The Cursed Man (18 page)

Alister watched the bright day turn black before his very eyes. He searched Anna's eyes for the lie she had just told him. But nothing but compassion could be seen. “I don't have a brother.”

“You were at a friend's house for dinner that day. When you came home and no one answered your calls, you heard noise coming from the upstairs bathroom. When you went up there, you found your father facedown in a pool of blood.”

“Becca.”  

“You saw your mother kneeling over the bathtub, holding something that was struggling against her grasp underneath the water, splashing violently.”

“My wife.” He shook his head and searched for the memory. Death and the curse were all he could find.  “I don't have a brother.”

“What you were reported saying to an investigating officer was that your mother looked at you as if she were serving dinner, holding casual conversation and asking you to come to her. You were smart enough to sense the danger you were in and ran to a neighbor's house.”

“I don't have a brother.”

“When the authorities got to your house, they found your mother had committed suicide.”

“I don't have a brother.”

Anna lifted Alister's chin with a gentle hand and forced his eyes to meet hers. “You did.”

“I didn't.”

Anna didn't respond.

“I left him to die?”

Anna pulled him close and held him strong. “You were just a kid, Alister. You can't blame yourself for your mother's behavior. She was a sick woman that abused you and your brother. Your father tried to keep you from her rage, but he couldn't be there all the time. And those days, it was taboo for outsiders to interfere in anyone's family affairs.”

“What was my brother's name?”

“Brett.”

“Brett,” Alister said. The hum of an electric motor approaching halted his thought. He watched Michael drive by in a golf cart. He was towing a small cart that was covered by a tarp.

 

 

The Last Laugh

 

 

 
The past.
 

 

“I forget your name,” Alister said, and he winced. He watched the muscleman clean the deep cuts on his palms.

“Milos,” he said. “Am I hurting you?”

“No,” Alister said, and he tried to place Milos' accent. “What happened to your friends is what hurts.”

Milos paused then got back to cleaning the cuts.

“You don't have to say anything,” Alister said. “I know what you're feeling because I've had to live it every day.”

Milos continued to work without pause.

“And the hurt I feel will never go away. After you die, there will be another.”

Milos placed white medical tape over the gauze. “I'd prefer we didn't talk about it.”

“There is always another.”

Milos slapped Alister's knee. “There, that should do it.”

“You're Hispanic.”

“What?”

“I'm trying to place your accent.”

“I'm Portuguese.”

“I never would have gotten that.”

Alister squeezed and opened his hand. The pain was intense.

“We should get going,” Milos said. “There are a lot of people I had to put in place to make this work. They're all awaiting your arrival.”

“And they all know what they need to know about me?”

“Yes. Follow me.”

Milos led Alister through hallways lined with pipes and lit with dim pigtail lights that blinked. They walked up two flights of steps and out a steel door that squealed when it opened. Alister took two steps outside and climbed into the back of a parked van.

“Where am I being taken?”

Milos sat in the driver's seat and turned to face Alister. He faced forward and started the van.

“You are being taken to a facility called Sunnyside Capable Care Mental Institution. It's a hospital, and you'll be given a private room similar to solitary confinement in prison. You'll be given three squares a day, and all necessities will be provided.”

Inside the van, the back and side windows were covered with cardboard and duct tape. Alister subconsciously fought the sway of the vehicle while his mind was immersed in a distant possibility. “Maybe I have a chance of beating this thing.”

Milos nodded. “I hope so.” Blood trickled from his nose.  He wiped the blood away and pressed the gas pedal. The engine revved, and the vehicle lurched forward. “It seems this is the beginning of the end for me.”

Alister could see his worry. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

Milos jerked the van to a sudden halt, turned around in his seat and looked at Alister. “I hope to be back in a minute so I can finish this.” He got out of the van. “Wait here.” He slammed the door shut and ran away.

 

 

Out of the front window of the van, Alister watched a man dressed in all white run toward him. He was pushing a wheelchair.

“No,” Alister said. Sorrow settled in his chest and wrapped his heart. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked the curse.

The side door of the van slid open, and the man waited for Alister without word or eye contact.

Alister exited the van and sat in the wheelchair. He was pushed across the parking lot and into the side entrance of a building he had no doubt was the hospital Milos had mentioned.

An entourage of people waited and whispered until Alister neared. As if each move were rehearsed, he was moved through long, bright hallways. The floors were polished to a high gloss, the ceilings and walls were a sterile white and doors with small windows were lined one after the other. Distant, muffled shouts of torment gave the hospital an ominous feel.

They rounded a corner, and there was a woman in a wheelchair speaking to someone that couldn't be seen by others. She was being pushed down the hallway toward Alister as her babble grew louder. A wild, distant stare accompanied her rant, and her focus became fixated on Alister.

“You,” the insane woman said. Her eyes filled with rage, and she pointed a bent finger at him. “You reap what you sow!”

She jumped out of her chair, and before anyone could react, she was on top of Alister. She raked her fingernails across his face and slapped him.

“You wonder why you're being pursued by that invisible demon when you're the one who invited it in?”

Alister tried to protect himself, but the blows kept coming.

“Get her off of me!”

But they had already gotten her back in her wheelchair. Everyone had stopped and looked at him.

“What have you done?” a man with a crooked nose asked Alister. He was dressed in a suit and tie rather than a white doctor's uniform like everyone else.

“I…”

“Why would you?” the man asked. If Alister had gotten to know him, he would have known him as Director Lofton.

