The Devil You Know
Short story from Shadow Lane by David Dean
In Shadow Lane, prolific short story writer David Dean examines the lives of children who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. Nominated for the Edgar, Derringer, and Barry awards, as well as twice winning Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s prestigious Readers Award, Dean shows his command of short fiction and his attention to the plight of children left to their own devices. Shadow Lane is a collection of eleven stories that will make you think twice about turning your back on a child.
An orphaned teenage girl living with her grandmother discovers something terrifying in the older woman’s past, and gains a new and terrible understanding of her own circumstances; a young boy trying to fill the emotional gap his father’s absence has left takes up stealing, but finds that some things are better left where they are; and a nine-year-old boy’s search for his missing friend turns murderous when he gets too close to the truth. These and other stories of children, both endangered and dangerous, fill the pages of this suspenseful collection.
The Devil You Know
(2013)
The city bus ground to a halt at sixteen-year-old Sonia York’s stop and with a hiss of compressed air knelt and flung open its doors. She stepped out clutching her books to her chest and feeling as if she had a bullseye painted on her forehead. Scanning the street she began to walk rapidly towards home, allowing her tumult of dark wavy hair to shield her face. She had never ducked out of school before, and it seemed certain to her that the police must have been alerted by now. Her pace increased, her boot heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk.
Sonia risked a glance up but saw no curtains parted, no anxious busybodies at their phones, no police cruisers edging along the curb. There was only a block left to traverse and she was beginning to perspire.
She wasn’t normally a rule-breaker, she didn’t look for trouble. Out of respect for her grandmother, who had been her guardian for the last four years, she tried to do well at school and behave. But Rachel’s announcement that they would move, yet again, just as she was making some real friends at school, just as a few boys were showing interest, had ignited a small hot flame in her. Sonia scuffed a boot on the cracked, weedy pavement, then tried on a lopsided go-to-hell smile for anyone that might be looking, but no one was.
Or maybe, her thoughts went on as the smile slipped away, it was the result of her period which had just started, or the sudden onset of glorious spring after a long dreary winter of low, leaden skies, and damp clinging winds. She just didn’t know. But, when she had seen the fire exit propped open as the janitor mopped up some stinking mess a fellow student had barfed up, she had simply walked out the beckoning door. The custodian had never once turned around and everyone else had simply rushed by trying to make class before the bell. Sonia smiled at her own nerve. She imagined that it was the kind of thing her mother would’ve done when she was a girl.
Rachel’s car was not in the driveway of their small rented house, and that was a relief. Not that she had expected her to be home, as her grandmother worked long days in a box store warehouse and was often not home till after dark. She pushed the key at the lock, missing twice before at last driving it home. Her lips felt chapped from nervous licking.
The door gave way and she dodged quickly inside to shut it behind her, her books still clasped to her chest, her breathing loud in the darkened foyer.
Tossing her keys onto the wobbly side table, Sonia shuffled down the hall towards her bedroom at the back of the house. To her eye, everything seemed to have an unfamiliar look. The coats hanging on the wall pegs, the clock notching moments of time from the kitchen, all things she took for granted each day, seemed imbued with expectancy. It was as if her arrival had caught them all by surprise, had interrupted something.
Allowing her books to cascade onto the mattress and box spring that served as her bed, Sonia collapsed next to them with a sigh. Her room was dim, as Rachel was fiercely private and insisted that Sonia keep all curtains drawn and blinds shuttered. She pulled off her boots and let them fall, thump, thump, to the cheaply carpeted floor, and lay back once more. After a long silent moment she stretched her slender frame until she heard the tiny cracks and pops of her bones and joints. Then, feeling at last safe, she began to laugh softly at her success. The silent rancher, devoid of all but the most essential furniture, echoed the sound with an ugly chuckle.
She knew the school would eventually discover her absence and contact her grandmother, but she knew also that Rachel, as her grandmother insisted upon being called, would confirm that she was home and let it go at that. Sonia would have to accept whatever punishment the school meted out as Rachel would not intervene. She allowed Sonia her own life but offered little else. She didn’t attend parent-teacher conferences and had no interest in meeting any of Sonia’s few friends. As it was Rachel’s custom to move every few years, it made little difference. She believed that her granddaughter had to stand on her own… that all women should.
