Vince’s heart was thudding. Could it be that their fathers were the same men? “What about your father?”
“Long story,” Frank said, dismissing it with a wave of one leather gloved hand. “I’ll get to that in due time. The basic story I got was that my father left my mom when I was three. That’s all I knew. It’s only been within the last year that I’ve discovered that my father didn’t leave so much as that he was… driven away. I’m… still doing some research on this, and don’t want to go too much into it now, if that’s okay.” He cocked a glance at Vince.
Vince shrugged. “Fine.”
“Okay.” Frank sighed and continued. “I went to live with my dad’s sister and her husband and my cousins, and I eventually left for Hollywood when I was sixteen. I wanted to be a musician, and I was in a band that came out here to try to make it in the music industry. To make a long story short, I lived on the streets for a while, sold drugs, became an alcoholic and a heroin addict, spent time in jail—the whole nine yards. I used people and people used me. I’m not proud of it.” He paused briefly, as if those memories of his past life were causing pain. “I lived in New York City for awhile and later moved to New Jersey. When I got clean, I came back out here. I’ve always had a knack for telling stories and writing, and I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, probably as a psychological method of escaping what I was going through. Makes sense, now that I think about it. Most of my stuff is fantasy and science fiction. Anyway, I started selling stories professionally when I was nineteen, and was already building a pretty reputable name for myself as a science fiction writer when I blew it with my addiction. I managed to get it all back, and now I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got a short story collection coming out this summer, and the third installment of a trilogy due out next winter. I’ve just started a new novel, and a screenplay I wrote has been optioned. I’m married to a beautiful successful woman who I adore above all of God’s creations. I have a three-year old son and a baby daughter. Things are going better for me now than I can ever ask for. And I wonder why I would want to jeopardize all that by… finding you and going through with all this.”
His voice became brittle, verging on that cracking edge of anger and despair. He turned away from Vince and rested his arms against the steering wheel. His breathing became heavier. “All this… stuff just started emerging during therapy over the past six months. I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother or stepfather in almost twenty years, and I remember the names and faces of my childhood with such clarity that it’s almost as if I can step back into that world and relive the horror I thought I’d escaped. It’s pretty surprising considering the amount of dope I shot up to deaden those images.” He paused, his face quivering as he looked out the windshield. “Goddamn,” he muttered, tears pooling in his eyes. He slammed his fist down on the dashboard. “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!”
Each “goddamn” was punctuated with a pounding of his fist on the dashboard. He lowered his head to the steering wheel, his long black hair draped over his heavily tattooed arms and shoulders, struggling to compose himself. Vince felt leaden, as if he was a spectator in a film he’d been cast in that he hadn’t rehearsed for. He felt awkward sitting in this car while the owner, who looked like he could snap the vehicle in two with his bare hands, struggled to keep from weeping. Vince sat still while Frank reined his tears in, trying to not seem so conspicuous.
When Frank was finished he wiped his eyes with the back of his gloved hands and smoothed his hair back. He turned to Vince. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… thinking about this… remembering the hell I went through… what it made me, just…” He let it drift into an incomplete sentence, as if he didn’t know how to finish.
Vince nodded, uncomfortable. “It’s all right. I’ve been going through my own personal hell as well. But I guess you already know about that.”
“Yeah,” Frank said, looking out at the park again, then back at Vince. “I do.” His deep brown eyes held secrets that wanted to spill forth.
Vince was going to try asking Frank what he knew about his mother and Laura’s death, what he knew about the attempt on his own life, when the bigger man began again. “Do you have dreams about being in a dark room and candles are burning all over the place? And there’s a strange humming sound and black hooded figures move closer to you? And they’re chanting?”
Vince’s stomach turned over in his stomach, as if dropped down an elevator. The chanting dream! “How do you know about that?” he breathed.
“I have them, too.”
Vince looked surprised. “You? Wh… why?”
“I was there with you, Vince. That’s why I remember a little bit more of it than you. We were both there. Along with Nellie, and some of the other kids we used to play with. They stopped bringing us to them when I was five or six, but they continued the ceremonies themselves.”
“Ceremonies? I don’t understand—”
“Our parents were involved, Vince. Mine. Yours. A group of twenty or more people. Samuel Garrison was their leader. I even remember the sacrifices.”
A bolt of memory flashed through his mind. “Sacrifices?”
“Yes. I know it’s hard to believe, but—”
“Your parents were devil worshippers?”
“Not just my parents, Vince. Yours, too.”
THIS SUDDEN REVELATION drained Vince. He needed a drink.
Frank suggested they get out and wander over to the recreation center. There would be soft drink vending machines there. They walked across the park to the recreation center, not speaking, both lost in their own thoughts. Vince bought a Coke, Frank a Dr. Pepper, and they walked back to the car, the summer sun beating down over them as they made their way back to the vehicle. The shouting laughs of playing took Vince back to the summer he remembered spending in California that was clearest in his memory. Seven years old and playing outside with the neighborhood kids, delighting in afternoon games of hide-and-seek, playing Dinosaurs, watching cartoons. Mom and Dad working, spending his days with Nellie and her folks, chasing after the ice cream man in his carnival-music-sounding truck as it drove slowly down the street as sprinklers showered summer lawns with cool water to run and play in. It was a magical time that seemed to last forever.
When they got back to the car, they climbed back in and sat in the stillness for a moment, savoring their soft drinks. Vince broke the silence. “It’s just so… hard to believe.”
“I know,” Frank said, sipping his Dr. Pepper. He turned to Vince. “And I’m sorry you had to find out about this. Especially after your mother died.”
“Are you sure my mother was involved?” Vince turned to Frank, imploring him to tell the truth. Don’t lie. He hadn’t had a lot of respect for his mother in the last ten years of her life, and he could accept anything about her regardless of how hideous. But this? Devil worship? It was beyond him. She’d been so… fundamentally Christian.
But then maybe that explained it.
Frank nodded. “I thought the memories were planted by the therapist I was seeing. I thought they were the result of my drug use. I didn’t know what to believe. But the more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense in a sick sort of way. I started thinking back on what I could remember that’d happened to me and place them with what I knew. It wasn’t until I started doing my own research into the occult that I found out a lot more. A whole lot more.”