The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams by Richard Sanders Page B

it
was. What kind of father does that to a kid? But that was him.
That’s what kind of son of a bitch he was. He was just a bastard is
what it was. Just a selfish, miserable bastard. After my mother
died, I can never remember having a meal with him. You know,
sitting down eating, the four of us? Just as a for instance? I can
never remember anything like that. Maybe it happened at some point,
but I can’t remember.”
    “He still
around?”
    “No. He took a stroke
years ago, kicked off. Bon voyage. He jacked me up, he really did.
Let me get you told—he jacked me up good. The things he did, I
don’t know. I just don’t know. Why am I even talking about this? I
have no idea.”
    We were here. We’d come to
an ordinary 20-foot oak that one night was nested with thousands of
fireflies and lit up like the most incredible Christmas tree in the
world. We went past the tree and through the brush on the other
side and there it was, there it was. The thing looked as impossible
as ever—a gigantic 100-ton boulder squatting with complete
equilibrium on a circle of small stones. If somebody who was 300
feet tall and blessed with extreme accuracy had dropped a stone
turd, this is what it would look like.
    And here comes the rush
again. Only it wasn’t a rush per se, not an onslaught of feeling,
but a slow undertow, a soft pull on the mind. It just came out of
nowhere. Whatever was in the air here—an intense concentration of
geomagnetic energy, whatever—whatever maybe drew the Algonquins to
this spot hundreds or thousands of years ago, whatever it was, it
worked.
    Wooly seemed calmer, and
somehow suddenly smaller. “You know something? What’s supposed to
happen in three days? I know it’s going to happen.”
    “Don’t talk that
shit.”
    “No, I know. I can tell.
My life is starting to make sense to me. That’s gotta mean I’m
going to die. Everything feels destined , you know? Everything’s
falling into place. Looking back on it all, the things I’ve done,
there’s a reason for it. Not a good one, but there’s a reason. It
can’t be a good sign.”
    “Life’s a bitch and then
you die?”
    “Something like that,
something like that.” He nodded heavily. “How old do you think that
life’s-a-bitch saying is? How long’ve people been saying
that?”
    There was no sound out
here—no sound in the woods, no sound in the universe.
    “It’s as old as our
tongues.”
    “I can believe
that.”
     
    >>>>>>
     
    MONDAY JUNE 18, 11:00
p.m.
    FOCUS
    We’d never made love like
this before. Things went biological as soon as we got into her
room. She ripped her top off in one motion, ripped my shirt open in
another. She tore into me like a hungry animal, never saying a
word. Her nipples were already stiff, her pussy was already
wet.
    Her eyes stayed open as I
pinned her on the bed—eyes like chocolate smoke—her arms tight
around my shoulders, saying just fuck me fuck me fuck me, and I was
fucking her like I’d never fucked before, I was fucking her with
every breath and pulse my body was ever going to have. It was
frantic sex, it was almost panicked sex. It was like she believed
that if we fucked hard enough, everything around us would be pulled
into focus.
    But it didn’t seem to
work. As we were lying next to each other, it felt like we were
further apart than ever before. Her body was still, but I could
feel her mind moving away from me, leaving the bed, going someplace
where I would never be able to follow.
     
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
     
     

CHAPTER 6
    KILLERS AND
CONFESSIONS
    >>TUESDAY JUNE 19 (2
days to go)
     
    TUESDAY JUNE 19, 7:35
a.m.
    HEART-WHIPPED
    I was dreaming when the
cell went off. I was dreaming that I’d woken up in a room
surrounded by hundreds of digital clocks, all flashing
glowing 12:00’ s
in the dark, as if a power surge had knocked them all out. I
answered the phone. It was Jen. I jumped.
    “You see something?
Somebody’s here?”
    Nooo.
    “Somebody’s by the
house?”
    No,