The Grave Shadows

24. Crazy

The poolroom was the enclosed base with no window, no unnecessary brightness, but the span of gloomy air, sleek oak surfaces, three classic pool tables, leathers, whiskeys, and privacy. It was Prime Branch boys' asylum where even Bill Watts didn't cross.

An unavoidable sentence hung in the amber atmosphere. Everett's report was unappreciated because Will, Simon, and Luke wished they had the meatballs. They struggled to look at Everett, the opportunist, the dangerous trickster—Cyan's friend. Nevertheless, they gazed at his phone on the pool table.

Madness had violated Cyan's mind. She spoke of that prohibited name: David. In Cyan's dreams, the same scene repeated. Everett flew at her, shaking her and forcing her to pay attention. I'm David. I really am. I'm him. I'm David. She shook her head in disbelief, but Everett insisted that he was. David was a psychotic infection, and Cyan should never have to deal with that thing.

"We don't tell him about Cyan," Luke concurred as the brothers' heated discussion drew to a close. Bill Watts lied, and David was responsible for Cyan's scholarship. "Ask him why he painted her."

"Good luck with that." Simon drifted to the oak shrine of whiskey. The Watts family and alcohol were inseparable. None of the boys made it to the legal age on their first hangover. Everett was ten or eleven when he drank a full glass of whiskey. Alcohols burned the unexplainable emotions into the known ones. But could it transform the unknown like David? "That lunatic is impossible!" Simon darted a furious glance at Everett, his eyes so sharp that they inflicted discomfort.

"If you have a better idea, share it." Luke hardened his face and planted his hands on the top rail of the pool table.

"Eventually, we'll have to talk to him." Will stared at the diamond-shaped rack beside Everett's phone. "I don't know what to think anymore. There's a connection between them."

"I change my mind." Everett twisted around, and smirking at him was his great-grandfather. This rare illustration of Colt depicted him older than the versions that were available for the public to admire. The Watts boys thought maturity went with the concept of the sanctuary. "That's not a good idea. If he wants her, you know what Father is going to do."

David was a bad mix for everything like fuel to fire, drugs with alcohol, and monsters in nightmares—a son Bill Watts wanted.

"So be smart." Luke gleamed and tapped his temple. "Don't frigging say that she's here."

"How the hell did he paint her?" Will shook his head at a glass of whiskey Simon was offering him. "And why? We can't let him know about her."

"As she can't about him," Simon added and handed the unwanted whiskey to Everett instead.

Everett gasped. If Cyan knew about David, she would think everyone in the Watts family was crazy. He held his breath and gulped the whiskey down all at once. "I'll do it," Everett said. "I don't trust your big mouths."

Will slid the phone on the baize toward Everett. "Put it on speaker." His gaze was like Bill Watts's warning.

Nobody trusted Black Sheep either.

The phone rang. The brothers were stealing something from a helpless child. A game of deception threatened the health of Everett's gut. He wanted to throw up whatever green fluid Will forced him to swallow early.

"Hello." A mew was low and cold. It was David's.

Possibly, David crouched in a dirty robe, covered in paints, exhausted from tearing canvas after canvas in his lonely gigantic apartment. He could forget to eat for days, and his skin might have shrunk against his bones.

"It's Sheep," Everett said and mused on David's meek echo of his infamous epithet.

At times, David was considerate. In the passenger seat of Mary's car, he often suggested that they stopped at Jill's because Sheep would want some ice-cream. Insane men were incapable of pretense, Mary said. The sound and perfect ones like Simon, however, Everett thought, were cynical and full of schemes.

Sneering, Simon smacked Everett's back. A fitting response, at the moment, was a sinister glint.

"How's it going?" Everett was good at the game, but the stake was too high this time.

Will, Simon, and Luke made faces and signed words, but Everett ignored them. David was mad, not stupid.

But as expected, David went quiet. His chapped pale lips needed serious motivation to move. Patience was the only nostrum to deal with crazy.

"What do you want?" David asked. His response came clearer and quicker than usual.

"It's about your paintings." Everett concealed an urge to scream. No, she's not yours. But guilt warmed his chest. "I want to ask..."

"Don't touch them," David uttered in his croaky, crazy voice.

"I won't. But what inspired you to do that, David?"

Silence drifted on the line again, this time long and awkward. The Watts boys looked at one another, David's breathing all they heard.

"David?" Everett checked.

"Hmm..." David sighed and mumbled some inaudible gibberish before another stillness took over the line.

"David?"

Silence.

"Nobody touches my things, especially you, Everett. Don't go near my works. Don't you ever touch her!" David hung up the phone.

Her? David meant them—the paintings.

"What inspired you?" Will shrilled. "You want to turn this room into a romance book club?" He slapped the back of Everett's head.

Everett's teeth sank deep in his bottom lip. "You think you can do better? He's crazy."

Simon locked his hands behind his back and took some steps. "Then maybe we should talk to someone who is not crazy."

Everett tossed the phone back on the pool table. "Who wants to talk?" The number was Hector's.