Found: How Not To Be Fooled By The Denials Of Authentic Divinity, Part 1

user775203199:

My name is Gretta. I have a really weird problem I’m hoping some of you can help me with.

I’ve been dating this guy from Indianapolis for about eight weeks. About two months ago, he drove down here not to see me but to get his brother out of jail. That very night, his brother got shot and killed, and things kind of went sideways for us. My boyfriend, Nathan, started going through his brother’s things. Greg had been a bit of a recluse and spent time as a vagabond. I never met Greg, personally, but I understand he had a lot of problems. He was into some heavy stuff. Nathan had no idea.

About two weeks after the funeral, Nathan was still going through Greg’s stuff, but he got secretive and refused to explain anything to me. I thought he was just going through a rough patch, but then he disappeared for several days. A truck driver found Nathan stumbling naked out of the woods beside the road with broken ribs, a cracked hip, stab wounds, and other injuries. A detective investigating Nathan’s case notified me about two days later, but it was already too late.

They said Nathan was gone, but still alive. They locked him up in Hemwick and left the rest of us out of the loop. It took me a long time to finally get to see him, and with all the drugs, he seemed pretty out of it. He had moments, though, where he almost seemed like the old Nathan. Other times, he jabbered like an infant, as if the blubbering sounds entertained him.

During one of the more cogent moments, he gave me a packet of papers, secretly, like he didn’t want the orderlies to know. So I snuck them out, only to find gibberish. It’s strange gibberish, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized it might not be gibberish at all. I hope someone here can decipher it and tell me what my boyfriend is attempting to communicate.

Thanks in advance,

Gretta.

GrettaS:

Is anyone here good with ciphers?

My boyfriend is locked up in Hemwick, but he shared a letter with me written in a very strange script. Some people have made comparisons to various ancient and occult writing, but a linguistic analysis excludes every known language, modern or ancient.

The thing about this is that Nathan had a brother who got killed just before Nathan was admitted. I’m terrified that the letter has some evidence or information about Greg’s murder, and that the murderer will go free unless I can solve this puzzle.

Nathan is a ghostwriter out of Indianapolis, so I’m sure he’s inventive enough to make up a code that could defy local language and encoding experts.

    I need to write this down. There’s too much much much and I need it out. Out. Get it out. Broken like like an egg.

    As a kid, I’d always enjoyed the drive from Indianapolis to Bellington. Unless you like the fringes of suburbs or the seemingly endless farmlands the road isn’t all that scenic, but it had never been the view that excited me. I loved the trip because we were going to see Dad. Going on twenty years later, I still feel that excitement when I start down US 69. Dad’s long long long long gone, but the weight of all those memories has a momentum, like that anticipation of weightlessness on a roller-coaster hill, just before the drop, unnerving but so exciting. The feeling usually lasts until I pass County Line Road, where a series of billboards about Bellington housing begins. xxyssyxxnnvyr

What I noticed first was the smell. Old guy smell, sweat, maybe some urine, definitely some weed, and something that might have been diesel fuel.

    “Come see Tom Sceasen,” they said, in one one one way or another, in garish yellow letters. Tom himself was plastered next to the text, yellow hair obviously a toupee, smooth skin obviously makeup, smooth tan obviously painted. The picture screamed “used-car-salesman” with the psychic equivalaeaeaeent of what you might find after dumping a sewage filter.

    I knew about Sceasen from Mom. There were at least a hundred stories, anecdotes mostly, about how she and Dad had rented from this guy when I was too little to remember. Gregory would warn me not to get her started, grinning, right next to Mom, and she’d glance at him like he’d asked the detailed questions himself. Twenty minutes later she’d still be fuming, close to yelling, scaring me with her rage. I came to hate private economics. And Tom Sceason.

    Greg had a way of dealing with Mom I never understood. Her flashes of anger, like sudden summer storms disguised as migraines, shed their fury and left me weary and hurting like I needed caffeine and darkness to recover. Greg saw something different, though, something even Dad had never seen. He explained it, one time before he went off to the Marines. We had photo albums like other families, and he opened one with me, showed me these pictures of her as a little girl, gold hair wild like a lion’s mane. These were slices, he’d told me, pieces of pie vvrtyrnlyrr between bigger pieces of awful spinach. He knew I hated spinach, and he knew how to use that to explain Mom’s childhood. I hadn’t understood at the time. I get it now, mostly, but I’ll never ever never ever never Lucyneverever see it like Greg had, back then.

That was before military service ripped him out of our lives, molded him into a Boy Scout, then hand-delivered a ghostly shell back to us that just sort of looked like Greg. He aged fast. The last time I’d seen him, he had a beard shot through with gray and white, and weathered cheeks like pictures of frontiersmen. He’d been in and out of rehab, in and out of the hospital, in and out of jail. He’d never hurt anyone, but he wasn’t afraid to steal, even on camera. I still got harassing calls from lenders he’d borrowed from those first years after Afghanistan.

    Greg was the reason I stopped on the ramp down to 69 to pick up the hitchhiker in the faded Army coat roat boat toat loat. I guessed the guy was homeless, but he had that coat over his torn flannel and some kind of lounge pants that looked like they’d been made after someone killed Grandma’s 1980’s sweater. He had the thumb out, though, and so, remembering my brother and why I was going to Bellington, I stopped.

    No. Don’t stop. This is where it goes wrong. Just turn around, go back go back go back go back back back to the house. Drink beer and forget. Watch that girl’s boobs on the singing show. idoldolidoldoldoldoldoldollllll

    The hitchhiker had been sitting on his stuff, which turned out to be a backpack stuffed to bursting and a worn and ripped trash bag holding what looked like clothes. I tapped the door-lock button as the guy ambled up to the car, and he put his stuff in the back seat before joining me.

