Land of Shadows (2.04) Shadow of the Grieved

[Stormm]

Unimaginable shades of purple and orange painted the heavens as it drove back the creeping black tendrils of night. Those beautiful shades of dawn emerged from the horizon, and a man who had unintentionally caused chaos for the small Nebraska town behind him had a front row seat for the show. It was a sight for him to behold, as it was the only sunrise he could ever remember seeing, which wasn’t the only memory he was struggling to find within himself as he walked away from the disaster he left in his wake.

The man’s gait had shortened, and he started putting more pressure on his left leg as the limp he acquired earlier that morning returned. He reached into the pockets of his tattered jeans, sifting through a wad of twenties to the bottle of pills he was left on the side of the road with. Ignoring the warning of no more than five in a twenty-four hour period, he popped his sixth in as many hours, and continued to limp down the side of the highway, headed north.

That time of day, there had been little to no traffic headed in either direction, a couple of eighteen wheelers that simply moved over and kept going, but the squeaky brakes of a much smaller vehicle approaching caught the man’s attention, and he leered back over his right shoulder. An elderly woman in a beat up, brown, Oldsmobile station wagon had come to a complete stop on the left shoulder of northbound Highway 81, and called out to the man, walking in the median. “My goodness young man, are you alright?” She cried out with concern.

He’d already been through so much that morning, and was barely able to muster the energy to shake his head as he hobbled up the median to the side of the car. As he leaned up against the side of her car with a heavy sigh, the woman unlocked the doors. “My lord; get in, get in!” She opened her door like she was going to get out and help the much younger man, but he motioned for her to stay put, and shuffled around the backside of the aged vehicle, and climbed into the passenger seat.

It took him several moments to find a comfortable position as the woman got the car back on the road. “Thank you.” He finally said, out of breath, dry-mouthed, and still in pain, waiting for the pills to kick in. “I was attacked and woke up in the middle of the road about twenty miles back; I have no idea what’s going on.” The man only disclosed so much of the truth for that morning, mostly out of fear of losing his ride.

"Sounds like you need to get to a hospital!" The woman exclaimed with a lead foot. "I'm actually headed to one now, so you’re in luck." She admitted.

Quickly coming out of his stupor, the man’s excitement brought him out of his seat. “No hospitals!” He shrieked, unaware of the volume his voice reached. “I just.” He continued, bringing his voice back to an acceptable level. “I just don’t think I need any doctors poking and prodding around on me right now.” He admitted, not fully sure why he felt that way, but confident he wanted nothing to do with any doctors at that time. “A little bit of a rest would do me some good, and you can just drop me off at a bus station so I can get out of your hair and be on my way.” He turned his attention out of the passenger side window, resting his forehead on the glass.

"You would know what's best for yourself." She agreed in a chipper tone without hesitation. "I’m sure there’s a bus station in Lincoln somewhere, I just hope you don't mind finding it on your own. My next and only stop is the Nebraska Heart Institute, so I can take you as far as there." She continued to share personal information. "My husband was attacked earlier this morning by some lunatic. He had a heart attack, but thank the lord he managed to call 911."

The man continued to look out the window, only half paying attention to her as she continued to unload her frustrations and fear for her husband. "That's nice." He replied as he started to nod off.

She hesitated for a moment, the forced smile on her face had disappeared, and she turned her attention back to the road. “I apologize for my rambling, we don’t even know each other, but you just seemed like a nice young man.” She admitted as her cheeks started to turn a shade of coral. "Well, there’s no sense in continuing to be strangers, am I right? My name is Frances. Frances Pennington."

...Shadow of the Grieved...

The older couple that owned and ran the convenience store in Geneva was the best lead I had at the time to find Kaden. Not only that, but the added motivation in finding him before that vindictive, slightly unstable ex-cop did. The unfortunate news here was, Chuck never recovered from the heart attack he had that day Kaden was dumped on their town. Frances, though, was still alive, but Alzheimer's had put a pretty tight stranglehold on her over the years.

