Red Rain: Lightning Strikes: Red Rain Series #2 (5 page)

“
Y
ou’re going
to tell me what the fuck is going on, and you’re going to tell me right now,” Diane said.

The tears had dried and her wet eyes were replaced with stone. She felt no vulnerability as she spoke to John over the phone, only a raw rage that could swallow suns with its intensity.

“What are you talking about?” John said.

“A cop showed up here. Detective Tremock. What is
he
talking about, John? Murder? You’ve been interviewed by the police?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” John said. “That fuck came by the house?”

“He left an hour ago.”

“He’s crazy, Diane. That’s why I haven’t told you about it. Look, yes, a guy named Paul died. He goes to meetings with me. I met him by chance at a Starbucks and then someone murdered him later that night. Then a guy that works on a completely different floor than me, in a completely different department, that I’ve never fucking met, is murdered. This cop thinks I did it.”

Diane’s anger didn’t dissipate. She didn’t think John murdered anyone, not after the initial shock of what the cop said. What she wanted to know was why he hadn’t told her a single bit of this.

“Awesome, John. Police interviews. Were you thinking about telling me when they arraigned you at trial, or did you want to wait until a conviction?”

“You’re overreacting,” he said.

“Overreacting? You’re lucky the locks haven’t been fucking changed. Did you talk to a lawyer yet?”

“No, Diane. There’s no reason to. I didn’t murder anyone. There’s no evidence that I murdered anyone--just this crazy cop who is now showing up to my goddamn house.” He sighed. “I guess I better get one now. He’s out of his mind. Literally.”

“We’re starting therapy this week. Next, if I can’t get in until then. I don’t want to hear anything else about it, John. That, or I’m taking the kids and we’re leaving.”

* * *

“
A
lawyer might not be
a bad idea,” Harry said. “Not the only idea, but it might keep us safer.”

John looked at his phone for a few seconds, having heard Diane disconnect instead of saying goodbye.

“A fucking lawyer?” John said.

“Well, man, you’ve been doing a lot of talking, but not a lot of action. Tremock isn’t playing around. He thinks you killed that cunt partner of his and he’s going after everything he can think of. What do you want me to say?”

John and Harry stood inside their gym’s locker room. John had been on the treadmill while Harry flexed in the mirror next to him, gabbing on and on about how they had to act soon. John kept his headphones in, running hard, trying to block out the fat, dead guy doing double overhead bicep poses.

And then Diane called.

Now, sweat drenched, John sat down on one of the benches in front of the lockers.

“What do you know about him?” John said. He saw no sense in arguing about what Harry did when he slept, especially since he had to argue enough with Diane when she saw him fucking leave at night.

“I’ve seen a bit. It’s not as easy as you might think, trailing a cop. He works around the clock. Truth be told, I’m not sure he sleeps. Two kids, both girls. A wife.”

“Can we do it?” He looked up at Harry, a smile blooming across his face.

“Of course we can kill him. We can kill anyone we want.”

“If we kill him, we can leave the girl alone, right?”

“Ha!” Harry laughed out loud. “Always the saint, John. Always trying to save someone from something that you would do whether I was here or not. No. Hell no. We’re getting both of them. For two reasons, one, because we fucking want it, and two, because if one of those people live, you’re in trouble when this goes to trial.”

John looked down and shook his head.

How had it gotten this far?

Is this what his mom saw? Is this what she feared? Him sitting here in an empty locker room, during his lunch break, talking to a dead man?

“Stop. Just stop. Why ask yourself such pointless questions? We’re here and there’s nothing that can be done. It’s time to start cleaning up the mess, John. It’s time to have a little fun.”

John stood up and wiped his head with the towel.

“I’m going to finish you when we finish this, Harry. I want you to understand that. Whatever it takes, we’re done.”

“John, I think when we finish this, there’s a good chance we’re both done, buddy.”

L
ori held
fire in her hands. It burnt. It wasn’t excruciating yet, but there it sat, engulfing her hands while she watched. She knew where to find water, how to douse the whole thing and put an end to it.

Yet, she held the fire, because the fire was John, and she couldn’t snuff out his life.

“He’s an interesting boy, Lori,” Dr. Vondi said.

“I told you,” she said, sitting on Vondi’s couch, knowing that John had sat there too, only a day ago.

“Well, I’m not sure you described him as interesting, but there are certainly things we need to discuss. I’m not going to break any ethical codes by talking to you, but I think that we can deal with some of your issues based on what he’s telling me.”

“My issues?”

“Your thoughts on who he is, Lori. Your thoughts on him being your mother reborn. On basically being insane.”

