Last of the Mighty (4 page)

I slipped into my headgear and did a few stretches, my insides squirming with the anticipation of doling out some serious payback. At the center of the mat, I extended my hand to shake.

Tucker slapped it away. He whispered, “I will knock him.”

“Tucker!” Coach's reprimand came out as an amused chuckle.

I will knock him? I must be hearlucinating.

Tucker glanced at Burns then shook my hand. Quick, impatient.

The whistle blew.

Game on.

We circled each other, hunched. We grabbed at wrists, elbows. Feigning. Taunting. Each of us trying to create a crack large enough shoot the leg, lock the arm, take the other down.

“Let us be patient…” Tucker's voice was hushed, familiar even, yet much different from his last whisper. “And wear him down.”

Okay. First the “knock” thing, and now this—the exact sentence I heard Smiler saying in The Committee a few mornings back.

“Knock him!” demanded Tucker, and he was on me like a bullet.

Strangling both my legs, he barreled forward, a tank. Low and powerful. I went down. Hard. Butt plowing into the mat, then the back of my head. I scrabbled quickly to my stomach. Man, he was strong!

Stunned by Tucker's speed, I snatched for anything of him I could get—a knee, forearm, ankle, foot… Nothing but air.

He dug his chin into the gauze that covered my stitches. Pain arched me into a canoe. I growled, teeth clenched, furious.

Whispering again, Tucker resumed the conversation with himself. “Easy, Knock, there's plenty of time,” said his softer, slow-paced voice. “But I smell the good on him!” came a reply from the more hostile of Tucker's imaginary friends.

Psychopath? No. The word path implied something small. Psycho-highway was more appropriate for Tucker.

At the edge of my vision, a crowd gathered. Other wrestlers.

Okay. Enough with playtime. Time to teach Tucker a lesson.

I twisted and grappled, coiled and spun, used every escape technique and reversal trick in the book. I called on all my strength and fought to bust out of his grip.

No dice.

The guy was iron.

I finally managed to wriggle my arm into a position that gave me a shred of leverage. In a few seconds, I'd be free of him.

A fist punched into the gauze on my back. Fire shot through me.

“Tucker!” Coach Burns warned.

“One!” said a voice.

“Lay ahhff Ahhg's back.”

One? Was I being counted out?

“Two!” boomed the makeshift ref.

Only then did I feel my shoulders glued to the mat, Tucker wrapped around me like a python. I rocked and writhed, desperate to create the pillow of air beneath my shoulders that would save me from—

“Three!”

Whack!

A hand smacked the mat.

Game.

Over.

I stayed in the gym for an hour. Even the showerhead's rainstorm couldn't wash away my humiliation, disappointment, and general pissed-offedness at being pinned.

In under two minutes.

I couldn't believe I lost. Especially to a tool like Tucker.

His face was still right there, looking the same as when he'd released me. The dead eyes. The cocked brows. The stupid fishhook hair. A mannequin grin clipped to his cheeks by the demon inside him called Smiler.

Part of me felt sorry for him. As if being possessed by one demon wasn't bad enough, but two... And I thought my day sucked. My sympathy for him was incomplete, though. Probably because Tucker was reveling in his newfound, diabolic strength. I don't know, maybe I was rationalizing. To justify my yearning to shatter his brainpan.

All my teammates had dressed and gone when a cry of “Og!” cut through the thunder of the shower. Had to be Coach Burns, telling me to get out or pay the hot water bill. I turned to face him.

No one there.

“Listen!”

The Committee again.

I wasn't in the mood. I preferred to carry on with the slow, wrinkling, waterlogged death promised by an everlasting shower.

“Augustine!”

The Committee's mention of my name jolted me, and I shut off the shower, taking the voice more seriously. Still, I was tired, depressed. Spying on The Committee was going to take more than I had.

“Listen!”

Okay. Fine. Geez.

I filtered through the cries and bickering in my head until I found a panic-stricken female voice.

I zeroed in.

The girl said, “I'll scream! I swear I'll scream.”

I'd definitely heard her voice before. Maybe a teacher. Or classmate. Her frenzied pitch made it impossible to tell.

As promised, the scream came. Then her footsteps running away. Another pair pursued.

Thud of a tackle.

Crash-down of bodies denting the earth.

