Chapter 10:
That following Sunday, Cole, his wife, their newborn baby, Rebecca, and Abigail were sitting in their normal pew in their fundamentalist church. It was full of people, and the pastor was giving his sermon to the congregation. Cole had seen him upon returning to Barnwell with Barbi, but before that, he had officiated Charles' funeral. With the hour-long service in session, Barbi needed to put a pacifier in baby Caroline's mouth to keep her quiet as they all listened to the pastor.
After refreshments were served in the backroom of the church house, Cole took everyone back home only to find a luxurious car parked in their driveway. Cole just peered through his windshield, seeing an all-too-familiar man with a strong jawline, thick brown brows, and intense blue eyes come out of the car with what looked to be a producer with him.
"Oh good heaven," Abigail said. "Who's that?"
"Oh not again," Cole muttered, driving in front of the advanced car model and rolling down the window to see what they were doing: "HEY!"
The face of Sidney-Aaron James looked in Cole's direction, and as the man watched the famed producer fiddle with the collar on his thousand-dollar suit jacket, walking toward Cole's vehicle with a smug look on his face.
"Hey, haven't seen you in a long time, superstar!" Sidney smirked, "you doing okay?"
"I would be, if you guys got off my property!" Cole exclaimed. "God, can't a man and his family go to church in peace?"
"Ah, church folk," Sidney said, "gotta love them."
"Get out of my driveway, please," Cole said forcefully in a polite command, getting his foot on the brake and putting the vehicle in gear.
The luxury car moved out and gave Cole just enough room to pull into the driveway. He got out of the vehicle and opened the passenger door to let out, in order, Barbi and baby Caroline, Abigail and his younger sister Rebecca. Ensuring the vehicle was locked, Sidney approached Barbi, who was holding the baby in a white cotton blanket, and smiled at her facetiously.
"Ah, you got a little one now," he said.
"Yeah," Barbi replied, "only a month old."
"Have we met…is it, Barbi?" Sidney asked with a smirk. "Don't ask me how I know-"
"Her name is Barbara," Cole corrected sternly, "but to you, you're gonna call her Mrs. Paterson, you hear me?"
Sidney just looked at the man he had interviewed a year before. Why was he being so cross with him? After all, it wasn't like he went through hell and back with his now-wife. Yes, of course he did, why else would he be acting this way?
"Look, uh…M-Mr. Paterson," Sidney said, correcting himself to try and appeal to Cole's demand for respect toward himself and his wife, above all. "Won't you just invite me in and we can talk this over? I think you'll like what I have to say."
"I know exactly why you're here," Cole replied, "you play me for a fool."
"No, no," Sidney disagreed, "I'm telling you the truth. I really think you want to hear what I have to say to you and…Mrs. Paterson."
Barbi went up to her husband's side, looking like the archetypical obedient housewife, and looked up at him: "Cole, please. It ain't fair to just shoo someone off our property. I-I'll make some coffee." She then looked to Rebecca, who held out her arms to collect baby Caroline. "Take the baby, please."
Cole and Barbi sat across from Sidney, who sat back lazily in his seat at the dining table, looking at the both of them. Cole looked anguished, his chin resting on his fist as his blue eyes looked back at him, light stubble covering his face that matched his dark blond hair. His hands were slightly calloused and rather large, and he was still wearing his Sunday best. Barbi, on the other hand, was more beautiful than Cole described her to be in his interview a year before. Her hair was a bit tousled in the front, the fiery color evident in the loose tresses that were once bangs held back in a silvery clip. She was wearing a pink dress to church with lace accents, along with gold hoops given to her by Cole on her birthday months before. Three cups of coffee were in front of them, and Sidney barely took a sip of his.
"So, what do you have for me?" Cole asked assertively.
It was that moment that Sidney pulled out a yellow manila folder and laid it out on the table for Cole to open and read. Barbi peered over her husband's shoulder as he read it, every word. It was a contract, and in big letters on the top read: Return to Roanoke: Three Days in Hell. Cole just slowly turned his eyes up to meet Sidney's, who cocked his eyebrows up to express hope that they would each sign along the dotted lines on the bottom of the document to agree to the conditions…to be in the show.
