The Revenant Road (5 page)

7

Attack of the

Naked Vandal

May 14
^th
.
Northwestern Seattle
.
Midnight
.

Sukhdeep Singh believed in the American Dream.

He’d immigrated from
New Delhi
in the mid ‘nineties, worked his way up through a succession of low-paying jobs, saving, living like a pauper until he’d amassed enough to buy himself a piece of the largest convenience store franchise on Earth.

He’d brought his wife and three children across the ocean two years ago and moved them into a four-bedroom house in a middle-class suburb.

 Sukhdeep Singh knew the Dream was real, had felt its transforming power reshape his life and the lives of his children.

Tonight, however, the Dream was being a perfect pain in the
cussi
.

The anarchists, teenagers who’d pierced, dyed and shaved themselves to within an inch of their skeletons, wanted cigarettes and beer. Sukhdeep just wanted to go home.

“I don’t care what you got at
Quickie-Mart,
” Sukhdeep droned. “The good people at the All-Nite Mart chain of convenience stores are in full compliance with
Washington
State
regulations regarding the sale of tobacco and alcohol products to people below the legal age of consent.”

“Corporate stooge!” one Goth who might have been female cried.

“You’re in chains, bra,” a second declared. “Just another latter-day slave.”

Sukhdeep rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

The Goths left, grumbling about the W.T.O and the global servant class. Sukhdeep went back to his crossword puzzle.

Two minutes later, the video monitor over Sukhdeep’s  head flickered. Then the front doors hinged open and a naked man walked into the All-Nite Mart.

“We’re closed,” Sukhdeep groaned without looking up from his crossword puzzle.

Over behind the
All-Nite 24 Hour Coffee House—
which was really just a tall cardboard display festooned with life-sized photos of attractive Seattle stereotypes—something heavy crashed to the floor.

Sukhdeep jumped to his feet. “Hey!”

He threw down his crossword puzzle and looked up at the monitor that showed the area behind the
Coffee House:
It
was empty.

“Piece of crap,” he muttered to the monitor.

This time, something exploded. Glass shards flew over the
Coffee House
. Sukhdeep ducked as glass tinkled to the floor around him.

“What are you doing back there?” he screamed.

Sukhdeep grabbed the crowbar he kept under the counter and stalked toward the display: Someone was tearing the
Coffee House
apart. Sukhdeep had been robbed seven times since buying the All-Nite Mart six months earlier and he’d had enough.

He rounded the corner and slid to a halt.

The nude Chinese man was crouching in the freezer compartment. Broken beer and soft drink bottles littered the area in front of the freezer. The floor was covered with bloody footprints.

“Hey!” Sukhdeep shouted. “Where are your clothes?”

The naked vandal grabbed a forty-ounce bag of ground coffee beans and ripped it open.

“Stop that!” Sukhdeep screamed.

The naked vandal upended the open bag and poured the ground coffee beans into his mouth.

“I’m calling the police,” Sukhdeep said.

The naked vandal opened another bag of coffee beans and upended it over his face. He swallowed the ground coffee in big, gasping gulps. When the bag was empty, he dropped it.  

Only then did he look at Sukhdeep.

The naked vandal stepped out of the refrigerator. As he moved, the bones in his face snapped and shifted. His body lengthened and his jaw elongated. A black snarl of hair burst from the skin of his face.

“I’m
really
calling the police,” Sukhdeep said.

Sukhdeep turned, slipped on one of the vandal’s bloody footprints and fell face-first onto the
All-Nite
Hot Sandwich Wheel. He screamed as the heating element in the Wheel set his turban on fire, beating at the flames until he extinguished his burning head wrap.

Then the thing from the refrigerator tackled him.

Sukhdeep struck the thing across the snout with the crowbar. In response, the monster from the refrigerator ripped his right arm off and flung it across the store.

The severed arm flew over the counter, and the crowbar, still clutched in Sukhdeep’s hand, smashed the television monitor.  

As he slipped into shock, Sukhdeep Singh’s life actually passed before his mind’s eye. And as the monster from the refrigerator tore out his throat, the last thing Sukhdeep remembered was his Uncle Iqbal’s terrible karaoke interpretation of
She Blinded Me with Science. 

Then Sukhdeep Singh knew no more.

8

One Hell of a Stew

Lenore sat across from me in the car staring out at the green hills of
New Jersey
across the
Hudson River
. She’d asked the driver to take the long way home, up the
Henry Hudson Parkway
, before heading east along the
Cross County Parkway
toward Bronxville.

In a normal family we might have expected dozens of visitors bearing food and condolences. But Lenore had formed few lasting relationships in
New York
, preferring to pass her days with her books and her garden.

