by A. I. Nasser
“Actually, I don’t,” Derrick said. “I have no idea what you mean about anything, to be frank. I even tried calling Karen, and honest to God, the woman’s making less sense than you are, which is quite surprising.” There was a pause. “What the hell are the two of you smoking up there?”
“Nothing,” John replied softly.
“Are the two of you okay?”
John thought about how to best answer that.
Ever since the fire, ever since he had seen the look on Karen’s face as she watched the Greens’ house burn, he had known that absolutely nothing was ever going to be okay again. He couldn’t prove it, and nobody could, but he knew the truth. He knew that Karen had burned that house down; she had burned it down with Eva inside, and that notion haunted him every day. She didn’t have to tell him. She didn’t have to come straight out and admit to what she had done. But it was as clear as day, somewhere between the lines, screaming at him and mocking him.
“We’re fine,” John said.
“I know what fine means in your book, buddy,” Derrick said. “You only use that word when there’s something going on, and you don’t want to talk about it.”
Don’t tell him anything.
“Who are you, my mother?”
“I’m the only friend you really have,” Derrick replied.
John almost laughed. If he hadn’t been so tired, so drained, he would have fallen off his chair in a fit of laughter strong enough to bring tears to his eyes. The idea of Derrick actually being his friend was amusing, but the simple fact that the man believed it was hilarious. Joke of the day, ladies and gentlemen. Watch the clown dance!
“Well, I assure you, friend,” John said through clenched teeth in a mix of stifled amusement and distaste. “I’m using the word quite appropriately right now. We’re fine.”
Good boy, Johnny.
He and Karen were far from fine.
That look in her eyes had scared the hell out of him the day Hank Pollard had driven him home. It had chilled him to his very core, and since that night, he had not come any closer than a few feet from her. The look had lingered since that night, his wife carrying it with her everywhere, the coldness in her eyes unbearable even now. He had moved his workstation out of the bedroom, too afraid to spend the night in the same room - let alone the same bed - and had set up in his ‘office’. He locked the door every night before going to bed, and often left it locked throughout the day except when absolutely necessary.
The woman living with him in the Victorian was not Karen. She was a shell of his wife, just the walking skin and bones of the woman he had married, but nothing else. Inside, she had changed. It wasn’t one of those obvious changes that came with knowing that your husband had cheated on you. No, he could handle a change like that. He could cope with the looks of hatred and disgust, the accusing glares of a woman. He would have been fine if that were what he had to deal with.
But, that wasn’t what he was dealing with. There was something else there, something just below the surface, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on and was too scared to look for.
And he wasn’t the only one who was noticing the change.
First it was the Sherriff, who appeared to have not wanted to spend any more time near the house than John himself did. He had heard about the Sheriff from June, the praises and the lore of the man who kept Cafeville safe, and John had even incorporated a mirror of the Sheriff in his story. But, the man who had visited them after the burning was not the man John pictured. The Sheriff had appeared uneasy and restless, and seemed to shake like a leaf when Karen joined in the questioning.
Hank Pollard had said something about it, too. John had almost forced him to come find a solution to the godforsaken stench that was not going away. He had had enough, and had voiced his concerns to Karen over numerous occasions, especially when she had gone down to the basement and returned without closing the door, like she enjoyed the smell. Hank had found nothing wrong, again, and John wasn’t very surprised. A part of him had only called the man to have someone else around the house for a change, another living and breathing soul unaffected by whatever the Victorian was doing to him and his wife.
Karen’s usual joking demeanor, the soft, harmless flirting attitude she had always reserved just for Hank, had been missing completely. At one point, she had even ignored a direct question, and when Hank had looked at him, the frown of confusion on his face had made John feel more relieved than ever. It was good to know that he wasn’t imagining things.
“So what do you say?” Derrick said, his voice breaking through John’s thoughts.
“About what?” John asked.
“You haven’t been listening to anything I just said, have you?”
John felt like reminding Derrick that he never really listened to anything he said, but decided against it. “You lost me for a second.”
“Well, just a few changes to the ending,” Derrick was saying. “In a way, you make it seem like the bad guys won.”
John felt his fist clench. “There are no bad guys in this story, Derrick,” he said. “There’s just a man who’s been betrayed, and a woman who’s been scorned, and their revenge.”
“Well, the man’s a cheat and the woman’s friggin’ insane.”
John felt his mind stall, for a brief second wondering who his editor was talking about.
“So, if they’re supposed to be the good guys, the ones who come out winning, then this is not a story that’s going to sell.”
“I’m in the storytelling business,” John said. “I write to tell a tale.”
“Then publish your work online,” Derrick said. “I need to sell in bulk. I’m in the bookselling business, and that well’s starting to run really dry. So, try to see things from my perspective, buddy.”
“Don’t call me that,” John mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” John said, a lot more clearly. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Derrick clapped his hands together, and John cringed at the mere thought of the man smiling in triumph. “Excellent!” Derrick bellowed. “How about you get the sheriff to shoot them both?”
