Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (26 page)

Ryan leaned against the closed door, sensing Sumiko’s presence on the doormat outside. Certain she had seen through him, he tried to remember what he had said or what signs he’d exhibited. He was sure he’d been infected by something, and he couldn’t bear the thought of infecting her. Or of admitting to her that he might be dying. Best to push her away.

As soon as he lowered his guard, he felt the rage bubbling up inside him and his muscles trembled with the urge to smash something or hurt someone. Talking to Sumiko had exhausted him. Pushing her away had been painful, but necessary. It was the only way to protect her from whatever was happening.

Inside the pocket of his hoodie, his right hand clutched the letter his mother had written to his father weeks before he had been born. The idea that his father kept that letter secret from him all these years made him want to scream. Once more he unfolded the paper and stared at the words as if they were a puzzle and its solution would explain his life.

He found himself sitting at the kitchen table looking down at the sheet of paper. The letter spoke about commitment despite what had happened to his mother. Without getting into specifics, she hinted at a terrible event that his parents had endured, a tragedy his father had kept hidden from him. His fists trembled on either side of the letter. A fever burned within him. His forehead continued to throb with a dull ache, itching as if he had a rash. His fingernails, now completely dark, had coarsened, with pointed tips so sharp he had been able to carve his name in the wooden tabletop with one of them, as if it were the blade of a penknife. He had hidden his nails from Sumiko, even as a sick desire to wrap his hands around her throat surged within him like a dark tide.

When he heard a key in the front door lock, Ryan jumped out of his chair, worried that Sumiko had come back. But she didn’t have a key. Only his father…

“I forgot some letters I wanted to mail,” Ryan’s father
said when he spotted his son standing in the kitchen. He twirled his car keys around his index finger as if he couldn’t wait to get back on the road.

“What is this?” Ryan asked, feeling anger rising inside him again.

His father stopped by the sideboard, his hands on a stack of stamped bills to be mailed. “What are you talking about?”

“This letter mom wrote you before I was born.”

“Where did you find that?”

“Answer the question!”

“Ryan …” His father looked away, trying to compose himself. “You were never meant to see that.”

“What does it mean?”

“Your mother and I were going through a rough patch when she wrote that,” his father said. “Trying to deal with … to get ready for parenthood.”

“What about the attack?”

“Ryan…”

“She writes, ‘Honestly, I didn’t know how we could survive together, after the attack. In different ways, it was incredibly hard for both of us. My decision to keep this child was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, knowing you might not choose to walk this path with me. I know this is nothing like how we envisioned raising a child together. So thank you for supporting my decision to have this baby and to raise him as if he were ours. Together, we are so strong, my love. I know we can handle this and create something positive out of what has, until now, only been horrible.’”

Ryan stopped reading and stared at his father.

“You’ve always hated me.”

“That’s not true.”

“My whole life, you’ve avoided me, never wanted to spend any time with me.”

“I’ve had to work two jobs,” his father said, “to keep a roof over our heads.”

“That’s always been your excuse,” Ryan said. “But you don’t look at me like a son, not really. I’m like a neighbor’s kid you’ve had to watch for too long.” He laughed bitterly. “All these years, feeling like I wasn’t good enough for you, that I was somehow lacking. No matter how hard I worked, how good my grades were, nothing made a difference.”

“You have worked hard,” his father said. “Maybe I didn’t tell you often enough.”

“Are you kidding? You never said ‘good job’ like you meant it. Any compliment, any scrap of praise, all I felt was your disappointment. I assumed I wasn’t good enough. I changed the way I looked!” Ryan grabbed a hank of his dyed blue hair. “Every time I looked in the mirror, I thought something was wrong with me. Because of the way you treated me!”

“You’re not a neighbor’s kid,” his father said, but he continued to look past Ryan’s shoulder, finding something more interesting about the kitchen cabinets than his child. “Every morning I wake up, I tell myself you are your mother’s son.”

“But not yours,” Ryan said, finally voicing the truth. He dyed his hair to hide its natural color, because it marked him as different from his father, his only surviving parent.

“Not mine,” his father conceded. “I tried to give you a good home, a safe place to live, a chance to grow and learn…”

“This house isn’t a home,” Ryan said angrily. “It’s a motel, with two strangers renting rooms.”

“Your mother was the strong one,” his father said. “I tell myself that you are her son, but when I look at you… all I see is him.”

“My real father?”

“The man who attacked your mother,” he said. “I’ll never forgive him.”

“Who—Where is he?” Ryan asked.

“They—The police never found him,” his father said. “Your mother and I decided we’d raise you, but on that one day she wasn’t strong enough.”

“The day she was attacked?”

“The day you were born,” his father said, and now a tear rolled down his cheek. “She hemorrhaged so badly, the doctors tried everything…” His voice became strangled with emotion for a couple of moments. “Before she died, she made me promise… promise I would take care of you.”

In that moment, Ryan finally witnessed genuine emotion from his father, the love for the mother Ryan had never known. Throughout Ryan’s life, his father had been a stoic, distant man, never showing emotion. He had watched over Ryan, given him a place to live, but had never shown him real affection. Never a tear shed in pride or joy. He had taken care of him, kept his promise to Ryan’s mother, but nothing more.

Watching his father moved to tears, but not for him— never for him—Ryan felt rage boiling inside again. He had received more affection from teachers, and from his friends’ parents, even from complete strangers, than he ever had from this man before him.

“A lie,” Ryan shouted at him. “From the minute I was born, my life has been one big fat lie!”

With a roar of anger, Ryan grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it over.

“Ryan!”

