Five Days Dead (23 page)

Unaddressed Prayers

Harley stood and cracked his head on the ceiling of the mine. He cursed and sat down hard, seeing stars, but at least he saw something. He crawled toward the mouth of the tunnel, his hands and knees stumbling over sharp shards of rock until he eventually came to a rough, uneven wall. He could hear nothing on the other side of the cave-in and he wondered if they would dig him out or leave him to die alone in the dark. He found no joy with either option.

He fished in his shirt pocket for his last two cigarettes. He had a moment of panic when he thought perhaps he had lost his lighter as well, but it was there and he thanked whatever Gods might be listening for that one bit of luck. He lit his cigarette and the flame cast a wavering light that only pushed at the darkness but did not penetrate it. He sat against the tunnel wall, smoked and tried to remain calm. Caged in the dark, he knew death was coming for him. It was just a matter of time before it found him.

Time passed. Darkness can take on a physical form after a while and for Harley it was becoming all enveloping. It was cold and it was harsh and it was bitter and it was cruel and it was hungry, of that he became very sure, it was hungry and he was the only thing on the menu. When it came time to feast, he wondered if he might scream. He thought that perhaps he might.

As he sat in the darkness of the mine, his mind raced backward and he remembered why he didn’t like darkness, not complete darkness anyway. He enjoyed the night, but night wasn’t darkness because even in the dark of night there was some light, shadows among the dark to break up the black. But he did not care for complete darkness, and his mind opened a door to a memory he had locked away years and years before. 

He had shot the dog. He had taken the pistol Dad had given him and he had shot the dog and watched the life bleed out of it and if he had felt anything, anything at all, he couldn't remember what it might be. But his mother had discovered him and the dead dog and she had been upset. She had struck him across the face, over and over. He had a feeling as she struck him that she was striking him for something other than the dog, because he didn't really think she cared for the dog all that much.

She had taken the gun from him and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the house. She shoved him on the couch and ordered him to sit there. He sat still because his face hurt and his mother was very upset. He didn’t like seeing her like that, didn’t like thinking that she was upset because he had shot Spot.

In their single wide trailer, there was a closet in the hallway. It was a small closet and his mother kept the vacuum and the broom in there and the winter coats. As he sat on the couch with his face stinging from her slaps, she opened the closet door and threw everything out, the vacuum and the broom and the coats and even a toy soldier that Harley had looked for everywhere, but never been able to find. It was right there in the closet all the time and he reached for it but before he could grab hold of it, his mother took him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him in the closet and closed the door.

Harley sat on the floor and waited to see what might happen next. There was light leaking in from beneath the door and along the edges and he could see the shadow of his mother as she paced back and forth. Then she stomped into the kitchen and when she came back, he heard a sound, like a skrrrppp that he recognized but could not place and then part of the light leaking from the doorway was covered up and it became a little bit darker in the closet.

Tape!  It was tape! She was using duct tape to steal away the light and for a moment he was proud of himself for figuring out the sound. But the light was leaving him, little by little and when the last skrrrpp sounded and the last piece of tape placed along the bottom of the door, Harley found himself in darkness, complete and utter darkness.

He heard the screen door to the house open and slam shut and there was only silence in the house. He stood and tried to open the door, but it would not budge and he realized she had taken a kitchen chair and blocked the door. He pounded on the door and yelled for his mother, but she did not answer because she was not there and eventually he sat back down on the closet floor. Even then he did not cry, not yet anyway.

He didn’t know how long it was before he got the sense that he was not alone in the closet, but eventually he realized that the darkness was not only darkness, it was something, something cold and something hungry. He soiled himself then, but it wouldn’t be the last time.

Sitting in the darkness of the closet, he had searched with his fingers along the floor and at the back of the closet he had come across a hole. It was a small hole that he could fit two fingers through and he wondered what had made that hole in the back of the closet, when he wasn’t screaming and crying and wetting himself. Then when he had grown tired of screaming and crying and wetting himself he had heard the mice behind the wall, scurrying about and he thought he might have felt one crawling across his arm and he had screamed some more. But he wasn’t sure if it was a mouse at all, or something else, something dark and evil and feeding on him, one nibble at a time.             

