Chapter 46
As they passed tents and campers, Sharon looked inside the lighted ones.
Most of the children were sleeping. Some were night owls though. She saw a few toddlers unsupervised in play pens, small children tied to posts with leashes allowing them to roam in limited circles. Teenagers were trusted to move about on their own, firmly brainwashed after years of coercion through violence. She didn’t see Adriana or Cindy.
When they reached the first mobile home, they found all the windows covered with blinds. They went to the second, and Sharon gasped. This room was in complete shambles—papers, cans, trash, bottles, cartons, books, food scattered everywhere.
When she got to the next window, she had to press her face close because it was so dim inside. This room was completely bare except for a crate in the middle and a lamp on a small table beside one wall. Two children were inside, one lying on the floor, the other sitting beside her.
The one on the floor seemed to be covered in shadows, but it looked like it could be Adriana. The hair was the right length, and she had only one leg. There couldn’t be many children in this camp with a missing left leg. The other girl’s face was turned, but she had blond hair.
Laif risked looking through one of the sleeves in the overcoat. He looked like an elephant sticking its trunk out to smell something.
“Let’s go in here,” she suggested. “It’s got to be them.”
They went to the door, but it was locked. Laif put part of the overcoat on the window to the left, while still managing to keep his head covered, and elbowed the glass. It cracked and Creo pulled pieces out until a hole was large enough to reach in and undo the lock.
The door opened to a hallway. They walked to the end, where it looked like the room with the crate was located, and opened the door on the right.
Laif had Creo’s overcoat off his head now. They were going to make it. This was too easy.
It couldn’t be this easy. She kept expecting something bad to happen.
Something bad had happened.
Her heart dropped as she rushed to the girls, saying, “No, no, no.”
Adriana lay with closed eyes. Cindy sat beside her, a glazed look covering her face.
Creo worriedly looked around the room. Laif tried talking to Cindy and snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, but she wouldn’t even blink.
Sharon knelt beside Adriana. She felt the girl’s shallow breaths on her hands. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Purple, pink, yellow, and red paint covered the girl’s clothes, face, arms, leg, and hair. Her fingers and hands were cut and stained with dried blood.
A whisper barely escaped Sharon, “What happened?” She smelled the bitter smell of old urine. The exposed parts of Adriana’s face were pale. “What the hell did they do to her?” Hot tears fell from Sharon’s eyes. She picked up the limp body of the precious girl and hugged her fiercely, crying softly and wishing she could take back whatever pain Adriana had endured.
“It’s not safe here,” Creo said hushed.
“Yes,” Laif agreed. “Let’s get the girls and leave.”
She lifted Adriana and began walking to the door as Creo picked up Cindy. Luckily Adriana only weighed forty-five pounds, partly because she was missing the weight of an entire leg, but also because she was a small girl for her age. Still, Sharon wasn’t used to carrying a nine-year-old girl. Laif would be unable to carry her through the rain though.
Sharon looked back to make sure the others were following. Creo wasn’t. He stood in the middle of the room, looking down.
“Sunny …” Sadness choked off his words. A small wooden box rested on the floor. Five feet from it was a mound of broken mirror.
She asked, “What is it?”
To her dismay, he put down Cindy and kneeled before the broken pieces. “Truth, love, and courage, concentrated—so much that it had formed a bright, beautiful, little creature.”
“Come on,” Laif urged, “we have to get out of here.”
He hesitated, touching the brittle pieces. “This nemesis must be powerful. Sunny has been through much in his lifetime.”
Laif gave him a few moments, then said, “Let’s move.” He positioned the overcoat over his head and put his hand on Sharon’s shoulder to guide him.
She thought she heard something—a whispering from a corner of the room. The ceiling light in the hall flickered and shadows danced on the walls.
They all stopped for a moment, their breath locked in their chests.
Then they headed for the door. As they traversed down the hall, the fluorescent ceiling lights flicked off, and Laif’s hand gripped her shoulder painfully. When she walked out into the rain with Adriana in her arms, he released her. She turned and saw him cowering at the doorway.
