Gingerbread Man (46 page)

Right. Like I was twelve and somehow
believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would
probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.

“How long before I’ll be able to look at my
sister’s face?”

She patted my hand. “Tomorrow, if all goes
well. And better than the other times, right off the bat, with full
recovery in two to three months.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be able to see my sister’s
face again…tomorrow.” I lowered my head, shook it slowly. Even if
it didn’t last, I’d have that. I just didn’t know if I could handle
the letdown if it was only temporary. You might think temporary
vision is better than none at all, but you haven’t been there. I
have. It sucks.

“It’ll work for you this time, Rachel. I
honestly believe that.”

Yes, she honestly did. I sighed, and she knew
I was going to give in. “If I believed in miracles, I’d think this
was one.”

But of course I didn’t. And as it turned out,
it wasn’t.

ERIC THOUGHT HE had blown it. He was pretty
sure of it, in fact. At first he’d been in oblivion, but then a
sound had brought him back. The sound of the rat, scratching,
biting. It wasn’t digging its way through the wall. It had escaped
that prison. Eric had blown a hole through the wall. Into his own
head.

So how could he be aware of anything, then?
Aware but immobile, aware but in full sensory deprivation. What was
this? Was this hell?

He’d intended to be dead, to kill the rat,
not to let it out. But it was free. And scratching now to let him
know it.

“I know it was my fault,” Jeremy said.

That voice, those words, snapped his
attention away from the rat’s merciless, incessant claws inside
him. His focus turned outside, as much as it could, anyway. He
couldn’t see anything. His eyes were closed, and though he tried to
open them, he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel much either, and he
supposed that was a good thing, because he’d blown half his head
off earlier today. Or was it yesterday? Or a week ago? Or a
year?

Steady beeping,
beep, beep, beep
. The
sound of Darth Vader breathing in his ear. A rhythmic thumping. And
that voice.

Jeremy’s voice.

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you for
forgetting we were coming home. But you didn’t have to do this,
Dad. You didn’t have to do this.”

It wasn’t your fault, son.

Damn, why couldn’t he tell him?

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

“Are you all right, Jer?”

That was Marie. She was standing close, he
could tell.

“They’re gonna cut him up, Mom. How can you
let them do that?”

Joshua’s sobbing, which he realized had been
soft background noise, took a turn for the louder. He felt like
joining his younger son. What the hell were they talking about,
cutting him up?

“This is no place for the boys.” That was
Mother. She was patting someone’s hand. From the location, he
thought it might be his own, but he couldn’t feel it, only hear the
sound. Smack, smack, smack. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better by you,
Eric. I hope you’ll find peace in the afterlife.”

“Josh, Jeremy, it’s important that you guys
understand something here.” That voice belonged to his kid brother.
Mason.

Mason had been yelling at him earlier. He
remembered that vaguely, but had no idea when it had happened and
barely recalled what he’d said. Oh, right. He was mad that Eric had
waited for him to get there to shoot himself. He had it all wrong,
of course. He’d been
trying
to do it before Mason got there.
He’d just run out of time.

Go on,
he thought at Mason.
Tell
the boys something. Anything to make them feel better. You always
know what to say.

“Your dad’s already gone.”

No! I’m not gone, I’m right here. And so
is the rat. Scratching me bloody, the damned thing. Why is it so
hyper?
Why is it still tormenting me now that it’s free? It
has what it wanted.

“He’s already gone,” Mason repeated. “Those
machines are forcing blood through his body to keep his organs
alive, but he’s gone. And what we’re going to do here, with the
parts he left behind, is help other people. Your dad is going to
save lives. He’s a hero.”

Oh, that’s a good one, Mason. But they
must know better. Or do they? No one had mentioned the dead men.
The confession. The bag of tools. Jeremy wasn’t asking Marie why
his father had murdered thirteen young men who looked just like
he
looked. Why hadn’t he?

What did you do, Mason?

