The Sorrow King (32 page)

But he had to touch the doorknob. He would have to turn the doorknob to get in the house.

He stopped thinking about the nothing of it all. He thought about doorknobs which was something he didn’t think he had ever really thought about before. Even though he could not imagine one specific doorknob there was still something buried in the working part of his memory that remembered what doorknobs felt like. That remembered when you turn a doorknob, you open a door onto
something
, not a void.

He turned the knob and walked into the house.

Yes. It was familiar. But it wasn’t familiar. There was more white. More nothing. No walls, no carpet, only that weird textureless white.

He continued walking through the house. He had the distinct feeling he was in a family room although there were not any walls or devices to describe this as a family room. He continued walking and, yes, now he stood in a kitchen. It had the feeling of a kitchen. It was where the kitchen
should be
.

And there was something on the floor.

Three objects.

He looked down and had to stare at them contemplatively for a moment before the memory machine registered what they were.

The three objects were lined up.

On the far right was a black felt tip pen.
You use that to write with,
he thought.

In the middle was a glass of water. He thought he could drink that if he was thirsty, because water was something you drank, but he didn’t feel particularly thirsty.

To the far left sat an amber bottle of pills. Yes. Of course, pills. He knew what they were. And he knew what this bottle was. It was the same one that had graced his medicine cabinet for so many years. It was the bottle that could take all the pain away. And, of course, the glass of water had a renewed sense of purpose. He could just open up that bottle and take all those pills, washing them down with the water, and it would make all this sick nothing go away.

So what was the marker for?

He could write with the marker.

Were those his choices?
Were
they choices? Was he supposed to use all three of the objects or could he just use the marker?

He bent down on the floor and picked up the marker, taking off its cap and smelling its faintly medicinal scent.

He made a mark on the floor, not knowing where else he was supposed to write. He didn’t know what he was supposed to write.

So he decided to start at the beginning.

He did that because those pills . . . they were awful things. Terrible things. He knew that.

So he started writing in quick little bursts that were half-printing and half-cursive and he wrote down everything.

He moved along the floor in a spookily quick way, trying to capture everything, trying to rebuild every feeling he had ever had.

He wrote about childhood and adolescence. He wrote about the deaths of his parents. He wrote about meeting Alison. He wrote about Steven’s birth and losing Alison and about how he wasn’t so sad he had lost her. He wrote about his fumbling attempts with other women and he wrote about his job. He wrote about the Sorrow King and he wrote about the suicides. He wrote about every sad and sorrowful thing he could think of, capturing it all. And he realized, in between all that sadness and sorrow, there was beauty and joy. And he knew they fed off each other. He could not have sorrow without the joy. He could not have beauty without the ugliness. So his scrawling became a representation of all that and he wrote the blank house into existence. He wrote away the nothingness.

Sweating, he stood up from the floor and looked around.

This was
his
house. This was his house exactly as he had left it when he went to search for the Sorrow King.

He wasn’t sure whether to be confused or happy about this.

Maybe none of this had happened.

Maybe he had just overreacted.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

Maybe that had been happening for some time.

He looked down at the floor.

The pills were still there, next to the glass of water.

There was a note attached to the pills. It read: “You’re going to need these.”

Connor reached down and grabbed the bottle.

He wasn’t so sure he needed them.

Slowly, he walked toward Steven’s room, his heart thudding in his chest. He desperately wanted to open the door and find the boy safe in his bed, sleeping. He wanted to be able to wake him up and tell him he knew he hadn’t been the best father in the world but all that was going to change.

All that was going to change.

Please let him be in there.

Connor had an overwhelmingly good feeling that Steven was going to be in his room.

Connor opened the door to Steven’s room and Steven was indeed in there.

In his bed.

A twisting and rotting corpse.

Connor raised the bottle of pills in front of his face and shouted, “No!”

The room trembled around him.

He stalked over to Steven’s bed, the air enshrouded by a cryptlike scent.

“
Not real. Not real. Not real. Not real,” Connor chanted.

The room trembled more ferociously, the plaster of the walls crumbling slightly, beading down on the bed. He reached out to grab Steven, to try and pick him up and shake some kind of life into him, but the boy crumbled beneath his fingertips.

Connor closed his eyes and shouted, “No!” once again.

And felt the hands of the Sorrow King on his throat.

Elise came down the road, pain receded into some form of grim numbness. Her house was in front of her, drawing closer and closer. Already, she could imagine the soothing balm of the Obscura washing over her.

Wanting it.

Tasting it.

Closer and closer. She walked a little faster. Hobbled a little faster. As fast as she could, the increased jostling causing some of the pain to flare up out of the ocean of numbness.

Almost there, she thought. Almost there.

Connor jerked, shoving away from the hands, sliding along the cold wet ground, opening his eyes and seeing . . .

Himself. Staring back at him.

No. It wasn’t himself. That was insane. That was like some kind of manifestation of schizophrenia. Maybe what he saw was part of himself but he knew that wasn’t true either. The thing he looked at, the thing that had made itself up to look like him was part of everybody.

Connor still held the pills in his hand.

“
You wanted me to take these,” he breathed out.