Rain banged the roof, splashed puddles on the ground, and slapped leaves in trees.
Creo pushed Laif from behind. “Move it. There’s something back here. Something following.” A wispy urgency tainted his voice she hadn’t heard before.
But Laif just stood at the open doorway, unable to see with the overcoat over his head. Sharon reached for his hand. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“The sound,” he said in a dusty, strangled tone. “I can hear it ... everywhere. It’s drowning out everything. It feels like death.”
“I’ll drown you in one of those puddles if you don’t move,” threatened Creo.
His legs trembled hard. “But water is everywhere. It’s cold.”
Just waiting for him, Adriana felt heavier in Sharon’s arms. She urged him forward by gently pulling his hand, but he didn’t budge.
“You’re freaking yourself out under this.” With one motion, Creo ripped the overcoat off Laif’s head and draped it around Cindy. “Just look. It’s only water.”
Laif’s whole body quaked. His eyes widened, frantically twitching about. His mouth gaped. Steam pumped out with each breath.
She felt bad for him and scolded Creo, “Why did you do that? You didn’t have to take the coat off.”
He pushed Laif aside and walked down the steps, pausing briefly beside Sharon. “He needs to fight rather than cower from it. Same from the earliest times in history till now.” He turned to Laif. “Courage. Tap it.”
But Laif didn’t seem to hear anything except for rain. His eyes moved so erratically, it appeared as though he were trying to capture every single drop with his vision before it hit the ground.
“Snap out of it!” Creo shouted too loudly. “If you can’t be strong now, when?”
“Would you keep it down?” she seethed. She pulled Laif’s hand into the rain, and he retracted it. “Look into my eyes.” But it was no use. He was in another place, literally obsessed with the noise and vision of rain.
Yet even through all that, something made him spin around.
She wondered what could turn him from his greatest fear.
A groan escaped his lips. He stepped backwards down the steps, into the rain, getting wet without any jacket over his head, now unable to remove his eyes from the dark hall of the mobile home. Sharon held him from behind so he wouldn’t trip down the steps.
Both she and Creo took his arms, but because he fought, they had difficulty turning him forwards. Head twisted back to the mobile home, he could not stop watching it as they guided him along the muddy road.
“It’s coming ... it’s coming ... it’s coming,” he kept repeating.
What’s coming? thought Sharon. What could be worse than Cindy’s parents? The Brewsters were at the campfires, spilling their guts about violence to control their lovely child.
As they continued down the road, she had the uneasy sensation that they were being pursued. She wanted to tell Laif to shut up. His words were creating paranoia.
But he persisted, “It’s coming ... it’s coming ... it’s coming.”
Her sandals got stuck in the mud several times, almost causing her to trip. Yet they increased their pace, pulling Laif along.
Her arms burned. Adriana was getting heavier with every step. She wished Laif could carry the girl. He head was still twisted around behind him, and he stumbled on depressions in the road.
They were half-way to the car when Sharon had to take a break. Laif had stopped ranting and looking backwards. However, he walked slowly, and she felt she could easily catch up with them, so she didn’t bother to call for them to stop. Since there was no cover underneath trees, she just sat down in the mud and held Adriana in her lap so the girl wouldn’t get dirty in addition to being wet, painted, and cut.
Sharon’s butt became bitter cold as it soaked in water. She held the unconscious girl closer and bent over to protect her from the rain and cold.
She spotted the fires to her right, the campers appearing as clusters of black ants around honey flames, eagerly taking in bits of sugar-coated lies.
She felt vulnerable just sitting on the road, but not from being spotted. She didn’t know exactly where this feeling came from. It was as though a diesel truck were barreling toward her at full speed.
Laif turned around. She waved to them indicating she was all right.
He and Creo began walking back to her, and she decided she could make it to the car now. While waiting for her to catch up, Laif pulled his own jacket over his head.
