She reached into the backpack she carried slung across her shoulder, withdrawing the journal. She’d ripped from it the pages of Billy’s note. Other than that it was intact, and to a large part empty. She’d only filled a quarter of these pages with her thoughts and ideas, and most of them had been written during the First Days, when the doctors had still held (what had turned out to be false) hope against the cancer in her lymphatic system. These were the hopeful pages, the ones strong with bravado and resilience, something that had gradually disappeared, dwindled like her own entries had. Thumbing through the small volume helped define direction and lent weight to the course she’d chosen. It was finally time to leave old, familiar things, and strike out on whatever (if any) path lay ahead. She put the thin book down on the bench beside her and reached into the pack again.
She withdrew a large freezer bag and a smooth, heavy rock she’d retrieved on a whim from a gutter several days before.
She placed the journal in the freezer bag along with the rock, and smoothed it until producing a vacuum. Then she carefully ran her finger along the seam, sealing it away. This done she stood up and walked to the pond’s edge. Her action caused an uneasy moment for the ducks scattered among the fronds growing around the base of the old oak. They became rapt with attention. Her only witnesses…and they would never tell. It was a fitting completion.
She lofted the journal out with all her strength, wincing but refusing to groan as it arched up and then curved sharply, slapping to the surface with a larger sound than the lake seemed capable of making. The journal stayed afloat only a moment before the rock inside dragged it out of view to the lake’s bottom. It too, leaving only a ripple. Her underarm ached massively from the throw, but the power it held over her was done. She would allow no more.
Reaching into her breast pocket, she took out the Valium. Her face remained expressionless as she popped off the top and poured the contents into her hand. She looked out at the lake again, seeing the last ripple had faded away into the hidden moment. Then she closed her eyes and put half the handful of pills into her mouth, holding them there without swallowing, her breath suddenly heavy in her nostrils. She sat down and fished out the water bottle she’d placed in the back pack, chasing the pills down her throat with the cold water. She took the rest immediately afterward and swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on the tranquility of the lake. Even so, her hands trembled when she brought them to her lap. “Let me catch it…” she whispered.
After a few silent moments she turned back and pulled the bag of birdseed from the last pocket of the back pack. She threw several handfuls into the dust bordering the tree trunk, showering several bits onto the suddenly surprised and curious ducks. They began a quick scurrying, picking and scratching through the dust. Elizabeth sprinkled the seed around her feet in a large circle, and by the time the park began to gray with the exit of daylight, the ducks had come up very close to brush against her legs.
When the daylight faded entirely from her eyes a faint brush-stroked smile still painted the corners of her mouth.
Chapter 65
Just before the sun went down, the receptionist ( a woman named Leonore Benjamin who lived on the West Bank and had made the traffic-thick commute every day for the past seventeen years by way of the city buses, never having found the inclination to purchase her own vehicle) pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and locked the drawers behind the counter. She religiously secured them every day not because they contained anything of value (that is, besides stacks of brochures and Art Museum letterhead and other paraphernalia), but because regulations specified that it should be done, so she dutifully did it. Even though possessed of only a fifth grade education she was studiously meticulous in her observance of policies. Then she checked her desk to make sure everything was as she liked it and turned to leave. The mail had gone out almost three hours before.
The janitors handled locking the front doors, and she had just seen Avery tidying up the steps outside. She walked to the cloak room and retrieved her purse from the locker she’d kept since her first day on the job. Her name had long since faded and fallen away when the tape cracked and powered, and that was the one thing she’d never bothered fixing. She knew and no one else cared so she saw no need to waste energy.
On the way back through the lobby she waved goodbye to Avery who had come inside to finish his business, and left out of the Employees’ Entrance at the back side of the building. She caught her bus near Esplanade, across the bridge Elizabeth frequented (though she did not know that), and a short walk to the bus stop. She hummed a song she’d heard her thirteen-year-old singing the night before, and pulled the shawl tighter across her stalwart shoulders. The air was indeed getting nippy.
