by Muriel Gray
“Better?”
Jim McFarlane left off holding the back of Josh’s neck as he took the glass of water from his lips and straightening up. Josh looked up at him and licked his wet lips.
“Yeah. Better. Thanks.”
The door to the sitting room opened and Jim McFarlane moved across to make sure it stayed that way for his wife as she entered with a tray. It had three steaming mugs balanced on it and she set it down on the low table in front of Josh with a matronly smile.
“Herbal tea.” She held up a hand in protest to Josh, though he had said nothing. “Now, don’t say no till you try it. Calms the nerves. Soothes the spirit.”
After having lain on it for nearly five minutes, Josh was at least now sitting upright on Nelly McFarlane’s long, low sofa. He ran a hand over his mouth and looked at the mugs for somewhere to rest his eyes other than upon his hosts’ anxious faces. Nelly sat down beside him.
“I’ll let you drink before you tell us what’s up. We heard someone shouting. I guess it was you?”
Josh picked up a cup and sipped the hot liquid. It was revolting, but he sipped again to avoid her question. Nelly looked up at her husband.
“Was that Herm crying?”
The big, simple-looking man cocked an ear. “Could be. I’ll check.” He paused. “Grandkids,” he said to Josh with an indulgent smile, then left the room through another door, closing it with a finality that Josh knew meant he wouldn’t return.
Nelly adjusted her dressing gown, pulling the satin tighter over her breasts.
“We didn’t expect to see you back, Mr. Spiller.”
Josh sipped again and put down his mug. He looked at her to see what she meant and saw nothing except a small-town busybody, pleased with herself for taking an active part in a small-town drama.
“Didn’t reckon on it either.”
Now there was something else in her face. A desire he could see, burning brighter, perhaps, than she planned to show, to know what exactly he was doing here.
“Did someone attack you out there? As I say, we heard a shout.”
Josh shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “Nope. Just got dizzy on the sidewalk there.”
She returned his gaze steadily. “Sounds like you ought to get that checked out.”
“For sure.”
She was silent for a few beats, then she smiled. “I presume you were making your way here, when you got dizzy.”
There was the first hint of sarcasm in her last four words and Josh’s senses stepped up their alert.
“Yes, ma’am. I was.”
“Well. Now you’re here, and feeling a bit better, what can I do for you at nearly a quarter to midnight?”
Josh sat forward, awkward that she was beside him. “I needed to see the sheriff about somethin’ and they tell me he’s on leave.”
“Well, if they tell you that, then I guess it must be so.”
“Could you tell me where he lives?”
Nelly McFarlane looked at him for a moment, then stood up and smoothed her expensive and uncreased gown.
“Now, Mr. Spiller. What would you do if a stranger you hardly know, and only know at all in fact as being the unlucky participant in a terrible accident, turned up at your door near midnight, looking like he’d been in a fight, and asked for confidential information?”
“It’s confidential where the sheriff lives?”
“Did you ask at his office?”
Josh looked down, and there was a cold smile on her face when he looked back up. “No. Because they wouldn’t have told you, would they?”
Josh stood up. “I guess not. Thanks for the tea.”
“Where are you going now?”
“You’re right. It’s late. I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.”
Nelly made a small movement in his way. “What did you need to see Sheriff Pace about, exactly?”
It was Josh’s turn to wear a cold smile. “That’s confidential.”
“Maybe I can help you, Mr. Spiller. After all, as councillor in this town I work very closely indeed with our law enforcement agency.”
“Thanks. But I need to speak to him.”
Josh stepped aside and walked to the door. As he reached it he stopped and turned. “Oh, I forgot. I was going to return this to you. Thanks for the thought.”
In his right hand he held out the pamphlet helping him to find Jesus.
Nelly McFarlane looked down at the cheap little book; then, with eyes that were filling with something other than housewifely concern for his immortal soul, she began to walk slowly towards him.
She kept her eyes on his and lifted her hand to the book. Josh watched her like a rabbit fixed by a weasel, and as her hand opened to receive it she spoke quietly. “Thank you.”
Her fingers closed on the pamphlet and she held it there in her hand, never taking her eyes from his. Josh tried not to swallow and failed.
“Did you have time to read it?”
He felt the heat in his neck and face and turned from her to leave.
When she spoke again, it was in a voice so different from the one he’d been addressed in so far, it made his skin crawl like a current over a circuit board.
“Mr. Spiller?”
He turned and looked at the woman who had been just a housewife, and was no longer. She spoke softly, but the power behind her voice was a force so immense he felt like backing against the wall just to escape her words.
“Who told you?”
31
He was eating nachos when she woke. Griffin’s hand went to her aching neck and rubbed it hard, moving her head from side to side in an effort to relieve the pain. She yawned and spoke through it as she kept up the massage.
“Christ, that’s sore. Where are we?”
Eddie fed another handful of nachos into the invisible mouth beneath his moustache and indicated the tourist stop with his head.
“A four-wheeler stop’n’shit.”
Griffin looked sleepily to her left. They were in an empty parking lot outside a low wooden building divided in two by a central glass box. The two wooden wings of the building were obviously male and female rest rooms, and the glass house dividing them boasted nothing more than a stand filled with dozens of tourist flyers.
