The Sorrow King (14 page)

Twelve

The Suicide Virus

Steven finally wandered out of his room. His bladder felt swollen and distended. After taking care of business in the bathroom, he went out into the house, entering the kitchen to make some coffee, hoping it would help clear his mind a little. It seemed like things were too full in there. He half-wished he was a teen alcoholic or pothead so he could just pacify himself with his chosen addiction and crawl into his bed, riding the wave of some calming music streaming through his head. But, alas, he couldn’t. Sad, really, he couldn’t even cultivate some addiction to take himself away from his brain.

As the coffee began brewing, he noticed the light on the answering machine flashing. He pressed the “PLAY MESSAGES” button, hoping it would be Elise, thinking it
was
possible she’d looked his name up in the phonebook. It wasn’t her.

“
Hey, Steven, it’s me, Connor, also known as ‘Dad.’” He grimaced at the machine, not knowing why he had become so angry at his father. “I just wanted to say I was sorry for yelling at you this morning. I know you can take care of yourself. I just worry sometimes. That’s not so bad, is it? Anyway, if you need to talk about anything, give me a call here at work. I’ll probably be pretty late. Bye.”

He hit the erase button. His dad’s passive aggressiveness was beginning to irritate him. Of course he would be working late. Whenever times became the least bit rough, Connor Wrigley worked late. That was the way it had always been. When his parents had first separated and Connor had Steven on the weekends, he worked most of them, shunting Steven off to his grandparents’ house in Glowers Hook, letting them ease Steven into his new way of life. When his mother had died, Connor had taken a month off work but, after that, it was back to twelve hours a day, seven days a week, Steven spending many hours at home alone, wondering why his dad didn’t want to spend more time with him.

He poured a cup of coffee, turning on the television and hoping to zone out. But even the TV, that great hypnotist, would not allow him to do this. On one of the news stations littering cable, Steven was surprised to hear the news people talking about Gethsemane. Even more strange that it was a national news show. Not quite the top story, it was a segue before going to sports or weather, the only news people seemed to care about.

The square-jawed newscaster rearranged the muscles in his face, denoting levity and said, “And finally, in our across-the-nation report, we turn our eyes toward Gethsemane, Ohio, a small farming town suffering from what locals call ‘The Suicide Virus.’

“
In just eight months, Gethsemane has been home to five suicides, all by young adults under the age of eighteen. Local officials say they are investigating this disturbing trend but claim there are not any suspects in what appear to be straight suicides with no signs of foul play. As of now, the most likely cause, says Sheriff Barney Elkton, is some kind of suicide pact, even though the suicides have had virtually no contact with one another and very little in common, except the town of Gethsemane.”

The newscaster looked away, turning toward his much younger female co-anchor to his left. She shook her head and said, “That is certainly a tragedy.”

The man tucked his chin into his neck, saying, “Hopefully, Gethsemane has seen its last.”

The camera moved closer to the woman and she said, “And when we come back we’ll find out where our travel expert will be going on summer vacation.”

Probably not Gethsemane, Ohio
, Steven thought, flipping the stations until he came to a home improvement show, feeling he was unlikely to see anything too depressing there.

So, Elise had been right. Someone else had killed him or herself. They hadn’t mentioned the latest suicide by name. Maybe that was out of respect for the family. Steven looked out the window more than at the television. He hoped it didn’t rain. The rain made the walks far less enjoyable, although he figured it wouldn’t be so bad now that it was getting warmer. He wasn’t planning on being there when his dad came home from work. Steven was afraid, with the latest suicide, his dad might not even let him leave the house. Maybe he thought Steven was part of whatever suicide pact the newscaster had mentioned.

He knew the business about a suicide pact wasn’t true. If anything, the kids were killing themselves because they lived in Ohio. But he didn’t really believe that, either. Whatever it was, he felt like something was
happening
to cause the suicides. And, try as he might to force the thought out of his head, he couldn’t help but feel involved in the suicides. He tried to dismiss the idea as pure guilt—like he was feeling guilty for being part of the judgmental society that pushed these people to their deaths, or feeling guilty for being so helpless. But he knew it went deeper than that.

His thoughts continually drifted back to the notebook. His writings, rantings, or whatever they were, fit into it somehow. But he didn’t even know where to begin. Other than the fourth suicide’s name and maybe the water tower there didn’t seem to be any connection at all. And while the story he had written dealt with suicide, he was pretty sure Gethsemane did not boast anyone named Oletta Goom. He sat there in the chair, thinking thoughts like that and hoping he wasn’t going insane himself.

Perhaps that was how the suicide virus began. The potential suicide is filled with all sorts of useless information and some vague sense of purpose so they struggle to make sense of all that information, the struggle eventually leading to some form of quiet madness before, finally, suicide.

The names of the suicides.

The names of the clouds.

The water tower.

Obscura.

The story.

Oletta Goom.

The Jackthief.

Did the Jackthief have anything to do with the suicides?

He was reluctant to think there was some supernatural monster out there, driving people to commit suicide. That seemed far-fetched. Then again, five suicides in a town the size of Gethsemane seemed far-fetched also.

Why would it be up to him to figure out anything to do with the suicides, anyway? Maybe he was just suffering from a delusion of grandeur. He couldn’t think of any way for him to prevent people he hardly knew from killing themselves.

