Chapter Twelve:
Place and time had abandoned me. Full, clear consciousness had gone its own way. I travelled to another world. A dark world of shadows, smoke, and demons. What was reality, what was unconscious dreaming, and what was pure, manic hallucination, I just can’t for sure. Known faces, unknown faces, and no faces at all. They all wore masks. Even the ones I couldn’t see. Some wore as many as six or seven. Few were flattering to human vanity, even though their bearers thought vehemently to the contrary. Then, the faces went away. All of them.
Voices their place. Voices, disconnected from their corresponding faces, circled the air near and so near to me. These voices covered the entire range of human modulation, tone, and pitch. Some seemed in no way human at all. Then, too, the voices went away. All of them. Then I was alone.
I had the sense that I had been put underground. But who knows? The room I was in had no windows, therefore no light. Darkness surrounded me, bathing me in a blind, hopeless despair. There were no binds to tie me down. There was no need for them. The room was six by six. The door was made of titanium.
To further humiliate me, I had been stripped of all my clothes, dragged through hey the mud, and my picture repeatedly taken by synchronized flash cameras from every possible angle. There was no bed or chair in the room. And most. importantly of all, no toilet. After the initial onslaught of faces and voices, I saw or heard no one for the rest of my captivity. But they were there all the same. Their eyes were watching me, enjoying my suffering, reveling in my sorrow. It was their way.
I screamed not loud, but silently, nearly shattering my eardrums from the inside out. I screamed time and time and time again this way, wailing across the unconscious mind. from wounds reopened and exposed to the dark unforgiving air of the tormented self. There were times when I wanted to be dead. I begged for it, pleaded for it, and yes even prayed for it. But I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to die because my captors didn’t want me to die. What did they want? They wanted to degrade me, humiliate me, demean me, torment me, and scar me.. And they succeeded and beyond at each and every one of them.
For the, it was an art form. A form they’d carried out many times before and had perfected to the smallest detail long ago. There would be no punches, no kicks, no cuts, bruises, or contusions. Isolation. That’s what it would be for me. Isolation. Cold, dark isolation. It was a subtler, more nuanced approach than the one taken by the kick your face and jolt your balls crowd.
The only thing required to carry out this approach was time. Wait. That’s all they had to do. Wait. Wait for the hunger, the thirst, and the demons to take their toll on my body and my mind. Wait for me to fall into a deep, overwhelming unconsciousness. Wait for me to crawl ever nearer to nearer to death, but not so close that I couldn’t be brought back to the land of the living. Then they would just pick me and dump me in the midst of open civilization.
Their insidious plan would’ve had a better chance for success if not for one thing. Much of what they did to me, I had already done to myself. Many times over. Many days, many months, many years. The isolation. The demons. The inward torment. Darkness filling my entire being, slowly rising up over my toes, climbing unstoppably upwards like a slow tide taking its time, prolonging the inevitable outcome of complete, all encompassing submersion. Then would come the abyss.
The time came for them to let me go. I don’t remember this time. I don’t remember anything at all. I wasn’t in a good state in any sense. I have no recollection of the conditions of this release. How? When? Where? I know none of it. My first memory after being released was waking up in a hospital with a severe case of still alive. Malnutrition, dehydration, hypothermia, pneumonia, anemia, I had them all and then some. I had plenty of visitors during my long stay at the hospital. Alex was the first.
“Jesus, Neal what happened to you?”
“I got suckered.”
“By who? Winters.”
“Who else? But there’s no way to prove it.”
“I didn’t know what to think. You went missing. Days went by. I thought you were---- were-----.”
“Dead.”
“Yeah. This happened all because of the case?”
“The case figures into, no doubt. But there’s something else behind it.”
“What?”
“Personal hatred.”
“Winters hates you personally? Because of this investigation and the one you did before.?”
“Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
“I was fucking his wife.”
The room fell into a deep silence. I closed my eyes. Alex pulled the room’s only chair closer to the bed, then turned it around to face me. She sat down hard and let out an emotion filled sigh.
“That explains a lot,” she said. “Your reaction to Donna’s death. I didn’t understand before. But now----. Still, you don’t completely fall apart over fucking. It had to be something more”
“There was something more.”
“She was in love with you?”
“Maybe.”
“You were in love with her?”
“My wife thought so.”
“That’s what broke up your marriage.”
“Divorce is one thing. But to take off to who knows where. And to take your only child. You didn’t deserve that. By punishing you, she’s punishing herself, and worst of all, she’s punishing your daughter.“
I said nothing. What was there to say? Agreeing with Alex wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring my wife and child back. Alex took my silence as a sign that the subject was closed. So, she moved on to something else.
“So, where do we stand with the case. You’re not still going ahead with it, are you? Not after----.”
“Drop it if you want to.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. But you can get out right now.”
“You’re not actually thinking about going ahead with case, are you?”
“Do you want to know the way it will appear to be or the way it really is going to be?”
“Both.”
“It will appear to all unwanted eyes that the case has been closed.”
“But----.”
“But appearances can be deceiving.”