John felt that familiar locking inside his head, as if he couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fiction anymore. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the sheriff?” Derrick sounded a lot more excited now that John had agreed to make changes. “Why don’t you have him shoot these maniacs in the end? Poetic justice.”
“I don’t see it,” John said, immediately disliking the idea.
Probably the worst suggestions that bastard’s ever made, Johnny-boy. Why not tell him to just shove it and hang up in his face?
“Make the sheriff a hero, or something,” Derrick continued, chuckling. “You know what? Never mind, you’re the writer. Think of something spectacular!”
John didn’t answer, and after a few more minutes of polite conversation, hung up.
He got up and walked painfully across the room. Being in a sitting position for almost eight hours had put both legs to sleep. He reached for his cigarettes, grabbed the edge of the blinds and contemplated letting a little sun in. The room was getting dark, and soon the sounds would start again; today, he didn’t have any new writing to shut them out with.
John pulled the drapes aside and realized that the sun had already begun to set, the sky a deep crimson that teased him with the passing of the day, pointing and laughing that he had missed his chance at a few good moments of yellow sun.
He didn’t care.
John opened the window to his room, the latches straining, the pane swinging easily. He stared out across the field where just weeks before he had watched Eva Green skip home after a night together. The field was barren, and the Victorian that had been her home was a burnt out pile of rubble.
John lit his cigarette, took in a deep breath and exhaled as the sound of running feet started to echo above his head.
Chapter 20
Nobody had expe
cted to see David Green so soon.
The tall man strolled through Gale Street, his head high, his eyes darting left and right as the people passing by averted theirs. His hair seemed to float in thin strands around his head, the strains of white having had increased over the past few days, giving him the tousled look of a man who had definitely seen better days.
And everyone in Cafeville knew that David Green was not a man used to seeing bad ones.
The Green fortune was known to all, marked on every corner and in every building that lined the new roads coursing through Cafeville. Even on Gale Street, the family had left its mark with one of the most notorious venues in town, the arcade, a place that had once been filled with laughter and fun, but was now a Halloween attraction for those brave enough to venture inside.
David Green was a force to be reckoned with, even now, after losing his home and his daughter all in one night. His tall frame was as intimidating as it had ever been, and even in the cold, his coat hung open and blew in the wind like the cape of a super villain out of a comic book. The sneer on his face pushed anyone away as his stride went unabated until he reached Hank Pollard’s store and stormed inside.
“You!” he bellowed, his voice echoing across the store as he pointed his finger angrily at Hank.
Hank immediately dropped the work he was doing, his hand instinctively going to the double barrel shotgun he had hiding under the countertop in cases of emergency. He felt like this might just be one of them, and he prayed to the Heavens that David wouldn’t force him to pull it out of its resting spot.
“It wasn’t a gas leak, was it?” David yelled.
Hank frowned and shook his head in confusion, his mind taking only a few seconds to register what the man was referring to.
“My daughter did not die in a gas leak!”
Hank stepped back far enough to make sure David couldn’t reach over the counter and grab him. Hank’s hand clutched onto the weapon firmly, his knuckles a gleaming white.
“You ain’t makin’ a lotta sense, Mr. Green,” Hank said, his eyes locked onto the man’s manic gaze. “What d’ya want me t’say?”
“You’ve been checking my house for years,” David hissed. “You never said one thing about a possible gas leak.”
“Cuz there ain’t never been one,” Hank said. “Everythin’ was fine with that ol’ place.”
“So how are they saying it was a gas leak, Pollard?” David balked. “How are they blaming my daughter’s death on faulty piping?”
Hank shook his head, trying his best to keep cool as his shaking hands threatened to give him away. “I don’t know.”
Hank had his suspicions about what had happened, but he wasn’t about to share that with David. Not when they were the only two in the store. Whatever consequences might arise from him voicing his opinion, Hank didn’t want to have only his word to fall back on. Everyone knew to take whatever he said with a grain of salt, even when he was telling the truth. Doing something stupid, doing anything at all actually, without witnesses would only mean he was digging his own grave.
David Green saw that. At one moment he was furious, his clenched fists slamming against the countertop with every stressed word, and in the next he was suddenly very calm and pensive, one eyebrow cocked as he read everything in Hank’s eyes.
“You know who did this, don’t you?”
Hank quickly shook his head, a little too quickly for his own good, and instantly regretted it. There was a glimmer of a smile on David’s face, and that small arch that was his lips was a chilling thing to see on a man mourning the death of his only daughter.
“You know, Hank,” David seemed to be confirming his suspicions to himself. “I can see it all over that round, porky face of yours. You know.”
“I saw nothin’ more than what anyone else’s seen,” Hank said firmly.
“It was Krik, wasn’t it?” David nodded slowly, rapping his fingers around the edge of the counter, his calmness a lot more alarming than his anger. “John Krik killed my daughter, didn’t he?”
