On the television is a commercial for one of those golden oldies compact disc collections, they’re playing Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes of The Broken Hearted, a song that brings back the smell of summer air and ice cream cones. I reach over to my side and retrieve my oxygen mask, crank the tank up a few notches and breath it in. For a second I look outside through my window beside my memory tree — and in that second I see that the storm still hasn’t moved.
I know what kind of storm this is, this is the sort of storm that has haunted my family before, the kind of storm that only comes when those…little bastards…those nabbers…are looking for their next target.I don’t suppose they’ll take me, not how I am, and I don’t suppose I’m sad enough for them to take me anyway, but they’re here for somebody, that’s for damn sure. I crank the oxygen up a little more, getting the sense that tonight I might need to be as alert as I can be. I shouldn’t dwell too much on that sort of talk, not with rain like coming down like this, not with the way those black clouds keep swirling overhead.
The weird tingling in my chest. I remember the way it felt the night I first saw them.
Like everything I’d been told was a lie, like life was more fragile and weird and destructive than a person could imagine. Funny how those things never go away…Knocking at my door sends me out of my seat so hard that I toss the remote control across the room. Who could it be — well, anyone really, because anyone could’ve told me they’re coming by and I’d have forgotten it by now. I check the clock on the wall and remember that nobody’s allowed to visit this late, not on this wing with us loons. I stand, hobble over to the door as fast as I can and when I open it, my mouth drops open, I’m shocked to see the person standing before me.
It’s Lucia soaked from the rain, takes me a second to remember exactly who she is but before I can say anything she’s inside my room, shutting the door behind her. And with that door slam I’m sent back to when she was a teenager, when I was raising her myself and she’d get angry at me and shut her door so hard pictures would fall off of the walls. She’s at the window now, staring out at those black storm clouds, at the spread of green and trees between the concrete buildings she’s learned intimately. Dark circles round her eyes, Lucia’s hair is tied back into a ponytail. Her face is pale and blemished not from lack of care but from crying — from exhaustion. Lucia’s eyes twitch rapidly around the room — taking it all in.
I don’t remember a day when she looked this scared…it’s scaring me.
“Tell me everything…don’t leave anything out, don’t sugarcoat it…tell me…the truth…” tears well in Lucia’s eyes, but they never drop — hanging there as gentle reminders that she has spent the past few days in a complete frenzy. I can see it; I know the feeling of the look on her face. I imagine it’s how my face must have looked when those bastards took Margaret.
They came through some split in time and space, a rift opened by our sadness. I reckon that a lot more of the people out there in the world must know about them. Must have faced them before and just never told anyone because you don’t want to sound crazy. I know now why those black clouds swirl overhead, chaos has spilled over from another world — one that I told Lucia about when she was older and when a flaw appeared in her counseling.
She stopped going after high school, and one weekend when she was visiting me from college, she asked me about Margaret and I told her the truth. I told her that devils stole her from us, I told her and I could see her begin to remember and that’s when she asked me to stop. I didn’t get it all out, I felt that the more I spoke, the more she could bring to the forefront of her mind like rewinding a VHS tape. And I stopped. And she left. We never spoke of it again.
Lucia walks towards me and in her face I can see Derek — if you knew my son you’d be able to pick Lucia out in a crowd, they’ve got the same features and with my mind being the way it is, I get confused often. A sick confusion. My heart breaks all over again each time it happens. Derek used to give me that same damn stubborn look Lucia’s giving me right now. This commitment to whatever the hell it was he wanted to do. He was driven. When I look at Lucia, I see the little girl who we almost never met. Like an orphan at our doorstep. Just as driven.
“Do you remember what you said to me on the night of the bastards?” I ask bluntly, hoping that she will recall it, even in all of this mind blurring age, I’ve never forgotten what she said.
“You said — Papa, does this mean it’s just you and I, don’t you remember that?”
Lucia runs through her memory, looking across the pictures on the walls.
“No, I don’t…” she says, “I don’t remember anything about it…just…the story you told me…which…I mean, I went to counseling, I’ve lived a life in therapy, I did everything I could to try and…normalize things…”
Margaret thought it was smart to have Lucia in therapy as young as possible, so we did, with her parents being the way they were and all. I can’t tell you how many times I fought with her mother. When her mother would come to our house with the police demanding we hand Lucia over. But the courts never sided with her, no, not with the sort of lifestyle she led. We put her in therapy and I agree it helped but it gave her a way to erase a lot of what those bastards did. As horrifying as it was, I always thought that it could happen again and Lucia will have forgotten the golden rule.
“I…I saw one of them…what I think I saw before, you know? I think I saw them in our room…and I got that same…feeling…I got when I was little. Like I knew they were coming but I thought they were coming…for me…” Lucia says this but in a way where I can tell she doesn’t fully believe it. And as the words leave her mouth I begin to tremble because I know that sort of confusion, like you can’t believe what’s right in front of you, like you’ve seen the devil himself and suddenly you have a faith you never had before.It’s painful, it’s a very specific type of pain.
It’s agony in a sense that you now know something so evil could exist. Something that is a mirror on the pain and fear and confusion you’re feeling. And we were feeling pain then as a family, all sorts. We were looking for ways to see the bright side of things back then, for sure, and now I can see that whatever bright side we had, whatever smiles we could conjure — none of that is with us now.
