Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 23)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's note: keep the reviews coming. What parts do you like, what could be better, is there anything you want to see (I am not saying you'll get it, try me), what creeped you out, etc... I can always get better, and reviews help me get better. Thank you guys. Happy reading! You guys have probably noticed I like to include quotes at the beginning of every chapter. I find they set the stage and are a neat, simple way to encourage interest in other subjects and writers. Hopefully you get something from the quotes, and if not, please just scroll past them.
"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years."― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
"God wants you to be delivered from what you have done and from what has been done to you - Both are equally important to Him."― Joyce Meyer, Beauty for Ashes: Receiving Emotional Healing
"We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves."― Chris Cleave, Little Bee
"There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape."― Brian Evenson, Fugue State
"Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does."― Karl Germain
Saturday, November 3, 2013 8:25 pm PST
Charlotte called her father an asshole, smiled tiredly, blinked her eyes oddly, mechanically, and wandered over to her bed. She lay down, exhausted, every cell sucked dry. Jane watched her sadly.
"You go talk to Lisbon now. Okay? Go get Lisbon," Charlotte ordered with a wave of her hand. "Okay?"
"Are you going to be all right for a bit?" Jane said, still staring at her. She lay down on her stomach, arms folded under her head. She turned her head towards the airstream's wall, away from his prying eyes.
"I am tired," she said. It wasn't really an answer, but in another way... in another way it was. What was "okay" in this situation, anyway?
"I am going to lock the door behind me, Charlotte. Okay? And I will call through the door before I unlock it, so you aren't startled. I am going to talk to Lisbon for a few minutes. I think she is going to want to talk to me, alone. So I might be ten or fifteen minutes. If you need me, just pop your head out and I will see you. Okay? I am going to be watching the airstream the entire time, to make sure you are okay. Okay?"
Charlotte waved a tired hand at her father, a leave already gesture. "I need to rest now, Patrick. You go and get Lisbon. I think she is probably crying." Softer, then: "I am okay. Don't worry. Just go get Lisbon. I don't want her to be alone right now. She has a soft heart, even though she scowls at you so much."
Jane winced at that. Charlotte's head was turned away from him, so he couldn't see her expression or her face, but her voice sounded flat. Deflated. It worried him, actually. Yet her words spoke of incredible empathy.
"Go and get Lisbon now. Okay? Go and get her." Said in the same exhausted tone of voice. Obsessive, though. He knew she would keep telling him to get Lisbon, over and over, until he finally did.
"Charlotte, if there had been more time to ask you those things slowly, and at your own pace, I would have done that. Okay? I..." Jane stopped talking. Charlie was silent, still, head turned away. Withdrawing from him.
Withdrawing from everything, more than likely.
He ran her responses to his questions through his head, felt a wash of horror and grief and conflicting emotions and wondered how the hell his child was still even remotely sane. It was almost a miracle. He had just put her through the wringer, emotionally, however necessarily, and she was withdrawing to lick her wounds. She couldn't go far, so she had opted to lie down on her bed, and turn her face to the wall. But she had let him hug her, and she had hugged him in the truck's cab, and she was trying so damned hard it made his eyes burn.
She had consented to him checking her bag and her "stuff", and that spoke to a considerable degree of trust. Didn't it? He had to believe she would be okay. She was strong.
Someone who wasn't strong wouldn't have survived.
"You go and get Lisbon, now," Charlotte said again and Jane nodded and smiled at her form, even though he knew she couldn't see him; a tender, sad smile.
He approached the truck cab slowly.
He saw Lisbon's hand come up to her face, and she wiped at her cheeks quickly, and he knew, then, that Charlotte had been right about Lisbon crying. Lisbon didn't cry easily, but she was human and they were all processing an enormous amount of stress and pain right now.
Jane smiled at her as she turned her head and for just a moment he saw her eyes widen as she saw him, because now she knew that Red John also looked like Jane. Until Red John was caught and killed, Lisbon would always get that startled moment of panic in her eyes, upon seeing Jane. The sudden pull-back and the startled fear. Seeing that wariness and fear on her face, Jane's desire to kill Red John increased and pulsed in his head, a surge of adrenaline and blood, a sudden, careful rage.
Red John had done so much damage, and he was still doing it, and he would continue to cause damage even after he was dead. He was a virus in a human body. He had to be killed. Jane had always known that, but now he knew that his desire to kill Red John went far beyond vengeance or any vendetta. Killing Red John would be the equivalent of eradicating a plague in a single human body. It was a public health service he would be carrying out.