Lori smiled. “You don’t believe me, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Lori, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t believe you. But I think he might.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re having a negative psychological effect on him. I’m not sure of the severity, but anything at this age, will become more apparent as he gets older. There will be damage.”

Lori didn’t say anything as the two of them looked at each other. Had she thought Vondi might see the same thing as her? Had she believed that after talking to John, Vondi would see her mother, just as she did? That he would see her holding this flame?

Because he didn’t.

“Did you find a dead animal, something that looked tortured, behind your house?” Dr. Vondi asked.

Lori’s eyebrows raised. It took her a few seconds, but she finally nodded slowly.

“And you blame it on him? You think he did that?”

“I do,” she said.

“Why do you think
he
did that? What in your head immediately goes to that?”

Lori stood up for the first time in Dr. Vondi’s office. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t stay seated anymore. Vondi didn’t flinch as Lori walked to the window on the right.

“Let’s say that I’m wrong,” she said. “Let’s say that I’m crazy, that some chemical imbalance is driving me to think these things about my son. You need to know I love him. More than anything else in my life. More than Alicia or Scott. But let’s say I’m wrong. You’ve spoken to him. You said he was an interesting boy. What’s interesting about him to you?”

Silence followed the question but Lori didn’t turn around. She basked in the quiet. Letting Vondi’s silence validate something inside her, the piece that wouldn’t be quiet or go away—that kept saying Clara wasn’t done. She might have skipped a generation but she lived inside John, unable to infect Lori either psychologically or genetically, but sure to pass on somehow.

“Dr. Vondi?” she said.

“I’m thinking.”

“I know. What’s making you think so hard?”

“He won’t tell me everything, I think, if I had to put it into words,” he said. “He’s holding something back; most kids are shy at first, but this isn’t shyness with him. He’s keeping it from me, and he knows it, and I think he knows that I know. If any of that makes sense.”

Lori smiled, though no happiness could be found in it.

“And what do you think he’s keeping from you?”

“I don’t know yet. Again, I’ve only seen him a few times.”

“Okay,” Lori said. “Let’s keep this going and see if you can figure it out.”

F
ather Charles woke
, drenched in sweat. His cover tried sticking to his body as he peeled it off. He swung his legs out of bed, breathing deeply with huge swallows of air.

“God, please make it go away,” he prayed aloud. “Please make it stop.”

God didn’t answer the priest, only silence and the images still moving through his head like a ghastly horror movie. Father Charles hadn’t stepped foot into a theater showing something like that since he was fifteen, yet he could only see blood, and only hear screams.

He had woken up like this for the second night in a row, unable to fall back asleep last night and knowing he wouldn’t be able to again tonight.

“Why have You given this to me?” he prayed again. “I cannot handle this. I cannot do anything for this man, nor the people he harms, and yet You brought him to me. Why?”

His breath continued in huge gasps as he tried to block out the images in his mind.

Cutting of flesh.

Bloodletting.

Pain, awful pain running through so many people.

And behind it all, the one cutting, the one holding the knife—John Hilt, with an insane smile across his face, blood splattered across his cheeks.

He couldn’t go on having nightmares like this, not if he wanted any kind of life. He didn’t think the dreams would stop, because his conscience wasn’t going to let him shirk this as he had before.

“What do You want me to do?”

And in that way, he and John Hilt were similar, as God answered neither of them.

“Fine. Fine,” the priest said, growing angry with his maker. If God wouldn’t intervene, then this rested in the hands of men, and that was just another way of saying, Father Charles Rapport’s hands.

The priest stood from the bed and walked into his living room where he found his phone charging. He picked it up and found John Hilt’s number. What was he going to do? What could he do? Father Charles didn’t know, exactly, only that he couldn’t continue seeing those things when he closed his eyes. And that if he did nothing, he wouldn’t stop seeing them.

He pressed John’s number and put the phone to his ear. The late hour didn’t even cross his mind.

“Hello?” John answered.

“Where are you?” the priest said.

T
he world was moving fast
for John and he didn’t understand much of it. John was plenty smart, he knew it and those around him did too, so intelligence had nothing to do with why he couldn’t understand what was happening to him.

His mother seemed to know better than he, and yet, neither spoke about it.

Like Harry.

Neither of them said a word about what happened at the beach house, and everyone else around John—from his dad to his classmates—treated John as if he somehow survived cancer. They felt sorry for him. They wanted to help. Everyone was
so
nice.

Except for his mom.

How did she know?

John told the psychiatrist that his mom thought he had something to do with Harry’s death … but he didn’t think the psychiatrist believed him, not totally anyway. It was true, though, even if his mom hadn’t said a word about it.

