“Harmony House” is a serial novel with episodes released every Tuesday morning. You can read the setup for the story or start from the beginning. Each episode comes with high-quality audio narration for you to enjoy on the go with the Substack mobile app.
Previously…
In the last episode, Schultz was revealed as a coconspirator working with the eco-terrorist group through his romantic relationship with their leader, Keith Darrow. Schultz reflected on his complicated twenty-year relationship with Darrow and his desperate need to hang on to the love of his life no matter what the cost. Schultz’s regret turns to horror when he learns that one of their captives has been accidentally killed.
“What is it?” Jessie asked. “Why are you smiling?”
Deepu hadn’t realized he had been smiling. The throbbing in his head had subsided and while that brought relief, it wasn’t the cause for his smile. They were sitting in the windowless room finishing the meal their captors had delivered unceremoniously in greasy paper sacks.
“I was just thinking about a pet turtle I used to have. The pet shop we got it from kept it in a big terrarium with plants and a view out the front window. It had a little pond in there and several friends. My dad bought the cheapest container they had. It was a little bigger than a shoebox. No pond, no plants, just some gravel and a view of dirty socks and my Anime posters.”
“And you’re thinking we’re like your turtle,” Jessie said.
“I hope we last a little longer than my turtle did.”
“You want the rest of my fries? Here. I find it funny that our climate warrior friends spared no expense in this operation but they bought food for us from the single biggest contributor of methane gas.”
“Isn’t it exhausting, always thinking about where everything comes from and what it means?” Deepu asked.
“You’re not the first person to call me exhausting.”
Jessie set the fast-food trash aside and stretched out on the mattress. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes. Deepu thought how funny it was to be stuck here with Jessie. Of all the other possibilities, he was stuck with the one person he liked the least. Even as Deepu thought this, he realized it wasn’t true. Jessie was the real deal. There were so few people who actually were who they appeared to be. Deepu knew he was not. He had spent his life being who he needed to be for his parents and then his aunt and uncle, his coaches, his teachers, his bosses.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” Deepu said. “I’m glad there are people like you. No, really. I’m being real, man. You shoot straight. You mean what you say. You defend what you believe in, and you look out for people who can’t defend themselves. Even if you don’t like them.”
“I’m an asshole,” Jessie said without much conviction. “I’m helping you because it’s in my best interest.”
“Maybe, but I don’t buy it.”
Jessie didn’t respond. He seemed tired so Deepu stopped talking, finished the fries, and stretched out on the floor. He missed his phone. Having to be alone with his thoughts was claustrophobic. He was glad for the light and the fact that Jessie at no point had insisted they turn it out even though he would have slept better without it.
Deepu tried to keep a lid on his anxiety but in the quiet, tomb-like room, his thoughts started crawling like lice. He wasn’t built for this. He felt a sense of shame at how fragile he was.
“I don’t think we’re going to get out of this alive unless we do something,” he said.
“You may be right. There’s no way to know. They’ve been careful so far about protecting their identity but someone’s going to slip the longer we stay and then…”
“They get paranoid and decide it’s better to kill us,” Deepu said. “We need to do something before that happens.”
“Probably. But I’m not sure what. This room doesn’t offer us a lot of options and so far, they’ve not let us both out at the same time. We can’t afford to be reckless here. Whatever we do, it needs to be planned out. We’ll only get one shot.”
Deepu didn’t say anything in response. This talk wasn’t helping. He knew he was the weak link here and would have to follow the old man’s lead. Deepu’s eye was twitching, and his breathing was ragged and uneven. He knew he needed to rest and conserve energy, but it was impossible. He stood up and began pacing back and forth in the small space beside the mattress. Jessie’s eyes remained closed, and Deepu was unsure if he was still awake but then he spoke, his voice little more than a whisper.
“Your parents, how did they die?”
“Why do you want to know? I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
The old man didn’t open his eyes. Who the fuck was this guy? How could he just ask about something so painful and personal? It suddenly made Deepu furious.
