Unscathed

The day came at last. He waited for a decade, and waited no longer. He hurled everything he thought he needed. Socks, suits, two suits, no just one- socks, lots of socks. He slammed his case, and put on a hat. The rain stopped and silver blades of light painted the street opaque. He took the umbrella anyway, and went to the kitchen. Hunger pains erased his taste for coffee, but he didn’t want the doughnut left out from the night before. Someone took a bite out of it, and he doubted it his wife ate it, because he hadn’t seen Harriette eat since their son disappeared ten years prior to the day. No once changed the calendar since the last of the last of the kitchen staff left. He opened a door and took out the scissors. He sliced his bank cards, debit and credit cars, licenses and sos card. He worked it all out when he first decided to leave. He tossed the pastry out the window since he didn’t touch trash bags, and let the suitcase lead him to the front of the house. He smelled her fumes, her smokes, and heard her chants through the glowing  door at the end of the hall. “Azorozar... Keeper of doomed souls… hidden by unopened gates...Come home, come home, come home… Azorozar…”

He hurried to the front door, each step his untied laces slapped the boards. His heart wanted to burst from his ribs and roll back the other way. Her father’s words still tightened around his neck. He told her how she spent all hours in their son’s room,  speaking to it, “whatever that thing is-”.

The old man own frowned, his skin burned to last layer of remnant melanin.

“-But it isn’t just these phantasms, she doesn’t eat, she pulled the rest of her hair out...and then I found her teeth in the sink. She needs more help than I can provide.”

The old farmer beckoned his maid, who looked no older than fourteen, to his side, “I got somethin to say,” he coughed to her, oxygen tubes in his nose fogged. Tanks kept him alive, and pills kept his heart strong for years to come. He whispered something into her ear. Efraim noticed that her expression bore an unfaltering severity that remained static even as her bangs cut into her eyes, as if foreseeing outcomes of events she’s yet to learn of.

She crossed her hands, and came to Efraim. She poured him more water. Ice drummed against the glass. She whispered in his ear, “he says, when he was a boy- strange foreigners moved into the county. They spoke strange, and sang strange songs, didn’t celebrate christmas or july fourth. Soon after, all the crops failed, all the animals died, except for those of the strangers. And then he saw one of them flying naked across the night sky, lit up by moonlight with a trail of dancing animals behind them.  He told his parents. The next day they burned the whole family. Afterwards, the sun shined and the crops grew again. It was like a second christmas for them all. If you send Harriette to an institution, or leave her abandoned, he will burn her too. If you do her any harm, you will face the law’s judgement.”

Efraim left remembering one thing Harriette told him before they married, that she remembered having several brothers and sisters as a child, but the number narrowed down to one brother and one sister by the time she graduated high school, and neither one showed up to her wedding to Efraim. She was 23, he turned 47. They had one son, cliven. Efraim owned several buildings in downtown Omaha, and The Midwest American Shopping mall on the outskirts of Falls Bluff, in between Highway 73, and highway 159, where his father-in-law lived. In agreement for consent, he moved there too.

Cliven disappeared after his eleventh birthday. He held the hands of harriette and Efraim as they walked through the wall on its advent opening. Tourist came to the town from Omaha, Kansas City, and even a few from as far as Vancouver stopped at his mall. Many other highway travellers stopped along their journeys. Locals didn’t come to his mall. They didn’t need a kitchenware store that sells pot lids for three hundred dollars. They didn’t need a clothing store for spoiled rich girls spending daddy’s money, they didn’t need a clothing for for spoiled rich girls spending “daddy’s” money either, nor one for burglars that sold balaclavas and shirts designed to catch falling body hairs, nor one for cowboys, nor one for crossdressed mannequins, nor one for cross dressing cowboys.

Efraim wanted to see the hardware store. Each floor panel acme from a different breed of wood, with the cheapest along the outside, with the rarest rainforest wood at the center of the store. He admired howed immaculate the wood cutter sliced the logs used for racks. Cliven ran his hand down the racks. They felt smoother than glass. As his parents gushed over the handiwork of perfectly aligned lap joints, the toy store caught his eye. A plush duck winked at him from the display window. He reminded his parents over and over of the toy store’s existence. Efraim ignored the tugging with annoyed silence, but Harriette smiled at him. “We can just look.”

To cliven, the store fell open for him like a never ending garden. He wanted everything inside, even the things that his father and mother purchased for him already. Efraim wanted the paint shaker he saw even though he needed nothing painted and groaned when he saw his son’s face light up at the world enveloping him. He hated spoiled children, and he told Cliven to put back every single thing he pulled from a shelf. Cliven put them all back feeling knives of shame that his father did not admire these machines of imagination as much as he did machines in the hardware store. Yet it only made him desire them more. “Nothing made in China” Efraim made the excuse. Then Cliven insisted that he choose his father a toy. He marched over to a small corner. Harriette followed him and looked at what he showed her.

