The Forsaken (25 page)

Kevin sat rigidly. His eyes roamed the oppressed, black room. He had guessed right. Dark, damp basement. Haunting figurines loomed over him, carved with downcast stares. They watched. They did nothing to save him. Hidden in the shadows and helpless, he waited for the plastic angels to swoop down and unleash hell.

“Where am I?”

“I don’t think where you are is as important as why you are here. For now, call it home. Home is where the heart is.” Morgan paused, his eyes a white pasty jelly that moved back and forth inside grieving sockets.

“Don’t stare, rat. It isn’t polite.”

“It’s just, your eyes, they’re red. And they’re moving. Like they’re alive. Like something’s trapped inside ’em.”

“What would you know about being trapped?” Morgan said, snapping his fingers. Then, gathering composure once more, he added, “What would you say to me if I were to tell you that your brother set you up?”

Kevin squirmed, the discomfort creeping back.

“You’re innocent, aren’t you? You didn’t kill Crystal. We both know you never could. You…loved her, right?”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

“You have every right to feel betrayed. I know exactly how it feels, Kevin. But this is part of the sport. Enemy hits us, knocks us down, but we must get back up again and strike more fiercely in return.”

“You’re the enemy. You kidnapped me!”

Morgan looked shocked. “From prison. Or have you forgotten my mercy already? I freed you from that cell where Jude left you to rot.”

“You killed those men back at The Pearl. I know what you are!”

“Really?” Morgan recoiled. “And what is that?”

“A cold-blooded murderer.”

Morgan’s applause danced off the walls. He seemed impressed, a sick kind of happy. “Bravo. I suppose it’s time to lock me up, then? Is that right? But what if I told you I’m not the one you should hate? What if I showed you the truth about how your beloved Crystal died?”

Kevin became alert immediately.

“Now the little rat wants to know the truth, doesn’t he?” Morgan gently pressed his palm to Kevin’s temple. Instantly, a slew of images came rushing in. Pictures of Jude stormed through, pictures of him searching Kevin’s cluttered apartment for the precise blade. Making love to Crystal in Kevin’s bed then stabbing her several times until her eyes rolled back.

“Oh God!” Kevin cried. “It can’t be. Get out of my freaking head!”

“It’s so hard to imagine the ones we love embraced by their darker side. To think, your own flesh and blood could be capable of such menace.”

“Jude, how could you?” Kevin sobbed, tears running down his cheeks.

Morgan yanked a blade from his back pocket and cut through the bandages around Kevin’s wrists and ankles. “I have saved you from your brother, make no mistake. He is the monster. But you’re safe here, with me.”

“It can’t be true. How’d you do it? How’d you trick me?”

“No trick,” Morgan answered, showing Kevin his sleeves as magicians often do.

“My brother cares about me. He’ll take care of me.”

“He doesn’t care about anyone. I should know. I trusted him with my life. Those lost in the crosshairs of your brother’s hatred meet…unfavorable ends, I’m afraid.”

“Why should I believe any of this? I don’t even know you.”

“Because deep down, you have searched, and you know that what my powers have shown you is the truth. Let him go.”

“You tried to kill my brother, didn’t you? He told me about it.”

“And you believed his lies, did you? There are two sides to every story, Kevin.”

“You’ll try to kill me too,” Kevin said, reaching for Morgan’s throat. “I know the truth already, and it isn’t you.”

“Go on. Kill me, if you think it’ll change him. If you think it’ll give you your life back.” Morgan struggled to get more words out. “But…he’s a…brute! You know this. Don’t be taken by him. He tried to…kill…me!”

Kevin thought for a long moment. He didn’t want to process this, any of it. He wanted to go home, to a home where Crystal would be waiting for him with a bowl of popcorn and a bad movie. He wanted to escape in her, and then to one day take her away from the world their lives had created.

“Your brother took the only woman you’ve ever loved away from you.”