Red John was a virus, and Jane would get rid of that virus- that telegenic virus, that charismatic virus with the boyish, easy grin. Manipulative, suave, soft-spoken and incredibly deadly, like Ebola-Zaire. That was Red John. Jane would stomp out the virus. Instead of liquifying the organs of his victims, Red John killed what he touched in the spiritual realm; but first he played with the minds of his "toys" for his own amusement.
Dance, puppets... dance.
Red John dashed trust and hopes, he stomped on the fragile bodies of the innocent, killing their tenderness, stealing their sense of safety. From these actions, he seemed to feed, and in feeding, grow more confident, more brazen. And Jane would kill him.
Lisbon smiled back at Jane and opened the passenger door of the truck, stepped out. Closed the door softly.
"You okay?" She asked Jane. He nodded.
"I'm okay. Are you?"
"I'm okay, Jane," she said softly, eyes hard and strong and stubborn. Stubborn Lisbon. Tenacious and tough and take-no-shit Lisbon. How he loved her.
"Okay. I'm going to kill him, Lisbon. I am going to kill the son of a bitch. It will be soon, now, too."
Lisbon nodded at this.
"But if you get a chance to kill him before me, you take it. This is not about me finishing him anymore. It is about him dying, period. So... you will kill him, if you can?" He said this pleadingly. Lisbon nodded immediately.
"Yes. Of course."
"Okay," Jane sighed tiredly. Rubbed at his eyes. He felt a sudden, strong urge to cry. He rarely cried. He was an expert at not crying in front of people. He kept a tight lid on his emotions, just like Lisbon did. She saw his shaky intake of breath and his hard blink of the eyes.
"What is it?" Her voice was immediately soft and careful, concerned. Full of empathy for his pain.
"I, uh... given the recent Red John developments, I had to ask Charlotte some things, so I know how to proceed. And I had to ask her things that were very difficult, very painful, for her to answer. And I am still trying to sort out her answers. I am not sure..." Jane trailed. His eyes scanned the sky, as if Charlotte's God might be up there, looking down at him in his moment of darkness. A sudden epiphany of God and grace in the Mexican night, maybe, a flash of lightning illuminating the clouds above with the sudden features of a benevolent face, but he saw nothing but black. The stars were out, but it was the blackness Patrick Jane saw.
"Charlotte is...?" Lisbon tried, expression marked by deep concern. It was the expression Jane had seen a sparse handful of times, when he was in mortal danger. Pain and fear for a loved one, her features saturated with the emotion that was burgeoning just under the surface. Lisbon acted tough, and she was tough, but she also wore her heart on her sleeve. And she loved Charlotte. Of that, Jane was certain.
"Charlotte... is she okay? Relatively?"
"I don't know," Jane said tiredly. "I don't know, Lisbon. I don't see how anyone could be okay given... what she told me, I don't see how anyone could be okay with those things having happened to them. But, for the moment, she is calm and is about as okay as I think is possible, given the circumstances. She was lying on her bed, looking at the wall when I left her. She was very adamant that I come and get you, and bring you back to the trailer. She thinks that you are in particular danger, now that she has run away. That Red John viewed you as keeping me sane or from killing myself, that your function was to keep me alive and playing this sick game of his, and now that I know she is alive... she is concerned that Red John's need for you has been diminished. She kept repeating to me, to come and get you. I think she wants to watch over you, wants to protect you."
Lisbon looked sadly at Jane. Thought of Jane's daughter with her deep, powerful and wounded eyes and her odd, funny little comments and her history of torture. Charlotte had lived through Hell, but she was scared for Lisbon. Lisbon nodded sadly at this revelation.
"Okay," Lisbon said slowly, testing out the word.
"If possible, can you stay next to her, next to Charlotte, until Red John is dead?"
"I can do that," Lisbon breathed. "Of course I can do that, Jane. Of course." She nodded her head emphatically. Jane smiled tightly.
"Thank you. I, um... you know I was in the hospital. After... my breakdown..." Jane trailed, still uncomfortable talking about his own mental problems. Lisbon nodded immediately. She knew how ashamed Jane was of his breakdown.
