The Wisherman (3 page)

He drifted into a fitful sleep, awaking later only to find himself in the midst of a dream. Oliver stood in a cornfield.
All around him, as far as the eye could see, corn rose uniformly from the ground. The sky was streaked with the purple tones of an evening palette. It was a peaceful scene, and he felt himself relax into it. Oliver walked forward, parting his way through the corn plants as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea. The corn stalks felt almost like gentle hands, guiding him through the sea, their touch delicate on his body. He walked further, although he wasn't sure how far.

Eventually, the edge o
f the cornfield came into view. The seemingly endless rows of corn ended, and far in the distance a forest rose up from the ground, its sudden presence startling Oliver. The trees rose up like tiny sprouts at first, then grew taller and taller until he could no longer see the top. He walked closer, and he peered in. His eyes met nothing but hypnotic darkness. It drew him in, and if he strained hard enough, Oliver thought he could hear a low, tantalizing whisper.
Oliver.
He looked around, and the voice called him again.
Oliver. I see you.
He felt a chill run slowly down his spine, and he found his feet beginning to carry him backward. Then suddenly, out of the spiraling darkness a cloud of bats rushed out, throwing him to the ground. As he cowered under the swelling flock, he cracked open an eye, and he noticed something that made his skin crawl right off his body. The bats were not bats, but instead black hands flapping together. Thousands of pairs of hands clapped around Oliver, the collective noise sending more chills down his spine. It sounded like one million cars crashing. The swarm grew closer, and a particularly large pair emerged from the group, clapping in time to "Ring around the Rosie". The other hands began diving towards Oliver, as if they were hawks that'd just spotted a family of hares. The big hands loomed ever closer, clapping less than an inch from Oliver's face. At the moment in which he was sure that the hands would simply consume him, he awoke with a start and a sweat laden brow.

~

Two days later, Oliver was fidgeting in the interrogation room at the police station. The ride down with his mother had been a silent one. He would have given anything to know what she was thinking. Occasionally, she would look through the rearview mirror, perhaps to see if he was still in the backseat. He wanted to assure her that he was, but he said nothing, instead giving in to the hypnotic sounds of highway driving. He closed his eyes for the remainder of the trip.

He stared at the complimentary glass of water that a somewhat cheery deputy h
ad given him minutes earlier, even though his throat was suddenly drier than the desert outside. The interrogation room was a small box with windows at every corner. Oliver imagined that the cops were looking in at that very moment, analyzing his every move. He grabbed the water cup and took a lengthy sip. The water ran down his throat, warm and sticky. The taste was metallic, and felt unfamiliar. He felt bile rise up in his throat, and he forced it back down. Outside of the interrogation room, dozens of officers shuffled by. A few stopped to peer into the room before going on their way.

"Oliver
Donovan?"

The door to the interrogation room
opened, and two officers entered. The first, a lady cop with short, cropped brown hair smiled at Oliver. He tried to smile back, but his face was frozen. The cop behind her was one of the male cops on the scene the day before. Oliver caught his eye as they recognized one another, and he felt his cheeks burning. The male cop smiled as well, but his gaze didn't waver and Oliver felt like he was under a sudden, hot spotlight. He was suddenly seized by the uncontrollable urge to run. It was only tempered by the shiny black gun sitting at the waist of the male cop.

The cops settled down in front of him, and the lady cop cleared her throat. "Sorry, I've come down with a terrible cold. And in the summer too, isn't that a shame?" She smiled again, and Oliver supposed that this was the moment where he was supposed to smile back
. It was always the first test on TV crime dramas. The friendly cop goes first, to try and draw the suspect out of his shell, and then the bad cop goes in for the kill. Depending on how the suspect reacted, that's how they knew they had their man. Oliver swallowed hard.

As soon as he'd thought it, the word suspect boomerange
d back around his mind, and wedged itself deeply in his conscious. He had in fact, just referred to himself as a suspect in his own father's death. How could they know?

The female cop coughed lightly, bringing Oliver back to the present.
Oliver nodded solemnly in response. The female cop studied him for a moment, before her smile gently faded and a harder look replaced it.

"Oliver, your mom tells us you've been struggling in school. Tell us about it."

He felt his shoulders rise of their own accord, into a half-hearted shrug. "There's nothing really to tell."

"Your mother says she suspects you're being bullied, and that you won't tell her.
It's okay to tell us, we won't tell her. We’re just trying to help you. I expect you’re going through a difficult time right now."

Ol
iver looked down at the glossy table that separated him and the cops. The female cop coughed again, although Oliver was certain this time that it was more pointed than before.

"Do you feel angry often, Oliver?" The male cop spoke this time, and Oliver felt his need to continue staring at the table intensify.
The table was glass, and he found himself staring into a face he barely recognized.

"No."
Oliver said.

"Your mother tells us that you fought with your father
after coming home from the doctor's office. What was that fight about?"

"Come on son, level with us."

"Did you and your father have a violent relationship?"

O
liver found it easy to ignore questions, it was a skill he had mastered over the years, but this one startled him. He quickly shook his head no, his eyes now absolutely glued to the table in front of him.

The female cop leaned forward and touched his hand. "It's okay, you can tell us. My father was a pretty hands on guy, too. Sometimes, I had violent thoughts towards him too."
Oliver recoiled sharply, and before he could understand what was happening, his feet were carrying him towards the door.