“John was with me all night,” Hank said. “That house was burnin’ long before we arrived.”
David cocked his head to a side, frowning at the sudden shattering of his perfect explanation, before his eyes widened with a novel notion. “The wife!”
Hank didn’t reply, suddenly feeling a shudder race through his body from hearing someone else voice his same suspicions.
“The wife, she did it,” David said. “That’s the only explanation.”
“They’ve already said what caused that fire, Mr. Green,” Hank said. “I suggest you lis’n to them.”
David shook his head, a slow gesture that made him look more dazed than anything. “It was the wife,” he said, and with a final glance at Hank, he turned on his heels and left the store.
Hank Pollard exhaled in relief, reluctantly letting go of his gun as he rested the palm of his hands on the countertop and tried to calm the beating of his heart. He looked at the door to his store, a part of him worried that David Green might just storm back in and attack him anyway. He counted down from ten, and when no one came back, he ran a hand through his hair and tried to think of what to do. He had a sinking feeling that David Green would do something that would only make matters worse.
Hank Pollard pulled out his cellphone and swiped through his contacts until Sheriff Walter Garland’s name appeared.
***
This is ridiculous.
John ignored the voice, squinting as he tried to concentrate on the screen in front of him. The scurrying above his head continued, and he had turned off the lights in his room to keep their flickering from bothering him. Everything that seemed to be happening around him in the house was part of the routine. It was the new normal.
He heard the slamming of window panes against walls downstairs, knowing that the latches had come undone despite his many attempts at fixing and replacing them. Over the past few days, he had come to terms that if they didn’t want to remain shut, nothing he or anyone else would do could keep them closed.
The stench had also become worse, and John quickly found himself using a towel against the bedroom door to hinder the scent’s insidious attempts at suffocating his sinuses. He locked the door as well.
This is a waste of time, Johnny-boy. You need to stop.
John continued with the editing, at first reading through the last few pages he had written before deciding to delete the final three chapters and rewrite them. He had almost felt like he could hear the voice in his head scream with every deleted word, as if he had ripped its soul apart. There were pleas of mercy, then threats of retaliation, and John ignored them all, working through the changes like a sledgehammer against the drywall.
You can’t change the story! Whatever you have planned, it’s not the way it ends!
“I don’t care,” John said to the empty room. “I’m giving Derrick his ending, and then I’m done.”
You’re a storyteller. You’re supposed to tell the truth.
John was telling the truth, at least the one he believed readers wanted to read. Or, to be more specific, the one his editor wanted to read.
He had felt good about how he had first ended his work, the final pages rounding everything up nicely into a gruesome resolution worthy of the story being told. However, Derrick had been right; it was too dark, and it was not going to sit well with a lot of people. It had to go.
You’re a liar!
“Shut up,” John whispered as he began typing.
His fingers raced across the keyboard, working on their own, already comfortable with the pace of relaying his thoughts. It wasn’t hard anymore, hadn’t been for a while now, and even when he was not being pushed by the voices, when he was not being motivated by some sinister stirring within, he knew that he could finish this off by dawn. It wasn’t the ending he wanted, the ending worthy of a horrific work like this, but it was still an ending.
At the end of the day, the books had to sell.
&n
bsp; You’re kidding, right? Do you actually believe the bull you’re spewing?
He didn’t.
John knew that with every word that materialized on the blank screen in front of him, he was writing a story that was far from the one he had originally intended to write. At this point, however, he didn’t care. No one would know the difference. Fiction was fiction, after all, and people wanted to be entertained. They didn’t care what changes had led to the final manuscript they were holding in their hands.
He just wanted to get this over with.
And then what, Johnny-boy? What are you going to do next?
“Go home,” John replied immediately, his mind already set on the sequence of events that would follow the final approval by Derrick.
John had imagined that final day during each waking minute of the past few days. Derrick would clap his hands and praise him for an outstanding piece of literature, if that was what anyone could call it, and he would light one final cigarette in his room. He would go to sleep, ignoring the voices and the sounds and the lights and the house.
In the morning, he would pack his bags. He wouldn’t clear out his stuff completely, because he really didn’t want to spend any longer than he needed to here. Just his laptop and the clothes strewn in the closet. He would pack hurriedly. He would throw everything in without even bothering to fold or organize. Then he would throw the bags in the trunk of his car and get the hell out of Cafeville.
The only problem with that plan was Karen, or the woman who was pretending to be his wife.
John had no idea what he would do about her. He had already given up on any hopes of talking to her. She was too far gone for reasoning or listening to logic, and even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t listen to him. Still, she was his wife, and leaving her behind was a worse sin than having had cheated on her. He just had no idea how to reach her.
A part of him thought of June Summers, and of asking her to coax Karen into going back home. He had toyed with the idea, had even considered it a worthy solution before seeing how Karen had reacted around Hank. Now, he wasn’t so sure.