“No, it’s not fair. Nothing about any of this is fair. What the fuck do you know about fair? You’ve had a long, comfortable life. We’re gonna die here and there’ll be nothing left of my family. I’m it. I was the great hope. I was supposed to be my parent’s legacy, the fruit of all their sacrifices.”
“I understand.”
“You understand what?”
“I understand being alone, losing someone who’s part of you. Maybe the best part. Forget I asked. I get not wanting to talk about it. I didn’t for a long time.”
The old man sat up and leaned against the wall. He didn’t look at Deepu but studied the creases in one of his calloused hands as if there was some great mystery to be solved there. The room was closing in, and Deepu felt his heart begin to race. He held his breath, closed his eyes, and tried to force the lid back over the open well of his loss, but it was no use. The dark images rose and flooded over the lip of the well, and soon he would be drowning. He couldn’t do this now. Not now, not here. He was trembling and sweating so much he hadn’t heard Jessie move from where he was sitting until the old man’s hand was on his shoulder, the weight of it real and substantial.
“Hey, son. Just breathe. It’s alright. You’re alright. Whatever it is you’re seeing, it’s not real. It’s in the past, or it hasn’t happened yet. Either way, it’s not happening now. You’re safe. You’re not alone.”
There was warmth in Jessie’s hand, and it radiated through Deepu’s back and into his chest, loosening the muscles around his heart. He gasped for air and tears came. He collapsed into the arms of the old man who did not pull away, but enveloped him, held him in a way that he had not been held since he was a child. Jessie began to rock him gently back and forth. Deepu felt shame and embarrassment, but there seemed no room for that in Jessie’s embrace. There was only the cycle of their breath that rose and fell in tandem and the rocking motion that, with every roundtrip lowered Deepu’s heart rate.
The images surfaced and Deepu stopped trying to fight them. His mother’s eyes blinking mechanically, her cheek in a pool of blood on the dirty tile floor behind the register. The pleading shrieks of his father’s voice, not his father’s voice before two more explosive cracks threw him against the cigarette display and dropped him to the floor atop his wife. The tiny space beneath the counter where Deepu liked to hide when he was small. His twelve-year-old body, all arms and legs compressed into a ball and wedged into that space so tightly that it left dark purple bruises on his shoulders and thighs for weeks after. For the first time, he allowed himself to look at these images as they cycled through like a slide show, the frames advancing with the rhythm of Jessie’s rocking. Eventually, as the slides advanced, there was nothing on them, just a dark screen that lightened by degrees with every back-and-forth motion. He became aware that he was being held like a child by this gruff old man and again he felt humiliation, but that feeling was less important than the feeling of not wanting to be let go. Jessie did not let go.
After a few minutes which could have been hours, Deepu heard someone clomping down the stairs above them. His heart started to race. The headache was back, and it gripped his frontal lobe like a vice.
“They’re coming, they’re coming!” he hissed.
Jessie released him, arched his back, and moved back over to the mattress.
“Relax, they’re just coming to do a routine check and bathroom break. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
A moment later, they heard the rattle and slide of the deadbolts, and the menacing one they called Hawk threw open the door and stepped into the room. Deepu jumped back and pressed his back to the wall. The sudden movement startled Hawk and he instinctively lurched backward bumping into the rebounding door which knocked the gun out of his hand. The weapon dropped to the carpet and rolled over to the mattress. Jessie reached to pick it up, but before he could, Hawk lunged forward and grabbed his upper arms. Jessie fell backward and pulled Hawk with him onto the mattress. They wrestled, rolling, and slamming into the faux wood-paneled wall where Hawk left a splintery, shoulder-shaped crater. Rebounding, he was able to throw his leg over Jessie’s midsection, straddling him, and pinning him to the mattress. He pummeled Jessie repeatedly in the face, each blow hard and precise like he was a machine on an assembly line.
Deepu stared at the weapon on the floor. He was shaking all over. He knew what he had to do. How many times had he seen this scene unfold in a movie? But he couldn’t move at first and when he finally did, it was as though he was moving through water. The gun was heavier than he expected when he picked it up. He gripped it and stepped back, keeping it trained on Hawk. His hands were shaking so hard that the barrel of the gun was like a conductor’s baton.