As she walked the streetlights around the park began flickering to life, and depending upon where they stood, threw eerie cloud-shaped shadows over the grounds and through the trees. She could see the lake glowing faintly off to her left, punctuated by little sparklets upon its surface flashing every once in a while across its surface. She usually walked through the dirt path cut close to the bank because the water was always so soothing. She remembered the time Lou and—
She pulled up abruptly twenty feet shy of the park bench.
There was a huddled form sprawled across it, the legs twisted at an uncomfortable angle, one foot wrenched beneath the bench. The chill had begun creeping the length of her spine before the thought fully registered: People don’t sleep like that. Even stew bums like the drunk who perched on the porch five houses down from hers every night didn’t sleep like that. Fighting her slow rush of panic she stepped closer, peering over the back of the bench to get a better view of the figure lying there. It appeared to be a girl although in this day and age it was not always easy being certain. In the growing twilight she saw an upended back pack and what appeared to be the remnants of a lot of birdseed, all gone to shells and slivers now. Some ducks dawdled nearby. Everything else was quiet.
The person’s face was obscured by long hair and the hands were relaxed, hanging motionless off to one side. The fingers of one curled into a loose fist. Leonore’s long years in New Orleans (she was originally from Memphis but had moved when her first husband had been laid off from an ill-fated lumberyard) had taught her to mind her own business. Another warned her the bus would come and leave, the next one not arriving until well after an hour. But the stronger side of her Christian ethics kept her where she was. The picture was not right. This was no bum wasting the night away on a park bench. It didn’t feel right. Leonore said a short prayer before leaning closer, afraid to speak and most assuredly afraid to touch.
“Hello?” she ventured. Her voice carried a tremulous edge which she wished less apparent. “Are you all right?” she tried again after the first entreaty went answered.
There was nothing from the figure on the bench. No movement, no sound. Leonore repeated both her address and question but to the same effect. Taking a deep breath and praying to Jesus in Heaven that she was doing the right thing (that it was indeed His hand reaching forward and not her own), she bent down and cleared the hair from the girl’s face.
Because there was no mistaking; enough light remained to recognize the familiar set of the jaw, the curve of the forehead. The girl from this afternoon, the one with the letter. Leonore’s eyes widened and her legs were suddenly very weak. Her mind rang a fearsome alarm but her muscles provided no avenue for retreat. “Honey?” she tried, her voice now only a squeak. “Are you all right? Should I get a doctor, the police…?” But she could very well see the blue tint to the shapely lips, the ashen grayness of the skin. The pallor of death come to speak its voiceless words again. The image of her dead mother came quickly to mind, racing away just as suddenly. The girl’s eyes were slitted, the mouth open and slack. “Oh my God,” Leonore whispered in both prayer and shock. She came around the side of the bench (empty now of her terror) and touched the pretty face with her hand. There was no hint of warmth. Leonore looked around for spl
ashes of blood, signs of a struggle. She found none. Only the scratchings and shells. She checked the pulse at the neck. Nothing. Farther down, nothing.
“Oh Jesus,” she tried.
Moments later she banged away on the back door of the Art Museum, finally calling Avery’s name when she could get enough breath to spit out the syllables. When the door opened (a broom raised slightly at the janitor’s shoulders and his eyes as big as hubcaps) she could barely find the energy to go inside. Avery soundlessly helped her to a chair and went to call the police before she even told him what the problem was.
It was the only time in seventeen years she missed her bus.
Chapter 66
“Oh Jesus, are you sure?”
Billy’s eyes were wide, disbelief transforming his voice into a strangled scream. There had to be a mistake. “They’re sure it’s Elizabeth?” He felt his knees going and sat down before he collapsed. His hands shook uncontrollably, making it hard to keep the phone to his ear, twice as hard to hear his mother’s broken sobs on the other end. Elizabeth was dead, she was telling him, over and over. Found on a park bench. Her identification and a picture taken at the scene confirmed it. The police were at her door; she was going down to make sure…
Could he--?