Though Sonia had been in the care of her grandmother for some time, they did not share a true closeness. Sonia was well aware that she lacked that certain ‘something’ Rachel carried before her like a sword and buckler, that aloneness that marked her whole bearing and stamped her weary features with a smoldering defiance. When Sonia thought of Rachel, she pictured her as one of the Valkyries of Norse myths, or the Amazon warriors of Greek legend—a giantess.
Sonia knew she was not like that and feared it meant that she would follow in her mother’s weak and faltering footsteps. In the dozens of photos she had managed to hold on to, her mother featured in nearly all—a tall, lithe, blonde, smiling and laughing. In a few, Sonia also appeared in the arms of her pretty mother, or standing next to her, at what must have been outings to county fairs, the beach, visits to long-forgotten parks in a dozen different towns. But just as often she was sitting on the knee of yet another of her mother’s boyfriends, none of whom remained for long; one of whom must have been her father. Sonia was seldom smiling in these pictures.
Rolling to the edge of her mattress, she pulled the photo album from the plastic milk crate that served as her night table. Throwing it open she perused the pictures for perhaps the thousandth time: several of the men were dark-haired and neatly built, but beyond that she could discern no further clues as to her progenitor. She didn’t remember the name of a single one. Closing the book, she sighed once more. The headiness of a stolen holiday threatened to escape her.
Jumping up, Sonia walked toward the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. She thought she might go around opening the blinds, as well. It was too beautiful a day to be in darkness. But what if Rachel came home early? She would be angry.
Sonia opened the fridge and selected an individually packaged fruit juice carton and skewered it with the drinking straw provided. Sucking on it, she pulled her cell phone from the front pocket of her favorite jeans, which she knew exhibited her derrière perfectly (after trying on some thirteen pairs), then remembered that everyone she knew to call was still in school. Her battery display was showing a single bar, which even as she watched, winked out with a frightened peep. Setting the useless phone on the counter next to her juice, she opened the blinds at the window above the sink.
A grey car flashed into the view framed by the window and ran head-on into a telephone pole halfway down the block. Simultaneous with the crunch of metal she heard a loud, but muffled, pop, then the lights went out in the house.
Stunned, Sonia stood staring, as two youngish-looking men tumbled out both driver and passenger doors and onto the verge where they crawled around in the weeds for several moments like senseless insects before finding their feet. Then, stiffly at first, they began to stumble off in the same direction, becoming more agile and quick with each step. Before they left the small frame of Sonia’s view they were sprinting like gazelles into the nearby wood line that separated her neighborhood from a series of strip malls and busy avenues to the east.
Sirens wailing, several police cars arrived within moments of the crash, the officers flinging open their doors and dashing off after the fleeing men, the entire spectacle unfolding within mere moments, its climax continuing beyond her limited view. She became aware that her mouth was open and shut it.
Sonia wished desperately that there was someone with whom she could call and share this amazing event. With a squeak of excitement, she thought of her computer perched on her small, scarred desk, and her Facebook page, and hurried back to her room. After stabbing at the mouse several times with a lacquered nail, it dawned on her that there was no power. As she did not have an iPad or laptop, she was no longer in communication with the greater world, or even her very small one. Slamming her fist down, she shouted, “Shit!”
This communication was answered by the ringing of the doorbell.
Sonia gasped, placing a hand over her mouth, and thought, Did I lock the door behind me?
It couldn’t be the men who fled the police, her thoughts ran on, they wouldn’t dare come back here.
The small house resounded with the blows on the front door and Sonia bolted to her feet. Maybe they would, it occurred to her. Maybe she was about to be taken as a hostage by two desperate outlaws. This sounded vaguely exciting until she remembered that she was playing hooky from school and that it was more likely a truant officer… whatever that was exactly.
Approaching the front door with her heart hammering, she could make out an unmistakably male silhouette through the frosted glass, one with broad shoulders and a head of short curly hair. Reaching for the door handle as if in a dream, she saw it turn of its own volition. With a squeak, she fell back as the door slid open a few inches and a young man peeked around the corner at her.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he stuttered. “I didn’t think that anyone was at home.”
All Sonia could think to say was, “Who are you?”
He blushed, and Sonia suddenly realized that her intruder was very cute.