Sharon spun back—not knowing why—it just felt she were being watched.
As they continued trudging down the road, their feet sank deeper into the mud, and she lost her left sandal. She didn’t bother to turn around and retrieve it.
The ground had soaked up more water since first leaving the Montero. Her legs moved slower and felt weak.
Laif breathed so loudly she could hear him through the pattering rain. He wheezed like his throat was closing up. His steps slowed as well.
As they neared the car, with the protection of the trees, the ground wasn’t as muddy. She felt some relief. They were almost out of this hell-hole. The kidnapping of Adriana, the horrible treatment and neglect of her causing unconsciousness, the trauma that had sent Cindy into a daze, and the attendance to a beating-camp were certain to cause the State to reconsider their decision of placing Cindy back with her family.
Creo fumbled with the door handle to the backseat. He took his overcoat off the girl and set her down in the seat, reached over and opened the door on the other side, and buckled the girl up while Sharon buckled in Adriana.
With his jacket still pulled over his head, Laif had been standing in the rain, appearing as a tall headless man, and as soon as Sharon moved out of the way, he quickly climbed over Adriana to get to the middle seat.
Creo threw his overcoat over his shoulder, and they closed the back doors.
Though Sharon could barely see them through the tinted glass, two figures rose in the front seats—
—a woman and man.
She saw that the front doors were already locked and heard the back doors being electronically locked. Although she wasn’t sure where the couple planned to go without keys.
“You have the keys, don’t you?” she yelled at Creo. But she couldn’t see what Creo was doing on the other side of the car. “Laif, open the door!”
Laif appeared to still have his jacket over his head and was hunched over, rocking back and forth.
“Laif!”
“Where the hell are the keys?” Creo asked aloud.
Adriana was still unconscious. Cindy was in her own world, far away from all of them.
Sharon banged on the back window. “Open up, Laif. Open the door!” She heard the car start. “Creo, did you leave them in the car?”
“I keep a spare under the seat.”
The car moved forward and see could see Creo now, turning the overcoat upside down and shaking it, worry straining his face. She heard a jingle, and he ran forward, keys scraping the door.
She said, “Hurry!”
The car engine accelerated, but the vehicle slowed, spinning the rear tires in mud, slapping some onto Sharon. Creo got the door open almost at the same time the car lurched forward, he running alongside it, throwing his arm inside, pulling the driver out with a grunt. Sharon ran over to the man, and as he tried to get up, and she kicked him in the stomach, losing her other sandal.
Creo was already climbing into the coasting car, his arms flailing probably at the woman. The brakes squeaked as the car stopped, and a white light shone from inside around him. It was exceptionally bright. Sharon heard a woman scream, the door opening on the other side, and saw the woman—Mary Brewster—fly out, a crazed look misshaping her face with tangled, wet, black hair stringing down, screaming, “Joe! Joe!”
Sharon looked behind her, and Joe was right there. She saw a blur of his arm swinging forward, heard a smack of his fist against her right cheek and eye, and then felt numbing pain where it made contact, as her vision completely disappeared while falling backwards.
“They have a powerful teller with them!” Mary screeched closer to Sharon.
She moved from her back onto her side in the mud, rubbing her numb face, then curling her body as she felt stings in her stomach and legs, evidently kicks from Joe.
She opened her eyes but had no sight. Her arms went defensively over her head and she folded up into a fetal position, trying to protect herself as more blows stung her shins and arms. They were coming like rain. Both Joe and Mary must have surrounded her.
Through her closed eyes light penetrated. And she no longer felt the blows landing on her, but felt sharp pains burning in spots that had already been hit.
She rolled away.
When she tried opening her eyes again, her left one stuck partially closed, feeling as big as a tomato.
White light enshrouded Creo.
Mary and Joe gripped each other’s hands. Darkness clung to their bodies like a hundred leeches, not emanating anything but sucking all other light. Joe’s and Mary’s bodies arched backwards as sprays of Creo’s light touched their skin in places where the darkness was not so strong, but as they continued holding hands, the gloom grew on their skin, thickening, straightening their backs as it bred around them. Then like a great whip, a strap of it flung off, lashing through the air at Creo and struck him on the left shoulder.