“So, you’re going ahead with the case.”
“Yes.”
“You’re playing a dangerous hand.”
I fell asleep then, right there out of the blue. It snuck up on me from behind and sucker punched me into unconsciousness. Days passed. Time moved like a turtle dragging an albatross tied to an albacore tied to an anvil. I wasn’t sleeping well. I wasn’t eating well. They told me I was improving, but they weren’t inside my skin. Alex came to see me everyday. Some days we talked a lot; some days we barely talked at all.
One day, the third or fourth of my stay, I thought I saw Donna in my room. An apparition? Or was it Adrienne? A live human being. I can’t say for sure. It was late at night. Visiting hours had long since ended. I’d been given painkillers and a sleeping pill, so I was groggy as hell. My eyelids were barely open; my conscious mind was barely on. She came into my room and stood next to the bed. She took my right hand and brought it up to her lips and kissed it. She stood there smiling down at me never letting go of my hand. This was the last thing I saw before going to sleep. When I woke up a short time later, she was gone and the whole seemed like a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe.
A couple of more days passed. My physical continued to improve. Slowly. I ate more. And I slept more too.(Though still not nearly enough) There was one night when I wished I hadn’t gone to sleep at all. I had a nightmare. At least, I hoped it was a nightmare. Because if it wasn’t-----. Anyway, here’s how it went:
One by one, people began filing into my room. Ordinary looking people. They carried with them an appearance of doing the world no harm. People with a look of genuine decency and concern for the human condition. But these were not ordinary people. These were evil people. People with meglomania sewn into every pore, every fiber, every living cell of their being.
They are master manipulators who aren’t just indifferent or apathetic to human suffering and death, they actively seek out avenues to cause them. The ends justify the means is the creed they live by. They will do anything to get what they want. No act is ever so destructive, so perverse that it’s off the table. And there they stood, a small group of them, in my hospital room. They completely encircled the bed two deep. Among them, on my left, was William ‘Sonny’ Winters. He spoke to me. He was the only one of the visitors to do so.
“You are here because I wanted you here. If I had wanted you dead, you would now be dead. But I did not want you dead. I wanted you alive. I wanted you alive because I wanted you to suffer. And I got what I wanted. Sooner or later, I always do. Just like everyone else here. Except you, of course.”
“We are people who want a lot and we get it. You are someone who wants very little and does not even get that.”
“Did you and your----. What should I call these other people with you? Friends isn’t right, is it?”
“How about associates?”
“Good enough, I guess. Did you and your associates come here just to tell me something I already know?”
“No, one reason we came here was to laugh at you.”
“You couldn’t have done that is some darkened room smoking a cigar.”
“We’ve already done that. But it is not the same. This is much better, much more satisfying.”
“Well, now that you’ve satisfied yourself, will you get the fuck out of here.”
“Not quite yet, Caterski.”
“What else do you want for Christ’s sake.”
“I wanted to make sure we are clear on where we stand.”
“Of the two of us, you’re the only one who can stand for any length of time. Me, if I stand for more than a couple of minutes, I’ll fall right on my face.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re clear Winters. No more investigation.”
“That means no more interviews with family members, co-workers, or anyone else.”
“You didn’t have to come here for this either, did you? You could‘ve just sat and waited to see what I’d do.”
“Yes, I could have done that. But this way is more effective at discouraging any lingering ideas you might have about continuing on with your work.”
“Well, are you satisfied now? Are you finally going to get the hell out of here and leave me to my misery.”
“There is one last thing.”
“What now?”
“The diaries.”
“You want them.”
“It is the only guarantee that they aren’t made public in any way.”
“The pathetic media in this town could almost guarantee you that.”
“There are other means of going public.”
“You can have them.”
“When?”
“Whenever I get the hell out of here. I’ll mail them to you. Is that the end of it? Will you go now?”
“Yes, we’ll leave you to your misery now.”
Winters and his associates then slow marched out of the room and were gone. I woke up seconds later. Then I went back to sleep. Then I woke up again. Then I went to sleep again. This is the way I spent the rest of the night. Alternating back and forth between sleep and wakefulness. The spells of wakefulness were too long; the spell of sleep too short. That dream with Winters got to me. I couldn’t get it out of head..
It was only a dream I kept telling myself. Only a dream. It wasn’t real. Winters and those other people weren’t really in my room. It was all in my head. These statements were all rational, logical, and true. But that didn’t stop me from being haunted by the dream. That didn’t stop me from feeling a touch or two of fear. Yet I knew, despite the haunting, despite the fear, I was still going to investigate Mr. William ’Sonny’ Winters.
The day finally came when I was well enough to be released from the hospital. Not well, but well enough. Alex came down and picked me up. Nothing was said on the way home. Not by her, not by me. The silence was calming, meditative. It did the both of us some good.
When we arrived home, I got out of the car on my own. But Alex helped me up the front steps and into the house. I fell instantly onto the couch. I mean I literally fell onto the couch. Alex looked me over.
“Liquids, food, and sleep,” she said. “You need to take it easy for awhile.”