Grunts.

Scuffling.

“Get off me!”

Merryn! It was definitely Merr—

A smash of fist into face.

I cringed, shivered. Raced to my locker, listening. I slipped on the wet floor, tears welling, eyes foggy.

It had to be Chool. He was getting at me through Merryn. I pictured the things he would do to her. It was all my fault. I should've gone after him.

A male voice came this time. “Easy Knock,” it said, calm and smooth.

Tucker? Whether he or Chool was worse, I didn't know.

“Remember, my friend, we are not to kill her.”

I spun out the combination to my locker, hands shaking. Wrong combo.

“Damn!”

Muffled sounds of more struggling. Fearful squeals.

I twirled the dial again and threw open my locker.

Knock landed another punch, this one to softer tissue.

A broken-accordion wheeze gushed out of Merryn's lungs and stomach. She whispered, “Daddy.”

My knuckles struck the inside of the locker.

Scrambled for my cell phone, flipped it open, and hit 911.

“Someone's killing her!” I yelled into my cell, pulling my pants over wet legs.

“Calm down, sir. Who is in danger?”

“Merryn!” I rushed to button up my jeans.

“Where are you, sir?”

“I-I-I'm at the high school!”

“What high school?”

“She's not…here…though.”

I realized 911 could never help. If I didn't know where Merryn was, no one did.

I stabbed END and called Uncle Will.

Shoved on a sock and shoe.

Voicemail.

I bolted out of the gym, half-dressed, shirt thrown over my shoulder. Speed-dialed Aunt Laurel, but the cell phone slipped. It hit the pavement and the battery popped out. I kicked it aside and kept running. To where, though?

Her house.

Less than a mile away. A little past Saint Perpetua's. I'd find her somewhere along the way.

The coming dusk made it difficult to see. I slowed to a jog, my eyes searching for anything resembling a human in trouble—someone sprawled among tree roots, stuffed into bushes, half-buried in a shallow grave…

A year went by in that ten minutes before I found her. She was in a ditch in the forest, as still as death.

I have since blanked out the details of what Merryn looked like when I discovered her. All I can tell you is that there was a lot of red and black.

The colors of Hell.

I carried Merryn, slack and boneless, through the church cemetery—her torso wet with my tears. In the distance, a light burned in Amos's work shed.

“Amos!” If he killed me, fine. Just get Merryn to a hospital.

The shed doors creaked open and he came out with a flashlight.

“Merryn… Merryn…” was all I could say.

Amos saw her battered body and waved me forward while running to his old station wagon. He turned over the engine and opened the passenger door so I could get in with Merryn.

As we drove, I told him everything, robot-like, while staring blankly at the road ahead. I spoke in a flat voice void of emotion about The Committee, Smiler and Knock, losing to Tucker, the shower, and hearing Merryn scream.

I asked him if he still wanted to kill me. Told him now would be a good time.

“Son,” he said, “I owe ya an apology. Y' not at all what I had ya figgered for.”

“Demon, right?” I told him my theory, what Merryn had said about him training to be an exorcist. About the murder charge and going to prison.

“It's a long story, Augustine. An' I'd be happy to share it with ya. But”—he pointed to a bright sign that spelled out Emergency Room—“first things first.”

****

They loaded Merryn onto a gurney and rushed her into emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding.

Hours later, they did.

Now it was up to me.

To bring her out of her coma.

I sat beside her for a thousand years, ran my fingers over every inch of the highways of tubing going in and out of her. Kissed her cheek a million times. Held her hand until it dissolved into mine. There were tears enough to lift an ark. It was the same hospital where my mother had died.

I vowed to stay with Merryn until she woke. If she never did, I'd curl up beside her and die too. After twenty years, the nurses brought me a pillow and a blanket. After a century, they brought me food and a more comfortable chair. After a millennium, they brought only silence. Smiles without words as they bathed her, checked her vitals, tested her reflexes, and shined a penlight onto her pupils.

Somewhere in between the hazy comings and goings of nurses, doctors, and Merryn's friends and relatives, I had a vision. May have been a hallucination, or a dream, or simply a happy fantasy brought on by sleepless nights and buried hopes. Whatever it was, I saw a man. Tall and handsome with glossy black hair that fell to his shoulders. His white, sleeveless tunic hung to his knees, and a thick gold wrist guard covered most of his left forearm. His skin was a toasted nut-brown. His friendly eyes were a striking color, closer to lavender than any other, and he held himself with a confidence and peace that could only be described as angelic.