    What I noticed first was the smell. Old guy smell, sweat, maybe some urine, definitely some weed, and something that might have been diesel fuel. The combination was unpleasant, and I struggled not to fret over how that odor was going to linger on the car seat. I didn’t want to be so shallow. I didn’t know anything about this guy, or what he’d been through, but that smell–the best courtesy I could do him was to keep my mouth shut about it.

    “Name’s Kyle,” the guy said. I got, “Nathan,” out before he took off and I realized that not only had he not heard, that he probably couldn’t hear, and that it was probably psychological, not physiological. Psmychological. Psmycelial.

    “Thanks, man, appreciate it. Not many stop, anymore, not many. Don’t know what happened to people, but they ain’t nice anymore. Been a long time. Been on the road a week now and nobody stops to help a guy. Hell, I’m going down to Kentucky, got to see my brother, and you’d think I’d just got out of jail or something.”

    And the people here think I’m…troubled.

    He had a way of talking, through all of that, like he was stuck on a rail, and wherever the track turned, that was where he went, even if it meant he was hanging on by his fingernails. I said I was going south to see my brother, but he went right on like I’d never said anything. His side of the conversation didn’t require that I speak at all.

    “You ever been to Louisville?” He said it like “Lewis-ville.” I said that I’d been there a few times with my wife, but he never heard. “You’d like it down there. Lots of pretty country, east of there, lots of horses and stuff. Never been on a horse, myself. Got to pay for that sort of thing. Times are hard. You ever been to Louisville?

    “Of course, nobody goes to Louisville these days. Times are hard. Money’s going away. Nobody’s got money anymore. Guess it went with the nice. I been down to Louisville a few times, always liked it there. Hey, they got these pastures and green hills east of the city, spread out like some kind of grand blanket, like God wanted a picnic or something. You ever see that? Like an old blanket your grandma made way back when? Back when people were nice? You ever see it?

    “I come from Minneapolis, St. Paul area. You ever been up there? St. Cloud? I lived in St. Cloud. Hey, we’re going through Martinsville, right? They say that KKK never died out there. I’m on my way to Kentucky, but it’s a long road, and nobody wants to stop and help a guy. Times are hard. I was driving a truck back in Chicago, back in the day, and them blacks is everywhere up there. Not like down here. Everywhere. You got to watch out. They brought the AIDS virus with them. You know? Brought it out of Africa. I saw that shit on TV back in the day. You can’t listen to what people say nowadays. They brought AIDS, man. Brought it here. I don’t get why they don’t stay in Africa.”

    It’s a thirty-five-minute drive to Martinsville, depending on traffic and how far I bend the speed limit. Kyle went on like that the entire trip. He’d ask me questions, then move on before I could answer, always ignoring whatever I said as if I hadn’t spoken. It was like he needed a wall of sound to keep me and any personal questions at bay hay bay hay bay lay day way shayayayayayaya. Can I get a sandwich? I should have said something about his obvious racism, but I expected it to be like talking to one of those Kentucky horses he kept bringing up.

    “My brother lives down there. I ain’t seen him since we were kids. Like he’s a ghost or something. You know? I got put up for adoption when I was three, so I barely remember him. He found me about a month ago. Hard work, that, real hard. I thought it must have been ‘cause he wanted to see me, you know, but turns out he has the cancer and was looking for money. I know how it is, though. You need them operations. Doctors. Bunch of thieves, you ask me. They want you addicted to their pills, and that’s it. Don’t want to fix anything. Just keep you addicted. Everybody needs three or four prescriptions, you know, and one of them’s got to be at least a hundred bucks a month. Man, I ain’t made a hundred bucks all year. How you supposed to live like that? You get cancer, you don’t, you know. I got liver failure. Too much beer and weed, I guess. Never heard of weed killing a man’s liver, but times are hard. I’m going to Kentucky man. You ever been down there? Nice green hills out east. So pretty. Like a blanket for a picnic. Got to see my brother. He just wanted money, you know, but I forgive him. Ought to see him before one of us dies, right?”

“Hey,” I said, loud enough that he stopped. His eyes widened and he jerked back like I’d tapped him between the eyes.

    I wanted to talk about Greg, but a conversation with this guy wasn’t going to happen. The parallels, except the ranting about doctors, kept my attention. He talked about his brother more, some carpenter in Louisville with three kids, a dog, and no money, about how the guy was an advocate for cutting back all the minority support programs, especially for African-Americans. He said “African-Americans” sarcastically, like a swear word, and went on again about AIDS. I said they were just people, but he didn’t hear, didn’t stop to listen.

    When the conversation went back to his brother, I tuned him out. His racism had me edgy, and more than once I thought about stopping the car and kicking him out. It was easy to imagine him just getting out without complaint. He seemed tolerant with his prejudice like he was with his illness and his desperate brother.

    Kyle stopped talking. He was looking out the window. He hadn’t met my eyes. Like the constant barrier of sound, I thought it was a defensive thing. What had he said, just then?

    “–Your brother is in trouble. You might want to pick it up a little.”

    I frowned. Surely not. How would he know about Greg? I hadn’t gotten a word in edgewise the entire trip.

    “–was at the bus stop in Chicago, man, and they came out of the security office to give me shit. There was two of them, big men, like wrestlers or weight-lifters. Black as can be. They said I had to leave. I don’t know why they was picking on me, except they was racist, man. I don’t know why they just don’t go back to Africa. I saw the news, man, saw it all. They carry AIDS like a dog carries fleas. But times are hard.”

    “Hey,” I said, loud enough that he stopped. His eyes widened and he jerked back like I’d tapped him between the eyes. “What did you say about my brother?”

    “You got a brother, man?” he started. “I got a brother too. He lives down in Kentucky. That’s where I’m going. I’m from Minnesota, originally. St. Cloud area? You ever been up there? Blacks up there too. Not like down here, but you gotta watch out. Hey, my brother has the cancer, man. He’s dying. He wants money, but anybody can see I’m as broke as a stick. Lived on the streets a while now. You ever been down to Louisville?”

    “No, you said something about my brother.”

