I hurt. There was pain all over my body so sharp that I couldn’t actually define what hurt the most. I used my hands to search around me and felt the seams of something stitched together underneath me. Vibration soothed me, I was moving but it did not feel like the movement of a horse or a travois pulled behind one. It felt like the upholstery of a car – not cloth but vinyl. I touched carpet below me, and my leg brushed against the hard metal of a door. Pain stabbed me again. I bit my lips to hold it in, afraid to let the driver know that I was awake. I was in the back seat of someone’s car.
I moved slightly, and my hand brushed against a hard mound of something that smelled musty and earthy. As if it had been buried in the earth for years. Rotten leather. Dead leaves and soil shared the back seat with me. I could run it through my fingers.
There was music playing around me. Country with a pop beat. A single that I had not heard before but then, I had not heard much music for the last year. I moaned so softly that I barely heard it, yet it was enough to cause the driver to stomp the brakes and make the vehicle veer to the right. Other heavier cars passed us and shook ours, the louder whistle telling me that a semi-had blown past.
He shut off the engine and I heard the ticking as the engine cooled. Felt rather than saw the person leaning over the back seat to stare at me. That stare had the weight of a blow, I didn’t need to see it to feel it.
“So, you’re still with me, boy?” My father’s voice seemed cheerful. Eager, even.
“You shot me,” I said in disbelief.
“With a rubber bullet. Enough to knock you down and out. Kinda pissed you made me shoot the horse, though. He cost me $3500 but since you’re worth $150 million and this here gold, you’re my son and I’m your Dad, it’s all mine and all good. I don’t begrudge you none for running off, making me hunt you down or shooting the horse.”
“You shot me!” I repeated. “You shot your own son!”
“Well, come on now, Cris. You and that bitch of a momma run off and left me to cope with all them lies about abuse and domestic violence. What did you expect me to do? At least the bitch is dead.”
I struggled to get up and attack him for the awful things he said about mom. For his treatment toward me. I couldn’t move, the pain left me nauseous and light-headed.
“Your leg’s broke. Compound, I tink. And you have pneumonia. You gonna die if you don’t get to a hospital,” he said. His big hand rested on the back of the front seat. He laid his chin on his hand, his face shadowed by the brim of the black wool Stetson that he favored. I still wasn’t sure if I was in his truck or a car.
“You gonna let me die? For the money?”
“You just disappear, no body to find and I got to wait seven years before I can collect. No, you got to die, boy. By natural causes or what proves to be natural. Your body has to be found. I figure to wait until sepsis sets in and you’re too far gone to save. Then, I’ll ‘find’ you and bring you in with tears and teeth-gnashing sorrow. My boy. My poor little boy.”
“Nobody will believe you. That man following me is a New York City detective. He knows about you. He’ll stop you,” I protested bitterly. “He won’t stop until he proves you killed me.” I started to cry, remembering how he had shot Ballycor.
“You killed my horse!” I sobbed. “You did it again. Just like you killed me before! I hate you!”
“How do you know about him? You left the school before he ever got there. You two haven’t met up, so how can you know about him?”
“I wish you were dead!” I shouted. “Crispin was right about you!”
When I said that name, he tensed up as if he knew it. In some deep, instinctual way.
“Crispin? How do you know that name? How do you know about Crispin?” he demanded and grabbed me by the collar. He jerked me off the seat and over, I screamed in pain and terror as my leg shifted. I saw the bone jut through my jeans and blood spurted. My back throbbed, and stabbing shots ran through my ribs and chest. I couldn’t breathe.
“Daddy!” I whispered, and he shook me as my hands scraped at his knuckles. He twisted my shirt until I was choking, the air trapped in my throat with nowhere to escape.
His face swelled in my vision, his eyes turned black and the edges of my sight leached into formless gray swirls. It took only seconds before I succumbed; less time than it had taken Crispin to die.
He met me in that beige void and this time, I could touch him. I could feel the solidness of his body whereas before; my hands had passed through his form. He looked very sad and there were tears running down his face, making tracks in the dirt that he wore as a second skin.
“I’m dead,” I stated, and he nodded in agreement. “He killed me again. My father did this. Johannsen. They’re one and the same. Does this mean that the detective will kill himself? Will this keep happening over and over? How do I get this to stop? Can I?”
He did not answer me. At least not that I could hear him. His mouth moved, and he seemed to be speaking, but I could not hear his words. His face expressed alarm at the same time as my chest exploded with the sensation of fire. Fire burning its way outward from the center of my chest – an exploding star. I fell, unable to breathe, my mouth gaping like a guppy I once had that had fallen out of its bowl.
I had stuck my wet fingers into a light socket once and the feeling I was experiencing was a thousand times worse than that. My back arched in the bland colored dust, only my head and heels in contact as the spasms wracked my body. My surroundings faded from my vision. I no longer saw Crispin’s face. Just an older man’s – dark-haired and dark-eyed wearing a worried frown as he lifted two paddles off my bare chest.
To my horror, he bent over me, his lips pressed against mine. I thought that he was attempting to kiss me until he blew into my mouth, holding my nostrils pinched shut. My chest rose and fell. A heavy thump followed the fifth breath and I heard a mechanical female voice.