“I want. to take a shower.”
“Can you manage to shower without help?”
“It would be more fun with help.”
“More fun for who?”
“Me.”
“But not me.”
“Well, as long as its fun for one of us, I thought.”
“Yeah, I know what you thought. You’re something else Neal, you know that. You really are. You could’ve died.. You still look half dead even now. Yet, you can still make a run at me.”
“What run? I need someone to hold me up just to take a shower.”
“Not if you take a bath.”
“Bath? I could pass out and drown/”
“Not if I go in there with you.”
“You changed your mind.”
“I meant the bathroom, not the tub.“
“Damn, I thought I had you there.”
“Nice try. I’ll come in when you’re in the tub. Now go.”
The bath was uneventful.(If you don’t count the two times I fell asleep and slid under the water) The meal of coffee, meatloaf, mashed potatoes was also uneventful.(If you don’t count the time I fell asleep in the mashed potatoes) Then I went to sleep for real. For twelve hours. The next day it was nine. The day after that it was eleven. My physical improved enough for me to stand on my own two feet without feeling as if I would tip over and hit the floor at any moment.
I was more worried about how Winters drug and grab routine would affect me psychologically. There have been times in my life when I have fallen into a very deep, very dark place. So deep and so dark, in fact, that I wasn’t if I had the strength and will to pull myself back out again. It’s a place where the darkness covers you so completely it frightens like no other fright you could ever know.
It seeps its way through every pore of your skin, invading blood and bone until it has occupied every atom of your body and your inner being. What truly worried me wasn’t that this episode of captive isolation was going to take me to this place. What truly worried me is that I would go to the place, get lost, and not be able to find my way back out again. After all, how many times can you toe the edge of the abyss and not fall in.
There were three human beings occupying this house. Three people living in the same small place. Yet, in some sense, each of us was alone. Each of us had our own shadows following behind us, sometimes silent, sometimes whispering, and sometimes mocking. But always there. Always there. Always. We were all longing for something. Something far away and out of reach. Something lying out there in the cold, dark mist of the great beyond. Something unreachable. Yet, we reached for it all the same.
Another week passed since the day I returned home from the hospital. Gina was at the house only to shower and sleep. The rest of the time she was out. Where she was going, what she was doing, or who she was seeing is anybody’s guess. She moved around damn good for someone who’s supposed to be almost completely unfamiliar with this city and the outlying suburbs. Alex tried tailing her a couple of times, but Gina shook her off each time. Alex said Gina seemed to know right from the start that she was being followed. Alex also said Gina acted as if she’d been through this before. Now, how does a lobster woman from Maine know about such things, I don’t know. But hell, there’s a lot I don’t know.
I should’ve had Gina checked out the same damn day she came to us with this case, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have had to think about it. It should’ve been an automatic, reflexive response. This failure gave further proof how much Donna has always affected me. She’d brought a million miles of hell, havoc, and chaos, into my life time I opened the gate and let her into my life. Now, I’d let her in again and the hell, havoc, and chaos had returned. And her death only heightened their intensity. If there had been any hope of resolving these conflicts before, there was no hope now. Hope died when Donna died.
Her hold over me holds no explanation. I don’t understand it. I never have, I never will. Yet, it is there. It has been there from the day I first became involved with her. And it will probably be there until my last day of life. I couldn’t escape her. I’d tried. Over and over and over again, I’d tried. A thousand different ways on a million different days. With all that I am and all that I will ever be. The spell that she’d cast on me was unbreakable. Even in death. Whether that death was suicide or murder, I still didn’t know with absolute certainty.
I did know one thing for sure though. I wanted William ‘Sonny” Winters to pay retribution. What kind and to what degree I hadn’t figured out yet. But the wheels were turning. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d finalized the last details of what I wanted to do. I wasn’t so righteous, self-deified, and delusional to call this retribution justice. Justice is a word abused and misused at least a thousand times a day. It is a word, to me, with no clear, precise definition.
Justice. It sounds so pure and noble, doesn’t it? Many people claim they know the exact meaning of the word. Many people will claim they know how to apply it with exact certitude for every applicable event. But many people claim to know many things, when oftentimes they know little or nothing at all. And too often, these are the very same people who are running things. People in positions of power, wealth, and influence.
Whatever I wanted to call my retribution against Sonny Winters, my options for carrying it out were severely limited. My house was being watched. There was no doubt of it. There were eyes out there. Dark eyes. Predatory. Lying low. Watching. Waiting .to track my every move. And a wrong move now, I believed, would cost me my life. There would be no more warnings. They were through with warnings. This time it would be death. They were in a killing mood.
In that, we had something in common. I, too, was in a killing mood. My heart and head were both in a very dark place. I had a gun and I was ready to use it. The worst part of my nature, the side of me that I fought to control, had escaped and was now roaming free. I had a plan in mind to carry out against Sonny Winters. I prayed this plan would work.(And I never pray) I prayed because if this plan didn’t work, there was a good chance I would take my gun and-----. That is, if someone didn’t get me first.