    Kyle glanced out the window. “Ain’t nothing like family, man. You got to take care of each other. That’s why I’m going to Kentucky, to see my brother ‘fore one of us dies. I ain’t seen him since I was three, and I don’t even know if I remember that. I got liver failure. I hope you ain’t got noooooooooothing. You ever see Louisville? Pretty, pretty country out east, man, like some kind of picnic blanket. Times are hard, though. I know how it is. I know what it’s like to lose a brother, man. I know how it is. Times is just hard.”882234551234n

    I let him out at a gas station in Martinsville. He mentioned the KKK again, like a talisman, and I didn’t even feel bad about not taking him those twenty or so miles the rest of the way to Bellington. I gave him change from the tray in front of the gear shift when he asked for coffee money.

    “Times are hard, man, I know how it is,” he said as I dropped eight quarters in his palm. “God bless you.”

    I didn’t say anything to that. I felt sick, but a part of me wondered if I was the sick one. I didn’t know what this guy had been through. There was no excuse for the prejudice though.

    Back on the freeway, I passed eighty miles per hour before I realized it. That was only ten over the speed limit, and faster than I usually drive. I couldn’t get those words out of my head. Your brother’s in trouble. You might want to pick it up.

    When wasn’t Greg in trouble?

    I passed another billboard with Tom Sceason plastered across it, his yellow hair faded, his face flaking where irregular rectangles of paper were peeling off.

#

    Gregory didn’t look all that different from Kyle as he shuffled into the Department of Corrections meeting room in an orange prison jumpsuit. They shared the same ginger hair shot through with gray and white, similar beards, similarly worn skin. They had become old men. Greg’s eyes were red, though. I knew he’d been using again. He couldn’t get away, and I didn’t know how to help.

    I shouldn’t beebebebeeebbeee so hard on a man bereft of self. They ripped it out of him and then stomped it on the floor, stabbed it a few times, and soaked it in cyanide a few years before they put it back. It doesn’t fit in the hole it came out of anymore.

    Unlike Kyle, Greg kept his face down, his gaze on the floor. He jerked periodically, like he expected to be struck, only there was no one there. The security officer was three steps behind my brother, and I was a dozen feet away, sitting in a cold, uncomfortable, fold-up chair. Greg dropped into the seat across from me and bit his lip.

    The guard nodded once to me, then backed away. He crossed his arms at the door, close to the wall, but like he was holding it up with invisible force from his spine, not like he was leaning on it. Oil gleamed on his bald head, reflecting the sterile, fluorescent light the same way his eyes did.

    “I got to say, it sure is good to see you.” Greg glanced at me, flashed an embarrassed smile, then stared at the table.

    I missed the old Greg so bad my eyes stung. “Your lawyer says his hands are tied. This is your third offense, Greg. And they found meth in your apartment.” I’d spoken to Ben Willis on the phone before I left Bellington, and his words at the time were, “He’s fucked.” I’d known Ben since college. We weren’t friends, but we’d had classes together. The profanity was a new twist, but it mirrored the same frustration that had blanketed me for years.

    “I got a will,” he said.

    I blinked. “What?”

    “It’s all pretty. Last will and testament of one stoned vagrant. You can call yourself a vagrant, right?”

    The flimsy chain of his words reminded me of Kyle more than I liked.

    “Greg, you need to check into a hospital. I’ve taken care of bail again. It’s thirty-thousand this time, by the way. You run, and they take my car and everything.”

    That probably wasn’t true, but sometimes my difficulties in taking care of my older brother seemed to be the only thing that got his attention.

    “There’s money. In the will. It’ll cover your car and the bail. I would have left part of it for Mom but…”

    I glanced away in the silence that followed. I never knew what to say when the tough subjects came up. My brain filled with fog.

    “If they let me out of here,” Greg went on, “I want to take you out to eat. You know, like a proper older brother. We haven’t done that since…”

    Another prolonged silence. We hadn’t eaten out since before the Marines.

    “I just want you to know I’ve always been proud of you, Nathan.”

    I met his eyes, and like always, I saw the ghost of the brother I had known in face of the unreliable brother I had now. I shrugged.

    “It’s your third strike, Greg. They’re not going to let you out.”

    If anything, Greg looked amused. “Alexi will take care of me.”

    “Who’s Alexi?”

    He leaned close. “Anyway, I didn’t want the will thing to surprise you. You know. Just in case.” Underneath the fresh shower they had given him, Greg smelled a lot like Kyle. Old-man sweat and weed.

    Just in case what?

    The truth was that I had long expected one day to get a call about how they had found Greg face down in a ditch somewhere. There wouldn’t be a will. There wouldn’t be any money. My brother lived hand-out to hand-out.

    “There’s actually a lot I need to talk to you about. After we eat, we can go back to my place.”

    I laughed. I almost blurted out that six months ago, his “place” had been a cardboard box under a railroad bridge. He had a pained look in his eyes.

    “Your place? It’s hard to not be skeptical, Greg.”

    His lips compressed. Was that shame, under there? A bit of trampled dignity? I wanted him to feel a little bit of the embarrassment I’d been bottling up over the years. I shouldn’t have, but this wasn’t the first time I’d bailed him out of jail, and roughly half the time, he broke bail and I lost all the money I’d posted. I’d do it again. I’d do it every time, but it still hurt and having to explain to my boss where I’d been wasn’t fun.

    “People change, Nathan.”

The smile withered. “It was the only way I was sure you’d come.”

    “Not that I’ve noticed. Look, it doesn’t matter. As I said, they’re not going to let you out. Usually, they process it while I’m standing there, but this time they said it would take higher approval, and they told me to get lost. It’s the third time, man.”

    “It’s probably just a lunch break,” he murmured. He had turned sideways, away from me, and now stared at the floor instead of the table. I shouldn’t have laughed at him. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. It was difficult to stop.