"What do you think?" Sidney asked.
"I-Is this a joke?" Cole asked him. "Are you serious right now?"
"Yes, I'm serious. I think you'd make an amazing addition to the new show," Sidney answered with a smile. "M-Mrs. Paterson, they get to see you for the first time and not just a reenactment, and you, Cole, you get be seen again by the millions who devoured the original show! Your interview was a TV sensation and now, people are-"
Barbi was disgusted: "you've made millions off our misery since. How dare you?"
"Look, I know I came forward to share my story," Cole said, "but for heaven's sake, I seen enough. I been through enough. The both of us have! How could you just sit there and act like everythin's okay?"
In that very moment, Cole closed the yellow manila folder and tossed it back at Sidney, the contents landing flat on the table without disarray. Sidney took the contract for the new show and opened the folder, looking down at the text as he incorporated a quote into his speech in order to convince them.
"The payout for this is much more generous than the interview you gave, Cole," Sidney said.
"W-What?"
Sidney didn't hesitate to hand over the contract once again, only this time, laying the folder open and flat on the table, taking the point of a pen to the part of the contract he was referring to. Cole and Barbi leaned down to look at it, only to be appalled and disgusted even more by his nonchalance and his evident greed for attention and wealth off their psychological misery.
"The payout is $175,000 per night," Sidney said. "That is just enough to get you out of this hick town, this house, and somewhere else. Think, Malibu or Beverly Hills, even Hollywood if you're ambitious."
That did it. How dare he come into their home and insult them the way he did? Cole took the contract off the table, gathering every piece so he could easily tear them in half. He took it a step further and tore the halves into their own halves, tossing the paper fragments on the table and slamming his palms on the table's surface. His blue eyes grew cold and narrowed at Sidney, his provocation creating tunnel vision and startling the producer.
"Get out of my house!" he hissed. "How DARE you come in here?! Insultin' my home, my family, disrespectin' me and my wife, and expectin' us to relive our trauma all over again just 'cause you want an extra million dollars! You are PATHETIC!"
"Now wait just a minute," Sidney said forcefully, "you just tore up a $500,000 contract! You're making a big mistake. Can't you just set all the memories aside and do this? For us? This is actually fake and simulated, nothing is real this time. I swear to you!"
Cole was never the violent type. It simply was not his style or in his normal mannerisms to hurt people when angry, but given the chance, he surely would have slugged Sidney right then and there without a concern. What he did instead, however, pushed his own boundaries. He grabbed Sidney, from across the table, by the collar of his thousand-dollar suit blazer and dragged him out of the dining area. Barbi sprung up from her seat and watched her husband hold a struggling Sidney, now in both hands, directing him to the front door. Abigail and Rebecca, holding baby Caroline, came out of their places in the house to see what the commotion was all about, only to see Cole literally toss Sidney off the porch so he landed on the dirt walkway in front of the house.
"I'd never wish death on another man," Cole said, catching the producer's full attention as he looked up at him, "but if you're that stupid, to just waltz in that house again, then you by all means DESERVE it!"
"You're…g-going to regret this!" Sidney exclaimed, struggling to speak and get back to his feet due to the pain in his back from the fall down the short flight of stairs on Cole's porch. "Ow…"
"I have no regrets, but you're gonna have regrets goin' in that house!" the man said coldly.
"I could sue you," Sidney said with anguish, feeling his lower back as he hunched over the minute he got to his feet, "if I have a slipped disc in my back."
"I wanna see you try," Cole retorted. "God ain't gonna see to it that you win, you greedy piece of garbage." He paused, turning to re-enter his house; "DON'T COME BACK TO MY HOME AGAIN!"
SLAM!
Cole closed the front door so hard behind him that the windows in the top framework nearly broke. Barbi came closer to him, as did Abigail, but he raised his hands to make them stop in their tracks. Their responses showed him obedience, respect for his masculine authority.
"Cole, what's wrong, hunny-bun?" Abigail asked her son.
