Sarah's Story, Segment #3

The vote is in! And the winner is: Sarah and Benny go to a nearby bar.

In case you were wondering, here's what would have happened with the other options:

• Benny's apartment: Sarah and Benny would have met up with one of Benny's neighbors, who just happens to be a conspiracy theorist. 
• The train station: Sarah and Benny would have hopped a train to go to the VA hospital where Benny did an internship the year before in order to talk to a patient there.

But the bar gave Sarah and Benny the opportunity to get personal in a way that I hadn't anticipated before I started writing. I hope you enjoy! 

Here's segment #3 of Sarah's Story, with a brief lead-in from segment #2 (or read from the beginning):

And she just exploded. “You don’t understand what’s happening here, Benny!” Terror made her voice shake, but fury strengthened it. “They’re coming after me! I’ve found something that someone didn’t want me to find, and now they’re coming after me. And I won’t have you put in the middle. I won’t put you in danger that way.”

She watched, fascinated despite herself, as a vein began to throb at his temple. “You think I don’t know that?” he asked. “What is it about me that makes you think I’m that much of a fu-.” He cut himself off and took a breath. “Either you think I’m an idiot or a coward. Tell me which one it is so we can deal with it and get on with whatever the hell is happening here.”

Stunned, she realized that he was furious. Her sweet, gentle, patient Benny looked like he wanted to smash something. Completely unsure of how to handle this side of a man she’d thought she knew better than anyone else, she could only say quietly, “Neither. I…I don’t think you’re an idiot or a coward.”

He studied her for a moment longer, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to release slightly. When he nodded curtly, she realized he was still angry. “Now that that’s settled, come on. I think I know someone who can help.”

*          *          *

The bar was narrow and dark, the kind of place where career drinkers build their resume. There were two old men arguing in the back corner, and a middle-aged woman of questionable reputation sitting at the bar. Just after Sarah and Benny walked in, the door behind them opened again and a group of giggling undergrads piled in on a rush of cold air. They stopped, took one look around the bar, and filed right back out without a word spoken between the four of them. Sarah lifted a brow and turned to Benny, but he was already walking up to the prostitute.

“Hey, Mary,” he said as he leaned against the grungy wood. “How’s it going today?”

She gave a mock shiver. “It’s a cold day to work outside, Benny-boy. Might just take the night off.”

“Yeah. You get dinner yet?”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “Yeah, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about me.”

“Alright.” Benny glanced at the men in the corner and then, though he knew no one else was here, gave the whole bar another sweep. When his gaze landed on Sarah, looking so out of place in this hole in the wall and utterly confused as to why they were here, he sighed.

“You finally bring us a girlfriend?”

“No.” Benny thought of Sarah trying to ditch him at the library, and he shook his head. “No, she’s just a friend. Look, Mary, I need to talk to him. Have you seen him yet today?”

“No, honey. But I’m sure he’ll show up at some point. He always does.”

“Yeah,” Benny agreed, his heart heavy and – though he knew it was unfair – angry. He couldn’t help thinking that the one time he needed the old man to be in a bar, he wasn’t. Benny pushed the thought away. “We’ll hang out a while and see if he shows up.”

He ordered two whiskeys and motioned for Sarah to follow him to a table near the back of the bar. As they sat down, one of the old men said, “Hey, Ben, he ain’t here tonight.”

“I know,” Benny said. “But he’ll show up eventually.”

“Ayep,” the man said and went back to his dispute.

Sarah tried not to think about what might be on the cracked leather booth as she sat. It was obvious this place meant something to Benny, and she didn’t want to offend him by looking dubiously at everything she touched. It was for the same reason that she took a big gulp of the drink he set before her, sending a stream of fire down her throat and contorting her face into an involuntary expression of baffled horror.

“What is that?” she managed to wheeze.

Despite himself, Benny had to laugh at the look on her face. “Evan Williams. Sorry, this place isn’t has highbrow as the Crooked Pen.”

