Bright Star (29 page)

“I won’t let you die,” Bright Star whispered gravely. “
Rush
won’t let you die. Not again.”

“What will you do, Bright Star?” he asked her in a soft voice. She couldn’t tell whether his tone was mournful or accusing. “What will you do, Burn?”

Discere Vivendo

“You killed those people,” Jackson’s throat was sore, even as he accused. He felt as though he had been screaming for days. His voice was hoarse and pained. His muscles ached from the constant tension of grief, sorrow, and guilt. “I thought I knew you. You are my brother. I’ve always known you, but this… Oh my God, Rush. You
killed
them.”

“I didn’t,” Rush retorted listlessly with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Jackson had to strain to hear him. Rush was lying on his side on his bed. Even though he was fully clothed with shoes on, a blanket was drawn over him. His dark eyes were open and searching the endless sky with its setting sun out of the window. The frame and pane had stretched wide and gaping, offering both a panoramic and dismal view of a red and violet horizon. His hands were clasped together as if in prayer and pressed to his mouth. He shook violently as if a fierce chill overtook him.

“You did!” Jackson accused. He snatched at the blanket, and Rush didn’t move. “You let them die. You knew what they were going to do and just like always, you
let
them do it. Then you just… you just let them die. How can you lie there? How can you live with it, live with knowing what you’ve done? How?”

“I didn’t” Rush said again. His brother was broken. “Jackson,” and Jackson heard what sounded like a bone-deep sigh. “I’ll never be able to explain—”

“And that’s not the worst part.” Jackson forced the words out even as he felt the bile rising again in his mouth. Rush covered his eyes and face with his hands. He continued to lie on his side, looking out of the window. “That’s not the worst of it, Rush. You brought
her
back. Why? Why not just end it all right then and there? Why not just let her die and end all this? God knows I couldn’t have let her go, but you… Rush, please, please, God please. I’m begging you. Tell me why. Tell me how.”

“I can’t. I didn’t let them die, Jackson,” Rush rasped from behind his palms. “She did.”

“Don’t you blame her for this! Don’t you dare blame her for this,” And then his voice broke. “You had the power to save them. I couldn’t. No one else could. You had the power to save them, all of them. People that we knew. People that cared about us. You could have saved them but you didn’t.”

“She didn’t—”

“No, Rush,
you
didn’t.
You
didn’t.”

“I’m not going to argue anymore. It’s pointless. I know you won’t forgive me.”

“They won’t forgive you, Rush. They’re dead.” Jackson said and found his knees collapsing under him. He reached out and steadied himself as he slid into a chair. “You let them die but you saved her.”

“You can’t understand what this feels like for me. You can’t understand the guilt, the pain. They aren’t inside of you the way they’ve crawled up inside of me. It’s like someone opened me up and put hot bricks inside of me; like someone burned their faces into my brain. You don’t see them every time you close your eyes.”

“I don’t. But you know what, Rush? I’m glad you do. I hope you see them forever.”

The words were out before Jackson could stop them, even if he had wanted to. Rush’s face seemed to crumple. His eyes darkened and he started to chew the inside of his cheek. Before Jackson left the room, Rush stopped him. “What if I had let her die?” he asked his brother.

“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t.”

“But, what if I did? Would you forgive me?”

Jackson thought about it. Her face appeared. Her voice. Her will. He wouldn’t answer the question. It didn’t matter. “Don’t make this about me. This time, I know it’s not about me.”

Jackson left the room, slamming the door behind him.

“I don’t know if I can keep on with this. I don’t know if I even want to live through this anymore.”

“Shhh… Don’t say that. He didn’t know what he was saying to you. He just wanted to hurt you. He doesn’t know that you’re already suffering.”

Rush didn’t respond.

“You should have let me go,” the dark haired girl whispered. She had been lying beside him for days and materialized there, still lying at his side. She reached up and stroked his brow with a feather light touch.

“He wouldn’t have forgiven me.” Rush told her. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

“He won’t forgive you for those people buried six feet below the ground in our backyard.”

“I won’t forgive myself for that.” Rush answered her.

She was silent for a moment. Then she told him, “I know you won’t. I see them, too, you know.”

“I know,” he answered, trying to shut out the souls for them both. He settled his arm over her shoulders as she nestled into his body.

“Do you think it’s my fault, too?” she asked softly. He could barely hear her.

“No. I don’t think you could have stopped her.” And then, she started to cry. Large wet and hot drops fell from her eyes onto his chest. “You’re warm,” Rush told her. “Warm like you’re real.”

“Remember,” Elizabeth told him with a shudder. “I’m not real.”

“I’ll remember,” he promised before he squeezed her hard and began to shake with sobs.

*

Three days later

“You’re back,” Jackson said dumbly as he found Monk standing in the kitchen holding a bottle of beer.

“Yep,” was the flat reply. Monk cracked open the beer.

“You’re having a beer?” Jackson asked Monk.

“Yep,” he answered quickly. “And why in the hell wouldn’t I have a beer? My doctor didn’t say I couldn’t have a beer.” Then he mumbled under his breath, “as if
that
could stop me anyway.”