    “Lunch break? The judge set the bail at your arraignment. Either you pay it or you don’t. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I paid for it, but they told me it would be a while. I’m telling you, they’ve changed their minds.”

    He shook his head. Was that a hint of a smile? “Alexi will take care of me.”

    “Who’s Alexi? Sounds foreign. He a friend?”

    Greg turned back to me, put his hands on the table between us. Scarred fingers attested to his rough life. I knew he had been beaten. There had been a hospital trip or two, one of them I’d paid for. I’d suspected others. Would those scars ever match the ones on the inside?

    “I’ve met some people, Nathan. Friends. They’re–not like–other people. They’re not like–me. But they’re nice. I want you to meet them. It’s going to change your life, when you start seeing c c c c cc c ccc cc c c c cc c-ing what I’ve seen.”

    I kept my voice even. I wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings, as much as I wished something would get to him. “Nice people changed your life? Then why are you in here? You stole from a pharmacy, Greg. They have cameras. You know they have cameras.”

    The smile withered. “It was the only way I was sure you’d come.”

    “What?”

    A commotion at the door caught my attention. An officer murmured in the guard’s ear, then left. The bald man walked over to us.

    “Well, Greg, looks like they approved your bail. Paperwork’s done, except for processing you out. Come on. Let’s get you changed.”

    I didn’t hear anything disparaging in the man’s voice, but it reminded me of people talking to their children. Let’s get you changed.

    Greg caught my hand. “It’s good seeing you again, Nathan. Meet me out front. I’ll see you in a bit. I told you Alexi takes care of me.”

    Then he was shuffling away with the guard, who gave me a parting smile, the kind people give automatically, to strangers.

    “Who’s Alexi?”

#

    I answered my phone as soon as I saw that it was Amy, only because I knew that if I ignored her, she’d call the front desk–right across from the lobby where I had been waiting–and make it embarrassing. She didn’t take petty all that well, and most of the time, that was me. Petty. I just wanted to remind her that she had left me.

    “Did you get in to see Greg yet?”

    Her voice was sleepy like she’d just gotten up from a naaaaaaaaap. There was a guy’s voice in the background. A careful breath steadied me. I didn’t need to hear a guy in her apartment any more than I needed her calling the front desk.

    “Yeah. He’s okay. Everything’s normal.”

    “Good. You sounded frantic this morning. I thought maybe…”

    “Sorry. I just thought I should let you know. I won’t, anymore, if you don’t want to know. It would make sense.”

    “No, Nathan, it’s fine. You’re fine. Don’t sweat it, okay. I’m glad you called. Did you get that paperwork?”

    Three years and the divorce still wasn’t final. And it wasn’t my fault. Not this.

    “It hasn’t made it to my house yet, sorry.”

    She cussed like a pirate. “Why does it take three days to mail something across town? It’s not like we’re in Kentucky.”

    I thought of Kyle and his picnic-blanket country.

    “I know. As soon as I get it I’ll sign and fax it to our lawyers.”

    “Okay. Thanks, Nathan. I…I know this hasn’t been easy on you, and I’m sorry for that.”

    Sometimes, I almost thought I heard the woman I’d married. Why was it the people in my life started out great and then became strangers over time, the kind of strangers I couldn’t bear to talk to?

    “Look, he’s coming out, so I need to go.”

    “Liar. But all right. Text me if you need anything.”

    “You too.”

    I didn’t answer her, “Bye.” I let the screen go black on my phone, then stuffed it in my pocket.

    A part of me wanted to be angry that she was asking about divorce papers at a time like this, after dragging it out three years. I reminded myself that I was lucky. At first, she’d wanted more than her fair share of everything, just like the guys I knew told me she’d do, but over the last few months, she’d whittled her side down to a modest alimony check for five years, and full ownership of the framing and decor business she’d started with my money. Not that I had minded, then or now. It was her thing, not mine, and I had no business running a business.

    I stood up when Greg descended the stairs next to the front desk. He hadn’t seen me yet, so I started towards him. I stalled when a woman walked up to him. He grinned at her, much more openly than he’d smiled at me, and talked to her, showed her his paperwork and some kind of bill. He was still going on when I started over. Maybe this was one of Ben’s interns. It was from the back, but she looked younger than me. Maybe this was Alexi.

    Greg grinned again when he saw me. “Hey, Heather, this is my brother, Nathan, I’ve been telling you about.”

    Heather didn’t look at me, and instead squeezed Greg’s shoulder. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said quickly. “But I’m late, so I better be going.” Without glancing my way, she scurried off.

    Okay, so who the hell was Alexi?

#

   Greg tapped the dash of my car like an excited kid.

    “Here. Here. Turn left here.”

    We had just crossed the 3’rd Street bridge over 465, and the next turn went down to McDonald’s and some other, fancier places. I tried to remember if I had never been up that street.

    Greg’s tapping moved from the dash to my shoulder. “Turn left here, Nathan. Come on.”

    I slowed the car, then stopped rather than cut off a guy in the black BMW darting past me on the left. I bit back my usual litany of swearing and followed the blue and white crest through the intersection.

    “Where are we going, Greg?”

    He grinned, showing brown and broken teeth, some lined with black. It was a kid’s smile, though, like the tapping. I struggled again to remember, this time to recall when I had last seen him excited about where he was or where he was going.

    “I told you, I’m buying supper.”

    “What? McDonald’s?”

    He gave me a sideways glance, then flinched, like he had back in the station. Whatever that was, it was new.

    “No, little brother. Keep going.”

    I rounded a sharp corner, then another, going past the golden arches, and on up the street.

    “There,” Greg pointed, his hand blocking my view.

    “Jesus, Greg, what are you, five? I have to drive, man, and I can’t see with your knuckle in my eye.”

    He pulled his hand back into his side of the car but insisted I turn, so I wheeled into Cheddar’s parking lot and took a spot, one of few near the doors.

    “You’re buying supper? Here?”

    “Right on, bro. Come on.”

    He clambered out of the car.