“I never loved her. She was just a slut I paid when I got lonely,” Kevin cried, knowing his false words would freeze, frail, in the cold air.

“No, she…wasn’t. No matter how much you wish for that to be so, it isn’t. She was more to you than that.”

Releasing Morgan, Kevin fell to his seat.

“Quite a stronghold you’ve got there,” Morgan said, rubbing his neck. “By the way, these are yours. I have your money too. It’s safe upstairs.”

Kevin held out his hand as a pack of cigarettes fell inside. He lit up immediately, not caring about the cash. The cigarette caught between his teeth glowed with a bright, orange light.

“I won’t lie to you the way he did.”

“Then tell me what I’m doing here.”

“I’m going to give your life meaning, Kevin. I’m going to give you purpose.” Suddenly, Morgan was gone. How did he manage to disappear like vapor? Where did he go?

In no time, a light bloomed in the still darkness within a small, hidden section of the basement. Kevin wasn’t sure entirely what he saw glowing in there, but he was certain there were chains fashioned to the walls of that secret area. Chains and clamps formed for small, human hands.

He could taste the dampness on his tongue, and he swore something upstairs was leaking. The sound of a faucet draining its weak life drip after drip. What he hadn’t heard was the starting of an engine or the driving by of someone in a neighboring house. How long had it been since he’d listened for any signs of life outside these walls?

What if Morgan was right? But why would Jude rip Crystal away from him? Why would he send him to a prison cell to rot?

He always wanted Dad’s approval. Never cared about you, not really. Not more than a few hundred bucks whenever the guilt got to him.
But the one truth in all of it remained: The past couldn’t get cleaned up that easily. A lifetime full of mistakes and jealousy was a lot of blood to wash off.

34

IT WAS STARTLING HOW
little things had changed, how little things ever change. He’d run away so many years ago, but he’d returned, like he knew he would one day. After all, it was home. You only get one.

The hallways still had that same pineapple-colored wallpaper Morgan had told Stanley he hated when they purchased the rotting edifice three decades earlier.

“I don’t know why you’re putting this crappy wallpaper up. It’s just gonna look ridiculous the second it dries.”

“Shut your filthy mouth, boy! That’ll be the day a little rat like you tells his old man what looks good and what doesn’t.”

Morgan could so vividly remember that day. He recalled the conversation word for word. That moment, and moments just like it. How much it hurt when Stanley struck him. How he’d memorized the patterns of each knuckle as it dragged across his body. The reasons multiplied like the bruises. Morgan eventually realized that Stanley just wanted a punching bag.

“Stanley, be kinder to him, won’t you? He didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Just doesn’t know when to keep his opinions to himself, God help us all.” His mom’s attempt at a noble defense was short lived, but it spared him a beating, at least for now. The bruises on his arms and ankles would have some time to heal.

It wasn’t until later that night that he felt guilty for not taking it
like a man
. The beating. The pleasure Stanley took from it. The flood of curses that always followed. The touching he never got used to. All of it. But tonight Mom was the victim.

Her cries, more like whimpers, seemed to jump off the hallway walls. Every time the bed creaked it was obvious. Stanley’s harsh form of love spilling into her, her resistance slow and soon overtaken. The sounds didn’t lie, even if Mom was efficient at hiding
the marks on her skin or the shame scribbled across her eyes. A part of him was okay with Stanley’s sick indulgences now and again, happy it wasn’t him.

Stanley argued that her butting into conversations meant solely for a father and son were what got her all the nice extras; what the menace enjoyed. But Morgan could see her scratching at her backside some days; he didn’t have to be an adult to know that whatever was done to her the night before had left its scars. He could also see the wrinkles getting comfortable inside her bloodless cheeks; how her neck seemed to sag; the terrible omens that age and atonement were coming for her.

During the mornings and afternoons, he was allowed out. There were some days that the light still didn’t feel quite right. Afternoons that seemed to carry a weight his young body wasn’t prepared to wear. Night was always too close.

