Chapter 26
Honk! Honk! Honk!
As Laif drove the Mercedes north on Chapman Avenue, Sharon surveyed the driver of a Jeep beside them. His inner eyebrows curled toward flared nostrils, upper lip stretched tight and cracking, bottom lip protruding to expose canines. He began yelling something behind her closed window, which she thankfully couldn’t comprehend.
She asked, “Most people have old anger in them?”
“Hidden.”
“But most people?” She didn’t want it to be true.
“No child can be raised perfectly, so to some degree every child gets hurt. Many parents just expect their child to get over it. But each hurt needs to be mourned, regardless how insignificant it seems to the parent. The hurt can be as innocent as missing your son’s baseball games. Or more obvious, such an untimely family death or poverty. It can be as personal as child abuse. It doesn’t matter. If people don’t mourn it, it stays. Then anger covers hurt as an attempt to protect.”
“So why don’t we see the anger more often?”
“It can be seen if you know where to look. It has only two directions to take, at others or the host. Anger at others you have seen. Anger at self is insidious.”
She looked around and estimated about forty people in nearby cars. She couldn’t think—didn’t want to think—what would happen if everyone were to flip out in a rage at her.
“The difference people can make is to be aware. But this is very hard because of denial. Most people aren’t self-aware. But if they can achieve and maintain awareness, they can mourn the hurt as it comes in waves.”
“Awareness,” Sharon repeated, thoughtful.
“Ever awareness, not just once or twice. That’s what heals. Then the waves grow smaller as you age. Awareness also prevents others from using your hurt to manipulate you.”
She agreed, “In therapy, the therapist tries to get the client to become aware.”
“With interminable awareness, no dark mist can pry anger loose from its mooring deep within your soul. Otherwise, the mist can make the old anger appear from the present—from the person right next to you.”
They were gaining on a blond woman’s spotless cherry-red Corvette. When the blond caught sight of Sharon, the woman’s nose contorted into a wrinkled pig-like snout. She spun her steering wheel hard to the left, almost hitting Laif’s car.
Sharon checked that her seat belt was engaged.
The blond’s blue eyes glistened with hatred as she continued to swerve her expensive red bullet at them.
“We have to get to a deserted street.” He pushed the brakes and moved to the left lane—away from the Corvette—but caught the red light.
Horns blared from at least three other cars as they stopped before the crosswalk.
She felt exposed. She never realized anger was bound inside so many people. Sure, there was the occasional psychopath in LA who would pull out a gun and shoot you if you cut him off, but who would expect a normal person to behave crazy?
She worried about encountering one of those psychopath drivers today. Their anger would turn catastrophic. Dealing with all these irrational people made her feel insecure and powerless.
The Mercedes lurched forward causing her head to lash back, then bounce off the headrest. She turned to Laif as if he held an answer. He was looking in the rear view mirror. She spun and saw a gray van behind them reversing then accelerating forward, and Sharon braced herself for the second impact. Tingles tattooed her spine. The van reversed again and drove forward, faster, crashing and drilling sharp pains into Sharon’s back, pushing them further into the intersection with opposing traffic speeding in both directions.
“This is ridiculous. We need to get out of here.”
Laif looked for an opening, then ran the red light, resulting in a number of murderous screams and blaring horns around them. A Hummer on the opposite side of the street also ran the light to head straight at them, the driver evidently lacking concern for his own life.
She screamed as Laif turned the Mercedes away at the last second, avoiding a head-on impact. The Hummer plowed through a sign in the center divider, then continued down the street.
Moving out of the intersection onto a residential street, Laif sped, where traffic was much lighter. Heading down the street a couple of blocks, making several turns without incident, they ended up in a cul-de-sac. No traffic there. At 3:00 p.m., many people were still working. The only person around was a gardener raking leaves two houses down.
“The mist has probably dissipated by now.” He sounded rattled. His breathing was labored, and his eyes shifted around warily.
Narrowly having just escaped death in the Mercedes, she felt claustrophobic inside the car. She rolled down her window half-way to get fresh air. “So how does a person fight dark mists?”
“I’ve never dealt with them, only heard about them. But my guess is that you can’t fight them while they’re inside another person. You can only fight them when they’re inside you.”
“That’s great,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“The best way to fight evil is to fight it within yourself. Once you get the upper hand there, you can help others.”
