The Devil's Dream: Book One (18 page)

"I couldn't tell
ya," Jeffrey said, looking down at the boxes next to his bed,
most had cardboard lids covering them, unnecessary for what came
next. "If I see them, I'll be sure to give you a call."

He hung up the phone.

Durham, North Carolina.
He'd been here for his last book and remembered feeling like he was
walking through an ashtray. He was heading back as soon as he
finished his drink. They'd left Lucent standing out in the cold,
albeit with a bunch of people hiding in the shadows trying to protect
her if the monster showed up. Jeffrey hadn't been lying. The monster
would show, and he knew it because he watched the monster pack. Brand
visited the warehouse last night and brought out a milk jug full of a
clear liquid. He brought out blankets. He brought out a gun.

Allison Moore let him
know who Brand was packing for: Linda Lucent, a quiet individual if
God ever made one. Jeffrey wanted to tell Lucent what was coming. He
really did. Show up in Durham and tell her to run. Find the nearest
cop and run into his arms and have him lock her up in a cell that had
no windows and no cracks in it. Because the monster was gearing up
and Jeffrey didn't think all of the F.B.I. and all of the Durham
police lined up outside her house would stop Brand from getting
inside. Jeffrey could tell her though, could warn her that a fate
much worse than death was on its way.

Only, that wasn't true.
That was a wish, not real. He wasn't going to end this book both for
himself and for Brand. Jeffrey was a middle-aged man sitting on a
hotel bed, drinking the last of his vodka. Boxes of old interviews
surrounded him. Alone and drunk. If he couldn't be honest now, he
couldn't be honest ever. This book would put him back on television,
would have him interviewed by David Letterman and anyone else he
wanted. This book would make him someone again. Less, but still
important, if he finished this—if he didn't step in, Brand had his
son back. Some people would die along the way, but fuck it, the child
was already gone. A few more people, old now, wouldn't matter. None
of them would go to the lengths Brand was for someone they loved.
None of them would even consider it.

Linda pushed her
grocery cart slowly down the canned vegetable aisle. She wanted corn
but her eyes kept looking at the people around her. Who were police
and who were shoppers simply looking for green beans or tomato paste?
The man reading the back of the can, or the woman handing her toddler
another piece of candy to keep the girl quiet for just a few more
moments? How could Linda tell who was who? She couldn't and she knew
it, but would keep trying.

She grabbed a can of
creamed corn from the shelf and put it in her cart.

Even grocery shopping
was different now, because people knew her.

She was the wife of the
slain cop.

Everyone knew about the
boy who was stolen in Florida. Everyone also knew that Brand wasn't
done and here she was walking around the grocery store like none of
it mattered. No one had said anything to her yet, no strangers at
least. The cops and that F.B.I. agent were pretty forceful though.
Linda's neighbor, Anne, had just about as much conviction as the cops
that Linda needed to beat trail.

"Sit here an' let
him come, huh? That's your plan?"

Her old face scrunched
up like a molded peach.

That was Linda's plan.
The only plan she had anymore besides to keep on living. She grabbed
some fresh broccoli, bagged it, and dropped it into the cart.

She made her way
through the rest of the store, trying to eye out the ones that might
be police, knowing that a cop car waited just outside at the curb.
Everyone had seen her face on the nightly news and everyone knew that
cop car waited for her. The police wanted everyone to know. That was
the point, wasn't it? To scare away this man who wanted her head just
as he had wanted her husband's?

She rolled through the
check-out, handing her debit card instead of the cash that Garret had
always used. He kept a wad of cash in his pocket all the time, and
pulled it out and counted out twenties or hundreds, depending on how
much they needed. How long had it been since she thought about him
like this? Five years? More? When she left therapy there wasn't much
to think about, except maybe she might kill him again if his big ass
ever made it to heaven. She didn't know if that was possible, but she
kept the hope. Other than that, Garret disappeared from her mind,
until Brand decided he was done sleeping. Now she thought of Garret
all the time. Pushing the buggy across the asphalt, she remembered
how he never used to let her push it. She thought that was sweet back
then—he was being a gentleman—not wanting her to work when he was
there to do it. The truth, to a fifty year old woman, was that her
husband had been too busy trying to control everything rather than
worrying about whether or not she was working.

