Where Stars Won't Shine

by Patrick Lacey

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  He lifted his plate. “Here, have my vegetables.” He exchanged them for her helping of hash and sat down.

  After shoving several forkfuls into his mouth, he reached for the floor. “There’s something wrong with this place. Aside from the obvious, I mean.” He lifted a bag of bread and set it on the table. Ivy nearly choked when she saw the dark blue tint of the dough, how it had turned to mold so badly it looked malignant.

  “Jesus, how old is that thing?”

  He pointed to the sticker. “That’s what I’m getting at. Look.”

  The expiration date hadn’t yet passed. Four days remained.

  “How is that possible?” Amy said, looking away as she ate her vegetables and plugged her nostrils.

  “I’m not sure,” Ethan said. “But I’m open to theories.”

  Ivy forced down a bite of hash. It was salty and sour but it filled the pang in her belly somewhat. “There’ll be plenty of time for theories and plans but first things first. What was in the bag?”

  “Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty. I’ll grab us some water.”

  Before she could protest he was up and walking into the kitchen, taking his time with their beverages. He walked slowly back toward the table, his head down. He would not meet either of their eyes, either embarrassed or ashamed or both.

  She sipped her water, gave him a moment to begin. It tasted stale, faintly metallic, but she chugged it nonetheless.

  “Pills,” he finally said. Instead of sitting back down, he began to pace. “The bag was filled with pills.”

  She nodded for him to go on.

  “The kind that are only legal if prescribed by a medical professional. The kind that are in high demand with the junkie crowd.” He shook his head. “The kind someone desperate might be convinced into stealing for the right price.”

  “Care to tell us who that someone is?” Ivy said.

  “It wasn’t my fault. Not really, at least. My brother, Andrew, convinced me. That prick. He’s only been out of jail for a few months. I’ll give you three guesses what he was in for.”

  “Come from a family of thieves, do you?”

  He laughed. There was nothing funny about the gesture. “No, it’s not like that. I’m a loan officer. I wear a tie and sit at a desk all day. I work at a gas station by night.”

  “Don’t loan officers make good money?” This from Amy. She’d finished her vegetables and eyed Ethan’s hash as if she might switch teams before the night ended.

  “Sure,” he said. “But my kitchen table is piled high with medical bills. Every time I walk by, one of them lands at my feet. How’s that for symbolism?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ivy said.

  He scratched at his stubble, nails on a chalkboard in the silence of the diner. “Not me. It’s my daughter, Lisa. She has …” He trailed off, wiped his eyes. “She has cancer. God, I hate that fucking word. She has cancer and she’s fighting it tooth and nail, and she’s doing well—great even. The doctors expect a full recovery. But no amount of medical insurance covers something like that. It’s like buying a car every time they put a needle in her arm. So even with two jobs, it wasn’t enough. Andrew got me drunk, played on my fears, tricked me into stealing a bag of pills from a pharmacy.”

  “Why Marlowe, though?” Ivy said.

  “Here’s where it gets crazy. The paper he gave me with the buyer’s address? It said Hotel Marlowe. At least the first dozen times I read it. But when I checked the thing again at the hotel, it had changed.”

  “Changed?”

  He nodded, paced, nodded, paced. “Like this place was tricking me. Like Tucker was tricking me.”

  They grew quiet. Ivy didn’t like that last implication. Not because she thought it was crazy—of course it was crazy—but because it seemed like the most plausible theory.

  Ethan refilled her glass, set it back down on the table. “Your turn.”

  She nodded, lit another cigarette. With the windows closed, the smoke gathered quickly. “I guess I was tricked too. Not into robbing. Nothing so simple as that. See, that bastard killed my boyfriend.” She held up her ring. “You asked me if I was married earlier? Well, I’m not. I found this in his bureau after the police peeled his body out of a bathtub. As far as I can tell, Scott was going to propose that weekend. I had the distinct honor of being widowed by Tucker Ashton. Scott was his last victim before he came back and slaughtered half the town.”

  Ethan ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Jesus.”

  “It gets worse. I didn’t come here on a whim. I came here because Tucker left behind a cute little message in my boyfriend’s blood. He wrote me a note on the bathroom wall. It said ‘I’ll be seeing you.’” She held in the smoke, wondered how long she could keep it up before she finally coughed it out. “Here’s where you think I’m crazy.”

  “No one thinks you’re crazy,” Amy said. She’d caved and scooped a healthy portion of Ethan’s hash on her plate. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “I wasn’t going to come here,” Ivy said. “But a few months ago, I started seeing blood. I don’t mean I cut my finger or anything like that. I mean I saw blood that wasn’t there. Not that anyone else could see, at least. But let me assure you, it was there for me. In my bed and in my car and at my work. Even when I closed my eyes. My shrink said it was normal. That sound normal to you?”

  Her question went unanswered.

  She tapped ashes onto her plate. “I got to thinking. Maybe I was being called here for some reason. I didn’t expect to meet the maniac that did it. I just thought, maybe if I came here and faced my demons …” She winced at the terminology. “Maybe I’d find closure. I see now I was wrong.”

  They both turned to Amy.

  Ivy cleared her throat. “And then there was one.”

  Amy looked up and shrugged. “What do you want to know?” In the dim light she looked no older than sixteen.

  “The same thing we just said for ourselves,” Ethan answered. “Why Marlowe?”