“Listen!” he said. A playful smile skipped over his face. He saw that I recognized his voice from The Committee. Still smiling, but with a more comforting one now, he said, “Put away your fears, Og. At the end of our conversation, your Merryn will wake.”

It was so real, his voice so clear. Every muscle, crease, and movement of his body and face so distinct. I asked, “How could you know something like that?”

“I just do.” He gazed at me, grinning. Probably entertained by my height or the size of my feet. Yet, there was more to it.

“Who…are you?”

“The mention of my name would raise an alarm within The Symphony, what you, Augustine, call The Committee.” He smiled again, amused by my terminology. “Perhaps I will risk telling you at our next meeting.”

“But you're not real.”

He strode forward, placed his huge hands on my shoulders, and embraced me. I was shocked. At two things. One, that he was so bold in his affection, and two, at just how natural it was to hug him back. It didn't hurt that the man with the lavender eyes was the first person in years I'd hugged who was taller than me. I'd say around seven-five.

Then he vanished. Couldn't tell you if he walked out the door, sprouted wings and flew away, or if I just woke up. But I was still in dreamland when I heard someone else say, “Disgustine.”

I chuckled to myself. Disgustine was one of Merryn's nicknames for me. It—

Disgustine! I opened my eyes and shot to my feet.

Merryn blinked at me.

She ran her tongue slowly over her dry lips and said, “Wh-here am I?”

I couldn't answer. My lungs and heart and guts were tangled in my throat. Without a word, I hugged her.

My Merryn had come back to me.

Turns out the thousand years I'd spent at Merryn's bedside had only been eighteen days. I didn't tell her I stayed the whole time. Said I just happened to be there when she woke up. Her cuts, cracked ribs, arm bite, broken wrist, and dislocated jaw all seemed to be healing well. To make sure, the staff put Merryn through a battery of daily tests—physical, mental, psychological. She surpassed their expectations. Her muscles were weak, so I snuck an In-N-Out Two-by-Four (it's on their secret menu; two patties, four slices of cheese) and a pint of Ben & Jerry's into her room. Before I even closed the door, she was scarfing it down while rolling her eyes in ecstasy, smacking the bed with her palm and kicking her feet beneath the covers. An exuberant, “mm! mmm! mmmmh!” punctuating every bite, smack, and kick.

We talked for hours. It surprised me how normal she seemed, considering what she'd gone through. When she finally brought up Tucker and the incident, I filled her in about Smiler and Knock.

The demon possession thing immediately made sense to her. Merryn was relieved to know the reason behind Tucker's strength and psychosis. She, too, felt sorry for him, and spoke of how Tucker wasn't responsible for his actions. She made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone who beat her up. But that didn't mean I wasn't going to make Tucker pay for what he had done.

She slept a lot over the next few days. I stayed with her, but slipped out at night to train. I needed strength for the altercations I was planning to have with Tucker, who had jumped to the front of the line, then Chool.

Strolling by the nurse's station on Merryn's floor, I had a thought from nowhere.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh, hi, Og.” By now, all the nurses knew me by name.

“Do you have…birth records here?” I had been born in this hospital.

“Sure. Not right here, sweetie, but down on two they do. Why? Do—”

“Sorry. Never mind. I—never mind.”

What was the point of finding out who my father was? Especially now, with all this other stuff going on. “Thanks, though.” I turned to walk away. “It's just—” I was back at the desk. “My dad… I never…” My palms were sweating. “Knew him.” I bumbled and fidgeted, eventually explaining that I wanted to find out who my father was. He was listed as ‘unknown' on my birth certificate, but research told me a Certificate of Live Birth had a better chance of having my dad's name on it.

“If you go to this website,” she handed me a paper, “print out these forms,” she circled something, “and have your mom sign here, we can—”

“But it's, sorry, right downstairs.” My lip trembled. “And I don't have a mom...anymore.”

She took my hand. “I'm sorry, Og, I am.” I could tell she was. “But without the forms…” She shook her head. “Sorry.”