It seems that no matter where I seem to tumble in life a dark, cold halo of misfortune hovers above and blows me completely out of the water when the rapid tides of life seem to mellow. Maybe that's a little much, but it's pretty much like that in almost all of my situations.
Here I am, at a loss of words, being gripped tightly by my sobbing hysterical mother who keeps chanting in a banshee's screech, shaking her head from side to side while her graying hair falling out of its loose bun. Had I really been gone that long? Four weeks of pitch black, a prisoner to my own body in a cell of no taste or feeling. I couldn't even comprehend how it was possible, let alone what kind of power needed to pull that off.
" Charlie . . . my only baby girl . . . Charlie. Oh Charlie! Is it really you?"
Mechanically my hands reached up to my mother's shoulders and roughly gripped her, popping my fingers slightly, as I pulled her away to look into her red puffy eyes. My mouth hung as slack as it could over subconsciously clenched teeth at her over dramatic display. It was known to everyone I was treated as a ghost in my own home on the norm. I didn't bother them, they occasionally bothered me. I paid my own way. Although it did seem that my paternal parental unit cared more, we still held a silent agreement.
At first I just opened my mouth and closed it a few times, but finally words escaped my parched throat with a hollow distant voice quite unlike my own. " Hhh-how l-long," I had to stop and cough slightly, "How long . . . have I been gone?"
Staring intently at her face, she began to slowly regain something closely to normal breathing and replied finally "It's been two months for you . . . "
Wait . . . For me?
Looking up at my father with questioning eyes, I was completely shocked to see the bitterness in which his face seemed submerged. His head lifted so I could see his lips moved with words in monotone, but his eyes stayed stone cold along with the rest of his face, "They took Cory, four weeks ago. They took your little brother!"
Then he plunged his head back down, shaking silently with quiet tears, while my mother began to start up again as well. Whaling and squealing perfectly.
For two months I had been missing and I reawaken to a torrential down pour of chaos and panic. I didn't know how to react or deal with it. So very like the good carpenter I am, I put up another wall to cope. A wall to absorb the information safely without somehow imploding like my mother seems to think.
Why would anyone take Cory? There was a possibility that it was a pedophile or drug mules, the later is on the more than likely side with this city. The only thing that was apparent was that my parents assumed he went wherever I did and sadly I knew that was how it worked it in their world, it was always some super villain out for revenge, but not in mine.
Out of the little information I held about "The Gray," I knew they wouldn't do that unless he was a threat and a little nine-year-old boy is no threat. If it was by chance, a villain that did exist in their world there should have been something left behind or delivered to taunt my family, but if it wasn't and it existed through true hatred than after four weeks I can only expect the worse.
I can't help but to wonder what it must feel like for them to understand just how out of control they are to the events around them, to know that no matter how much power they posses they will never fully be in control . . . Unless they are in denial and that is likely.
"How did it happen? Is there anything . . . anything at all that helps us know where he might be?"
"Four weeks ago, at around dusk, Cory was told to take a casserole to old Mrs. Margaret after her hip surgery," I felt something nasty in my stomach begin to build, "But as he crossed the street your mother heard him screaming and raced outside to see him being thrown onto the back of a motorbike between two people."
The feeling was there building like a volcano, I knew what it was, but I was trying to deny it. Selfishness.
"Didn't you want to call the cops or something?"
Slowly my mother turned to look at me with an infuriated expression, "Call the cops? You think . . . We should have called the COPS! We're out there doing their job most of the time! WHY THE HELL WOULD WE CALL THE COPS!" Definitely denial.
"Just a suggestion," I squeaked out right before I felt a hand lay into the side of my face at full force, cutting my cheekbone where her wedding ring was. I knew I totally deserved it, but I couldn't help but to hate her more than ever, because in the back of my mind, she never tried hard enough. So I let my feelings of selfishness rise above it all and spew outward.
"Yes! You totally had it under control when you lost your first child! RIGHT! You totally had it under control when you went on living your lives! RIGHT! So why CAN'T you have someone help on SOMETHING just for once!" I couldn't stop there I had to keep going as I began to back her into the kitchen corner, "Who was out looking for ME! Why can't you just GET THE HELL off your high and mighty stool and realize that you've NEVER had it under control and you NEVER WILL until you accept help dammit!"
By then I had my face two inches away from hers and I was seriously debating on whether or not to spit on her over dramatic tear stained face, but concluded that it would add insult to injury and make me just as bad if not worse than her. My father's voice stopped me when he mentioned the one person who I never wanted involved in the other parts of my life.
"Warren has been looking for you. We haven't spoken since he came back from searching for you to be updated on your little brother, "he paused, "He checks in once a week on a blocked number we can't trace."
Oh great, that's all I need. Warren trying to save his own pride by helping my family. It seems the 'All American Dream Boy' is brainwashing him. If I ever see him again, he's going to have my foot jammed so far up his ass he'll be walking around with a colostomy bag the rest of his life.
Moving across from me and my mother, my father opened a little mahogany cabinet door beneath the counter and pulled a small box out about the size of a cheap Easter basket handle-absent. Backing away a little, I moved toward him with a curious expression and gently took the box out of his old trembling hands and sat down on the floor from where I stood, my frame slightly hunching over.
Lifting open the cardboard flaps I found it was exactly what I hoped it to be, the only finger pointing in the right direction.
Inside were three items, first of which of was a letter addressed to me with a shredded envelope no doubt due to someone's quick tearing (i.e. my mother). The letter itself was not a letter really, more of a blank gray greeting card which at first would definitely signal activity from my favorite underground group, but something else caught my eye as I turned it over. Imperceptibly printed numbers only a shade or two lighter than the base color placed into the lower right hand corner near the crease of the spine followed by a perfectly shape lion.
'Note to self, copy numbers.' I thought as I began to move to the next item.
Setting the card on the floor beside me I turned to the box again and pulled out a small collapsible asp that, when extended, reaches out about a foot or so. Now that is quite mind boggling. An asp? Isn't that what police officers and security guards carry when on duty? Curiosity got the best of me and I dropped the asp quickly and peered into the box at the last object.
A simple necklace chain similar to those used with army tags, held a single silver ring. On the outside of the ring there were two crosses on either side of what appeared to be the burning heart usually associated with Catholicism. When I peered on the inside of the ring, another thing completely threw me off, foreign writing inscripted all the way around the band.
"We didn't know what they were," my mother rasped out, "There were other things inside, but Warren came back and took them."
That's just like him. I'm stuck here with the hard clues, dirty bastard. Shaking my head with a slightly bitter chuckle, I slipped the necklace on then grabbed the asp and card. Ready or not, here I come.
