On a third video the tiny Foster backed away from the screaming crowd and ducked out a fire exit.
Tonight he’d drink Jack Daniel’s and surf the dark web one final time in search of his child.
At times he’d hated her for running away, even in a game of tag. If she hadn’t dashed into an elevator, regardless of her intentions, she’d still be here. So perhaps the funeral had accomplished its purpose. It had forced him to express his sorrow and his anger, and now both were gone. He’d overcome his addiction to her.
This indifference, it wasn’t numbness because numbness implied the opposite: that some feeling would return. This had no opposite.
An email chimed in his inbox. A link from an address he didn’t recognize. From a secret pervert or not, this was an ordinary link to a movie pirated on YouTube.
Foster was old enough to realize that no problem was entirely his own. What kept him awake at night also kept a million others up. The video was an excellent example. A fake high school cheerleader stumbled through a fake forest in implied darkness, barefoot and wearing only a lace negligee. The fake blood smeared on her hands and face was laughable. Generations had watched so much fake death. Beautifully lighted, badly acted, underscored with music. Now nobody could believe in the reality of death.
After people had been fed so many lies they’ll never swallow anything as the truth.
Millions had watched the scantily clad actor push her way through briars and branches as a shadowy figure carrying a butcher knife stalked her. Foster wasn’t the only person not buying it. He lifted the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and put it to his lips. Drinking, yes, but not drunk.
No, this new indifference wasn’t from whiskey. This was a complete inability to believe in anything.
The cheerleader struggled with her negligee snagged on something. Snagged on a thorn.
Her stalker lifted the knife so that the long blade caught the moonlight. Shining clean.
The cheerleader raised her hands to ward off the attack. She gasped.
The knife slashed down clean, but rose again smeared with blood. Stabbed downward bloody, but arose dripping.
In profile, the cheerleader’s face tilted back, outlined against the full moon. Her glossy mouth moved. Her lips not matching the scream. The overdubbing was so bad, but the scream made up for it. The shrill voice of a terrified girl shrieked, “Help me! Daddy, please, no! Help me!”
The words seemed to hang in the air like so much smoke. If the cheerleader escaped, Foster didn’t notice. If she died, he couldn’t say.
It wasn’t Lucinda’s voice until it was.
He tucked his chin and vomited across his keyboard.
Part Two:
Tape Bleed
When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed.
Book of Joshua 5:20
Jimmy’s skin smelled like paint. So much so that when she’d wrap her hand around his dick and jerk it up and down—like shaking a can of spray paint—she’d half expect to hear something rattle inside. Ketoacidosis, the smell probably was, his body was that kind of lean. But Mitzi suspected years of vandalism had seeped into his pores, giving him body odor like so much late-night graffiti.
Who could guess what soup of chemicals the Rohypnol was interacting with in his bloodstream? Mitzi pulled open a file drawer and dug up some aerosol NARCAN given to her by Dr. Adamah for such emergencies. One whiff and Jimmy jolted eyes-wide, gasping awake.
He stammered, “Did I overdose?” His yellow eyes marveled at her. “You saved my life!”
Mitzi leaned in to adjust an RCA Type 77-DX ribbon mic, saying, “Don’t thank me just yet.”
The grave yawned, open and empty, at Foster’s feet. Barely visible in the dark, tombstones stood like innumerable witnesses radiating outward from this spot. Each stone, granite or marble, a chunk hacked from the whole, impossibly big planet and hammered down to a uniform size and shape and made to carry a conventional message.
A framework was still in place atop the hole. Whether to cover the grave or to eventually lower Lucinda’s casket, Foster couldn’t tell.
The nighttime smell of cut grass took him back to childhood, while the left-behind bouquets, fresh and plastic alike, were without scent. In-ground sprinklers jetted ghosts of gray water into the still air.
A crunching reached him. Footsteps along a gravel path. Then a figure, a black outline, moved against the background of the blue night. A voice hissed, “Foster?” A male voice. And Robb came forward clutching an edge of each stone he passed like a blind man negotiating a strange room.
Instead of calling a lawyer, Foster had once more called his group leader. Hadn’t Robb talked him out of that beef at the airport? Not that even Robb could disappear a weapons charge so easily. On the web, after the cheerleader movie had ended, a pop-up teaser had announced, “Bereaved father threatens mass shooting at daughter’s funeral.”
According to the web, Foster was dodging an arrest warrant. His cell phone pinged his every step, so he’d taken out the battery. The last thing he needed was jail time. Not after he’d heard Lucinda. Her voice, not his imagination. Not a dream. Her shout had shocked him sober, and he needed help. He needed some help.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
Robb said, “I should’ve called the police.”
Foster lowered his voice. “Some amazing magic is at work here, my friend.”
Robb looked at his wristwatch. “It’s late.”
Standing there at the grave intended for his daughter, Foster pressed his case. He insisted that none of this had happened by accident. Just the other day he’d been back to the airport to collect the suitcase that had flown to Denver without him. The little girl at the airport had been
