Billy Austin (A Gathering of Lovers Book 1) Page 3

  "Awake, are we?"

  "Yes."

  His voice sounded far away and darkness at the edge of his vision made it seem as if he was lying at the bottom of a well.

  "You're hurt pretty bad, son. I should have taken you to the hospital but something told me it might be better not to. I fixed you up myself the best I could. I used to be a doctor so I know a few tricks."

  "Thank you."

  "What's your name, son? Mine is Kirk."

  "Oscuro, my name is Oscuro."

  As a boy he had read a story about a magician, a sorcerer of black magic, whose name was Oscuro, the dark one. He had taken to calling himself by that private name, especially when especially malevolent urges overcame him. Now, it seemed best to take the name public. He sensed the name Alex Johns might be all over the news.

  It had been his plan all along to disappear as soon as he was released from Didi Hearsh. To slip away from his Malibu home would have been simplicity itself. The accident was fortuitous in that the authorities might well have assumed he perished in the flames too. By the time they sifted through the ashes he was long gone.

  A momentary image of Allison blossomed in his mind... whether she had lived was only an afterthought. That his father was dead did not trouble him in the least... he had seen his broken body lying in the ditch as he made good his escape. Oscuro knew he would be able to find out the fate of Allison without too much trouble... most newspapers would probably report the death of the prestigious Allen Johns and mention in passing if his daughter had joined him in the heavenly hereafter.

  "Ah yes, Oscuro, the dark one. I've heard that story too. It seems to me the name fits you well, son. Tell you what... if you like magic I'll teach you some tricks I've learned along the way so you can earn your keep."

  The old man had an ingratiating way of speaking that irritated him yet Oscuro knew he needed an ally if he was to survive. He swallowed the contemptuous words rising in his throat and instead cast about for a meaningless question to ask in order to foster friendliness instead of bitterness.

  People were useless to Oscuro. He abjured their presence, only tolerating it if he saw some personal gain. He had never had a friend other than those who had sought to take advantage of him like that bastard who had the gall to try and marry Allison.

  Didn’t Tony know the girl was taken? If he wasn’t already dead Oscuro thought how pleasant it might be to track him down and teach old Tony a lesson. He remembered how the kid used to hang around him in school and obsequiously invite himself over to go swimming all the while only preening and posturing in front of Allison. Did Tony actually believe Allison would have married him? She was completely out of his league.

  What had the old man been saying? Something about magic tricks... Oscuro thought how he might be able to show him a few tricks of his own but of course that would have to wait until he was on his feet again. What did most people ask when they woke somewhere unknown? That would perhaps be a place to start.

  "Where am I, Kirk?"

  "You're in my RV. We're traveling east into the town of Battle Mountain, Nevada, for our next show."

  "What kind of show? Are you a performer?"

  "Oh, something like that, I suppose. We're part of the carnival, son. I'm one of those precious clowns kids have nightmares about for weeks. We move from town to town. Battle Mountain this week, Reno next week, we're always on the move. Suits my nature and yours too, I suspect."

  "I don't understand, Kirk. What is your nature? Who are you? What do you know about me? Why are you helping me?"

  "Ah... questions... that's good. That means you didn’t suffer a concussion. Well, let's just say I'm an old man tired of being alone in the world. I had a family, once. They disowned me years ago. Now most of them are dead. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you remind me of my son. And like I said, I used to be a doctor. I saw you were hurt and probably in trouble. I've been there myself, Oscuro. Someone took the time to help me out so I suppose I look at this as a kind of payback."

  "Thank you, Kirk. I might have died out there if you hadn’t found me."

  "I've no doubt of that, my young friend, and hopefully before the wild dogs followed your blood scent."

  "I can't breath."

  "You have a couple busted ribs and more that are bruised. I wrapped you up tight as I could. You took a blow to your pelvis too; your hip might be broken; I can't tell without x-rays. There are some other issues as well but we can speak about those later. Now, I have to get back on the road and you need to get some sleep. Here, swallow these. They'll help with the pain."