    “They’re not even going to let you in,” I called after him, then sighed as he swung the door open and went in without me.

    I took a slow breath. I do that a lot. It’s how I stay sane. Breathe slow. Think slow. When I was calm again, I followed Gregory into the restaurant.

    While it was clear that the hosts disliked Greg’s faded, dirty denim and old t-shirt, they also had not thrown him out.

    “Just two,” said a girl hardly old enough to be in high school.

    Greg glanced at me, still childish. “Can we have a booth?”

    I shrugged. “Ask her.”

    By that time I had resigned myself to a fifty-dollar supper. Greg usually kept things cheap. It had been a while since I had eaten out, and going on a decade since we had eaten together at a place like this. It wasn’t in my budget, but what the hell.

    The girl, her gold name tag said, “Sheena,” found an out-of-the-way corner, with a small, two-person booth, and told us Laurie would be along shortly for our drinks. She slid two menus onto the table and darted away like she might get into trouble for having allowed us into the place.

    “Get whatever you want,” Greg said. “Steak? Lobster? Oh, man, am I hungry.”

    I leaned closer. “When was the last time you ate?”

    “They fed me at the jail this morning. It wasn’t very good, though. Dried out. Not like this place.”

    A few glances showed me an inordinate number of people staring at us. Well, at Greg. I supposed I fit in, Dockers, Hush-Puppies, tastefully rumpled Oxford. I did my best to ignore them.

    Laurie arrived a moment later, and unlike Sheena, seemed completely unperturbed by my brother’s disheveled and dirty appearance. She smiled like we were all old friends, and was friendly enough about it that I almost believed it myself. I ordered tea and a slice of roasted ham with pineapple glaze and steamed green beans. It was modest. Greg asked for a T-bone and fries.

    He crouched over the table when she was gone and whispered. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

    I laughed at his childishness. I wanted to be angry at him, at all the trouble, but it was like he was the younger brother and I had snuck him out of school to goof off.

    “Talk away, man,” I said with a chuckle. “I’ve got all night.”

    Greg peeked at the other tables, as if someone might hear, then leaned back.

    “At my place. We’ll talk at my place. There’s so much. I don’t know where to begin.”

    I still hadn’t come to grips with him having a place. When was the last time he’d kept a job more than a week? Had he won the lottery? Or stolen something? Was that how he could afford a fancy dinner? My brother, the drug runner?

    “Look, I’m not going anywhere, okay? We can talk wherever you want, but here’s just as good as there.”

    For a second, my brother the soldier replaced the man before me. He watched me with discerning eyes, gauging depths and breadths with the same innate wisdom he’d used on Mom when I was a kid.

    “Later, Nathan. Later.”

    My eyes stung.

#

    After I pushed my empty plate away and wiped my mouth with the napkin, I leaned back in my seat with a smile.

    “This was a good idea,” I told my brother.

    “Wait until you get dessert. Seriously, get whatever you want. The chocolate mousse is amazing.”

    That made me shake my head. “Sorry, I’ll pass. My tea had more than enough sugar.”

    Laurie brought the bill, and Greg snatched it up before I could take it. I shook my head, too happy with the savory flavors of roast ham still in my mouth, and more than patient enough to wait out my brother’s zaniness.

    “Not too bad,” he murmured, scratching his armpit. I watched with interest as he pulled a silver-speckled debit card out of his wallet and tucked it into the folded receipt.

    “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises?”

    Another flinch, which he tried to cover by staring out the window like he was watching for someone.

    Laurie arrived and took the card. I imagined them returning shortly to say that it hadadadad been declined, then gazed at my hands in guilt. What if he really was cleaning up? What if the red running his eyes–and the dark around that–were leftover from his hard life and he wasn’t using again? 57fy4734ksr

    I didn’t let that hope linger. Even with this Alexi looking out for him, my brother had been this way most of his life.

    The waitress brought Greg’s card and the receipt to sign. He took care of that, so I insisted on paying the tip. “No, let me get it,” he whined.

    “You got the bill. Let’s share it like we used to. I got the tip.”

    Another rare grin. “Look, man. Thank you so much for coming down. I know I haven’t been the best older brother for a long, long time. It means a lot that you’re still here like you’ve always been.”

    I locked up. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t decide between telling him it was all good or that I’d always be there because I loved him. For a second it was like I was back in high school, paralyzed because Rachel Price had given me a mild compliment. 

    Greg wasn’t the only one with issues.

    “What I’m trying to say,” Greg went on like I hadn’t just spent an eon all but stammering, “is that you’re the best, and I want to make it up to you the best way I know how.”

    “Greg,” I said, “you don’t owe me anything. If anything I still owe you for taking care of me—when we were kids.”

    I almost said, “with Mom.”

    We left the table and started towards the doors.

    “There’s this place down on Whittingham you got to see. There’s a lot of hippies and weed down there but it’s relaxed, tucked away behind a grove of trees. They have the best food and it’s so cheap, man.”

She knows so much. Makes the hair stand on the back of your neck. You’ll see.

    “We just just ate,” I teased, laughing.

    Like Kyle, like his old self, my brother kept right on going. We slowed down at the entrance for an elderly couple, the gentleman struggling behind a walker.

    “You ever wander around Whittingham? Especially at night? Man, it’s like a different world. Four generations of hippie folk taking all the captain right out of things man. You can get a meal and a bed for mowing someone’s yard and doing some dishes. People let you right into their houses like it’s 1964 again. You just expect Lennon to walk out and say, ‘Hey man, what’s up?’

    “Oh, and I got to show you the dryad, man. There’s nothing like her. You haven’t lived until you’ve made it with the dryad.”

    The old woman scowled at us like we were calling her names.

    “Pottery,” I said, trying to cover for Greg’s hapless monologue. “He’s talking about pottery.”

    Greg giggled, on and on, as I pushed him past the old couple and towards my car. He was still giggling when I started the ignition. I had to help him with the seatbelt.