Everyone wanted to know if John was okay, but he felt fine. Almost. One thing he couldn’t quite deal with: the dreams and what they meant. The dreams he spoke about with the psychiatrist were really happening, and John
didn’t
want to talk about why he couldn’t save Harry.

Or wouldn’t save Harry.

John watched Harry die, out there in the waves. No one else saw it, and John didn’t even raise his voice loud enough to call out to Harry’s parents until things were too far gone. Until Harry was almost drowned.

He couldn’t. He hadn’t been able to, and that’s what he struggled with now.

John sat on the beach and watched Harry walk out into the ocean. Watched as his friend, his
best
friend, started swimming, going out further than he might have if his parents had been there. But they went inside to get drinks. Just John, Harry, and an endless ocean.

John saw it happen; one moment Harry’s strokes were smooth and strong, the next his voice rang out from the sea. John saw his arms flailing, his back no longer facing the sun, just trying to keep himself above water. The ocean waves pulled him out, farther and farther, much faster than his own strokes had been able to do.

John turned around, looking at the house behind him. He didn’t stand, either to rush to the ocean or the house. He wanted to see if anyone could hear Harry.

John had killed things before. Of course he killed the little squirrel, skinning it alive. The thrill that came with it was something he wouldn’t have been able to describe if someone put a goddamn gun to his head and said he had three seconds or everything went dark. He knew no one else would understand the rush and that scared him some. He knew what people would say if they found out, and was shocked that his mother said nothing.

He also knew he loved doing it. Every second. His entire concentration and force of will focused on that singular moment, the rest of the world fading away as if it never existed.

Yet, even in those moments, he hadn’t thought about doing something similar to a
person
. Humans were sacrosanct in his mind, off limits to whatever thrills he was finding as he grew older. He’d hurt them, sure. Hurt that bully for Harry years ago, but murder was too far.

Until Harry screamed.

“HELP!”

Loud, at least to John’s ears, but when he turned around, he saw no movement from the house.

He looked back to the sea, hearing Harry’s screams, loud at first but waning as Harry swallowed salt water.

John’s pupils contracted down to tiny points as he stood up.

He couldn’t help himself, something inside forced him to walk to the edge of the waves crashing on the shore, where they soaked his feet and the sand he stood on.

“HEL—” The water cut the words off.

John saw nothing else besides the ocean and its singular inhabitant. The struggle to keep his head above water, the way the water frantically pulled at him, both outward and downward. John saw the exhaustion across his friend’s face.

All John had to do was open his mouth and scream for help.

He didn’t, though. He watched. And he loved every second of it.

Finally, when he saw Harry had no chance, regardless of what was done, he screamed for help.

John told everyone he had been lying with his eyes closed and his headphones in his ears. He didn’t hear a single call from Harry. When he realized something was wrong, he immediately jumped up and screamed for help.

John didn’t understand it, even weeks after, why he let his friend die. Not outside of the fact that his whole being wanted to watch every single moment. His mom knew, or at least had an idea about it, and yet John didn’t dare turn to her. Didn’t dare turn to anyone. How was he supposed to tell someone what he’d done? They wouldn’t understand. Not now, and not ever.

* * *

“
I
’d like
to keep this quiet, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to cause John any more stress than he’s already under,” Dr. Vondi said.

“Of course, I completely understand,” the woman in a business suit said to him. She was the principal of John’s school and the one granting Vondi permission to interview his teachers.

“Where would you like to start?” she said. “His teachers, or the counselor that he’s been seeing?”

“This may seem a bit different, but I think it’d be best to talk to some of the teachers he had last year. Before all this happened?”

“Yes?”

“Yeah, I’m wanting to build a foundational knowledge of him, to see what changes are normal and what might be caused by what he saw.”

The principal nodded. “Okay. Let me look at when Mrs. Tchen has her next break.” She typed a few words into the computer and then looked back to Vondi. “She should be ready in about thirty minutes; if you don’t mind waiting in the reception area, I’ll have her come get you as soon as her next class is out?”

“Not at all. Thanks so much for your help.”

“We are all … just devastated at what happened.”

Vondi shook the woman’s hand and then left her office, heading to the reception area, which was little more than a few chairs and a secretary. Vondi took a seat and started his wait.

He hadn’t told Lori he was coming here, and John certainly didn’t know. He told Lori what she needed to hear at her last appointment, but that didn’t mean it was necessarily the truth. John wasn’t opening up, and that response didn’t exactly scratch the itch that resided in the center of Vondi’s brain.