"I need a cigarette," he said, walking past them. "I'll be on the back porch."
Dr. Christian Landau had been seeing Cole as a patient for close to a year by this point. Later that week, after the incident with Sidney visiting his house with a contract for the reboot series related to his interview, he had his weekly appointment with the therapist. When he sat down in one of the plush, upholstered, mustard-colored lounge chairs, Dr. Landau pressed 'Record' on the iPad he had in the room with him – recording was a part of their patient/caregiver contract, just so the therapist could playback anything that may have been odd during the session and assess it as it was, or if something was hidden in Cole's words.
"How did your week go, Cole?" the doctor questioned.
"Eh, it was rough." Cole sighed and looked at his therapist. "I ain't gonna lie."
"Well, start from the beginning. What exactly set the tone for the week?"
Cole looked down, leaning forward and clasping his hands. He nodded and gathered his thoughts before speaking, beginning the session with his testimony about Sidney.
"Okay, so…did you hear about them makin' a reboot TV special about my interview? My ordeal in that house?" he asked, establishing the tone.
"I…have not," Dr. Landau answered. "Can you tell me more about that?"
"Yeah. Well, damn son o'gun had the balls to come to my house after my wife, daughter, sister and mother came from church services on Sunday, with a contract…invitin' us to sign it and appear in it…at that HOUSE," Cole explained. "Can y'imagine?"
"Wait, so he wanted you to star in this new, uh, reboot?"
"Yup."
"Oh wow," Dr. Landau muttered, "even though he knows full well that you have had a hard time and then some. How did you handle the situation, Cole?"
"I was obviously mad, doc," the patient replied, leaning back in the chair. "I tore up that contract and send him outta my house. I…I let my anger get a hold of me, and I…I threw him down the front steps. He threatened to sue me, but…I ain't havin' that."
"He…threatened to sue you?" the doctor asked.
"Yeah," Cole said. "He ain't gonna."
"Why do you say he won't?" Dr. Landau asked. "How can you be so certain?"
"Because chances are," Cole answered, "he'll just find the person who played me in the documentary. He's likely to say yeah to it all."
Dr. Landau nodded, listening to his patient. In the first year of treatment, Cole had shown so much improvement and had revealed so many of his innermost thoughts, emotions, memories; pretty much anything he could remember from the house at Roanoke and even before that. The moment he diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder was the moment he prescribed medications. Then came the prazosin for the nightmares when they began to haunt his sleep every night. Cole had a nightmare once a week at the very least, even still – the pills did not do much for him.
"I see," Dr. Landau said. "Now, Cole, can you tell me about the medications? I think it's important to discuss, because it's been a year and you seem to be, well, not benefitting from them enough. I remember upping your nightly dose two months ago. Have you had any nightmares this week?"
Cole took in a breath: "Well…I did…but it was because I skipped out on a dose. I gave it to my wife. She had a bad dream. I…wanted to help her…but…I remember, yes I did have a bad dream…"
He found himself locked in the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom upstairs in the house. Barbi had looked sullen and depressed, the life zapped from her enticing, almond-shaped brown eyes. She had been holding a knife, but for whatever reason, it made him uneasy. She was sitting with her back to the sink counter across from the curtained bathtub.
"There is no escape," he heard her say.
"W-What do mean? We got outta here before!" he exclaimed, going over to his wife and looking into her dead eyes. "We can leave this place again! We are gonna make it out alive. I love you, Barbara, please!"
"There is nothin'," she repeated. "We are back to where we started."
"No," Cole said forcefully, "don't say that, dammit!"
What she said next frightened him, and even made him feel bad: "Marryin' you set me free. I've only liked you. Love was never somethin' I could feel."
He felt tears begin to form in his eyes – all he did for her was for nothing. How could she sit there and say such horrible things to him after all he had done to make her happy and satisfy her as her husband?
"Y-You don't mean that…" he sobbed. "P-Put that knife down…gimme it!"
"There's nothin' left for me."