Sharon felt confused. “So in order to fight against a mist or dust trap, I have to get in touch with my old hurts.”
“Yes, awareness, even if you’ve already mourned most of it.”
“How do you fight against these things, when they try getting inside you?”
“I can see dust traps, so I’ve never stirred them into the air.”
“What if I step on one again?”
“If evil resides in and feeds on lies, what is our greatest weapon against it?”
She shrugged.
“Truth.” He said it like a sword slashing through the air. “Not just truth. A determination for greater truth. For we rarely arrive absolutely, only closer.”
“But how would you fight it?”
“Being terribly open and honest most of the time. It makes me bad company.”
“I don’t find you bad company.”
“I’m glad.” He looked out the window. “It made it difficult for me with my father. Because of his schizophrenia, he lived in fantasy. By embracing reality, I was rejected.”
The gardener finished raking leaves in one yard and began in the yard adjacent to the Mercedes, gathering leaves in small piles.
Laif continued, “I’ve dedicated my life to fighting lies. I hate them. I hate the damage they cause.”
“Where does the dark mist and dust come from?”
He looked at the pedals on the floorboard. “From evil people with psychic powers.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Why don’t they just stop? I don’t understand. What’s so attractive about being evil?”
“It’s the easier road, in the short run. It’s easier to pick up a gun and shoot your lover than deal with problems in your relationship. It’s easier to smack your kids than learn and practice love. It’s easier to rob a liquor store than work for money. It’s easier to bury your pain than deal with it.”
She looked at the gardener and found solace and goodness about his work. He stared at her. This man had made a choice, and it was for the better of humanity.
When she turned back to Laif, she saw him smiling. He didn’t smile often and it was beautiful. She smiled back, shyly, for some reason.
Fear suddenly gripped Laif’s face, breaking his smile, blowing his eyes out, twisting his handsome cheeks, enlarging his nostrils. He turned the keys in the ignition. “Roll up your window!”
Sharon turned and saw the gardener sprinting toward the car with the rake posed like an ax, fully extended behind his back.
She began jabbing her finger at the window button but mistakenly rolled it down further. She reversed the direction. The man was only feet from the car. He began pulling the rake over his head to land it onto Sharon’s half-closed window. As the glass slowly inched its way up, she could see each brown freckle on the gardener’s tan, leathery cheeks.
The car engine fired to life.
The rake descended.
She turned her head and closed her eyes, heard shattering, and felt pieces of glass showering her chest and legs. She tried moving towards Laif, but her seat belt caught her just as the rake pushed inside, metal teeth searching for her eyes. Her fingers reached the seatbelt release button, and she moved so quickly her shoulder slammed into Laif’s, and then he put the car into gear, lurching them forward, yanking the rake from the man’s hands. Its teeth held onto the remaining inch of jagged glass still fixed in the door, the wooden handle grinding against the pavement outside.
She unhooked the teeth and heard clattering after it fell. She found herself breathing hard. “That was nice,” she said sarcastically. She didn’t know how else to respond to this insanity. How could Laif live like this for years on end? Wouldn’t that scar him permanently?
As Laif accelerated further from the gardener, relief slowly spread through her.
A basketball rolled onto the street about twenty yards in front of them. Following it was a chubby boy in a striped orange shirt with an eager pink face. Laif slammed the brakes. The boy suddenly lost interest in the ball and just stood in the middle of the street scrutinizing the car screeching towards him.
“Watch it!” she cried.
Laif turned the wheel hard to the left, smoking tires, causing the car to slide sideways, her broken window rapidly approaching the boy.
To her shock, the boy ran towards the car with a twisted grin. The Mercedes stopped a foot from him and he reached in through the window, scraping his fat arms on the remaining glass, laughing, pulling Sharon’s hair, hooting like he was digging through a candy jar.
She slapped his hands but they clung to her.
Laif put the car into gear and drove slowly, evidently not wanting to hurt the possessed boy. He yelled, “Get him out!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do? Play patty-cake with him?” She grabbed her own strands of hair and yanked them out of his tight, thick fingers, leaned her back into Laif and blew hard in the kid’s face, surprising him, his long eyelashes fluttering, giving Laif just enough time to jerk the car forward out of the boy’s reach.
They sped down the street.
But where could they go? The mist could influence most people to attack. In a city as densely populated as Orange County, there were no safe places.