The cop car didn't move
as she passed it, but the heads inside did. They followed her
movements, not acting like they were out on patrol or doing some kind
of private gig for the store. They were here for her and her alone.

She pulled out of the
parking lot, groceries packed into her trunk, and the police cruiser
followed. She wished they would pull up in her driveway and help her
unload all this food, but that wouldn't happen. This was a stand-off
job only, no need to get up and close with the widow now being looked
at as lunch meat for a possible rebirth of that psycho's son.

Linda parked the car in
front of her house. The same size it had been when Garret lived with
them, and for a long time after his death, it appeared so big. So
empty without his presence there. Now it was only her home. Not
empty. Not big. Not small. Just her home where she had managed to
live on and get through everything that happened.

She opened the trunk
and had all the bags in after three trips.

* * *

The cops in the car
outside weren't the only people watching Linda's home. People
practically lived in the back too, although she didn't know if they
were cops or F.B.I. At Brand's last crime scene, he had gone through
the back yard—trekking through about a half mile of woods to get
there. So while she never looked in her backyard for them, she knew
cops were out there, probably hiding. Hopefully hiding, because a lot
of good they would be at catching Brand if they were out poking
around in daylight.

She didn't think Brand
would come for her here. It would be too hard of a task. Getting
around all of these people staring directly at her, when there were
easier ways.

Easier ways.

The thought appealed to
Linda. It wasn't a death wish, per se, but something that she took
from therapy. Thanks to Mr. Jeffrey Dillan for it. The man
interviewed her for his book and she told glowing stories about
Garret and his life. Told of the great things the man had
accomplished and the great things he wanted to accomplish. Mr. Dillan
told a bit of a different story, and when the book came out, Linda
lost it.

Her neighbor, not quite
as wrinkled as she was now, found Linda cutting long lines into her
forearms. She was attacking the top of them, luckily not the bottom,
and so she wasn't close to bleeding out but was certainly making a
mess of both her kitchen and her mind. Anne took the knife and
slapped her face, then called the ambulance. Linda kept on picking at
the raw skin until the paramedics showed up and medicated her.
Probably would have picked until her arm was nothing but bone if
she'd been left alone.

Linda loved Anne for
finding her. At the time, she was mildly annoyed. If her husband had
wanted to fuck everything that walked on two or four legs, then why
couldn't Linda have some fun of her own, even if it meant a little
self-mutilation?

She wasn't allowed to
come home for a long time. The papers said nothing about it because
this was two years after Brand was silenced inside that glass cell.
The Wall
they called
it. No one cared about Linda Lucent or what she went through anymore.
Linda went to an institution. An asylum. She went somewhere where she
couldn't cut herself anymore. A room with white walls that she
eventually hung pictures on. A room with a cot a little bigger than a
single person, when she had been so used to the king size she and
Garret shared. A room with a single window, just like in the movies
and Linda had thought—
well
isn't this quaint?

She took her meals in a
cafeteria that reminded her of grade school. All of the stools were
attached to the tables and she met people that were a lot better than
her and some that were a lot worse. She met Martin there, a black man
who looked to be the exact opposite of Garret. Where Garret was tall,
Martin was short. Where Garret was thick, Martin was thin. Where
Garret had hair, Martin was bald. Where Garret liked women, Martin
liked men. That was the only way she knew to look at Martin, and how
could she not? The only man she ever had in her life beside her
father was the God-like presence of Garret. Martin had found his way
to this sunny estate in much the same way as Linda, through all
encompassing self-hate. A small, bald, gay, black man in Durham,
North Carolina—Martin had learned to hate himself early.

