The Child Eater (24 page)

At one time the whole area might have been busy, for people die all the time, but recently a young queen brought in from a land across the Southern Sea had introduced a new custom: burial. Now the nobility and the rich stored their dead underground, with stone monuments to impress future generations. It was only the poor and the old-fashioned who fed the vultures.

Matyas stared out, narrowing and focusing his eyes until he saw them: a small handful of downcast people, only three or four in the traditional white robes of a funeral, and at their head a young woman in a ragged dress. She held that thing in her arms, the empty puppet that had once been her brother. Matyas could not imagine how hard that was, but Lahaylla kept her body straight, her head high even as she marched up the steps of the Offering Table.

Matyas might have expected her to shroud the body in some beautiful fabric, if for no other reason than to conceal the missing head, but no, she laid him out exactly as he was when Matyas had showed him to
her. She set him down without ceremony and immediately descended the steps to wait.

The vultures circled, arced, moved closer—and then climbed up again. Three times they moved down toward what looked like a body, and each time they soared up again, confused. Finally they simply gave up and went back to their patterns in the sky. Only then did Lahaylla begin to wail and sway and hold her head in agony. Thankfully, she was too far away for Matyas to hear her.

He turned around to stare at Veil. The old woman looked small and weak in her narrow chair. Matyas said, “I want to fly.”

Veil shook her head. “I've told you—”

“No more lies!” He stepped toward her and she stood up to face him.

“Why do you always think I'm lying?”

“Because you're so good at it.”

“The world has limits,” Veil said. “Structures. This is what Joachim and Florian created.”

“And the
other
? He was there, too. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“Break the rules. Tell me the secret.”

She sighed. “Matyas, do you see that black stone in the corner, by the stove? Bring it to me.”

“What?” He looked where she said, and yes, there was a black rock, about twice the size of his foot, just past the stove where he'd cooked their meals every day for years. He remembered now that he'd seen it when he first arrived, and probably hundreds of times since then, but he appeared to have forgotten it. He said, “If I bring it to you, will you teach me to fly?”

She shrugged. “We will see.”

In two steps he was there. When he tried to scoop it up it wouldn't move and he nearly pitched head first into the wall. He squinted at it. It was a trick, of course, like that climb up the stairway. He summoned all the spirits that hovered at the ends of his fingers to bring energy into his arms. He bent down and pulled so hard the veins in his neck threatened to break through his skin and send his blood flying in all directions. When it still wouldn't move, he summoned the spirits who slept under the tower to wake up and push from below. Slowly he felt it stir, half an inch, an inch. Then he heard terrified shouts, from the courtyard, he thought, but when he listened, he realized they came from people
all over the world. He dropped the stone and sent away his helpers. Exhausted, he had to lean against the wall to stand up.

Veil said, “You see? How can you expect to perform miracles when you cannot pick up a single stone?”

Matyas said, “
That was the night sky
. You crazy old woman, you wanted me to bring you the sky! What would have happened if I had done it?”

When she smiled, flickers of light came through her skin. “Then maybe you wouldn't need to fly.”

Matyas launched himself toward the alcove where he'd slept for six years. He grabbed the box from under the bed, quickly checked to make sure everything was in it, then held it against his chest as he rushed past her toward the door. He left the suit of clothes she'd given him under the bed.

“Matyas—” Veil said, but he didn't stay to hear the rest. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, worried she might turn it back into celestial steps and he would never reach the ground. He didn't care, he realized. He raced downward and thankfully they remained ordinary wood.

Outside, in the bright courtyard, a few people looked curiously at him, and at the wooden box he clutched so tightly. Then they looked away again and returned to whatever important matters were moving them through the day.

With the fear of the mythical Jessica Green hanging over him, Mr. Chandruhar did not try again to expel Simon. He did, however, send him home twice more, both times for fighting. Both times the principal greeted Jack with a defiant stare, arms crossed, certain that if necessary, he could summon witnesses to testify that it was Simon who hit first, Simon who had attacked some helpless innocent, Simon who was in fact the bully.

