Thing Bailiwick

by Fawn Bonning

Not a snake. An arm.

  But he’d suspected as much.

  And the gnarled ring-finger on the hand connected to the arm was wearing the wedding band that matched his own.

  But, he’d known that as well.

  The arm was covered in dirt and sores that seeped puss and squirmed with fat maggots.

  But…that didn’t surprise him one bugging bit.

  What did surprise him was that the hand was holding his pack of cigarettes up as if casually offering him a smoke. Now that one threw him for a little loop. Little, hell! The triple loop de loop at the stinkin’ state fair couldn’t have rattled his brain better. But stranger yet, was the overpowering urge to take one.

  The van lurched over a dip and Eddie looked up just in time to read Unleaded--$1.29.9 on the gas pump not more than five feet from his windshield. What a rip!

  ~~~~

  Eddie lifted his heavy lids. He blinked into focus the soda bottle jutting from the windshield not half an inch from his right temple. The windshield was no longer attached to the window frame. With a groan, he attempted to push it away from his face. He could no longer see through it. It was now an opaque sheet of intricate latticework, the broken glass still held together by the wonderful modern-day magic of the shatterproof film. But it wasn’t necessary to see through it to know where he was. The smell of gasoline was overpowering, the noxious fumes burning his lungs and eyes.

  Bringing his hand to his face, he briefly explored his pulverized nose, moving his hand quickly away when he touched what felt like raw hamburger meat. He winced when he found the deep cut on his forehead. It was the blood from this gash that was trickling into his eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked it away.

  “Hey mister, you all right?”

  The voice came from somewhere far away. Obviously the idiot had enough sense at least to stay back.

  He tried to speak, but found he couldn’t. Good thing, too. Otherwise he would have told that brainless moron a thing or two.

  Does it look like I’m all right, you stupid motherbugger!

  He needed to get out of the van. But he couldn’t move. The main reason being the steering wheel presently lodged in his chest. Every breath was painful. A broken rib had punctured his lung. And his legs were broken too, both of them. He couldn’t see them because the steering column had been shoved forward several feet by the impact and they were currently wedged somewhere beneath it.

  But he was lucky to be alive. Damn lucky. What the hell could he have been thinking? It wasn’t like him to lose it like that. He wasn’t some paranoid schizo, for God’s sake. Just an ordinary, levelheaded kind of guy. Actually, he considered himself slightly above average in the intelligence department. So how he let a stupid mouse rummaging around in a few old chip bags escalate to this, he didn’t know.

  “Mister, you okay in there?”

  Oh yes, I’m just fine, thank you very much. Just having a little party. Yee haw! Turn up the square dancing music and get your roach-stomping shitkickers over here. Let’s whoop it up. Bring on the party balloons. Where’s the party hats? How’s about a cake? No candles please.

  He began to chuckle, and immediately tried to stop as his entire body screamed in pain. But it was too late. His giggling triggered a gagging reflex and he coughed up a wad of bloody mucous. In too much pain to spit, he decided to just let it dribble down his chin.

  “Bugging pathetic,” he muttered, and two teeth tumbled from his mouth.

  He couldn’t breathe. The gas fumes were asphyxiating him, filling the van, filling his collapsing lungs, filling his brain. And to top things off, his bowels had turned loose and there was no toilet paper to be found.

  “Mister, can you hear me? Hang in there. I called for help.”

  Oh, thank you very much. How very thoughtful… you bugging moron! I know what you are, you lowlife! You can stand back and hide all you want, you big fat cockaroachie, but I know about you and my wife. I know what you were doing behind my back. I know where you’ve been dipping that stick. Don’t think you pulled one over on good ole—

  “I checked under her hood real good, Mr. Ciello,” the voice shouted faintly from the distance. “Checked all her fluids. Gave her a lube job she won’t never forget. Adjusted her high beams. Filled her up with high-test. The works! You name it, I did it. Yes sir, only full-service treatment for a high performance number like that. She was purring like a pussycat when she left here. Oh, speaking of pussy, have you looked between your legs lately?”

  There was a strange noise down by his legs. Craning his neck back and sideways, he peeked down through the twisted steering column.

  The fumes were burning his eyes. And the blood running into them wasn’t helping matters, either. That’s the only reason he thought he saw a maggot infested arm protruding from under his seat. It wasn’t real. Just the gas burning his eyes, distorting his vision.

  It wasn’t offering him a cigarette, anymore. It held something else.

  He blinked his eyes to clear his vision.

  It was small and white and cylindrical, and—

  He recognized it just as a crusty, blackened thumb compressed the lever.