Pushing the door open a few more inches so that she could see his badge and uniform, he explained, “The police, miss… I’m with the police. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“Come in,” she managed.
Her policeman, as Sonia immediately began to think of him, was clad in a short leather jacket over his standard-issue blue shirt. He had curly, black hair, and arched eyebrows. The kind of eyebrows women tortured themselves over, she thought, even as a smile began to play on her lips. His eyes were large and dark, mesmerizing, while his skin was pale and smooth. But there was nothing feminine about him, she thought, the smile growing to idiotic proportions as he stepped into the foyer: his shoulders were broad and he was slim and wiry looking, very athletic, she’d bet. She felt her cheeks growing warm and raised a hand to one without thinking.
“We’re checking the houses in the neighborhood,” he went on. “You may have seen that there was a police pursuit of some burglars that ended in a crash right up the street. They got away… for now, but we’re just ensuring that they didn’t rip off any other houses in the neighborhood, and that everything is okay.”
Sonia watched his mouth.
“Everything is okay…?” he repeated.
Sonia managed to stop smiling and respond, “Sure, everything is… okay.”
He smiled back at her, then took a step toward the door.
“Except, we don’t have any power and my phone isn’t charged so I’m a little nervous…”
Her policeman raised his marvelous eyebrows.
“… about what to do if they come back… we don’t have a house phone…” she blathered on, trying to hold him back from leaving.
He looked hard at her face. “Are you home sick from school?”
Sonia felt her cheeks grow warmer still. “Yes…” she blurted, “I think I might have the flu.” Even to her it sounded untrue.
“I see…” He seemed unconvinced, as well. “And you’re by yourself?”
She nodded once more.
“Do you want to use my phone to call your mom and have her come home?” He fished his cell phone from a holder on his gun belt.
“No…” Sonia blurted. “I… she can’t afford to miss any work, and besides she’s my grandma… I live with my grandma… my mom’s gone.”
“Oh… okay.” The handsome officer looked troubled. “Well, then, you just make sure and lock up after me, alright?”
Sonia nodded dutifully, feeling as if she were falling into his eyes.
“Okay,” he said, while backing out the front door.
“What’s your name?” she asked, hating herself.
His smile returned, “Jason… Patrolman Jason Gorgasali.”
“Gor-ga-sali,” she repeated. “That’s different… what kind of name is that?”
“Georgian,” he answered.
“Oh… I see. But you don’t have a Southern accent.”
“No,” he agreed. “I meant as in the Republic of Georgia. I’m first generation, but I was born and raised right here in this town. Probably went to your high school.” The smile crept back. “I played hooky sometimes too.”
Sonia had never felt quite so stupid.
Jason glanced over his shoulder, then back at her. “Well… gotta go,” he said. “It was nice meeting you…?”
“Sonia… Sonia York.” He had asked her name… sort of… and Sonia felt like dancing around the room.
“Pretty name,” he added as he closed the door and stepped off the porch to return to his patrol car.
Sonia stood without moving for several moments, then squealed loudly and threw up her hands and began to do a jig. The door opened and her policeman peered in. She froze in humiliation.
“Lock the door,” he commanded, then shut it once more.
Sonia, her face aflame, turned the deadbolt and fled for her room once more.
***
The only thing worse than having met Officer Jason Gorgasali and then having him go away, was not being able to tell anyone about him. Sonia wondered if he had one of those playing cards with his picture on it that some police departments handed out. Would it be too slutty of her to call headquarters and ask for one, she wondered. Then she remembered her phone was dead.
Leaping to her feet, Sonia huffed and stamped in frustration, scanning the room for something that might provide some entertainment. Her few celebrity and teen fashion magazines had been read cover to cover several times over and lay strewn about the floor.
With a sigh for the stolen day that was running through her fingers, she drifted from her narrow room and down the hall. Arriving at Rachel’s closed door, she halted before it. She was forbidden to enter this room without her grandmother’s permission and presence.
Like a sleepwalker she watched her hand rise and come to rest on the doorknob. After a few moments, she tested it.
It was locked. Her hand fell away to her side. Even as she turned to walk the short distance to the living room and their single television, she remembered again that there was no power. It was this final thing that galvanized her.
