The Minotauress

'Don't you own any decent clothes?' Dean asked, smirking at Ajax' holey jeans, beat loafers, and the stained, Wermacht-gray jacket with rips down the inner sleeves,

'What's wrong with my clothes?' Ajax asked, truly dismayed.

'Never mind.'

'But thanks for bringing me along. I need a vacation.'

'This isn't a vacation, Ajax. My father might be dying. Something really strange is happening in town, and considering the really strange things that have been happening to me, lately, I need you.'

'Consider me your personal psycho-therapist,' Ajax assured. Then he rubbed his face in aggravation. 'Since when can't you smoke on planes?'

'Since about fifteen years ago.'

'Fascists. Some free country. I'll bet Bill Clinton smokes on Air Force One while some subjugated and thoroughly exploited female White House aide smokes his—'

'That's enough, Ajax.'

The three-hour flight passed in what seemed minutes, along with the beautiful landscapes below. Dean's eyes kept dragging back to the window. It wasn't so much the landscapes he was seeing as much as it was his past. He wondered what else he'd be seeing once he got—

Home, he thought.

They landed in Sioux Falls, rented a 4x4, and several hours later were pulling into the visitor's lot at DeSmet General Hospital.

««—»»

The heart-monitor beeped all too slowly. When he stepped into the wanly lit room and parted the privacy curtain, Dean's heart slowed to a rate less than the monitor's when he looked down. The figure on the bed looked dead already.

'Dad?' he choked out the single, simple word. Indeed, Dean thought that his father must be dead, until he remembered the heart monitor. Gray whiskers speckled his father's chin; long grayer hair sprawled over the pillow. Long lines from dangling IV bags drooped to a variety of needles sunk into his bone-thin arm. The worst sight, though, were the great swathes of bandages plastered across the entirety of Jake Lohan's chest.

Dean stared for a long time.

Gored, he thought. That's what the ward nurse had told him. 'They're saying it was a mad bull out in the woods,' she'd clarified. 'Your daddy was the only survivor of the entire shooting party. Combination of initial blood-loss and shock's what put him in the coma. God forbid, if your daddy dies... no one'll ever know what really happened out there.'

The rest of the information was just as sketchy. His father and several other local men had gone out to the vicinity where over a dozen children's bodies had been found, around Stoddard's Mill. They'd gone out there with guns and were all crack shots. All their ammunition had been expended yet no 'wild bull' had been recovered. Just a bunch of dead men and one man—Dean's father—clinging to life.

The whole thing was crazy. Dean couldn't imagine it. The nurse had also told him that his father had not yet surfaced from the coma, and that there was a fair chance he never would.

He's dying, Dean reasoned, a tear in his eye. He's as good as dead now.

Dean didn't know how long he stood there looking. 'Dad? Dad?' he kept saying over and over again. 'It's me, it's Dean. I'm home,' but the only reply was the faltering beep of the monitor.

'I'm sorry but visiting hours are over,' the nurse came in and said. 'Try to wrap it up in a few minutes, okay, hon? You can come back tomorrow at eleven.' Then she'd left as quickly as she'd arrived, kind enough to give him a few more minutes.

'It's me, Dad,' he repeated to the still, sheeted figure. 'I'm home.'

Nothing. His last minutes ticked by, then Dean turned to leave.

'You're home,' a voice rattled behind him.

'Dad!' Dean rushed to the bed, hovering, gripping his father's hand. 'I'm here! Let me get the nurse! You're going to be all right!'

'No time.' Jake Lohan's mouth barely moved as the words leaked out. 'Something's here—'

'I know, they told me. Stoddard's Mill—'

'No!' the old man cracked in a gust. He winced in pain. 'Behind Stoddard's Mill... '

Behind? Dean thought. 'But, Dad, there's nothing behind the mill except—' Then he caught himself, remembering his childhood. Dean and his friends, as kids, had regularly escaped behind Stoddard's Mill to flip through their stash of Playboy's and chew tobacco and talk about girls. Yes, Dean and Kit and Darrell and Boner. And come to think of it—

The old gypsum mine, he remembered now. More memories flashed back. The old mine had been closed for longer than he could remember, but no one had ever boarded up the gaping entry to the main shaft.

The mouth of the old gypsum mine had been the secret place where they'd illegally dumped all of the ranch's rendering bilge. They'd even dumped whole dead cattle down there when they could get away with it.

'The mine,' Dean said to his father.

Jake Lohan squeezed his son's hand in acknowledgment, nodding feebly. Then the parchment-dry voice creaked on: 'My boy. My fine strong son finally come back to the roots of his blood.'

'Never mind that, Dad,' Dean whispered fiercely. 'What happened? You've got to tell me what happened out there!'

'Evil,' his father croaked like a frog. 'That's what's happenin' out there, son. I've a mind to tell ya to catch the next plane and git your ass out'a here.'

'I can't do that, Dad. Not while you're like this. And what did you say about—'

A pained cough ripped from Jake Lohan's bandaged chest. 'It's blammed fuckin' evil is what' I'm sayin', son. I know it is... 'cos I saw it.'

Dean leaned closer. 'What, Dad? What did you see?'