Billy hung up; his eyes dilated with shock. No! Not True! She had just been here! Right goddamn here! The bed hadn’t even been made since she slept here. This was some bizarre joke, some hideous fucking mistake. He bit down hard into his cheek. His breath came fast and hard and spots danced before his eyes. His ears began a loud buzzing. His throat constricted; it was hard to breathe—
He suddenly burst to his feet, running to the door and madly flinging it open. Have to get to the street! There was no air; he was suffocating! Billy hit the street at a flat out sprint, tripping on a curb less than a block down, and spilling onto the asphalt. A cab swerved to miss him, denting its fender against a street lamp as the driver cursed him nine ways from Sunday. Of course, Billy heard the squeal of rubber and the hot air that slapped his face, but nothing registered. Even when he got to his feet and saw the growing crowd of spectators forming, the reality of danger was a mere figment of a dream. His knee burned and his pants were ripped from ankle to knee. His mind barely registered the red-faced cabby, screaming, hurling obscene gestures as he fought to free his bulk from the car. Billy turned, limping slightly, pushing his way wild-eyed through a group of onlookers. No one laid a hand on him. Another six steps and he ran again, not feeling the pain in his knee, not feeling anything. The world passed in a blur. Nothing was real, the nightmare inescapable.
He ran on and on, careening into people who either pushed back or yelled epithets at him; he saw none of them, heard nothing save the buzzing in his ears. That and lost voices knifing through the dim, voices from the past, insinuations, guilty, bloody ghosts made manifest and literate in his head. He tore down wet alleyways where his footsteps echoed off steaming walls and rats turned their bleary feral eyes in the direction of the madman in their midst. Cats slunk to the shadows until he passed. Dying sunlight played upon his fleeing figure where he rampaged from the shadows only to disappear again, throwing up muddy spume beneath his feet. His breath raked from his lungs in looping draws. Once, he slammed into a metal hitching post and went down in a skidding heap. Hands thrust down at him, but he couldn’t make out human faces, only vague shapes that might have been demons in this inhabited hell come to take him deeper. He screamed and jerked away, ripping himself out of the half-formed crowd before tearing off into more contrasts of light and shadow down the way.
He returned to his senses only gradually, long after the sun had been replaced by a rogue, bloody slice of moon. The glow was minimal and disturbing, a cataract eye staring from the lost regions of space. He knew he still lived when he moaned. Then came the fire in his knee. Looking down, he saw his pants in tatters, blood scabbed the leg to the ankle. Pulling back what was left of his jeans, Billy found a mess of dripping blood and fluid covering the area around the mushroom that used to be his kneecap. He reached out for a step to hoist himself up and the knee flamed.
Elizabeth was dead.
That was that. There was nothing left to do. It finally boiled down to this, no horrible nightmare from which there’d be eventual escape. His all-encompassing pain proved this. The disorientation made it worse. His mouth tasted like the street, his back like a horse had been driven across it. “Jesus Christ,” he pleaded, “what’s happening?” He turned his head, scanning the street: a vaguely lit run that appeared deserted, an acid chill racing its length. He noticed one of his shoes missing and the sock on that foot worn through. What remained was filthy and ragged. “Elizabeth,” he whispered and pulled himself the rest of the way up. Tears welled in his eyes when he put any weight on the bad leg. But pressing down helped level it out. He could take that.
Where the hell are you? What had he told Nora?
He wiped a dirty strand of hair from his eye, repulsed by the smell wafting from his sleeve. He needed Ebenezer. He knew of no solution in seeing the old man, but he knew there was nothing else that could save him.
At the corner stood a light, right beneath it a street sign. Billy hobbled over like an apparition from a black-and-white horror movie. He had a hard time focusing and his head split from a booming headache. He finally read N. Roman and St. Phillip. He was almost underneath the interstate and he hadn’t even noticed. But that really wasn’t so strange, considering he couldn’t remember anything in the recent past except a phone call, the message it relayed, and endless running. The nightmare voices had filled up all other spaces in his mind. They’d run right along beside him.
