More time, more dreams, more visitors, more blue-green light, more attention from Rachel. Attention I don’t deserve, not after what I had done to her. But she doesn’t see it that way. She sees my injuries—and the death of my partner and the murder of the innocents at the convention center—as her fault, due to her inaction.

  We both need therapy—or each other. I drift back to sleep.

  ***

  It is, I think, two days later, when I feel a pressure on me, and I awaken from a deep, dreamless sleep—and emerge into the Winter Wind. I see the face I have been most hoping to see: my brother.

  His hand is on my chest as he speaks to a nurse and occasionally shoots glances at Rachel, who looks at him with suspicion, concern and pity. She knows he left me. She knows he hurt me. She knows my brother is a troubled man.

  Aren’t we all?

  I do not know if they have introduced themselves, but when the nurse leaves, my brother turns to Rachel and says something. Interestingly, I see the vibration of his words leave his mouth. I watch them imprint a pattern in the air, a sort of sound wavelength, and I wonder, at the back of my mind, if I can someday read these patterns and understand what people are saying to me.

  I wonder…and I hope.

  My brother, apparently, has requested to be alone with me, because Rachel finally nods, acquiesces—but doesn’t seem too happy about it. God bless her loyal heart.

  Finally, she gets up from her spot in the chair next to me, looks at my brother, looks at me, then turns and leaves the room.

  I am alone with my brother.

  ***

  My brother appears relatively unscathed. There are wounds along his wrists and forehead, where I can almost picture him slamming his head against something, perhaps trying to push through something. The injuries to his wrists are obvious. I suspect there are similar injuries to his ankles, where he’d been restrained.

  What happened to him, I don’t know. That he had been experimented on, or had been about to be experimented on, was the only thing I can surmise. But none of that matters now.

  All that matters is that my brother is standing before me, alive and healthy—and had my mother been around, she would have been weeping incessantly, holding both of us, and never allowing either of us out of her sight again. She had been a good mom.

  As my brother moves around and sits where Rachel had been sitting, I wonder if he’s still planning on leaving. If he does, I’m gonna be pissed…and hunt him down myself.

  He’s speaking to me, I see. Vibrations warble out of his mouth, forming a pattern in the air. I smile at this, and absently wonder what the vibration for “hi” might look like. Or for “I love you.” I wonder if I can someday discern such vibrations. Maybe, I think. Maybe.

  Now the vibrations issuing from his mouth turn staticy, abrupt, and halting. I look up from the sound waves to his eyes and see tears flowing. Tears that glow almost supernaturally, rivulets of diamonds.

  He lets the tears flow, untouched, unconcerned who sees them, never guessing that his eyeless brother is watching them even now.

  He takes hold of my right hand and holds it with both of his, and still, I do not move. I let his emotions play out…but mostly, I am enjoying seeing him, being with him, looking at his familiar sharp chin—hatchet jaw, as my dad used to call him. Reveling in his broad shoulders and his thick brow. I remember our time growing up. I remember the sports and the games and the fights and the forgiving and the long conversations, and I am so happy that he is here, now, holding my hand, and not in some faraway state, never to be seen again, or, worse, hidden deep underground in a madman’s laboratory of horrors.

  My brother is lucky to be alive, I know that and he knows that. I had seen at least two of the dead, and there might have been more. I wouldn’t know the full extent of the doctor’s experiments until later, if ever.

  No. I need to know.

  But now, I stop thinking of the horrors I’d witnessed, or the horrors I had experienced, and just lay there next to him, watching him from somewhere above me, reveling in his touch, remembering the good times, and wishing like crazy for many, many more good times to come.

  When my brother is finished with his soliloquy—his words lost to me and known only to him—he puts a hand on my chest and pats me.

  I choose now to lift my hands and weakly sign, “Don’t leave me again, asshole.”

  I see him stare at my hands, then at me, then throw back his head and laugh, shaking the whole bed as he does so. He eases up out of the chair and sits next to me, managing to wrap his arms around my damaged shoulder and bury his face into my neck, holding me in a way that somehow doesn’t hurt too much.

  He holds me like this for a long, long time.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  It is a few days later and I am at home with Rachel and Detective Hammer. And Betsie, of course.

  I am leaning on my right side, taking pressure off my right hip and, concurrently, trying to ease the discomfort in my chest. Neither seems to be working, which is why I am glad I am still on lots of pain meds. Vicodin, in fact. The doctors and nurses have all lectured me about dependence, and to stop once the pain is mostly gone.

  When the pain goes away, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there—just as long as the crossing of the bridge is pain-free.

  For now, addiction is the last thing on my mind. Getting through a full minute without wincing is my first big goal.

  Meanwhile, Detective Hammer is talking while Rachel signs rapidly into my palm: “Your brother was one of the lucky ones. We found nine dead, most rotting in cages or stuffed into sacks or barrels. Filthy horrible business. Many more were in various stages of dehydration and malnourishment, and still others had been infected with, of all things, tuberculosis, which is what the mad son of a bitch had been hoping to cure.