“Get… get off him…now!” he shouted.
Hawk turned and looked at him. The balaclava had gotten pulled down during the struggle and Deepu could see his pinched, red face and the stubble on his jaw. Hawk sighed and raised his hands slowly as he lifted his leg over Jessie who was not moving. He chuckled and shook his head as he knee-walked to the edge of the mattress toward Deepu.
“Good job, I didn’t think you had it in you,” Hawk said. “Now, give me the gun before you hurt yourself.”
Deepu’s eyes widened and he slid along the wall toward the door.
“Give. Me. The. Fucking. Gun,” Hawk said, the smile disappearing.
He moved to a crouch and held out one steady hand. Deepu continued inching toward the door without realizing he was moving. He had to run. He was no fighter.
But he looked over Hawk’s shoulder at Jessie who was beginning to stir and groan. He couldn’t just leave him. He realized then that he didn’t have to. He had the gun now. He had the power. He felt the weight of it and willed his hand to stop shaking. The electric current of panic that had been coursing through every cell of his body since the last time he was this close to a gun switched off. It was the sensation of a shrill alarm being silenced after going for so long that his bones had tuned to the frequency and in its absence returned to their solid stillness, heavy, grounded.
Staring into the eyes of this thug, Deepu felt a hatred like nothing he had ever experienced before. He knew he would pull the trigger and kill him. It was as simple and true as anything he had ever known.
Hawk must have seen this change in his captive, or felt it like deer knows when it’s in the crosshairs. He sprang from his crouch, hurling himself into Deepu and slamming him into the door jamb. The impact was like being hit by a car, and it forced all the air out of Deepu’s lungs. He crumpled over the powerful man’s back and dropped the gun.
Hawk threw him to the floor like a bag of laundry. Deepu lay gasping on the carpet trying to recover his breath. His nostrils filled with the moldy smell of the dirty floor and something sharper, acrid like the memory of fireworks when he was a kid. His ears were ringing and as the oxygen returned to his brain, he realized the gun had gone off. He scanned the floor for it but Hawk had already picked up the weapon.
“Look what you did! You fucking idiot.”
Hawk’s voice was shrill. Deepu rolled over to look up at the man, but the man was not looking at him, he was looking past him at the mattress. The gasping sound Deepu had been making as he struggled to breathe was outside of him now, filling the small space with a wet, gurgling rhythm punctuated by anguished cries. He pushed himself up so he could see over the mattress.
Jessie’s shoulders were pinned to the wall, his neck at an awkward angle, his eyes and his mouth open wide as if trying to recover the air and light that were leaving his body with his blood that was rapidly soaking into the mattress beneath him. Deepu scrambled over to him, ignoring the shouts of the man who held the gun behind him. The blood was like a crimson spring pulsing out of Jessie’s flannel shirt. Deepu hovered over him. He had to do something as surely as he knew there was nothing he could do. He looked away from the wound and into Jessie’s eyes. When he did, the old man’s gasping slowed, and his eyes narrowed. He was trying to speak, but the words were unintelligible. It sounded like ‘key,’ something key. His eyes widened again, searching, screaming with words his mouth could not produce.
Deepu found Jessie’s hand and squeezed it.
“It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay,” he said.
Jessie blinked and his head nodded. He looked at Deepu and Deepu felt the old man was looking into him or maybe through him. The look of suffering on his face relaxed into something peaceful and almost serene. His lips moved again, trying to form words. Deepu leaned in close, his ear inches from Jessie’s mouth. He could smell the piney scent of his beard.
“Mickey,” he whispered. “He was my boy.”
Deepu squeezed his hand and then he was being pulled away from Jessie. There were others in the room now, shouting at each other. The older guy Deepu had not seen since they were first captured had pulled Jessie away from the wall and onto the mattress and was pushing a pillow down on the wound in his chest.
“He’s losing too much blood,” he yelled. “We have to stop the bleeding. Jesus, we have to stop it.”
