CHAPTER 30
They headed out of the city, Matt’s big old Monte Carlo rumbling beneath them. For the first five minutes or so the silence remained unbroken. Eventually Diedra turned on the radio, listened for about ten seconds, snapped it back off, and spoke.
“I keep waiting for a commercial.”
“Sorry?”
“I feel like I’m watching a show on TV. None of this seems real.” She stared out the window. “You said you’d tell me about it.”
Matt hesitated.
“It started about seven years ago. Well, no, actually before that, when I was sixteen. So. Eleven years. My dad—”
Matt stopped. His throat seized unexpectedly, and he fought back sudden tears. He blinked a few times and swallowed, breathed deeply.
“My dad was a stage magician.” The words came out slowly and deliberately. “He made things disappear. He was good, really good, and nobody ever figured out his tricks. That’s ’cause they weren’t tricks. The stuff actually disappeared.”
“What, like cars and statues...?”
“No, no. Small stuff. Apples, keys, rabbits. But man, it looked great. The crowds loved him. So. These guys approached him and asked him to do some tricks for them. Basically, they wanted him to make some money disappear out of a safe and reappear in their pockets.”
Matt took a ramp onto I-85 north. Diedra said nothing.
“He refused. I think he refused several times, and finally said he’d go to the police. So they showed up at our house one night, a couple of days after my sixteenth birthday.
“I’d just gotten my black belt in karate, and I was studying jujitsu and aikido at the same time, and I thought of myself as a real tough kid, y’know? The kind of kid who could handle anything? And it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. A guy was waiting for me when I came through the door that night, and he hit me in the back of the head with a lead pipe. They chained us both up in the kitchen, and killed my dad, and shot me.” His fingertips brushed the scars high on his chest, through his shirt. “I guess they thought I was dead.
“Before they shot him, he... The guy, the one in charge, his name was Sammy Kyle. He kept pointing his gun at me, said he’d kill me if Dad didn’t cooperate with him. I don’t know what happened, if Dad tried to kill him first, or if he just lost control, or what. But when Dad did his trick, made something disappear, there was always this feeling in the air. I could tell when he was doing it. Well, the whole kitchen lit up with this feeling, and Sammy Kyle started screaming, and...
“Dad made Sammy Kyle’s left eye disappear out of his head. One second Kyle was standing there, and the next second his eye was just hanging in the air beside his head. It fell on the floor, and Kyle staggered around with the pain, and he stepped on it. It made this pop...
“So Kyle realized what my father had done, and he put his gun between Dad’s eyes and pulled the trigger. Then he turned and shot me twice, and I went over backward in the chair—but the gun he was using, it was really small caliber, a .22. He used that, I think, because he thought it was the kind of gun a real Mafioso would use, like in a mob-style execution—but he wasn’t seeing so well, y’know, so his aim wasn’t too great, and he didn’t manage to puncture anything too vital. And I lived.”
Matt kept his eyes straight ahead, and blinked rapidly a few times.
Diedra said, “Dear Lord.”
“I stayed in a hospital for a while, till my body healed. But my head was another story. For a while ... actually for a few years, I wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t respond to anything anybody said, and they didn’t know exactly why or how to fix it. But I did do one thing. One of the interns there brought me some paint and paper one day. I started painting. I’ve kept that up.”
He gave her a tiny smile.
“I heard someone say I displayed ‘savant-like’ talent. I think they thought I wouldn’t ever come out of it. Anyway, I was lying in bed one night, about half asleep I guess, and there was this thing. This thing happened. I’ve...been trying to put words to it ever since then, and I can’t really, it was just this event. And I came to myself, and realized where I was, and I really really wanted to be outside. And bang. I was out on the lawn, in my pajamas.”
“In the dark.”
“Right, in the dark. And it felt just like what my Dad used to do, except a lot stronger. And there was the cold.”
“So you inherited it?”
“I think so. I must have gotten it from Dad, and then—whatever that event was—whatever happened, boosted the power. Dad never knew anybody else that could do anything like this, and I hadn’t ever met anybody either until we saw that guy in the park.”
“The mugger?”
“Yeah. I think he’s like me. I mean, not just like me, but I think something similar happened to him. I’ve been looking for him.”
“What, and you’ve found him? Is that where we’re going?”
“No! No. This is something totally different. Something that’ll explain a lot about me. I think.”
They made the rest of the trip in silence. Soon Matt got off the freeway and took them down a two-lane road lined with oaks, pines, and hickories. Diedra spent the time staring out the window, trying to decide whether or not she was going insane.