He reeled back, gathering his balance, shouting “Laif! I need you.”
Sharon looked to the car but saw no one exiting and caught sight of another man making his way toward them. He looked like a homeless man with a flowing brown beard, yet running as though well fed, and then Creo was on the ground, the black whip encircled around his neck, tightening, white light flowing from his hands to his neck, trying to slip underneath the noose.
She cried, “Laif!”
***
Laif sat in the back seat of the car, literally stunned by the soggy clothing clinging to his skin, rain water that would not leave.
Here in the safety of the vehicle, it should have felt better. It should have been dry. But it was just the opposite. Droplets thumping on the seat from his wet jacket, rain amplified by the metallic roof, squishy noises from his feet in his shoes—all bubbled his anxiety, and his head felt exploding with pressure.
Then his mind just shut off. Everything around him was too much to bear, and a biological safety valve had turned.
After an unknown passage of time, he saw bright white light penetrating through his jacket, and he knew it had to be Creo. Some of its warmth touched Laif on the back of his exposed hands, and he lifted the jacket to peek out.
He was taken back to that day his father beat his mother, when he was just four years old.
I’m so small in my blue pajamas spotted with purple turtles that I feel like I might fall over as Daddy rushes past me to Mommy.
I stop pushing my yellow truck on the kitchen floor to see what’s going on.
He pulls Mommy by the hair and pins her across the breakfast table on her stomach, spilling salt and pepper shakers. A full bottle of water with a funnel rests on a chair just below Mommy’s head. He pulls her hair back hard. Several tears squeeze out her eyes, down her chin, and then fall into the funnel.
I freeze, coldness suddenly all around me.
Daddy laughs and pulls harder on her hair, causing more tears to drip into the bottle. “Com’on, empty bitch. If you don’t give, I’ll get Laif to.”
She turns her glossy eyes to me.
“How do I know he’s even mine?” Daddy says. “I’ll squeeze him like a lemon.”
More tears spill faster from her eyes into the funnel and down into the bottle.
After a while, she is no longer able to cry, and he begins pounding on her back. “I’ll milk you dry, whore! Payback for all your slutting around.”
Although I’m only four, I understand this is not a bottle of water. This is a collection of tears. My dad has beat my mom not only one night. It has been going on for as long as I can remember.
My heart aches. I run to my mom’s rescue and tell him to stop, but he slaps me down and drags me to my room.
“You come out, boy, you die.”
I lie in my bed, listening to Daddy’s grunts and Mommy’s screams until they become quiet moans, and I fall asleep.
When I wake later that night, it’s very quiet. I decide it’s safe to come out now, so I creep down the hall to look into my parents’ bedroom. Mommy is lying on her stomach on the floor. Daddy is sleeping in his clothes on the covers of the bed. The bottle of Mommy’s tears rests on the nightstand.
I go to Mommy and whisper if she’s okay. She doesn’t reply. I shake her, but she doesn’t wake up. I turn her over and see her face is scary gray. Blood drips from the corner of her mouth. I hear the thumping of my heart in my ears. “Wake up! Wake up!” I shout, but she doesn’t. I’m confused. I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel terribly alone.
Dad moans from the bed.
I walk to my father and shake him as best I can. “Daddy!”
“What the hell?” His breath stinks. “Back in bed, boy.”
But I don’t stop. I keep shaking him and repeating, “Something’s wrong with Mommy.”
Finally, Daddy sits up and picks up the bottle of tears and waves it above my head. “You want the whore? Well, here she is, boy. Years of that hag,” and he turns the bottle upside down, and the liquid gurgles out onto my head.
It’s cold and sends me into a fit of screaming.
As years of her tears disappear into my hair, pajamas, dripping down my arms and into the carpet, I feel her leaving forever.
