The Minnesota Candidate (36 page)

“We might as well start here,” said Marie. There
was a creaking sound, followed by a loud click. Marie spun around,
but the open door behind them was now closed. “What did you do that
for?” she asked.

“I didn’t touch that damned door.”

“You must have. Doors don’t close by themselves,
ya know.”

Doris swore under her breath and shook her head.
She then slung her sack over her shoulder and tried the doorknob to
the room across the hall. “Well, this is just great,” she grumbled.
“The door is locked.”

Marie was already trying another door. “They
must all be locked,” she said. “This really sucks.”

“Nothing is ever easy, is it?”

“Not for us. I knew I should have grabbed that
axe.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because, stupid, I didn’t want to ruin your
daughter in-law’s house.”

“Quit calling me stupid!”

Marie began to reply, but her flashlight beam
flickered, grew dim, and it winked out. “Son of a bitch,” she said,
slapping the flashlight. “I don’t suppose you remembered
batteries?”

“No,” said Doris, sarcastically, “I didn’t
remember batteries.”

“Well, this sucks.”

Just then, the beam on Doris’ flashlight dimmed
and they were suddenly plunged into blackness. “Shit!” cried Doris.
“Didn’t you check these before you took them?”

“They worked just fine! Damn it, anyhow, Doris.
Do you have a lighter? We’ve got to find the stairs.”

Doris didn’t have a lighter, but she did have a
book of matches. She dropped the sack and the dead flashlight and
began digging in her pockets. The air in the hallway seemed
noticeably colder. Something brushed past her and Doris shoved it
away. “Quit crowding me,” she growled, “I’m trying to find my
matches.”

“I haven’t moved,” said Marie.

“I’m freaking out over here. Stop trying to
scare me.”

“I’m not trying to scare you. Doris, I haven’t
moved.”

Doris found the matches and she tore them from
her pocket. Blindly, with trembling fingers, she struck one of the
paper matches and it slowly came to life. Doris and Marie huddled
in the light. From somewhere behind them, came a loud crashing
sound. Doris dropped the match and she began to run. Marie trampled
behind her. They bounced like pinballs off of the hallway walls.
They ran until the floor seemed to disappear under their feet. And
then, tangled together, they were tumbling down a stairwell. Marie
cried out in pain. They hit a landing, but their momentum sent them
crashing off a wall and down another flight of stairs. Doris
screamed. She grabbed a handful of something and pulled hard, but
realized it was Marie’s hair and she quickly let it go.

And then they were sent sprawling out onto a
wooden floor.

“Are you alright?” asked Doris.

“I don’t know,” groaned Marie. “Will you get
your foot out of my face?”

Doris began untangling herself from Marie. She
was banged up and bruised, but nothing appeared to be broken.
Shafts of light pierced through heavy drapes in what appeared to be
some kind of ballroom. Doris was just happy that she could see.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

Marie shook her head. “Yeah, I’m not deaf, ya
know.”

Doris was already moving toward the nearest
window. “I don’t really know, but I think it was ghosts.”

“I need to find a bathroom.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Marie staggered to her feet, just as Doris threw
back the drapes, drenching herself in delicious sunlight. Limping,
Marie stumbled toward the window. “Something grabbed me by the
hair,” she said. “I couldn’t help it.”

“It was probably one of them ghosts,” said
Doris. “Let’s find a way out of here.”

“We need to find a bathroom, first.”

Doris nodded her head and looked around. They
were in a massive room, empty of furniture and lined with tall
windows. Doris continued parting the drapes as they walked along.
She could see a much larger, grand staircase at the far end of the
long room. “Would you hurry up?” she asked. “Whatever it was that I
saw up there, I don’t think it was happy to see us.”

“I’m going as fast as I can. I think I broke my
arm.”

“Not again. Can you move it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then it isn’t broken. Besides, what does your
arm have to do with your legs? Just try and keep up, will ya?”

They walked along in silence, until something
that sounded like a shattering window crashed above them. Marie
shot past Doris in a blur of movement. Doris raced to catch her.
They ran to the wide staircase and down the stairs, taking them two
at a time. Halfway down, Marie slowed to a brisk walk. They were
losing their light. “Oh shit,” she groaned. “I can’t see a damned
thing down here!”