Striding purposefully to her room, Sonia retrieved a metal nail file and returned to the door. We are two grown women, she thought, we share a house together and I am not allowed to keep a locked room, so why should she? Besides, she may have some magazines herself; some issues of Cosmo or People. Even as she thought this, Sonia knew it to be ridiculous—Rachel cared nothing for fashion, as evidenced by her careless, sloppy appearance, and as for celebrities, she found them contemptible. “Media whores,” she had once called them when Sonia had been gushing over some teen heartthrob or other.
Sonia had seen Rachel jimmy a door years before, not long after her mother abandoned her. Having locked her grandmother out of the house during a tantrum over something she no longer remembered, Rachel, with the use of a pocketknife, had regained entry in mere moments. Sonia had watched the whole thing from a window. She had been sure that she would receive a beating, but Rachel, her face scarlet with rage and her breathing ragged, had held back. Even as she raised a clawed raw hand to strike, Sonia had seen something in her grandmother’s eyes—evidence of a terrible and implacable willpower.
The blow never fell. Yet, when Sonia recalled the moment, she almost wished that it had, as she had lived in fearful dread of it since. There was an awful power in that upraised hand.
Even so, enough was enough, Sonia fumed; it was ridiculous to be afraid of one’s own grandmother. The door popped open with a soft metallic click and swung inward on its ill-fitting hinges.
Rachel’s room was scarcely larger than Sonia’s own and, not surprisingly, just as shrouded. The faint light that seeped through the blinds gave the room a grey, smoky quality. Rachel’s mattress lay beneath a window, narrow and unmade, a twisted nest of unclean sheets. A backpack rested against the wall next to it. Like Sonia, she utilized a stack of plastic milk crates as storage for clothes and a few books. Their bright oranges and blues were the only colors in the room. With equal parts curiosity and dread, Sonia pushed forward into the room.
A closet stood a little open just beyond the bed, darkness spilling from it. If possible, her grandmother’s room was even sparser than her own, she thought. There weren’t even posters tacked to the wall. As her vision adjusted and the room grew in detail, she could see, with a pang of unexpected sadness, that neither were there any photos of Sonia or her mother hung upon the walls or propped up on the crates.
Her grandmother’s room was more barren than a monk’s, Sonia imagined, though she had never seen a monk’s cell or even been to a church. Rachel was vehement on that subject—religion was merely a means of enslavement, a yoke especially devised to control women and minorities, she had assured Sonia one summer Sunday as they had passed a church on their way to the park. Sonia had made the mistake of commenting favorably on the sounds of the choir within.
Why does she live like this? Sonia asked herself as the awful barrenness bore down on her. Then, Why do we live like this?
As she stood in the perpetual twilight of her grandmother’s purgatory, the enforced shabbiness of their lives unfolded before her with a clarity that she had never before experienced.
Striding to the beckoning closet, she threw the door open wide. The interior was a miniature of the bedroom minus the single mattress, dusty and dim, empty and without purpose. A few wadded pieces of paper lay balled up in one filthy corner. She spun back to the room at large, then marched over to the rat’s nest of a bed.
Dropping to her knees she slid her hands beneath the mattress and ran them the length of one side then the other. She found nothing, no hidden letters explaining their ceaseless migrations, no evidence of any past whatsoever.
Sonia saw that her palms had come away grimy from their task, and she made a face. Reluctantly, she wiped them on her precious jeans and turned to the rucksack. One outer pocket revealed a small toiletry kit with toothbrush and paste, a comb, a brush, a pair of tweezers and other items for the motel traveler. Another contained a well-stocked first-aid kit that even provided a curved stitching needle and filament. The words, U.S. Army, had nearly faded from it altogether.
Sonia regarded this piece of intelligence in bewilderment. Had her grandmother been an army nurse, or medic of some kind? If so, why had she never mentioned it? Yet none of this explained their gypsy lives together.
The top flap of the ruck was thrown back revealing some clothes, and with pursed lips she cautiously, and carefully, removed nondescript work shirts and worn, faded jeans, until she reached the bottom. With the removal of the last pair of rolled khaki pants the sack collapsed in on itself, empty and useless.
Why did Rachel keep a packed rucksack next to her bed? Sonia wondered. Was she planning to run off somewhere? A bolt of fear and sadness at such a prospect shot through her, making the pit of her stomach feel light and empty. It had never occurred to her that she might actually harbor some affection for Rachel, that she might love her a little.