  Kirk handed Oscuro three white tablets. They had a bitter taste and as he put them into his mouth the old man gave him a cup of water and then he disappeared. Oscuro felt the vehicle lurch and begin to sway again as it moved down the highway. As he closed his eyes the motion of the RV lulled him into a fitful slumber.

  He dreamed of a huge black wolf watching him, sniffing the air, and patiently waiting to devour his flesh. Stifling a scream Oscuro surfaced to waking to reassure himself that he was indeed dreaming. He discovered he could breathe deeply without pain if he took it slow.

  It was good to be traveling. He sensed motion and heard the rhythmic sound of wheels on pavement. One of the wheels was out of balance causing a minute trembling that he didn’t notice at first but soon became quite aggravating. He wondered why the old man hadn’t had it attended to... if he didn’t notice or if he was just plain lazy.

  Whatever else he thought about him, Oscuro knew the old man really was a first rate healer by the feel of the compression tape wrapping his ribs. When he altered his position on the thin foam padding upon which he laid to be a tad more comfortably he could feel something loose in his pelvis like the time as a boy he had fallen out of a tree and broken his collar bone and how the fracture seemed to shift each time he moved.

  What had the old man told him? They were heading for Battle Mountain and then Reno. There were lots of women in those towns... the odds were at least one or two of them would be a poor match for Allison's beauty if not her grace. Thinking of the fun he might have with them took his mind off his present predicament.

  Whatever the old man had given him for pain worked well. For a moment he was tempted to rise, to go and sit with the old man, but sleep clawed heavy at his mind. He wondered if he could summon the wolf again, to see what the dream portended. As darkness descended he heard its howl.

  Chapter 6—Before and After

  Billy woke once again somewhere in time.

  He was in a small room the size of a closet. He lay on a hard metal bunk rendered a little softer by crushed padding that might have once have been called a mattress covered in faded green vinyl split down the middle from use… no sheet or pillow, only a rough blanket that smelled faintly of laundry soap and of bleach and a sort of lingering fragrance of urine… the walls were a mottled white, whatever colors they used to be underneath was slowly reclaiming their rightful place.

  He laid in bed a long time staring at the ceiling… a black stain lurking above the door as if water had been dripping there for a long time reminded him of an enormous hairy spider waiting to drop on him if he walked underneath. The door was open. He could hear voices and the sounds of clatter outside the door.

  He wondered where his mother was and how he gotten here from the abandoned house where they had been staying. His body seemed much too big. It was so much bigger than he remembered it being when he laid down to sleep the night before. Perhaps he stayed over at a friend's house. He wondered momentarily if he embarrassed himself by wetting the bed.

  Awkwardly rising to sit he discovered bandages wrapping his thick long arms from his wrists to his elbows… his skin prickled underneath… scratching was futile, he tried but he couldn’t penetrate the dressings. Wearing a thin gown tied in back Billy struggled to remember why the bandages were there. A miasma rolled over him coating his mind in avalanches of pain… the source issuing from under the bone behind his left
ear. Rubbing there with the fleshy part of his thumb diminished the ache but didn’t alter it altogether. Raising his arm sent shards of pain from his fingers to his shoulder and his head ached worse.

  “Oh… I see we’re up.”

  A woman bubbled into his room with a cup in each hand.

  “Time now for your medication. Hold out your tongue…”

  She wore a blue top and a matching bottom that were both too tight for the flesh bulging under them and she smiled a smile that didn’t go beyond her mouth, as if she might be baring her teeth to ward off a predator. The woman emptied the contents of one cup into Billy’s mouth and then handed him a cup of water. He drank it, washing down the pills.