The only thing keeping me from hitting another dead end was a journal that she had been keeping through the years since her husband’s death. Now, I don’t feel great about taking a dying woman’s journal from her bed-side table, but just as she helped Kaden all them years ago, she again would be helping him, just in another way.

Justin leaned against the opened door frame to the twins’ room. The glow from their night light illuminating enough of the room for him to see their faces as they slept. It wasn’t so much a sleepless night for the Force of Nature as it was one of the many times he’d been awoken in the middle of the night by a pregnant Lindsay.

The birth of their third child was fastly approaching as she neared her third trimester, and with that, was up at least once every night like clockwork. Whether it was another trip to the bathroom, her moving wrong in her sleep and causing discomfort, or just the little guy moving and jostling her awake.

He’d gotten used to how sporadic Lindsay’s movements were while she slept through the years, so those he was able to sleep through, but the sounds she made through her discomfort, or frequent bathroom trips, were what usually brought him out of slumber.

On that night, it was the tired giggling of his wife that woke him up. Just like this stage during her first pregnancy, her body had started to make some crude noises that she was not in control of. It just so happened, as she sat down that morning, that her body decided the porcelain bowl was the perfect stage for such a performance, and as it echoed through the master suite of Michaels Manor, catching her off guard, she couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

With everything else on his mind, he figured a quick patrol of their home would do him some good rather than trying to get right back to sleep. The search for Kaden Calix being fresh in his mind, and being unable to fathom what Kaden’s parents must have been going through for the past eleven years, was enough to keep him awake at night. But that night, he also had the excitement of finally getting to wrestle in his first actual match since Mass Destruction.

His first stop was Joe and Remi’s room. They had tried to give the toddlers their own rooms, but they would always just end up sleeping in one room together, so they put them back in the same room. For the time being anyway. There would be plenty of time for them to grow up and stop wanting to be attached at the hip. They had grown up quite a bit already, and would be starting kindergarten in the Fall, when it had just seemed like the day before for Justin that they were born.

“Do you think they have any idea what’s coming?” The voice from behind him asked, as he turned to see Lindsay.

Justin shook his head. “They understand they are getting a brother, but there’s no way for them to understand what that’s going to mean for us.” He admitted. “At least they have each other, hopefully that will ease the neglect that most kids feel with younger siblings.”

“Sorry for waking you up.” She giggled again. “Was it the…?”

“I’m used to it, and yes, it definitely was.” He said, chuckling under his breath as he pulled away from his wife. Much like the first time she was pregnant, Lindsay continued to try and get Justin to touch her growing belly, and at times would just try to force it on him, knowing he wasn’t the type to get mushy over her baby bump.

There was just something about pregnancy that made him uncomfortable. He was a great father, but it wasn’t until the twins were born the first time around that he truly got excited about having kids, and his emotional discomfort just sort of melted away. That mentality hadn’t changed the second time around either.

“Oh come on, just touch it.” Lindsay said, as the two continued to whisper in the doorway of the kids’ room, but it quickly turned into her chasing Justin downstairs and into the kitchen with her belly.

Now, the entry she had in that journal about Kaden from back then wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was certainly more than I’d had to go off of for a long time. It’s still hard to believe the irony in it, though. You know, of all the people to pick him up that day, it’s the wife of a man who had a heart attack because of him in the first place.

Out of breath from the chase, Lindsay took a seat at the island bar while Justin flipped the lights on. To be fair, it was a less of a chase, and more of Justin just walking away from her. Despite how good of shape she was in prior to the pregnancy, it still had a way of playing havoc on her body. “Rude!” She playfully exclaimed as she worked to catch her breath.

Justin grabbed a glass out of the cabinet close to the fridge, and filled it with water. He drank most of it, and left the last few sips for Lindsay, as he passed the glass to her. “You know, there’s umpteen bathrooms in this house, maybe you could take your early morning acoustics to one of them, instead?” He joked, and cracked himself up as he finished the sarcastic statement.

