Sand

Chapter 8: Halfway Home

Wayne hadn't expected to sit in the driver's seat again, ever. The last time he drove, he had killed a young woman and her small child in a crash he couldn't remember. The arresting officer suspected he had been drunk, blood tests incorrectly confirmed it, and he even admitted it.

He didn't bother to question how or why he had been drinking and ended up behind the wheel. He thought drunk cops were a pathetic cliche. His family deserved better, so he never drank. The facts remained that he had passed out behind the wheel, lost control of his vehicle, and annihilated someone's family. Disputing the results of blood test made no sense when he deserved whatever punishment the courts would him, and more.

The chance that he could save Dmitri's life had kept his hands on the wheel and his foot on the pedal, even after the sand returned. If Dmitri had the courtesy to die of natural causes, Wayne wouldn't bother mourning the schmuck. Letting someone murder the man was a different story, especially since the killer was trying to frame Wayne.

Four minutes later, he stopped the Audi on the curb outside his building, dropped the keys in the gutter behind the front tire, and sprinted across the courtyard to building 500. It was one of the five, fifteen story public housing projects around a central lawn where Wayne's young drug-dealer neighbors displayed a surprising work ethic. Gills, a fourteen year old with a baby face and a temper like a rabid dog, and Licker, a younger chubby kid with a habit of licking his almost comically large lips, were the bosses of the yard. They watched him run by, but otherwise ignored him like usual.

So far, there was no sign of police coming after him. If Garret told them Wayne had gone to his mother's for dinner and a shower, they would start their search for him there. He hoped they wouldn't inconvenience his mother too much. She had friends on the force, and would probably try to talk their ears off and feed them the hot meal that should have been his. By the time they made it here and found the car, he'd have saved Dmitri, stopped whoever was trying to frame him, and would go quietly back to jail for violating his parole and whatever new charges stemmed from stealing the car.

He burst through the front doors, slid around the corner, and hit the stairs at a run. The elevators worked sometimes, but were far too slow and seldom cleaner than the average public toilet. He skidded past two women standing together in the corner of the third floor landing. Six more to go. If a crazed white man sprinting up their stairs surprised them, they hid it well. He had no time to worry the impression he left on his neighbors.

The sand whipped around in his head, caught in storm winds most likely brought on by his sense of urgency. The coming attack, and the last, too, were different than the others in a very important way. Once the sand started to rise, he knew he would black out in a matter of seconds. Now, it clung to his brain like an aftertaste, yet he was fully awake and alert. It felt solid, too; more real, like a part of his physical body instead of just a metaphor or concept he used to describe his affliction.

His apartment building was only a halfway house by virtue of the case worker and eight other ex-cons who shared a cluster of efficiency apartments on the ninth floor. The other residents knew he was on parole, and generally left him alone. He happily returned favor, and knew next to nothing about the people in his building.

He passed two women smoking cigarettes in the stairwell between the second and third floors. They watched him suspiciously as he approached, and something about them caught his attention, too. He couldn't help staring. The sand shifted in his head, and tugged his attention towards them like a magnetic force. It didn't hurt, or cause him any discomfort, it just sort of pointed them out. Even from around the corner, he could point straight through the wall at them. It faded before he reached the third floor.

It happened again on the eighth floor. A boy, probably eight or nine years old, stood in the stairwell exit with a toy laser gun. He pointed it at Wayne and squeezed the trigger, making a realistic sound like the blasters from Star Wars.

The sand pulled towards the boy before Wayne saw him. The sensation was the same as before, but this time Wayne let it go. He wasn't sure how he did it, but the sand stretched towards the boy like a rubber-band, so he let it fly.

The laser stopped firing, and the kid stood with his arms dangling at his side. His face had gone slack, like the people in the cafeteria. He was asleep on his feet, with his eyes half-opened. Wayne waved his hand in front of the boy's face. Nothing.

The sand recovered almost instantly. It continued to pull towards the boy, and a second tendril, as he imagined it, started tugging towards someone in the hall behind him. Time to go.