“I'm sorry,” Alister said.

“Get him into his room now before he infects someone else.”

“My God,” Alister said, and he looked at all the people that were there. “What have I done?”

“Murderer,” the insane woman said. Her accusation was loud, clear and true.

Alister stood up from the wheelchair and walked to his room. “I'm sorry,” he said as he closed the door. He rested his forehead against the door. “For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry.”

 

 

 

Present day.

 

“I don't understand,” Anna said. Her arms were held wide in question, and her eyes were bright with wonder. “Why in the world would you purposely invite a curse into your life?”

“You're trying to simplify something that is complicated. My having to deal with the death of pets as a child and kneel beside friends and family as they lay in caskets as I got older brought about a search for the meaning of life.”

“Questions like why we are here?”

“Yes.  And my mother's obsession with religion and the nonresponses she would get after years of devout prayer encouraged a change in me that had me searching everywhere but heavenward.”

“So you're angry at God?”

“With each death I had to mourn, my focus became fixated on the idea that something other than God had control over our destinies.”

Alister snickered, shook his head and looked away.

“I'm sure this all sounds so very dramatic to a mental health doctor,” Alister said. “But as hard as my mother would pray, she never got one single request answered, and yet day after day she would get on her knees and thank God for anything and everything that happened in her life.”

“And this angered you. Why?”

“Good or bad, it didn't matter,” Alister said. “She was thankful and submissive, and I could never understand why. I surmised that having to suffer one way or another was what we were designed to endure. Whether from self-persecution or the mean nature of others, it didn't matter. So why in the world should God be given thanks for that?”

“What I don't understand,” Anna said, “is why, when things get tough for someone, do they immediately blame God? I mean do people really think they are so important that they feel God owes them something?”

“If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then He has the ability to change things and make them right, but He doesn't.”

“Then what about free will?”

“Let's not forget about all the disease that can riddle our bodies, tragic accidents that plague our days and random acts of violence we commit against each other because we are made in His likeness.”

Alister stood and started to walk the path toward the roundabout, and Anna followed.

“And one night while I mourned the loss of my grandmother, the idea that death was not just an event that was going to happen but, that it must have been controlled by someone consumed me, and I was compelled to communicate with it. I believed if I could gain its mercy and trust, I could escape its wrath and wouldn't have to suffer the same fate as everyone else I knew. So I prayed to death every night for mercy to spare me from the suffering I had had to witness.”

“Is that what this is about?” Anna's tone was gentle. “Are you afraid to die, Alister?”

Alister rubbed his chin and could feel stubble that had grown back. “I used to be when I was much younger, but not anymore. I would welcome it if there were a way.” Alister stopped at the roundabout and looked down the path that would bring him back to his room. He turned away from that route. “Let us not go back to my room just yet.”

Anna stopped by Alister's side and refrained from making any comment or suggestion.

“I believe it was after the very first time I prayed I had gotten a response. I felt a void fill that had been empty for a long time. And right then I knew I was onto something. I had already gotten a greater response than my mother had, and that proved my prayers were being heard.”

“And you prayed to death?”

“Yes, to the entity that was responsible for it.”

Alister looked down the path that bent alongside the entire length of the hospital. On one side, the enormous building stretched toward the sky, and on the other side, the thick forest blocked out most of the sunlight.

Alister pointed into the distance toward the front of the hospital. “I haven't been down that way. Do you mind taking a walk?”

Anna hesitated. “Let's not roam too far. I've only secured this area of the building.”

“I don't mind.” Alister started on the path and examined his surroundings as he moved onward. “But this is interesting.” He eyed the trees and rubbed his chin.

“What?”

Alister held up a finger and prompted Anna's silence. “You know, the idea that I'd discovered death was an actual living, thinking being filled me with a range of emotions that went from absolute fear to adoration and even to curiosity. To imagine such a being to be real was incomprehensible, and I wondered if it could be labeled as good or evil—good because it ended people's suffering and evil because it was designed to end someone's life.”

“You sound sympathetic to it.”

“Did it perform its task with malice, or did it find remorse within the parameters of its lonely existence?”

Anna clasped her hands behind her back. “This is interesting, but it is nothing more than forged memories to protect you.”

Alister kept his focus on the tree line. “What I really wanted to know was how it would respond to love—even admiration—from someone that was supposed to fear it.”

“Alister?”

“But could you imagine?” Alister asked, his face bright with excitement. “Imagine how I felt when death began to show me favor. I felt as though I'd discovered eternal life—the key to living forever. I celebrated the idea that I was immune to illness, injury and, ultimately, death.”

“Alister.”

“But everything has a price,” Alister said. “Death was jealous and filled with such rage that it wouldn't allow anyone near me. It was as though I had become its possession and no one was permitted around me.”

“Why are you telling me this again?”

“And it wouldn't allow me happiness.”

“I thought we moved past this.”

“And no matter what elaborate plan I tried to create to escape it, it would punish me by lashing out against those around me.”

Alister stopped walking and placed his hands on his hips. “As time went on, my misery only deepened, and the deaths started becoming more frequent and increasingly violent. With all of my family gone, I knew I had to get away to preserve as much life as possible. And that, doctor, is how I ended up here in Sunnyside.”

Alister looked at Anna and searched for the truth. “And suddenly I think I get it.”

“Get what?”

“That you are death.”

Anna stiffened. “You've got to be kidding me.”