The Other Brother (15 page)

Chapter 26

abriel tried to get comfortable on the sofa and close his eyes to fall asleep. That didn't work, so he tried to watch TV until his eyelids grew tired and slid shut. That didn't work either. An awful fact boomeranged through his mind, keeping him awake.

Dana didn't trust him anymore.

Realizing her doubt in him was like being slugged in the face. He was tempted to leave, without warning, and go home, a passive-aggressive way of letting her know how deeply she'd hurt him. But he didn't do that; it seemed cowardly, equivalent to giving up on their relationship. He loved her too much to leave and let this problem ruin what they had together.

They would work this out, somehow, just as he would work out this issue with Isaiah. He had to believe it. At this point, faith in a better future was all he had.

Mandy cuddled on Gabriel's lap. She looked up at him with adoring eyes.

"You haven't given up on me, have you, girl?" Gabriel said. "You know I'm telling the truth "

Mandy licked his fingers.

Gabriel rested his head against the pillow. He watched the spinning ceiling fan and began to count the revolutions....

Sometime later he jerked awake with a crook in his neck. The room was dark except for bands of coppery streetlight that filtered through the blinds. Mandy snored softly at the opposite end of the sofa, her body a white bundle in the darkness.

The TV was off. Dana must have switched it off while he'd been sleeping. The digital clock on the fireplace mantel read one fifty-three.

Gabriel rubbed his aching neck. He started to stretch his legs into a more comfortable position and then noticed something moving on the floor barely five feet away. A dark, serpentine shape.

Terror clawed up his throat.

It was a snake.

Logic wanted to deny what his eyes told him. He was in Dana's condo, in the middle of the city. There were no snakes there. It was impossible. He was imagining this. He was dreaming.

Then he heard a soft hiss.

That evil hiss pressed a panic button in his brain. He began to tremble.

This was really happening. Again. It wasn't a dream.

He reached toward the lamp on the end table. He turned the power knob.

It was a water moccasin. It was identical to the snake that had terrorized him at his house.

The snake lay coiled on the hardwood floor between the fireplace and the glass coffee table. The table was the only object separating them, and it was no protection at all because the snake could slither beneath it.

The snake watched him, muscles taut, challenging him to move.

How could this be the same snake? Had it hidden in a bag or something he'd brought there?

No, that couldn't be. He hadn't brought anything from his house other than the clothes on his back and he sure as hell would've known if a two-foot-long pit viper hitched a ride with him.

He didn't know where it had come from, but he had to get away from it, or, failing that, contain it somehow until someone else could take care of it.

He looked around the room, frantic.

At the end of the sofa, Mandy continued to slumber, dead to the world. It seemed weird that the dog didn't smell or hear the water moccasin, so close by, but, then again, Mandy was a house dog whose hunting instincts had been dulled by years of pampering. If she'd been awake she would only have barked and perhaps driven the snake into a deadly rage. Better for her to stay asleep.

He grabbed his pillow. He held it in front of him. Rising slowly, he edged away from the sofa, toward the kitchen.

He wanted to get his hands on a weapon of some kind. Like a knife. Even a broom would do. Anything that would keep this creature away from him.

The water moccasin shifted, watching him. Light glimmered dully on its green-black scales.

This was far too detailed to be a dream. His heart felt as if it were at the back of his mouth. His clammy hands dampened the pillow so much he could've wrung sweat from it.

A chest-high, granite counter separated the kitchen from the living room area. He reached the counter, looked around the kitchen, saw the trash can, got an idea.

The snake charged forward in a liquid blur.

Gabriel scrambled around the counter. He dropped the pillow on the floor, grabbed the edge of the trash can and flipped up the lid. The can, lined with a white bag, had recently been emptied. Good.

He raised the can.

As the snake slithered around the corner, Gabriel slammed the can downward, aiming to trap the reptile underneath.

He missed.

The snake evaded the trap, smoothly flowing out of the way. Hissing, it came at him again.

Gabriel backpedaled so frantically he almost fell down. He banged against a door, realized it was the pantry, reached behind him, and twisted the knob. He moved aside and flung the door open as the water moccasin writhed toward him.

The door thwacked into the snake's head. The reptile collided against a cabinet and lay still, momentarily dazed.

Gabriel snatched a broom out of the pantry. Like a hockey player whacking a puck, he swung at the snake. The bristled edges whooshed across the tile and swept the twisting snake into the depths of the pantry against a large bag of Purina dog food.

"Gotcha!"

Gabriel closed the door.

Then he noticed the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. It was less than an inch high, but he didn't want to take any chances. He hurried to the pillow he'd dropped on the other side of the kitchen. Kneeling, he stuffed the pillow in the gap, imprisoning the snake inside the pantry.

