Painful Truths

by Brian Spangler

  As if knowing this was a punishment was for what he’d done, Ghoul lifted his hand and placed it onto mine. His breath was staggered and came in chops that sounded like rippled water lapping against a rocky shore.

  “Thank you,” he said as his eyes fluttered and began to close.

  “What?” I asked, nearly shouting. “What did you say?”

  His body lurched upward again, and he clutched at his chest. Nerd was right. The sudden shock had interrupted Ghoul’s ICD, sending him into cardiac arrest. He was in the throes of a massive heart attack.

  I eased him down until he sat leaning on his side. He patted my hand again, nodding slowly as if agreeing with what I’d just done to him. A short wave of emotion came over me but I quickly dismissed it, reminding myself that the world would not miss him.

  “You did for me what I—” he began, but then lost his voice.

  I didn’t wait to hear him finish. I left him in the small alcove. As I walked across the street, I turned to look back once, but couldn’t tell if his breathing had stopped. We’d already had one failed case, and I had sworn that I’d see every case through to the end from then on. I needed to stay in the area. I needed to watch and make sure Ghoul was dead.

  A diner next to the playground provided the perfect vantage point. The small building looked like a shiny metal box with large glass windows wrapped around it. I couldn’t help but pause when I reached the front, thinking the restaurant had been magically transported from the past. The diner’s sign proclaimed the restaurant as Suzette’s with curvy lettering in big, bold, red letters across the window. I decided to go in.

  A bell above the door rang out. I stopped when the smell of chicken and waffles came to me. It had been years since I’d seen the inside of a diner. This was a treat. I glanced through the window, locating Ghoul. I fixed my bearings, my line of sight. He hadn’t moved. An older black woman offered me a quick hello and motioned to one of the empty booths facing the window. Her name tag read “Ms. Potts.” I took her suggestion.

  Air wheezed from the booth’s seat as I sat down. Before Ms. Potts could even place a glass of water in front of me, I’d given the alcove another long and hard stare. Ghoul lay motionless, his body slumped over, but I could see a subtle rise and fall in his chest. He was alive. A harsh cold sat in the pit of my gut.

  Did I fail?

  When I’d crossed the street, Ghoul’s legs had been tucked up beneath him, and now one leg was stretched out, protruding from the storefront like a tree limb. A crack of lightning lit up the inside of the diner. Thunder rumbled next, shaking the plates and the glasses above the counter. The rain beat down on the glass, twisting and blurring Ghoul’s body, making it difficult for me to tell if he’d moved again.

  “What can I get for you, honey?” the waitress asked. She put on a smile for me and pushed the thick frame of her glasses up before they slipped off her nose.

  “Sorry,” I said, picking the menu up. “Haven’t looked yet.”

  “No worries, honey. You take your time. Lord knows that rain will take its good old time.”

  I smiled back in agreement.

  The waitress stood at my booth, staring through the rain’s stretches and pulls, and for a moment I thought she’d seen Ghoul. I swallowed, held my breath, and waited. A beautiful young woman with red hair and soft green eyes approached us and placed her hand on the older waitress’s shoulder. She leaned in and whispered a few words. The two erupted in laughter. I leaned back, pressing the air from the vinyl seat again, surprised by the sudden gaiety. It was hard not to smile at them—the sound was contagious.

  “Suzette, girl, you go on back over there and set them kids right,” the older waitress said as she motioned to a booth where I saw a teen girl crying. Her friends were clearly trying to console her. “Ain’t no coffee and tears, just some silly teen angst.” The young waitress laughed again and fixed me with a courteous nod before leaving us. I opened the menu and began to read, but it didn’t take long to find what I wanted. The menu said that Suzette’s Diner served all sandwiches on doughy bread—baked fresh, daily. I was sold. I ordered my favorite: pastrami on rye with spicy mustard.