  Billy heard the diesel-rumbling of the bus starting up again. He lurched along with the bus as it began moving not bothering with opening his eyes. He wondered where the bus might carry him. He had no destination in mind other than a compelling need to be close to the ocean. As his mind settled back into a half-sleep he saw himself as a lost soul, like the Flying Dutchman… the ghost of a man who once killed his wife, condemned to eternal wanderings, seeking small boys to carry off, listening for them when they were supposed to be asleep, coming into their rooms to snatch them up in his ghostly arms.

  His father once told him the story to scare him into going to sleep or to at least act like sleep had hold of him. Billy saw himself forever traveling up and down the coast, always going where the bus took him, and never stopping more than a few minutes. He fell into a deeper trance, reliving fragments of memory he had forgotten heretofore, sensing if he interrupted their flow that they’d stay lost forever.

  “Do you remember me, Billy?”

  A man walked into Billy’s room and stood by his bed. Apparently he was unafraid of the spider or perhaps just on friendly terms with it.

  “No… not really.”

  The man seemed familiar but Billy couldn’t quite shake the stupor from his mind to place where he’d seen him.

  “Alex? Are you Alex?”

  “No… I’m Dr. Grimes… we met briefly at County General. You’ve been transferred to the psychiatric ward. We have you on some pretty heavy medication so I’m not surprised you don’t remember me.”

  "Where is my mother?"

  "Your mother? Why, I don't know, Billy."

  "But I was with her just last night."

  "Listen to me carefully, Billy. You are in a psychiatric ward. You were not with your mother last night. You've been here undergoing treatment for six months."

  “Psychiatric ward? Do you mean an insane asylum?”

  “Well, we don’t call it that anymore, Billy. We call it an institution for behavioral modification. We’re here to help you. Once we get you stabilized on the right dosage of medication we’ll start therapy sessions.”

  “Do I have to stay here?”

  “I’m afraid so, Billy. The court determined it is in your best interest to be confined here until such time as you’re better able to cope with the destructive tendencies that you’re exhibiting.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Your wife called the police. She said that you attacked her and then tried to kill yourself. Do you remember any of that?”

  "My wife? How can I be married? I'm just kid."

  "You are probably experiencing the side effects of your treatment. You are an adult, Billy. You are not a child. Now, think hard; do you remember trying to hurt your wife?"

  “No, I don’t... I’d never…”

  Billy started to say that he’d never hurt his wife but then he remembered the wolf telling him that she was seeing someone else… that she needed to die for it. He tried to argue but the voices grew more insistent… as if God demanded he do it. His mother had often told him to listen for God’s voice and to follow His will. So he did. But he had difficulty telling the difference between wolf and God.

  “Well, Billy… like I said… we’ll start therapy sessions just as soon as we find the optimum medication dosage for you.”

  Dr. Grimes turned to leave as he spoke a few final words.

  “Too high a dosage and you’ll become manic. We’ll lower it a bit and see what happens. Try and make yourself comfortable here, Billy. You're going to be with us a while.”

  When Billy finally worked up his nerve to venture beneath the spider lurking on his ceiling and out of his room into the hallway he found he was surrounded by shuffling idiots like himself with blank stares on their faces and drool running down their chins and the corners of their mouth turned perpetually downward. Though he knew with a certainty that the iron door guarding access to the outer world was locked he waited until no one was looking and tried the handle.

  He was right. There was no way out of this horrid dream.

  Chapter 7—The Wait

  It had been over thirty years since she arrived at the tavern by the sea side.

  It had been so long that she sometimes wondered if that for which she waited was just a figment of her imagination, nothing more. Had she diddled away her life here like she had wasted it back in the house by the lake?

  "Order up!"

  She heard the words even in her sleep, a continual and constant river of toil and trouble stretching out behind and before her like a thousand years. Walking over to the order slip pinned to the clothesline that ran from the bar area to the kitchen she glanced at the words written there and then looking up she scanned the bar room for a familiar face, like she had done countless times before.