He roughly carries me to my room and throws me on the floor, closing the door behind him.
I shiver there in my soaked pajamas.
For the first time ever, Laif understood his fear of water. He had successfully blocked out that night and all the previous ones of his mother’s torture, safely believing that his mother left him at birth. The denial he saw in other people all these years had been inside himself as well.
His father murdered his mother.
He began to pull the jacket off his head, slowly, and through the neck hole, he saw the gray-white rain falling through the headlights outside. Fear shook him, and he pulled the jacket back over his head, but he knew in his heart this time it was not the rain that sped his breaths or stung him. It was the pain his mother had endured for the first four years of his life, the most formative years.
His heart thundered in his chest as he began to pull the jacket down again. This time, he fisted his hands with determination, keeping the material moving until it was off, resisting the compulsion to see the rain as something other than what it was.
It was not death. It was not tears. It was simply water, only a reminder of something terrible.
He felt alone. He wanted his mother. He wanted to thank her, hug her, comfort and protect her.
***
Sharon pulled herself out of the mud, and from behind Joe, she kicked him between the legs. As her foot entered the dark cloud surrounding him, emptiness shot inside her—
—I’m a bad person. She saw the truth of this, finally. She had failed her sister, allowing her to get hit by a car on their own front lawn. Despite everyone, including Laif, telling her she was not to blame, she knew now she was responsible for her sister’s death. After all, she could have screamed something else besides Marlene's name to get her attention. She could have done something different.
She was obviously a failure as a protector. Her dog died because she carelessly let the delivery man discover her identity. Why didn’t she go out to get the food herself rather than bringing danger into her home?
Her job was to protect the defenseless. She failed there too. The kids on her caseload were living proof, sitting in the SUV, both numbed out, probably victims of horrific acts.
I’m a failure. She knew this to be true. How could she have thought otherwise all these years? How could she have believed that it was chance or fate and not her own doing? What kind of sick excuses had she been telling herself to trick herself into believing she was a good person? It should have been her who died, not her sister—
—her kick landed exactly where she intended, and Joe buckled over, separating from Mary, both their dark clouds shrinking from the break in contact with each other.
Sharon fell to the ground in tears. She was worthless. She hurt Joe, a man who used to be an innocent boy, just to get what she wanted, just to make her feel like she was fighting for good. The children didn’t need her to save them. If she tried, she would only screw up, just as she has done the past few months, bringing them to this low point in their young lives.
I bring people down. That’s my purpose.
Laif had it wrong. She was evil.
There was movement out of the corner of her teary eyes. Creo was trying to stand again. She crawled over to him, not that she could do much, but more out of instinct.
Mary kicked her as she passed, sending her black covered foot into Sharon’s stomach, driving hope from her soul. Mary then jumped on Joe’s back, digging her fingers into his shoulders, hooking her legs around his waist, as he struggled in the mud for balance.
Sharon thought this was odd behavior for good people. After all, if she was bad, then they had to be good, didn’t they? This was very confusing. No. They were all bad, including Creo. Especially him. He didn’t deserve her help. But since she was bad too, she continued crawling to him so she could hurt him, like she had done to all people in her life. At least this time she would be damaging a truly evil person.
Mary and Joe’s black clouds were beginning to thicken around their tangled bodies.
Maybe if she could make Creo fail, she could redeem herself. Maybe there was still a chance for her for goodness. She crawled faster to him. But it was too late.
He was standing. His arm went back and he threw it forward like a pitcher throwing a baseball, but from his palm a spear of lightening forked, one prong jabbing at Joe, the other at Mary.
They both screamed as the bolt penetrated their buffer of darkness.
***
Laif climbed over Cindy and stumbled out the car into the rain and fell into a puddle.
He scooped up water with both hands and splashed it onto his face, laughing and crying at the same time. His tears blended with the rain water.
He felt so alone. It was a constant pain. But he did not pull his jacket over his head. He no longer needed it.