He didn’t know how long he was in the closet. It was more than hours and less than a week, but other than that he was not sure. But what he was sure of was that the darkness was with him and while it did not consume him it enveloped him, every part of him and he found another reason to scream and he found another reason to cry and he could not stop.

When his mother opened the closet door, there was food and water waiting for him on the kitchen table. Ravioli, his favorite, and he ate and thanked his mother for the food. When he had eaten, she sent him to the bathroom to clean the mess he had made of himself. While he scrubbed away the urine and the feces he thought that he loved his mother very much and should do a better job of taking care of her, as his father had asked. He should do a better job.             

But when he had the chance he ran away and left her all alone.

The memory washed over him as he sat in the darkness of the mine and the only sound he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. It was jagged and it was rough and it was scared and he felt the darkness pressing into him and he gritted his teeth and tried to not be afraid. He was no longer a boy and this was no longer a closet.

“I’m going to die down here.” His voice was calm and collected and it was hollow and without emotion and from down the dark tunnel he thought he heard the darkness reply that yes, yes he was going to die down here.

After a time he started to laugh for no particular reason. Laugh because what else could he do?  Cry? And eventually Harley Nearwater did that as well. He cried and he laughed and he cried some more as the darkness sank into his lungs and when his bladder released and he soiled himself he laughed even louder and cried even harder and eventually he fell asleep, holding his lighter in his hands.

When he woke, he was calmer and he sat up. There was still no sound outside the mine. He thought he might hear water dripping somewhere down the length of the mine but could not be sure. He flicked his lighter and lit up his last cigarette and while he smoked he thought back to the days before and what had led him to the end of his life in the darkness of a dead coal mine.

It had started with a death. It would end with a death.

He tried to remember why he had killed the legionnaire in the hotel. Kara, her name had been Kara. Terrified and alone, he had killed her because she pointed a pulse rifle at him. But was that the real reason? Did he really kill her because she had pointed a gun at him, because a lot of people had pointed guns at him over the years that he had not killed.

“That wasn’t the reason.” He said in the dark and his voice sounded giddy, almost childlike. He had killed her because she said things that could not be so. She said things that mocked the world he had accepted as reality. In the days that followed his killing her, every piece of that reality had been torn asunder.

“The end is coming.” She had said that with breath that was dying.

Since he had pointed his sidearm and ended her life, he had done things the Harley Nearwater before that day would have never done. He had saved a young man and his children when it gave him no benefit. If they had died the Wrynd might not have come looking for him, but he had saved them. Then again in Price he had done what he could to save them and later he had tried to save the old man not once but twice. He had done things he would not normally do. Things contrary to his disposition and sitting in the darkness of the coal mine he realized that the man he had always been, the man that had grown from the boy released from the darkness of a broom closet, was no longer the man he wanted to be. He wanted to be something else.

“I’ll change.” He whispered at the darkness. “I’ll change. I want to change.” His whisper became a prayer and he found himself wondering when he had gone to church. Had he ever gone to church?  He remembered once being with his parents going inside a beautiful building and he thought that it might be Christmastime but he was not sure. Dressed in their best clothes, he sat between them and had been happy and they were quiet, but that was all that he could remember. They had been quiet and he had been happy. Was that church? He didn’t know, but he found that he could not stop praying. “Help me get out of here and I’ll change. I’ll be better. I’ll do better.” He didn’t know who he was praying to, perhaps only his mother. She had let him out of the darkness once, perhaps she could again. It felt good, to pray.

Something moved in the darkness. He could not hear it, but he could feel it, a shift in the ocean of blackness, a shift in the tide. Somewhere in the darkness something had heard his prayer.