"I was a grown man, and I cracked up because of the grief of what... because of grief, and also because of what I saw. And guilt. I cracked up, Lisbon. I was completely... gone. Out of commission. I... once, in the hospital, I tore into my arm with my fingernails, in a rage, and I used the blood to paint a smiley face on the wall of my room. I was... sick. I was a grown man, and I saw Red John's... when I found Angela and, and..." He was having trouble speaking. Lisbon nodded. She knew what he was trying to say.
"Okay. Now. I tell you this to really put everything into perspective, here. Charlotte... she was five when Red John took her. She saw her mother murdered. And for a period of time- I am not sure how long, exactly, but for some length of time- she thought Red John was me. She... Lisbon, Red John cut his mark into her, and then... he lit her on fire. He lit her wounds on fire." His eyes were tear-filled now. So were Lisbon's. She blinked heavily, wiped at her face. What she was hearing was too upsetting to process fully. It sounded unreal, almost beyond what was possible. Yet it was possible. Not just possible... it had happened.
"She also... at the age of ten, tried to take her own life. I want you to know, because... because I need you to watch her. I think she is okay, whatever that word means in this situation, I don't even know anymore, Lisbon... but what she has experienced... I don't know how anybody could be okay after that. You will watch her?" Jane exhaled loudly, a wheeze almost. Blinked hard and wiped at his own eyes.
"Yes. Of course. Of course I will."
"Okay. It won't seem odd, now, because I think she will be so focused on looking out for you, trying to keep you safe, that she... she won't think you're crowding her or concerned about her. Hopefully not. She's a little like you, in that respect. Doesn't like people to worry about her; wants to protect them. So there is that. She gave me permission to check her bag and her other stuff, said she would tell us if she felt like ever harming herself, said she didn't want to harm herself or us. I... right now, so we're on the same page, can I go over her responses to my questions with you? You need to know these things, but I don't want to leave her alone for too long, for obvious reasons."
Lisbon nodded slowly, and with dawning horror and grief, she heard what Jane had to say. She shut her eyes for a full 30 seconds when he was done talking. Jane forced out another shaky breath, got himself calm again.
"So. There it is. That is what I know about her reality, so far, and obviously there is a decade of experience there, and what I know, what you know now, only begins to scratch the surface, I'm sure. And... she cares about Red John. Her answers and her pauses, microfacial expressions, everything, made that abundantly clear. I am her father, and she loves me. She has memories of me, she bonded to me as a baby. But Red John looks like me, and she wouldn't be human if she wasn't confused, if she didn't have some degree of Stockholm syndrome going on by this point. She loves Red John, and yet, is quite rightly terrified of him at the same time and feels, justifiably, conflicted. That makes her, in many ways, unpredictable in a crisis. There is so much going on beyond the surface there, so much in her mind beyond the realm of normal, everyday human experience, that I do not feel confident saying I have a read on her, or her motivations or a sense of how she might respond in a particularly emotionally... trying situation. You need to know that, both for her safety and emotional well-being, but also for yourself, so you can keep safe. Keep it in the front of your awareness from now on, okay? If it is possible, she will not be present when he dies. If it is not possible to keep her away... will you please...?"
How to ask the obvious. Protect her? Shield her? Don't let her see me kill him?
"Jane, yes, of course I will. I'll do my best to protect her from anything I can."
"Yes. I knew that. Of course I knew that. I just feel the need to be as clinical about all this as possible, as analytical as I can be, right now. I am a bit off my game, so to speak, Lisbon. Not quite sure I am handling all of this properly."
"I understand," Lisbon said softly.
"Should we go back and have coffee now, and put Charlotte's mind at ease?" Jane said, glancing back towards the airstream. Charlotte had said to drive to almost-Hermosillo, and maybe they would run into the crazy chicken man.
They hadn't.
It was dark out. Jane had been going on fumes, from one moment to the next, reacting more than planning. It was now painfully obvious that the crazy chicken man would have to find them, not the other way around- at least at night. If they were going to even begin to look for the shaman, they'd have to do it during daylight hours, when the locals wouldn't be spooked talking to outsiders. And if the crazy chicken man didn't find them soon or they didn't find him, Jane was certain... that Red John would.
Life would not be calm for long.
Red John had lost his favourite little toy, his human pacifier, and was no doubt throwing his version of a tantrum.
Jane checked both doors of the truck, even though he knew his side was already locked. He walked back to the trailer with Lisbon; she walked slowly beside him, resigned and sad and tired and determined. Two lone souls in a dark night, and it would be so long before morning, but they would not be beaten.