She began to reverse the unpacking of the clothes, returning the faded, worn garments in the order that she had removed them. When she was satisfied with her work, she went to throw the top flap over the rucksack, only just remembering that it had been opened, not closed, when she had entered the room. As she handled it once more, it became apparent to Sonia that the flap itself contained a compartment, as she could feel a thickness within it, a flat something that slid between her thumb and fingers as she kneaded the material.
Examining the underside, Sonia found a pocket closed with Velcro, a small tab, like a green tongue, protruding from it. Without further thought she pulled it down and was rewarded with a gaping mouth lined with plastic for waterproofing. Peering within, she could discern something flat, and this she removed, drawing it out with her highly polished nails. She found that she was in possession of an envelope.
Carrying it over to the window, she unshuttered the blinds a little in order to study this secret find. The rays of sunlight sliced the gloom into bars of gold dancing with motes of suspended dust. In the improved lighting Sonia could see that there was nothing written on the outside of the envelope, only that it was smudged and yellowish. She examined the flap next. It was not sealed. Drawing a deep breath, she exhaled slowly, feeling a growing sensation that she was about to cross some great divide, some chasm from which she might not be able to return.
Squatting, Sonia dumped the contents onto the bare floorboards, yellowed newspaper clippings drifting like ancient leaves into a heap before her, then began to separate and examine them. One thing was apparent to her right away, Rachel had not been much of an archivist. Most of the clippings had had the dates and the newspapers’ names removed by her careless scissoring. Rachel was just as careless when she cut her own hair, Sonia thought. In all their years together, Sonia could not remember Rachel ever wearing her hair in anything but a ragged, over-long pageboy.
Most of the articles featured grainy photographs of the same small house. In fact, Sonia thought, leaning close to the page for detail, not unlike the succession of run-down bungalows that she and Rachel had occupied for the past several years. The tiny white house of the photograph had a sagging chain-link fence around it, and what appeared to be a discarded bike missing a front wheel in the weedy front yard.
Next to this was another photo of apparently the same residence, but this time it was in flames. The caption for this article proclaimed in large, bold print, “Shootout in Compton,” while beneath it in smaller type, “Five Dead—Hostages Rescued.”
Another clipping contained almost identical pictures but ran the headline, “People’s Liberation Army Wiped Out.” This article also ran photos of the five killed, self-styled “freedom fighters” and urban guerillas according to their manifestos. The two men, one black, one white, bore the unmistakable stamp of the seventies upon them. The black man, identified as Field Marshal Dante, sported a small afro, while the white guy had shoulder length hair and a large mustache. Both wore jaunty, military style berets. They looked very young, as did the three women in the remaining pictures.
Like their male counterparts two sported berets and stared defiantly into the lens of the camera, their faces plain and unadorned. The third woman’s features were nearly concealed beneath a floppy, Viet Nam style forage hat, the upper half of her face cast in shadow, the lower revealing a strong, cleft chin. In all the pictures automatic weapons were brandished, while behind each of the posed subjects hung a red flag with the image of a black rampant lion as a dramatic backdrop.
Sonia was shocked by the raw hatred on the faces of the women. The men’s expressions, while determined, seemed less genuine to her, as if they were not fully resolved to the fiery end that they must have known they were courting.
A third article, this one with a banner still attached announcing that it was the San Francisco Chronicle and bearing a date of February 7th, 1975, carried an article on a daring daylight bank robbery and the taking of hostages. Two men, one a guard, the other a customer, a young soldier, had been shot to death by the armed gang, a gang identifying themselves as the People’s Liberation Army. They were already being sought by the FBI for numerous bombings of government buildings and the assassination of a city councilman. Apparently the bank shooting began when an alarm was set off.
Photos taken by the security cameras revealed the revolutionaries arrayed throughout the bank, their automatic rifles leveled at the cowering tellers and customers within. The three women appeared to be controlling the captives and gathering the money, while the black man remained closest to the front entrance, and presumably, escape. Sonia did not see the white guy with the Pancho Villa mustache and presumed he was outside in the getaway car that witnesses reported idling near the door.
Several customers within the bank reported the abduction of a young woman with a small child—a girl. It was unclear as to whether they had been in the company of the murdered soldier. The police were making inquiries at the nearby Presidio to determine if the soldier was married and a father. His name was withheld pending notification of relatives.