In the moments that followed, Oliver experienced more thoughts and emotions in rapid succession than he ever thought possible, at once. As his legs carried him towards the door, he felt time slow down. The male cop's face contorted, but no words came out. His fingers closed around the door knob, and he threw the door back, eyes steadfastly focused on the "exit" sign at the end of the hall.
A chorus of "STOP" rose from behind him, but Oliver kept going, his feet carrying him closer and closer to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

The
exit sign came closer in view--he could see the gentle glow of the red letters, when his entire body was consumed in a cramp. The cramp spread from its nucleus in his back to his limbs. The cramp spread through to his fingers tips, causing them to stiffen. He looked up at the exit sign once more before blackness consumed his vision.

~

Oliver's focus slowly came into view. He was lying face down and as his vision slowly regained its clarity, he found himself staring at the cold hard tile floor. From behind, a hand abruptly bent his arm behind his back. "You are now being detained for resisting arrest." The voice, although it spoke directly in his ear, sounded far away and impossible to understand.

He found himself being lifted up from the ground with two sturdy hands and being carried away.
The only thought that Oliver could process is how his mother would never let him move in, now.

Chapter
3

"Resisting arrest? In a police station? Dog, you
weren't even under arrest yet. Are you stupid?" Oliver's cellmate looked pointedly at him, his head hanging over the top bunk.

The holding cell was small, ancient, and windowless. If someone told him that the cell had been built pre-Civil war era, Oliver would have no trouble believing that.
He had been alone for several hours, but a short while ago, the cell door had creaked open, and in shuffled a boy about his own age. An officer had come in briefly to deposit a tiny meal for them both, a sandwich, soup and water.

"Shut up."

"No really. What the hell were you thinking? Why'd you run?"

"I don't know." Oliver mumbled, and he said the words, he realized the truth in them.
It had all happened so quickly. His mind had barely registered what his legs were doing before they were off running at Olympian speeds while his mind lagged behind.

"You did it?"
His cellmate was still looking down at him, his curly hair hanging limply from his head. It looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days, Oliver noted. His eyes were wide with disbelief, and something else.

"I didn't kill him."
Oliver said.

His cellmate raised his hands up defensively. "
Whoa dude, I didn't say what you did. I was just asking. That's the only reason people run, because they know there's no way out. I'm not blaming you if you did, I'm just saying. I've seen a lot of runners."

Oliver's cellmate peered down at him curiously, eyes squinted.
Oliver averted his eyes, but there was nowhere to look. All four walls of the cell were an impossibly dull grey. The longer Oliver stared, the more he felt the walls were enclosing in on him. He looked back up at his cellmate.

"Stop looking at me. Don't you have something to do?" Oliver snapped.

His cellmate laughed. "I wish. I'm going to be in here until my mom comes and gets me. Which will be never, by the way." He paused and swung his legs over the top of the bed, before hopping down. He landed with a thump on the floor in front of Oliver.

"Paul."
His hair was curly and brown, and his skin had a slight ashy quality to it. To Oliver, he looked like the kind of kid that most mothers would never want hanging around. Paul stuck his hand out, and Oliver shook it, absentmindedly. As soon as he did, the lights in the cell dimmed briefly and Oliver felt his heart catch in his throat. When the lights came back on, he was concerned, but when he looked around, nothing seemed to have changed.

"
Bad lights too? This really is hell. And you didn't actually specify what you were in here for…. You know, what you did, or
who
." Paul said.

"You didn't tell me, either."

The two boys stood across the cell from each other, arms folded, at a standstill. They sized each other up like two roosters in a cockfight.

"I didn't
do
anything" Oliver insisted. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." The understatement of the year, he muttered under his breath.

"I could say that too.
I don't know if I'm always in the wrong place, or the stuff they think I stole is." Paul leaned back on the stone wall, and huffed. He looked down at his folded arms.

"What?"
Oliver asked.

"My mother never believes me, and why would she? I swear, s
tuff just comes to me. My teacher accused me of stealing her really rare vintage hand watch, her grandfather gave it to her." Paul said.

"And did you?"

"Well, it was in my pocket, I'll give her that. I found it."

Oliver rolled his eyes.

"But I didn't steal it, I swear. The same thing with money, too. What'd you
not
do?"

"
I didn’t kill my father." Oliver's words felt more concrete now, and for some reason he felt surer than ever.

"That's heavy, man. Sorry. I'd hate to be accused of something like that.
How'd they get you?"

"I think…
I don’t know…Never mind."

"
You’ve started now. Go on. This sounds like a story I want to hear."

Oliver sat down on his bunk and stared out into the cell. His life then, had been reduced to a bedtime story for him to tell to his prison mate? Would he start it with “Once upon a time”
and end it with “Happily ever after”? Paul sat across from him, rocking in the ragged cell chair as if the only thing he was missing was a bowl of popcorn.

He kept opening his mouth to start, but his mind had gone mysteriously blank. Oliver had the strange urge to tell his story in third person, and again he attempted to start, but the words would not come.

“If you really don’t want to tell, I guess that’s fine.” Paul started eating his sandwich and shrugged. In response, Oliver crawled into his bunk and lay down on the sheet of rock beneath him. He immediately recoiled, and Paul’s laughter filled the room.

“It takes some time getting used to. It feels better if you lay on your side.” Oliver curled up sideways, his back to Paul, and he tried to imagine that he was lying on a bed of clouds.

"Want some?" Oliver waved away Paul's request, returning to his bed as he was now deep in thought, and worry. He replayed the night his father died over and over in his head, each time only marginally less painful than the last.
It's your fault, you know.
An ugly little voice reared its head, and Oliver swallowed hard as he forced it to the back of his mind.
You did this.