Jack did not have the strength to argue. He knew, he
believed
, with all his heart that his son was not some kind of violent sociopath. Simon had never been one of those children who tortured the neighbor's cat, who set fire to things. It agonized Jack that he had to even think of such things. Simon was a good boy. Until . . . until the troubles started, Simon had been a happy child. He'd had friends. Got good grades. Natural leader, isn't that what the day-care woman had called him?
What the hell had happened?

Jack couldn't believe that tearing up a stupid deck of cards could actually make his son sick. It made no sense. It had to be a symptom, not the cause. If Simon wasn't already sick, he wouldn't have reacted that way. Period. In fact—how could Simon have known? Jack kept going back to that moment when Carla called to say Simon had been taken
ill. It was just after Jack destroyed the cards, certainly well before Simon came home and searched for them. So that proved it, right? Because if Simon didn't even know what his father had done, that couldn't have been what made him sick. So when Howard Porter asked Jack if he could think of anything, any incident, large or small, that might have thrown Simon into such a terrible decline, Jack could only shake his head, with a thoughtful expression molded on to his face, and say no, there was nothing.

Sometimes, when he thought Simon was safely asleep—as if, Jack reminded himself, sleep could ever be
safe
for Simon Wisdom—Jack would go to his own bedroom and pick up the picture of Rebecca he kept on his dresser. There she was, in the park where they'd first met.
Look at her
, he thought. Smiling, bright, no sense of . . . You could look at this picture and almost believe his dad's favorite slogan had finally come to life:
more normal than normal
. “Oh, Bec,” he whispered. Was it his fault? Had he ignored all the warning signs? Indulged her too much? Laughed away all the psychic talk—or worse, pretended to believe it, in some misguided attempt to support the woman he loved?

If Jack had made Rebecca get some kind of treatment, maybe they could have . . . what? Stopped her trying to burn their infant son in the fireplace? When he thought of that night, he pressed Rebecca's picture against his chest, as if he could not bear to look at her, but even less to let her go. He thought of that awful, sick message splashed in paint all across the living room wall. “Remember!” Did she really believe he'd
forget
?

Howard Porter wanted to send Simon to specialists. More specialists. All they ever did was upset Simon even more. What was the point? he asked Howard. With a forced optimism, the good Dr. Porter explained that they would provide more information. Such as what? Jack asked, and Howard said the sudden onslaught of symptoms without any clear cause suggested the possibility of seizures.

Jack stared at him, as if to say,
That's what you call good news?
To which Howard said, all in a rush, yes, because if it was seizures, they might not be curable but there was treatment. Drugs. More drugs all the time. Better drugs. Hardly any side effects at all.
Better and better
, Jack thought bitterly, but agreed to let Simon undergo more tests.

Simon, however, did not care for the idea. Expecting this, Jack had suggested sedation, but Howard pointed out that they were scanning
Simon's brain patterns. So Jack tried the age-old parental three-pronged attack: assurances of no danger or discomfort, firm commands and, of course, bribes. Oblivious, Simon thrashed so much on the table that they had to strap him down, like . . . like a lunatic, Jack thought. A screaming lunatic in a straitjacket. At any moment he felt ready to demand they stop this torture and release his boy. But with Howard Porter at his side, occasionally gripping his arm, as if to reassure him—or restrain him—Jack let it carry through to the end. By then, Simon had in fact stopped resisting. When at last they unstrapped him and Jack rushed forward to help him off the table, Simon said nothing. And continued to say nothing for three days.

When the tests came back negative for epilepsy and any other signs of seizure, Howard insisted that this too was a positive step. “At least we've ruled something out,” he tried to say. Too exhausted to speak, Jack just hung up the phone.

A month after the “MRI incident,” as Howard called it, Jack received a letter from a Dr. Frederick Reina. The letterhead said “Reina Institute for Pediatric Neuro-Psychiatry,” with an address in Wisconsin. “Dear Mr. Wisdom,” it began, “I hope you will forgive this unsolicited letter. My colleague Dr. Howard Porter and I were discussing cases recently at a conference, and he mentioned your son's deeply troubling condition.”