Sonia felt a surge of sympathy for this unknown young man. What kind of people gun down unarmed customers in a bank? Then she remembered the first articles, which were obviously the later ones, and their mention of the hostages saved. Was it the young woman and her little girl?
The papers were so brittle that Sonia had to be very careful handling them; the edges crumbled with the slightest pressure. She strained to read the faded print. It appeared that it was the same woman and child from the bank, and that they were, indeed, the wife and daughter of the slain serviceman identified as PFC Travis Wheeler. The woman’s name was Sherry, her daughter Melissa. The young mother had seized her chance and fled the burning building with her daughter in her arms, even as she risked both their lives in the withering crossfire of the exchange. The police spokesman commended her courage. Halfway down the page was a flash photo of a rangy-looking woman, filthy with grime and soot. She was holding a terrified little girl who stared into the camera with an open, screaming mouth.
Sonia felt the room grow dark and light in turns and then begin to spin ever so slowly. She recognized her mother from the few childhood photos of her she possessed. The woman holding her was Rachel—in spite of the years, she was unmistakable.
She looked again at the names… Sherry… Melissa… Wheeler.
But her grandmother’s name was Rachel… her mother’s name Sandi; their last name York… as for Wheeler… she had never heard of it before.
Even so, there was no mistaking her mother and grandmother in the photo, they were the mother and child kidnapped from the bank, Sonia was certain of it—this was the reason for Rachel keeping the clippings.
Suddenly, the sad, bumpy itinerary of her own life began to make sense; she began to understand the trauma that had spawned her family’s tumultuous history, and to feel the first beginnings of sympathy for her restless, lost mother; her distant, angry grandmother.
The People’s Liberation Army had liberated her family of their chance for happiness and normalcy with their psychotic self-importance, their tired propaganda, their bullets. She hated them even though she knew that they were all dead. They were the reason her mother had run away, leaving her with her grandmother, and the reason that even now she was grubbing about in the grime and dirt of Rachel’s bedroom for some explanation of who she might really be. It was all so unfair… something that happened so long ago, long before she was even born.
Sonia felt her eyes grow hot and her vision begin to blur. Raking a sleeve across them, it came away streaked with moisture. “Bastards,” she whispered to the empty room. She began to gather the brittle yellow clippings and slide them back into the envelope. The sun of the brilliant day had dropped low in the sky and the light was fading fast. She hurried to complete her task and return the articles to Rachel’s backpack.
As she sealed the Velcro of the waterproof compartment a husky, familiar voice asked, “You finished now?”
Sonia squealed and leapt to her feet. Rachel stood in the doorframe, her long arms hanging loosely at her sides, her grey complexion stained with a crimson tint, like a sunset hidden behind a storm cloud. Her bleak eyes swept the room from one end to the next.
“What?” Sonia answered back, confused and suddenly frightened.
Her grandmother nodded curtly at the rucksack that Sonia stood over. “Interesting reading, isn’t it?”
“What?” Sonia repeated, unable to think of a good enough lie.
Rachel walked a few steps into the room. “Don’t even try it on, little girl, I’ve been standing here for five minutes. Well…?”
“Yes,” she managed, at last. “It was interesting… you could have told me, Rachel. I should have been told.” Sonia felt her courage returning after the shock of discovery. “I’ve been affected by what happened to you and mom too, you know. Maybe if I had known, it would have helped me understand Mom better… you, too…maybe.”
Rachel stared at her granddaughter, her expression blank. “You think so?” she said at last, then added, “Maybe… but, you’re not supposed to be in here, are you?”
Sonia stood firm and said nothing. It was time she was treated like an adult.
Rachel smirked, then turning to the door, said, “Come on, let’s make some coffee. We’ll talk.”
She walked ahead as Sonia followed to the kitchen.
“Sit,” she commanded and began to measure coffee into a filter. Sonia did as she was bid and waited. She wasn’t normally allowed to drink coffee after breakfast, as Rachel insisted she was too high strung as she was. This exception seemed to mark the beginning of a new era between her grandmother and her, an evolving of their relationship into that of two mature women.
“Cream and sugar, as usual?” Rachel inquired.
“Yes, please… but I would prefer honey.”