“How about these?” Harriette showed Efraim puzzles of rings and iron keys interwoven. “These are domestic.”

Efraim inspected the metal, and the packaging. US Steel. He told Harriette that he wanted a paint shaker for Thanksgiving, and grabbed three more.  The clerk rang them up, but gave his card back. “The computer says its no good.”

“Try this one.”

“No dice.”

“This one…. This one…”

“These work everywhere else?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any cash?”

“What?!”

He asked the clerk about credit since and as they negotiated Cliven widened the hole in the inside of his jacket. He lost his battle with composure. His mother looked deeply into her shopping bags. He didn’t know if he’d ever see another puzzle like this ever again, so he reached up the counter as his dad showed the clerk credentials that he owned the mall, took one of the puzzles, and stuffed it into his secret compartment. He kept clutching it.

“Oh really, Why didn’t you say so?” the clerk laughed.  For the first time Harriette noticed he looked a lot like a boy that went missing from her graduating class, but she never learned his name, so didn’t ask.“We have the real toys in the back.”

Harriette saw her son fidget. “Dearest, Cliven needs the commode.”

Efraim walked with his wife and son towards the gate, and dialed  the bank on his phone. Horses of exhilaration galloped through Cliven’s heart. He grasped the puzzle harder to make sure it didn't slip into the furthest recesses of his jacket.  His father yelled at someone. “-then why are my cards declined!” He kept demanding information as they came close enough to hear the traffic stream past. Cluttering steps, compressed conversations roared fast. The air smelled different. It smelled to Cliven, like a new puzzle, but the nearer he came to the blurring river of strangers the more he felt their eyes pressing  through his clothes to the contraband he hoped to smuggle free. A security guard in a white uniform browsed the snacks outside. Cliven never felt like such a fool in his life. They didn't care if they saw him take anything, because the guards stop shoplifters, not the workers. The guard just had to wait for him to walk out. Witch only feet from the gate Cliven made ten thousand wishes for the guard to leave. He prepared to toss it out before anyone saw him, and he’d claim he found it. Full proof. His mother tried to take his hand, but no matter how she tightened her grip around his forwarm he did not let go of the puzzle. They crossed the gate. The security scanners kept blinking. With one foot still in the store, Cliven prepared for a headone on collision, as he bit, swallowed his last spit, and lifted his foot from the store into the concourse. The scanner blinked and stayed silent.

The columns rose over Clivens’ head to the ceiling so high and dark he thought he no human, alive, not even ones with wings, could possibly get up there to clean it. The lights dangled overhead. One creaked and flickered. Cliven stood under its halo. He heard the whip crack of chain links splitting, and he looked up to see the cascading Erinyes.

Harriet and Efraim heard it too and both leapt out of its way. Harriette pulled her sons arm, but only managed to wring the puzzle from his grasp as Efrain pulled on the opposite arm. They let go as powder shot into their eyes. A shotgun blast sfittled the traffic.

But they found no boy under the fallen light. No blood, no fibers from his shirt nor rubber from his soles. Harriette still held the puzzle, and it strayed the last atom of his being. Police blocked highways and checked every passing car. The search followed the highways to the coasts, still they found no one. Investigators from Dallas, Chicago, LA, St. Louis, London, Moscow- Efraim even hired PIs that operated in the Caribbean, as well as former CIA agents that monitored drug and arms trafficking across Azerbaijan to watch airports around the world for his son. Each investigator reviewed the same footage, but only one thought it precise enough to drive to the scene that night.

After an eight hour ride, he arrived fatigued and hungry at the Mall’s empty parking lot. He looked over at the shining roofs of dilapidated factories. The power plant blew steam from its tower. The store opened at 8am, he looked at his watch. 630. The sun just rose. He walked through litter and to the door, where he hoped to see security or a janitor. No one bothered the mall, though it still looked as clean as the day the construction companies moved off. Even the front door opened for him as if never locked. He peeked inside, slid inside, and left after 25 minutes. The eight hour drive tired him out, but he left the mall gasping, his heart healthy enough to race him back to his car.

Harriette left town every week to shoot skeet. The investigator found her at the shooting ranges. her husband talked to him- she didn’t even know that an investigator still worked for them. He approached, “What kind of gun is that?” He asked her as she loaded shells. He slung a Remington 1110 over his back. A full box of shells sat by a trail of intact discs lay scattered about the grass.  

“Looks like you know exactly what gun it is.”