    “That’s not what I was talking about, but oh, man, she nailed it. Called you right on, dude.”

    “What are you talking about? Your friend from the jail?”

    “Alexi, bro. She totally said you’d say that. Pottery.” More laughter.

    I didn’t get the joke.

    As abruptly as it started, Greg’s humor came to an end. He was watching a car at the other end of the parking lot, where all I could make out was a bit of blond on top and dark glasses in the driver’s seat. Greg had always had good eyes.

    “We should go, huh?” he whispered.

#

    Maybe it was my good humor over Greg’s paying for supper. Maybe I was just enjoying hanging out with him. Between long stretches of manic dialogue where I couldn’t reach him, the old Gregory emerged. It was much like that long-predicted day when television advertisements took more airtime than the show, and the good stuff was sandwiched between the constant inanity. It was a game of listening for my Greg, the real Greg, to emerge for his thirty seconds of show-time before the commercials resumed, and I didn’t want the nostalgia—even sporadic—to end. So when he insisted on swinging over to that place with the hippies, I turned south on College and headed for that murky, studious area between the university and the high school, where we found Whittingham Road.

    Interspersed with clumps of small houses with limestone facades and frills of ivy were clusters of shops and diners. Eventually, we came to a narrow road where my brother tapped my shoulder with a, “There. There. That’s it. Turn there.” It looked more like an alley than a street, so I parked on Whittingham. Walking a few blocks would prolong the evening, I hoped.

    Greg went on about how the diner split off into a record store where you could trade a record you brought in for another just like it, even if the one you brought had already come from Rosemary Lane. Singles for singles and so on. Evidently, he spent a lot of time there.

    We were out of the car by that point, walking back half a block to the turn, nestled between two Victorian houses, small but elaborate, reminding me of a wooden effigy of bustles, lace, and high-heeled boots laced to the knee. A cat sat in the window of one house, calling to us but its voice lost behind the glass.

    “There’s one guy who comes in now and then you’ve got to watch out for,” Greg told me. “Scrapey Sam is his name. Scrapey. You’ll understand when you see him. He’s mean. If you take a record in, don’t let him see it. He’ll tell everyone it was his and you took it. Sometimes he spits. Not when he’s talking. Well, not when he’s talking with his mouth. Slobbery spit, the kind that stretches out like pizza cheese. Sometimes it’s white like that too. Like cheese I mean. Stretchy. It’s scary, but those are his good days. When he’s in a mood, you know, a real bad mood, he breathes like a horse and looks at you like you kicked him in the crotch. Those days, probably best to just go. He’s going to hit someone. Audrey don’t take his shit, though. She’ll call on Muscle Tim and Scrapey goes right back out, sometimes on his ass. Tim’s a small guy, but I never knew anyone so strong. He does pushups against the wall, you know, with his feet up on the wall. He’ll do them facing the wall, and not facing the wall. One of them is harder, you know, but I can’t remember which. Seems like if you’re not facing the wall would be harder. Have you ever done that? Pushups against the wall?”

    He got quiet again as we passed the stands of trees where the narrow street began. Shadows from some trees hid the street sign, but as we passed under an arch of bricks, like an old fire station had been there once, and all that was left was the part of the wall that framed the truck entrance, the scent of honeysuckle came strong, soothing. I thought of Mom, then pushed that thought away. Gregory, I noticed, was watching back up the street.

    “Waiting for someone?”

    Greg flinched and dropped his head.

    “You remember that time…” He broke off. I waited but remained silent. A guy in his twenties zipped towards us on one of those two-wheeled scooter things with the little motor whirring under the skateboard part of it, so we veered onto the sidewalk.

    “She’s real,” he said, finally.

    “Oh?” Was this one of his meanderings?

    “Alexi. You just got to talk to her. She knows so much. Makes the hair stand on the back of your neck. You’ll see.”

    “This a chat thing? New phone app? I mean, like Alexa?”

    His head swiveled towards me, and I couldn’t tell what emotion played out, there in the dark.

    “No, Nathan. Alexi. She’s my friend. She’s real. You’ll understand soon enough.”

    The street passed next to a sort of canal, or long pool designed to resemble a canal. On the other side, a small factory had burned down. Even in the dim light, the scorch marks on the brick looked like someone had taken black paint and splashed it upwards. A section of the wall facing us had collapsed. Greg pointed at the gaping hole.

    “You can start with her.”

    I stopped walking. “Who?”

    There was a man in the darkness, facing us. There was something wrong with the picture, but I couldn’t place it.

    “Her. The dryad. Go talk to her. You won’t be sorry.”

    “I don’t see anyone, Greg. Just that guy.” The man across the water stepped closer, out of the deep shadows, and I realized what was wrong. “Dude, there’s no one there but the naked guy.”

    Greg shook his head. “You’re not looking right. It’s the dryad, and she’s beautiful. Go. Talk. I’ll wait. She’ll blow your mind.”

    I shook my head and laughed. “I’ll bet. Come on. Let’s go look at the records.”

    It took a few steps and more verbal prodding before Greg joined me. After passing a dozen parked cars, spaced out over half a block, we came to Rosemary Lane, a combination restaurant and record store, on the first floor of a three-story building. The upper floors looked abandoned. Wooden panels made creepy eye patches on some of the windows. The place was yellow brick, and graffiti decorated the side of the building.

    At the steps up to the entrance, Greg paused, glancing up the street. Froze. Not breathing. Not blinking.

    “Hey, man. You okay?”

    He swallowed.

    I clapped his shoulder. “You’re scaring me. Come on. Let’s go in.”

    Greg started back up the street. “I forgot my wallet in the car. I’ll catch up to you.”

    “I’ll come with you.”

    He paused. “Nah. Go on in. I’ll be right back.”

    I laughed. “Fine, but you’re going to need these.” The keys clinked as I tossed them, then sailed, silent, until he caught them. My brother grinned, and once again I saw the real Gregory.