Just like that, Barbi took the blade of the kitchen knife to her throat and dug the blade into her flesh, slicing clean across in one swipe. Her jugular and carotid were fully severed, and her windpipe was cut in such a way that it stuck out as blood splattered out everywhere at a jet-fire speed. Cole was covered in her sanguine fluid, and it was that moment, after a few chokes and final attempts to breathe from his wife that he went over to her and sobbed over her body.
"NO! NO!" he sobbed. "No, no…please…no…"
Then, he found himself letting her go, covered in her blood. His shirt was soaked in it. Nevertheless, he stood up. He turned around to see the image of an unrecognizable young woman. Half of her clothes were missing, but what was left of a black dress was in tatters with singed edges. Half of her hair was missing, her scalp melted over and badly charred from a fire injury. The once beautifully, but eerily unmarred, pale skin on the woman was now black with severe burns; so severe, in fact, that her upper and lower arm bones were exposed with the muscle and tissues completely incinerated away. Piercing hazel eyes stared at him with hatred and disgust, reminding him of the fire she was pushed into that caused her demise.
"You're back," she told him.
It took a minute to recognize her voice, but it sunk in: "Sarah?"
The charred woman looked down at the fresh corpse of Barbi, her throat cleanly slit with blood still dripping all over the place. Her eyes looked intensely angry and vengeful.
"What in the hell did you do to my sister?" she hissed.
Cole gulped really hard, still sobbing heavily from witnessing her suicide: "s-she killed herself…I…I tried to stop her…I…I couldn't…s-she's dead…I saw everythin'…I saw it all…"
Sarah did not look convinced. One of her soot-covered phalanges pointed to his right hand: "hard to believe, considerin' you got a knife."
Cole looked down and saw he was holding a blood-covered knife in his right hand. He dropped it and let out a startled scream. He just stared at Sarah and shook his head: "NO! I'd never! I loved her!"
"She was too happy-go-lucky to off herself like that, you dumb bastard!" Sarah screeched.
Cole had nothing else to do except run – she was even scarier in death than she was alive as his distant neighbor. Her presence alone made him shiver. He ran out the door, only to see what looked to be Barbi coming back to her feet, throat still wide open from the self-inflicted wound. She looked at him with empty, dark, soul-piercing eyes as she stood next to her charred sister.
"Please! Y-You need to stay with me!" Cole said, "I didn't kill you, Barbi! Tell her!"
"She can't talk," Sarah said, both sisters looking at him, "fuck you!"
SLAM!
The door was shut, and as Cole pounded against it to get them to open it up, he felt a blade dig into his back, hearing the flesh as it drew itself out.
"AHHH!"
He collapsed to the floor to find himself looking up at the tall figure of a man with a pig's head. He heard him squeak a bit before proceeding to hack him repeatedly with the short machete he had in his hand. Cole's final moments were full of the sound of metal hitting flesh, repeatedly, agonizing pain until he drew his last breath.
"Oh, dear," Dr. Landau replied as he listened to the description of Cole's nightmare from that previous week. "Now, this was when you gave your wife your pill for that night?"
"No, I…I took one that night before bed," Cole said. "She woke me up screamin' and cryin', I gave her my pill for the followin' night…so it was the next night I had no pill for the night. I took everythin' else though, that day."
"Ah, okay. Did it work for her?" he asked the patient. "You aren't supposed to give someone else your medications."
"I don't care," Cole said defiantly, "if I see my wife sufferin', I'm gonna end it right there."
"Did it work? Did she have any more nightmares that night?"
"No." Cole sighed morosely, catching the therapist's attention fairly quickly. His facial expression denoted uncertainty, as though there were words unsaid, unshared, as they were meant to be during the session.
"Is there something you want to share with me?" he asked finally.
"What else is there?" Cole asked. "All I do is repeat myself."
"Which is, by all means, okay here," Dr. Landau reminded him. "I'm your therapist, I'm here to talk with. About anything."
Cole took a minute to think, reflecting on his dream before saying anything: "say, doc, h-have you ever questioned someone's loyalty to you?"