  ~~~~

  “He had to be goin’ at least a hundred,” Jed said as he nursed the cuts on his face with a bloodied hanky. The blonde hair protruding from his cap was now sooty black, the ends burnt and frayed, and his face and hands were glowing as if he’d laid in the sun for at least ten hours straight. But all said and done, Sheriff Daniels considered him to be an extremely lucky young man.

  As he went on about how he’d tried to help the poor guy, Daniels observed the many investigators efficiently examining the scene. His eyes drifted to Mr. Lemm where he was sweeping the shattered remains of the station’s front glass-panel windows, shaking his head and muttering and stopping every few seconds to pull the dangling hanky from his back pocket and swipe at his face.

  Turning his attention back to the boy, the sheriff noticed the young man’s eyebrows had been singed clear away.

  “Poor guy,” the eyebrow-less Jed was saying, “I didn’t know him too good. He came in every once in a while. A bit on the quiet side, but he seemed like a nice enough fella.”

  “Yep,” Daniels said, wiping his brow on his sleeve.

  Though the fire had been out for several hours, the heat was still hanging in the air like a smothering blanket. And the asphalt beneath his leather soles was soft.

  Turning his head, he let loose a stream of tobacco juice and watched as it sizzled upon hitting the pavement.

  Mercy! There was nothing left of the van but a giant metal carcass. He prodded at a piece of charred debris at his foot, barely recognizing it as a cigarette lighter. “Well, don’t see as there’s nothin’ much I can—”

  When he glanced back, the boy was wrestling with an antennae, it having escaped from where it’d been hiding beneath his hair when he’d taken off his cap to wipe his forehead. Quickly tucking it back under, the boy clapped the cap back on his head with a sheepish grin.

  “Daaamn, son,” Daniels drawled, looking around nervously. But everyone was busy sifting through debris and taking measurements and writing important things on impressive clipboards. “It’s ‘bout time you grew you a pair, but keep them things under wraps, would ya.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Jed replied, averting his eyes as he dabbed at a cut on his chin.

  Daniels turned to look at the smoking metal skeleton so Jed wouldn’t catch him grinning. “Ed had two kids,” he said. “Cryin’ shame. Damn shame about his wife, too.”

  “Oh, yessir. Yessir,” Jed agreed, his head lifting and his eyes lighting like fireflies at dusk. “She sure was a fine woman. One of a kind.”

  The sheriff put his hand to his holster, his fingertips lightly caressing the smooth leather. “Yep,” he sighed, his eyes taking in the metal carcass, “she surely was. Lord a mercy!”

  ▪

  ▪

  Dark Horse

  (Thing in the Dream)


  “You getting this?”

  “Shhh, yes.”

  Through the lens of the video-camera, she watched her five-year-old riding Black Beauty for all he was worth. The springs groaned loudly as he swayed back and forth, dangerously close to the point of toppling. His delicate features were set in fierce determination, his lips drawn back into a grimace, his golden curls plastered to his damp face, his eyes blazing intensely.

  What was he seeing? Certainly not the wall his eyes were presently riveted on. Nothing there but a couple of enlarged eight by ten photos. No. He was no longer in this dim room at three-thirty in the morning. He was someplace much more exciting. A wide-open range in the Wild West, a cowboy in mad pursuit of some renegade Indians. By the looks of him, they were giving him a real run for his money, too. His breaths were coming in short gasps and his Spiderman pajamas were spotting where he was beginning to sweat through.

