Red Rain: Lightning Strikes: Red Rain Series #2 (22 page)

T
he plane landed
and Scott exited in a daze.

He didn't finished the journal. He couldn’t. Then again, he didn’t need to.

He had learned everything he needed, or at least everything Lori thought. She couldn’t be right. It was impossible that Scott lived his whole life with a serial killer. Absolutely impossible. John couldn't help but to go around killing people?

And the things Lori said about her mother? She hadn’t mentioned a word, not one single breath during their whole marriage, and yet Scott was supposed to believe Clara was a sick sadist who killed Lori’s father,
and then
, somehow transferred it in the bloodline?

No.

Fuck no.

But weren’t there signs?
a part of him asked, something that had lain dormant for decades.

No. There weren’t any goddamn
signs
.

The only thing that made any sense at all—the only possible way the puzzle pieces fit—was that Lori’s mother was insane, and some of that insanity transferred to Lori, making her think these ridiculous things. Making her write them out for years and years.

Or perhaps you saw that insanity in a different way, one you didn’t want to think about?

He shoved the voice down, refusing to listen to it.

She had to have written all of those entries due to some kind of mental issue. Hell, the England thing? Scott did the research on that; John went for
school
and look at what it did for him: two Ivy League degrees. He didn’t go to escape some curious psychiatrist’s obsession. Scott
would have known
.

He picked his bag up from the luggage carousel. He walked out, barely stopping for traffic and got into his car.

Scott pulled his cellphone out and turned it on, the first time in two days. Voicemails popped up across the screen, four from Alicia. He closed his eyes tightly, crow’s feet appearing at the corners, and realized all at once the situation's gravity.

Perhaps during the plane flight and the walk to his car, nothing actually sank into his brain’s deep wiring, remaining only on the surface. Or perhaps he had just ignored it on a subconscious level.

Scott’s body slumped forward, leaning his head on the steering wheel. Tears flooded his eyes.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he said, talking to himself as much as any God. He wasn’t a religious man by any means but had he ever felt so lost in his entire life? The world so completely out of control?

What was he to do?

Who could he tell?

Scott looked at the phone sitting on his leg—salty water dripping down his wrinkled cheeks—and pressed the first voicemail.

“Dad, I don’t know where you are. I’ve called you at least a hundred times. Look, we need to talk and I don’t want to say it all on here. Call me immediately.”

The message ended.

Scott kept going through them until he got to the fourth.

“Dad, I’m not calling anymore. No one knows where you are but we need you.
I
need you. I didn’t want to say this over the phone but I don’t know how else to tell you. John ran off to Mexico. The police are asking questions about a murder. He’s a suspect, though they haven’t put a warrant out for him. Diane has a lawyer but no one can find John. Please call me. Please. I love you.”

Scott stared at the phone, his eyes so wide he felt they might fall from his face.

He’s a suspect.

John’s a suspect.

And he’s in Mexico.

Simple, declarative thoughts, but carrying a force like The Big Bang.

It’s true
, he thought.
It’s all true.

And then his wife’s words came back to him. They pushed out everything else, his own concerns, even Alicia’s. Everything.

“You’ve got to stop him,” she said. “You have to protect the children. Diane. You have to. There’s no one else and I could never do it.”

She knew what she was saying. Lori wasn’t delusional and she told him something she had known her whole life—something Scott was oblivious to.

But you shouldn’t have been, should you?
the voice asked.
Just because you shoved all that past away didn’t mean it wouldn’t come back.

Protect the children. Diane.

Scott leaned back in his seat and stared straight ahead.

There’s no one else.

* * *

T
he fever was on him
.

John didn’t think he had ever felt it so strong. Indeed, he lay in his room, sweating, despite being completely nude and the shitty air conditioner turned on high.

Harry sat on the other side of the room, refusing to leave, but blessedly not talking. He had a new book, though John didn't know the name. Somehow the bastard had gotten a Kindle, ditching the paperbacks.

Harry seemed pretty interested, but John knew that was a facade. The only thing on Harry’s mind was on John's as well, and this little respite was only a ruse.

Building up the anticipation.

Until John didn’t have a choice.

“FUCK!” he shouted across the room. “FUCK YOU!”

“Thou doth protest too much,” Harry said, not looking up.

“You won’t stop will you? Not ever. No matter where I go? I could travel to hell and you’d still have me knifing people down there, wouldn’t you? The Devil himself if it tickled your motherfucking fancy.”

“There is no Devil, John. No God either. Or don’t you realize that yet?”

John dropped his head back on the pillow, trying to refuse the blaspheme. There was a God.

“Then he’s forsaken you,” Harry said.

Maybe so.
Probably
so.

John knew the one Harry wanted. They’d both seen her a hundred times in the past two days—or at least thought about her that many.

“Fuck you and fuck it,” John said.

He stood from the bed and started dressing, pulling clothes over his sweaty skin. He was dressed in a matter of minutes. He went into the desk drawer and grabbed a small knife. The blade was only about three inches long, but it would do the job. No doubt about it.

* * *

H
arry looked
up from his book.

A smile crept across his fat face.

Yes,
he thought.
Yes, yes, yes.

More
, he thought.

Because there was never enough. No matter how many times, no matter how many places, no matter anything.

Harry stood up and followed John out of the room. He started whistling, though it was hard to do.

Because he couldn’t stop smiling.

T
hanks for reading
, and I mean that wholeheartedly. I love telling stories and without you, that wouldn’t be possible.

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A
ddiction isn’t all
or nothing. Not at first, at least from my experience. It certainly does turn into all or nothing, and in a very ferocious way.

This book, for me, was John’s change. Where an addict begins taking steps that put his addiction at the forefront of his mind, more important than anything else.

There isn’t a singular moment one could point to and say, “There, that’s where I became an addict.” No, it’s a process with hundreds of tiny moments which rewire the brain until the addict can honestly no longer say ‘no’.

For the longest time, I didn’t think addiction was a ‘disease’. I thought, like a lot of people, that it had something to do with willpower and weakness. I did a lot of research and spoke to quite a few doctors before I came to understand addiction’s essence.

The addicts brain literally changes—rewiring itself in abnormal patterns (a disorder of structure). If you were to compare an addict and a non-addict’s brain, you would see large differences both in reaction to stimuli and (from what I understand) composition.

I don’t say this to excuse anyone from the damage they cause to those around them. I only say it to perhaps help give some understanding to those whose lives have been hurt. We never meant to do it; indeed, the pain we cause rips us up inside.

It’s our addict, our Harry, that pushes us forward. And we listen to them in large part because we’re trying to fill some infinite hole inside ourselves. It doesn’t matter how much we use, though—the hole only deepens.

Addicts take, and John isn’t done taking yet.

See you in Book Three: Hurricane.

All the best,

David

7/19/2016