  “Before being fired from the zoo, he had been secretly experimenting with animals—possums, I think. Rare ones, too. Apparently, these little guys have a remarkable immune system that science is still trying to understand, but I think you know all that, right? Anyway, he goes about it in the wrong way, experiments on endangered possums, gets canned…and then, a year or so later, decides to kick his experiments up a notch with people.

  “The guy—Dr. Diamond—says he did it to help mankind. That he was close to a breakthrough. He doesn’t see it as killing people. He sees it as a sacrifice to the good of humanity. A real whack job, if you ask me.”

  “And his helper?” I sign.

  “A hired thug, no more. We’re sure he’s the one who offed Jesse, and did a lot of the heavy lifting.”

  I sign: “How many total were found?”

  “Nine living and eleven dead. Twenty total, that we know of. We’re still digging through that mess.”

  “Where did the others come from?”

  “From what we gather—and from what the good doctor has told us—they picked them up along Skid Row, with a promise of a hot meal and some clothing. The others, as you know, were lured his way via an online ad buried deep in the Dark Net.”

  “Where he prepped them how to disappear,” I sign.

  “Exactly.” There is a pause, a long one, then Rachel signs into my hand: “One thing I need to know, Lee: how the hell did you manage to get all the way out there, find an underground tunnel, and fight off a guy with a bat and a man with a gun?”

  Rachel, I sense, is as confused as the detective.

  I reach down and pat Betsie’s head. “I had a little help.”

  “Just you and your dog?”

  I smile. “Just me and my dog.”

  “I’m calling bullshit.”

  “Call it what you want, Detective.”

  I sense the detective staring at me, probably with his mouth hanging open a little, confused as hell, and rightly so, anyone would be. Now, I feel a shift in the floorboards, and suspect the detective has stood.

  “He says he’ll be back in a few weeks to check on you and hopes you get better soon—and that you are a lucky son of a bitch.”

  “Tell him I love him, too.”

  “He says to piss off, but he’s also laughing.”

  When he is gone, I take a few short breaths…and slip into the Winter Wind. Rachel is sitting next to me, holding my hand, looking concerned and relaxed and beautiful all at the same time. Betsie is at my feet, sleeping.

  Rachel signs into my palm: “The detective raises a good point. What did happen back there, Lee?”

  I smile, then sign: “I have something to tell you, baby.”

  She looks at me, frowning, then signs into my hand: “What?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Winter Wind?”

  ***

  It’s later, and I have done my best to explain Jack, John Wang, and the blue-green light of creation and vibration. Rachel stares at me, tears in her eyes. Confusion on her face. But there is hope in her eyes, too. She is sitting straight, and I see she is shaking. I would be shaking, too. Finally, hesitantly, she points to her heart and slowly, slowly crosses her arms over her chest. She holds the position for a heartbeat or two, then releases it and points at me.

  I smile, and wipe my tears, and sign back:

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  The End

  Also available:

  The Pale Cold Light

  by J.R. Rain

  Available now!

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

  (Please turn the page for a sample)

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  Return to the Table of Contents

  Also available!

  The Pale Cold Light

  by J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  It is windy and cold and there is rain, too.

  Not a lot of rain, but enough. Enough to make him think he may never be warm again. Warmth is a luxury. He knows that now. He didn’t know that before. He knows a lot of things now. A lot of terrible and wonderful things.

  He pushes through the dusting of rain and keeps his head down and the weight off his disfigured ankle. He keeps the weight off by pushing a shopping cart that, even to this day, works surprisingly well. A gift to him, surely. A gift from God.

  He loves God and will never stop loving God, not now nor ever, no matter what happens. And a lot has happened.

  Thank you, God, for my life, my clothing, my cart with its oiled wheels. Thank you, God, for the breath in my chest.

  He ducks his head against the wind and maneuvers around the broken sidewalk, and breathes through the scarf that covers his lips and nose—especially his nose—a scarf given to him by an elderly woman a day or so ago. Maybe a week ago. She’d gotten out of her car and wrapped the scarf around him as he crossed the street in the crosswalk. He heard her words again, and had started repeating them often, as he did now:

  “You are loved. Never forget that. You are loved.”

  He looks back often for his dog and calls to her until he remembers that she died in his arms not too long ago. He reminds himself now, again, but he looks anyway, just in case. Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she had died and come back. Maybe she had gotten better. Maybe he had forgotten what happened. Maybe he was thinking of another dog. Maybe he made it all up.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Maybe another dog would come, as she had, years ago, to comfort him. He looks back again, but no. He looks again, this time faster, and almost trips, but she is still not there. He looks again and again, and thinks he sees her, but it is a shadow. Maybe. He will check later. Yes, maybe she would come back from wherever she had gone off to. She would come back to him where she belongs. Her name is Blessed, and he misses her all over again, and cries for her all over again, the tears lost on his cheeks in the rain.

