Cast a Pale Shadow(3)

"I see. Have you sought counseling or treatment of any kind in recent years, Mr. Brewer?"

"Do I need to remind you, Doctor, that I was the victim here... one of the victims, not the patient? I doubt that any of the victims of Duncan Brewer have sought treatment of any kind in recent years."

"Yes, but the others are--"

"The lucky ones." Cole reached into his pocket and withdrew a scrap of paper. "I'm moving. You can note my new address on your chart. Thank you for informing me of the experimental treatment. I hope that you find some benefit to it. Good day, Doctor Fitapaldi." Cole tried to slip out from under the microscope, but Fitapaldi followed him to the door.

"I can give you some names. You should consider counseling. Or perhaps a surgical exam. The plate is still--"

Unable to stop himself, Cole lifted his palm to cover the right side of his skull where his hair grew in swirls and contrary patches. "Yes, the plate is still there. The payment for my debt is still being extracted."

"They were trying to help."

"So they said."

"It can be removed, you know. The procedure has improved in recent years. The survival rate is--"

"Forget it. I hardly notice it anymore. Except when it picks up transmissions from CIA wire taps." He laughed when Fitapaldi's dumbfounded stare showed he thought Cole was serious. "I have to see my father now."

"But you will call me?"

"Don't wait up." Cole mumbled his goodbye and strode from the office, knowing a periodic hour or two in his father's room was the only treatment he would ever seek. It was shock therapy for him, jolting him out of his haze of memory for a while. If the side effects were harrowing, the returned nightmares terrifying, at least they were familiar and clearly out of the past, preferable to no memory at all, or the strange snaps and flashes that sometimes attacked him and did not seem like memory at all. Nightmares were symptoms of sanity. Everyone had them occasionally.

Cole took the stairs to his father's floor instead of the elevator which he remembered reminded him of a padded cell and moaned with distress each time it hoisted itself to the next level. A bell and a light announced his arrival as he opened the stairway door to the fifth floor. No one paid any attention. He had to tap on the counter and clear his throat twice before the ward clerk glanced over her shoulder at him, then ignored him.

"Excuse me. I'm Cole..."

"The nurse will be with you in a moment."

"Fine." Noticing the balls of yarn and five-inch length of crocheting on the desk across from her, Cole shrugged off a bit of his tension. Yarn meant it would probably be Mrs. Hayes. He could handle her. She never looked at him as if he were the spawn of the devil.

"Mr. Brewer. A surprise visit? It won't be much of a one, I'm afraid. We haven't had a lot out of him in the last week." Mrs. Hayes had a voice of grandmotherly kindness. It always seemed too soft to Cole for the job she had chosen. But he supposed there was enough screaming done around here to make the soft voice be the one that got noticed.

"Sometimes it's easier that way," Cole admitted. "Say, I see you're finally starting that afghan you promised me."

"Go on with you. You never told me your colors." Mrs. Hayes held her hand over the keys at her waist to quiet their jingling as she led him down the hall.

"Brown to match my eyes, don't you think?"

"Hmmm, maybe a shade to the chocolate side, I believe." Peeking into the barred grid of the door, she said as sweetly as a maid announcing teatime visitors, "Mr. Brewer, your son is here." There was no response. "The guard is on his coffee break. I'll stay within earshot until he returns. Call if you need us." She patted Cole on the arm before locking him in the cell with his father.

Two chairs, a bed, and a gray metal wardrobe were the only furnishings in the room. Duncan sat with his chair facing the window, except when seated, he was too low to see anything but the sky through the bars and glass. He made no move to acknowledge his son, and Cole had learned over the years it was best not to touch him. He moved the other chair a few feet closer to the adjacent wall and sat watching his father.

"Pop, it's Cole. I came to tell you I'm moving." Cole always paused as if expecting a reply, though, of course, he didn't. But he found it easier to run these conversations as if they were two-sided, framing Duncan's probable responses in his mind and continuing as if he'd actually said them. It made no difference if his father had not said a civil word to him in fourteen years. Cole knew well enough what he would say.

"Yeah, again. Grand Rapids didn't work out for me." Anyone listening might assume they were hearing one end of a telephone call.

"I'll be headed for Myrtle Beach next. Probably too far away for me to visit much." He searched his father's face for any faint trace of regret but found only his implacable, placid stare, a look Cole always interpreted as disapproval.

"I know it would be better if I got a steady job, but I can't seem to work that out for myself.

"If your only surviving son is a bum, I'm sorry. I may be responsible for the bum in me, but it was you who managed the only surviving part.

"Forgive me, I didn't come here to throw that in your face. I only came to say goodbye." Cole allowed himself to be deceived by a light from the window or a drift of air from the radiator that caused Duncan's eyelid to flutter. He wanted to think it was voluntary. He stood and reached a hand to his father's shoulder.

With lightening speed and vice grip strength, Duncan clamped his wrist and squeezed until Cole felt the tendons crunching. Drawing him down to eye level, Duncan growled, "Why ain't you dead, boy?"

It was Cole's turn not to answer. He merely concentrated on not flinching or pulling away and met Duncan's hateful glare until he released him. When he finally did and returned to his impassive state, Cole moved away from him and called for the guard.

As he stood at the door waiting for him, he asked in a voice bereft of all emotion, "Why am I alive, Pop?"





Chapter One





Three years later

Nicholas



A thin streak of brown charring snaked across the paper, and Nicholas could no longer make out the signature or the hugs-and-kisses X's and O's Beth had scrawled across the bottom edge. It didn't matter. He knew the whole letter by heart now. A tongue of flame licked at his finger, but he held the rose-scattered stationary for a moment longer until the corner floated away in cinders. Dropping it, he watched it drift toward the fire, then vanish to ashes. Like Beth. She was too hot for him to handle. And she had known it as well as he had.



Nick Sweets,





Gotta go. Sorry but it would have never worked. Hayley Mills needs me in Hollywood. Seems she can't make a move without me. Ha Ha. I took all the money I could find and the ring. Don't look for me. I'm with Mitch. He wants me. And he seems a little less scary than you sometimes.





Ciao, Beth





P.S It wasn't yours, you know.





Beth. Wild Beth. With her sweet, little-girl-lost looks and her wanton ways. Beth had found Nicholas when he wasn't looking, when he had made a conscious decision not to look ever again. Not after Janey. It had taken too long to get over Janey, longer even than Cynthia.

He remembered he had scared Janey, too. And now Beth. She had gone off with Mitch because he seemed 'a little less scary...sometimes'. And because Mitch would help her where he could not. With the money and ring, Mitch could buy for her what Nicholas had refused to buy -- a way out of her predicament -- an end to the life that grew within her.

Nicholas suspected it was not his baby she carried, but he had craved the hope of it. A future. Something beyond the darkness that always called to him. A way to a different kind of magic than the one he always sought. But Beth had been in control all along, and just as he had started to feel the crazy part of him, the scary side, slip away, she had left him.

"Gotta go," she said. "Ha ha."

"Mister, if you order me a burger and a Coke, I'll sit with you and -- who knows?" she had said softly with her baby lisp on the night he met her. He remembered how her voice had jolted him out of his reverie, and, at first, for just a second, he had thought it was Janey's.

He had rolled the window down all the way to talk to her, and she had leaned on her elbows to meet him eye to eye. "Are you hungry?"

"A little." She looked half-starved with her large, hazel eyes and sunken cheek s. She was dressed in some man's old dress shirt, her father's he had supposed at the time. The shirttails stopped just short of her ragged-denim knees. She had a yellow scarf tied around a pert, if scraggly, red ponytail, and she carried a purse that seemed large enough for her to sleep in.