“
Of course I did. Take those and it’s all over. You won’t have to feel what I’m going to do next.”

“
Fuck you.”

Connor lunged at himself, taking the other down onto the ground.

He was now very aware of all the faces swirling around him. Steven’s face was somewhere in there. And, even if it wasn’t, this thing had to die.

Connor straddled the Sorrow King, the King bucking him off.

He watched as the Sorrow King’s nails sharpened into points. Already he was becoming more powerful. The King lunged at him, slashing at his neck. Connor held out his arms and the nails slashed just below his neck, burning, searing hot. Connor wished he had a weapon. He swung his fist toward the King and landed a crisp blow to his jaw. The King staggered back and a realization dawned on Connor. If this person was him, or at least part of him, part of everybody, it couldn’t be that powerful. This was the younger him. The weaker him. The one that believed in nothing. The one that fed on sorrow and pain. The one that had existed before the blank house.

While the Sorrow King regained his composure, Connor barreled into him, feeling his bones crunch beneath his weight, driving him down to the ground. He threw his legs over the Sorrow King’s arms and took the lid from the bottle of pills. With his left hand he smashed the King’s nose, jamming the open end of the pill bottle between his thin lips.

“
You take them,” Connor said, ramming the entire bottle down the thing’s throat before standing up and backing away from him.

The Sorrow King screamed in rage. He lunged at Connor, his fingernails bared, his bloodied teeth flashing and Connor knew that, even though he had accomplished what he had intended, he was still going to die. He closed his eyes and held out his arms, tired of fighting, knowing there wasn’t anything else he could do, waiting for the boiling bite of the Sorrow King.

The Obscura was now in front of Elise. She could almost touch it. She raised her arm, wincing at the pain it caused, knowing if she could feel it for just a second then things were going to change. Her fingertips almost on the green leaves of its surface she withdrew them, knowing what she had to do.

Eyes closed, Connor never felt the death of the Sorrow King.

He opened his eyes and saw that something had stopped the Sorrow King. The faces of the dead, now the bodies of the dead, had unleashed themselves from the whirling funnel cloud and fallen upon the Sorrow King. He screamed as their hands ran over his body. For a moment, Connor once again saw the true shape of the Sorrow King, of the Jackthief he had written about so many years ago. And he saw that form taken apart and he watched as the dead ate its waxy flesh. He watched as they consumed all the sorrow their deaths had created. He watched as they took back their lives, erasing that sorrow, making it their own.

Reeking of gasoline, her clothes and skin soaked with it, Elise once again approached the Obscura. The Sorrow King had thought he would walk out of here with her body but, she thought, what if neither of them walked out?

That was the only way, wasn’t it?

She felt the cool metal of the lighter beneath her thumb.

She stepped into the Obscura, knowing the Sorrow King would be eager to claim her.

She felt the pain ebb away and, just before her mind and thoughts went with it, she flicked the lighter and touched it to her chest.

The pain was tremendous and, just before death could claim her, she charged out of the Obscura, the Sorrow King screaming in her mind as she fell to her knees beneath the sky.

The swirling mass around him vanished.

Connor looked around him and saw stunned faces. Only the faces weren’t looking at
him
. They were looking toward the sky, toward the cloud.

The funnel cloud drew itself up into the heavy stratus clouds that had blanketed Gethsemane for days.

The stratus clouds broke apart, becoming thick gray cumulonimbus clouds.

The sun peeked out, burning the rain out of the clouds until they were puffy cumulus clouds.

And even those further receded into mere wisps, far away in a nearly flawless sky, cirrus clouds like faraway birds that could be carried away on the wind.

The faces blinked in bewilderment.

There was a universal feeling that something terrible was now over. Slowly, because there wasn’t really any need to hurry, they started back home. Many of them, the same people who were trying to tear each other’s eyes out only an hour before, left arm in arm, ready to go home and begin life anew.

Connor looked behind him.

The Suicides were there.

They were as confused as everyone else.

But they too knew the way home and they walked through the town of Gethsemane.

Bringing up the rear was a face Connor almost didn’t recognize.

It was the last suicide. And she had her arm around Steven.

Steven pointed upward, to a comma-shaped cloud to the left of the sun, so small Connor almost didn’t notice it.

“
Deathbreaker,” Steven said before taking Elise behind the veil where the dead keep all their secrets and laugh at the ignorance of the living.

Conclusion

Sitting on his porch at a farmhouse in Glowers Hook, Ohio, Connor looked out over the field while drinking a cup of coffee.

Gail Hennessy sat in a chair to his left.

It had been two years since Steven’s death. Connor refused to think of it as a suicide.

“
Have you seen him?” Gail asked.

“
Not tonight,” Connor answered, looking toward the dark woods on the horizon, searching for the blue lights that would, on occasion, wander close to the house.

Some nights, Steven came alone. Some nights he came with Elise. They came to tell him they were doing okay. They came to tell him death was nothing to fear but they would not share with him the exploits of the dead. That, they said, was secret. That was the mystery of life.

Connor had yet to tell Gail about the Sorrow King. He didn’t know how. Didn’t even know if it was important.