He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, getting them smacked by fat drops, which stung and caused him to blink. He screamed and howled in joy and pain. Something he used to fear so deeply, he now saw as beautiful.
Rain was really a miracle. It was innocent. It was pure and unstained by the past now.
He opened his arms and legs to hug the storm. Somewhere behind the car he heard his name being shouted, and he rolled back onto his hands and knees.
***
Mary was screaming hysterically, jumping up and down in place, scratching her body and arms. Joe had a grim look in his eyes as he watched his wife, and with his hands fisted, he began punching her in the head. She went down, still scratching herself, making bloody lines on her arms. Joe knelt beside her, grabbing her hair, and began smashing her head against the ground.
Sharon couldn’t stand to look any longer. She turned and saw Laif outside the car kneeling in a puddle, with his jacket around his body where it belonged.
The bearded man was coming up fast behind him.
She yelled at Laif, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, he rolled onto his back like a turtle, and splayed his arms and legs into the air.
She saw the bearded man pulling out a gun from under his belt. He was getting closer to Laif. She could save him. She could yell to him. A chance like she had with Marlene. But why should she help him? He was just as bad as Creo.
She shouted at him anyway. It wasn’t part of her conscious self that made her do so; it was something deeper, something she could not control, an evilness inside her causing her to meddle in others’ affairs. Everything she touched, she destroyed.
I’m truly a horrible person.
The bearded man raised the gun and slowed his pace.
“Laif,” she cried, “Dammit, watch out!”
The bearded man was pointing the gun directly at Laif now.
Then several things happened at once: Laif rolled back over onto his hands and knees; she yelled, “Laif! Behind you;” and an intense bang rang through the night.
Other campers probably would mistake the gunfire as thunder.
Laif lurched forward and fell into the puddle, face buried. The man lowered his gun and quickened his pace toward them.
“Come here!” shouted Creo. “You don’t have to worry about the Brewsters anymore. They have faced the truth within themselves.”
She just stared at Creo, stunned in disbelief.
“We do have to worry about bullets!” He sounded nervous and irritable.
She rose. She felt like she didn’t deserve life, and she was walking not to Creo, but to the hobo with the gun, his eyes squinting as he sprinted, his soggy beard slapping against his chest. He would end it for her. He was good. He was her angel.
“What’re you doing, woman?” Creo cried over his shoulder, running to hide behind an oak tree. “Get over here!”
Laif was on his side and not getting up.
Sharon ran to her angel. I’m worthless. I’m a horrible sister. I’m a rotten person. These things were as clear as scientific facts to her. She had to do what was necessary now to redeem herself. She had to end it. The hobo was her savor.
He was only ten feet from Laif and thirty from her. A smiled cracked open in the midst of his beard. Long, wet bangs sagged down into his mouth.
As he passed Laif, white strands of light burst from Laif’s fingers, wrapping around the man’s thigh, fixing around the leg, causing the hobo to fall and drop the gun, which skipped along several puddles to submerge in a deep one by the side of the road. But the hobo was not moving to retrieve the gun. White jagged lines of light still sizzled around his leg from Laif’s fingers.
The bearded man convulsed.
Damn that good for nothing Laif! What did he do? He doesn’t know anything about right and wrong.
She found herself heading to the puddle with the gun.
Laif was rising in painful hitches, holding a bloody spot on his left side. “Let’s go!” He staggered to the car and sagged into the open door.
She heard Creo’s splashing footsteps behind her as she ran her hands through the puddle, feeling for the gun.
“We don’t need the gun,” Creo shouted.
But they didn’t understand. They still believed in the lie that she was worthy. They didn’t know all the horrible things she had done. She needed the gun. It was somewhere in the puddle. That’s where it had landed. Her hand was turning numb in the cold water. It should be right about here. She felt something solid. Her fingers tightened and she brought it up. Instead, she held a rock. She threw this to the side and continued searching.
Creo was already inside the car. He shouted for her to get inside. But Creo didn’t understand. He didn’t hold all the truth. She began searching