CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - ALEC
Young Liam is about three inches shorter than I am, so his clothing is an imprecise fit, to say the least. And his shoes didn’t fit, so I’m still in proper Bruce Willis mode.
Conversely, the silk pyjamas in which he is now swaddled make him look as though he is a tiny, happy, paramilitary baby. We left him bundled in the bed, snoring safely, blankies pulled up around his face, and now we can only hope that if anyone enters the room, he stays that way.
By everyone’s admission, this entire endeavor is one hastily thrown together absurdity after another. But, so far, it appears to be working, and my hopeful dream of making it free of here with no bloodshed is somehow maintaining. Eish, man. This can’t be real life. Not because it’s ludicrous—life is fundamentally ludicrous. All life. That we are here, breathing oxygen on a geological exception to the laws that govern the rest of the galaxy, is ludicrous. But it can’t be real life because there is absolutely no way Eliza, Christine, and I would ever occupy the same place at the same time again.
Even less probable that her brothers would be helping, and that Danny would be waiting to receive me and Christine back into each other’s loving arms again. Which is why I’m not so certain that I’m not still dreaming. It’s all just a little too perfect. As perfect as imperfection can be, anyway.
I am strangely comforted by the fact that I still don’t know how I got to this place. How I was retrieved from the bottom of that abyss and brought back to here, to the site where the beginning of the end… began. I am comforted because it allows for a virtual Sword of Damocles to remain hanging over my head. And I am at my most relaxed when I know that catastrophe very likely awaits.
When one is born into a world of chaos, one can either be made subject to its unpredictability, or become its master. I thrive on the mayhem.
“This is fucking mayhem,” Christine says as she, Eliza, and I scurry through one of the underground tunnels that web their way below the property. There is no radio signal, so we’re fully out of communication with the rest of the world for the moment. It is just us three as far as we’re concerned. We have only each other for now. “How did you get here?” She follows up, as though the question has been simmering inside her and has now reached a boil and spilled from her mouth.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How can you not know?”
“I don’t know.”
She lets out a breath of frustration and pushes past me. “Yeah, OK.”
“Glad to see each other, are you?” Eliza asks. I ignore the question and run up to catch Christine.
I take her by the arm to slow her down and whisper, “I wish I had an answer. I truly do. But, sadly, I do not. But I’m glad you found me.”
I mean it. Not because I’m glad to have been found. I would have gotten free one way or another. As long as I’m still alive, I will find a way to do as I like. But because I’m glad she is the one who has come for me. She and Danny. I can’t help that in my dreams the memories that came to me were those final moments when Christine and I were challenged by my relationship with Eliza. I write that off to being back in the same place where it all came undone.
But in my waking hours, as I would amble about the parts of the house I was not restricted from, I would think only of Christine and Danny. Their touch, their voices, their bodies pressed against mine. My will to survive does not need a great deal of encouragement, but if it did, the love I feel for Danny and Christine would be more than enough. And it is love. Which is a remarkable thing for me to feel. Because I didn’t believe myself capable of feeling such a thing. Triumph, exuberance, a certain jouissance, all of these things felt possible to experience. But love…? Unexpected.
I am suddenly overcome with an urge to tell this to her. Here, in front of Eliza. She needs to know, and I need to make it unambiguous. “Christine—”
“Which way?” she interrupts.
“That way.” Eliza points. Reminding Christine, of course, that she knows this place better than Christine does and, in effect, dousing the flame of love I was about to express with an icy bucket of Eliza. Which is what she is. An icy bucket of reality. It’s what she’s always been. I’m curious to see what happens once we’re all out of here. And by “curious,” I mean fokken dreading.
We reach the end of the passageway and land at an old, wooden door that looks as though it might splinter into pieces if you put pressure on it. It has stood here for hundreds of years, unmolested, and the idea that our being here and pressing on it might shatter it into a thousand tiny shards seems symbolically fitting somehow. That is what we do. All of us. Break the things we touch.
“What the hell was all this? Was it used as, like, an escape route during a war or something?” Christine asks.
“Not sure,” I say. “I never bothered to ask after its pedigree. I just bought it.”
“My guess is that these were likely installed by some land baron for liasons dangereuses,” Eliza says. And I hope that she’ll just shut up and leave it at that. But she’s Eliza, so… “You know, secret entry- and exitways through which the lord of the manor might shuttle his mistresses and whores. That type of thing. Probably.” There is an extra amount of knowing emphasis on the last word.