This question was not unusual, but in his particular case, it was unnerving. The fact that he would ask that, made Dr. Landau think that Cole was exhibiting some paranoia regarding people in his life. Who could he have been talking about? He asked the patient just that.
"Excuse me, Cole, I don't think I understand," he began, "I mean, I DO, but…who are you referring to when you ask me this question?"
"After that dream," Cole explained, twitching his right leg, "I started to cry when I woke up, I reached and held my wife close to me, told her I loved her…but still, next day I had to know for sure. So I asked her, 'do you love me, Barbara? Really?'"
"What did she say, Cole?"
"Nothin'," Cole said, "just kept at her laundry work. Said absolutely nothin' to me."
"But you said she tells you she loves you."
"It seemed to stop after…this crap with the TV program," Cole said, remembering. "I think she resents me."
"Why's that?"
"Because I came forward with my story and let these people profit off our misery," Cole said. "It's…all my fault."
Dr. Landau was quick to disagree: "No, it isn't. We've been over this, remember?"
"But I can't get it through my head!" the patient exclaimed, leaning forward and holding his dark blonde hair between his fingers, sighing. "I feel like it's my fault, and it's killin' me, doc!"
"I understand," Dr. Landau said, "you've been through a lot, so it's only understandable that-"
"LOOK," Cole said, nearly shouting, "until you've been in my shoes, you'll never understand what I have to live with everyday! All you doctors think you know things, but you barely know anythin' unless you, yourself, have been there. How would you feel if you were in my shoes? Seein' the world through my eyes, seein' what I saw, experiencin' what I did?"
"Cole, please…try to remain calm," Dr. Landau said, trying to get the patient to settle without becoming frantic, as he sometimes did during appointment sessions.
He kept going: "You ain't got a damn clue what it's like to relive all that horror on a daily basis, havin' this crap in your nightmares no matter how many times you pray to God to make it all go away. Do you even understand how hard it is to recover from somethin' like this even with you and your cocktail of meds to go with it?"
There was a long moment of silence, and it made Dr. Landau take a peeking glance down at the iPad, with the Voice Recorder still on, and he noticed that the session had recorded 55 minutes in, taking in all of his testimony from the week that he could possibly remember. For Cole, remembering things wasn't so easy anymore – sometimes even the most vivid nightmares could go missing from his memory. His repression of memories was rather quick, but it was his own way of securing his sanity and what seemed to be left of it. Ironically, though, everything that happened stuck in his long-term memory like fresh gum.
He left Dr. Landau's office that day feeling anxious and tense, but everything changed the minute he took a cigarette out of his case and lit it, taking the first drag and letting out a small cough. He went to his vehicle and continued to smoke, getting it in reverse and pulling out. As he drove down the road, he passed by the church his family frequented, but before he could make a complete pass, he found himself turning the wheel to park in the church's parking lot. He took a moment to himself, finishing his cigarette and dropping it on the black asphalt as he stepped out, closing the door behind him and ensuring it was locked.
Entering the church, he removed his cap and hung his head low, looking down at his feet as they made their way down the aisle of impeccable red carpet, which was a splash of color in a mostly plain church. He looked before him and saw no one in the pews, not even in his family's usual spot, but he took a seat at one and pulled out one of the leather-upholstered knee fixtures for prayer, kneeling down and clasping his hands, counting down as he closed his eyes.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven…please God, make it all go away.
Six.
Five…
Cole took in a deep breath and let a tear fall. Four…
Three.
Two.
Then he opened his eyes. One.
"Ah, hello Cole," a voice said, "how's it goin' today? You holdin' up good?"
Cole did not answer verbally; his response consisted of a nod. The man speaking was the pastor of the congregation, who also happened to be a longtime friend of Charles Loring, his late third-cousin.
"I ain't seen you 'lone in this church since your pops passed," the pastor told him in a rather kindly monotone, taking a seat next to the kneeling church-goer. "It was a hard time for your family, I know that. I…I remember when you was just a youngin'. Now you a grown man, a man o'God."
Cole took in a heavy sigh: "I try to be a good Christian."
"You succeed," the pastor smiled. "So…what's got you sulkin', son? You can always talk to me."
