The morning that I had dreaded for weeks finally arrived – the day I was transferred from my safe hospital cocoon to the custody of Social Services. Only, in the state of Louisiana, it was called CPS. Child and Protective Services. I’d already heard the horror stories about abuse, drugs and rampant sexual attacks on top of the lack of money to provide for the inmates. Their facilities were nothing less than youth jails, with all the problems that the grown-up ones sported.
All the screaming, pleading, begging and bargaining didn’t change anything. Even Matt was helpless to prevent them from getting their hands on me. The only break I had was the week that I would spend in Rehab; a separate facility that wasn’t part of the hospital. It was twenty minutes from the city and in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t like being that far from help with my father in the wind. No one listened to me or cared what I thought.
I still had problems speaking. You could understand my words, but many of them didn’t make sense in the way I used them. I might say I was hungry, but what you heard was ‘I’m honey.’ At least my writing had improved, and I was able to hold a conversation in almost a normal way, even if it was on paper.
I had trouble recognizing what was happening now, as opposed to yesterday or tomorrow.
My brain felt different. Squeezed. As if it were too tight, too full and yet, it felt curiously blank. Memories intruded at the oddest time and made me unable to interact with the present. So, a lot of time I acted like I wasn’t there with the people around me.
The doctors tried different drugs, yet all they did was make me dopey. Left me vulnerable. They gave me seizure meds because they were afraid that my brain had suffered too much damage and now, I might have epilepsy. Even though I hadn’t had any seizures since the last one over three weeks ago.
Three weeks in the hospital and at least one in the rehab place, more if my progress was slow. That's what I had to look forward to in the weeks ahead. I was determined to spend as little time there as possible.
I could walk – sort of like a zombie’s stagger. It wasn’t because my broken leg interfered; more a case of my balance was shot. I felt like I was falling when I was straight, and straight when I was falling.
Bending down to touch my shoelaces or put on my socks was a nightmare. I followed my head and would have landed on the floor if the therapist hadn’t caught me. All the things wrong with me brought frustration. And anger. I was still so pissed off all the time that I could have murdered someone. That only made me madder, that I couldn’t control my temper. It reminded me of my dad. His nickname because he had anger issues. Temper Neige.
His anger had caused this. Mom running away and taking me. Forcing us to live in a cold, rundown RV. Escaping from one pervert to run into the bus accident which killed my mother and 30 plus others.
He murdered Ballycor. And the other horse. As if they were nothing more than rabbits in his way. He hired bad men to kill me and hurt Matt and Jake. It wasn’t the first time I’d wished him dead nor would it be the last.
I rode in a wheelchair van, tucked nicely into a padded chair with a lap-belt and my sneakers belted to the foot-pedals. I wasn't the only passenger in the big van, there was a cute teenage girl with drug issues, an old lady that had a stroke and a weird dude that was yelling at himself. He was talking as if he was still in the army or something. We weren’t supposed to be restrained, but the girl and the army dude were belted to their gurneys and chairs.
I couldn’t touch the buckles on either my feet or my lap. My only movement was my upper body and that was limited by the effect of the pills forced on me because of my outburst that morning. There were two men in the back with us, plus the driver up front. One of those with us looked as if he was a cop. Off-duty by the lack of uniform he wore.
The air was cold on my face and arms. No one had thought to bring me a jacket, just threw a blanket over me and tucked the ends under my thighs and shoulders. I was able to see only a limited amount; the van had pulled up into the inner garage where the ambulances unloaded into the ER.
The huge automatic drive-through doors were all glass but smoked so no one could see clearly in or out. What I could see were cars parked on both sides of the streets under bright lights. Across from the doors was a gray brick building, square and ugly. It was connected by an overhead pedestrian pathway that was dimly visible to me.
I did not recognize the hospital; I was too young when I was born nor had my mother ever taken me there. He had never allowed mom to go for medical help after one of his beatings, he wanted no paper trail or photos to exist of the abuse. He was afraid that she could use it to force him out of the Sheriff’s Department. I knew that if she had tried, he would have killed her in a rage. Being a Sheriff’s Deputy, being one of the police defined who he was.
I eyeballed the two in the back with us – one was a member of the transport team. The other was clearly a cop in plain everyday clothes with a gun tucked under his jacket. He had incredibly black eyes that I couldn't see into and was afraid to look at too closely. He was either there for me or to keep the addict and vet from going berserk.
Since all of us were seat and lap-belted in, drugged into stupidity, I doubted that any of us could offer any hint of trouble. I was pretty sure that we couldn't even spell trouble.
The wheelchair van didn't stop at all. But I was only going about twenty minutes from the hospital before reaching the rehab center. So, when the van drove past the half-hour mark and was well into the hour, I wasn't the only one getting perturbed. The drug addict girl and the veteran both grew agitated, starting to curse and pulling at their belts. Shaking and tugging at their wheelchairs, they were really upset. Both had been placed in handcuffs and ankle shackles, limiting their movements more than my own.
"Wherefore?" I grunted and was shocked when the guard's eyes flared totally black at me. Evil eyes. Scary. He sat next to the paramedic who acted as if nothing was wrong.
Come to think of it, all three of them favored each other – something in the shape of the head and eyes. They reminded me of...Clovis and Twin.