  Maybe he would see her again in his dreams. Boy, he sure does love Blessed. Never knew a dog like her. Always by his side, a friend to the end. He likes friends. He likes people who are nice to him too. He likes people who smile and nod and think of him as a person. He likes to be thought of as a person. He knows he is dirty and talks to himself too much. He thinks everyone talks to themselves, but most people do it alone at home, or in the shower, or in the car. Except he doesn’t have a shower or a home or a car, and so he talks to himself on the street, his home for now. Or in the park, his home for now. Or under the bridge, his home for now. Or in the shelter, which is his favorite home of all.

  He knows his mind is lost. He knows he can’t think one thought for very long at all. He knows this and he does not care because this is the way God made him and he loves God more than himself. God has been so good to him. God has blessed him with life and he loves life and so he loves God.

  He loves the cold because he loves to be warm too.

  He loves smiles because they remind him of God.

  He loves angry people because he knows life is hard. He tells them that God loves them, and sometimes the words come out right and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the words sound wrong to his ears, too, and he wonders when he last spoke. Days, sometimes weeks.

  But sometimes he will go whole days where he does nothing but speak to himself. He likes his voice, even if he can’t understand what he is saying. He knows what he means to say and that’s all that matters. His mind isn’t right and he knows that but some minds don’t have to be right, right? Some can be wrong. And all are from God and he loves God more than he loves himself.

  He wonders what he says, but then he forgets what he is wondering, and people look at him more and he smiles at their frowns and tells them God loves them. He hopes people can see God in him. Some days he knows that God is with him, walking next to him, holding his hand. He can feel God there. He feels it and knows it.

  Where is Blessed?

  His cart squeaks but he is so very thankful for the cart. Whoever made it has to be a genius. The metal. The curved bars. The hundreds and hundreds of tiny welds. The perfect symmetry of the whole beautiful thing. It wasn’t off balance. It was made to help people carry their groceries. It wasn’t made for him, he knows. It was made for a grocery store and he worries that he has sinned, but didn’t he find it behind a dumpster with a half filled can of Coke that was more delicious than anything he had ever drank in all his life? He had, and he doesn’t think it is a sin to find things. He wishes he could ask his mother if it is a sin, but she is gone to heaven, too, with Blessed.

  And someone else, someone else, someone else. A young one. A sweetheart. A precious angel.

  No. No. No.

  Stop. Stop.

  Good. Good.

  Better.

  He pauses, breathes, braces himself.

  It is coming on evening and he knows he needs to find a place to sleep, but he would like to eat, too, although he is less hopeful about eating. He can’t remember when he last ate.

  He pauses, thinks, but nope, he can’t remember.

  He continues on, shuffling, pushing the cart, putting weight on the side of his foot where no weight belongs. His foot hurts. So does his ankle. So does his stomach. His stomach hurts most of all.

  He pauses now and bows his head and feels the wave of panic grip him because he thinks there is a very real chance that he may never eat again, and with his head bowed he thanks the Lord for the food he has provided in the past, and if he is to never to eat again, he understands. More food for others. He likes the idea of others eating, if it’s not him. His stomach hurts. The pain, the pain...

  He continues on and finds tears on his cheeks.

  A woman watches him and shakes her head, and he hears her say something about being pathetic. And he smiles and thanks God that she is healthy and alive and dressed warm and smells good.

  The pain grips him again, a long, slow, sad, throbbing pain.

  His stomach is like a child alone in the forest, alone and afraid and forgotten. He puts his hand on his stomach and tells it everything will be okay because God is good.

  Sometimes he eats well, sometimes he will find a whole meal thrown aside, a half a chicken in a dumpster. Sometimes an angel will buy him a meal while he sits with his dog and looks toward the sun. Sometimes the shelter will give him a hot meal. But the pain always returns, often within hours or days. Sometimes the pain in his stomach is so great that he finds himself weeping in agony, because the child is lost and hungry and he doesn’t know what to do for it.

  But then he prays and asks for forgiveness because he was weak and doubtful and God is great.

  Sometimes angels stop and ask if they can help and he always points to his dog first and says he is hungry. Sometimes the angels feed his dog, and sometimes they feed him, too. Angels, he knows, are real.

  Blessed.

  He looks back, but she is not there and his heart breaks all over again and he wonders if Blessed is in Heaven with God, and if she has enough to eat, and if someone is taking good care of her, and if her tail is wagging, and if she is happier without him.

  He pauses because his mind is spinning again. It always spins when he thinks of Blessed, it spins and spins, and he can’t see or think and all he feels is loss and fear and worry and hunger. He holds onto his shopping cart with dirty hands and feels the tears and knows his mind might never come back, ever, and he wills it to come back, it has to come back, if his minds goes, then there will be nothing left of him, and he will be gone, gone, gone.

  He breathes and grips the cart and feels a hand on his back and hears an angel’s voice talking to him, now holding his arm. And now the angel is patting his hands, and he thinks this is the first time anyone has touched him in days, weeks, maybe years.

  When he opens his eyes again, he feels the tears on his face and the drool in his beard, and the angel is gone and he is alone again on the broken sidewalk with cars passing and people looking at him and shaking their heads. He grips his shopping cart. He doesn’t remember what just happened or where the daylight went, but he remembers his dog in heaven, and fights another wave of dizziness that threatens to tear his mind away, but he holds on, holds on, holds on.