m not the one swinging from the rafters or burned to death.
I’m alive, and though I’m about to make myself a promise that I’ll rectify that before the sun goes down, I’m going to forget about Hell and devils and men with no voices and miraculous resurrections and ghostly spouses, and the cosmic or celestial balance that has made us all its slaves. I’m going to put out of my mind all thoughts of betrayal and lies and sin and hate and love.
Fuck all that.
Right now I’m going to restore the only balance that matters a goddamn right at this very second in my life.
And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.
I expect to find him gone, fled like the yellow son of a bitch I know him to be, and when I storm into the parlor, he’s nowhere in sight. Rage is making me shake harder than a man in an electric chair, but when I turn, there he is, the front door open, poised, waiting, as if for me to accompany him. Like we’re about to take a nice pleasant walk of the grounds. The daylight doesn’t reach far into the hall. Maybe he’s holding it back. Maybe it doesn’t know how to penetrate the sickness, death and misery he wears for a coat.