Ragnarök

Six: The Visitor

If anything positive can be said to arise from Friday and Saturday nights' strange occurrences, it's that come Sunday morning, the Holy Trinity congregants—far from an aloof bunch—seem to detect a change for the better in Mildred's overall disposition. Not that she was ever ill-tempered, but today she is more receptive to the salutations she receives, more active behind the eyes. It's like she is returning to her parish after a much longer hiatus than one week. Many privately attribute it to an adjustment in medication.

Most auspiciously, Father Rourke can sense it. As Mason steps up to receive Eucharist, the priest gazes upon him fondly for the first time in recent memory, rather than glowering like a gargoyle from on high. Mason is still far from feeling at the top of his game. He suffers residual nausea and headaches after ingesting Edgar's expired prescription, but that's not important. He can soldier through. What matters is that he and Mildred maintain the prosaic façade of uneventful, God-fearing country life for all of Grillow Rock to behold.

Liza isn't at school the following day. The extent of his own despair surprises Mason. He realizes he's been hinging on her presence like a kind of opiate, something to cloud the deranged absurdity of his own life. He wants to hear more about her past, her travails, her opinions. Being in a hypersensitive state, he reads personal rejection into her absence. Adding injury to insult, Viktor Grunewald has caught wind that there is something between them. For this, Mason is roundly punished.

While headed to homeroom, minding his own business, a foot materializes from the surrounding mob. Two hands shove him square in the backpack, which is loaded with heavy textbooks. Blindsided, he goes down easy. He puts out his hands just in time to break the fall, and, owing to this lucky reflex, his nose makes impact with a flat knuckle instead of ceramic tiling. Laughter floats away above him like a passing thunderhead. He lies there watching droplets of blood pool close-up on the dirty scuff marks made by winter boots.

With homeroom underway, and Mrs. Rydell checking names tardy on the roster, Mason stands at the bathroom sink with his head tipped back, bunching coarse, brown paper towels against a leaky nostril. He can't bear his own stupid reflection, so he stares off to the side, at a strand of toilet paper taped to the heating vent. It flaps in the warm current like a pennant. He's dimly aware that someone occupies the stall behind him, a fact that draws glaring attention to itself with a peculiar sound, at least peculiar given the setting. It's the wheezy snap of a digital camera.

He jumps a little at the noise, its unexpectedness. A grown man mutters "shit" beneath his breath. Studying the stall door in the mirror, Mason can observe only tan slacks bunched around a pair of walnut loafers. The stalls are painted candy-apple-red in tribute to school colors. Instead, it reminds him of that scene in The Shining where Delbert Grady wipes Advocaat off Jack's coat and tells him he's "always been the caretaker here." He remains in place for another two or three minutes, bunging his nasal hemorrhage until it reduces to a trickle. In the meantime, the well-dressed occupant doesn't so much as take a loud breath, never mind leave the anonymity of his stall.

At three o'clock, Mason flees the building as fast as he can, leaving by a different door than usual, wanting to avoid any further hang-ups with Viktor and the old crew. The sky is sheet-metal gray, it looks on the verge of unleashing a blizzard. Arriving home, he spots something that makes his adrenaline spike. A strange bicycle leans against the front stoop's guardrail.

Equal parts fearful and hopeful, he lets himself in--to find Liza there at the kitchen table, seated across from the widow.

They're holding what by all appearances is a perfectly banal conversation over mugs of tea. Liza smiles but says nothing, leaving the widow to explain events as she sees them. "Edgar, I'm glad you're home!"