Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (5 page)

12. The Joker

I hold the Zippo lighter in my hand, an old relic that supposedly belonged to dear old great-grandpa, who my mom thinks died in World War I.

Who turns to a rotting corpse before your very eyes if you wait around long enough.

I went into a store in Asheville to fill it with fluid, but it still doesn’t work. The guy told me it was too old to ignite. Yet I keep flicking it, trying. Flicking it to see if anything comes, even the slightest spark.

As I do I can’t stop thinking of something.

I never had a chance to tell Lily good-bye.

With Jocelyn, it was different. She knew how I felt, and she also knew what was coming. But Lily’s death was somehow, in a strange way, more shocking. Not the how but the why. The suddenness of it. One minute I’m sitting right next to her, and the next she’s gone.

Because in the end, everybody dies. Everybody.

Marsh might not be right about many things, but he’s certainly right about that.

I’m in my cabin thinking of everything but mostly thinking of Lily. I recall what she said about heaven.

If heaven is real, I don’t want to go. Because it’s probably bright and sunny, and I won’t belong there.

In this cabin, stuck in this dark town that’s terrorized by evil people and hidden secrets, I want to believe in that bright and sunny place. A place of hope. A place of second chances.

I tried. I tried to do it on my own and I failed. Badly.

I want to tell Lily that. I want to tell her how sorry I am that after everything that happened, it had to end so fast.

Boom.

For some reason, I think of the Joker. It’s stupid, but it’s just me and my thoughts so I can let them be as lame as I want. So I think of the Joker from
The Dark Knight
. No, I take that back. I think of Heath Ledger, who played him in an insane role that could never be duplicated.

Then …

Boom.

Just like that, he’s gone. And he’s immortalized and will forever live on.

He was so young, with so much potential and promise. But like all of us, he wasn’t guaranteed tomorrow.

I wish I had that Bible that Dad gave me. I’m thinking that maybe somewhere inside I could find some wisdom or encouragement. Anything.

Maybe that’s too simplistic a notion. That this rule book of sorts will give me some answers. But I need something. And watching
The Dark Knight
for the millionth time probably won’t help me much.

Heath Ledger didn’t get a chance for another act. But I’m still here, and still in the story and ready for another act. Perhaps a final act for Solitary.

If that’s the case, I need to do everything I can to be the hero I’m able to be.

That maybe I’ve always been destined to be.

13. Vessel

The maps app on my iPhone doesn’t work that well around these spiraling roads and rolling hills. Still, I finally am able to find Zebulon Lane not because of my GPS but because I’m stopping at every road off this side street of a side street of Sable Road. And because I see the sign.

The road reminds me a bit of the one leading up to the Crag’s Inn, yet this one looks even worse with deep ruts in the road and even a few dead tree limbs stretched out over it. It doesn’t look like anybody’s driven here for a while.

Maybe the address on the mannequin is an old one. Maybe there won’t be anything or anybody at 1947 Zebulon Lane.

I slow down at a driveway dropping from the road. I look down and see a modern-looking house on the side of the mountain. Half of the house is propped up by beams, and a long deck circles that part. This isn’t a cabin at all, but looks like some kind of funky house designed by a famous architect.

Like those Frank Lloyd Wright houses my mom would point out back in Chicagoland.

I coast down the driveway and then get off the bike, wondering if anybody lives here. There are abandoned houses all around these parts. Like Jocelyn’s old house. Empty and silent.

Perhaps this is one of those.

When the door opens without my knocking on it, I jolt and almost tear back to my bike. Yet the man at the door doesn’t appear threatening.

Then again, appearances don’t mean a thing. Not around Solitary.

“Hello, Chris,” he says without any hint of surprise at seeing me.

“You know me?”

“Of course. Would you like to come in?”

The windows in his modern-styled house looked dark and hidden.

“How do you know me?”

He smiles, and several lines of wrinkles form on his forehead. He looks sixty- or seventysomething, with white hair that’s slicked back, at least what hair he has on his half-bald head. He wears wide glasses that hide more wrinkles underneath them.

“I can explain. I won’t hurt you. Promise.”

“Do you know my mom?”

The man is quite tall, a couple of inches taller than I am, and he just stands there next to the opened door, waiting for me to come in. I nod and walk inside.

I almost bump into a woman with long blonde hair standing in the hallway. I step back and blurt out an “excuse me” before noticing that her eyes look a little dead.

“That’s Fiona,” the man says as he closes the door behind me. “Lovely, isn’t she?”

She’s wearing a short black dress with a low-cut top that reveals a golden necklace. In her heels Fiona is taller than I am. She’s not quite smiling. It’s more like she’s … posing. Posing and waiting.

And, oh yeah, she’s a mannequin.

“Fiona is five years old and still as beautiful as the day she was born,” the man says as he puts a hand on my shoulder and guides me down the hall.

Suddenly Marsh doesn’t seem that creepy to me anymore. I really am regretting that I came here.

“You drove all this way out here to find me, yet you’ve hardly said a word since you arrived.”