But it was too late. Deepu watched as Jessie’s breathing stopped and the urgency in his eyes faded until they were just another surface reflecting a world in motion. He was gone. Deepu had the sensation of coming apart from the inside. He felt the old scar pull apart the sutures that had never truly healed the wound. It was a gaping black hole that began to suck all the light from the room, and he collapsed within himself, no longer seeing, or hearing anything. He was a boy again in a room of strangers. An orphan alone in the world at the age of ten.
“Get him out of here,” Darrow said. When neither Freja nor Mark moved, he yelled, “Now!”
Freja snapped out of her trance, pushed past Mark who was still holding the gun and took hold of one of Deepu’s arms. He stuck the gun in the waistband of his pants and grabbed Deepu’s other arm. Their prisoner’s body was limp and yielding and surprisingly light. Freja could not take her eyes away from the dead man on the mattress and she was glad when they were out in the hall. They dragged their prisoner out into the game room and leaned him against a couch that was probably spectator seating for many spirited foosball matches when the place was occupied by happy families on vacation and not terrorists.
Freja had never accepted that label before but she could no longer deny ownership. A man was dead. He was not a point of leverage. He was a human being who cared just as much about what was happening to the planet as she did. He had suffered in his life. She knew it, not just from the gruffness in his voice or the weariness in his eyes. She had watched all the episodes of Houze, seen him interact with the others, and heard the tenderness in Jayden’s voice as she spoke of Jessie’s loss. She had read the background files on each of the contestants. Jessie’s boy had died in a horrible accident. The man had suffered. He didn’t deserve to be shot like an animal in a dank basement room. Hot tears sprang into Freja’s eyes, and she turned to Mark.
“How could you do it!” she hissed. “You killed an innocent man.”
“Whoa, that wasn’t me. Swear to God. He did it,” Mark said, pointing to Deepu whose catatonic stare did not falter.
“Yeah? Well, why the fuck do you think that happened? The guns were never supposed to be loaded. We agreed.”
Mark did not answer. He turned away and walked to the sliding glass doors that looked out at the clearing where the replica of Houze sat up on blocks like an actor cast as a monster who was halfway through make-up. Freja disliked him from the moment Darrow had introduced them but now she hated him. He wasn’t just a macho prick, he was dangerous. And now she was stuck with him. She was complicit.
She looked down at Deepu. His hands and shirt were soaked in his friend’s blood. An angry smear of it covered his smooth, dark cheek in a way that reminded her of Native American war paint in movies she loved. What were they going to do now? They had a dead body and a catatonic prisoner. Maybe they could just let him go and they could run. Surly Darrow wouldn’t expect them to continue.
She looked over at Mark. His blocky jaw was flexing, and his nostrils flared. She realized for the first time that his mask was down. She reached up and felt the smoothness of her cheek. Her stomach turned over and her mouth went dry. When she looked back down at Deepu, he was staring directly at her.
« Previous Episode | Next Episode »
What did you think of this episode?
Your feedback is so valuable to me. What’s exciting you? What’s boring you? Where do you think this is all going? Please join the conversation in the comments or even better, start a chat with other readers.
Don’t have time for that? Just hitting the ❤️ button or “restacking” this episode in Notes helps more people discover the book and it’s a strong signal to me that you’re out there and maybe I shouldn’t give up today.
Who’s Who in Harmony House?
Having trouble keeping track of who’s who from one week to the next? It’s tough when you only get to visit once a week. I made a little cheat sheet just for you:
Wow, I'm in awe of the surprise in this episode - here I was thinking I already knew what happened and was simply being treated to a different POV. Well done! Thinking about that turtle and the tender moment with Jesse and Deepu. Your craft is better with each new episode -- which, how is that even possible when it was so fine to begin with?
Sensational (and devastating), Ben. The action scene was gripping, with real tension and desperation in the actions. I'm so sad we've lost Jessie, though. He was my favourite.
This was a superb follow-up to the events of last week. Knowing that someone had died, but then finding out how. Fantastic work, even if I am distressed that it was Jessie.