Sam Sawyer Chapter Two

Chapter Two

A ring of security
cameras crowned Sarah Sawyer’s two-story brick home. Seth’s feeble if futile
attempt at keeping ‘them’ out. Still making the effort, had made him feel a bit
more of a man.

She still
smiled every time she looked up from her flower garden and saw them looking
down at her. It was easy to imagine it was him keeping watch on her from on
high as she struggled to draw life and color from the cold dark earth.

Making the
world prettier did not make it safer. But she clung to that comforting if silly
notion anyway. Thanks to her hard-working husband she could spend as much time
as she wanted in her garden and her greenhouse.

Two years
had passed since Seth did the same. He worked so hard, worked himself into an
early grave, trying to provide for her. Provide what-something they both knew
they lost forever on their wedding night, so many years ago. Still he tried.

Flowers,
especially the ones she grew in her own back yard gave her hope and made her
smile. They brightened the direst backdrop. No wonder people were forever littering
graveyards with them. 

Her flower
garden is where Sam found her that morning. He didn’t have to look hard.

“Mom,” He
said, gently pushing the garden fence door open as though it were spun from paper
thin glass.

Her plump
face beamed as she rose from her potting bench. “Oh, Sam. What are you doing
here so early?  Something wrong?”

He said
nothing as he picked his way through the colorful labyrinth of azaleas, crepe
myrtle and buttercups, she had so carefully cultivated.

Her pale pretty
features somehow grew paler. She eased back down as he drew near.

“Mama,” he
hesitated, “I remember.”

“Remember
what dear?”  Her eyes darted up then
dived back down.

He squatted
beside her, “You know.”

She looked
down into his too blue eyes, smiled and blinked. “What are you talking about
dear?”

“The Aliens,
Oloran, the Oloran.” He reached up to take her hand which was pressed so hard
against the table it looked like she was trying to keep something from
wriggling out from between her fingers.

“Aliens” she
snorted, “that’s silly. Sam you’re much too old for such nonsense.”

“Silly,” He
said, staring intently at the side of her bowed head. “I saw them last night.”

She stiffened,
started to turn her face toward him but jerked her head back. “You didn’t see
anything. You, you’re just teasing. Why are you being so silly, so, so mean?”

“Mama I’m
not trying to hurt you. I saw what they did to you, and Daddy. I lived it. I
know Mama. I know.”

 She lifted her head her. She seemed transfixed
by the open door of her happy little greenhouse. “They, they killed your father.”
She said each word as if she were pulling rusty nails from a piece of petrified
wood.

“Yeah, well
they pushed him into his grave, so yeah, they killed him.” He reached out to
touch her shoulder. She jerked away.

Suddenly he
was back in his bassinet. Her fear and disgust pouring down on him like acid.

Her eyes
fixed on a tray of petunias. An invisible quilt of icy silence settled over
her. It chilled him to the bone.

“Mom, we
need to talk. I need to know what I am, why I’m here. And you need to know I am
not a monster. I had nothing to do with what happen to you and Dad.”

She slid
back, removed her gardening gloves and spread her hands out on the table.
“They,” she paused. He stood up and stepped back, barely aware of what he was
doing.

“They,” she
continued coolly, “made it quite clear that we were to provide you with a
normal supportive childhood, that we were to embrace you, shower all our positive
emotions on you.” She paused, apparently gathering her strength, “Oloran
entered our home at will. A shadow figure moving through walls, moving through
flesh and bone just as he pleased. He took us back to that first abduction,
made us relive it, made us know we were to feed you our love without pretense
or hesitation. Do you know what night terrors are? Seth and I knew all too
well.” She pushed her body up and turned toward him. “I hope your being here
this morning saying these things means I don’t have to love you anymore. Seth
got to go out into the world wheeling and dealing, ‘providing’ for us. I still
love him, but he left me here with you. I had to forget what you were, so I
could love you. I had to forget what he did, so I wouldn’t hate him. They
weren’t going to take that away from me too. Oloran gave us no choice.”

“Mama,
that’s enough.”

“Enough Sam,
it’s never enough for you. You had everything to do with what happened to us.
It was all about you. You’re not just a monster Sam. You’re a vacuum, an empty
hungry hole that took everything from me. You sucked us dry to feed your
master.”

She turned
away from him and looked back at the house, smiling sweetly at the nearest
camera as euphoria spread across her face. Oloran had released her. She snatched
a shiny three-pronged gardening tool from the table. “I have to leave now. Seth
is waiting.” Silver flashed. Blood splashed. She crumpled at his feet. Her
throat a ragged bloody mess.

Sam’s knees
crushed a patch of blood-stained buttercups. His hands clutched Sarah’s throat,
trying to stop blood that was already shining red on the ground. Her slimy
windpipe slid beneath his fingertips. Blood flew when he snatched his hands
away. They had been inside her throat, inside her body. He wanted to save her
but instead he violated her one last time.  

‘her walls
were strong...’ Oloran’s words rang in Sam’s mind. He was already on the
ground, now he was kicking away at an unseen assailant, unseen because Oloran
was buried deep inside.

It took a
moment for Sam to grasp this simple fact, something he already knew but until
now could easily push away. Until now Oloran’s voice was a distant muffled
whisper. Speaking words that were simply too far away to understand. Until now
most of his past was hidden.

Oloran was
now standing in his ear, shouting and would not be ignored. ‘she locked the
truth behind those walls…she wanted to live in our lie…when they resisted, we
reminded them, we scared them back to pretense. Besides you were such a pretty
boy. We made sure of that. Beauty is easy to love, even when it’s born of
terror. And humans are easy to manipulate, so shallow…’

“You killed
her like you killed my father.”

‘no Sam, we
simply let her go…and Seth, his heart was weak, another human frailty, one you
need never worry about…we gave her what she wanted…no more nightmares…our last ‘official’
visitation was ten years ago. Then you came rushing here this morning, confronting
her with her past…your nightmare was simply your coming of age, pulling away,
maturing… you took her back there, you tore down her wall…you killed her, not
us…but it was about time…Sam they were never your parents, she was just a convenient
gestation container…they were emotional wells springs…a means to our end…’

“An end. I’m
an end.” Sam rose from the ground, his face streaked with tears and blood.
“What does that mean?”

9

‘whatever
you wish it to mean…this world is yours Sam, and those like you…I’m leaving you
now, but you will never be alone…you should wipe your hands and call the
authorities…do not worry Seth’s cameras will exonerate you…’

“Exonerate,”
Sam yelled at the empty sky. “I don’t want that,” He dropped his head as he
clumped back to his mother, his gestation chamber, crumpled down beside and
wept. “I want her, her,” he whispered down at her, “love.”

That is
where they found him, nestled beside her, his denim clad knees soaking up her
blood like a couple of blue jean vampires.