She yawned again and scratched at her head. “Mind if I use it?”
Eddie shrugged and lifted his chin. “That’s what it’s for.”
She cast him a grumpy glance, straightened her crumpled clothing and climbed out of the cab. The engine of the truck was still throbbing, and maybe she’d have been nervous the guy would drive off with her pack and leave her stranded if it hadn’t been that Josh always left his running, even when they went to eat.
Josh. She shivered as the cold night air hit her, but the tremor was more than just a reaction to temperature. The only way to keep her head was to stop letting him creep into her thoughts like this. She shut her eyes briefly as she closed the cab door and concentrated on her immediate needs, like the very immediate need to piss. Stepping down onto the asphalt, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders as she crossed to the brightly lit building.
Where the hell were they, she wondered? It was colder than she’d figured it would be farther south, but then, maybe going west had kept them on the same latitude. Who cared? She would buy a sweater next store she found; then, even if she ended up in Alaska, things could be worse.
Was Alaska far enough from Furnace? Right now, she thought, Jupiter wasn’t far enough. Pushing open the swing door, she blinked under the harsh striplights illuminating the circular display stand for exactly zero customers.
Griffin walked to the door marked with the symbol for women and gave the crude outline, with its A-line skirt and long, curled-at-the-tip hair, a contemptuous sniff.
“Hey. That looks exactly like me!”
She banged open the door as though it were personally responsible for centuries of women’s oppression, and went to take a leak.
Eddie watched her from the darkness
of his cab until she entered the women’s washroom, then turned the CB back up.
“… so she says, you give me the dog’s phone number, buddy, an’ you can put it where you goddamn like.”
“Shit, man, that’s older than your rig.”
Eddie pressed “talk.” “Hey, Jezebel. You out there?”
A pause.
“Who’s askin’?”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “A secret agent for the IRS. Guess I blew ma cover, huh?”
“Weren’t that rig they was all talkin’ ‘bout handled Jezebel?”
“You there or not, Jez? It’s Eddie, not the fuckin’ bears.”
He waited.
“Hey, me an’ my buddy havin’ ourselves an argument here. Anybody out there know if it’s garlic makes you horny?”
Eddie slapped the wheel in irritation and turned the volume down but not off. He would hear Josh if he called. Meanwhile he would have to keep Looney Tunes in sight. He pushed his hand into the bottom of the nacho bag and scooped up the crumbs.
Griffin sighed with pleasure as a hot stream of urine twisted its way into the bowl. It had been hours since she’d taken a leak, she realized, and hours since she’d eaten. She was hungry, and that monosyllabic son of a bitch at the wheel hadn’t even offered her one of his nachos.
Things were not going as Griffin had planned and she shifted on the toilet seat as she tried to clear her head. It didn’t work. The strip of runes in Josh’s hand came searing back into her head and she bent forward and put her face in her hands. Where was it now? Had it been slipped into something, concealed and passed on? Or had Josh given up? Taken her advice before…
She grunted with the effort of trying to lose the image that conjured. This time she managed to push it away, filing her head with the things she would do when she got far enough away. California, maybe. Maybe not. Being free was intoxicating and she held to the joy of it to keep the horror of Josh Spiller at bay.
Finishing, she pulled up her panties and jeans, went to the wash basin and rinsed her hands. The mirror above the basin told her she wasn’t looking her best. That was bad, but like a lot of things, it was something she could rectify. She splashed her face with cold water, and decided she’d dig in her pack for some witch hazel when she got back to the truck. Feeling refreshed she left the washroom with more spring in her step than when she’d entered, and as she passed by the circular stand, she paused and playfully grabbed at one of the hideous flyers.
“Okay,” she said jauntily, pushing a wet hand through her hair, “let’s see where we are and how we can amuse the nuclear family while we’re here.” She read the long piece of shiny paper aloud. “ ‘Want to explore some of the oldest and most mysterious caves in the United States?’” She turned the page, smiling as she did so. “Shit, which state hasn’t got caves?”
Her smile died on her lips as she read the second page.
A small map showed the location of ten famous caves, all dotted cheerfully in red along the ridge of the Appalachians. Dropping the fiver on the floor, Griffin tore out another one.
A picture of a happily screaming toddler sliding down a plastic chute begged her to visit the Shenandoah Water Park, open from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
She grabbed a handful and scanned them feverishly, panting like a frightened animal.
Come on a guided nature trail in the beautiful George Washington National Forest…
Pet live farm animals in our authentic working Dutch farm…
Griffin let the rest of them flutter to the floor, and turned her head to the truck with its engine running on the other side of the glass.
She pressed her hand to her chest as though it would stop her heart from racing, and spoke out loud again, this time through gritted teeth.
“You son of a fucking bitch.”
Nelly kept her eyes on Josh as she held the booklet by a corner of its cover page and shook it. Nothing fluttered from its pages. She smiled at him with raised eyebrows, almost in admiration.
“Just testing?”
Josh looked back at her, his heart racing. When he replied in a dry, cracked voice, he felt like a child.
