Calamity

you wonder.”

“What?”

“Does He even exist?”

Was this some kind of test? “God?”

Dwayne smiled, turned to him. “They say the purest believers are always children.”

He was leaning toward Brendan just the way the cop in the painting was leaning toward that boy. In fact, the two had the same broad back and wide nose, same short, neat haircuts. Was Ellis the other guy then, the one with the strange smile?

“I found God many years ago,” Dwayne said. “I was lost, so lost that it is even a wonder I was able to find my way. I was a bad person, did some horrible things. All because I hated myself so much. I abused my wife. Beat her viciously many, many times.”

Brendan couldn’t say anything. What was Dwayne’s point?

“Ellis saved me. He walked right into my house one night while I was throwing my wife around and he stopped me. I had a kitchen chair, like one of these, held over my head. I was going to crush her with it, her and our unborn baby.

“Ellis told me that God had other plans for me. I told him to go fuck himself. And you know what he did? He walked right up to me, put his hands on my arm and said, ‘God loves you so much that even if you kill this woman, He will still accept you with open arms.’ That just took out all the aggression. I went limp, dropped the chair, almost collapsed. Ellis told me that one day I’d be glad that a child existed somewhere with my DNA.”

Dwayne’s eyes drifted back to the painting. “I knew he was right. So, I went with him and that’s been how it is ever since. Ellis took me to God and now I am His servant. It took something so horrible and dark to get me to see where I needed to go. It wasn’t easy, don’t mistake that. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever endured. Taking your father’s beating was a slap on the wrist in comparison to the self-flagellation of my soul. Finding God is not rainbows and lollipops—it’s anguish and brutality.”

Brendan swallowed something hard, steeled himself. “I am ready. I want to serve God.”

Dwayne nodded slowly. “I’ve done some terrible things since Ellis found me. But I’ve done them all in God’s name. Can you understand that?”

The bowling ball slipping from his fingers … “Yes,” he said.

A smile crept up at the corners of his mouth. “You are such a special boy. I’ve told you all this not to scare you, but to reassure you. I learned, son, that in the darkest corners of our minds there is a gateway to the illumination of the soul. Don’t fear the darkness; it can lead you to wonderful places.”

Something in Brendan’s mind popped. His brain flooded with the screaming, warning sirens of coursing blood. He should run, get to Dad, and they should both run and never look back. Something wrong was happening here, something possibly very, terribly wrong. Blaring in his mind—Trouble! Danger!—but the specifics of the message were unclear. What had triggered the panic? He sensed the answer but it was blocked, hidden behind a foggy veil. Then, from somewhere—a dark corner, perhaps—the veil lifted and the answer came.

“That’s exactly what Dr. Carroll said to me,” Brendan said very slowly as if expecting his words to cause an explosion. “About the darkest corners of our minds.”

Nodding again, Ellis said, “The doc is fond of that saying. I think it’s originally Ellis’s, though. Dr. Carroll was a troubled man, but not without his usefulness.”

Dwayne paused. Seconds passed slowly.

“If you are ready and sure,” Dwayne said, “there is much I have to share with you. It starts with Dr. Carroll and it ends with Debra Karras.”

As Dwayne spoke, Brendan could hardly believe his ears. God really did work in mysterious ways.

13

Sasha was more receptive than Tyler dared hope. Of course, he concealed his real motivation, but as long as he got into her house, the rest would take care of itself. Paul drove him to Trailer Trash Town. Tyler told Paul to be ready for his text message, which would signal his part in this plan, and then Tyler took his grocery bag of supplies and walked up Sasha’s driveway, past her mangled car, and onto her vandalized front steps.

She opened the door before he could knock. She had managed to scrub off much, though not all, of the spray paint. Black blotches speckled her face like cancerous freckles. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and dark with moisture. Her hands were hidden in the sleeves of the sweatshirt.

“I don’t know what to say …” That wasn’t true, of course; he had thought for a while about what to say and decided that saying he didn’t know what to say was, in fact, the best thing to say.

“Let’s go for a drive,” she said.

* * *

They returned to the scene of the crime. The sun was still a few hours off from its dive behind the mountain across the lake on which houses sprouted like warts. The giant monster was sleeping now, waiting for nightfall before it would awake and open all of its hundreds of glowing eyes. It had seen what happened here last week. With all those eyes, it had bore witness to a crime that had, in turn, led to events that brought him right back to this gravel pull-off area by the lake. Life sometimes had a cyclical quality to it. Maybe it was karma or Fate, but it didn’t matter. He was here again and again he was staring at her breasts. The sweatshirt was loose, which gave little indication of her figure, but the way she slumped back in the driver’s seat pulled the sweatshirt just snug enough to reveal some of her feminine figure.

Tyler kicked the bag he had brought and glass bottles clattered against each other. Sasha glanced toward his feet but said nothing. She was waiting for him to make the first move. He wanted to yell at her and call her a crazy cunt-trap of a bitch, but he had to stay calm. The success of his plan depended on it.

Most of her windshield had been destroyed with one swing of a bat in Tyler’s hands. Small pieces of the breakaway glass lay between the seats in the cup holder or in the footwells, but Sasha had cleared away most of the debris. A few jagged pieces like shark teeth jutted up from the bottom of the windshield frame. He could reach out and impale his hand on one of them. Or Sasha’s throat.

“I’m sorry about your sister. Everyone says she was really cool.”

“Thanks.”

Sasha pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt, pushed her arms between her legs. She tucked her face into the crook of one boney shoulder. “This has been such a fucked-up week.”

“I know.”

“How’s your hand?”

Tyler hadn’t forgotten the seared arrowhead imprint on his hand but he had pushed it to the back of his mind. He appreciated it anew and it began to throb with a dull, hot heat. “I’ll be okay.” He should apologize for her face but he couldn’t push himself over that cliff. Paul had gone way overboard but still, this whole mess could be traced back to Sasha.

Or her breasts.

Or your dick.

“My mother’s gone really nuts this time. She’s … scary.”

“You’re not safe.”

Her wide eyes peered over her shoulder at him like the eyes of a fawn into the barrel of a shotgun. “It’s not her fault.”

“You don’t have to put up with her. She sliced her wrists once, what if she does it again? Tries to cut you?”

She said nothing, only stared with those owl eyes.

“I told you about my mother, how she’s drugged all the time. It’s not the best thing for her but it keeps her from crying all the time, talking to nothing, or hitting herself, like she did after the baby died. She may be drugged up but she is alive and safe.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can do the same for your mother.”

“I’m not drugging her.”

“She’s already drugged with that witchcraft shit.”

After a pause, Sasha asked if he no longer believed a curse had been cast on his family.