Project Pallid (21 page)

At
the third, gravity works against me. In spite of his emaciation, my dad’s not
an easy haul—especially not when I’m doing it through sobbing, clouded
vision.

His
cooling skin pulls from his body with each of my tugs, and it’s gut wrenching
to the point that I actually do throw up, spitting a little on my arm as I
shoot for the side of the stairs.

His
head bobs back, thumps each of the first steps, and fights to crest the third
as I pull hard to get it up and over. His hips barely lift off the ground and
with the steps and steps I’ve got left to go, I know it’s pointless, and I
concede defeat. I’m not strong enough.

His
body slouches to the bottom with the release of my grip.

My
dad is dead.

He’s
really
dead.

It
finally registers that he’ll never just stand up and be okay again. And that
he’ll never be there to talk with me, or to watch a game with me again. That
the world I’d hoped to reclaim is now one essential person less.

The
thought makes me scream. So loudly and for so long that I know I’ve made a
mistake—that I’ve sounded an alarm. A dinner bell.

I
need a new plan, and I need one fast.

Survival
instinct takes hold and I grab my dad’s waistband and unhook his belt: a
durable, leather one that he’s worn for as long as I can remember. Quick up the
stairs, I can’t help but pause to savor the warmth of sunlight on my skin as I
look around the kitchen and remember it as it was. I try to separate those good
memories and to preserve them from what I see now. It’s unfathomable to think
that my mom and sister were standing at the stove only a month before, prepping
another uneventful, family dinner—one of our under-appreciated lasts.

I
want to scream out to their apparitions and warn them about what’s coming. I
want to tell them to seal the house and to get on a plane—to leave
Platsville and to get far, far away from Madison. But I can’t. It’s too late
now.

Lost
in their images, time passes.

Enough
that I could have been easily whited out without ever having seen it coming.
Somehow though, by the graces of whatever God is left, I’m able to pull myself
away, and I crawl back to my tomb.

I
know my dad’s gone—that’s a given now—but I still don’t know about
Catee, Mom, Nicole, or anyone else. And if nothing else, I’ve got to do
whatever I can to make sure I’m still here, if they’re still alive, somewhere
out there. We have to survive for each other, and I’m not doing that by hanging
in the open like some sitting duck.

With
the door pulled shut, I thread my dad’s belt through its handle, loop its end
around the banister, and adjust it snug. Tragically, it’s the solution I’ve
been after all along.

But
now there’s the rest of him to consider.

He’s
looking up at me through his remaining, bleached-out eye while my pocketknife
tugs the other one sideways—I still haven’t found the stomach to remove
it. The pantry, darkened with the closing of the door, has become even more
uninviting than it was before.

And
instead of acting, I sit in silence on the upper steps, to hover over the translucent
body that glows in wisps of sunlight below. Knees pulled tight and arms
cradling my head, I rock back and forth, and I try to make sense of life … or
whatever this is now.

It’s
been three weeks since the hospital blowout and when the news first braced us
for the worst. But the worst can never be measured when it’s always yet to
come, and nobody had the insight of today to make experienced decisions back
then. Nobody knew what to do when neighbor turned on neighbor or when families
turned on each other. There was no stopping the infection once it started its
spread.

From
the hospital, it jumped to staff and visitors. People who were otherwise going
about their daily business became suddenly exposed. Days later, like clockwork,
each of the afflicted began to exhibit what would become trademark symptoms of
infection. Incidents of outbreak popped up all over Madison as unsuspecting
hosts brought The Whitening home to families and friends.

In
the beginning, people tried to treat and help each another. The hospitals did
what they could, too. But after the first couple days, it became all too clear
that there wasn’t any help available—those who were infected would stay
infected, until they paled-out and infected everyone around them.

It
became epidemic in under a week.

My
mom, who’d kept her cool about it at first, grew more and more excited as
reports began to show increasing footage of the grim and gore. Her morbid,
enthusiastic responses to the updates were alarming. Frightening. They were
reactions I’d have never expected from her. They were the reactions of someone
else—someone far more sinister and sadistic than I could’ve ever fathomed
her becoming. And yet, there they were, spilling unfiltered from her mouth.

“Serves
them right,” she said. “That’s what they get for what I heard. You see,
Damian,” she turned on the couch to face me in the doorway, “that’s Him sending
his message. Saying he doesn’t approve. You heard about that Officer Stallon,
didn’t you? You heard how he was running around with that teller from the bank?
Serves him right. Serves his family right, too.” She continued uninterrupted as
I gawked with mystified awe from across the living room. “As I heard it, his
wife was extorting her ex-husband for thousands, too, claiming alimony she didn’t
have any right getting. From what I hear, they were both just bad people,
Damian. And He probably saw that and decided they weren’t living the lives they
were meant to be. That’s what Mr. Laverdier says, at least.” She finished and
turned back to the TV.

“What?!”
I shouted. “What are you talking about??? THAT’S fair!!! I pointed to the
newscasters and yelled at the side of her head. “THAT’S what you think’s OK?
Because of THAT!!! You’re CRAZY!!!”

“Damian,”
she calmly turned and said. “Go to your room.”

“But—

“Damian.
Go. To. Your. Room. Now.” Her words were non-negotiable. “This conversation’s
over. You can come back down when you’re ready to see the world for what it
truly is. THIS is a time of judgment, Damian. And YOU need to decide whose side
you’re on.”

I
couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She was giving me an ultimatum in a time
of desperation. At a time when the world was crashing and burning around us,
the only support she could give was to tell me to choose. Choose what? Choose
between rational thought and Mr. Laverdier’s manic brainwashing? Choose between
sense and insanity? I’d been trying for weeks, and I’d already learned there
was no chipping through to her. My fighting only fueled her convictions, and it
separated her more and more from me, while her allegiance to Mr. Laverdier
created a divide that twenty-six years couldn’t between her and my dad.