She stiffened at the apparent dig on her favorite bar. “I didn’t realize the Crooked Pen was highbrow.”

“No, I didn’t mean…” Benny stopped and sighed again. In one night, it seemed he’d managed to ruin the headway it had taken him four years to gain. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just…when you tried to shut me out, it made me wonder if…”

When his voice trailed away, Sarah forced herself to meet his gaze. He looked so miserable, her heart twisted. Suddenly, for no reason she could name, she thought of that moment in the library. When she’d thought about kissing him. Having the thought now, when the threat of danger seemed a little less real, made her flush. Still, something in her needed to know what he’d stopped himself from saying.

“Made you wonder what?”

He met her eyes, that heart-stopping blue not dimmed even in the dark of the bar, and her breath caught. But before he could answer, the door behind her opened. His gaze went over her shoulder, and his whole countenance visibly hardened.

Sarah glanced back to see who had caused this transformation, but she only saw a drunk old man stumble in from the cold. He shout-slurred, “Gimme ano’er one,” though he clearly hadn’t ordered anything here yet, and he scanned the room in a manner that seemed oddly familiar. Just as Sarah placed it, her eyes widening in surprise, the old man’s gaze landed on Benny. He grinned and said, “There’sss ma boy, the docker.” He shook his head at the mispronunciation, moved his mouth more slowly, and over corrected, “Dock-tore.”

Sarah looked at Benny, who shook his head, downed his whiskey in one gulp, and stood. “I’m not a doctor yet.” He turned to Sarah and said grimly, “Sarah, meet Henry. My father.”

*          *          *

Between the two of them, they managed to prop Henry up long enough to walk him to the diner across the street. Benny seemed almost as well known there as he was at the bar. Two servers and a line cook called out greetings when they entered, and as they were piling into a booth, one of the waitresses walked over with a pot of coffee.

“The usual, Ben?”

Benny shook his head, an uncharacteristically jerky motion. “Just hot wings tonight.”

“Actually,” Sarah said as she slipped in beside Benny, “could we split a burger and some fries?”

Benny glanced at her in surprise as the server walked away. It was their usual order when they shared a meal, but he understood that tonight it was also a gesture. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, and he looked at his father.

“Dad, I need you to do something.”

“I know, I know,” Henry mumbled with shame and regret. “I tried, Benny, I really did. I’ll stop drinkin’, I promise-”

“No, it’s not about that. We need your help, Dad.”

“My help.” Everything about Henry went still, and he lifted watery, bloodshot eyes to Benny. Sarah wondered how long it had been since someone had asked for Henry’s help. By the change she saw come over him, she guessed quite a while. He took a long swig of black coffee, and he said as clearly as he could, “What do you need?”

Benny hesitated and glanced around the diner. When he was sure no one was near, he leaned forward and asked quietly, “You served with a man named Venquist once, didn’t you?”

Sarah looked at him in shock, and her arms wrapped protectively around her bag. She thought of the paper still hidden inside, and a chill swept over her.

Henry paled and set down his mug with a thud. “How do you know that? You shouldn’t even know that name, Benny. How do you know that name?”

“Dad, you told me. You told me a story about him. I need you to tell Sarah.”

But he was shaking his head, his expression surprisingly stern. “I should never have told you that. I should never have mentioned him. I was drunk anyway, Benny. It wasn’t real. That’s what you said, and you were right.”

“Maybe.” Benny pulled the paper from Sarah’s bag and spread it out over the table. “But the name is real, Dad. When I saw this, I thought it was just a coincidence. And then someone tried to push a bookshelf on top of us.”

Henry’s eyes moved back and forth over the sheet, an ever faster motion that started as a study and morphed into panic. His gaze seemed to lock on one spot near the top of the page, and his finger tapped there restlessly. Then he looked at Sarah with wild eyes. “You did this?”

When she nodded hesitantly, he seemed to freeze with an odd, old man kind of tremble. Then he snapped out of it and ran his hands over his face. “Put that thing away,” he said.

“Dad-”

“I’ll tell her. Just put that damn thing away before someone sees it.”