"When I was
fifteen, to be 'zact 'bout it," he said in his country twang
that Linda imagined most people from his high school still possessed.

No pills and no therapy
sessions when he was fifteen, just a lot of neighborhood beatings and
a drunk dad who probably had a good deal of suspicions about which
type of genitals his son preferred—even before Martin knew.

"I'mma be leavin'
soon. Doc Teasler says so. Maybe in the next few months," Martin
told her when they met.

"Do you still hate
yourself?"

The black man looked at
her, not smiling.

"Some. Probably
always will. This isn't about purifying your mind, it's about
progressive victory over that self-hate. I didn't cut today. I didn't
think 'bout cutting today. It's 'bout takin' that small win and
turning it in to something else the next day. You don't get it now,
butcha will."

Linda met Martin her
first time in the cafeteria and she sat with him every day for the
next three months until they released him back into the world.
Healed. Ready to go on.

"I'm 'spensive in
here, cost too much money, and I don't think I'll be cuttin' anymore,
so they're shippin' me on."

Martin was a guide as
much as Dr. Teasler. One showed her the path and the other showed her
what the path looked like when you walked in it. Martin's self-hate
revolved around his childhood and sexuality. Linda's self-hate
revolved around her childhood and sexuality too. That's what Dr.
Teasler showed her. Garret wasn't allowed to do what he did because
Garret was that dominant, it was because Linda decided long ago that
someone besides herself would control her life. Linda's mother was a
sweet, compassionate woman. Her father used his hands for discipline.
Both tried to raise a daughter that was obedient and driven, but they
created a woman who couldn't say no yet had the determination to
continue with something until she died. Don't speak up and don't ask
why. Just keep your head down and let the world turn around you,
dear. That's how good things come to people. If the meek were to
inherit the Earth, as the Good Book said, then Linda's parents
prepared her to be the Queen of that Kingdom.

The cutting, that came
from realizing what her marriage had been. Dear Mr. Dillan had been
the one to show it to her, or at least make her aware of it. Her
marriage was a sham at best, a tunnel of perversions for Garret to
walk through, picking out one fantasy after another. Linda was but
one brick in that tunnel, one brick that helped hold up the
disgusting life that Garret spent so much time building. From her
view point as that brick, she couldn't see anything besides the
bricks directly next to her, was barely able to understand she was
part of a tunnel. Garret walked beneath her from time to time, and
Lord, did she love to see him, but when he passed from her view all
she could do was wait to glimpse the top of his head again. Perhaps
hope that he might look up and smile at her.

Martin and Dr. Teasler
helped take the brick down from its spot at the top of the tunnel.
Helped put it in the middle of the tunnel so that she could see
everything, all the twisted and rotten bricks that had surrounded
her. Saw that she was the only piece allowing the whole structure to
remain standing, her place in the center allowed him to do as he
pleased. To fuck every hole he could find and still look like an
upstanding citizen. To give her fucking chlamydia and make her feel
as if she did something wrong. Like
she
should have been more careful. The self-hate, all of it at once, fell
on her the same as if the tunnel had collapsed. There were no more
illusions and also nothing left to cling to. Garret was dead and now
the memory of him, which she loved for so long, had died too. Garret
had been a philanderer and a taker. He took from Linda until there
was virtually nothing left for her to give, took nearly her entire
soul until she could only survive by sucking from his, and when there
was nothing left to suck from because Brand murdered Garret, Linda
nearly died.

She couldn't find her
own soul.

"You'll have to
decide if you want to try to build another one, or if you're fine
living here like this. If we let you walk out today, you'd be dead
tonight, and that's something we can't do, Linda. It's up to you how
you want to continue living, in here or out there."

It took a long time to
figure that out. Entire notebooks filled up with her journaling.
Words screamed into pillows for hours at a time until her throat
burned and her was voice missing. When they okay'd her to leave,
Martin was waiting outside.