  By the time my elbows were propped up and I was eating the best pastrami sandwich I’d ever tasted, I heard the first screams. The rain had eased, and the flashes of lightning were soon replaced by dancing blue and red as an ambulance circled around the block and stopped in front of the alcove. They shut off its siren but kept the lights spinning, I noticed. I stared, mesmerized by the lights bouncing off the wet glass. The warbling sound of more sirens turned on and off as police cars passed. Some slowed, some stopped, some moved on in the steady flow of traffic. I bit down on my sandwich, letting the doughy bread invade my mouth as two men pushed a gurney out of the back of the ambulance. When the police cars began to leave, I felt better.

  That certainly meant that Ghoul was dead, didn’t it?

  If Nerd was right, his death would look like a heart attack and an autopsy would show that he’d had a failing ICD.

  Burn marks!

  A distant flash from the storm lit up the diner and all I could see were burn marks in my mind’s eye.

  Could the stun gun’s metal posts burn flesh? Would they show up on the autopsy?

  I tried to shrug off my concern by taking another bite of my sandwich. The stun gun would soon face a watery grave—just as soon as I got to the bridge over Neshaminy Creek.

  Ghoul’s life was officially over. I saw the EMTs pull a white sheet up to cover his head. The hit was complete. My task was done.

  I could have left then, but I decided to finish my food instead. The older waitress stopped at the end of the table and motioned to the empty booth seat, asking for permission to join me without saying a word.

  “Of course,” I told her as I sipped at my soda.

  “Would you look at that?” Ms. Potts said, sitting and moving closer to the diner’s front window. “Probably some drunk from that bar over there. Got himself in a bad way, I’m guessing. Seen it time and again . . . never made it home.” By the inflection in her voice, I guessed the Irish pub on the street’s corner didn’t have the best clientele.

  “Could be,” I answered as I peered through the wet pockmarks on the glass. “Never can tell.”

  “Mmm hmm. You got that right,” she added, nodding her head. “Hope the unpleasantness isn’t too much for you, honey.”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Not at all.”

  “Ain’t hardly ever a scene ‘round here ‘cept when it comes to that bar,” she said, a disapproving frown forming as she shook her head and got up from the booth. “You let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling as she winked at me.

  “Diner’s slow. I can grab some coffee and lend an ear if you’d like the company?” I raised my chin, surprised by the offer, thinking that it was sweet, but said nothing. The bell above the door chimed, catching her attention. A small group of teens charged in, bringing with them the smell of the weather and stories and speculation about the ambulance and why the lights and sirens weren’t on.

  “It means the dude is dead!” someone hollered over the commotion.

  “Think about it! Why would they need lights and sirens if they’re carrying a dead person?” another voice added.

  “It was quiet for a spell, anyway,” Ms. Potts said, letting out a sigh and giving me one last wink before corralling the teens into nearby booths. She whipped out her order pad, flipped the pages over, and pulled a pencil from her bluish hair.

  When she licked the end and began to write, I dropped what I owed onto the table and found my way to the door.

  The taste of my sandwich stayed with me as I crossed the playground, passing the jungle gym and the spot where Pigtails had thrown the tree branch into the street. By now, the ambulance was far enough away that it just looked like a tiny matchbox toy sitting in a row of traffic. Everything looked faded in the drizzly, wet air. Although the heavy
rain had saved Pigtails that afternoon, I knew Ghoul would have been back the next day. I felt certain of that deep inside. He was about repetition and routine and patterns. That would have led him to kill Pigtails eventually. And while I’d killed again, I knew I’d also saved a life today. I was convinced of that fact. As I stared at the smashed tree branch, it warmed me inside to know that Pigtails would now have a chance to grow up.

  TWO

  Finally accepting what we’ve always known to be true but have tried to ignore is usually painful. I’d learned that sad fact after killing the homeless man. His death released the truths of the past into my dreams. One of my painful truths was that, while I’d always known who I was, I now knew my mother had been just like me. And, sadly, I fear my daughter may be one of us too.

