Calamity

“Anthony, please. She was severely depressed, suicidal.”

“Why do you carry so much damn medicine with you? Doctor’s don’t do that—they write prescriptions.”

“I carry what I need.”

Anthony stepped closer. “No pharmacist would fill all the prescriptions you’d have to give her. Where do you even get your medicine? Are you even a real doctor?”

Where had Anthony first heard of Dr. Carroll? Someone at work had mentioned him, a few others joining in to agree that Dr. Carroll was a good psychiatrist. Gives you what you want, someone remarked. What you want. Not what you need, but what you want. Anthony hadn’t cared about the distinction last year when Brendan was failing several subjects or when the baby died and Chloe started talking to the empty place setting at the dinner table.

“You get some sick jollies from drugging people?” Anthony asked, stepping closer, tire iron at hip level.

Dr. Carroll took a deep breath. “You aren’t going to attack me, Anthony, so why don’t you put that down?”

“Were you happy when my daughter died? Did you find yourself elated because you knew Chloe’d need more drugs? Were you secretly smiling at her funeral?” He stepped closer, just a few feet away.

“Anthony, you need to put that down and let me give you something to help you rest.” For the first time, Dr. Carroll’s voice adopted a nervous tweak, an anxious tremor.

Chloe stirred again, her whole body enacting in slow motion some form of hand-to-hand combat.

“You see my eyes, doc?”

He didn’t respond, just stared. Doc’s hands were on his bag, probably thought he could use it as a weapon.

“These eyes. What do you see?”

“Anthony, you need to—”

“You see my pain, my misery, my fucking anguish?! Do you see that doctor? DO YOU?!”

“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, his high-pitched voice that of a scared child.

“You think these eyes give a shit about anything you have to say?”

“No, but—”

“I want my wife back. I want my daughter back. I want my damned baby back! Can you do that? Can any of your fucking pills do that?!”

“No.”

The Giant Jesus was watching over him, his drooping eyes staring down as Anthony asserted himself and sought the empowerment of God. This was what He wanted. This was what had to happen.

The Logical Voice hollered and begged and pleaded but its voice was scratched and strained and resembled the mumbling nonsense emanating from his wife.

Anthony raised the tire iron over his head.

Dr. Carroll let go of the doctor’s bag and tried to back up, pawing at the sheets. He hit the headboard but still tried to push himself away, hoping the wall would vanish and he’d tumble outside onto the grass. One of his hands landed on Chloe’s stomach. She grunted. The doctor didn’t notice. Anthony stepped closer, striking distance. The doc’s hand clamped down on Chloe’s breast and she shrieked in her sleep, swatting at his arm.

Anthony swung.

The thwank of metal against bone and then the hollow clank of bone against the headboard.

* * *

Sometime later, Anthony tried to wash off the blood that had splattered on his hand but the soap did nothing and he managed to stain two washcloths. Neither Chloe or Stephanie had awoke. The good doc had given them something heavy indeed. The poor doc had gotten some medicine of his own, unfortunately, and was not going to wake. Ever.

What have I done?

* * *

Slowly, the realization that he had killed a man began to take root. Even so, it wasn’t yet something tangible, something that made sense; it was only something that had happened and now had to be handled.

Dr. Carroll’s body lay in a clump next to the bed. One of the smacks from the crowbar had knocked him off the bed and ripped open his face. It had been that first hit, however, that had done most of the damage. That full- swing collision had cracked something and sprayed blood across the bed linens.

He couldn’t grieve over this body, couldn’t grieve over his own loss of humanity—he simply had to get everything cleaned up before Chloe or Stephanie drifted out of their slumbers.

He’d grieve later, he told himself. Probably in prison. The Logical Voice chiming in there.

Anthony grabbed the three body towels from the bathroom. He was wrapping them around Dr. Carroll’s face and was thinking how he had to change the bed sheets too when he thought of his sons. They were still in the house. The boys had grown accustomed to an irregular life these past few weeks, might not have even thought twice about the shouting match or even the sounds of violence. Still, they might be worried. He had to talk to them, figure out a way to get the body past them.

“Dad?”

Brendan stood in the open doorway, hand still on the knob. His mouth hung open a bit but he did not appear as shocked as he should have been. Because he’s in shock.

There were many ways to handle this. There were all types of avenues of explanations Anthony could attempt—he could even just tell his son to get the hell back in his room and not come out. This was Adult Business, after all. But Anthony couldn’t do that. All he could do was slump back against the bed, the fresh blood almost touching him, and resign himself to guilt.

“I … did something horrible,” he said. “Can you call the police? I don’t have the energy.”

When Brendan didn’t respond for several seconds, Anthony turned to him, expecting tears or the dawning realization of what horror had transpired. Instead, Brendan had entered several feet into the room. His mouth had closed, his facial features tightened.

“No,” he said. “I won’t call the police.”

“Daddy did something … terrible and …”

“Don’t worry, Dad. There’s someone we can call.”

9

Tucked among the pages of Brendan’s tale of Detective Bo Blast and the Darkman was the list of various ways to sacrifice someone to the gods. The book had described the ancient ritual in detail, but heart-removal had been out of Brendan’s capability. Brendan had been capable of murder, however. Like son, like father.

Before his revelation last Saturday (Number 47—drop bowling ball onto car), Brendan had crafted a diverse list that included: number 4—burn person’s house down; number 7—bury person alive; number 32—kick person off ladder; and number 39—beat person with hammer.

Standing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, Brendan thought that’s what Dad had done: beat Dr. Carroll to death with a hammer. He didn’t notice the tire iron with pieces of skin and hair stuck to it in bloody patches until he walked closer and assured Dad that everything would be alright.

Dad looked at him with eyes so filled with pain and confusion that Brendan nearly started crying. All he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was for his family to be happy. That went for both Dad and him. Dad was a good man who had been pushed too far. Brendan was a strange boy (he had accepted that long ago) but he cared about nothing so much as he did his family. In that way, he and dad were almost identical. Dad would do anything to make everything right. But Brendan knew how to do that.

“What do you mean, someone else?” Dad asked.

Brendan removed the business card from his pocket, where he always kept it since Dwayne had scribbled his cell number on it and said that if he needed anything, anything, to call. Brendan had already called once about Sasha Karras and Dwayne would be around in a few hours to explain how she was to be