  Sometimes she wished she knew who it was she was waiting for, that she might seek him out rather than biding her time here, growing older with each passing year, cooking food for unappreciative customers who would have eaten swill like swine if she fed it to them She waited here so long that her once beautiful breasts sagged onto her belly and her wonderful teeth fell out one by precious one and her very bones ached like they were full of wasps.

  "Yelena Ivanoff, you are nothing but an old fool."

  She muttered the words to no one in particular. She hated how the future was hidden from her but like an open book to any other person who made her acquaintance, anyone who might happen to touch or be touched by her. Others called it a gift but she knew it was a curse.

  "Please tell me my fortune, Yelena."

  As she waited she had heard the words hundreds of times, seeing the eager look of anticipation in the eyes of people who desired to know the good things coming their way. The world wasn’t made up of good things, however. The world was born of suffering and it had ached ever since.

  Her Gypsy grandmother had read fortunes for their bread and butter back in Russia where Yelena was born. The Gypsies had a saying that such a gift skipped a generation. Yelena wanted no part of it. It seemed to her as if everyone she touched was destined for death and try as she might to warn them they walked right its waiting arms nonetheless. It was her curse. What was worse, Yelena could never remember what she saw when she fell into the trance that inevitably followed her touching another human being.

  "Only god sees the future, Yelena."

  As a girl Grandmother Zoya warned her to listen closely to her words when she went into the same sort of trance as she told the fortunes of Russian peasants who offered up coins to know the future.

  "I see nothing. Only our god sees this. I am Her sounding board. Listen to what I say, Yelena. You must repeat my words carefully."

  Yelena still remembered the looks of horror blossoming on the peasants' faces as Grandmother Zoya foretold the coming sicknesses, diseases, and deaths from which they would suffer. Many of them refused to pay the promised recompense for the telling of their fortunes, pronouncing Grandmother Zoya a fraud and a huckster.

  Even though Yelena wanted to believe her grandmother's words there were times when she too failed to place much faith in her utterances. As she grew older though and more and more of Grandmother Zoya's prophecies came to be, Yelena came to understand there was something very mysterious and strange about not only her grandmot
her but her people in general.

  The Romani had journeyed from the Far East ages before, always marrying amongst each other, forever traveling, never settling down for long in any one spot. Her own clan traveled the course of the River Volga north, south, east, and west and back again all of her young life. Yelena still dreamed of its waters and of the boy who was her husband in those faraway days.

  Just as she was about to turn away from the window and resume her chores the front door of the tavern opened. The sunshine momentarily blinded her to the figure that walked inside. He carried a battered suitcase; as the door closed behind him so Yelena could make out his features she noticed how lost he looked.

  "Like a little boy."

  Her wait was over. But then again, she wondered if it was just beginning. This boy had no sense of self. He was as lost as anyone Yelena had ever had the misfortune to meet. There were so many machinations to maneuver around, people to gently persuade, lovers to introduce, that she felt quite unworthy of the whole endeavor.

  "You must quit worrying like an old woman, Yelena. Remember Grandmother Zoya's words. Unless you can untangle the times, your life will have been nothing but a vast waste. Not that it isn’t, mind you, but you have lived too long and seen far too much to squander all that work."

  She often chided herself while she labored. It wasn’t that she hated cooking but she had nothing else to sustain her. Sometimes it seemed as if hell itself would be a step up for her... the endless days, the lonesome nights, all spent in an alcoholic stupor fueled by dreams that might never come true.

  All that changed the moment she took his hand in hers. In a timeless flash the world rushed around her... the way things had to be in order to sustain what was ordered. Though she remembered nothing she came away with the feeling that should she fail in the amusement which had been allotted to her, the world might well break apart under the great weight of sorrow that would ensue.

  "What did I say, Billy? It is important you tell me my exact words."

  The boy had an odd look in his eyes as if he was gazing at his own tombstone, which unbeknownst to him, he was. That Billy would die was a given. Every single thing in the world was temporal in nature: arising a brief while, flourishing, and then going back to the dust from which it all sprang.