Charlie and Walter spoke as one, “Where’s mother?” they whisper/moaned. “Dark down here. So dark. I have to go potty. It’s dark. I’m hungry.”
Charlie and Walter began to weep, great silent sobs racking through them in shared tremors. I’ll die, Charlie thought. I can’t live through this. But that was bullshit. Walter had lived through it. He’d gone crazy as a shithouse rat, but he’d lived. Charlie Dunbar would goddamn well cowboy up. Walter was giving him terror. All right, Charlie could give him something back.
He imagined his own mother’s face the day he graduated from nursing school. He pulled the gentle and thrumming pride from his memory, the security and tenderness, and let it flow through him into Walter. He went farther back, remembering how his mommy used to hold him on her lap and then suddenly open up her knees and say “Elevator!” as he’d drop a few inches. She always caught him. He always loved it. He remembered her smell and how she would patch him up after a fight with the bigger kids. They were always bigger. He remembered the look on her face the day he got his first belt in Karate. She’d expected nothing less. Knew he was wonderful. Told him so.
“She’s gone, little guy,” Charlie said, somehow knowing that’s what Walter’s father had called him before he left. “You’re not alone anymore. It’s not dark anymore. You can come out. You are out.” Charlie felt something like a spasm travel through his arm and lost the image of the boiling terror storm.
He stepped back and opened his eyes. Walter was looking at him.
“Balder,” he said, his voice as rusty as his hair. “I look like Balder.”
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 30
EMILY WAS ALREADY up and sitting at the table when Charlie came staggering into the kitchen. She was wearing an oversized NYPD t-shirt that slipped off her left shoulder. “There’s coffee,” she said, not looking up from the book she was reading. Charlie muttered something that might have been “thanks” or “good morning”. He poured and shuffled back to the table and sat down. He leaned over and kissed her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her skin. “Mmm,” he said. “You smell like you.”
“That’s always a good sign,” Emily said. She gave him a wink and went back to her reading.
He sipped, the caffeine reminding his adrenal glands to do their thing, and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. “Readin’ my book?” he nudged the edge of the big text book: Absolute Asgard: A Compendium of Norse Mythology.
“Yeah,” she looked up. “This is really neat. I only knew about Thor and Odin.”
“That’s one more than I knew about. I remembered Thor from comic books and a few old Super Friends cartoons, but the rest were new to me.”
“Where’d you get it? It looks pretty old.” She knew before he answered from the look on his face and the sadness that wisped through her and was gone. “Oh, it’s one of Harlan’s.” Had that sadness been hers or his? Maybe a mixture of both. That happened all the time now, their feelings blurring in and out of each other. Not because of her ability, but just because they loved.
“Yeah,” he squeezed her hand and let go. “The landlord at his old place stored all his books in the basement. Told me I could take whatever I wanted.”
“Why this one?”
“I wanted to look something up.”
Emily stared at him a moment and flipped to a page he’d dog-eared. On it was a plate showing a few Viking-types standing around a wounded man with rusty hair. He lay spread on the ground with what looked like a small tree branch protruding from his chest. “Balder,” she read. “God of beauty, peace, innocence and rebirth. Wounded by the treachery of Loki.”
“It’s a pretty cool story actually,” Charlie said. “Balder couldn’t be hurt by anything except mistletoe.”
“Christmas must’ve sucked.”
“Cute.”
“I is.”
“Anyway, one day the gods are playing one of their favorite games which is to hurl stuff at Balder because it just bounces off. Only they’re gods, so they’re like throwing mountains and shit. Kind of like little boys having a pillow fight. Loki—who’s the asshole/trickster god—hands Balder’s blind brother this spear of mistletoe and the brother gives it a toss. Balder just thinks its part of the game and takes it right in the chest.”
Emily reached over and stole his coffee, took a sip. “That’s terrible.” She stretched her foot out under the table and flattened it against his crotch. “Mmm,” she said. “Warm.” She stole another sip of his coffee. “So what happened?”
“Balder died,” he pointed to the picture in the book. “Those’re all the other gods gathered around him feeling crummy.”
“Except Loki.”
“Right, he was fucking tickled. So, Balder goes to Norse heaven.”
“Valhalla.”
Charlie’s eyebrow did the Spock thing. “You have been reading.”
Her lips curved. “I’ve been up for an hour, lazy bones.”
“It’s Sunday. The Lord God says we’re to rest on Sunday.”
“Lord God? Which Pantheon?”
He crossed his arms across his chest. “You want to hear how this story ends or what?”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“So, Balder’s soul goes to Valhalla where he meets the souls of everyone he’s ever whacked in battle. And being a god, he’s something of a badass in that department.”
“Met a lot of souls.”
“Yes. Gimme back my coffee. And it really bummed him out, so much that he sort of went off his nut for a while and started eating.”
“Eating?”
“Ballooned right up just like a depressed house frau. So, after a while of just stuffing his face, he has this vision and it gives him hope again.” Charlie stopped talking, his eyes far away. Balder. I look like Balder. He shook his head and smiled.
She gave a soft squeeze with her toes under the table. “What happened?”
Charlie shifted a bit. “Uh, yeah, right, so while Balder’s been dead the end of the world’s happened.”
“Rigamarole or something, right? It’s not that, but it sounds like that—Viking armageddon.”
Charlie nodded. “Ragnarok. Yep, but after his big vision of hope, Balder is reborn and the whole world is reborn with him.”
Emily sat back and stretched her arms over her head. “Sounds like a lot of other stories you hear about that kind of thing—Pandora’s box and all that shit about hope.”
