knees, swimming in pain. He couldn’t hold her anymore. Mike and Matt walked up to him. They each put a loving hand on a shoulder and opened their mouths as one.
“christopheR. i aM donE chasinG yoU. i havE waiteD twO thousanD yearS tO geT ouT oF thiS prisoN. yoU eitheR brinG mE bacK thaT keY and kilL thE hissinG ladY oR i wilL keeP youR motheR aS mY peT iN herE foreveR. therE iS nO otheR choicE. somebodY wilL diE oN christmaS daY. iT iS eithEr thE hissinG ladY oR youR mothEr. noW…
“choosE.”
Mr. and Mrs. Collins opened the tree house door, ready to throw her in.
“Okay! Stop! I’ll do it! Just let her go!” Christopher cried.
There was a moment of silence, then a whisper came in from a thousand mouths.
“thanK yoU, christopheR…”
The town gently lowered Christopher’s mother down the ladder to the ground. Christopher looked at her lying next to the tree. She seemed so peaceful. After everything she had been through. Everything that life had done to her.
He knelt next to her body and stroked her forehead like she always did for him when he was sick with a fever. He took her hand. If there was a pulse, he couldn’t find it.
“Mom, I have to go now,” he said quietly.
The fever started. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. The hairs on his neck stood up. His stomach got warm and crackling with electricity. The whisper scratch heated up all over his body, but for his mother, it didn’t start in his mind or in his hands.
It started in his heart.
He closed his eyes and held her to his chest. The whisper scratch moved through him like the clouds moving above. He could smell the Vicks VapoRub she put on his chest when he was sick. The beer on the rocks he poured like Mary Katherine’s altar wine like the blood running out of Christopher’s nose.
There was no difference anymore.
Christopher felt as if he would have no blood left, but he would never let go. No matter how much it hurt. Whatever he had left he would give to her. The whisper scratch made Christopher feel the bullet in her body. Every hope and every fear that pulled the triggers. Every broken promise and broken life.
His fever climbed. Christopher’s head screamed. His skull felt like it would snap in half. He knew everything now. Everything his mother had been through. Everything his mother had ever done for him. He looked at her life, and he finally understood this feeling inside him.
The feeling was not pain.
It was power.
He was omniscient. He was omnipotent. He was as close to God as a mortal could be. He healed her broken ribs. Every cavity. Every wrinkle. Every little ache and pain. It all ran through him and disappeared into the clouds.
Christopher’s mother opened her eyes. She was alive.
“Christopher?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing, Mom. You’re okay now.”
He kept touching her chest. Giving her more and more life. He saw all of her memories. Not only the fact of them. The feeling of them. The tears. The rage. The self-hatred. The invisible scars.
“Mom, I can take away all of your pain. Will you let me do it?”
“What?” she said softly.
“You don’t have to feel any hurt again. Will you let me do that for you?”
“Yes, honey. Whatever you want,” she said.
He brought his hand over her shoulder and touched the skin between her breast and collarbone. For a moment, she didn’t feel any different.
And then, it started.
She looked up at her son, blood pouring out of his nose.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Christopher. “Do you have a nosebleed?”
“I’ll be okay, Mom. Just watch,” he said.
She instinctively reached up and wiped the blood from his face. He took her hand in his and smiled. His warmth spread all over her skin, and she saw her life pass in front of her eyes. Every time she hid her tears because she was not going to teach her son how to be afraid. Every time she smiled to make him feel safe, then went into the next room and counted the thirty-one dollars they had left. All the hits she took for him. All the things she gave up for him. Every time she tucked him into bed at night. Every time she dragged herself out of bed because she would never give up on Christopher the way that everyone she ever knew gave up on her. She felt every moment she ever spent with