He groaned and tried to shake off another bout of dizziness and nausea. When he flexed his back, his backbone machine-gunned from the top to bottom, almost causing him to go down. What time is it? he wondered. He bent to his watch and saw only a scraped wrist and bruised knuckles. Nothing left except a tan line. My God, what have I been doing?
He leaned momentarily against the street lamp, trying to pull his mind together. North Roman…Christ, he was ten or fifteen blocks from the river. He knew Ursulines was several blocks over but it was still a hell of a long way. Hell, the next step was a long way.
But what else can you do? a voice challenged, a faint shadow of the ones who’d railed in his head while he ran.
He thought of Elizabeth again and caught his breath. A threatening weight bore him down, not pressing but completely encasing his body. Walking was as difficult as swimming against a current. Even so, he pushed away from the street lamp and shuffled out to the edge of the sidewalk, near the rushing cars. His knee was agony, but there was nothing to be done about it. “It’s finished,” he croaked into the densely packed night. He lost himself at the corner, staring into the windows of the passing cars, seeing the people within who appeared no more than blurred ghosts occupying different worlds. A fisted quiet had squeezed into his head, dampening the effects of the voices and tumult that had filled it since the phone call. He was finally alone in the universe, cut off and drifting, his only anchor a thin thread leading to a man as cast-off as himself.
Billy put his head down and plodded down the cracked sidewalks, grinding his teeth against the pain. Occasionally he sniffed at the air as if following an invisible trail. His darkness was complete; there was no time here in the void, only interminable dispossession and ragged soul. He was ravaged, depleted, burnt.
He tried to concentrate on the clump and steady drag of his bad leg. He found this helped somewhat, or at least separated the agony to a realm where it was bearable. He could smell the river when the wind was right and didn’t bother to read any of the street signs as he floated along.
He realized if Ebenezer was not home when he got there, he would skirt the gate and break down the door at the top of the stairwell. Collapsing on the couch was the sole object in his mind. No other place in the world would do. He was used up.
He continued lurching down the stre
et, catching disparate glances and disgust from people who made a wide berth as he went past. The pain had become a vague throb although the scab had broken away and fresh rivulets of viscous blood painted a lighter pattern on the already black shadow that stretched from knee to ankle. His breath whistled in his nose.
Sometime later he came to the irongate, set as an illusionary guardian for those within. He forced it wearily back. He was drenched in sweat even though the night was cool; he had to constantly wipe it from his eyes. Shambling through the opening like an ogre to its underground labyrinth, he climbed the stairwell leading up to Ebenezer’s loft.
A catacomb darkness filled the top of the stairwell, and Billy didn’t know he’d reached the landing until he took a final step and stumbled finding none there. He flung out his hand for balance and banged clumsily against the old STOP sign. Luckily, it kept him from going down. After a few seconds rest, he reached out and knocked loudly on Ebenezer’s door, only pausing a moment before starting the assault again. He quit abruptly when he heard a voice on the other side call out, “Hey, hey, hey! Who da hell is it!?”
“…Billy…,” he called hoarsely. “Let me in…open the door…”
Light flashed in the landing and Billy shaded his eyes as the door opened and Ebenezer’s wild eyes fixed upon him. The shock deepened when Ebenezer saw his condition. Billy was barely standing, supporting himself with his hands on the wall, his eyes mere phantoms recently visited by an unknown horror. “Jesus Christ, boy,” Ebenezer managed in shaken awe. “What the hell’s happened?” He flung the door wide.
“They found her today,” Billy choked as Ebenezer grabbed and steered him inside. In the light filtering in from the living room Ebenezer immediately saw the mangled pants leg, the amount of blood underneath the ragged flaps. The boy was practically incoherent. Ebenezer helped him to the recliner and sat him down. Billy’s face was ashen, as pale as a porcelain doll’s. “She’s dead,” he said in a low monotone, his voice revealing nothing of the shock that was apparent in his expression.