Something was different about the kid, more different than anything Vondi had seen in the past twenty years as he sat in that chair, crossing and recrossing his legs. He had seen psychopaths, sociopaths, and all other variations of evil—but he didn’t feel any of those labels applied accurately to John.

At least part of this kid was good.

He loved his mother, his father, his sister. He wanted their company and wanted to please them. Psychopaths didn’t have that piece in them. They saw people as chess pieces to be moved, with the end goal simply their happiness. John cared about other people’s happiness as well, so that ruled out Lori’s concerns. He was not Clara and never would be.

Yet the itch was there, almost maddening. Vondi found himself thinking back to John when in sessions with other patients. He thought about John at home, alone, with the television on and not a single word spoken from it going through his head.

Not obsession, he didn’t think. Not yet, but was it possible that he might get there? He didn’t want to think about that yet. He would scratch the itch, hopefully with this next conversation.

“Hi, Dr. Vondi? Is that right?”

Vondi had expected an asian woman, but a tall, red haired, white woman stood in front of his chair.

“Yes,” he said, standing up and extending his hand.

“Mrs. Tchen,” she said. “If you don’t work in a school, I’m sure that sounds awkward, all these adults walking around calling each other by their last name. It helps remind the kids to call us the same. Feel free to call me Liv.”

“I’m Gerald,” he said, smiling.

“Great. Ms. Hallen said there’s a spare conference room open this way, if you want to follow me?”

They entered the room and Vondi sat across the table from Liv.

“So how can I help you, Gerald? Ms. Hallen said something about you wanting to discuss John Hilt?”

“I do,” he said. “I’m seeing John as a patient and I want to understand what other people think of him; I’ve only seen him a few times so far, but I’m finding it hard to break through his exterior. I’m not sure if it’s because of what happened, or something others have experienced?”

Liv nodded. “So, I taught John last year when he was in seventh grade. He’s a quiet kid, to tell you the truth. He and Harry were very, very close. Has he spoken about him much?”

“Yes, I know about their friendship.”

“Those two were inseparable. I’m not sure anyone got John to speak as much as Harry.”

“Did you teach Harry as well?”

“No, he was in …,” she paused for a second, remembering. “I think Mrs. Ware’s class. I got to see them a lot, though, because they both would come to my study hour.”

“What do you think about John?”

“As a student?”

“As a person,” Vondi said.

Liv leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowing. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I feel like you’re not being honest about what you want here, and that’s going to make it hard for me to answer you. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask?”

Dr. Vondi sighed, leaning back in his own chair. “Fair enough. Did you ever feel there was anything odd about John? Anything that made you think he might be different than other kids?”

A few seconds passed before the teacher spoke.

“I guess I’d have to say yes, though I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone else this.”

“What’s different about him?”

Another silence, this one longer than the last. “I’ve only taught in this school, and it’s not a rough one. Very small free or reduced lunch population. I say that because most of the kids here are kind. You have the bickering and snobbery that comes with upper middle class, but you don’t have the pure anger that I think probably comes with lower class. I don’t know a lot about John’s family, but the difference, I think, is there. He has a ruthlessness about him that I haven’t seen in any other kids.”

She stopped talking and Vondi was about to say something, but she started again.

“He was kind to Harry. He was kind to me. To be honest, I never saw him do anything to anyone that wasn’t on the up and up. Still, John is different than the other kids walking around here.” She looked Vondi right in his eyes. “I would deny saying this, but he’s the type of person who might get off on hurting someone.”

* * *

“
I
talked to Mrs. Tchen
,” Dr. Vondi said.

John’s brow furrowed. “My teacher from last year?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” John said.

“Because I wanted to learn more about you, I suppose,” Dr. Vondi said. He hadn’t been sure about this conversation at all, whether to have it or not, and if so, what he would say. Here they were, though, patient and doctor discussing what many would think of as a betrayal. Certainly Vondi had never done it with any of his other patients.

“What do you mean, learn about me?”

“Well, John, you’re not telling me much. You’re keeping things from me, and I think you know it.”

“So? I have to tell you everything?”

Dr. Vondi opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. In what other patient relationship had he demanded everything be told? And what right did he have to do it now?

“What do you want to know?” John said. “I don’t care that you went to Mrs. Tchen. She’s cool. But go ahead, what do you want to know?”

Vondi tried to control his facial muscles from showing surprise or eagerness, both of which filled his head like water fills a pool. Surprise at the honesty and eagerness to scratch the itch that seemed intent on driving him mad. An eagerness he didn’t understand, and honestly, didn’t want to—because he was scared of the reason causing him to feel this.

“I want to know why, in your dream, you can’t save Harry, and I want to know why you don’t want to tell me.”