Chapter 23
I could think of only one hope for Tyler Matthews: that the man who had taken him might somehow find the strength to go against the colonel’s orders. I had sensed a fragment of goodness deep inside him, buried by years of abuse and pain and hatred. But some good was still there, and it had led him to care for the boy, if not tenderly, at least adequately, over the past few days. That same spark might lead to his, and the boy’s, salvation.
How do you save a soul? I did not even know how to save my own.
I headed to the house where the boy was being held, moving through a town that was going about its usual business without any inkling that a young boy’s fate hung in balance. People hurried, cars honked, drivers shouted, buses whooshed, trucks rumbled and roared—all the noisiness of a Saturday night suddenly seemed infinitely dear. I wished so badly that this cacophony of ordinary life was the soundtrack to my own existence, but I had moved well beyond that now. I was treading murky waters with no shoreline in sight.
Tyler Matthews was playing listlessly in a back bedroom, once again offering his soldiers to an unseen play-mate, oblivious to the horrors that awaited him. The man who had taken him stood shirtless in the living room, dressed only in jeans that sagged beneath his boney hips. He was weeping from the sting of the words being uttered over the camera system’s speakers.
“I took you in. No one else would have you,” the colonel was telling him, not in a thunderous, commanding voice, but in a quiet voice ripe with malignant confidence—and, oh, it was so much worse, that sibilant whispering that gnawed away at the edges of the young man’s soul with a power as corrosive and relentless as acid. The colonel knew he would win in the end; he was simply playing with his prey. “I took you in when no one, not even your own parents, would have you.”
“What do you want me to do?” the man in the house whispered, his cheeks wet with tears. He had twisted his arms around his torso, as if he might explode if he let go.
“You know what to do,” the colonel said scathingly. “It’s been done to you often enough.” The colonel’s malevolent laughter filled the silence that followed. “Trust me, my friend, once you begin, you will not need to ask me what to do.”
“Why?” the man pleaded. “Why are you making me do this?”
“Why?” The colonel sounded matter-of-fact. “Because I cannot do it myself.”
He was lying. He wasn’t doing it because he was confined to a wheelchair. Like all evil men, he was harming others because it fed a rapacious hole that burned within him, a nucleus of malice that fed on hatred of all that was good in the world, and a companion need to destroy anyone and anything that was happy. He did it because he could. Because he was strong and he had found someone weak. He did it for the power, and it was this power that fanned his lust.
“It wasn’t my fault,” the first man whispered.
“You were the one driving.” I knew it had been years since the accident that had left the colonel in a wheelchair, yet his tone was confident he would prevail in this most familiar of arguments between them. “Do you want people to know what you are?” the colonel continued. “Do you really want people to know who you are, what I’ve done with you all these years?”
The man did not answer. He did not need to. His lowered head, the way his body shrank inward on itself, the twisting of his torso were all proof to the colonel that his words had found their mark. The man would do his bidding.
“Do not fight me anymore,” the colonel advised in a deceptively kind voice. “You are about to discover your destiny. How many men can say they have achieved that?”
The first man could not bring himself to reply. His shame was palpable in the silence.
“Daddy?”
A child’s voice cut through the silence with the purity of a handbell resonating in the hush of a church.
“Daddy?”
There it was again—Tyler Matthews calling out from the back bedroom, whether to the man twisted in agony a few feet away or to his own imagination, I could not say.
But the man in the house heard him through his pain. I could feel the good in him flicker as his heart responded to the artlessness of that single word.
“Where did you go?” the little boy’s voice called out.
“I’m right here.” The man turned his back on the camera and walked slowly toward the hall.
“Don’t you dare move until I say you can,” the colonel thundered after him, but the man did not turn around.
Tyler was lying on his stomach, holding a tiny plastic chicken and pretending it was pecking at grain on the floor. He looked up, his brown eyes wide. “I want my daddy,” he said.
The man sat slowly beside Tyler and patted his back ever so gently. Once, I knew, someone had done that for him. But how long ago? Would the memory be enough to save them both?
“Your daddy isn’t here,” the man said. “Remember? He was in the war.”
“He says you can be my new daddy,” the little boy said confidently. “That you’ll look after me.” Tyler touched the man’s cheeks with a chubby hand. “My other daddy had rough skin. He let me hold his razor once.”