“You’ve
completely lost it! You’re psycho!” I hurled my words and flew up the stairs to
the sanctuary of my bedroom and away from the bipolarity that’d become my
house.

My
parents had been fighting on and off ever since Mom first went to one of Mr.
Laverdier’s “Gatherings”. The word came out harmonious when she said it, but
his get-togethers were anything but. I’d seen what went on at them once before,
weeks earlier, when Mom started attending and Catee and I took our bikes out to
their Damariscotta encampment. Her dad was gone, of course. My mom was gone,
too, but in an entirely different sense of the word. My dad was home, but
slipping away was as easy as telling him I was staying at a friend’s house.
Consumed with worry over my distancing mom, he barely heard me ask to stay out
for the night. He agreed without question, and it saved me from having to lie
about where I was really headed.

It
was a ways—maybe twenty miles from Catee’s place in Madison—but we
had the whole night to make the trip, and we started as soon as school got out,
one Friday afternoon. With a couple stops, we made it there by 7:30.

Catee
had been to their new place a few times before—soon after her dad’s
revelation at our dinner table—and she remembered the few, simple turns
it took to get back. The house he described during family dinner was true to
form: a small, single-storied place with a connecting dock to an adjacent pond.
The property was littered with pine trees, and the ground underfoot, saturated
with April showers, squished with each of our steps as we moved closer and
closer to a trailer that nestled under overarching limbs at the property’s far
edge.

We
stopped and hunkered behind a grove of trees, beyond reach of the trailer’s
lights that reached out and dissipated to darkness only yards from us.

“Now
what?” I asked, and looked to our bikes at the side of the road, then to the
dozen or so, older model cars that lined the driveway, and finally, to the
trailer that boomed with a single, electrified voice.

It
was Mr. Laverdier—Pastor Dave, as his followers had begun to call
him—and his voice was interrupted only by the screams of worshippers who
reveled in his words. My mom’s was the most dominant one—to me at
least—because hers was the most familiar and the most surprising to hear.
I still haven’t come to terms with it, even now. How could she cave so easily
to his senseless ramblings? She’d always been stronger-spirited and more
self-guided than that; it was almost impossible to wrap my head around the
fanatic she’d become.

“So,
what now?” Catee asked.

“I
just asked you the same thing, dough-head.”

“Don’t
call me dough-head, meat for brains,” she said, with a jab to my arm.

It
was one of few playful exchanges we’d had in a long time, and it came at an odd
moment—a perilous one that commanded greater seriousness than our
bantering afforded. Still, our words were light and organic. Unaffected by the
stimuli around us, they cast a glow all their own in the shadowy recesses of
the property.

“So,
what now?” Catee asked again.

“I
think we need to get closer.”

“Closer
how?”

“Closer
as in, one of us needs to get to one of those windows.” I pointed to the side
of the building.

“Who’s
going?”

“Who
wants to?”

The
cold air hung silent and heavy between us.

“I’ll
go,” she said.

“You
sure?” My response was as much surprised as it was relieved.

“Yeah,
I’m sure. I’ll go,” she confirmed.

“OK.
Five minutes. You listen, and then come right back. After five minutes, I’m
coming in after you,” I warned. “And watch for my texts,” I waved my phone and
added.
 

“Don’t
worry, Damian. It’s covered,” she shot me a wink, crawled forward to a stance,
and moved to a run that stopped at the side of the building.

Crouched
low and with arms stretched to full wingspan, she pressed her back against the
building and craned her ear skyward. Totally playing up the spy element, she
hung there to wait and listen.

I
had no choice but to do the same. On guard and at a distance, I watched the
inside of the trailer for any signs of movement toward its door—anything
that might warrant Catee having to get out of there. I could see the tops of
what must’ve been 15-20 heads—some big, some small—and empty spaces
between them that I could only assume were the seats of the congregation’s
children.

Mr.
Laverdier stood at one end of the trailer, totally visible from where Catee and
I had stationed ourselves, and I only lost intermittent sight of him as he
moved up and down the length of the trailer. He wove in and out of the group
and pounded his fist into his palm with each word of emphasis: “Sinners!”
“Ungrateful!” “Abomination!”

It
was pretty predictable stuff. I’d seen enough documentaries and read enough
about cults to understand the trademark words of brainwashing. People like him
fed off the weak, and they used them to make themselves stronger. Mr.
Laverdier’s god-complex was out there, on display, and even Catee had to accept
it for what we were seeing and hearing. She couldn’t hold onto the slim hope
that our suspicions were untrue any longer. We went to Damariscotta expecting
the worst, and that’s just what we found.

My
mom stood. Heads, seated in folding chairs, completely surrounded her, and her
voice rang out—the first clear and complete self-expression I’d heard
from her since taking up position in the shadows.

“Thank
you, Pastor Dave! Thank you for your mercy! For protecting us from The
Whitening! For helping us to see through the despair, and to find our own,
protective light!” Her arms shot up to the sky and cheers surrounded her,
coming together to form a chant:

“Fight
the White … Find the Light.”

“Fight
the White … Find the Light.”

“FIGHT
THE WHITE … FIND THE LIGHT.”

“FIGHT
THE WHITE! … FIND THE LIGHT!”

“FIGHT
THE WHITE!! … FIND THE LIGHT!!”

Its
steady, pounding, rhythm grew. It rattled the trailer on its foundation, and it
slunk Catee lower and lower against it, further from the window, and closer and
closer to the ground.