Anger surged in Jack that Howard would treat Simon as some kind of interesting study. Upstairs at that moment, Simon was sitting on his bed, just staring at a blank television, and
Dr. Porter
thinks it's okay to
chat
to some stranger . . .

He took a deep breath and allowed hope to push the anger aside. The letter went on to say that Dr. Reina had seen such cases before and had good results with an intensive treatment he had developed at his Institute. Then it listed Simon's symptoms—the nightmares, the outbursts, the behavioral changes, even what Dr. Reina called “a fixation or terror of the paranormal.”
Who is this guy?
Jack wondered, for he was pretty sure he'd never discussed Simon's “fixation” with Howard—or anyone, for that matter.

The letter ended with the news that Reina was about to visit the area on personal business and might he come and examine Simon? No charge. If Dr. Reina, with Jack's agreement, of course, decided that treatment might prove beneficial, they could discuss a plan. He went on, “I do not know, of course, of your financial circumstances, but I have never
turned away a child in pain for monetary reasons. Restoring your son to health is all that matters.”

Jack didn't know what to do. Something in him wanted to tear the letter into small pieces and call Howard Porter to scream at him. But maybe Dr. Reina could really do something. He called Howard and asked him about Reina.

“I don't know that much about him,” Howard confessed, “but he seems to know the field really well.”

“You don't know him but you told him all about Simon?”

“Yes, it's a little strange, I know. He just seemed to understand, and I found myself telling him. Maybe he can help. I've got to be honest with you, Jack—I've run out of ideas.”

“Why didn't you tell me about him?”

“I'm not sure. I guess I was embarrassed I told him so much. I know your concern for privacy.”

Jack paused, then said, “Did you tell him anything . . . anything about the paranormal?”

“What? No. What are you—? Jack, please don't tell me you're going to some quack promising miracles.”

“No, no,” Jack said, then, “you think I should do it? Let him examine Simon?”

Jack could hear Howard take a breath before he said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

The letter listed a website, Reinainstitute.org. Jack called it up and saw photos of a large stone building in a woodland setting, more like an elegant estate than a hospital. It didn't say much about Dr. Reina's methods, but there were photos of smiling kids, and letters from grateful parents, and endorsements from prominent pediatricians, some of whom Jack had heard of from his own research. They mentioned the “slightly unorthodox” approach of what they called his “total immersion therapy,” but added that the results were “nothing short of phenomenal.”

There was a video as well, a couple around Jack's age sitting on a couch with a boy who looked a year or so younger than Simon. They talked with him a moment or two, just long enough to demonstrate how cheerful he was, how normal. When they asked him about Dr. Reina, the boy's face lit up and he said, “Doctor Reina's
cool
.” Then they sent him away and their whole manner changed. The woman began to cry and the man put his arm around her, then he started crying as well. They
told how three years ago Eric had changed, apparently overnight. He pulled away from them and all his friends, he couldn't sleep without screaming nightmares, he even became violent with other kids. And he started obsessing about . . . “strange ideas” was all his mother would say.

They'd tried everything: therapy, drugs, prayer. (
Just like me
, Jack Wisdom thought.) And then they found Dr. Reina. For a moment neither of them could speak, and then it was all “miracle,” and “astonishing turnaround,” and “blessing.” The video ended with the man nodding vigorously as his wife said, “Thank you, Doctor Reina. Thank you,
thank you
.” Jack watched it three times, then clicked on “Contact us” and sent Frederick Reina an email.

Frederick Reina arrived just five days later. He was a tall man, handsome, with greying hair around a young face, so it was hard to tell his age. He wore a dark gray suit with a blue striped tie, “banker's clothes” they would have said at Jack's office. He had a large gold ring on his left hand, stamped with some kind of insignia. His fingers were very long, Jack noticed when they shook hands. For just a moment, Jack had the strangest reaction, a feeling that he knew this man from somewhere, knew him and wanted to slam the door on him. All that vanished when Dr. Reina smiled at him. The man was so confident yet caring. And he'd come specially just to help Simon. What kind of person would Jack be if he didn't trust him? What kind of father if he didn't take a chance? It wasn't like he had any other options.