Silently, Doris cursed herself for dropping the
matches. They had lost their supply sacks and were now descending
into darkness. “Maybe we should have stayed up there,” she said.
“At least we had daylight.”

“I told you, I have to find a bathroom. This is
an emergency.”

“Marie, how many times have I asked you to see a
doctor about that?”

“Will you just shut up?”

They reached the bottom of the staircase and
stopped. They stood in the pale light that filtered down from above
them. Even in that shred of light, the women could see that they
had stumbled into the right place. From where they stood, it
appeared they were inside some kind of museum. There were rows of
glass display cases, covered in dust, but display cases, just the
same. As far as they could see, which admittedly, wasn’t very far,
the walls were covered with large framed paintings of people from
another time. They disappeared into the shadows like phantoms. “I
think we hit the jackpot,” whispered Doris.

“I think you’re right,” said Marie. “Come on,
there has to be a bathroom down here. Help me find it and then we
can go exploring.”

“I don’t need to use the bathroom. Go ahead,
I’ll be right here.”

“You’re a bitch, you know that, Doris?”

“And you taught me everything I know.”

The drive to Alice Kindersley’s house took just
over half an hour. Tom rode in the front of the Ford with Sam,
while Senator Levitz rode in the back, rolled up in Shari’s living
room rug. Tom and Senator Levitz, who insisted everyone call him
Merle, were determined to get some answers from the old woman.

Tom left the others in the truck and he walked
up to the porch. Before he could even knock, Mrs. Kindersley was
opening the front door. “Hi,” he said, uncomfortably. “Um, I hope I
didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“I’ve been wondering where you were,” she said,
smiling her old woman smile. “I baked us some cookies. Did you
bring him?”

“Did I bring who?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, you know who I mean. Is
Senator Levitz out in the truck?”

Tom felt as if an elephant had jumped onto his
chest. “How could you have possibly known about that? Did Shari
call you?”

“Oh no, Norma told me. I’ve been waiting five
years for this day.”

“What do you mean? Norma is dead, isn’t
she?”

“That depends on how you define dead.”

Tom was still thinking about that when Mrs.
Kindersley thrust a plate covered with wax-paper into his chest.
“We were hoping to come inside,” he said.

“I know you were, but things are moving very
fast and we don’t have a lot of time. I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m afraid
you’re stuck with me. I will need that plate back; it’s part of a
matched set, my mother would kill me if she knew I allowed it out
of the house.”

“Stop,” said Tom, holding up his hand. “Before
we go anywhere, I have to ask you a few questions. Who was Norma
and how did she know what was going to happen?”

“Oh Tommy, I thought you would have figured that
out by now. My dear boy, Norma was a prophet. Well, she still is,
even if she’s not of this world. I do still talk to her.”

“I must have met her. Why else would she have
written about me?”

“Tommy, you need to wake up. There isn’t enough
time for me to walk you through this. Unless we can stop them,
these are the last days, the end times. Norma saw you doing great
things, but that doesn’t mean they will actually happen. You’re
going to have to be brave and you’re going to have to fight.”

Tom didn’t know what to believe. He thought
about the rug in the back of the truck. “What about Senator Levitz?
He asked. “How does he fit into this?”

“Senator Levitz is the Chosen One. My Lord,
didn’t you read Norma’s journals?”

“I just kind of browsed them.”

The old woman reached back into the house and
grabbed a suitcase. The lime-green bag was large and Tom hadn’t
seen one like it in many years. “We have to go,” she said. “Tommy,
if I had to give you a progress report, you’d be pulling an F. I’m
very disappointed in you. Now, help me with my suitcase.”

Sam was out of the truck as soon as he saw the
suitcase. He ran up the walk and he took it from the old woman.
“Here,” he said, “let me help ya with that.”

“Thank you, Sam,” she said.

“Where you headed?”

“I’m going to Tommy’s house. The end of the
world is coming and I want to get a good seat.”

“Is that right? Huh, I never heard that.”