"Yore daddy says hi, boy. But, don't you fret, you-all will get to see him real soon."
After he said that, he pulled out a knife that was only slightly smaller than a machete which he used to nearly decapitate every patient in the van. But me.
Blood arced on the walls, the ceiling and us before slowing to fall on the floor an inch thick before it sank into the wheel-wells. Leaving behind a Hansel and Gretel trail on the pavement.
The smell of iron and copper was strong. So strong that it made me puke. All down the front of my borrowed blanket. I wasn't sure which smell was worse; the blood or the puke. Neither seemed to bother the pair in the back with me. All three of us were covered in blood, painted with it like a mad mural. The feeling as it dried on my skin, my face and hands was enough to send my mind spiraling in terror. Too much. I had lived through too much in the last few months and my mind couldn't hold onto sanity any more.
I vaguely heard their voices receding from my awareness. The feeling of a human hand coated in wet, sticky blood touching my eyelids was the last sensation I was capable of identifying.
*****
The van entered the ramp onto the Interstate and drove for only a few miles before exiting on the next exit, a feeder route that headed for the area known as Texarkana. Where the states of Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana shared a common border. Great pine forests covered a vast section of the three states and what wasn't wooded was covered with swamps. It was the huge pine plantations that had made this corner of the US rich beyond belief. Americans obsessed with building depended on the third and fourth generation of regrowth in the huge pines that rivaled if not equaled the Northwest's forest giant corporations.
Easier to reach, less mileage to transport, these trees grew faster in the warmth of the south than the red pines and firs of Washington, Oregon and the Cascades. Only Arizona competed with the Southern states on lumber.
Taking a well-hidden dirt road concealed behind a stand of bushes, the van crept down a potholed torture of a path for over a mile before reaching a circular turnaround. Huge logging trucks with grappling overhead arms, bulldozers and excavators were parked in various nooks among the trees. Only one was running, a massive bulldozer that was the size of a semi. Its blade was digging a trench through swampy mud deep enough to hide the dozer up to its cab.
Without a word, the driver of the van pulled up, turned around and backed toward the ditch. The two in the back exited as the driver came around to join them. The man with the black, soulless eyes undid the restraints on the boy who had not blinked, spoken or moved in over an hour.
Hoisting the child over his shoulder, he carried the boy away from the bloody murder scene. All three moved out of the way as the dozer operator shoved the entire vehicle into the ditch. It took ten minutes before there was no sign of the van or its corpses. Even the lingering odor of blood was gone.
The driver looked at the boy hanging over the other man's shoulder. "He say anything?"
"Not a word. Hasn't moved, blinked, spoke or farted in the last hour. Weird."
"Hmmn." He lifted the kid's head by the blondish hairs and flicked a fingernail at his eyelid. The eye did not react at all, not even in an involuntary blink, a reflex that was almost impossible to prevent. Startled, he grabbed the slight body away from the taller man and checked the vitals. He found a slight pulse, very slow and the kid was breathing less than ten a minute.
"Penlight?"
The other EMT handed over his and both men watched as the boy's eyes barely dilated when flashed with the bright light.
"What's wrong with him? He dying?" the black-eyed man asked curiously.
"He's gone catatonic," the driver said slowly. He shrugged as if he had no concerns. "Temper didn't say he had to be sane, just alive."
"He's gone nuts?"
"Naw. Probably just a temp thing. Sometimes, kids can shut down their minds when bad things happen. He doesn't see, hear or feel anything. He can't see us. You could cut him, and he won't move. Sometimes, not even if you killed him would it wake him. That's cool. We won't have to drug him or worry about restraints, screaming for help or trying to escape."
He stared at the silent child. "He's small, pretty, too. He'll make a cute girl and since no one is looking for a female, you ought to be in the clear." He looked up at his cousin. "You headed back to the station or the cabin?"
The EMT nodded, walking toward an old Jeep parked near the grappling truck that was unloaded. A flat spot indicated where a pile of forty-foot logs had rested. The driver stepped away from the black-eyed man and turned to speak, keeping the bulk of the truck between them.
"Tell Temper that we're even. I don't want to see him, hear from him or ever hear his name again, Lynch."
The man named Lynch nodded flatly as he was handed the keys to a Volvo station wagon. Silver, beat to hell and covered in mud, it still didn't seem to be comfortable parked in the woods next to the Jeep. He waited until the two cousins had driven off before he walked over to the silver and muddy wagon where he opened the back and slid the quiet child onto the unrolled sleeping bag. Lynch zip-tied the kid's ankles together and then his wrists. Once he had those secured, he zip-tied the boy's ankles to a steel ring welded to the cargo area's floor. His shoulders were pinned to another set of rings with larger ties that went around the boy's upper arms. Cris was effectively belted in, as safe as if he were in a safety approved child's car seat.
Looking around one last time, Lynch watched as the bulldozer's operator trundled off into the woods, the sound of the diesel engine heard long after it was out of sight. He slid into the front seat, started the Volvo and drove off down the dirt track off to the right of the original way in. The new track was slightly more traveled, less spine-jarring and led him back onto the Interstate, miles from the pair's exit, from their original entry point and in a whole other state.