Dastardly Bastard(40)

“I just can’t see any more.” Scott shoved the fork into his eye.

Everything was spinning. The world became unhinged. When it righted itself, she was standing in an office. The boy’s father sat across a desk from a man in a white lab coat. The coated man looked emotionless behind his curly black beard. His bald head reflected the bookcases behind him.

The father asked, “What can we do for the child?”

Scott, Justine thought. His name is Scott. And you ignored him, you bastard.

“We can only watch him and make sure he doesn’t do anything like this again. We’ll medicate him. See that he is sedated.”

“I have so much going on right now. I wasn’t paying attention. He’s troubled. I know that. There’s the new logging company coming in, that chasm we found, the state moving about like crazy, trying to steal that land right from underneath me. I just didn’t see this being that big of an issue.”

He’s your son!

“You can come by, take him out for day trips. You have to maintain contact. He needs you right now, Mr. Fairchild.”

“I know.”

Fairchild? The name was familiar, but where had she heard it before?

Justine was whisked away again through a black, seemingly endless void. Her ears popped as the pressure shifted. She felt herself rising, being pulled through time and space, passing through a rift in the world.

She landed in a child’s room. Pictures hung from the walls, abstract charcoal renderings of stick figures with black lines coming off of them. If Justine hadn’t made the same pictures, once upon a time, she wouldn’t have realized the wavy black lines were shadows. That was how they looked, at least to a child’s eyes. Dark, wispy threads emanated from people, evil pouring off them, clinging to their bodies, stretching to heavens the world should never see. The older Justine got, the less she saw them. Before she was ten years old, she’d seen them everywhere, on everyone she passed in her life. Her room had become a sanctuary from the horrors of the world.

At the highest point of the picture pyramid was a piece of parchment filled with a child’s scrawl. She read the words aloud.

“The Dastardly Bastard of Waverly Chasm did gleefully scheme of malevolent things. Beware, child fair, of what you find there. His lies, how they hide in the shadows he wears. ‘Cross wreckage of bridge is where this man lives. Counting his spoils, his eye how it digs. Tread if you dare, through his one-eyed stare. This Dastardly Bastard is neither here, nor there.”

She felt sick inside. Cold.

When she stepped forward to get a better look at a certain picture, she noticed the texture of the walls. They were padded.

“He can’t see you when you’re inside, you know.”

The boy spoke from the middle of the room. Legs crossed under him, he was bent over, coloring a piece of paper in big black swirling motions. That black hole terrified Justine.

“But I do,” he finished.

“Who is he?”

The boy shrugged.

She had to go about it in a different way. “My name’s Justine.”

“Scott.” The boy went back to his drawing.

Justine noticed he wore the eye patch again, the aftermath of his self-inflicted wound. “You know, they can’t hurt you. The shadows, I mean.” Justine knew the comment wouldn’t help, but she had to try something. She needed his trust. She needed answers.

“But they do.” The words were final.

Justine realized the boy was further gone than she had ever been. She’d had Nana Penance, a beacon in the dark, an understanding soul who had helped her cope with her visions. The boy, he’d had nothing like that. No one believed him. The shadows had won.

“I’m so sorry.” Justine’s voice cracked, filling with emotions she hadn’t seen coming. “My God, I’m so very sorry, Scott.”

The boy just shrugged again. He looked back to the page he was working on, and continued coloring.

She was looking at a lost soul, one who had given up all hope of a normal existence. Justine thought about Nana Penance and what her life would have become without her help. Was the boy what should have become of her? Was he the embodiment of the outcome Justine had skirted? She thought so. When Nana Penance had died, Justine had dived into Trevor wholeheartedly to bolster the wall between her and the shadows. But what did she have left? Trevor was gone. Yet his memories remained, just enough of him left to hold up that wall.

“I have to go.” She didn’t want to leave Scott, but she needed to find a way out of the nightmare. The boy, the sad, pitiful soul, was gone. Whatever time he had lived in was now past, left behind by a world moved on.

“He’s waiting for you.” Scott met her gaze with his one good eye as he finally looked up from the picture. “He’s going to get you. This Dastardly Bastard is neither here, nor there.”

The boy held out the picture. The charcoal drawing began to swirl, collapsing in on itself. Justine felt herself being pulled forward.

“Stop! I don’t want to do this anymore!” She curled into a fetal position, wrapped her arms around her knees, and shook violently. Her mind was cracking. She was being flooded by feelings and emotions not her own. They shouldn’t be there. She willed them to leave.

“Do you give up?” The voice was everywhere. Justine thought she could hear it laughing.