“What do I have to do to stop them? How can I get…”
Lucia pauses, and in that momentary break, as she’s searching for the words to say, I see her face shift from mania to a calm. The type of calm a person feels when the reality of their situation has finally set in and they’re aware of how deep the rabbit hole goes. The type of calm a father feels when he is assured that his son has passed away, and as I reach out to try and comfort her, she finally asks the question…
“How can I get Chris back?”
I gulp down a breath of air and in an instant that name brings about a rush of emotions and images, smiles and laughter. Lucia had married Chris two years ago but they’ve been together a long time, it’s hard imagine one without the other. He’s a good man, the kind of man a father would want for his daughter and certainly someone Derek would’ve loved.
Chris works a steady job, takes promotions and raises, drinks socially but never at home and the thing I always liked most about Chris is how he’s a defensive driver. I bet he lost points on his driver’s test for hesitation.Thinking now that those bastards got him, they took him to the same place where they took Margaret, I have no doubt, I feel myself sink deeper into that thick sad calm that’s filling the room. Two of the people I love, taken and the heart of a third shattered in a way she’s never been before.
Even when Derek died Lucia never really cried or moped around, she was always tough, probably because she was too young. She’s always had a devil may care attitude, but right now, the look in her eyes is one of true desperation. I wouldn’t say that she’s weak but in this moment, she’s sure as hell not ready for a fight…and a fight is exactly what’s coming.Lucia embraces me, and I swear to you now that she’s young again and I’m young again, and we’re outside at the lake, dancing with the swans. We used to go to the lake weekly after I picked her up from school. It was her idea.
“Papa, we can go you know? Just you and me,” she told me.
I showed her videos I took of Margaret and I at the lake on hot summer afternoons when we were younger and willing to skip out early on work. I’d set the camera down on a picnic table, lift Margaret up into the air and twirl her around, her clothes would catch the sunlight coming down through the sky and sometimes we’d time it just right and get a front row seat for purple sunsets. Man, those were better days.
Those were days when the only trouble I had was the lack of cash in my bank account or some asshole at my job giving me a hard time or the Clippers losing a playoff game.Looking over her shoulder through the window, the clouds are even darker now and it’s raining so hard you can’t see your hand out in front of your face. I close my eyes, holding Lucia in my arms and she is now Derek, before, when he was my son. It’s hard to say whether it’s my confused mind or my rattled soul that’s manifesting this ghost, but the strange thing is I feel comforted by him. I feel a sense of direction, a purpose, I remember now that this whole world — my whole world — it’s all about making things right with Derek, through Lucia.
“Do you know…how to get him back?” Lucia says again, bringing me back into this current moment. What do I say to her? Do I tell her that I have seen the other side and while I’ve held tight to the idea that Margaret is still there waiting for me, that I do not know for sure? Do I tell her that the only way to get to them, the only chance we have is for one of us to leave this world, to travel into the next? Do I tell her that no matter what we do…this night might be the last one we have together? This whole world — my whole world — is about making things right…
“I don’t know why this has cursed our family, baby. But you are stronger than I’ve ever been…perhaps you…can bring him back…” Lucia looks at me confused, as if she didn’t expect me to offer her over to them, as if she thought there might be some other way.
“If those bastards can cross over twice, they can do it again, and we can follow them back into their hell,” I tell her and instantly I realize what I’ve said. We. That’s it…that’s the answer. We can follow them back. We can rescue Chris. We can…bring our family back.
“You haven’t forgotten what I told you, have you?” I ask and am fully aware of the irony. Lucia isn’t, not tonight, not on this night when those bastards returned and took away the person she needed most, just as they took my wife. We know their weakness, it’s one bitch of a weakness, too. I read it once online, Mark Twain said it and when we started to fight back, when we saw the cure to their wickedness, I repeated it. I don’t know why it struck me then, but it did, it struck me like a boxer’s jab into his opponents gut.
Lucia nods, “Against the assault of laughter…nothing can stand…”That’s my girl. I sit back onto my bed and motion for Lucia to sit on my chair. I know what she’s thinking — we’ve got no time, we’ve got to get him back.
“I want to move, I want to…” she stops as I raise my hand to tell her shhhh.
“The only way to get Chris back, is to draw them in.”
Lucia takes a breath, and I sigh as if exhaling for her. There’s only one story in my mind that can have that sort of power, only one story that I remember now in fragments but hope I can bring to the surface in whole.“We have time, darling…we have time to do this right…” I crack my knuckles and look over my tree, I see young Lucia, as young as she was the night Margaret went missing, and I begin to remember.“Alright, I’m going to tell you the real story…”
I smile as best as I can, I can feel tears falling down my cheeks and suddenly I am not sure why I’m crying. I’ve forgotten what I was saying, lost in confusion now…shit…not now…not when I know something so important is at play but can’t place it…not when — I look at Lucia, I look at the picture of young Lucia — okay, it’s…alright, I’ve got my setting…Lucia grabs my hands, looking into my eyes, she can see that I’ve lost my place.
“Tell me from the top…let’s bring those bastards back…”
I shut my eyes, fighting to remember what it was we were talking about, I can feel the space growing in my brain as the memory slips away. Then I find it — those bastards…