He grabbed the dish drainer, lined with drying glasses and bowls, and threw it against the wall. Glass and ceramic shattered and the dish drainer knocked the calendar off the wall.

“All these years, I’ve hated my life,” Ryan yelled, striding toward his father with clenched fists, “and now I know why. Because I’ve hated you!”

His father stood there, stricken, hardly reacting when Ryan punched him in the face. Beneath his knuckles, he felt his father’s nose crunch and shift. Blood streaked down his face. Ryan punched him in the face again, knocking him to the ground. When he fell, Ryan drew back his right foot and kicked him in the gut.

His father doubled over, helpless.

Ryan pulled back his foot again and aimed the toe of his boot at his father’s head. As the rage burned within him, he imagined his father’s face pulverized, his skull fractured, and the mental picture made him smile in anticipation. He trembled with the need to crush the life out of the man who
had made his whole life a sham.

At the last moment, something stopped him from delivering a fatal blow, something fought against the rage inside him and won.

“You’re not worth it!” he whispered fiercely and ran outside.

Standing in front of his house—never his home—he bent over, hands on his knees, panting as he waited for his heart rate to return to normal. When his head began to clear, he realized what had stopped him—Sumiko. She was the only thing that had ever truly meant something in his life and deep inside he knew that if he murdered his father, he would lose her forever. For a moment, he had stared into the abyss and finality had stared back at him.

Even though he had pushed her away for her own safety, he couldn’t accept a future without the possibility of her in his life. She had saved his father. But he wasn’t sure if anything could save him.

Twenty-Three

Disoriented, Jesse assumed the previous night’s beer consumption had dehydrated him, because something was definitely wrong with his body, other than a standard-issue hangover. He thought food might settle his stomach, make the pounding in his head go away or simmer down. He staggered down the hall to the staircase and grabbed the banister railing with his right hand while massaging his brow with the left. The raised bumps at the top of his forehead— just behind where his hairline would be if he didn’t shave his head bald—felt dry and scaly, as if he had some kind of rash. His probing fingers found a split in the skin, like a cut, but without blood.

His father climbed the stairs, clutching a forty-ounce beer bottle in his hand but paying attention to little else. Jesse, distracted by the bloodless slit in his scalp, bumped into his
old man and knocked the bottle loose. It hit the stairs and toppled over, spilling the rest of the beer.

“What the hell!?” his father groused, his speech slurred. “You some kind of moron, boy?”

Jesse shoved him against the wall. “I must be,” he said angrily, “to have stood your drunken bullshit all these years.”

“You got it wrong, buddy boy,” his father shouted, spittle flying freely.
“I’ve
had to put up with
you
all these years. Now make yourself useful—get me another beer and clean up this damned mess!”

“Do I look like your servant, Pop?”

His father leaned in so close Jesse had no choice but to inhale the sour mixture of booze and dried vomit steaming out of his mouth. “No,” his father said. “You look like something I scraped off my shoe.”

Jesse grabbed his father’s chin and shoved him backward, hard, slamming his head into the wall. A framed picture of his father standing with a few fishing buddies at some lodge fell off the wall and clattered down the stairs. Before his father could react, Jesse slugged him in his big gut, then grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him sidewise, down the stairs.

His father rolled awkwardly, his foot splitting two balusters on the way down. At the base of the stairs, he swayed on his hands and knees, fighting for the strength or balance to rise.

Jesse charged down the stairs and grabbed his father by the hair, lifting his face up high enough for a punch.

“Go ahead, tough guy,” his father slurred. “Do it, you stupid son of a bitch. Kill me, just like you killed your own mother!”

Jesse released him and stepped back, staring at his father as if he had sprouted a second head. “What?”

“You killed her,” his father repeated. “So go ahead and kill me. A matched set.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jesse yelled angrily. “Mom ran away. She couldn’t take living with you. And who could blame her?”

Jesse blamed her. For leaving him with this worthless human being, for abandoning him. His father liked to blame Jesse for her leaving, saying she couldn’t take raising a kid and left to avoid the responsibility, but Jesse knew she left because her husband was a worthless drunk. The only doubt that had ever crept into his mind was trying to understand why she would throw out the baby with the beer-drenched loser.

“It was you,” his father said, pointing at him, “you freak. You killed her.”

His father climbed awkwardly to his feet, clutching the edge of the kitchen table for support. In his inebriated state, standing and regaining his balance required all his remaining wits and stamina. Panting, he staggered back until he bumped into the counter. Jesse stalked after him, fists clenched at his sides.

“You’re a worthless liar,” Jesse said. “She ran away from you!”

“Want proof, smartass? I’ll take you to her grave!”

“Liar!”

All his life, the idea that Jesse’s mother might come back for him, might contact him and offer him an escape from this worthless excuse for a father, had kept him sane. A tiny scrap
of hope that somewhere life made sense. He hated that she had abandoned him, but he thought he could forgive her… if she came back for him.

“She died giving birth to you, jackass,” his father said. “Bled out on the table. Worst part is, you’re probably not even mine. I loved your mother, but she was no saint. Sure, I’d go on my benders, but she’d shack up with a different guy every other week, always looking for something else, something better. Never satisfied with what we had. And in the end, it caught up to her. She gave birth to a freak bastard and it killed her.”

“You’re a worthless drunk and a lousy liar,” Jesse said, his lips drawn tight. “Why should I believe a word out of your mouth?”

“Believe what you want,” his father said. “But you know it’s true.” He raised his hands over his head and laughed. “Hell, I’m a hero! Raising somebody’s bastard. I should get a medal.”