  A tangle of sunlight slipped in and out of my baby girl’s hair, the summer light turning her locks golden. She peered up as if knowing I was thinking about her. She had been occupying herself by playing a game where the carpet was hot bubbling lava, teeming with monsters eager to eat her, so she had strewn a path of pillows and cushions across the floor as stepping-stones. I motioned, urging her over. She hopped from one to another, up and down, until reaching my feet. I smiled at the glow on her cheeks, and the wrinkle of concentration on her face stretched into a smile.

  “Why you look sad, Momma?” she asked, perching her tiny hand on my knee. I sat up, her question catching me off guard.

  “Momma’s not sad, baby girl.”

  “You sad because you miss your momma?” I shook my head, feeling an unexpected sting. But what bothered me more than my girl’s question was that I had no idea how much my mother had influenced her. As far as I knew, there was just the one drawing, just the one crayoned Killing Katie design. Since that day, I’d combed through all of her drawings, heavy with concern, searching for anything resembling what my mother had handed me at Katie’s graveside. Finding nothing, I’d hidden the one drawing in my secret box, then watched and waited. For a while, my heart skipped whenever her school called. I’d waited for the voice on the phone, waited for the voice to tell me there were issues and concerns and that it’d be best to discuss them in person. Those phone calls never came, though.

  My mother drew that picture, I thought, trying to convince myself that there must have been evilness guiding my baby girl’s fingers. She drew it and gave it to me on the day of my best friend’s funeral. It might have been Snacks holding the crayon, but I was certain my mother drew the picture.

  “Grandma?” I asked, seeing my baby girl’s eyes flick open and sparkle. “Do you miss her?”

  She lifted herself up onto her toes, “We go? Go play with Mom-mom?”

  Stuck for words, I couldn’t answer. Snacks cocked her head, catching more of the sun in her hair. I looped a lock of auburn red between my fingers, then tucked it behind her ear. She waited patiently, blinking slowly, expecting me to tell her we’d go see her mom-mom soon. She didn’t understand what she was asking, though. She couldn’t.

  “Outside?” I asked, hoping to persuade her interest. We were just about at the birth of summer days. The air moved slowly and the trees came alive at night with the glow of fireflies. A guttural rumble came from the west, and I could smell the damp warning of a late-spring storm. The rain doused my ideas for a playful distraction, but I thought maybe we could take to the porch and watch the rain.

  And then came the scent of wet asphalt. It distracted me with the memories of a truck stop, the sounds of an air-hose bell, and the scent of men and creaking leather. I shuddered, but I couldn’t ignore a deep sense of fear and excitement, forgotten but not gone.

  I didn’t know what to do about my mother. Was she the monster, or was I? I might never know.

  I’ve killed too, I reminded myself. But she had to have shown me how. Right?

  What truth was I fighting? That I’d been born a murderer, or that I’d been taught how to murder?

  “Not today, baby,” I answered, an apology in my tone for the disappointment that I knew would come. “We’re going to stay home. Just us. Maybe watch a movie with Daddy and Michael. Would you like that?”

  She straightened her head, catching the angry rumble of storm clouds. “Storm!” she said excitedly. We’d been lucky to have children who weren’t afraid of thunder. “Storm!”

  “Storm!” I answered, raising my voice to match her pitch. “Want to sit on the porch and count down the lightning and thunder?” Snacks shook her head up and down wildly and gathered a few of her Beanie Babies from the floor.

  “Storm!” she repeated, pointing toward the door, a velvety-red Beanie Baby dog swinging in her clutches.

  Snacks plunked down on the porch swing—an anniversary gift from Steve the year before—and began to pump her legs back and forth. Her sneakers moved through the air like a mechanized pendulum but did little to move the seat.

  “Like this,” I told her. I leaned forward and back, slowly rocking until the porch swing began to sway. “But easy. Not like at the playground. This swing is for relaxing—” A flash of white creased a giant bruise in the sky, interrupting me. I flinched, but in fun. Snacks playfully shrieked. Thunder bellowed from the parting clouds and the sound of gentle rain pattered on our porch roof.