“None of…” Jackson paused. “Well, none of the rest of them drink.”

“You know,” Monk started, handing Jackson the beer he’d opened and opening another for Rush who walked into the room. He opened a third for himself. “I don’t know why they don’t drink. It’s not as if we are some strange religious cult.”

Jackson raised a brow as he looked at the man who was draped in a white sheet with a yellow sash around it.

“Would you believe a toga party? No? How about: I didn’t have any clean clothes?” Monk grinned. “Anyway, we were talking about drinking.”

“Yes,” Rush replied dryly as he eyed the “robes” Monk wore. The man looked like he’d just rolled out of bed dragging the sheets to cover himself while he had every intent of going back to the warmth waiting for him. In fact, he smiled to himself, that was exactly what Monk had done, even if he’d been wearing the honorary colors.

“Anyway,” Monk continued, snubbing the all-seeing Rush. “Rush himself drinks a beer or two, so I really don’t see anything wrong with it. Besides, what’s the point of embracing life without… well… embracing life?”

“Here, here,” Rush raised his beer in a mocking toast and took a sip. Jackson followed suit. Monk hitched up one sagging side of his sheet.

“So, I’m curious,” Jackson began leaning against the counter. “How does one keep the faith when the savior cuts the ranks in half whenever the hell he wants to?”

Silence. No one had spoke of the dead in weeks. Now the words were out there, like poisonous darts shooting through the air in search of a target.

“One keeps the faith, Jackson, when one accepts that the path is what it is.”

“So no free will in the Followers of Jacob Rush religion?”

Monk smiled benignly. “We are not a religion, and I believe whole-heartedly in free will. I also believe in human nature. We are who we are. We do what we do. There’s only one path.”

“Sounds like bullshit to me,” Jackson mumbled. He looked over at his brother who had gone quiet. Then he turned back to the holy man. “What is the significance of the yellow?” Jackson asked.

“This?” Monk motioned to the sash at his waist.

“Yeah,” Jackson returned. He looked over and noticed the hard set his brother’s face had taken. Something had just put severe tension there. “Why not blue?” he pressed.

Monk looked over at Rush, always conscious of what the idol felt. “Why would it be blue?” the Monk returned.

Jackson thought about discarding the question. He didn’t like the Monk’s habit of answering a question with a question. Monk had told him many times that a holy man had to be properly Socratic. Instead, though, he thought about it. Why would he have assumed they would have chosen blue as their color? Ah.

“You are right, Monk,” Jackson had conceded, though the Monk had not offered a verbal argument. “There is no reason for you to have chosen blue. It still doesn’t explain the yellow. Rush isn’t keen on yellow.”

Rush gave a half-grin at that and took a swig of his beer.

Jackson was glad to see his brother relax. So was the self-proclaimed holy man.

“He’s not self-proclaimed,” Rush contradicted Jackson’s mental note.

“Stop doing that!” Jackson yelled though there was no longer anger in his voice.

Rush laughed out loud this time. “Tell him, Monk. Jackson thinks of you as a self-proclaimed holy man.”

“Oh hell no!” Monk answered. “I didn’t proclaim anything. Bright Star and Point are at the bottom of this. They did it to me. You know me, Jacks. My name was Thaddeus. I was a physicist. A very, very bad physicist, mind you. I couldn’t get beyond determinism… never mind. That’s why I was in consulting and sales. I worked with Point who was then called Frankie Monnish.”

“Frankie Monnish?” Jackson chuckled at the name. Something about that name and their severe, devout Point didn’t mesh.

“Yeah. Anyway, we were at a conference rubbing elbows, pimping out our skills. When we decided to leave one night for a big celebratory dinner, Point decided not to go with us. She said we should enjoy ourselves but there were some loose ends to tie up with our newly won contract with a Department of Defense sub-contractor. So we left and had a grand old time. We didn’t know that—” He swallowed. “We didn’t know Point was very, very sick. She didn’t go out with us that night because she had just found out she was dying from cancer compounded by a rare blood infection. She disappeared that evening.”

It was difficult for Jackson to digest. Again he thought of the woman who was the field marshal of the group of Followers. She organized. She directed. She coordinated. She was the backbone for them: the leader of a movement. She was Bright Star’s right hand and had probably been second most successful at bringing new Followers into the fold after Bright Star herself.

“Well,” Monk went on. “The next time I saw Frankie, she wasn’t Frankie Monnish. She was Point. At first, I thought she was a ghost. Not that she looked it. She looked great. Younger, more vibrant, happier. Still the same but so much more that I thought it had to be supernatural. And I had been so worried. She’d been gone for three days. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen her or talked to her for three days since I met her. But then she was there. She came back and showed up in my apartment… and I was so happy—”

“You’re in love with her?” Jackson uttered, awed.

“Yes,” Monk said with a quick shake of his head as if to admonish Jackson for not noticing earlier.

“How does she feel about you?” Jackson asked, knowing that he would hear the sad truth. Point’s devotion was unshakable, thus uncontested. She ate, drank, breathed, lived to perpetuate this movement, to second Bright Star in her push to make Rush recognize his responsibility. There was nothing else in her life that she would put before that duty.