"Charlotte?" Jane called through the door. "It's me and Lisbon. We're coming in. It's just us." He unlocked the airstream and pushed the door open. Held it open for Lisbon.
"I made coffee," Jane said, and motioned the coffee pot on the small kitchen counter with his head. "There is milk in the fridge, and um... sugar if you want it. In the cabinet."
"There are fruit roll-ups, too," Charlotte murmured from her bed, still in her prone position. She waved with her right hand towards the kitchen. "There are fruit roll-ups, Lisbon."
Lisbon caught Jane's eyes and Jane shrugged. Smiled a little. A "what are you gonna' do?" look.
"Okay, thank you," Lisbon said to the room.
"Is Lisbon going to have a fruit roll-up?" Charlotte murmured, face still pressed into the bed, into her pillow. Not yet quite ready to face the world. Jane looked at Lisbon with a duck of his head. Coughed out a small laugh.
"She is right here, Charlotte. You can sit up and speak to her. Ask her yourself."
"You ask her. You ask Lisbon if she is going to have a fruit roll-up."
"Lisbon, would you like a fruit roll-up?" Jane said, theatrically loud. Lisbon grinned. Shrugged, then nodded. Why not?
"Did she say yes?" Charlotte muttered a moment later.
"She is going to have a fruit roll-up, yes, I am getting her one now. She is also having a cup of coffee, and she is sitting down at the table. If you sat up and joined us, you would know these things."
"No," Charlotte said stubbornly. "I am too tired right now."
"Okay." Jane said, and actually rolled his eyes. Lisbon caught the eye-roll and felt a surge of hope, that both of them would be okay. That she would be okay, too. Jane pulled mugs out of the cabinet and poured two cups of black joe. "Lisbon? Milk?"
She nodded. He got the gallon of milk out of the fridge, poured some into her cup. And took it over to her, placed it down in front of her and sat down with his own black coffee. She chewed on the fruit roll-up dutifully. One of the flavours Charlotte didn't want, something red.
"So, I am thinking we stay here tonight, and try to find the chicken man during daylight hours," Jane said to Lisbon, loud enough for Charlotte to hear.
Lisbon nodded. That made sense. If he was as on-the-fringe as he sounded, then they would no doubt have to ask the locals for information, and asking strangers who didn't know you and spoke a foreign native tongue unusual questions was easier in the day, especially when you were asking a statistically over-all-superstitious group of people about a shaman. Night was not the time to try and make people feel at ease about witch doctors and spells and madness.
Charlotte didn't respond to Jane's proposal. He guessed she was having trouble processing the last hour or so, in particular. Emotional upset took a huge amount of energy.
"Do you have any ideas for who we should ask about the chicken man in the morning, Charlotte?" Jane said, talking in his kid's direction. A weary sigh from the bed.
"Someone will know where he is, I think. There are churches all over the place here. It's Mexico. Roman Catholics meet the witch doctors of the animistic tribal cults. Sort of like the Voudoun priests in Haiti...in Haiti, their religion is a mixture of Roman Catholicism's Luciferianism and so-called Voodoo. Wow. Neat. Never noticed that before, but yeah... Anyway, the churches... someone in one of them is bound to know something. You can mentalize them tomorrow, do your thing..." Charlotte muttered, trailing off.
"I don't think mentalize is a word," Jane said in response to that.
"Doesn't matter. It should be a word," she mumbled back, face still pressed into her arms. "You should stop talking to me, now, Patrick. I am trying to recharge. I am very, very tired. Talk to Lisbon. I am trying to distance myself from all this craziness for a bit. I don't want to talk anymore right now. If you ask me something else, I will feel morally obligated to answer you, but I would prefer to be quiet, now. Thank you."
Lisbon raised her eyebrows at Jane, at Charlotte's incredible earnestness, her ingenuousness. Pretty hard to argue with that. You had to respect her for that. No games, no sulkiness, she just came out with it, told her father what she wanted, needed. And that was that. Lisbon guessed it was a trait she got from her mother. It was refreshing.
"Tomorrow you should find a proper place to park the airstream and fill up the tanks with water and everything. And a laundromat. We need to find a laundromat. Now, I don't want to talk anymore. Goodnight, for now." Charlotte's last words on the matter. Maybe.
Jane took a sip of his coffee, nodded at Lisbon's fruit roll-up, which she obviously had no intention of finishing. She passed the mostly uneaten candy to him and he pushed it out of the open window. Jane didn't know what to say to Lisbon. How did a person make chit chat at a time like this? He had never been good at chit chat that didn't have an end goal.
