CHAPTER 5: OUR ROUTE HOME
3:33pm – Friday, October 7th/2016
As Wade makes his way back from the church, he reaches an intersection. The brightly lit sign illuminates from his headlights in front of him with a high contrast of greys and blacks. It has two big arrows pointing left and right and checkered black dots around them. Wade stops in question as to which direction he will choose. He is shaking and bloody. His body is weak, and he needs to make a decision.
‘Do I go to the hospital, or do I go home?’
He looks right to see the town entrance. He then looks left to see his subdivision beyond the country fields. He stares at the sign a moment longer when a crow lands on top of it. It stares directly at Wade with its deadly black eyes, tilts its head to the right, and caws into the sky. With the crow’s head facing left towards the subdivision, Wade turns the steering wheel in that direction and drives back home.
She’ll send you messages too.
She’s the reason you’re here.
I’m the reason you’re not dead... yet.
There’s much more for you to remember.
And there will be much more you will want to forget.
Sequitur Aves.
Pulling up to the entrance of his subdivision, Wade looks around to see the neighbours are tending to their regular everyday duties. Raking the lawns, playing with kids, and not running towards his car screaming. He sighs at the calm state of things, even though it is in black and white, and accepts this is his world now. As he turns left down Helen Ave, everyone around him stops what they are doing and stares directly at Wade’s car. He panics and starts to drive faster down the road, trying to ignore them. As he gets to the end of the road, there is another dog lying on the concrete.
“No. I’m not falling for this again,” he says.
Wade drives around it and turns right onto Elizabeth Ave. Slamming on the brakes, he looks out his front windshield to hundreds of crows lying dead on the road over pools of blood. The familiar screeching noise starts to creep into his ears again, and with chills up his spine, he immediately slams on the gas. The car shakes as he runs over the crows, and the noises amplify. At this point, Wade tries to convince himself that this is just a dream.
“This isn’t real. None of this is real,”
he whimpers as he makes his way to the end of the street. The screeching stops, reaching the end of the road. Wade looks into the rearview mirror, and the bodies disappear behind his car. He breaks down momentarily, crying into his hands,
“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
A woman slams her hands on the hood of his car, jolting Wade in his seat. He looks up to see it is Leah. She is screaming something, but he can’t understand what she is saying. Her voice starts screaming through the car speakers,
“GET OUT OF HERE, WADE. TURN BACK AROUND!”
She slams her hands harder on the hood, and Wade smashes his fist onto his car horn. He notices it isn’t actually her, but she is wearing the same clothes that Leah wore in the picture that smashed in his kitchen.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” he yells back.
Wade puts his foot on the gas in a rage, and the woman passes through his car like a ghost. It sends chills up Wade’s spine, and he gasps for air approaching the next street.
“Jesus Christ. I can’t handle this shit anymore.”
The next few streets are bare. There are no cars or people on them. Not a single vehicle parked in a driveway or person walking down the road. The neighbourhood is now empty. When Wade approaches his home, he pulls into the driveway and looks at the time, ‘4:44pm’. He gets out of his car and rubs his eyes. Wade is taken by the uncontrollable manic of this situation.
“What kind of nightmare is this? I didn’t ask for this.”
Oh yes you did.
The moment you left your home,
the storm built behind you.
This is where we find each other again.
This is where we start over.
This is how we are going to do things from here on forth.
So begin again, and learn from the rest.
Time is short, and your clock is ticking.
Wade walks up the concrete steps to his front door and notices an envelope sticking out of the mailbox. “What the fuck is this?” he bickers, thinking it is a note from Leah. He pulls the envelope up out of the black aluminum.
It reads, ‘Wade Russel’ on the front and nothing on the back. No return address, just a blank envelope with his name on it. He walks inside his home and closes the door. Walking over to the white couch in the living room, he puts his keys on the table, sits beside an empty box next to Leah’s books sprawled out on the other end of the couch, and rips open the envelope.
“Dear “Father” I know you don’t give two fucks about us anymore, but I found out where you lived and had to let you know that Tao is dying. He has lung cancer and is in the hospital. He requested to meet you before he passes, and I tried to tell him otherwise. But this is his wish, maybe his last, and I need to respect them. Please come find us, and say goodbye to him. I don’t want to talk to you though, so don’t bother trying. I am just the messenger. From, Rayne.”
Aw, how sweet.
Your family misses you.
You coward.
You awful, piece of shit, coward.