I’d neglected to tell anyone from my set about Marcus’s death. Few of them were even aware that I’d
had
a father, and I’d never seen fit to disabuse them of the notion. As a result of our voluntary exile, we were heading toward Lenore’s immaculate and utterly empty house. During the internment more people had offered their condolences to Kowalski than to either of us. Afterward, he’d invited us back to “the House.” Lenore, thankfully, had refused.

“Some friends are gathering there to pay last respects,” Kowalski had said. Pointing to one older woman who sat wailing ethnically at the graveside, Kowalski chuckled and added, “Old Sadie there made one hell of a stew for everybody. You sure you won’t change your mind?”  

It was as we were walking back to the car that the list of ingredients that were tossing themselves into my mental crockpot slammed together: The dish they presented was anything but tasty.

 Out of respect for Lenore’s unexpected display of human emotion I’d stifled myself at the cemetery. But as we passed beneath the
George
Washington
Bridge
, the stew of anger that had been bubbling in my gut since meeting Kowalski erupted over the lip of the cast-iron pot of forbearance.

 “When the Hell were you planning to tell me about them?” I said. 

 Lenore shrugged.

 “When I felt you’d reached a certain degree of maturity.”

 “Mother, I’m thirty-eight years old.”

“I’m still waiting.”

“I’m serious, Lenore.”

She hated when I called her Lenore.

“There are just a few things you don’t understand,
Mister
,” she snapped.

“Oh I understand alright,” I said. “I understand that the three of you were hiding a dark little secret.”

“Obadiah…”

“I understand that my dead father’s common-law ‘wife’ has more facial hair than I do
and nobody ever saw fit to tell me.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Lenore snarled.

“Face it,” I said. “Marcus and Kowalski were lovers.”

“Christ, give me strength.”

“What?” I said. “I’m okay with it. I mean I
have
to be okay with it, don’t I? It’s the 21
^st
century, for God’s sake.”

“You’re not listening.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m furious. I’m furious with you. I’m furious with Marcus and I’m furious with Kowalski, the other woman.”

“Just shut up,” Lenore snapped.

“Oh no,” I said. “You shutting me down as if I were eight years old is not an option, mother-dear.”

“Right now, retroactive abortion is looking like an option for me,” Lenore grated. “You want to push your luck?”

The silence in the limo was instructive.

“You’re a vulgar person,” I said.

We drove on.

* * * *

I picked at the food Lenore set before me. My mouth was already too full of recriminations. I didn’t have room for pot roast.  

Lenore emerged from her bedroom and set a large black box down on the kitchen table. The box looked hand-carved from some dark wood, mahogany or painted oak. It had been secured with a heavy padlock.

“Your father had secrets, Obadiah,” Lenore said. “In many ways he was different than other men.”

“Really, mother, what’s the point?” I said.

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped. “After today you may never speak to me again, so I mean to have my say while I can.”

Something in her tone shut me up. Whatever had been eating at her since the funeral was close to the surface. For no reason at all, a sense of foreboding draped itself about my shoulders like a uranium pashmina.

“I know that I’ve never been an affectionate woman, Obadiah. But I
do
love you. I hope you know that.”

Lenore smoothed the front of her dress and sat down. Even twenty years after her last modeling assignment she still moved like the Vice-Principal of a charm school. 

“Mother, what’s—”

Obadiah, your father was a monster hunter.”

Silence.

“Did you hear me?”  

I said, “He was a what?”

Lenore took a deep breath. “A monster hunter. He killed monsters.”

Silence.

“For a living.”

Outside, a cat knocked over Lenore’s garbage pail.

Inside: Silence.

“Actually, for Marcus it was more of a calling.”

Silence.

“Obadiah, you’re staring.”

“Mother, what the hell are you talking about?”

Lenore stood and walked to the breadbox.

“I need a drink,’ she said. “You want a drink?”

“Since when do you
drink
?”

Lenore reached into the breadbox and pulled out a pint-sized bottle of Crown Royal. Then she pulled out two glasses, cracked open the whiskey and sat down.

“This is going to be difficult for you to hear, and even more difficult for me to say,” she said. “I’m asking you to trust me and wait ‘til I’m finished before you start shooting. Agreed?”

“But—”

“
Agreed?”

Stunned, frightened by the passion I saw in her eyes, I could only nod. I sat back and watched the woman I knew as a tee-totaller, a sober judge who held contempt for anyone who drank anything stronger than the occasional Mr. Pibb, toss back a finger of Crown Royal and pour another one three seconds later.

Then Lenore began to talk.