They drank their coffee in silence, Jane's eyes darting over to his daughter every minute or so.
Saturday, November 4, 2013 1:12 am PST
They decided to sleep in shifts, at least until Charlotte was awake. It seemed safer. Jane slept first because Lisbon was sure she couldn't. He got a few hours, rose around midnight to relieve her. She nodded at him and passed him her gun. As a precaution, only, of course.
Tomorrow, in the day, they'd find a gun for Jane. They'd discussed it, and that seemed safer, too. Lisbon had half joked that even Charlotte might be better off with her own gun, a real gun and not that toy she had. Jane was quiet, thinking. Shook his head. No. He didn't want Charlie with a real gun. Not with the scars she had on her arms, and the stress in her face and the craziness in her head.
Besides, Charlotte wouldn't need a gun, because she was never going to be so far away that she'd be without one of them to protect her... and yet. It made sense. The paranoia and dread was getting stronger as the hours slipped by, was getting worse, not better. Lisbon yawned, glassy-eyed, and went to her bed almost immediately. She didn't bother changing out of her day clothes, just lay down fully dressed after brushing her teeth. She was asleep almost at once, judging by her even breathing.
Jane sat at the table and drank another cup of coffee. Earlier in the evening, he'd discovered a pad of paper and ballpoint pens and several crossword puzzle and sudoku puzzle type books in one of the drawers in the kitchen.
Rico had done a good job stocking the trailer, considering how little time Jane had given him. No doubt he had gone shopping with other people. One person to get bedding, one to get toiletries, one to get medical supplies, maybe a few to get groceries, another to get miscellaneous, everybody hurrying fast but still managing to get mostly everything, hurrying like soldiers or emergency response workers in a crisis.
Which, of course, was what they were: emergency response workers.
Still.
It was impressive.
Then again, for someone like Rico, 50,000 wasn't chump change.
Jane had one of the sudoku books open, was filling in the little boxes with digits when he heard Charlotte get up off her bed. She blinked at him tiredly, went to the washroom. Came back into the kitchen, got a plastic tumbler out of the cabinet and filled it with water. Came over to her father at the table and sat down and looked at him pointedly.
"I want to go for a walk," she said.
"You can't. I'm sorry. But I can't leave Lisbon and it is the middle of the night. And I don't want you going alone," Jane said. He knew that his comment would not be accepted at face value.
"But I can't sleep. I need to walk."
"Charlotte, I can't go with you, and I don't want you going alone," Jane said calmly. He'd say it as many times as he needed. He already knew- or was pretty certain- that Charlotte wouldn't openly defy him.
"What if I ignore what you're saying and just go out the door? What will you do?" Her eyes were bright with hypothetical possibilities. This was a test, to see how he would respond. How much power would he wield over her? Would he try to guilt her? Manipulate her or scare her or guilt her? His response was important.
It was important he not behave in any way like Red John.
"If you insist on going, then I will have to wake up Lisbon, because I can not leave her alone, sleeping, unguarded. I have the only gun. And you know why I will net let you go. But I think Lisbon needs sleep..." Jane cast a tender look over in Lisbon's direction.
"Lisbon isn't used to this sort of intensity. She needs sleep," Jane said softly. He meant it. No tricks. He was being open, unguarded. Charlotte nodded, looked over at Lisbon with heavy eyelids, eyes full of so much deeply-rooted sadness that Jane felt a twist in his guts.
"So what do you say? We let her sleep for a few more hours? In the morning we are going to be doing a lot of walking, anyway. You, me and Lisbon are going to be on our feet all day, in all likelihood, tracking down this chicken man of yours. Can you wait a few hours?" He was being so reasonable, so calm, that Charlotte could not argue. She blinked tiredly.
"I can't sleep," she said softly, an admission of pain. Jane nodded his head sadly, in acknowledgment.
"Didn't you get any sleep at all? I thought you were sleeping."
"My brain never powered down," Charlotte said tiredly, and wiped at her eyes. "My eyes were closed, and I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't."
Jane nodded again. Thought of the Nyquil in the medicine cabinet in the trailer's bathroom.
"There is Nyquil in the bathroom. That stuff usually knocks me out. Want to give it a try?"
Charlotte seemed to think about this for a moment. He could see how badly she wanted to rest, how tormented she was. She seemed like an animal thirsty for sleep, for rest, but terrified of being drugged.