Collapsing on the floor beneath him, Wade cries out in desperation and complete self-loathing. “Oh my god.. Tao.. Please, God, no..” His tears fall on the paper in his hands, and he holds it close to his face, panting and wincing with uncontrollable anguish. “My sweet Rayne, I love you.. I’m so sorry. Tao, my sweet, sweet boy, why? Why you? Why is this happening to me?” He cries harder into the note, grabs the area rug underneath him, pulls it towards his mouth, and screams into it as loud as he can.
You are so sensitive when you’re not fucking other women, Wade.
So very sensitive.
You poor thing, here let me take that note from you,
and you can cry into me, as long as you need.
He rolls over onto his back with the note on his chest, staring up at the ceiling. The tears falling from his eyes, with the absence of crying out loud, he stares blankly into the white lines on the ceiling and closes his eyes. His thoughts run endlessly through the last twenty-four hours, and with his eyes closed, he loses consciousness.
Tic-tock clock, the clock is ticking for you.
’Cause the love you said you’d give, came up way past due.
So dance to the clock-rock, stay on the floor.
’Cause when ticks, turn to tocks, I’ll be knocking at your door.
Knock knock, Wade.
Wade is awakened by the slamming of a door somewhere in his dimly lit home. The grandfather clock in front of him reads ‘4:44’. Wade wonders if he fell asleep at all or if it is now 4:44 in the morning. He lifts his heavy head off the floor and notices all the blinds are shut. He’s about to sit up but falls back to the floor, recollecting yesterday’s events.
‘The sands, the birds, the church, and---the note.’
Wade quickly throws his right arm against his chest. The note and envelope aren’t there. He looks around the floor to find nothing. He jumps up and frantically looks around the room.
“Was I dreaming? Was this all a bad dream? Did any of this really happen?”
Finally, Wade convinces himself,
“No.. Tao! Oh no. Oh god, where is it?”
He runs into the kitchen to notice the sand still lying on the floor. His mind stops focussing on the note for a moment as images of what he’s been experiencing start to flicker. His eyes turn to tunnel vision as the kitchen seems to move far away. He instantly vomits, then chokes. His body hasn’t had any sustenance since he got home, and all of the stress from the last day came rushing to him at once.
After a moment of catching his breath, he looks into the kitchen to see some of the sand still on the kitchen floor and realizes,
‘If the sand is real, then the note has to be here. Where the fuck is it?’
For a moment, he looks around the kitchen and remembers hearing a sound wake him up.
“Leah!”
In a panic, he turns around and wipes his face as he slowly climbs the stairs. Reaching the top, he can hear her in the bedroom talking to herself and opens the door.
“Don’t even say, a fucking word.”
She quietly says to him with her back turned to him. Wade lets go of the door handle as it opens up to see her packing a garbage bag full of clothes.
“Leah, where’s the-”
Leah turns around and shouts,
“I SAID, DON’T, FUCKING, SPEAK.”
“Where’s the note, Leah?”
Wade says, whimpering. Leah walks towards him, and with violent eyes, she raises her arm to hit him. Wade grabs her arm in the air and gets right in her face, and yells,
“WHERE’S THE FUCKING NOTE?”
As he holds her arm in the air firmly, they meet eye to eye, and she whispers,
“You are going to die, Wade.”
He lets go of her arm, and she relaxes it at her side. Keeping eye contact, a moment of uncertainty passes, and Leah says,
“This note?”
she reaches in her pocket, and as Wade looks down, she smashes her left fist against his face. Wade falls back into the hallway from the impact and looks up to see Leah holding the note in front of her. With her fingers placed on either end of the paper, she begins to tear the letter in half.
“No!”
Wade shrieks and jumps toward her. He snatches the note from her fingers, completing the tear in the process. Leah backs away from Wade as he falls to the floor with half of the letter in his hand. Leah screams,
“YOU HAVE A FUCKING FAMILY, AND YOU DIDN’T THINK YOU SHOULD TELL ME THAT? AFTER 10 FUCKING YEARS?”
She kicks Wade in the back of the skull, and Wade falls to the floor.
“You fucking LIAR!”
Leah jumps on top of Wade and starts swinging her fists into the sides of his head. Wade is now covering both sides of his head, holding the papers in his right hand. Leah rips the letter out of his hand and backs up to the doorway. Wade lays on the floor in pain, crying. Leah calms her breath and says,
“You, are going to hell. Your child is going to die, and that, is your fault. You selfish, fucking, prick.”