Everything, Cole thought, everything. It's nothing you don't already know.
"Ain't nothin' new," Cole said, "it's haunted me since leavin' North Carolina."
"I remember when you first came to me, to talk," the pastor said, clasping his hands and leaning forward to lower his voice. "When you returned…now you see a psychologist. I…didn't advise you to, but…has it worked?"
Cole's voice cracked: "Barely. Dr. Landau has years in the biz, but I still have nightmares, and flashbacks, and that cocktail of pills don't help much."
The pastor reached for the Bible before him nestled in the wooden block pouch and opened it, flipping through the crisp white, thin pages, licking the fingertip that turned them to flip with ease. Cole just looked at him and sighed in a deep breath, awaiting what he was going to tell him.
"Cole, do you remember this past Sunday when ol' Toby Darling came to our church and repented for gratifications of the flesh?" the pastor asked.
"Uh…what?" Cole asked.
"Let me refresh you," the pastor said, "he was a very successful business man, went to college, played football, remember he told us. And...it all went to garbage. He had been too far deep into debauchery to deal with his business no more. So he closed. And he moved back here. He reclaimed his Christianity. Church was part of his upbringin', but he was Lutheran then. Now, he's evangelical like you and I."
Cole was confused, pointing his index finger to himself: "so, what does he have to do with me?"
Having his finger serve as a bookmark, the pastor closed the leather-bound Bible and held it toward Cole: "you must repent for any sins you done. God wouldn't want his child to suffer for no reason."
Cole's blue eyes widened and he shook his head, breaking down before the church elder: "I…I never sinned! Not willin'ly! I don't know what I did! Let alone to deserve this daily mental torment! D-Did God not want me up in North Carolina, and I evaded his plan for me?!"
"It ain't that simp-"
"TELL ME!" Cole begged, grabbing the pastor's shoulders. "Why's God punishin' me if you say I sinned?! What do you see as my greatest sin? Why am I bein' punished?!"
The pastor looked down into the Bible, opening it up to pages with proverb on top of proverb: "please tell you you ain't forgotten the Corinthians?"
"What?!" Cole exclaimed.
The pastor adjusted his glasses and looked down at the tiny black text on the white pages, nodding when he found it: "ah, here it is. Corinthians 6:18, here, it states…'flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin one commits is outside his body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body."'
Cole was now extremely confused – he had never once had relations with anyone aside from his wife. He was a faithful man and Christian, and before the incidents at Roanoke, he had never lain with a woman, not even out of curiosity. What was this pastor getting at with him?
"I…I don't get it," Cole said. "I never was unfaithful to Barbara. B-Before everythin' I was pure! How could you say-"
"You laid with the Devil in the form of a woman, Cole," the pastor said.
That was when the Witch Scáthach coerced him into sexual acts while he was asleep; that morning where Barbi found him laying on the ground, outside of the house, with his member sticking out for the world to see. The anger was real now, but Cole tried to control himself regardless – his family was close with this pastor. The last thing he needed was the be the next black sheep of the Loring family.
"I…I didn't want it! I SWEAR!" Cole shouted. "Please believe me! I've told you this! I've tried to tell you I'm tryin' to get over it! Y-You said wasn't a sin!"
"But it's becomin' quite clear, son, that it is your sin," the pastor said affirmatively. "You's gotta repent."
"No," Cole protested, standing up and walking out of the pew swiftly and staring down at him. "I can't believe you! You think it's my fault I got violated by that…that…demon?!"
"Repent, and you will once again be in the grace of God, son," the pastor said. "Peter said it! Remember. He said to everyone to repent their sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the Lord, our God. Put your burdens in the arms of the Lord, and your nightmares will be no more."
Cole began to walk toward the entrance of the church, only to turn back and look at the aging pastor to say: "I WILL NOT repent for somethin' I did not do! As a man of God, you oughta be ASHAMED of yourself, sayin' what you just did."
All those years of Christian upbringing were suddenly down the toilet – was he to be the next David Loring? Or would he find his solace elsewhere?
Little did he know, solace was unreachable.