"I will watch over you," Jane said calmly, eyes intent and scanning her face. "I promise, I will not let anything bad happen. If you get some rest now, that'll be better for tomorrow, right?"
Charlotte desperately wanted to give in and trust her father with the face of a killer, and sleep. He could see that. But her life had taught her that trust and sleep and silence were dangerous.
"Do you want some tea?" Jane said then, nodding towards the kitchen and the kettle. Charlotte blinked heavily again and Jane saw her running through possibilities. Would her father drug her, for her own well being? Would he put something in the tea to "help" her sleep?
"I won't give you any medication or do anything to your food, Charlotte. Ever. Even if I might have considered doing something like that to someone else, I won't to you. Because... if I did, you'd know, and it would destroy your trust in me, and I want you to trust me. Long term. I need you to trust me." His words were solemn, his eyes focused on his daughter's eyes like lasers. Charlotte's gaze skittered away, uncomfortable with Jane's intensity.
"You know when someone is manipulating you, and lying to you. You know that, don't you?" Jane said after a moment. Charlotte sighed, a weary sigh. Shrugged.
"I think you do know, even if you feel uncertain."
"Okay," Charlotte mouthed, looking at the trailer's dining table surface. Eyes so tired, body flooded with the need for rest, but also adrenaline. Conflicting, opposing forces.
"I am not going to drug you. If you try to leave through the door, I will not physically stop you, and I will not try to manipulate you into staying. If I thought it was safe for you to go alone, believe me, Charlotte, I'd have no problem with you going for a walk by yourself. I know you are not a child, and I know you are not a fool, or incompetent. But I don't think it is safe. So I am asking you for this favour. We let Lisbon sleep for a bit longer. And if you want to take some Nyquil and see if that helps, I promise I will not let any harm come to you."
Charlotte looked back up at Jane.
"You are being very reasonable," she said, in a soft voice. "But I feel if I am forced to stay in this trailer, I might go crazy."
There it was, the honest truth, the little and cowed and scared truth. Jane nodded. He had expected as much. How could anyone have lived Charlotte's life and not have developed major anxiety issues?
"What if we walk around the trailer, then? In a circuit. We can guard Lisbon, then, and you can walk? It might help with the restlessness, and your sense of being a sitting duck, of being watched?" Jane's eyes were bright, alert.
Charlotte stared tiredly at the table.
"Maybe I will try to Nyquil. I will have some and then we can walk around while it takes effect. Then maybe I can sleep. What do you think of that idea, Patrick?"
"I think it's a good idea," Jane said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. Charlotte got up and went to the little bathroom. Jane heard her open the medicine cabinet, then there was a moment of silence as she no doubt took the lid off the Nyquil and took a measured dose. A half a minute later he heard the tap going, then the door slid shit. 30 seconds later the toilet flushed, the tap water ran again, and then Charlotte came back out, face dripping wet, eyes wide and staring, sleeve cuffs stained dark with water, hair mussed. She sniffed loudly.
"I smell like sour sweat and like dust. Is there enough water in the tanks for a shower?"
"Maybe a short shower. In the morning I'll find a tourist site or a camp site and park the trailer. We'll refill the tanks."
"Okay," Charlotte nodded, but her eyes were already drooping. She rubbed at them. Jane got out from his seat on the bench, pulled the hood up of his hooded sweatshirt and opened the door. He held it open for his daughter. She flitted past him, out into the night and stood waiting. She had the chicken man's rosary beads and lucky rabbit foot around her neck and her battery powered glow stick, which was glowing green and eerie and lit up her face.
Jane locked the door, even though they would never be more than a few feet from the trailer door, and they began to circle the trailer, Jane walking at a decent speed, but calmly. Charlotte fell into step beside him, and he could feel the nervous energy coming off her like a type of fearful radiation. Her hands were balling into little fists at her side and relaxing, balling and relaxing, and Jane knew that if he wasn't here, Charlotte would have taken off into a run. The need to flee was strong in her- a primal fear-driven response common to all prey animals.
They circled the trailer and the truck, and Charlotte's eyes scanned the streets and the distant buildings, the sky, the expanse of dark, cool night. Eyes analyzing and sorting shapes and colours, looking for danger, wherever it may be, in whatever form it may presently be in.
"You only remembered Red John being your brother tonight?" Charlotte said, as they came full circle around the trailer for the first time. Jane nodded dully.