Wade lifts his head up and stands on his feet. He turns around to see Leah standing in the doorway and takes a deep breath. He sees the other half of the note hanging out of her pocket. Wade is filled with anger. He is dripping blood, and Leah is out of breath. They lock eyes. Wade sprints towards her. At a few feet away from her, he leaps forward. Leah tries to move out of the way, but Wade spears her body with his shoulder and knocks her into the railing of the stairs. Her head flips back, and her body slides down the side of the staircase wall. Wade’s body falls on the top stair, and Leah’s body flips upside down. Her skull cracks on a stair near the bottom. Her body flips over onto her back, and she slides down to the bottom of the staircase. The echo of the skull cracking is left resonating through Wade’s ears. As her body hits the bottom of the stairs, he lifts his neck up and looks down. He can see blood from her nose and mouth slowly falling onto the floor. Her eyes are open, and he watches her body twitch for a moment. He lifts his body up with his bruised arms and says,
“Leah?”.
He slides his back against the staircase wall as he lowers himself down the steps. Getting closer to her body, he says again,
“Leah?”
The blood is gushing out of her nose, and a drop of blood falls from behind her left eye onto the floor. She is not moving. Wade lowers himself onto his behind, halfway down the staircase.
“No.”
He pleads.
“No, please. No.”
He places his hands over his mouth and stares as blood drips from her skull onto the floor.
Bravo, you beautiful monster.
You killed me.
And yet, you never did say sorry for that.
Hours have passed. The sun is now directly above. Wade sits with his left hand pressed against his cheek. His right eye is wide at the pool of blood underneath her broken skull, and his left eye is distorted. There has been no movement from her body in the timeless amount of hours that have passed. Wade lifts his left hand away from his cheek, and the skin tries to grab hold of his hand as it peels away, making his unfocused eye fill up with unwanted light. He tries to speak, but sounds don’t come from his mouth. His body starts to shake. He tries to sit up without vomiting on the staircase, but his body reacts to his movements. He coughs up bile from his stomach, and it reaches down the stairs beside Leah’s dead body. Wade creeps down the stairs, and with every step, the sound pierces his ears. As his foot touches the floor, his boots step into the pile of blood next to her. A flash of the church enters his mind’s eye, and he falls face-first into the wall in front of him. With his knees on the ground now and his face pressed up against the wall, he stares into the kitchen and sees the picture of him and Leah on the floor. His heart starts to race when suddenly a loud thud hits the front door.
Wade falls over in terror, face-down in the pool of blood. He closes his eyes, scared to death that someone is there. He crawls towards the door to lock it. His body is dragging a line of blood across the floor beneath him. As he approaches the lock, he can hear a faint screeching sound, one that sounded like the winds from before. Wade reaches his hand up to lock the door and in the reflection of the round brass doorknob, he can see Leah standing up behind him. In a panic, he locks the door and turns around. Standing up with blood dripping from her head, Leah is looking straight at Wade with her head tilted to the side. Her eyes are pitch black, and she starts speaking in tongues. Wade backs up against the door, and the screeching gets so loud that he cannot hear Leah’s demonic voice. She starts to float towards Wade, trailing blood behind her. As she gets close, Wade unlocks the front door and jumps outside. The door slams in front of him on it’s own, and the shrieking comes to a halt.
Wade is kneeling on the concrete porch, and in front of him is a dead crow. He stands up and backs away from it, breathing very heavily. As he stares at the dead bird, it moves. Wade sits back in fear, and the crow stands up on its legs. The bird is missing an eye, and there is blood coming from its wing. It caws at Wade with an ear-piercing tone. Wade screams, and the crow turns around and flies into the sky. Wade follows its flight with his eyes as it moves across the houses in the distance to what looks to be a cloud of smoke billowing above a forest.
Smoke and mirrors.
A snake in the grass.
A light in your window.
A flicker of fire,
in your rearview mirror.
Intratis Helices.
“God, hear me now. I am sorry. Please, make this stop. Make this nightmare go away.”
Wade crumbles to the ground, falling over on the concrete. His face is pressed up against the corner of the step, and his head is tilted to the side. His hands are sprawled out down the steps, covered in his blood and Leah’s.
“Just, take me now! TAKE ME NOW! TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS PLACE! I’M SORRY!”
Wade shouts into the street and passes out on the concrete.
When you awake, you will get another chance.
For now, you must sleep.
I will help you clean up this mess, Wade.
I won’t let her stop you from finding our children.
You’ve done enough wrong already.
Take my hand.
I’ll guide you.
7:16pm – Saturday, October 8th/2016