Blood poured from Marshall ’s cheek, onto the back of his hand, leaking onto the axe handle, making the wood slick. His brain burned. His body was a machine gone amok. Another cry burst from him, and he heaved upward with all his strength. Surprise registered on Danny’s face as his hands slipped from the newly slickened handle, and he began to fall backwards. Shadows took him, as he slammed onto the lower landing where the steps turned again into the cellar.
Sudden and complete silence filled the space. Then came a whisper, no more than a breath of sound.
“Dylan?”
Axe still in hand, Marshall slowly descended the stairs.
“Rich?” Time folded in on itself. Mack the Giant was but a few minutes away. Rich was crumpled at the bottom of the flight of stairs, his head propped up against the wall at the corner. Light from the window didn’t penetrate far enough that Marshall could read his face.
“Help me, Dyl.”
Marshall crouched down beside his brother, the space so tight his butt hit one wall and the head of the axe the opposite. “Are you hurt?” It wasn’t Marshall asking, it was Dylan. Marshall heard the concern in his voice and hated it.
Dylan loved his brother.
“I broke something. You made me a fucking cripple.” Danny started to laugh and the sound seared the last of Dylan from Marshall ’s soul.
Marshall rose and ran up the stairs toward his apartment, the staccato laughs following him in a poisonous swarm.
39
Marshall took the stairs three at a time and slammed into the door to his and Polly’s kitchen. Danny had locked it. Marshall swung the axe and heard the frame splinter. A kick, and he was in. Lights were on in the kitchen and dining rooms. Both were empty. He ran for the stairs and, for once, climbed them without feeling the clamp of Mack’s hand on the back of his neck, his rasping insults at every step.
The upstairs hall was empty. His office door stood ajar. The master bedroom door was shut. Adrenaline drained out of him as fast as it had shot through his veins.
Like then, like Dylan, he did not want to see what lay in the bedroom. Visions of black-and-white photographs of his dad in the double bed, his face cloven in two, crowded Marshall ’s vision, shifted, became Polly’s face. Lena appeared, her tiny body destroyed. Lena drifted, became Emma.
Sirens.
The police had arrived. Marshall was holding a bloody axe, the only one standing after the bloodbath. Danny-Rich-lay wounded at the foot of the stairs.
Like before. Just like before.
He was still standing there when two young policemen came upstairs, guns drawn.
“Put down the axe! Put down the axe! Put down the axe!” they shouted at him. Marshall turned toward them.
“Put it down,” one of them screamed and pulled the trigger.
The sharp report of gunfire released Marshall ’s fingers. As the bullet smashed into the wall six feet from his head, the axe fell from his hands.
“It’s down! It’s down! He’s dropped it, for Christ’s sake!” one cop shouted at the other. Both were kids, both looked scared.
“It’s okay,” Marshall heard himself say. “You’ll need to look in the bedroom. You can handcuff me if it will make you feel better.”
His compliance reassured them, allowed them to move from scared to angry.
“You’re damn right we’ll cuff you. You’re goddamn right,” the shooter growled as he walked crabwise up, his pistol still held on Marshall.
“Could you radio for an ambulance? My brother’s hurt, he’s on the backstairs. I think I broke his back.”
“Proud motherfucker, aren’t you?”
Son of Mack the Giant.
Cuffed and pushed face down on the hall floor, Marshall turned his head to watch them open the bedroom door. It was good to be manacled. Prison would be good, too. No, not good, Marshall thought. Not good or bad. Nothing, really. Just one long unbroken nothing. Without Polly, life was his prison.
He wished they had put him where he wouldn’t be able to see in. Because he could, he had to.
“God damn,” the cop huffed as the door refused to budge. Son of Mack pulled out his sidearm again, readying to shoot the lock like they did in police shows.
“Oh, stop, would you stop with the gun?” the other policeman said. “It’s not locked. Something’s wedged against it.”
Both of them put their shoulders into it, and the door opened a foot or so. Another shove and whatever was blocking the way toppled with a crash that reverberated through the floorboards and quivered in Marshall ’s bones. The door swung wide. The policemen stood to the sides, guns drawn, backs to the wall. Marshall could see in.
Polly was there. And Emma and Gracie. The girls were on the king-sized bed and looked no bigger than fairies. Polly, her face white as wax and hard as granite, was at the foot, standing, facing the door. She had a cell phone in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
Ready to die for her children.
But she hadn’t, and Marshall began to cry with relief. In the past weeks, he’d cried more than he had since he’d been little. These tears came easily from joy; they neither blinded him nor choked but flowed warm and comforting.
Polly and the girls were alive. The nothing he’d looked toward would always be peopled. Wherever he served his time, even if he got the death penalty, in his mind he would see them. He would never be alone. Marshall closed his eyes so he would not have to see his wife’s hatred, the fear in his children’s faces. That way he could remember only that which would allow him to live.
“Put it down. Drop the knife,” he heard a cop yell, and there was a clatter.
Marshall ’s brain shut down, and he welcomed unconsciousness.
40
It was spring, and it was raining. Marshall felt the first warm drop hit his face. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t want to know. Here in this place where it rained so gently was where he wanted to stay. Another reality, the one outside this cocoon, pushed at the back of his wakening mind, but he ignored it.