“Even Jesus did the rebirth thing, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Emily got up from the table and walked over to the sink with an empty cereal bowl. Charlie gave her legs a good once and then twice over. All that running had forged some serious definition into her calf muscles. She muttered something to herself.
“What’d you say?”
She turned around and leaned against the sink. “Hope. It’s not something I had a lot of when we met.” She looked at the floor, it needed a good scrubbing. “I was really close to doing it, you know?” she said in a voice that was barely there.
“I do know.” Charlie said and got up. He crossed to her, took her hands, tilted his head until she made eye-contact with him. “I also know that you got through it. You’re on top of all that now, right?”
“I came to New York to put a bullet in my head, Charlie.”
“If you couldn’t get on top of all the feelings.” His mouth quirked. “You said that. I remember you saying that.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Shhh. Shhh.”
Charlie took in a big shaky breath. “Sorry, Em. You scare me a little sometimes is all.”
“You’re hurtin’ my hands, big boy.”
Charlie looked down. “Sorry.”
“Charlie, I’m not okay. I’m different in ways shrinks don’t have words for. My whole life has been about not being able to feel my own emotions because every one else’s were crowding them out.”
“And now?”
“And now,” she sighed. “Now, I still get some cross-over, but I'm on t
op of it.”
“But?”
A sideways smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, “But I’m still not used to feeling my own stuff.” She took a deep, shaky breath of her own. “I feel a lot, a lot, of my own stuff about you, Mr. Dunbar. It’s from me and of me, but it’s bigger than me.”
“And scary,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, super scary.”
Charlie felt something big coming and his heart dropped a notch in his chest. She was going to ask him to do something for her and he might not like it. This was going to be one of those moments in life that defined love as something more than what you felt for a person. It was what you did for them as well. Maybe what you sacrificed. Maybe even if it was letting them go. He stared into those tar emeralds of hers and felt the heat rise behind his own eyes. “Em,” he said, “before you say anything else, let me just tell you this: I love you. I’ll give you anything you need for you to be happy.”
Now it was her turn to feel the tears push up from her throat and her eyes go hot. Emily squeezed Charlie’s hands maybe a little too hard now herself. Go on, girl. Daddy said in her head. Do the big scary.
“Charlie,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Will you marry me?”
* * *
TWO YEARS LATER, Charlie stood off to the side of a hospital bed holding a squalling new born baby girl that would look more like him than her mother, but would have the same deep emerald eyes. Emily Burton-Dunbar lay sweating, blown-out and beautiful in a way that made Charlie breathe hard through his tears. “Wanna’ meet your daughter?” he asked, and held the little bundle of pink out to Emily’s waiting arms.
“Hello,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. She planted a flutter of kisses on the tiny curve of forehead, nose and chin. “Hello, Lisa.”
The Ob/Gyn—a buxom forty-something who insisted on being called Dr. Jodie—leaned over and grinned like a showgirl. “She’s going to be a heartbreaker,” she said. “Just look at that bone structure.”
Charlie grinned. “She’s got bones. Awesome.” Emily and Dr. Jodie both laughed. Indeed, it was awesome.
At the sound of the women’s laughter a bottle of water on the bedside table began to tremble and then fell to the ground. Dr. Jodie leaned over and picked it up. “That was weird,” she said. “Sucker just jumped right off there. Did you see that?”
Emily and Charlie exchanged a glance.
“Must’ve knocked it with my hip,” he said. “Thank God for plastic, right?”
The baby had stopped crying.
The End
Washington, D.C.
February 7, 2004 to April 7, 2007
Author's Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time to hang with Emily, Charlie and their friends.
Empathy took forever to write. The novel I wrote prior, Sins of the Fathers, only took me six months. It's dirtier, darker and moves a hell of a lot faster, but lacks the humanity I found in Emily Burton. I found myself wanting to spend a lot of time in her shoes because of her unique boundary issues—they're a lot like mine minus the psychic stuff. That and I had a hell of a good time roaming the streets of Manhattan in my mind.
Before writing Empathy I had never set foot there and about halfway through I ran into some trouble. I couldn't see it anymore. Anyone can fake New York, right? We've all watched enough movies and TV to know the landmarks and famous streets, but writing is about telling the truth and I was starting to bullshit too much. So I hopped on the train from D.C., got out at Grand Central Station and walked around for three days. Didn't sleep a wink. Saw Brittany Spears strolling in Central Park and had a couple of beers with movie star, Chris Klein, at a bar in Tribeca. When I came home I was completely blown out but I had the city under my skin enough to finish.
By the by, if you liked Chris Kimata, the D.C. exchange cop, you can spend more time with him in one of my earlier novels, Captain Ninja. Most of my test-readers love Chris. He's competent, smart, and flawed as hell. Kimata was all kinds of fun to walk around in. If you decide to check him out, ask Chris to make his "red brick" chili. It's delicious and he loves to show off.
About the Author:
John Richmond had a nice middle class childhood in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mostly he was safe and sound but did brush up against some evil along the way. That darkness got into the backwaters of his mind and never let go. Today he's fascinated not so much by the things that go bump in the night, but by how everyday people might react to them—even if they do a little bumping of their own. To be honest, the things that go bump in the night scare the hell out of him. He's been troubled by nightmares his entire life. He writes to keep them at bay and because he loves it.
Discover some of John Richmond's other novels:
Shard
Sins of the Fathers
Connect with John Richmond online at:
www.JohnRichmondBooks.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Empathy/
"Dear Stephen King" One-sided Video Conversations with SK by John Richmond: www.youtube.com/johnrollinrichmond
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