Lindsay tried to reach across and slap him on the arm, something she was able to do before the pregnancy, but she wasn’t able to connect with the hindrance of her stomach pressed up against the counter. “There’s umpteen bedrooms in this place too, you know?”

“Yeah, because that’ll happen.” He said, nodding his head at her, and all but forfeiting the playful argument.

“So, what’s on your mind? Kaden again?” Lindsay asked as she finished off the last sip of water, handing the glass back to her husband.

He nodded again, but with a shrug. “Among other things.” He admitted.

“Like?” Lindsay prodded.

“Well, my first match in four months.” He admitted. “It’s bad enough I got hurt during my last match with Gerard, but then for the brass to not put me in a match for another two to three months afterward.” He paused and shook his head. “That, and…”

“The fact that your ‘warm up’ is against ‘him?’” Lindsay snickered.

“Well, yeah.” Justin conceded.

“It’s Razor Blade, you and everyone else on the roster have beaten him, handily.” Curious as to Justin’s apprehension, her tone stiffened.

“Yeah, that’s not what I’m worried about.” He started in. “You’ve been pregnant since my last match, so you haven’t been able to help. Johnny’s been gone for a while now, and he was always pretty easy to persuade to come work the ring with me. I literally haven’t been in the ring with anyone but myself since March, and the first person I get is him?” Justin’s tone turned to worry. “How am I supposed to confidently walk into Return to Glory in a few weeks, with the World title on the line, against a man everyone and their dog has been waiting to see me get into the ring with in years?”

“But you…” Lindsay started to question, but he interrupted her.

“Seromine doesn’t count, and that one-off match with him in last year’s Invitational was not against The Anarchist .” Justin answered.

“Will it even be The Anarchist this time around either?” She wondered, and Justin went to answer, but stopped himself as he pondered as well. “I’d say if Jason had been going around all this time terrorizing the entire roster like we both know he’s capable of, then maybe you’d have to worry.” Lindsay agreed. “But given the interactions you two have had lately, and seeing how he’s been acting, you’ll basically be stepping into the ring with the emotional equivalent to Joey in a few weeks.”

The couple paused for a few moments. Justin thought over what his wife had to say, and Lindsay adjusted herself in the stool, wincing with discomfort as she placed her right hand on her stomach while shifting in her seat. “Yeah, but…”

“But what?” She hastily asked back, trying to get Justin to really think it over.

“I mean, the World title is on the line this week too, so I might not even walk out of the Summer BBQ with the title.”

Lindsay’s mouth just dropped open, and she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. The man she’s stood beside for all those years, that went eight years to get back to where he was now. Doubting he could retain against the superstar with, arguably, one of the worst records in PCW history, was flabbergasting.

Justin couldn’t keep a straight face, and began to laugh. He was aware of how hard it was for Lindsay to understand sarcasm while pregnant, and he did his best to pull one over on her, but just couldn’t do it, and she joined him with a nervous giggle as well. “You’re an ass!” She exclaimed, and because she couldn’t reach across the counter to smack him, instead, grabbed a piece of fruit from the nearby bowl, and tossed it at him.

“I do what I can.” He said, catching the pear, and placing it back into the bowl. “But, in all honesty, there’s always that bounty that Gerard has out on me that could become a problem.”

She wrote about the strange young man she second guessed herself for stopping to help out, but seeing the shape he was in, didn’t hesitate in offering him a ride after stopping. Though, if she knew what a confused and scared Kaden had actually done, and the part he played in her husband’s condition, there’s no doubt in my mind he would have continued walking until the authorities caught up to him.

Nevertheless, she gave him a ride as far as the hospital in Lincoln, where she left him back on his own. Apparently she had gotten him to open up enough to know he was headed for the closest Greyhound stop to hop a bus to Michigan. Which makes sense, knowing Kaden, but the funny thing is, she wrote about his decision to go to Michigan as being random, like he had no idea why he was going there.

Regardless of how or why he came to the conclusion back then, given his state, it was something for me to go off of. Kaden’s mother was from Lansing, and that’s where he’d moved to when I got him to the states to wrestle. So that was my next stop.