Then the rest of Mason’s words started to
soak in, and he realized they were going to donate his organs.
Well, that was good, right? He couldn’t feel anything, so there
would be no pain, and he certainly couldn’t keep on living if they
took out all his vital parts. Could he?

He would be free then.

Scratchscratchscratchscratch!

“Part of your father will live on in the
people whose lives he saves today,” Mason said softly. “You should
be very proud of that.”

Part of him would live on.

Part of him.

Part of him…

No, not
that
part!

A soft breath, close to his face. He heard it
but didn’t feel it. “Bye, Dad. I love you.”

From down lower. “Bye, Daddy.”

“Goodbye, son.” That was Angela. Mother.
Never Mom or Mommy. Mother. Cold. Like she knew.

He heard the boys’ shuffling steps, Mother’s
clacking heels fading, the door swinging open and then closed. And
then it was down to Marie and Mason.

Marie said, “He kept a part of himself closed
up— always,” she whispered. “But I loved him, all of him. Even the
parts he didn’t want me to see. I wish he knew that.”

The rat. You didn’t need to see that.

“I know. I know.”

But you saw it, Mason. You saw my rat in the
end. Those driver’s licenses. God, what did you do? Did you cover
it up?

A smacking sound, soft, near his ear. Had
Marie leaned over to kiss him? God, he wanted to feel that.

A sob. “I can’t do this.” Running footsteps.
The door.

It was just him and his brother now. Mason
heaved a big sigh. Like he was almost too tired to stay upright. He
sounded just about all in.

“I covered it all up, Eric. Your secrets are
going to be buried with you. I just couldn’t put them through
it.”

I should have figured you would do
that
.

“Maybe the lives you save now will at least
start to make up for what you did. Balance the scales a little. I
hope so, brother. And I hope to God you find some kind of peace
now. I really do.” And then he went away, too.

There were feet, followed by the sound, not
the feeling, of being jostled. And then Eric faded away for a
while. When he returned, he felt different. Hollow. Empty. There
were still others all around him, their voices muffled. More
machines beeping. He was in an operating room. Had been for some
time. He wondered vaguely what was left of his body at this
point.

“Scalpel.”

He heard it. He heard the sound of his skin
being sliced. It was like a very faint echo of butter melting in a
skillet.
Sssssssss
. And then the horrifying buzz of the bone
saw, and the cracking as his ribs were spread apart. No, no, no, he
couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel it. He kept reminding himself of
that. He was just imagining the pain.

“Transplant team, ready for the heart?”

“Ready, doctor.”

No! No, wait until I fade away again. I
know, I know, I won’t feel it, but it’s still too awful too awful
too awful….

Scratchscratchscratch!

More cutting. God! And then the squishy
sounds as they pried and pulled and lifted what he thought was his
heart from what he thought was his chest. Surely he couldn’t keep
going now!

No. No, he couldn’t. He was fading, falling
into a whirling vortex of darkness and turning his attention away
from
here
toward
there
. A pinprick of light appeared
far, far away. No more scratching. No more rat. He felt free of it,
lighter than air without it weighing him down.

Believe me, pal, it’s mutual.

Eric spun around in his rapidly expanding
consciousness, which was inflating like a balloon. He started
wondering how he had ever fit into his little body to begin with.
But still, that voice,
the rat,
got his attention. Where the
hell was it? What was it doing?

Hey, you made this choice, I didn’t. I’m not
going anywhere, buddy. Just because you shot your head, doesn’t
mean the rat is dead.

And then it laughed and it laughed and it
laughed, and Eric’s horror enveloped him. He couldn’t see that
speck of light anymore. Nor could he hear the laughter. Or
anything. He felt like an astronaut cut loose from his tether,
floating through space, only without a spacesuit. Or a body. Or any
senses at all. He was adrift in a vacuum that was stretching him in
all directions and dimensions, and he was thinning, and thinning,
and wondering when he would simply become a part of the void.