It said, “charging. Place the contacts on the terminals and check for vital signs. Pulse and respirations. If no breath sounds, give thirty quick thrusts and two breaths.”
There were a few seconds delay and the female voice pronounced that the unit was charged back up to 300 joules.
“Patient shows signs of tachycardia. Proceed with CPR.”
The man placed both his palms on my chest and pushed down. My ribs crackled and broke, yet I did not feel it. His dark eyes plunged into my own and I was afraid.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. Once more, I entered the darkness where nothing reached me. I floated. No memories, no anxiety, just the vague sense that I existed at all.
I opened my eyes. Finally, fearfully. Not thinking about what I would find when I turned my head to look around. The last thing I remembered was my father’s face looking down at me in anger and that made my stomach clench in fear.
I felt…warm. Not hot, or sweaty warm or weak. Comfortable and warm. As I moved my legs, I was aware of crisp sheets on top of me and beneath me. My legs ached dully and were heavy. My fingers explored and felt the rough surface of a cast on one that went from my crotch to my ankle. Tons of weight on the leg and made it hard to move. The rest of me seemed to have gotten off lightly; I had a brace made of elastic and plastic around my belly and back. A soft collar forced my chin up and there were bandages on both arms. An IV port was in the bend of my right elbow and I could see the pole holding both fluids and antibiotics on the right side of the bed.
Above me on the wall was a TV on mute, showing pictures of kiddie cartoons. I snorted. I hadn’t watched them even when I was a baby. The air smelled funny – of iodine and alcohol. There was a three-panel window on one side, looking out on a scene that I knew by heart. I could see the scattered remains of the city and the rebuilding of New Orleans. Not much had changed since Katrina.
I was in a hospital – probably Little Sisters of Charity, in downtown New Orleans and my father had brought me there because he knew many of the personnel. He could get away with anything there, sweet talking his way through the regulations because he was a Deputy and a local.
Trying to move was nearly impossible. The cast on my leg weighed more than I could shift, an anchor pinning me to the bed. My groping hand found the call button and I stabbed the one for the nurse. Five minutes and an older lady in blue scrubs entered the room. She smiled at me with big white teeth.
“How are you doing, Cris?” she asked in that soft, Cajun accent.
“Who brought me here?” I returned and was surprised that my voice was a mere whisper.
“Your daddy. He’s been sitting with you for days, wouldn’t leave your side until he was sure that you were going to make it,” she answered. She picked up my wrist. “I’m Kitty. I’ll be your nurse tonight. If you need anything, just push the call button. Can I get you anything? Ice water? A snack?”
“How long have I been here? What happened to me?”
“Your father brought you in three days ago. You were running a high fever of 105˚. Convulsing and had a bad infection in your blood called sepsis. A broken tibia, fibula and green-stick fracture of the femur. He said that you were camping, fell off your horse and picked up salmonella from drinking the water. Your daddy said your heart stopped before he could bring you home. He did CPR twice until his friends in the Sheriff’s Department sent a helicopter for you.”
“You can’t let him take me,” I said desperately. “He’s going to kill me!”
She laughed. “That’s just nonsense. If he wanted you dead, why would he do CPR? And bring you back? Bring you to the hospital? He said you’d say crazy things because of the fever. You just rest, and you’ll feel much better in the morning.”
She patted me briskly on the arm. “If you’re in any pain, let me know. I can give you something to make it go away.”
“I want out of here!” I protested. “Don’t let him in! Don’t leave me alone with him!”
“Calm down, Cris,” she said as I started to thrash in the bed. I couldn’t move very far but I was able to tear the IV loose, knock over the pole, the bed tray and kick at her. I banged the cast into the rails of the bed and tried to break it.
She called for help and two big dudes in scrubs rushed in. They held me down as she ordered a shot. She called it a B52. I screamed back at them, but I was helpless as she slid another catheter into my arm and the shot into the port. In seconds, a warm sensation went up my arm, made my face flush and my ears burn. My body felt warm and sluggish. I melted like ice cream left out on a sweltering day, my body sinking into the mattress. I couldn’t fight it, so I gave in.
Dreams ruled my awareness as I vaguely knew that I was being moved from one place to another. It felt as if it were dreams but it could have been part of a drug induced memory. I was never really awake and had no will to fight back or try to come out of the daze. In my mind I had given up and was resigned to let my father do what he wanted with me. No one knew that I was alive or knew where I was. Crispin was only a ghost and he couldn’t help me, either.
Time passed. My life drifted on hold. I was almost sure that he came to visit me. At times, I felt afraid to the core – as if he sat by my side and whispered things in my ears. Evil, horrible things. How he was going to kill me and take control of my Trust Fund. All the things he was going to do with all that money. He told me that he had stashed the gold I’d found and was selling it little by little, so he would not leave a trace on the market. So much gold at once would drive the price down.
He brought his own lawyers in to verify that I was alive and his son so that he could put forth his claim on the Trust Fund. I knew as soon as he had control, I would disappear. Be killed in some accidental way, leaving him the sole owner of the 150 million. I was resigned to it.