“It may be a Caesar Guerini, but I’ll have to hear it from you to believe it.”

“Yes, it is.” A visor kept the sun from stabbing her eyes.

“Wow. Here I was thinking only olympic athletes used those. You must be a talented sharpshooter. How many contests have you been in?”

“I dont compete.” she rigged a disc into her hand thrower., “Just… helps to get out in the morning.”

“I stopped after I got shot. Shot tore right through my body, missed all vital arteries. Just couldn’t stand much gunfire after that.”

She hurled the disc. It hummed over the tall grass. She fired. Gunpowder filled the air and blew over the grass. Pieces of clay rained. She rigged the next disc in.

“I hear you lost your boy... Terrible thing.”

She fired. Her disk landed in a bird’s nest. She turned and faced him with smoke spilling from the barrel.

He reached into the box, and handed her the next disc.

“Did you know your husband owes four hundred thousand dollars to twelve different criminal organizations?”

“He’s in business…”

“With these people: Vincent Cammarata, Capo of Greater St. Louis. Marco D'Amico Consigliere of Chicago-”

“You think we did it. Get in line.”

“No, I only suspect you little. Cops already have your phones and laptops. There’s not much more I could investigate. That leaves ones possibility that concerns me.” He reached into his pocket, and Harriet feared he’d pull out another slug, load his weapon and fire it at her before she gave up her trust on him. He did something far worse. He pulled out the puzzle of rings and keys.

“You broke into my home.”

“Garbage. Keep it, because if you ever find a sign of that boy again, you’ll need this to get to where he is… if I’m right.  I know a ...specialist. He calls himself “Ashgabat”. If I’m just getting word of this recently, then he’s known about it for weeks now. Better not let him have it. Whatever you do. Don’t let him have it. He told me about a case like this. A demon named Azorozar was trapped in the tomb of a powerful king. The tomb sat on top of a hill, and people saw the smoke from its funeral rituals from miles away. They didn’t even put a door on it- and no one ever tried to steal from it. The shepherds warned anyone unaware of the curse- Anyone that stole the treasure would be trapped there until the king came back from the dead and released them. I don’t think your son- or any of the others that have gone missing there- ever left.”

Further searches brought no results. Any suspect got out without trial. Efraim put plans in order to sell the house, and move away, with or without Harriette. She spent hours in Cliven’s bedroom, taking apart and reassembling his puzzle. Black suits came knocking on his door, and by the end of their short visit, he lost his buildings downtown to them.

No matter how he insisted, Harriette refused to leave Clivens room. He looked through the keyhole once to see her squeezing into his tiny clothes. “He’ll return,” she told him every time.

“No, no.” He wept to her. “Azorozar took him. I thought it would protect the store.”

“Azorozar will bring him back to us.” She told him.

He watched her habits change. She used to do things ladies her age did, but one night while Efrain slept his servant shook him awake and lifted him onto his shoulders, ran him through a haze of red smoke, to the front lawn where they both took in fresh air and choked. “Gas leak!” he explained “Where is the Mrs?”

Efrain told him to look in the child’s room, and the servant rushed back into the fumes blushing through the wallpaper. The paintings on the wall warped. Vapors rose from the vents. He thought only of smoking mines burying towns in soot. Reeking orbs glowed from the open doorways. Only one stayed closed in the dark hall, the space under the door it’s keyhole beamed crimson.

The door flexed against the frame. The plaster cracked. Inside he heard the Mrs cooing like a kindergarten teacher explaining snow to her young captives, but her words didn’t match her tone. The language she spoke jammed vowelless sequences with long, sighing breaths. “Z’r’z’r-j’ym’g’g, m’thr’ms.”

The servant called for her through the haze fuming from under the door, coughing and sweating, his intestines twisting and his stomach boiling, his vision blurred under stinging tears. The more of the fumes he breathed in, the more grains he tasted on his tongue boring cavities in his barred teeth.  He wrapped his tie around the handle of the door but the handle melted and burned through the floor. He called for the Mrs once again to stand away from the door. He opened doors for them, but in the military he piloted armored jeeps right through razor fences and kicked in compound doors. The frames bent, and the screws on the hinges popped out further with each flex of the wood. The servant kicked the hinges loose, and dropped two hundred and thirty pounds against the door. The  door broke inwards.

The smokes blinded the servant, but he saw the toys floating around the source of the light. The Mrs knelt besides a crude altar of her son’s favorite things, headed by a thick set of horns. The servant didn’t see her head, only her thin arms reach the puzzle to the altar. He stepped into the smothering exhaust crying “Mrs, are you hurt?” Her neck hung limp over her collarbone. Her head rested in her chest. Her spine relaxed backwards. She stayed from falling by ghostly suspensions. The servant tasted battlefield gases but never anything so glazed. He lifted her onto his back thinking that some terrible attack occurred. The servant needed better hold, so he took her arms and pried the puzzle from her.

