Epilogue
Everyone had gone and Lucas walked alone up Demoray. Orion passed him going in the opposite direction, spasming, twitching, clicking his tongue, snapping his fingers, “click… snap… click… snap…
He turned and watched Orion walk away in the opposite direction. When he turned back he found himself face-to-face with Lucy, his neighbor’s – Mr. Johnson’s – mastiff. She flashed her teeth and barked and lunged at him. His heart dropped into his stomach and he took an involuntary step backward. His heart beat so fast he thought it would burst. Lucy’s growl lowered, her eyes bulged and her pupils shrank to little black specks. Maybe it was the fact that this wasn’t any more real than the nightmare he’d just endured. Maybe it was the memory of how his father had dealt with the beast a year earlier flashing before him. Whatever it was, it was sufficient. His spine straightened and his chest expanded as he inhaled all of that power. He could almost taste the rank Katatonian atmosphere as he did so. His eyes took the form of cold black stones that looked straight through her, blasting the confidence right out of her. He raised his right foot and got ready to stomp on her head, but before he could, she whimpered and ran off.
Now he knew it wasn’t all a dream. It couldn’t be. He thought of what he’d just heard the Channel Seven News anchor say about the Samos victims being cured, and then it hit him, and he took off running toward home. “Dad!”
* * *
Jon’s dad drove with Jon toward the hardware store on Jenkins Avenue. A teal Volkswagen bus parked on the shoulder came into view as they rounded a corner and he saw a woman pulling a tire iron from the trunk. He slowed and pulled up alongside her. “Flat tire?”
She turned and hunched over the passenger window where Jon sat.”Afraid so.” Her hair wisped in the wind as she spoke and she looked up toward the cloud-covered sky, revealing the crucifix and the words ‘Child of God’ tattooed over her throat. “When it rains…”
Thunder clapped. The sight of the woman’s tattoo sent what felt like a jolt of electricity through Jon, and frantic images of the same woman caught in a fray beside him and Paul in some mildew-ridden shack surged up.
Jon’s dad pulled off the road ahead of her and got out. Jon followed.
“Do you have a spare?” asked Jon’s dad.
Jon caught the scent of illegal herbs coming from the Volkswagen.
“I think so.” She walked him to her trunk, impulsively panning the horizons every few seconds as if expecting someone – or something.
“Everything okay?” he asked her.
“Maybe not,” she said worriedly, looking up the road.
Jon and his dad shot each other confused glances.
A police car emerged from around the corner and it slowed and eased its way up to them. The tattooed woman bolted and hopped the wire fence into the adjacent pasture, and ran toward the trees at the opposite end. The police car then sped up and skidded to a halt behind the Volkswagen, and a bald, thickset cop erupted from it and chased after her.
Jon’s dad watched curiously as the cop, already out of breath, hefted himself over the fence to come crashing down on the other side, and then pick himself up and bound toward the trees with his belly undulating to his gallop.
The wind blew harder and the clouds darkened. The sight of the cop’s face brought more frantic images searing through Jon, like strangely suppressed, electric fragments of memories. He looked around and saw that everything was different. He looked at the Volkswagen. It was not as it was before. He saw it not only as it was at that moment, but how it was at other moments, and how it came to be as it was at that moment. The chain of events that led to the aroma emanating from it was plain when he focused on it. Some slight scratch marks and smudges on the hood of the cop’s car then caught his attention. He examined them closer and could make out the precise angles at which the struggling woman’s manicured nails gouged through the white paint. He could imagine the exact pressure required for her lipstick and mascara to rub off as it did when she was held facedown against it.
A terrible scream rang out from the pasture and Jon and his dad peered out over the fence and saw that the cop had stumbled and caught his leg in something.
“Help,” screamed the cop.
Lightning flashed and illuminated a massive, blackening thunderhead moving in over them.
“Zhang Tao!” said Jon’s dad as he climbed the fence. “I’m going to help him. Wait here!”
Jon looked back at the cop’s car and noticed more of the scratch marks near the trunk. The low voltage spell seemed to be wearing off, and he made one last effort to deduce the antecedent event. As he glanced over the slight dent and chips in the paint on the edge of the trunk’s lid, for a split second, he could see how they got there – he could imagine how it was slammed down onto the no-longer-struggling woman’s wrist, colliding with her wrist watch with enough force to chip the paint as it did. He blinked and the spell was gone. He looked around and saw that everything was back to normal – everything except for the possibility of there being a body it the trunk of the cop’s car. Then he remembered. He looked back over the fence and saw that his dad was already half way to where the injured cop laid bellowing and twisting and turning. “Dad!”
Thunder pounded and echoed about them, and it began to rain. His dad stopped midfield and looked back. “What is it?!”
“Dad! You should see this!”
“Just wait!”
“No! I mean… you should see it now!”
“Don’t even think about going back over there,” shrieked the cop.
Jon’s dad turned toward the cop and saw that he had his pistol drawn and aimed at him.
“Now come over here and get this thing off my leg.”
Jon’s dad slowly put his hands up, took a few steps toward the cop, and then turned back and looked at Jon, who was now watching from half way up a fence post he’d climbed.
* * *
Paul and Rachel sat opposite each other at the dinner table. Rachel beamed and hummed a tune as she ate. Paul’s appetite seemed to have doubled overnight. Their mother smiled as she watched them eat. Neither Paul nor Rachel could remember the last time they’d seen her smile. Their dad looked at them with suspicion. “What’re you so happy about?” he huffed at Rachel.
“I know why she’s so happy,” said Paul, teasingly, with a ridiculous smile.
Rachel stuck her tongue out at Paul. “Shut-up, geek.”
Their dad glared at them. “Well… would you please stop that incessant humming!” he said to Rachel.
Rachel looked at him. Something was different. She wasn’t afraid of him. Not anymore.
“What’re you staring at?” he said to her.
She kept staring. A vaguely familiar image of two slain nurses bleeding out in a parking lot flashed before her eyes and she flinched.
“I said, what are you staring at?!”
Paul, too, felt different. Instead of feeling afraid, he just felt angry. Something stung on his left hand and a red lump – which he could have sworn he’d seen before – suddenly flared up between his thumb and index finger. His muscles twitched and burned and his ears rang as he became intensely aware of his surroundings.
Their dad got up and went over to Rachel. She didn’t take her eyes from him. He grabbed her by her hair, pulled back on it, and shouted into her face. “I said, what the fuck are you staring at?!”
Paul stood and glared defiantly at his dad, who still had Rachel’s hair in his grip.
“Now you’re gonna get it, too!” said his dad.
Paul couldn’t make out what he was saying. The ringing in his head was too jarring. It seemed to be coming from the empty wine bottle on the table, like it were a missing puzzle piece to the puzzle that was the situation. The demand grew louder and fiercer until there was no refusing it, and Paul picked it up by its neck and loosed it into his dad’s forehead. His dad stumbled backward into the wall. Their mother exploded out of her chair screaming, and launched herself into their dad, kicking and punching him until he was barely moving.
She grabbed him by his arms and tried pulling him toward the front door, but he was too heavy. Paul and Rachel came to her aid, each taking an arm, and dragged him out the front door onto the driveway. Paul’s strength suddenly gave out and he collapsed. When he picked himself up he noticed that the ringing in his ears was gone, and so was the burning red lump on his hand.
The sound of thunder boomed in the distance, and they looked and could see the massive dark thunderhead looming over the country.
Their dad moaned and turned beneath them, and they watched him in awkward silence.