The reptile thumped against the door, hissed angrily.

Gabriel moved away. Cold sweat drenched his face and back. He couldn't stop shaking.

It's over, man. You're safe.

He turned to the sink to get some water and calm his nerves.

Dressed in her pajamas, Dana stood at the edge of the kitchen. He was so startled to see her that he almost screamed.

Dana regarded the upended trash can on the floor.

"What are you doing in here?" she asked.

"There's a snake in here," he said, his voice quivering. He hooked a thumb behind him. "But I trapped it in the pantry."

"What? A snake?" She stared at the pantry door. "Are you serious?"

"It was a water moccasin like the one I saw in my house. Looked like the same one, matter of fact. But I caught that joker this time. I need to find an emergency number for that wildlife control company." He grabbed for the Yellow Pages directory stored in a niche near the wall phone.

"Hold up" She raised her hand. "I can't believe you found a snake in my condo, Gabe"

Gabriel flipped through the phone book. "Believe it or not, it's in there. It was trying to get out a minute ago, but it's quieted down now."

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming?"

"You don't believe me?" He dropped the phone book on the counter. "Do you think everything I say now is a lie?"

She flinched as though he'd slapped her.

"That's not what I meant," she said. "But I think the episode at your house today frightened you, and maybe you had a nightmare."

"It wasn't a nightmare! The damn snake is in there. You wanna look for yourself?"

"And remember those visions you were seeing in the mirror? Those hallucinations?"

"This isn't the same thing. This is real."

"As real as the other snake that was at your house-but that the wildlife control guy couldn't find?"

"It got away, hid somewhere"

She walked toward the pantry. He caught her arm.

"Don't open that door," he said. "You'll let it out. It's a poisonous snake, Dana."

"Stand back, then" She shrugged off his hand, knelt, and yanked away the pillow from the door.

Gabriel went to the far side of the kitchen.

Dana opened the pantry door.

The pantry was full of canned goods, dog food, and other nonperishable items.

No snake.

Chapter 27

"-'m not imagining things," Gabriel said to Dana for the Itenth time. "A snake was in here, and it did attack me. I know that for a fact"

They sat at the dinette table. Dana sat on the other side of the table, watching Gabriel with what he recognized as her "MD look"-an intense yet detached gaze, as though he were one of her patients at the hospital-and he hated that. The way she looked at him, it was as though she'd already made up her mind that he was a nutcase who needed psychiatric care. He couldn't make her understand that there was nothing wrong with him.

"We searched the entire pantry," Dana said. With a wave of her hand, she indicated the pantry's bare shelves and the items they'd pulled out and stacked on the floor. "There was no snake in there"

"It got away. Slipped through a crack in the walls or something."

"That's stretching it, don't you think?"

"Then you think I hallucinated seeing the snake at my house, too. Don't you?"

Sighing, she ran her fingers through her hair, looked away from him.

"Dana, come on. This is your man talking here. You know me better than that. You know I've always got it together."

"I'm worried about you, Gabe."

"There's nothing wrong with me"

"I want you to make an appointment with that neurologist Dr. Robinson referred you to. I'm worried that your concussion is the source of these symptoms"

"But my head hasn't been hurting." He tapped his temple; against his doctor's orders, he had removed the head bandage that morning, tired of how it made him look like a patient. "No headaches or anything. I feel fine"

"All I'm saying is, go see a neurologist, have a few tests run, an MRI-"

"I'm not going to another doctor," he said.

"Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?" She spread her hands on the table, pleading. "I only want to help you!"

"You want to help me?" He smiled bitterly. "Start taking me at my word again."

She didn't flinch this time. She leaned forward, her eyes scalding hot. "I am trying to help you. I care about you enough to tell you what I honestly think. And you know what? I'll be damned if I indulge you for the sake of protecting your feelings especially when your health is at issue."

Gabriel cradled his head in his hands, silenced. Dana's words began to gnaw at him, eat away his confidence.

Had he really seen a snake? Could it all have been a hallucination?

He remembered the snake's terrible hiss, its murderous glare.

There's no way I imagined that. That was real.

Mandy lay near Gabriel, sleeping. Gabriel recalled that when he'd spotted the snake on the floor, the dog had remained asleep, which had struck him as odd.

Maybe Mandy had not awakened because there never had been a snake in the condo to begin with.

A finger of ice tapped the base of his spine.

Was this how it felt to go crazy? Were you aware of gradually losing your grip on your sanity? Did you watch helplessly as the walls of logic crumbled and gave way to madness?

"I thought it was real," he said, and to him, his voice sounded hollow.

Dana came around the table and put her hand on his shoulder.

"I know," she said. "Please, go see the doctor, baby. I'll go with you. We'll go tomorrow, together."

