“Can I interest either of you gentlemen in more coffee?” Peter asked.
The offer brought a smile to both their faces, Liza’s also.
“Another cup of your delicious coffee would be splendid,” the priest replied.
“I would love another cup as well,” Sierra said.
“Me, too,” Liza chimed in.
Peter fixed a fresh pot and served his guests and Liza, then pulled up a chair to the table. His heart was racing and he could hear a bass line pounding in his ears. Life was filled with unexplained mysteries which we carried with us to our graves. One of those mysteries was about to be explained to him. Liza sat on the windowsill overlooking the courtyard, content to listen as Peter’s past unfolded.
“Perhaps I should go first, since it was me your parents first came to see,” Sierra began. “As you and Liza know, I am a marriage counselor by profession, and I specialize in dealing with relationship issues. One day, your parents appeared in my office, and said they were having problems, which is nothing new in my line of work. They were both rather vague about the situation, and seemed to be having difficulty coming out in the open and discussing it. Whatever this problem was, I could tell it was affecting them deeply, and harming their marriage. As our session wound down, I bluntly asked them to tell me what was going on. If they were unwilling to do this, I said, then there was no point in their coming back, since I couldn’t help people who couldn’t be honest with themselves.”
Peter stared at the table. It sounded like an echo of his own problems with Liza. “Did they finally tell you what was going on?”
“Your mother broke the spell and explained the situation,” Sierra said. The problem, it seems, was you.”
Peter drew back in his chair. “Was I causing problems?”
“I’m afraid so. Your parents were beside themselves as to what to do. It was tearing them apart, so they decided to come and see me.”
“How bad were the things I was doing?”
“Very bad, I’m afraid.”
“Did they spell them out?”
“No, but they alluded to them. Don’t you remember?”
“Not at all. I must have repressed the memories.”
“That is not uncommon in violent children,” Sierra said.
The kitchen fell quiet. A sense of enormous guilt came over Peter. To think that he’d done things that had nearly ruined his parents’ marriage was unconscionable, and he felt the overwhelming urge to bolt from the room. Milly had accused him of running away from his problems, and he forced himself to sit tight and face the music.
“You must have some idea of what I was doing,” he said. “Was I hurting other kids at school? I had a rough time when I first came to the United States. I was small, and my British accent made me stand out. I got into a fight with a bully at school who was picking on me. Was that what they were talking about?”
“No, it was not,” Sierra said. “Your parents told me that you had a demon inside of you. They said that you were born with this demon, and that when it showed its face, it was capable of all sorts of horrible acts. At first, I thought they were exaggerating, and blowing the problem out of proportion. After all, you were only seven, and how much trouble could a child that age cause? It was at that point that your father decided to show me the photos.”
“What photos?”
“Your father took photos of the things you’d done. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps he needed evidence to convince men like myself what you were capable of. I still have them.”
“Are they bad?” Peter choked on the word.
“Yes, I’m afraid they are.”
He glanced at Liza. She nodded as if to say it was okay.
“Show them to me,” he said.
Sierra produced a faded envelope from his jacket pocket, pulled back the flap, and removed a stack of photos. “I want you to know something. Up until now, I’ve shown these photographs to no one except Richard. I protected your family’s privacy, and will continue to do so. Your family’s secrets are safe with me, despite what you might think.”
“Thank you,” Peter said.
The stack was handed to him. Taken on a Kodak Instamatic, the color had faded but not enough to hide the horror of the images. The top photo showed Peter’s bedroom in the family’s apartment in Murray Hill. They had lived in a third-floor walk-up with rattling pipes and noisy neighbors. In the photo, there was shattered glass on the floor that appeared to be swimming in a substance that resembled catsup.
He stared hard. Not catsup. Blood. And there was a lot of it. Had someone died in his bedroom, and he’d not heard about it? It didn’t seem possible, yet the photo said otherwise.
His eyes shifted to the broken window in the photograph. There was a hole in the glass big enough for a man to slip through. The hole led to a fire escape outside.
“I don’t understand,” Peter said. “What happened?”
“Look at the rest of them,” Sierra said.
Peter laid the photos in a row on the table, and let his eyes drift over the disturbing images. After the bedroom came the narrow hallway, where bloody handprints covered the walls. Next was the kitchen, where the furniture had been turned upside down, leaving more bloodstains. Then came the study, where his parents held séances with their psychic friends and talked with the dead. This photo was the most troubling of all. In it, Peter sat in his father’s chair dressed in his Batman pj’s. His eyes were half open as if in a trance, his mouth twisted in a menacing snarl. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood, as were his hands. He looked more animal than human.
Peter looked across the kitchen at Liza. If she saw these photographs, things between them would never be the same. But if she didn’t see them, things wouldn’t be the same either. Whatever was left of his relationship with Liza was about to go up in flames.
Stacking the photos, he went to her, and placed them in her hands. “Here.”
Then he poured himself more coffee.
35
Liza shocked him. After she’d finished studying the photos-which she spent over a minute doing-she dragged a chair up to the kitchen table, sat down beside Peter, and placed her hand on top of his, clasping it in the process. She was going to go down this road with him, no matter where it took them both. What was the expression from the country-and-western song? “Stand By Your Man.” He wanted to hug her.
“Who did I kill?” Peter asked his two guests in the calmest of voices.
It was Sierra who replied. “You didn’t kill anyone. At least your parents didn’t think so.”
“But I hurt someone pretty badly.”
Sierra nodded gravely. No wonder he’d asked Peter if the demon inside of him had come out the night his parents had been murdered in Times Square. Sierra had already seen the demon, and knew the carnage it could wreak.
“Any idea who it was?” Peter asked.
“Your father said that the apartment house where you lived had been burglarized several times,” Sierra replied. “Late one night, a burglar broke the window in your bedroom, and tried to enter. That was when the burglar encountered you. He managed to get away, but only barely. Your father said there was a great deal of blood on the fire escape and also in the alley below.”
“Did I stab him?”
“You used the sharp edge of one of your toys.”
“Wow. Talk about a little demon.”
No one laughed. Peter picked up his mug and drained it.
“Your parents were torn over what to do,” Sierra went on. “Your mother was fearful that your demon was out of control and might strike again. The night of the burglary, your parents went over to a neighbor’s for a few minutes to see her new baby. This was when the burglar chose to enter your apartment. When your parents returned, it was your mother who found you.”