Maybe that’s because I haven’t been this freaked out since, well, since the last time I was in a family room looking at a mannequin. In this case, there are probably about half a dozen of them surrounding me. All ladies … the guy’s own wonderful set of wives.

“My name is Alfred Graff. And, as you can see, I make these beautiful creatures.”

That’s what he said. Not mannequins or dummies or figures. He said creatures.

“What brings you to my home, Chris?”

My heart is slowing down a bit, and I notice the old man isn’t holding a gun or a knife or anything like that. He just holds a small container the size of his thumb that he keeps dipping his finger into and then spreads the contents over his lips. Which, once again, is sorta creepy.

“Did one of your, uh, ‘creatures’ recently escape?”

He laughs and glances at a figure right behind him. “A man seventy-seven years old no longer takes offense at comments like that. I’ve heard them all. I’ve been making these for a long time, Chris.”

“How do you know my name?” I ask again.

“There are quite a few people around here who know your name, Chris Buckley. Who know of your importance.”

“So you, uh—are you with Marsh? And Staunch?”

“With?” He says the word as if it’s a bad curse word. “This isn’t grade school, my boy. This isn’t the Cub Scouts. I am paid very well to do what I do and have been for quite a while.”

“Make mannequins?”

“Yes.”

The room is barely lit, so the figures that are all standing around us seem threatening, waiting to suddenly pop to life and attack me.

That’s just my luck. I’m finally in a room surrounded by beautiful and exotic women staring my way. Unfortunately, they’re fiberglass models that don’t breathe or speak or blink.

At least I hope they don’t.

“Who do you—”

“Why are you here?” Alfred interrupts in a deliberate and loud tone.

“A mannequin showed up in my cabin, and it was made by you.”

He nods, then dabs his finger in his little jar and rubs it over his lips. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Was it a lady? Curly blond hair?”

I nod, and suddenly the back of my neck feels sweaty.

“That was one of the last ones I made.”

“Who was it for?”

“Is that what you’re really wanting to know? Who asked me to make that mannequin? Is that your main question?”

“It’s one of them.”

Alfred stands and then walks over to a dark-haired dummy with bold eyes that seem to be bearing down on me.

“Do you believe that animals go to heaven, Chris?”

I shake my head, not sure what to say.

“I believe that animals are born without souls. They’re wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But they don’t have
souls
. Yet they are God’s creatures, and they can sense the spiritual world. Especially when that world is full of unrest. Am I not right?”

I think about Midnight, then about Iris’s bluebird, then about the random kinds of animals I’ve encountered around here.

“These creatures are the same,” he says as he puts his finger on the lips of the lady he’s standing next to and does the same sort of weird motion. “They are born without souls. They are harmless. They are merely … vessels.”

My skin crawls. Alfred seemed lost in his weird sort of act with the mannequin until saying that last word and looking at me.

Vessels.

“In most places in the world, these vessels would be merely that.” He takes his hand and knocks on the hard face. “Just hollow, empty figures. Beautiful, true, but empty. Yet Solitary, as you already know, Chris, is not like most places in the world. Trust me, I know. I’ve seen what’s out there. This is truly a special place. And you, my dear boy, are truly a special person.”

We jumped from creepy to blood-curdling the moment this guy said vessels.

Because in a way, it clicked. Not in a rational, oh-okay, two-plus-two-equals-four sort of way.

I just suddenly get what he’s talking about, and there’s nothing about it that I like.

“Do you believe in magic, Chris?”

I stare at this ordinary-looking guy who I’d never pay any attention to on the street. Yet now I study his every move and action and word.

“I’m coming to believe in a lot of things these days.”

Alfred walks to the back of the room and starts to slowly stroke the red hair of a mannequin that appears to be laughing. “There is a dark magic in the world, a magic I’ve witnessed with my own eyes, a kind that I used to try and tell Iris about, though she never wanted to hear it or believe it.”

Did he just say …

“I told her, but she didn’t want any part of it.”

I think my mouth must be hanging open, because he looks my way and laughs. “Yes, Chris. Iris. Your lovely Iris.”

“You know Iris?”

He walks over to another figure that I haven’t noticed before. This one is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. As if watching from afar, not enjoying herself.

She looks like Iris. A young Iris that I once saw in the pictures.

This is so incredibly wrong. All of it.

“I’m still waiting. Still hoping. Still wanting.”

He doesn’t say anything more.

For a moment I look back at the hallway and the front door.

“You can leave anytime you want,” Alfred says. “There won’t be any magic show tonight. If that’s what you’re wanting.”

“How long have you known Iris?”

“Ever since she moved here. And before she lost her son. That poor sick child. I offered to help. I offered to do anything possible.
Anything.
But she refused. She refused to believe. But people always have to learn the hard way. Don’t they, Chris?”

14. Help

Back home I get an email from my father. It’s strange because he normally doesn’t send a lot of emails, and the timing of this is a bit suspicious. Yet I believe it’s him because of what he says.

