Pivot (The Jack Harper Trilogy Book 1)

  Chapter 5

  ROLAND

  When I woke, I was in the bedroom that had been partitioned to me in the West wing of Cyrus's home. Above me was a ceiling of ornate wood sectioned into squares with swirls in their middles, and as my eyes traveled with their twists, I thought of the dead man Roland James.

  He was to be alive again, Cyrus had said. He was to be resurrected that very night. And it was night. I looked out of the windows peering to the back of Cyrus's property and saw the moon and the night's freckles of stars. I had slept the whole day.

  Though my eyes still felt full from their shedding tears, and my cheeks were still flush, I felt wholly better inside. The man I killed was supposed to return. With that in mind, there was magic in the air, like a funeral slowly replaced with Christmas.

  I heard the twist of the doorknob while I sat at the window, and I turned, expecting Cyrus to greet me. Alex, his son, appeared instead.

  Cyrus's son was shorter than me, with blonde, very blonde hair, and blue eyes. His face was fairly round, and his cheeks were plump. He wore a black, long-sleeved shirt and dark blue-jeans, and he was simply in white socks.

  He did not look like a child, but rather a small adult. He stared at me with no emotion.

  For a moment neither one of us spoke. I could hear his breathing, and though he did not look angry, there seemed to be a fount of feeling behind each breath. "Hi," I finally said.

  "Hi," he mirrored me. Then he asked, "What did you and my Dad do this morning?"

  I looked at him and cocked my head to the side, trying to register what he was asking. "What?"

  "This morning, when you went to the basement, what did you and my Dad do?"

  I shook my head back and forth. "I can't tell you."

  "Why?"

  "Cyrus wouldn't want me to."

  Alex stood motionless, and I listened to him breathing. His blue eyes, which were locked to me, distanced, and he bit his lip for a moment before he said, "You might be older, but I can do whatever you can. When Dad teaches me, I'll be better than you." With that, he left, not bothering to close the door. I heard the soft thud of his footsteps move away from the room and then the loud slam of a door.

  All I could think of was finding Cyrus, and also that my hunger was surprisingly strong. Alex left in me no impression.

  I left the room. I headed to the kitchen of Cyrus's home, which was located towards the northern center. It was very close to the den, but also to what I had labeled "The White Room" - a modernly decorated room with white carpet and walls, platinum drapes, and a pool table of glittering white marble and velvety white felt.

  The chairs, the tables, the molding, the baseboards, the windowpanes, all were white. The very great chandelier above was like a ghost pinned mid-air. It was a very frightening room for me as a child because without color of its own, the room seemed a starved thing, hungry for something human.

  When I entered the kitchen, I heard the laughter of Cyrus, and it came from the direction of the white room. I walked slowly towards the double swinging doors to the West, pushed through them, and looked down the hall, straight to where the dining room was. I walked ten feet and turned to my right, and there before me was the great white whale of a room of the house. From where I was, I could see the white desk and the man sitting behind it, Cyrus, who held a cigar in his hand - big white puffs of smoke coloring the very air about him with pallor. In one of the plush, thick velvet chairs in front of the desk was the man I had murdered that morning - Mr. Roland James.

  Roland was not only alive, but smiling, laughing, and exuberant. He was the human thing that the room hungered for, with a bright blue suit with a khaki shirt. He looked to me to be the very paradigm of a healthy man.

  That was true, except for his neck and his face. The parts that had blackened that morning from my plunging the needle through his vein were still a bit darker than he was. While I stood staring at his neck, Roland James turned to me, and he smiled.

  "Jack." Cyrus said. He motioned for me to enter. "Come in."

  "Yes," said Roland. As though under a spell of the dead man, I drew closer to him, feeling hypnotized with curiosity, until I came to the edge of Cyrus's lengthy desk. I put my hand upon its surface and swallowed hard.

  Roland smiled at me, and his eyes were eerie. Cyrus, meanwhile, was stripping some of the ash from his cigar onto a white ashtray before him as though not a thing in the world had happened, and only after doing this looked at me. His air was cheery, and he asked me, "Well what do you think Jack?"

  "I..." I looked back and forth between Roland and Cyrus and wished I could speak to Cyrus alone. "Does... does he know?" I asked Cyrus.

  Cyrus's eyebrows lifted, and he leaned forward in his desk. "Does Roland know that you murdered him today?" he asked to confirm, and I grimaced at the blatancy of Cyrus's question.

  I expected them to laugh at me, but they did not, and Cyrus drew again on his cigar, blowing a smoke ring into the air.

  "I know," Roland said, and he looked at me again with a cunning that I had seen in Cyrus. "And it's okay, Jack. It's alright. Cyrus told me you were worried, but there isn't anything to worry about anymore. Here," he said, "have a seat." He patted the fluffed chair, identical to his, beside me.

  I pulled myself into the chair, positioning myself on the very edge, and I felt as though I was in the presence of God.

  "I expected," said Cyrus, "that we would begin this way. That is, where the person you killed would be brought back. And, obviously, he is back. You agree?"

  I looked at Roland once more, and he smiled at me and held out his hand. I took it in my own, and I knew wholly and for certain that he was the man on the slab that morning. This was not a twin, this was not a charade. The man that sat beside me and asked for my company was the person that I had let the liters of blood pour out of only hours before. How could this be? I wondered. How could he be living and breathing again? I did not ask.

  Roland leaned forward in his chair - his khaki suit crinkling as he moved - and he said to me, "I want you to know that it's alright what you did earlier. Cyrus was training you, and he wanted to train you well, so he asked me to help. As you can see, I accepted, and so I was here for you before and am here for you now. I am going to help you learn how to kill and understand killing. You know - don't you - that someone who would sacrifice himself for you has your best interest at heart?"

  I nodded my head as though under a spell.

  "Roland has done a magnificent job," said Cyrus, "And perhaps we will do what was done this morning a few more times. You will kill Roland, and I will bring him back. And what you will learn from this is that you are not really killing him, not really. He is like a boomerang. He simply comes right back to life, no matter how many times you take it from him. But eventually, Jack, eventually we'll move on to another person."

  My heart fluttered, and I looked from Roland's kindly face to the man responsible for life and death.

  "And you will kill as we have taught you. When it comes to that person, though, he won't return like Roland. But hopefully you will keep in mind that you aren't really murdering that person or any other, not really, just like you're not really murdering Roland. Rather, we're just not bringing them back to life. Do you understand, Jack?"

  I looked to my right at Mr. James' eyes, and they twinkled at me like the starry night. "Yes," I said.

  "Then say it with me," said Cyrus. "Say, 'I'm not really killing anybody, I'm just not bringing them back.'"

  I swallowed a sticky bit of saliva so that the words flowed freely from my mouth. "I'm not really killing anybody, I'm just not bringing them back."

  "'Just like Roland James,'" said Cyrus.

  "Just like Roland James."

  "Thatta Jack." Roland patted me on the back.