Gabriel had begun to voice another weak oppositionclaiming that he had to go to work tomorrow and get caught up on business-when he glimpsed something in the mirror that hung over the fireplace in the living room. A large, dim shape.

It propelled him to his feet.

"Look!" He pointed at the mirror and rushed across the living room. "See this? This is the same thing I've seen before!"

It was a tall, man-sized figure-almost like viewing himself, albeit in a blurry, dust-filmed mirror. He could not make out any specific details of the figure's appearance. But he saw that the apparition was motionless.

This excited him. In previous incidents the shadow had faded as abruptly as it had appeared.

Dana came to stand beside him. "I don't see anything, Gabriel. I see the two of us reflected"

The mysterious figure stood between Gabriel and Dana in the glass, like a dark pillar.

"But it's right there!" He put his index finger on the mirror. "Can't you see it?"

"Baby." Dana gently took one of his hands. "Please sit down ""

He turned away from the mirror and looked at Dana. Fear glistened wetly in her eyes. But it wasn't fear of what he saw in the glass. It was fear for him.

Everything he'd seen was all in his mind. Hallucinations.

He glanced at the mirror again. The silhouette had vanished.

"It was there," he said. "I'm not crazy."

Dana took him by the elbow and guided him to the sofa, as though he were a senile old man in a nursing home.

"I'm not crazy," he said.

Dana pulled him into her arms, held him tightly. He felt his body go limp. A shudder rattled through him.

"I'm not crazy... .

Gabriel's voice broke and he started to cry.

When Isaiah did not dream of being a child and watching, helpless, as his mother suffered at the hands of abusive men, he dreamed an even more disturbing dream.

He dreamed of being murdered.

"Payback 's a bitch, ain't it, motherfucka?"

The thug standing over him spat those final words, aimed a gun at Isaiah chest, and pulled the trigger.

Darkness passed over Isaiah, swallowing him, plunging him into oblivion....

Isaiah awoke with a start, clawing at the air as though it were the smothering darkness in the dream and could be torn away like wallpaper.

I don't wanna die, not yet. It's not time.

When Isaiah realized that he was alive and safe in his father's home, he dropped his arms to the mattress. He drew in deep, invigorating breaths. He used the bedsheet to blot the sweat on his face.

He hated that damn dream. It reminded him of how his life used to be.

He'd taken steps to rectify that aspect of his past, too. He'd murdered those thugs who had gunned down Mama and had tried, unsuccessfully, to kill him.

Why, then, did he still dream of being shot?

Troubled, he checked at the bedside clock. It was a few minutes past three o'clock.

He'd been asleep for barely an hour. He'd stayed up late, working.

He switched on the lamp.

He reached underneath the bed where he'd stored his duffel bag and other luggage. Although the bedroom included a huge walk-in closet, Isaiah liked to keep his most important belongings within easy reach. Old habit.

He unzipped the bag. It was full of battered paperbacks he'd purchased from a used bookshop in Chicago. Titles such as TheArt of War, by Sun Tzu; The Count ofMonte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas; The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli; The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

He'd read all of them, most of them twice.

His bag also contained other, more esoteric books. Books about near-death experiences; developing your psychic abilities; telepathy; mind control.

He'd read all those, too.

All his life, he'd been a voracious reader. In prison, especially, there wasn't much else to do. Mama hadn't been much of a reader-her Bible was the only book that interested her-so he wasn't sure how he had acquired the love of books. Maybe it had been embedded in his genes. Some people were genetically predisposed to be brilliant; other poor souls were destined to be idiots.

He preferred to read nonfiction: texts about politics, war, business, martial arts, crime, history. Books about facts, not fiction, not make-believe. Fiction was for women and soft men; Gabriel probably enjoyed fiction.

Reading had refined his raw intelligence, had equipped him to survive on the streets and in prison. The mind made the man.

He dug under the books and retrieved his journal. He'd clipped Gabriel's expensive Mont Blanc pen, which he'd stolen from his office, to the front cover.

When Isaiah had taken the pen, he hadn't planned on actually writing with it, but it had proven a splendid writing instrument.

Of course, the pen served other purposes for him, too.

He uncapped the pen, found a fresh page in the journal, and began to write:

Friday, June 10. 3:0 7 A.M.

I've awakened again from the nightmare of being murdered. I don't understand why I keep having this dream. What does it mean?

I have a suspicion about what it might mean, and it worries me.

Am I living on borrowed time?

He paused and removed the old photograph from his wallet. He studied the picture. Mama and Pops.

No matter what...

He wrote:

If my days in this world are limited, I only want enough time to finish what I came here to do. It's going so well that it would be a shame ifI didn'tfin- ish.

Pen poised above the page, he smiled.

Little brother's starting to lose his mind.