During those moments when permission was granted to roam certain rooms of the house, Morgan often enjoyed having a bowl of cereal or a few slices of French toast. Mom usually removed the mold on the bread before making it. She tolerated him a bit more than Stanley.

“Like your breakfast?” Stanley asked.

Morgan barely nodded, his focus completely on his meal. He was hungry.

“I asked you a simple question, rat.” A tormented chuckle escaped the dragon’s mouth.

“She makes it good…Dad,” Morgan forced out. He loathed the idea of using such an esteemed title in reference to worthless scum like his old man. He shrank in his seat, shaking as he cut another square and dipped the flowery piece into syrup. He sometimes wondered what it’d be like to trade a piece of French toast for his old man’s head. To dip Stanley’s bulbous cranium into a filthy pool of blood syrup with a skewer attached to the sloppy pink meat beneath his scalp.

“Finish up, Morgan. Your daddy’s in a mood,” came Mom’s request.

Morgan shoveled the remaining sugary toast into his mouth. “I hate it when you call him Daddy,” he said with food in his mouth. He hoped Stanley was too drunk to pick up on it.

He was wrong.

“What’s that you’re saying, rat?” He put down his bottle, his cigarette, and lowered his unclean suspenders. “I can’t hear you.” Stanley shoved the plate aside and grabbed Morgan by the mouth. His crusty nails carved into the young boy’s cheeks, drawing some blood. Chunks of undigested material splattered onto the table.

“I said I
love
you, Dad.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Guess my ears don’t need to be checked after all, Theresa.”

Mom wiped her hands on her apron and used up a smile.

“Looks like the boy’s finished. Not hungry anymore, are you?”

Morgan detested the black linings in Stanley’s teeth, the parts that suffocated the dull rust blanketing a grimy surface. He didn’t mean to count the filthy lines or to name them, but gradually he had.

“Go play with your toys, rat.”

Morgan exited the room, leaving some of the food and syrup stuck to the table. He always waited until he was around the corner to sob, even farther away before he gave up tears. But he listened to Stanley carry on in a drunken rant, spilling curse after curse with the word
rat
in between. No, it wasn’t a word at all. It was a name. It was
his
name. Morgan. Rat. Made no difference. Names could be changed or altered, their meanings given new life or stripped naked and abandoned. Names were like children. Children needed to be loved. But Morgan didn’t feel loved. He wondered if he could feel anything other than hate.

Morgan noticed new sets of goose bumps running down his arms. He was shivering, but he wasn’t cold. After Stanley finished his vile sermon, Morgan heard his heavy footsteps draw closer to Mom. She was doing the dishes. The way she saw it, it was safest just to keep busy, regardless of the task. Avoid her husband, or the human being buried alive beneath the creature he had turned into.

The old, wooden floors betrayed nearly every location in the house, especially the kitchen. Noise echoed in there. That’s how Morgan could hear it from almost twenty feet away, hiding in the hallway, holding his breath and hoping to pass out. As he swallowed, he shook his head, listening to Stanley burp then move in slyly for a kiss.

He wanted to scream
bastard!
To pledge a thousand oaths against the dragon. But he was just a kid. What could he do? And she was just a mother. What could
she
do?

She could’ve protected me. She could’ve taken me away from all of this.

Yeah, that was it. The scathing thoughts multiplied. She was to blame, same as Stanley. That foul, inebriated monster. It never mattered how much Morgan shivered in the dark. He wouldn’t run to her side; he wouldn’t help her. Perhaps she had it coming the same as he had it coming. Perhaps God hated her too and got a thrill from watching them squirm.

The shuffle of Stanley’s pants sliding to the floor made Morgan’s flesh crawl. He could hear the moans lifting into the air from the other room. Stanley was enjoying himself. There was a sound of loose change clicking against the floorboards when Stanley’s pants fell that left Morgan anxious. He figured it was far too much change to carry around. Far too much.