  I snuggled up close to my daughter, wrapping my arm around her. I closed my eyes and listened to the storm, telling her to do the same. Another stab of electricity turned my eyelids orange, and she jumped. We let out playful shrieks and her little frame tensed for the coming thunder.

  Steve and I weren’t usually ones for prayer, but with my baby girl, I’d found myself praying for her to be normal, wishing her to be anything other than who I was, who her grandmother was. And maybe wishes are like prayers. Maybe after the storm passed and the cloudless sky filled with night stars, I’d wish upon one of them, and my prayers would come true.

  THREE

  STEVE GRUNTED AS HE stood up from his office chair, his bad leg weak and trembling. The scowl fixed on his face reminded me of how I’d nearly lost him to the bullet Sam Wilts, the owner of that sleazy White Bear biker bar, put inside him. And while his days of chasing after Snacks and running down pop flies with Michael would never be the same, at least our children still had a father.

  We were living an unexpected reality, stringing together days one at a time and hoping that somehow that would make things seem a little normal. A new normal. Some couples never reach normal again, finding it impossible to recover from an event like that. The thought of us being one of those couples sat like ice stuck in my throat, a freezing burn. It terrified me. Our new reality came with problems too. Steve’s resentments. I’d watched him pound on his leg a hundred times now, cursing what he could no longer do. I tried to be there for him, but I wasn’t enough—I’d never be enough—and my greatest fear was that I’d eventually lose the man I fell in love with. Something broke inside him the day of the shooting. He was off the way a cracked bell could never ring true again, and it broke my heart to think he might never be the same.

  “Babe, can you get that for me?” Steve asked, pointing to his cane. “Amy?”

  “Sorry, wasn’t paying attention,” I answered, sounding apologetic as I took it to him. “Here, babe.”

  He gave me a curt nod and dropped back down into his chair, his neck and cheeks flushed from the struggle.

  “Having a bad day,” he said, fixing a stare on his leg. “No strength.”

  I wrapped my arms around his middle, cautious of his leg. I knew exactly where and how to place my hands—a trick I learned from the physical therapist.

  He held on to my shoulder and I squeezed myself in next to him, holding him, shaping us until we were one and he was standing up.

  “I love you, Amy,” he said, surprising me. He said that less and less these days, and I was trying to understand why. His eyes were wet and filled with shame. He zapped my strength with a single look.

  “Babe, come on,” I told him. “This is temporary. They said it could take a y
ear or more.”

  “I’m not feeling any improvement. What if this is it?” he asked. I’d considered that too—his leg might never get any better.

  “Then, I guess—” I began, and shifted until he was standing and leaning on the cane. “I guess you better just get used to having me help you.”

  “Where do you want this?” Michael asked, his voice unexpectedly close to my ear. I nearly lost my balance, but Steve braced and caught the both of us.

  “Geez! Sneak up much?” I asked, joking. My son had grown like a spring weed and was nearly as tall as I was. So fast.

  Michael cradled an open box, the cardboard torn and the shoddy bottom buckling. It was filled with the junk that had been bouncing around inside my car for the last year. It was time for a spring cleaning, and Michael was eager to earn some cash.

  “Still five dollars?” I asked.

  “Five for cleaning and vacuuming the car,” he answered, plunking the box onto the floor. “And another ten for a wash. Add an extra five and I’ll scrub the tire rims?”

  I played like I was considering the offer, rocking my head from side to side. The truth was, I would’ve given him thirty dollars. “Deal!” I exclaimed. “And I’ll pay you another fifteen dollars if you Windex the windows . . . both sides. And that means all of them—the sides and back too.”

  Michael’s lips moved in silence, counting. His eyes flicked wide. “Yeah!” he answered. “That’s a deal.”

  “If you do a good job, we’ll talk about cleaning my car,” Steve added. “Could be a big payday for you.”

  “I could get two new video games!” Michael said, hopping out of the room. The front door slammed, and we saw him rush past the office window—a blur we followed until out of sight.

  “Love spring, but hate the cleaning,” I said and laughed. Then I added, “Isn’t this what we had kids for?”