The organs and blood from his body turned to the same fumes escaping from between floorboards. Green and yellow fumes burned leaking holes over his body.  The Mrs clutched the puzzle from of his trembling fingers. She walked from the coat of smoke escaping the house. Efrain ran to her, and she kept telling him. “I saw him- Azorozas- and I saw Cliven too. He’s okay, he’s okay.”

That night he put plans together to liquidate and disappear with the rest of his money... He stayed because he hoped for a better outcome, but after years passed and he crossed into his sixties it became painfully clear. The mall barely stayed open. One by one the stores closed, but he kept funneling money into keeping it alive. City officials wanted to have dinner at his home. He kept delaying them, but rumors lingered of the strange lovers that together wished away their only child to live secret lives of demonianism.

His plane ticket waited. Efraim no longer wanted to. He came to the front door and before he opened it, a shadow appeared before the oval glass and knocked.

He opened the door, and told whoever stood there to go away, but he said it without a firm tone, with each syllable weakening as he examined the man on the porch. His hair didn’t match the long hairs he missed shaving his face. They looked white, but his head hair looked platinum blonde. He wore splotches of make up unevenly spread across his cheeks and under his eyes. When he smiled, the makeup peeled. The iron buttons on his valet vest strained. The name sewn into the breast read “Jazz”.

“I’m your hier- your son.” he said hushed. Efrain scoffed. The man before him looked on with the red weeping eyes of someone well past seventy.  Efrain pushed his suitcase out the door. “Don't go. I can help mom-Azorozar is not as powerful he sold you on.”

Efraim stopped, balled up his fist and nearly flung it into the visitor’s nose bridge but shook his head and relaxed his arm. “Yeah, of course, you’re him. Son! Welcome home.”

He grabbed “Jazz” by the hand and pulled him inside. “Stay there.” He warned. “If I see you touch one thing I will shoot you in the legs.”

He went down the hall, and called to Harriette. “Honey, it worked! Cliven is back!”

The chanting stopped. The door flung open. A wave of ash filled his nostrils. When the cloud cleared there stood what used to be Harriette, now slouched, skin like gravel, fingernails yellow and scraping the floor as she walked. Veins throbbed on her scalp. Yet somewhere in the face of of the strange woman he saw the curious wonder that filled her eyes when she saw her first born for the first time. “Show him to me.” She growled.

“Yes. He’s right here. See? Right here.” He walked her down the hall to where “Jazz” waited. “Don't mind the clothes. He just got off work. Didn’t you, son?”

“I’m a valet a country club around here.” He pointed at the vest “Can I see my room now?”

“Terrific. Do you see now, Harriette?”

“No, this can’t be. Arozozar shows me he is still a boy.”

“Arozozar doesn’t have Cliven. He’s standing right here! He said so himself.”

Harriette cowered against the wall, and shrunk into a creature of shaking fear. As if “Jazz” just grew thirty feet tall. Her eyes widened, and she tried to put her hand in her mouth to keep from letting small squeels escape but the fingernails prevented her from balling her fingers up and she ended up sliding against the wall, so tight that her feet slipped from under her.

“This isn’t Cliven.”

“Can I see my room now?”

“Of course, son. Go right on ahead.”

“No, keep him away. Keep him out.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your own flesh and blood?”  Efrain set his case down, crossed his arms and watched.

“Jazz” moved down the hall without moving his feet. The fumes screamed and evaporated as he crossed. The bedroom door fell open for him and he entered the smoking realms. Harriette peeled from the wall and hobbled down the hall. She swallowed dust with every breath in, and slowed with each beat of her heart. When she stepped under the shadow of the doorway, she lost her breath. The room looked just as it did before they moved in. Even the weeds outside the cracked glass looked the same.

“Make sure you eat. Come back this Thanksgiving.” Efrain shut the door behind “Jazz”, who walked tossing and catching the puzzle. He drove to the airport, and on his flight to Barcelona he watched the news that the Midwestern Mall is shutting its doors and being demolished to make room for a new hockey rink.

Ashgabat drove down Interstate 29 choking on his own laughter. The puzzle still rested firmly in his hand. The most successful single trafficker, he mused deeply remembering his experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa and the mountains of Central America, maybe can catch twenty people. He decided to be generous. Call it two hundred at one time.  The puzzle contained the soul of every missing person from the mall in the decade Efrain kept it running. Then he thought about how many malls were left in America.

Nebraska has a population of 1.8 million people. The FBI claims that 800 slaves are sold here every month.