More and more made sense now. Of course he wasn’t wet when she saw him during the storm. He hadn’t been outside. He’d been wherever that place was. His hidey-hole. His basement.
And the painting...the painting must have soaked up some of whatever it was he had. She wanted to ask him about it, but he didn’t look as though he had anything else to say for a while. So she kept quiet.
Soon they reached their destination, and Diedra got an inkling of why Matt had brought her.
They turned off the road onto a wide circular drive, which curved up through a very green, perfectly clipped lawn and stopped in front of a massive three-story white brick house. Huge columns on the front porch supported a small balcony on the third floor. A small, tasteful sign near where they parked read, “Leslie O’Brien Care Facility,” and below that, “est. 1946.”
Matt left the car and started up the stairs, and Diedra followed wordlessly. She alternated between looking around her and watching him. His jaw was set hard, but his eyes glistened.
A young woman dressed in white met them in the lobby. She wore an identification badge clipped to her left shirt pocket, which gave her name as Loreen Fugett. Loreen lifted the corners of her mouth in a smile that Diedra had seen before. In hospitals.
Matt asked, “How is she today?”
“She can see you,” Loreen Fugett said. She looked frankly, but politely, at Diedra. “Who is this?”
“This is my friend, Diedra Shikari,” he answered, his voice mild. “She’s my captive for the day.”
Diedra and Loreen Fugett shook hands cordially. As Loreen turned to go, she said, “Call if you need me.” Matt nodded and led Diedra through a door and down a hallway.
The house had once been spectacular, and still preserved some of its former grandeur, but it couldn’t hide its purpose. Whitewash covered everything, and the place smelled faintly of disinfectant. Matt stopped in front of the third door on the left, and seemed to collect himself before he opened it.
Diedra glanced down the hallway. Several doors down, a teenage boy peeked curiously out at them, but yanked his head back inside when he realized Diedra had spotted him.
Diedra hugged herself and glanced up at Matt, who let a breath out slowly and turned the knob, eased the door open. As the latch clicked and a gap appeared between door and frame, she noticed two things: a faint scent of blueberries, and a clear female voice halfway through the A-B-C song.
Diedra followed Matt into what had once been a medium-sized bedroom, but which now carried the unmistakable air of professional care. The off-white walls nicely matched the beige curtains on the window, as well as the light brown cover stretched across the neatly made hospital bed. A small table and three chairs, all built of blonde wood, sat in a corner, and a metal wardrobe stood against one wall with a door half-open. Diedra saw several dresses on hangers inside it.
In the middle of the floor sat another nurse and a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties with long, curly yellow hair. A partially completed large-piece jigsaw puzzle lay on the floor between them. They both looked up as the door opened, and the nurse smiled. “Mr. Sinclair.”
The young woman surged up, arms wide, and shouted, “Matty!” She caught him in a fierce hug, and he lifted her off the floor, spun her around. As he turned, Diedra saw his tears spill over.
Matt set the young woman back on the floor and brushed away his tears with a thumb. “Here’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Okay!” the woman said, and Diedra noticed she slurred her speech slightly. Then the woman brushed a lock of hair away from her face, and Diedra saw a large, irregular indentation marring the left side of her forehead. She smiled brightly at Diedra and stuck out her hand just as a tiny line of saliva escaped from the corner of her mouth. Matt deftly dabbed that away.
“This is my friend Diedra,” Matt said, as the yellow-haired young woman pumped Diedra’s hand. Matt pulled a pink hair ribbon out of one pocket and held it out for her. “I brought this for you.” The woman squealed and thanked him and pivoted around to show the nurse.
Matt’s eyes made Diedra ache.
“That’s Glory,” he said, barely above a whisper. “She’s my wife.”
AUTHOR’S NOTES FOLLOW IN THE COMMENT SECTION.
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1 comments:
My wife has never liked Diedra as a character, but I find myself growing more and more fond of her. So much so, in fact, that she plays an even more significant role in my planned (but as yet unwritten) sequel, REDEEMER'S WAR. She stars in a major plotline of her own in that later story...but sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't just incorporate that story into this first book. It would change her character radically, but it might improve things overall. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it.
I started taking Kumdo this week; that's a Korean sword-based discipline that is, so far, incredibly fun. I briefly considered taking Matt's bo staff away and giving him a sword, but I figure his reputation with the public is bad enough already. He doesn't need to leave a trail of severed limbs all over Atlanta. :)
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