And he began to talk. As he did, the server brought their order. The caffeine from the coffee woke Henry up a little bit. The combination of fat and protein from the wings absorbed the alcohol still in his system. Between those and the story, he was soon sober enough to wish for another drink.

“You had it in there,” he said. “Not the details, of course. But you were right that he was there.”

Sarah frowned, confused. “Where?”

“Vietnam. I was eighteen when I joined the army. Poor and kid-stupid, and I couldn’t think of any other way to make money.” He looked at Benny with haunted eyes. “Killin’ people ain’t no way to make money.”

“I know, Dad,” Benny said softly, and something about the tone of his voice hinted that he’d heard this before.

“Well.” Henry looked at Sarah. “There was talk that they were pullin’ troops out, but they sent us in. And it was a bloodbath, almost from the moment we had boots on the ground. I didn’t know what I was doin’, and I got shot pretty soon in.” He patted his side, where the scar from the old bullet wound still ached when the drink wore off. “I ended up buried under a pile of men I’d met eight weeks before, wounded but alive while my squad fell all around me. Driftin’ in and out, couldn’t really make sense of what was happenin’. But I saw him.”

“Venquist,” Sarah breathed, and she put her hand on Benny’s without realizing it.

Henry shuddered. “Yeah, Venquist. Went by Ian then. Maybe he still does; I don’t know. He was part of our squad, but there was somethin’ strange about him. Somethin’…he didn’t connect, you know? He didn’t talk to no one, and no one talked to him, and after a while I just kind of forgot he was there. Until I saw him that day. Could barely focus for the blood in my eyes, but I saw him walk into the middle of that battle as if no bullet could touch him. And no bullet did. He pulled up his sleeve, had some kind of wide, silver bracelet under there that ran from his wrist to his elbow.”

Sarah started, remembering the law student, but Henry was still talking.

“He pressed a button on that thing, and this blue beam came out from it. And everything it touched just seemed to…vaporize. Just poof! into thin air. Killed every one of those men in seconds. And all I could think was….Why did he wait? If he could do that, why did he let the rest of the squad die first?”

“What happened to him?” Sarah asked when Henry fell silent.

Henry shook his head, shrugged. “He just walked away. Never saw him again. The army declared him dead, and I never said otherwise. Figured they’d just think I was crazy. Wouldn’t have changed nothin’, anyway.”

“How old was he then?”

“That’s the thing,” Henry said, his eyes coming up to Sarah’s. “He was Benny’s age, maybe a few years older. Definitely not more than thirty. So he couldn’t have been in all those places you say he was.”

“I didn’t know he was in any of the wars themselves. It never even occurred to me that he would be. That’s not what the chart is about.”

“Then what?”

She hesitated, but if they couldn’t trust Benny’s father, then who could they trust? “That man was present at the declaration of every war I could find. For the last three hundred years.”

“Well,” Benny clarified, “not that man. That name, passed down through a family, I guess.”

“No, Benny,” she said, shaking her head. She pulled another piece of paper out of her bag, this one a print-out of a faded picture from the 1920’s. “The same man. This man.” She pushed the paper forward, but she could already see by the look on Henry’s face that she was right. “Is this the man you saw in Vietnam?”

“Yes.” His voice shook, and the memories flashed through his mind, conjured by the image of a man who should never have existed. He pushed the picture away with trembling hands. “You’re saying that man, the man I saw kill more than twenty men like they were nothin’, has been alive for three hundred years?”

“Not just that. I’m saying he started every war that occurred in his lifetime.”

Henry shook his head, and he looked at Benny. “Listen, kid, I know what I saw was crazy, but this…. This goes beyond nuts. This is just plain impossible.”

Sarah began to answer, but then something moved in the window behind Henry. She couldn’t see what it was at first, but something in her, some instinct she couldn’t have voiced, had chills racing over her spine. Suddenly, the movement stopped, and what stood behind Henry came into focus.

And Sarah opened her mouth to scream.