“Oh would you? Well, we’re out… sugar will have to do.” Turning away, she ladled a few spoonfuls from a glass jar into a mug. “So you read everything… all the articles?”
Sonia squirmed at the reminder of her trespass. “Yes, I did. At first, I couldn’t understand why you had cut out those articles and kept them, but when I saw the picture at the shootout of the little girl and her mom… then I knew… I understood.”
Plopping the brimming mug onto the bare tabletop, Rachel spilled some over the sides, then retrieving her own cup from the counter, pulled back a chair, and joined Sonia. “Understood what… exactly?”
“Well,” Sonia resumed, taking a sip of the hot liquid, “you’re the young woman in the bank… the little girl is mom.” She blew on the coffee before taking another sip. She felt confused by Rachel’s questioning—this didn’t feel like family bonding. “The only thing is… why do we move so much… wasn’t that whole gang killed by the police… are you afraid that there might be others that are looking for revenge?” This last had just occurred to Sonia and seemed a very exciting prospect, lending a certain style and romance to their Spartan lives.
Rachel’s smirk grew wider.
“Is that it?” Sonia insisted through lips that felt numb and swollen. “Are we being hunted?” Rachel’s face wavered like a desert mirage and Sonia shook her head to clear her vision. She took another sip of the sweetened liquid.
“No,” Rachel answered. “They’re all dead… including your grandmother, actually. I killed her myself.”
Sonia felt as if she was being pelted with words as soft and palpable as marshmallows, their meanings arriving seconds later like echoes. “What…?” she heard herself ask.
“When the house caught fire, there was only one of my comrades still alive. We were surrounded, and the ammo and bomb making materials were bound to go up soon… the fight was over, but General Dante didn’t accept that. He was never as smart as he wanted us to think. He said, ‘We’ve still got the woman and the little girl! We can bargain our way out.”
“That’s when it hit me, when I knew what had to be done—I shot him right between the eyes before he could utter another stupid word.”
Sonia felt herself slumping forward in her chair but struggled to keep her eyes open, and not succumb to this waking nightmare.
“Then I shot your grandmother. She was roughly the same weight and build as me… blonde hair, too. You saw the photos the papers had,” she addressed Rachel. “That hat I wore the day we took the pictures hid my face. Field Marshal Dante was furious over how it turned out; he wanted all our faces in the public’s eye.” Rachel winked at Sonia. “He knew then we’d remain loyal… after all, what choice would we have had? But, by then, the papers already had them, and we were on the move again. We always wore disguises whenever we were outside the safehouse,” she explained.
Rachel continued as if she were relating her day at work, “I knew her husband was dead… we had killed him during the hold-up—a fascist in uniform… who could resist?”
Sonia heard the woman’s chuckle as the low rumble of distant thunder. “Wait…” she mumbled. “Not my grandma…?”
“Try to keep up—I shot her in the head, then changed clothes with her, stuck my rifle into her hands. Your mother was just a little girl, not much more than four, I think. She was screaming bloody murder, though I could hardly hear her over the gunfire.
“I waved a piece of torn sheeting out the front window a few times, snatched up the girl and ran out. I half expected to be cut down, but I think seeing your mom in my arms made all the difference. It gave those pigs that moment of hesitation I needed. I sprinted across the lawn and into the middle of them like a jack rabbit. The cops all seem stunned. They thought Sherry and Melissa were already dead.
“Suddenly, they were all cheering and hugging me and your mom, congratulating themselves like the smug pigs they were. None of them knew what the real Sherry Wheeler looked like… my gamble had paid off. I had counted on the bank photos of her being too blurry and she had already told me that she didn’t have any family, and that her husband’s lived in Texas.
“Even so,” the woman went on, “I got us out of there as soon as the Feds finished questioning me about who all was inside the house—the bodies were burned beyond recognition, you know. I identified everyone in the photos, of course, and they were thrilled, I can tell you… gloating over their victory. Then, your mother and me hit the road and kept going. I couldn’t afford for the Wheeler family to show up; that would have blown everything—it turned out they were cashed-up, and every few years their private detectives came nosing around our latest digs, so we kept moving. Plus, I could never be sure when the FBI might get wise to what I had done. They had no reason to question my identification, but who knows when something might change that. These things never really die, you know… just the people in them.”