And because there are automatic weapons available and no one would know… I would not put it past Christine to run outside, weeping, and telling everyone, “They didn’t make it,” after having laid waste to us both.
The sound of blood pumping furiously though her veins is very nearly audible.
“Lekker,” I say, and push on the door. To my surprise, it doesn’t splinter and fall apart, but retains a startling amount of integrity and requires quite a bit of shoulder to force open than I expected. I definitely feel pain throughout my side and look back at Eliza and Christine for a bit of aid in the pushing. They offer none. They both just stare at me.
All right. That’s fair.
The door opens and afternoon country sunshine greets us. The rain has stopped completely, and the sky is beaming with the rays of that great, golden orb. There is a small set of steps that lead up and out into the pasture just beyond the fence that protects the property. A fence, I might add, that I did not have installed. I don’t know who did.
I step up and into the meadow. Looking back, the manor appears to be about two or three hundred meters behind us. We’ve arced around and can see the front of the place spread out laterally before us. The great drive that leads to the front of the house ends just a bit ahead of where we stand and meets up with the road that passes us to the side.
Typically, these geographic details might not be important. But they are now, owing to two things that happen simultaneously.
One: I can see two bulky figures who bear a striking resemblance to the Brenden and Charlie I remember streaking from around where the entrance to the kitchen is to make their way into the cab of the vehicle. I also see Russell on the roof, sprinting to the edge of the house to, it would appear, leap down onto the escaping vehicle before Charlie and Brenden leave him stranded there.
And.
Two: The radios that Christine and Eliza are carrying erupt with sound. The sound of mingled voices shouting, “Go, mate! Fuckin’ go, go, go, go, go!”
It is immediately evident why.
The various laaities who had been seeing to it that I stayed safely within their ranks are also running after the Watsons (and an as yet unseen Danny, I suppose), rifles aimed and firing.
Ah, yes. This is more what real life looks like.
Russell reaches the front edge of the manor just as the truck is pulling away. And as I am not prone to hyperbole, when I say that he makes a death-defying leap onto the roof of the vehicle as automatic weapon fire lances the air around him, I am not exaggerating. It is quite something to watch. I’ve never been impressed by acrobatic feats. It’s just not something that interests me. But if Cirque du Soleil thought to incorporate small-arms fire into their acts, I might be forced to change my assessment.
The vehicle comes barreling straight toward us, Charlie and Brenden growing clearer in my view along with Danny, whose head I now see popped up between the twins. The look on his face is half-astonishment, half-anger. Russell is pressed flat to the roof of the truck, making himself as small as possible. The back of the cube is opening and flapping about, a couple of slabs of beef crashing to the ground as the lumbering transport weaves and jolts in our direction.
It makes its way through the only unsecured portion of the estate itself—the opening in the fence where the drive connects to the road. Two more guards wait there and my hope that no one will die today is looking increasingly unlikely. The bigger concern is that the ones dying will be us and not them. But, if we’re lucky, perhaps not.
I raise the weapon I’m still holding and point it in the direction of the guards, who appear ready to fire into the windshield. My finger is on the trigger just as it was with Liam earlier, ready to pull away.
And then, as if in support of my global thesis that life is ludicrous… the firing stops. Their shooting ceases, entirely. Every one of them. The okes chasing the vehicle all stop, seemingly at once, and lower their weapons. The guards at the edge of the property also lower their weapons and don’t make a move to stop the lorrie. Instead, they step aside and let it pass, unfettered. It comes squealing to a halt beside where we are huddled by a copse of English countryside and Charlie yells, “Get in, get in, get in!”
Eliza bounds to the open rear and in one feline pounce is up and into the back. I, in my barefooted, ill-fitting, and not-quite-yet-fully-healed state, attempt to do the same, but just like the guards, I also stop when I see that Christine is making no attempt to move forward. At all. She is just standing in place, looking ahead, impassive. Almost catatonic.
“Christine! Let’s go! Come on, nunu!”
“Christine!” Charlie yells urgently from the cab. “Make moves, luv!”
But she doesn’t. In the midst of the confusing chaos, she stands stock still. Looking back at the house, her chin lifted slightly.
“Christine!” I shout again, going back to take her by the arm and drag her if necessary. “Christine, we have to fokken—!”
And then I stop my forward energy once more. And see why she’s inanimate. Because as I look to understand what it is she sees that has frozen her thus, I become frozen in exactly the same way.
Watching from a massive third-floor window that overlooks all that just played out on the grounds of van den Berg manor—unmoving, standing as still as Christine and I have become…
There he is.
Lars.