The man held his breath and something in him swelled and broke. It was sorrow, but it was sorrow that stemmed from the loss of love—and it was that love I needed to reach. I searched through his memories as he spoke to the little boy, promising Tyler that he would return him to his mother one day soon. I cannot bear to dwell on the memories I found within the man. They were of things no one should experience, of events dark and ugly and all too real in those places where evil souls walk the earth. But they were a part of him, and I had to go through them to find the good that lay underneath. At first, I could only detect the memory of smells. Of perfume as faint as gardenia bushes in a yard, of soap and aftershave and a kitchen warm with the heat from an oven. Then I could hear faint voices in his mind, a tune, though I could not discern which song it was. It was there, underneath that memory: the man had once been loved.
“I need to go to the potty,” Tyler told the man.
“Okay,” the man agreed. “I’ll help you. You remember where it is, right?”
The little boy nodded and took his hand. The man led him out into the hall. I followed, trying to hold on to the thread of that one distant memory. I felt love surrounding that moment, and a total lack of fear, with no thoughts of the past or the future, just the warmth of a present that was utterly and unequivocally safe.
“I need help with my pants,” Tyler told the man, struggling with the top button on his cotton shorts.
The man helped Tyler with the tiny fastener on his shorts, revealing underwear printed with colorful cars.
“I need some piracy,” the little boy said proudly, repeating a lesson his mother had taught him.
“Piracy?” the man asked, confused.
The little boy nodded solemnly, holding his shorts up over his knees with two chubby fists, unwilling to give an inch.
“Privacy?” the man asked, understanding.
The boy nodded again.
“Of course,” the man agreed. “Tell me when you are done.”
He turned his back on the boy and I knew the moment had come. I let his memory of love and safety wash through me. It filled me and I gave it life. I held it within me, almost vibrating with the love and care the man had once, himself, been given, even if so very long ago.
“Get back here!” the colonel’s voice boomed from the living room. “Get back in here at once.”
Don’t do it, my friend, I willed him. I did not know if it was presumptuous of me to interfere in this way, if my shaping human events was an affront to whatever power decided such things. But I was willing to risk everything I had, to risk my very soul if that was what it took, so that this man might turn from the evil the colonel embodied. I began to pray, though I did not know who or what I was praying to. I had often been angry over the last few months at being kept on this worldly plane. I had experienced bitterness and resentment, wondering why I was doomed to wander and others were granted the right to move on. But all that seemed petty now. All that mattered was that the man who stood in front of me do the right thing, a man who had once been as small and innocent as Tyler Matthews, a man who had surely been loved by someone, for however briefly, before his life had gone terribly wrong and he had joined forces with the colonel. I left my bitterness behind me. I thought nothing of myself. I lifted my heart to whatever power guided me through my lonely world, and I asked for help in turning the man. I prayed that he might break free from the terrible hold the colonel exerted over him. I prayed for his salvation.
“I’m done,” Tyler announced proudly. “No drops, see?” The boy pointed to the toilet seat. “I’m the best at potty in all preschool. Of the boys. Girls are good at potty.”
The man knelt before Tyler like a suitor proposing marriage, helping him untangle his shorts. “You’re a big boy,” he said in a kind voice.
Yes, remember those who once said that to you.
“Will you button them for me?” Tyler asked, wiggling as he tugged the shorts up over his legs.
As the man fumbled with the fastener on the waistband, Tyler wobbled and put his hand on top of the man’s head to steady himself. It was a simple touch, whether made out of trust or a desire to stay balanced, I do not know. But I do know that this single touch, from that tiny, trusting child, turned the man away from evil.
He stood up abruptly and tucked Tyler’s shirt back into his shorts. “There,” he said. “Good as new.” Something vulnerable in him shifted and grew, holding back the anger that usually commanded the man. He had made a choice.
“We’re going to play a game,” the man told Tyler. “Do you think you can remember the rules?”
The little boy nodded, anxious to make the man happy.
“I want you to stay here in this house alone for just a little while,” the man told him. “I’m going to lock the door, and I don’t want you to open it for anyone but me. Okay?”
The little boy hesitated. He did not want to be left alone.
“I just have to go out for a while, but I’ll be back soon, okay? And when I come back, I’ll take you to your mommy, as long as you wait for me.”
The little boy’s smile took my breath away. “We’re going home to my mommy?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “I just have to do one thing first. Okay?”
Little boys are creatures of few words. Tyler had no words to express his feelings that he would soon see his mother. Instead, he wrapped his arms around the man’s legs and held on tight, butting his head against the man’s thighs in his joy.
The man laughed and pried him free. “I guess you’re cool with the plan?”
Tyler nodded.
As the man left the bedroom, I could hear the song in his memory growing louder: his voice, a mother’s voice, a father’s voice, too, all joined together in one pitch-perfect sound.
It wasn’t much to carry a man through an entire lifetime of pain, but it had been enough to save his soul.