Sonia felt drool running down her chin as she tried hard to frame words with her useless lips, “You… killed… my… grandma?”
The older woman looked at her with contempt. “You were never very bright… you took after your mother that way… nosy, but stupid.”
“Mom…?” Sonia felt herself swaying dangerously in the chair.
“Yeah, somewhere along the way, she started to remember. You’d think somebody with an appetite for drugs and booze like your mom would’ve had trouble remembering her own name. When she showed up with you to live here, it all started to come back to her. I couldn’t allow that… I won’t be blackmailed by a reactionary little druggie. I’ve got enough to worry about without that.
“Melissa… Sandi… made good cover; no one suspects a mother of being a danger to the state… or a grandmom, for that matter” she added. “But that’s all over now. The moment I saw you reading those articles I knew that you’d start talking, bringing attention to us—you should’ve stuck with the devil you know.”
Sonia wanted to jump up from her chair and run but found she could only sit there and cry. “I… won’t… tell…” she blubbered, snot running down from her nose. “I… promise…”
“No, you won’t,” Rachel agreed, her thin, corded arm lashing out across the table, the long-awaited blow crashing into Sonia’s jaw. Falling backwards onto the kitchen floor, her arms and legs flopping like a ragdoll’s, Sonia’s head struck the floor and bounced with the impact. As she lost consciousness, she saw Rachel’s face grow large in her fading vision, the cleft in her chin a canyon.
A sensation of weightlessness followed, and Sonia could feel herself rising towards the heavens, floating towards something warm and welcoming. After a while this motion faded, and she rested without light or thought in a silent, dark void. She was content with this and wished nothing more than to remain in this state forever, but the acrid smell of smoke was irritating and she heard someone whine in discomfort. After that, a pounding began in her tender skull… a pulse that grew louder and louder, seeming to emanate from the spot where her head had struck the floor. The whining grew louder still.
It was only when she sensed the sun, impossibly rising within the walls of her home, that she began to fidget, the light stabbing through her eyelids, the heat searing her skin as if she were laid out on a skillet. Her false grandmother was really a witch, her returning consciousness warned her; a witch that even now was cooking her alive!
The pounding stopped, and Sonia was relieved, though the silence was flawed and imperfect, containing within it a small, distant voice repeating something over and over. The light, however, was something that was unrelenting and inescapable, as the sun swung so low over her that she now began to smell the unmistakable odor of singeing hair. The tears that slid down her cheeks sizzled like bacon fat.
The voice grew louder and she realized that it was her own name that was being repeated. She wanted to turn her head toward the sound and answer, but it was no use, her lips had melted together. A thunderclap of colliding planets followed by a great, hot breath swept over her, and Sonia felt herself seized and roughly handled—an angel, it seemed, had arrived with the beating of great wings. Soundlessly now, he carried her forth into the cold, dark places that lie between the stars and laid her down.
At last, in the twilight of flames and constellations, shouts and sirens, she managed to open her eyes to painful slits. Leaning over her, his face sooty with smoke was Jason Gorgasali… her policeman—he had come back to check on her.
***
The newspapers trumpeted that the last surviving member of the People’s Liberation Army had vanished once more, leaving behind yet another burning house. This time, however, she had been robbed of her victim, as well as her anonymity—thanks to Sonia the police knew exactly who they were looking for now… who Rachel really was.
Sonia’s ordeal made her a seven-day wonder, which she thoroughly enjoyed, happy to be interviewed by any and all media “whores.” A nurse in the hospital had shown her a few make-up tricks that her magazines had neglected, creating just the right touch of sexy maturity without too much sluttiness; her singed hair hidden beneath an expensive donated wig. Jason had saved her from the worst effects of the fire, and she was well pleased with both her policeman and her appearance on the television screen.
When Sonia referred to Officer Gorgasali during an interview as, “her angel,” the press made the most of it, and he was nearly forced into hiding; mostly from his fellow officers, who henceforth called him ‘Angel’ Gorgasali, or the ‘Archangel Jason’. His community policing photocards, meanwhile, became very hot trading items amongst the girls at Sonia’s high school.
As for the Wheelers of Texas, having already lost three family members to the People’s Liberation Army, they quickly reached out to claim the last of their battered tribe. So, even though it broke her heart a little to say goodbye to her policeman, Sonia was at last headed for her own true home.
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