Jack had hoped Howard Porter could sit in on the consultation, but that morning an emergency had summoned Howard to the hospital. Maybe it was for the best. Simon might have refused to cooperate if too many grown-ups, too many
doctors
, ganged up on him.

When Simon first came downstairs at his father's summons, he shrank away and Jack feared he would run back to his room. Instead, Simon only squinted, as if he had trouble seeing Dr. Reina clearly, but when the doctor smiled and held out his hand, Simon appeared to relax and walked right up to him.

Jack was about to sit down next to his son when Dr. Reina said it was best if he talked to Simon alone. “I'll be right upstairs,” Jack said to Simon, who looked very young and frightened. The thought,
Something is wrong
, came into Jack's head, but then Dr. Reina nodded to him, and trust dissolved Jack's fears. “Just tell him whatever he needs to know,” he
said. Simon nodded.
Help him
, Jack thought as he left the room.
Please help him
.

Upstairs in his bedroom, Jack saw a pair of squirrels on a branch outside his window. Dots of light bounced around them as they stared at him. He opened the window and threw an old ballpoint pen at them, and they ran down the trunk.

The session lasted nearly two hours. Jack sat on his bed the whole time, hands together between his knees. He thought of phoning Howard, just for support, but he wanted to be ready for anything Dr. Reina—and Simon, of course—might need from him.

When Dr. Reina called him, it was all he could do not to leap downstairs three steps at a time. Simon was still sitting on the couch, his head bowed. Jack thought,
What have I done?
But when he looked at Dr. Reina, the man was smiling. Could it be? Could Jack finally have found someone who could help his son?

When he let the doctor wave him into the kitchen, the news sounded anything but good. “The situation is serious,” Dr. Reina said. Simon, he claimed, was suffering from a deep inner conflict that was causing his psyche literally to attack itself in a kind of autoimmune response.

“What conflict?” Jack said.

“We will not know this until I begin treatment. Of course, with your permission.”

Jack was having trouble breathing. “You think you can help him?”

“Oh yes. I can work with Simon to relieve his inner pain. I assure you, he will become once again the strong and healthy boy you have missed.”

“Oh God,” Jack said, “that's incredible. That would be so wonderful.”

Dr. Reina held up a finger. “I must warn you, Simon is in a critical condition right now. He must come to my Institute immediately.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“I return in three days. I will come for Simon then. You must have him ready.”

Jack thought of people he'd have to call to get away at such short notice. “No problem,” he said. “We'll be all set to go whenever you tell us.”

“No, no,” Dr. Reina said, “Simon must go with me alone.”

Jack leaned back. “No. No, I can't. He's never been separated from me. Never.”

“Exactly.” Dr. Reina nodded, as if Jack had given a correct answer. “You are deeply entwined in his psychic world. He needs to break from that world so he can heal himself. Do not worry—he will not become distant or hateful. On the contrary, I assure you he will return with his love for his father liberated.”

“Maybe I could get a hotel room somewhere near your Institute.”

“No. Simon must make a full break from his current psychic universe, and at the same time know firmly that his home awaits his healthy return. You are the essence of that home.”

“Wow,” Jack said. He sat down on one of the oak table chairs.
Don't do it
, he thought, and,
I can't just send him away
. Suddenly he imagined he could hear Rebecca, very distant, very faint, as if on a bad cell connection. “Jack! Remember!” Remember
what
? he wanted to shout. Instead, he looked at Dr. Reina. The man appeared so calm, so confident. And what had Rebecca ever done but hurt Simon? What had
Jack
ever done but hurt him? This Reina was the first person to offer any hope. He said, “All right. I'll have him ready Monday morning.”