“Why would you want to change Harley?” Said a voice like sandpaper on metal and Harley Nearwater’s screams became so much more than they had ever been before.

Harley didn’t know how long he screamed, long enough that it hurt not only his throat but all the way down into his chest. He screamed until he could scream no more and then he stopped.

“There now,” the sandpaper voice scratched again, sounding pleased, sounding amused. “Got that all out of your system?”

Harley reached for a gun that was not there. “Who’s there?” He didn’t like the sound of terror in his voice, but it was there, yes indeed, it was definitely there.

Laughter filled the tunnel, the giddy laughter of a school child, and rather than be muffled, absorbed by the darkness, it was lifted up and echoed. “I’m a friend Harley. Just a friend. You could use a friend I think. You’ve soiled yourself I see, sitting there in the dark. It’s the broom closet all over again, isn’t it?”

Harley could feel the cold urine on his jeans. Although he did not know how whatever it was in the tunnel could see that he had soiled himself, the truth was still the truth – he had wet his pants like a scared little boy. Harley flicked his lighter and the small flame cast what light it could. Something right beside him blew it out and Harley screamed again.

“What do you want?” He struck out in the darkness and found only darkness.

“Want?” Harley could hear the smile on the gritty voice. “I was just in the area, just passing by you might say, because I’m a wanderer on the path, just like you Harley. I travel here and there, helping where I can, hurting where I can’t. I was passing by when I heard your little prayer.”

“You heard my prayer?” 

“Why yes, I heard your prayer. You didn’t address it, you know.”

“Address what?” He flicked his lighter again and this time it stayed on.  Just out of reach of the tepid flame he thought he might see something, grayness in the black, a shape that might be a mouth and two holes above it that might be eyes. “Address what?” He asked again.

“Why your prayer, of course. You didn’t address it. Just ‘please help me, oh please oh please’ but you didn’t address it, so exactly who were you praying to?  God, the Almighty Himself, or Satan, ol’ Mr. Scratch as I like to call him. He hates being called that, by the way, which is why I like it so. So which is it, the Shepherd or the Jackal?”

Harley peered into the darkness and could see nothing that could tell him who he shared the tunnel with, but he thought he knew. “God, I guess.”

“Good enough. I rather thought so, what with the all the ‘I’ll be better, I’ll do better’ nonsense. You have to be careful when you pray Harley; you’ve got to be very careful indeed. If not properly addressed, your prayer could be answered by anyone. Anyone at all.”

“Like the Gray Walker?” Harley shifted in his seat. The tunnel floor beneath his buttocks was becoming painful.

The voice in the darkness chuckled. “Bah. Gray Walker. He is but a myth isn’t he? The boogey man of the New Golden Age?”

“So you say.”

“Yes, so I say. Aren’t you going to ask me if I am an angel of God, perhaps God the Great Shepherd Himself, come to answer your prayers?”

“Are you?”

The Gray Walker laughed, deliriously happy. “No. Afraid not. God doesn’t make house calls you see; you have to go to him. Climb the mountain and all that nonsense. And before you ask, I’m not the Jackal either. Scratch and I don’t see eye-to-eye on things I’m afraid. I’m just another happy traveler on the path who happened to hear your prayer.”

“Are you here to answer it?”

There was silence in the tunnel for a moment and when the voice answered all of the humor drained away. “Well, that is the question, isn’t it Harley? Truthfully, I’ve been watching you. I have peered into your soul and found no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Normally I find that an attractive trait in a person, but with you it gives me pause. Both the Shepherd and the Jackal would struggle to find a use for you and while I value you I still wonder if you may not be one who would create more mischief than you are worth. You have talents, there’s no denying that, and if someone could only find a way to harness them, they could be of great value. But for now you are like a pulse rifle waiting for someone to pull the trigger. A scye, waiting for a mind to wield it. It might be better if I put you away, out of sight, out of mind -- do you know what I mean? Until your talents might best be put to use.”