"Yeah," he said softly, and images and sounds and perceptions came at him like a flickering slideshow, 8 mm film running through his brain, an old, dusty projector back behind his eyes. Smells and memories, tastes of candy and stolen cigarettes, the sharp acid sting of skinning his knees after being pushed from his bike by a jeering twin brother, lost childhood memories, summery and yellow with age. But real. They were real, weren't they?
Red John in his room that first night with haunted, ancient, watchful eyes. Red John over the coming weeks after, bizarre and cold comments, cryptic. Baleful eyes, back teeth black with cavities that had never been filled when he laughed, knuckles scabbed over. Red John cornering him, shows of dominance and childhood aggression. A game called bloody knuckles, and Red John's dark eyes, glinting with scorn and anger. Hateful comments, and the time he accidentally-but-on-purpose dropped a lit cigarette near a tent while Jane watched, horrified, starting an accidental-but-on-purpose grass fire.
Running away, laughing, delighted in his fiery destruction. Jane and Red John (Patrick and Peter), running, Patrick scared, Peter exhilarated.
The morning Patrick got up and found Peter running his Oral B toothbrush around in the yellowed bowl of the toilet. The grin on his lips when his younger brother caught him and recoiled in revulsion.
The sounds and memories, the images, were coming in a flood, in a stream, and Jane was doing his best to sort through them.
"How does that work? You don't remember a chunk of your own life? How does that happen?" Charlotte said, casting a sideways glance at her father. Jane sighed sullenly, shrugged.
"I don't know. That summer... he was only with me for a summer... just sort of disappeared. I think on some level I knew, but... it just faded. It wasn't a good summer."
"Why didn't you grow up with him?" Charlotte asked. "I mean... I know what Red John told me, but I don't know if it is true or not. What do you remember?"
Jane thought about this. Opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. The memories were dreamy and odd, like remembering a dream instead of forgetting one... indistinct, faded memories, like trying to remember what was said and done in an alcoholic blackout.
"I seem to remember that... our mother, mine and.. Red John's... she split up with our father, when we were really young. And what they owned, my parents, got split down the middle. Including... us. My father got me, and our mother... she got Red John."
"Then.. what happened to him? Why did he come back?" Charlotte persisted with big eyes. Jane sighed tiredly. Sorted through the flood of impressions and colours, facial expressions and old words, even in there... there were some screams in there, like memories of a dream character screaming, shrill and surreal. Were those screams real? If so, whose screams were they? Who was making that horrible, agonized sound?
"From what I am getting right now, and could tell as a child, Red John was abandoned. He had some... um... antisocial traits, and our mother couldn't deal with him, and he ended up in foster care and then in a juvenile facility. And our father was contacted, sooner or later, and came and got him out. That seems to be how I remember it."
"So his own mother didn't even want him?" Charlotte said after a long, pregnant pause. Jane considered the way she had worded that question, the sadness inherent in her word selections.
"I guess not," Jane said slowly. He could barely remember his mother. Blurry impressions of her wiping his face as a toddler, the glint of her blue eyes, the smell of some perfume he could not remember the name of and the soft mounds of her breasts. She had been reduced through age and fading memory to a few scattered sense impressions, and linked with her was a sense of abandonment and grief. Regret. Of a little brother with wide, staring eyes crying and being loaded into the back of a station wagon, his lip split. Angry, slamming of small, baby fat hands on the back of the station wagon's window.
Jane shut his eyes.
That was... Red John, as a little child? Crying? Screaming? Screaming for his twin brother?
The sense of sudden pain, grief strong like a knife, was upon Jane in a flash. His own hands turned into fists and he pressed them into his belly. He felt an actual physical pain now, something akin to what he imagined a gallbladder attack might be like, or appendicitis.
He exhaled deeply, counted to ten in his head and opened his eyes. He wouldn't over-react to this. Charlotte was watching him carefully.
"You okay? Did you just remember something else?" Her words were slow and careful, uncertain.
"Yeah," Jane said carefully, voice distracted. "I guess you could say that."
"About Red John, when you were a kid?"
"Yeah," Jane breathed.
"Him doing something... bad?"
"Not really. Him crying."
"Crying?" Charlotte's forehead wrinkled in confusion, as if Jane had just said something obviously insane. Red John crying? The idea that he had ever been an actual, small child was weird enough.. but that he had ever cried? Normal human emotions? Surely not...
"Was he crying for real, or crying as... fake-crying?"