    “Thanks, bro. You’re the best. Hey.” He came back to me. Put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen. I’ve seen the face of god, okay. It’s not anything like you think. Nothing at all like you think.”

    His face was calm, sober, but his eyes were haunted.

    “Be right back,” he said, then, and moved back up the dark street at a fast walk.

    I stared after him, frozen by confusion, trying to remind myself that he was ill, that his talk was just talk. He was a user, and unstable to start with. That was what I told myself.

    Then.

#

    The condensed version of my brother’s death is as follows:

    One one two two two three three three three four four four four four. Testing. Fail.

    Gregory went back to Whittingham Road, but he didn’t go to my car. He went the other direction. He stopped at a flashy car, a Camaro maybe. Toreo maybe. Twaro, yaro, bonaro. The driver wore sunglasses and a hoodie. He got out, walked up to my brother, and shot him in the chest. The bullet ripped through Greg’s heart and shattered his spine. It was a big bullet. It was a big gun.

    I’ve wondered often how things might have gone differently if I had insisted on going back up the street with my brother. Would we now both be dead? Might it be me instead of Greg? I’m not a brave man. I think I would have tried to talk the guy down, even if it sounded like frightened whining. Would things now be the same?XOYOZONOMO

    Or would the killer have left instead, and Greg would be with me now?

    People tell me I can’t blame myself. There are too many permutations to calculate, permutations on permutations on permutations. It doesn’t matter. What gets me is that Greg walked back up that street knowing he was going to die, and I let him go alone.

    We know about the guy in the hoodie because a traffic camera recorded the event. Magically, the plates were too blurry to read. Magically, the list of Camaro owners, even narrowed down to an orange-ish, yellowish color, is too long and impossible to parse. Magically, the bullet, removed from Greg’s T6 vertebra, failed to produce distinguishing fingerprints or barrel striations to identify…anything other than the size of the bullet.

    The only good news, as Detective Lars Grace put it, was that so many people had seen me go into Rosemary Lane at just the right time that no one considered me a suspect. That didn’t seem all that convincing to me, and as he left my hotel room, I had to wonder if he had only told me that to put me at ease, as in so that I would make a mistake and implicate myself. I’m a ghostwriter, so a dozen variations of possible guilt, with motives, conspiracy, etc., came to mind quite quickly.

    Eventually, the police gave me the things Greg had been carrying at the time of the murder. The keys and wallet came in a sealed white bag. I had to go to the police station to get them. The very station where I’d picked Greg up that night. I sat in the car after it was over, wondering if he was in that building, lying dissected on a table or stitched back up in a cooler.

    Why, when I remember, is it always the bad stuff? Recollections of the past assaulted me, but none of the fun stuff, none of the happy things that made life bearable. This time it was when Mom came at me with garden shears and Greg faced her down. He’d been grown by then, and I’m afraid of how our lives might have changed if he’d been closer to my age. I remember doing stupid and embarrassing things to annoy them both. This led to conversations with an ex-girlfriend, and my ex-wife, the stupid things I’d done, things I’d said. How I’d told friends I planned one thing, then did something completely different, and found myself wondering years later if I had wrecked their plans or merely been annoying. Better people would have had the guts to ask and apologize. Better people recognized right off how bad it would be.

    The car turned cold, and I realized I’d lost track of time when I saw the meter maid a few cars down. He watched me as I got out and slipped my card through the reader, paid up, and gave myself twenty more minutes.

    When I started the car and the heat pushed back against the chill in my bones, I opened the bag. Greg had a wallet with a few bills, the credit card from the other day, and the stubs from three movie tickets. I had no idea Greg went to the movies. When was the last one we saw together?

    The card was a debit card instead of a credit card and had been issued by a bank called Cutter-Hurkley, so I looked them up online, found a number, and called about his accounts. Three hours later–and after a visit to a local branch, I had the account transferred to my name, an app on my phone to check the balances and sundries, and a pdf of the latest statement emailed to me. The biggest oddity was a regular payment of nine hundred dollars the third of every month. I called back about that, but the bank was unwilling to give information related to the identity of the payer. I thought that a little weird, and while the man on the phone agreed with me, he still wouldn’t budge on releasing where those payments had come from.

    Policy.

    I needed to get in touch with them, though, because whoever they were, they needed to be informed of Greg’s death.

    The other item of interest was a key on the keychain. It looked like a house or apartment key and had something tiny stamped on one side. I had to find a department store and use a magnifying glass to see the writing.

    “If found, return to 914 Barclay, Ste 6.”

    My map showed the best route to get there, so I started by heading over to the bypass to skip a few stoplights.

    When I was fourteen, Mom quit her job. She didn’t tell anyone, she just stopped going to work. I called Dad, but he told me he couldn’t do anything except send a little more money. We both knew there wasn’t any more to send. Days passed. Mom spent the last of her savings on clothes she bought online. We got two or three packages every day. I was angry and scared. I understood, perhaps for the first time, that Mom wasn’t in the same world as the rest of us. Some people can be that way and still function. Those people are awesome. At the time, I hated Mom. The day she shouted at me because I didn’t want to go out to the mailbox in the rain, I shouted back.

I opened the closets and checked the bedroom and bath. No cat litter. No cat food or tuna in the cabinet. I said as much, and Mom looked at me like I’d sprouted alien antennae and was threatening her with some kind of gun with little radar dishes and glass tubes on the side.

    I don’t remember what we said, exactly. I called her names. I said she was a stupid bitch. She grabbed the garden shears and started towards me. Greg came out of nowhere. At first, Mom didn’t see him, which was odd because he was tall. I remember that part clearly, how her eyes panned upward, and she slowed like a steam train where the engineer had killed the power, coasting with flat-footed steps that jostled her entire body.