“What did I do wrong?”
Nelly McFarlane sighed and walked to the sideboard where she’d originally fetched the booklet, and carefully replaced it in its drawer.
“You did nothing wrong, Mr. Spiller. In fact, you did everything rather well. It’s what you were going to do that couldn’t be allowed.”
He watched her cautiously, trying to remind himself that the damage was already done, that he had nothing else to fear. His pulse failed to get the message and it thumped like a piston in his ear. Nelly gently closed the drawer and turned to him.
Looking at this woman in her suburban silk nightwear, her hair scooped back and face without makeup, Josh wanted to laugh at himself, to mock the terror lying like heavy syrup in the pit of his stomach. What could be frightening about someone who looked like they were wandering around the ground floor of Southfork Ranch with a cocktail in their hand, waiting for J.R. to come home? He looked deep into her green eyes and decided there was plenty to be afraid of.
“You really should have read it. It’s never too late to embrace the Lord.”
Josh felt a stirring of anger and spat his words at her. “Were you embracing the Lord when you killed that baby?”
Her face softened, like a lunatic being humoured. “Yes, Mr. Spiller. I surely was.”
Turning his face from her, he blew his ire through pursed lips.
She laughed, a small, merry sound that was hideously inappropriate to the situation. “You see, because you don’t know the Lord, you understand so little.”
He looked back at her, his anger manifest in his eyes. “I guess we might just be talkin’ about two different Lords here.”
She raised a finger to her lips as though she were hushing a baby.
“No, no, no. My saviour is your saviour. The risen Christ. The son of God, who died in agony to show us that life is not merely the finite, random thing you and I might mistake it for. I can understand your desire to believe that my Lord might be, shall we say, on the other team, but you would be very wrong.”
“Then I guess I read a different Bible.”
For the first time she looked at him with contempt. “I guess that you don’t read it at all.”
He returned the contempt in her stare. “So the Bible says it’s okay to murder kids and mess with the devil.”
There was no question in his voice, just the sarcasm of teacher to wayward pupil. It was the only tool he had left to mask his fear.
She laughed, not unpleasantly, which made it deeply unpleasant. “You think it’s the devil on your tail, Mr. Spiller? Good gracious, no. Let me assure you, it’s a very minor demon indeed.”
Josh ground his back teeth together, trying to keep a grip on reality and his rising rage.
She lifted a finger again, reversing the pupil-teacher relationship.
“And in answer to your question, it was Jesus Christ himself who ‘messed with the devil’ on many occasions.” She turned back towards the room. “Just think,” she said, crossing to a large armchair and sitting down as though about to relax for the evening, “how fearful that dark legion of unseen creatures must have been when the son of God made it so very public that they were there to he commanded by those who possessed the knowledge.”
She gazed at him with a burning righteous intensity.
“And, of course, the purity to use that knowledge.”
She leant back into her chair with a satisfied smile. “There’s nothing wrong with using them as you will, difficult and troublesome as that might be sometimes. Christ showed us that. Although I have to say, even if they make rather unwilling servants, they’re no worse than the kind of surly help modern America offers. Have you noticed a decline in the attitude of the service industry? I reckon people have lost pride in serving others.”
“You’re fuckin’ crazy.”
She w
eighed him, seemingly oblivious to his insult.
“Did something at the end of the street cause you bother, Mr. Spiller? Make you think you’d gone a little crazy?”
His bitter silence made her laugh again. “Another even more minor entity. Call it our neighbourhood watch. I won’t embarrass you and ask what you saw. Its methods are always effective, but a private matter between itself and the unwelcome visitor.”
Josh felt sick. “Where does Pace live?”
“Do you plan to give him something? A book, perhaps? An envelope? After all, the sheriff did his best to persuade you that you were mistaken in what you saw. Dear me. That’s very ungrateful.”
Josh clenched his fists impotently, then exhaled and bowed his head to his chest as the hopelessness of it all overwhelmed him.
When Nelly spoke again, it was with surprising softness in her voice. “Why don’t you come back and sit down?”
She extended an arm towards the sofa he’d vacated, and since there seemed little else to do that made sense, he walked to it and sat down heavily. He leaned forward and rested his forehead in his palms.
She brought her feet together daintily, like a debutante at a supper party. Josh stared miserably at her slippers. They were of a silk matching her dressing gown; her voice, however, had no silk in it whatsoever.
“Who told you?”
Even in his own numbing terror, Josh thought of Griffin’s safety.
“I worked it out for myself.”
Nelly McFarlane burst out laughing, a chilling, acid sound that made Josh look up with alarm.
“That, Mr. Spiller, would be like a raccoon working out time travel.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
This time, she seemed a little more riled by his curse. “I believe, and God forgive my mouth, that it’s you who’s fucked. In about six hours from now, to be precise.”
He looked across at her, hatred in his eyes. “And what if I used those six hours usefully, huh? To drive to the city and tell the cops what really happened to that baby? Who’s fucked then?”
She shook her head in mock sadness. “Now, that’s exactly what I mean. It was that silly thought that got you into this in the first place.”