  Sleepwalking. Or rather, sleepriding. At age five, nonetheless! The youngest yet. A Goodman record. Jeff was positively beaming where he stood in the doorway in nothing but a pair of boxers. Yep, carrying on the family tradition. The wonderful Goodman family legacy. She supposed it was inevitable. All the Goodman’s were sleepwalkers, at least the males. It was a legacy passed down to every single Goodman male, going as far back as any of them could remember. It started at about age ten or eleven, and only lasted a few years. And boy, were they proud of it. Every holiday, every family gathering of any kind, it seemed that the topic of conversation always managed to work its way back around to one sleepwalking incident or another. Her favorite was the one about great-grandpa Goodman, how he’d awakened from a spell to find himself standing clear down at the creek’s edge a good fifty yards from the house, his fishing line thrown in and a damn fish tugging at his line.

  Trevor was laboring for breath to the point of wheezing.

  “Honey,” she breathed in a worried tone.

  “Shhh, just leave him,” he whispered. “It won’t last much longer.”

  She knew he was right. It was best not to interfere. Just let the dream run its course. If you woke a Goodman from one of these spells, they came out disoriented and confused and just itching for a fight. Jeff actually broke his father’s nose during one particularly nasty episode. No, it was best just to let him be. He’d awake the next morning no worse for the wear.

  As if on cue, Trevor came to an abrupt halt. With a grin and a giggle, he dismounted Black Beauty, giving him a few pats on the neck before clambering back into his bed.

  Shutting off the camcorder, Cheryl handed it to Jeff and went to her son, pulling the covers to his chin, watching as a contented grin formed on his flushed face.

  Jeff came up beside her to join in on admiring their only child. Damp curls formed neat little ringlets along a forehead beaded with sweat, and his rosy lips were slightly parted as be breathed, once again deep in slumber.

  “Oh, Jeff,” she breathed. “He’s so young.”

  Jeff nodded. “Beat me by three years.”

  Cheryl put a hand to her mouth, nibbling nervously at fingernails that were barely there as it was. She’d been dreading this moment. More than she cared to admit.

  Jeff put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. “It’s gonna be okay, hon. All us Goodmans go through this. He wouldn’t be a bona fide Goodman if he didn’t.”

  “I know. It’s just…did you see his face? So…intense. Scary.”

  Jeff nodded and looked back to Trevor sleeping so soundly.