He really didn’t want to think about any of that. The only thing he wanted to think about was Elise. Thinking about her made him happy. Crippled by his other thoughts, he found himself especially grateful for Elise. If it were not for the hope of seeing her again, the hope of possibly being involved with her, he didn’t think he could deal with all the other stuff. Or, possibly, she was the final piece to this puzzle. Maybe all he had to do was spit this mental bile at her and she would be able to put it in its proper receptacle.

He didn’t see how that was possible but he felt, in order to deny that possibility completely, was to deny the fact there was some connection between him and her and the suicides. But that associated her with all the bad stuff and he wanted to keep her clean. He wanted to keep her out of the cesspool of his mind. He wanted her to be somehow separate from the death and depression.

It told me I would be dead in two years. It was Mom, telling me she knew I was going to die.

Turning off the lights in Bookhaven, those words surged into Connor’s head, sending a chill down his spine.

Nonsense
, he thought, locking the door and heading across the eerily empty parking lot of the strip mall to his car.

Sliding into the seat, he turned the key and, as always, was greatly relieved and slightly surprised the car actually started. He turned the radio to an NPR station and tried not to think about what his brain was telling him. It was trying to seduce him. Just like it had seduced him when he found out Alison was fucking one of her coworkers and it was time for him to move out.

Different circumstances but the process was the same.

His mind had seduced him then, taken him in and nearly killed him, just like it was trying to do now. Then, his mind had told him it was all his fault. It had forced him to replay every argument, every fight he and Alison had ever had, and most of the time it had tricked him into believing she was right. His mind was what had kept him from being a normal person, from rising above the concept of right and wrong to see that the world was really just so many shades of gray. How could he find someone else to love him? How could he rise out of self-despair when he was such a loathsome person? Surely, he was responsible for the dissolution of his family.

Somewhere in his period of self-hating, he had become essentially a non-person. Perhaps it was his lack of self that had kept him alive.

There were reasons all of this suicide stuff bothered him, try as he might to convince himself otherwise.

During those bleak years, he had thought about the act. He had thought about it because, ever since he was a child, he had wanted perfection. And, given his smarts and his health, there wasn’t any reason he shouldn’t have achieved it. A perfect wife, a perfect job that gave him plenty of free time to read and write, a perfect house with perfect children in perfectly good health. Before meeting Alison, all of that could have been his. It took him until recently to realize he would have had to have a good deal of maturity to equip him with the foresight he would have needed. His scenarios of perfection had blown up in his face, triggering some dark room in the back of his psyche. A room that was really more like prison, allowing only light that could squeeze its way in between the impenetrable bars.

He had even, at one point, acquired the means to do away with himself. A bottle of sleeping pills. He kept them in the medicine cabinet. There were nights when he opened up the mirrored door, yanking his own image out of sight, and stared longingly at the amber bottle. Sometimes he went so far as to pull the bottle out and jostle it in his hand as though it were a loaded gun, little bullets clacking inside it.

“
Why not?” was the question he asked himself. He didn’t seem to take any pleasure from the world around him. And, on the rare occasion he did wake up in a good mood, it would be promptly squashed by a harsh day at work or a phone call from Alison, there to remind him what a fuck-up he was.

So, if not for himself, then who did he live for?

Steven.

It was Steven who had kept Connor alive. How could he kill himself? How could he poison Steven with a life of latent guilt? It wasn’t that Steven didn’t bring him joy—nothing brought him joy at that point in his life.

And then there were the people at work . . . He couldn’t just leave them like that. He did too much. He was there all the time. The place would shrivel up and die without him. So, if it meant staying alive to make other people’s lives easier then that was the way it would have to be. If it were up to him, he would have greedily swallowed the pills and waited to see what the big mystery was.

Driving along the state route, the sun already set, the air just warm enough to have the window cracked, he knew all that stuff wasn’t necessarily true, anyway. There had never really been a time when he didn’t take a small amount of pleasure from the world around him. There was just a time when the bad things far outweighed the good things and his brain had wanted to kill him. He had still woken up in the morning, glad to be alive. He had still found a certain pitying amusement at the absurdity of the human race. Each week, he had found himself eager to see Steven’s somber little face and smell his kid smell as he tucked him in bed at night, after a bath and before a story. And there was always the hope a perfect woman would come along and lay the final balm on the burns of his past.

Closing in on Gethsemane, he realized his priorities had not changed much. He had grown comfortable with the quiet humor that came from being locked inside himself, staring out at everyone else.

Still, there was something that unnerved him. He had not been this scared and unsure of anything in so many years. This time, he found he was more afraid for Steven than he was for himself, but he couldn’t come up with a justifiable reason for his fears . . . Other than the suicides and the thought they might find Steven one day soon.

But he couldn’t stalk the boy. He couldn’t take away the simple pleasures Steven got out of life just because he was paranoid. He supposed it was normal for a parent to be paranoid and cursed himself for not being more active with Steven before Alison’s death. Maybe if he had been more of a parent then he wouldn’t find it so crippling now. The only thing to do, he guessed, was to act like an alcoholic and take it one day at a time.

He pulled into Green Heights, his eyes drawn to the water tower, looming over the closely packed ranch houses. The tower reminded him of something but he didn’t have any idea what it was.

Something flashed across the street in front of him and he slammed on the brakes.

He jumped out of the car, thinking maybe he had hit someone’s dog or something. He hadn’t felt an impact but when he was distracted like he had been, he didn’t notice anything happening around him.

He looked under the car.

Nothing there.

Something brushed his shoulder and he caught a quick movement off to his right. For a second he thought it was a person but there wasn’t anyone there.