* * *

THE NIGHTMARES STARTED my first night home,
barely forty-eight hours after the bandages came off my eyes. But
I’m getting ahead of myself here. Because really, that was major,
that day. It was fucking
huge
.

I hadn’t taken the bandages off myself. Not
because the doc had warned me so sternly against it—like
that
would have stopped me. I wasn’t real good at doing what
I was told. Or conforming. Or following rules. Or anything, really,
except writing books telling people to follow their bliss. The more
ways I could find to say it, the more books I sold. But the truth
was, the whole premise—that you could attract good things to you by
being good yourself; that a positive attitude would make life go
smoothly; that belief could create fortunes and castles and
bliss—was flawed. It had been drummed into me by the well-meaning
adults around me ever since I’d lost my eyesight for good.

Look for the silver lining, Rachel.

Everything happens for a reason, Rachel.

Something positive will surely come of this,
Rachel.

And I remember thinking,
My God, they
actually
believe
this shit!

And when they started getting me
books—audiobooks back then, though now it’s ebooks with
text-to-speech enabled, because let’s face it, braille is kind of
passé these days—that spouted the same bull, I realized they not
only believed it, they
wanted
to believe it.

By the time I was sixteen I had figured out
that these Pollyanna idiots would pay any amount of money for any
product that supported their inane beliefs, because those beliefs
were so flimsy they needed constant reinforcement. One stiff gust
of logic or common sense would blow them to hell and gone. Hence,
the self-help guru explosion of the first decade-and-a-half—so
far—of the new millennium. Entire companies have been born and
built around the idea that one could create one’s own reality.
Those companies produce books and DVDs and card-kits created by
authors who pretend to understand quantum physics, and use their
brand of pseudo-science to support their claims that
you are
what you think
and all that crap.

Eventually I figured, why fight it when I
could make millions off it instead?

So that’s what I did. That’s what I
do
. Being blind makes me even more popular among the sheep—I
mean masses. Silver lining? No. Smart thinking.

But back to the subject. No, I didn’t take
the bandages off. I was an obedient conformist for the first time
in…well, ever. I waited because I was scared shitless. I had not
seen in twenty years, not really. The post-transplant unveilings of
the past had been little better than the blindness that had
preceded them and of course, short-lived. And before I’d lost my
sight entirely, there had been a solid year of slow fading, so the
final unforgettable image I’d seen—my brother, Tommy—had been dull
and dark around the edges.

Point is, I was too scared to take the
bandages off myself. I don’t even know what I was scared of,
exactly. That the transplant hadn’t worked and I would still be
blind, maybe, or maybe that I would be able to see again and it
would be terrible.

I know, stupid, right? How can seeing be
terrible? I guess it’s like anything else in the human psyche. When
we don’t know what to expect we’re all alike: terrified. And
frankly, I probably would have gotten over the fear and yanked the
eye patches off myself if I’d had to wait very long for the doc to
do it. But I didn’t. Just overnight.

So I was sitting up in the bed, listening to
the clock tick and my sister yap at me in an effort to try to
distract me from my impatience. My breakfast tray was still there,
wafting aromas that weren’t really bad but were making my stomach
turn anyway. Amy was there. She was unusually quiet. Barracuda
Woman was there via Skype, on a laptop beside my bed. The twins
were at the mall. Sandra wisely thought maybe I’d like to see them
for the first time with just us four.

Mott hadn’t even shown up. Him and his idea
that being blind was something to be proud of. Like we should have
a freaking parade. Blind Pride. Fuck that. If I could see, I damned
well wanted to.

And there it was. My hopes were high. I
hadn’t intended to let them climb up there, but they’d ascended to
the point where they were making me dizzy. God, I was a glutton for
punishment.

And then there were the footsteps and the
smells that told me Doc had finally arrived.

“About time,” I said.

“I said nine. It’s only 8:30.”

“Left my braille watch home. Feels like noon
of next year to me.” My voice was shaking. Why the hell was my
voice was shaking?