  Fumbling for her husband’s hand, Cheryl clasped it tightly. “I’m scared, Jeff,” she whispered, her eyes riveted on her sleeping child. “Really scared.”

  ~~~~

  It was as she was making his bed the next morning that she reached an entirely new level of scared.

  Extracting the coarse black hairs from the bed, she held them before her eyes, rolling them between her fingers. She had a strong suspicion that she knew what they were. She had, after all, grown up on a horse ranch. Even so, she examined them as if they were something totally foreign.

  Hurrying to the hamper, she frantically dug out Trevor’s Spiderman pajamas.

  There they were. Three of them dug into the fabric of his pajama bottoms. She plucked them out one by one and twirled them between finger and thumb.

  Moving to the rocking horse, she ran her hand over the cool, smooth plastic. “What the hell is going on?” she whispered, a chill traveling down her back.

  Shuffling numbly to the living room, she lowered herself to the couch, her eyes glued to the small boy who sat on the floor in front of the television watching ninja turtles throwing karate kicks left and right. He giggled when one did a front flip over a startled opponent and then proceeded to spring up, performing a split in mid-air, taking out two more opponents in one fell swoop.

  Five years old. Well, six in four months. The Goodmans all seemed so tickled whenever they spoke of Jeff starting at eight. He’d been the youngest ever. Until now. Hell, Jeff was probably on the phone this very minute, bragging to every Goodman across the states.

  The Goodmans and their damned family legacy. Why would anybody in their right mind be so damned proud about something like sleepwalking? Like it was a damn gift or something, a talent, for God’s sake. It was a nuisance as far as she was concerned. It was creepy, not to mention dangerous.

  A cereal commercial came on, and Trevor sprang up to throw a kick at an imaginary opponent and then proceeded to slash him with a make-believe sword. “Awesome, dude!” he bellowed, and then began to twirl in place. Overcome by the dizzies, he dropped to the floor amidst a barrage of giggles.

  Looking down at the dark hairs, she gulped down the panic, hoping to send it back down to the pit of her stomach.

  She had a bad feeling about Trevor and his ‘gift’. She’d been dreading its arrival ever since the odd dreams she’d had while pregnant with him, the dreams that hadn’t been her own at all.

  Back then, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to go to Jeff with her suspicions. He would’ve only scoffed and told her it was her hormones going haywire. So instead, she’d broached the delicate subject with her sister Cindy, who basically told her the same thing.

  “It’s okay, Cher,” Cindy’d said as she filled the waffle iron with batter. “I ever tell you what I did when I was pregnant with Timothy? Ate flour.”

  “Flowers?”

  “No, flour, as in baking. I had the urge to make some homemade biscuits, can you believe it, me! So there I was, up to my elbows, when all of a sudden, before I even realized what I was doing, I was shoveling flour into my mouth by the handfuls. Can you just imagine? I just couldn’t stop myself. It was really weird.”

  “Yeah, that is pretty weird.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, my doctor said it was perfectly normal. Something about pregnant woman craving starch or something. So I wouldn’t go getting in a tizzy over a few strange dreams.”

  “I know, but these dreams… they’re different. They seem so… oh, I don’t know how to explain it,” she sighed, rubbing her face.

  “Every pregnancy is different, Cher. I mean, you have strange cravings, do strange things, have strange dreams. This is nothing to worry your little head about, little sister, really. When I was carrying Shaina, my little toe kept spasming. I think I may have told you this. My left foot, I think it was. Yeah, my left,” she said, looking down at her wriggling toes. “I’d be sitting there, watching the T.V., my feet propped up on the footstool like a good girl, just like the doc ordered, you know, to keep my ankles from swelling to the size of watermelons, when all of a sudden it would go off.” She pulled the syrup from the cabinet and stood there grinning, her eyes someplace far away as she thought back to the magical moment. “Kenny got a real kick out of it. He kept saying we should paint a face on it and make a miniature hula skirt.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me that one. But, I don’t know, Cin. I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m somehow experiencing the baby’s dreams. It�
��s the strangest thing I’ve ever felt, like I’m looking through someone else’s eyes. A child’s eyes. Everything is so…I don’t know how to describe it,” she said, rubbing at her forehead. “It’s just the perspective. I’m always looking up at everything and everybody. And there’s this creepy man, Cin, in every single one. He’s always smiling down at me with these icy blue eyes, and he’s always bringing me candy and toys. And, oh my god, Cin, the lollipops are so amazing! As big as dinner plates, and swirly-whirly and colorful, and they taste so sweet and—”

  “You took them!” Cindy gasped. “For Pete’s sake, Cher, stranger danger. Haven’t you learned anything?”

  “That’s just it, Cin. I know better. But not in the dreams. In the dreams, I’m clueless. I’m trusting. I’m…innocent.”

  “Well, if these are the baby’s dreams, then how could there be a creepy man with lollipops? Or anything, for that matter. The baby doesn’t have memories in those little brain cells yet. He’s got nothing to draw from. Am I right, or am I right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But I’ll tell you something else, and I don’t want you to think I’m losing it or anything, but a couple of weeks ago I was dreaming that I was walking along the beach, and it was so real, Cin. I swear I could smell the salt, I could feel the sun, I could hear the waves, and when I woke up—”

  “Fudge!” Cindy gasped. Jumping up from the table, she sprinted to the counter and threw up the waffle iron lid, releasing a cloud of steam. “Damn!” she swore, stabbing the waffle with a fork. It hit the plate sounding more like a hockey puck than a Belgian waffle. “I guess this will have to be mine,” she grumbled. “The kids won’t touch them if they’re crunchy.”

  “Sorry.”