"Real crying... I think," Jane said morosely. In his head he could see Red John's face, scarlet. Screaming loudly. Snot bubbling out of his nose, eyelashes wet with tears, pounding on the back of the station wagon window as it pulled away. Hysterical. PATRICK!
"Why.. why was he crying?" Charlotte said.
"I think... I am not sure, but I think it was when we were first separated. The day he left..."
"Were you crying?" Charlotte asked then, face unreadable. Jane shrugged, and scanned through his memories. So old, so buried. He couldn't remember crying. Confusion? He could remember feeling confused. Not upset.
"I don't think so."
"So he didn't want to leave you, you think?"
"I don't know, Charlotte," Jane said, and it came out snappier than he intended. She pulled back, just a bit, as if suddenly afraid.
"I am sorry. I don't know. I don't know what I am getting.. it's all sort of blurry. Okay?" He smiled at her to show he was sorry for the snapping tone, but she still seemed uneasy. Finally she nodded.
"Maybe he was so upset, he turned evil?" She said after a minute of walking. Jane didn't say anything to this. What could he say to that?
"Do you think that is possible? He missed you so much, he turned evil?"
"I don't think evil works like that, Charlotte," Jane said finally, resolutely. Evil didn't work like that. You weren't upset- however bad that upset was- and then.. then you just turned. Life didn't work like that. If it did, the world would be crawling with sadistic serial killers.
"If Red John is possessed by a demon, maybe the demon got in when he was upset? Maybe it said it would be his friend? An imaginary friend, and that is when it got inside him? He was so lonely, that the demon came to him, and he let it inside, because he missed you so much?"
"Charlotte..." Jane breathed, so tired. He didn't want to talk about hypothetical demons entering distraught, hysterical toddlers and turning them bad, like some sort of extra-terrestrial invasion of the body snatchers: catholic edition. He didn't have the energy for such inane conversations
"What?" Charlotte said in response to her name.
"I don't believe evil works like that. I don't even believe in demons," Jane said, hoping she'd stop with this talk. At least right now.
"But you said you're going to kill Red John-"
"I am going to kill Red John," Jane said immediately. He was. No matter what he remembered. Red John was evil, he was a virus, he killed people and played sick mind games. He had to die. Even... even if he hadn't started out bad, he was bad (understatement of the century) now, and irredeemable, and he had to be put down. He was like a rabid animal, maybe.
You didn't blame the animal for having rabies, but you didn't let it continue to rip people apart.
"But if he is possessed, and all he needs is to be exorcised? What if your little brother is trapped in his body, and you kill him, and he is inside, screaming on the inside, for you to help him? And you kill him?"
Jane didn't respond to that. He didn't know what to say. He was overwhelmed. He knew that Charlotte wasn't just philosophizing, that this idea she had voiced was a very real, and very upsetting possibility, to her.
"Look, you lived with Red John for ten years. No doubt, if someone in a position to exorcise him existed, they would have helped you, at least gotten in touch with you-"
"I was just a kid, Patrick." Defensive tone, there.
"I know, Charlotte but... okay, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Red John, as he is right now, is a demon in a human body. From what I have read about exorcisms, they often don't end well for the person being exorcised, and Red John is pretty... far gone. Wouldn't you say?"
This got a shrug from Charlotte. She didn't know if Red John was far gone, apparently, and Jane felt a spike of heat in his cheeks, a deep surge of annoyance.
"Charlotte, he burned a happy face into your abdomen, so-" Jane stopped speaking. Charlotte was watching him with haunted, blighted eyes. He had spoken out of fatigue and confusion and frustration, and he'd hurt his daughter.
He saw her eyelashes flutter, like someone about to faint, and reached forward for her as she staggered into his hands. He made a "whoa, easy," noise and shifted his weight. Then her eyes cleared and she righted herself.
"You okay?" Jane said carefully.
Charlotte blinked dumbly. "Yeah. What just happened?"
Jane eyed her silently. Decided not to remind her. "Nothing... I think the Nyquil is taking effect. You look a little dead on your feet. Want to go in?"
"Okay," Charlotte said dully and they looped around the trailer again. Jane flitted up the stairs and unlocked the door. They'd circled around 13 times, and he couldn't help feeling a certain superstitious unease at the number. He caught himself, his silly thoughts, and chastised himself. This was, no doubt, how mental illness started, by paying undue attention to numbers and black cats and dreams in the night.
He'd have to watch it.