Hey, Chris. Hope you and Mom are doing well. I began reading Ephesians and thought of you when I read these verses:

“God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.”

This applies to me as well as you, Chris. And please know this: even though I’m up here in Chicago and will be here for a while, I’m praying for your mother and you. I still pray that we will be a family again, and that the work God is doing will continue on in Mom.

Stay strong and let me know if there’s anything you need.

Dad

It’s strange to hear Dad saying this stuff to me.

I think about that guy in the driveway of our old home as I left Illinois and vowed to never look back. I hated that man and assumed I was going to hate him all my life. I didn’t know that he was as confused and struggling as I am right now.

Stay strong
.

The words encourage me. I certainly need as much help as I can get.

I don’t have any classes with Mr. Meiners, so I have to make a special trip to see him right after morning break. I make it to his homeroom where he teaches history all day long. He’s sitting at his desk, grading papers.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I say as I enter the room.

Mr. Meiners has a thick beard and thick dark hair. Sometimes I wonder if he used to be a hippie when they had those—back in the sixties or seventies, I think. I’m not as good with history as he is.

“How can I help you?”

“Well, I’m just, uh—”

I’m not sure how to ask him. I’m not even sure
what
to ask him.

“Someone told me that you might be able to help me. To really help me.”

His look changes. Is it concern? Frustration that I’m bothering him?

Whatever it is, it looks serious.

“Do you need help in one of your classes?”

I shake my head.

I don’t know if I’m being watched. Or if this room is bugged. Or if Mr. Meiners is with them.

“It’s not school related?” he asks me in a direct, quick manner.

This was a bad idea.

“Well, not really.”

“Then sorry. Why don’t you ask your guidance counselor? Or homeroom teacher?”

This doesn’t seem like Mr. Meiners. I’ve always seen him to be a caring, thoughtful teacher. The least he could do is ask me how I need help.

“You better get to your next class, Chris,” he says, going back to grading papers.

I nod and want to say something else, but I don’t.

I exit the room and hear the door shut behind me. Students are heading this way for next period.

Well, that was a major fail.

I head to my next class, wondering why Mr. Meiners was so rude and uncaring.

Maybe
M&Ms
stands for something more mysterious.

“The weekend is coming up,” Kelsey tells me.

“It’s only Thursday,” I say.

“That’s what I mean. It’s approaching.”

“Oh.”

I love doing this. Playing games with her and teasing. It’s cute because it’s so easy. And because she always acts shy and unsure of herself.

I know why she’s asking about the weekend. This is one area—maybe the only area—where I can be quiet and mysterious.

It’s obvious to me that I’m going to see her at some point. But it’s certainly not obvious to her.

“I’m hoping someone has a big party I can go to,” I tell her.

“You are?”

“You know me. The party guy.”

“Since when?”

“Since that one time I showed up and saw you all glammed up.”

She turns red, and I figure I should be nice.

“Or maybe I can skip the parties and just hang out,” I say. “With you.”

“Sure.”

It’s after lunch, and we’re near the entrance to the school. Normally we might be outside, but considering it’s freezing out there, we’re hanging inside around the corner from the cafeteria. It’s a good place to talk because it’s away from everybody.

“Kelsey?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen—I’m just kidding around with you.”

“You like doing that.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be mean. You’re just so cute when you’re being shy.”

“Sorry.”

“See—like that. Don’t. Don’t apologize. Don’t be shy. You don’t have to anymore. This isn’t art class, and I’m not the new kid. Okay?”

She nods, brushing her blonde hair back over her shoulder.

“Look—you know this, but maybe I’ll remind you. I like you. A lot. Okay?”

Kelsey looks up with innocent, sweet eyes that you could never paint if you tried a thousand times.

“I didn’t forget about Chicago just because we’re not there anymore,” I tell her.

“I didn’t either,” she says.

Her comment makes me smile. It’s almost as if—as if she’s been waiting somehow to tell me that.

I start to tell her more, about how worried I am about this semester, about how things might suddenly get tough and dangerous. I want to tell her to be careful and don’t talk to strangers and stay away from the dark woods and all that, but I don’t say anything.

I don’t want to ruin this moment. This quiet, simple moment.

“I want to see you this weekend. As much as I can. Okay?”

She nods.

A part of me knows that this is dangerous. For her. She’s not just playing with fire. It’s an inferno she’s dealing with. And she doesn’t even know it.

At the end of the day I find a note in my locker. It’s a printout of a Word document in simple type.

The only way to get help is to do so without another soul knowing or seeing.

There are ways.

You’ll hear from me soon.

I fold up the letter and look around. Of course nobody is there watching me. Maybe someone’s hiding in a locker, glancing out the tiny slits at the top.

Or maybe, seriously, this is from someone who overheard my conversation and is playing another mind game with me.

Something tells me that’s not the case.

I have a feeling this is from Mr. Meiners.

What about Mr. Marsh? Huh? He could be M&M.

I go to find Kelsey to tell her good-bye for the day. I try not to dwell on that last thought, the one about Marsh, but it stays around.