    The look in her eyes, then, as she watched Greg, haunts me to this day. Sometimes I think that was one of the few times she truly understood how bad things had gotten. It was a sort of abject, bleak despair, the pinnacle before a plunge into screaming grief. I’d seen her lose it before that, and quite a few times since. Those were nothing like that day with the shears.

    Sometime soon, I would need to call her or go back to Bellington and try to explain what had happened. If she’d been any other Mom in the world, calling her would have been the first thing I did.

    The way the police were going, I doubted they would know what had really happened. I mean, we knew about the gunshot. Plenty about the gunshot. Nothing else, though.

    914 Barclay, Ste 6 was the address of the central offices of The Kandace Suites apartments, a series of buildings with plenty of trees and park-like areas between them. From the outside, at least, they looked significantly better than my apartment building. The doors were on the outside, with a heavy balcony for access to the second and third-story apartments. The buildings sported a mixture of siding, pale stone, and rich, red brick.

    A redhead with “Soozy” on a gold nametag worked the desk at the office. I showed her the key, explained who I was, that I was Greg’s beneficiary, and that I had proof of death and so forth.

    The necessary paperwork to take possession of the apartment took another hour. By the time it was finished, my energy was gone. Evaporated like spilt water in a desert, boiling away on sun-baked rocks. I was the crusty stain left behind.

    When Soozy said, “You’re all set,” I left the office and followed her directions towards Greg’s apartment, #8216.

    The memories kicked back in once I was walking. After the screaming and Greg’s intervention, I demanded to know how we were going to eat. Mom didn’t understand. Maybe she never will. Or maybe she just didn’t have an answer.

    We talked about it once, much later. After Greg had gone and returned, now changed. She’d turned older, grayer, not just her hair, but everything. “I look like a widow in some black and white movie,” she said. Alanis was on the radio again. Mom loved her videos, said this was like the voices, sometimes. Echoes of herself telling her story to no one, plying un-hearing passers-by for money for pills. She’d turned gray from a decade of Lithium, but the medicine never really helped with the problems. It just kept her calmer, quieter. Gray.

    I never liked Alanis as a result. Mom’s fault, nothing wrong with the music. Or maybe just my fault.

    I had to help her with some trash and cleaning. Treening. Fleening. Jeening. No big deal, and I worked while Alanis let that guy know exactly how she felt. Mom talked over her.

    “Get the tuna out for the cat.”

    I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “Mom, you don’t have a cat.”

    “What’d you do with it?”

    “Nothing. You never had a cat.” 645geet762h75

    I opened the closets and checked the bedroom and bath. No cat litter. No cat food or tuna in the cabinet. I said as much, and Mom looked at me like I’d sprouted alien antennae and was threatening her with some kind of gun with little radar dishes and glass tubes on the side.

    “I’m not going to fight with you about it. You got a cat, fine. You feed it.”

    That got her to follow me into the kitchen, where I went back to washing a three-day pile of dishes.

    “Let’s not fight about it, Nate,” Mom said. “I never wanted to fight with you.”

    “Oh, but you did,” I snapped. “Plenty of times. Came at me with big-ass scissors once too.”

    Silence, for a moment, long enough that I had to turn off the water and face her.

    “You,” she said, and her lips tightened and she fought a laugh, the crinkles stretching up to her nose and down to her chin. “You were such a firecracker.”

    “Mom, I was the opposite of a firecracker. I was the quiet, shy one. I still am.”

    Another shake of her head, and a shaky pointing of a pointer and middle finger. “Fighting ain’t no good. You never even remember what it was about. What was that toy you wanted? Some crazy robot thing.”

    I went back to the dishes. “We weren’t fighting about a toy.”

    “Yeah, Voltron, wasn’t it. Big cat robots flying around with laser eyes.”

    “No, Mom. I hated Voltron. Rich and Brian at school were always going on about it. I hated it. I never wanted a Voltron toy. Just stop. We were fighting because you quit your job.”

    She looked away like she’d been caught in the lie, but then she was grinning again. “Must have been another one of those robot things then. Hell, we were broke, Nate. Money only goes so far.”

    “Whatever,” I said. I didn’t want to fight either. I was tired of this fight.

    To be fair, I’ve gotten better at handling her lapses, and the medications keep her from forgetting to eat or shower. She can’t hold down a job, but between my payments and her disability, she does okay on that front. Conversations remain–interesting.

    Another time, maybe a year before that, she wanted to take her truck to pick up some lumber for a closet in the place she was staying, a place that explicitly allowed no alterations to the property. And, she didn’t have a truck. That time, when I tried to skirt around the topic and just steer her in a better direction, she turned on me with that shaky pointing of fingers and snarled.

    “You just remember, Junior, that this is your fault. Greg left because of you!”

    There isn’t a switch to turn these things off. Her words followed me across the parking lot. It didn’t help that I’d thought the same thing more than once before she said it.

    Maybe she was right. Maybe if I’d been less hostile, Greg would have picked a different path. Maybe he could have gotten a better job instead of going off to war.

    Maybe.

    I went up the stairs to the second floor and followed the doors down to 216.

At the door, I paused, took a deep breath. The last time I’d seen one of Greg’s apartments, it had made Mom’s look ordinary.

Once I had bolstered my resolve, reminded myself that if he had cleaned up, maybe it was unfair to expect the same disaster in his apartment. I pushed the key into the door.

“Excuse me,” a woman said in an alarmed voice. She was coming up the walkway towards me, a black lady with not-quite-shoulder-length hair in wind-tossed ringlets. “What do you think you’re doing?”

There. That’s all of it. No, don’t ask about the weird, repeated sequences or the numbers. My translator says they’re part of the text, not something we added on this end. If you don’t harass me, you’re welcome to send more.

76 signs off, and we don’t see anything from either of them for about two weeks. Finally, Gretta replies:

G: You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s all of it? This rambling nonsense?

76: I don’t think it’s nonsense. I think your boyfriend isn’t as gone as you’ve been led to believe, and he’s trying to tell you something. Maybe you should visit him again, and see if he has more of his story.