Tom barely heard them. His head was spinning and
he felt like he was going to throw up. The logical half of his
brain was battling it out with the crazy side. Tom was all-too
aware of his family history. He knew that if he allowed his brain
to slip a gear, there would be an irreversible chain reaction. He
had seen it happen before. They walked out to the back of the truck
and Sam tossed in the suitcase. Levitz grunted. “What the hell was
that?” he asked, his voice muffled by the rug.

“Oh, sorry about that, sir,” said Sam. “I almost
forgot you was back there.”

“Change of plans,” whispered Tom. “We’re taking
Mrs. Kindersley back to the house.”

“What? Why the hell did I have to ride
along?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “Just keep quiet and
enjoy the ride.”

Tom climbed into the backseat of the crew cab.
Sam helped the retired schoolteacher into the passenger seat and
then he got behind the wheel. He started the Ford and pulled away
from the curb. “So, he said, casually, “we got a United States
Senator in the back of the truck.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Kindersley. “I must say
that I don’t approve of his politics. Did you know that he voted to
cut Social Security on two separate occasions?”

“No, I guess I never heard that. I kind of been
out of town.”

“Don’t you mean up the river?”

Tom stared out the window as the battle inside
of him raged on. The old woman wasn’t dealing with a full deck.
Like his own mother, she had started to lose touch with reality the
day her husband passed away. The only logical explanation was that
she had written the last journal, herself. Still, that didn’t
explain how she had known about Senator Levitz. That added fuel to
the fire burning on the crazy side of his brain. Tom fought to put
things into perspective. He only got as far as Shari before he gave
up.

“Alice,” said Sam, “so you’re telling me that
you didn’t vote for Senator Levitz?”

“Good heavens, no,” she said, tossing her head
back with laughter. “I don’t even like him.”

Tom leaned forward in his seat. “But didn’t you
just call him the Chosen One?”

“I did, but that doesn’t mean I agree with his
politics.”

Tom shook his head and stared out the
windshield. “You need to be in the right lane. Sam, where are you
going?”

“I know a different way. I think it might be
faster.”

Orange construction signs and barrels lined both
side of Central Avenue. The work had stopped, but the damage had
been done. Mrs. Kindersley braced herself against the dash and
laughed as the truck bounced up and down on the ruined pavement.
Tom looked out the back window and watched helplessly as Levitz,
still rolled up in the rug, bounced up and down. He was angry with
Sam, but he didn’t have the strength to argue with him. They
continued down Central until they reached Broadway. Sam took a
right. The construction signs were gone, but the pavement only
seemed to deteriorate.

The hardest thing for Tom was the thought that
his life, including his marriage, had been preordained. Just
thinking about it gave him a headache. Did Shari actually love him,
or had she been preprogrammed to fall in love with him by a higher
power? Inside his head, Tom tried to flip that around, but he
couldn’t do it. His very foundation stood on his true love for
Shari. Tom grabbed the back of the front seat as Sam swerved to
avoid something in the road. Old Mrs. Kindersley laughed like a
schoolgirl.

Tom thought about how he was going to explain
Alice Kindersley to his mother. The two had never been the type of
neighbors who borrowed sugar and traded recipes. Since they had
become widows, their relationship was more of a Hatfield/McCoy type
of thing. They spied on each other and Tom thought it might
possibly kill them if they actually agreed on anything. Mom wasn’t
going to be happy to see Alice, Tom was sure of it. And then there
was Marie to consider. Like him, Marie was the common denominator.
Unlike him, Marie played both women like a string fiddle. Marie
loved to stir the pot and she had brewed up plenty of wicked
arguments between the neighbors. Tom wondered why the women even
tolerated her, but he knew that good or bad, Marie had become the
spice in their bland lives. Which side Marie would choose, Tom
could only guess.

Tom pushed the thoughts out of his head and
began to consider the journals. He didn’t want to read them. If
what Alice had told him were true, the journals would contain
events in his life that had yet to happen. No man should know his
ultimate destiny, or at least that’s how Tom felt about it. What if
the journal spoke of an impending injury or death? Tom knew that he
would do everything he could to make sure they never happened.
Another thought came to him, were prophets right about everything
they wrote about? Tom didn’t know, but he doubted it. He imagined
Norma after a bad day, drinking wine, and then picking up her pen
to write about the future. This thought troubled him.