  She stopped eating, stared at something far in the distance. Something neither Ethan nor Ivy could see. “I don’t have anything special to tell you. I wasn’t called here by mysterious circumstances. Tucker didn’t kill anyone I know. Not literally at least.”

  “How do you mean?” Ethan eyed Ivy’s cigarette. She could feel him itching for a smoke. Once you started, it was always with you. Just because you quit didn’t mean you weren’t an addict.

  “Tucker killed Zeke in a way. Zeke was already obsessed by the time we started dating. It started when he was younger. But it was harmless, you know? Sure, he ran a website dedicated to killers but he wasn’t hurting anyone. He wasn’t a killer himself. But one night, he started sleepwalking, started writing letters to himself like they were from Tucker. I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise. It sounds sick, but Tucker was—is—his hero. I figured there was no sense in spoiling the illusion. He thought it was a good idea to come to Marlowe. Read it in one of his sleep letters. And here we are.”

  “It sounds like you didn’t want to come here so why give in?” Ethan said.

  She blinked away tears but they were instantly replaced. “Because he’s the only person left in my life. It’s a long story. I know he’s not the world’s greatest boyfriend but he takes care of me. He makes me feel like I’m needed. If it weren’t for him, if he was gone …” She wiped her nose with a crumpled napkin. “I guess he is gone. That wasn’t the same man I knew tonight, in that room with Tucker. In that television studio.”

  Ivy had nearly forgotten about that part. Fear and exhaustion played with your head. “Which brings us to the million-dollar question.”

  Amy sniffled. “You mean why there’s a giant crack in the ground?”

  “I mean what the fuck is wrong with Marlowe, Massachusetts?”

  Ethan opened his mouth to respond but his words were cut off and his eyes were drawn elsewhere. Ivy followed them, saw the object hurling toward the neares
t window just before it crashed through. Broken shards littered their table.

  Something landed on the table in front of them.

  FIFTEEN

  A KNOCK AT the door.

  Brad Ashton ignored it. He faced the only window in the microscopic room. It was almost light outside, the darkness fading. The horizon was pink, the clouds like cotton candy, and he took solace in this. He found himself doing that more often these days. Recognizing the beauty in simple things, things he never used to notice.

  Probably, he thought, because time was ticking and he didn’t have that many sunrises left to witness.

  Another knock. “Mr. Ashton? You have a visitor.”

  He groaned. “Do you know what time it is?”

  The nurse—it sounded like Sophia but could’ve been Andrea—opened the door a crack. “It sounds urgent.”

  He could’ve laughed at that. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had come to see him. There was no one left to bring urgent news. He was an old and bitter man and would almost certainly die alone.

  An estranged friend then. Someone who’d lost touch and tracked him down. Someone who hadn’t given up on Brad entirely. It seemed unlikely but it was the only theory he had. “Send them in then.”

  The nurse—Sophia after all—poked her head into his room and nodded.

  The door opened, revealing a man Brad had never met. A stranger who somehow seemed familiar. He didn’t believe in déjà vu but he did believe in trusting your gut. And right now his gut was sending out warnings left and right.

  The man smiled. Brad’s stomach revolted. He thought he’d lose what little he’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours. No, not eaten. Drank was more like it. That had been the worst part about the stroke. He could take the numbness, the occasional fatigue—hell, even the speech impediment—but he would never adjust to drinking a Salisbury steak through a straw.

  The man whispered something into Sophia’s ear—a joke, judging by her laughter. She slapped him on the shoulder. It was playful, flirtatious, and it reminded Brad of better days. Days when he could still get a hard on, when it was fathomable that a woman would take him to bed.

  Days when his wife was alive, before he’d become the son of a bitch he was now.

  Sophia told the man she’d be back in fifteen minutes. Breakfast was coming. Another liquefied concoction to slurp through his partially paralyzed mouth.

  The man winked at her. “We’ll be quick.” He turned to Brad. “I promise.”

  The door closed. It was perhaps the loudest sound Brad Ashton ever heard. A gunshot in the early morning calm.

  “Who the hell are you?” Though it came out jumbled, Brad got his point across.

  “I’m a friend of the family.”

  “The hell you are. I’ve never seen you before. And besides, I ain’t got a family.”

  The man walked toward the window, gazed outside. The pink had come closer. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Brad shrugged. “It’s something to look at. What did you say your name was again?”

  “I didn’t.” The man pulled from his pocket a folded piece of paper. He unwrinkled it and read whatever was written, mumbling to himself. It was the face of someone studying before an exam. “He says you’ve been expecting this.”

  “Expecting what exactly? And who said that?”

  That smile again. Brad’s skin shriveled in response, the wrinkles growing even deeper for a moment. “Who do you think?”

  “Look, what’s this about? I’m tired and hungry. It’s going to be a long day and I’d rather not spend it with someone who’s out of their mind.”

  The man nodded. “He said you’d say that too.”

  “Who said—”

  “Your son, Mr. Ashton. Your son sent me.”

  The silence that followed was thick. It floated about the room, like the morning clouds had forced themselves through the glass. Only these were storm clouds, no longer pink and dream-like. They were black as night and they brought thunder with them. “My son, you said?”

  “Tucker asked that I get you. He said it’s very important you come with me.”

  “Why would I do that? My son is dead.”

  The man laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe that. I expected more from you. You must have felt it in your bones. Mr. Ashton, you would know if your son was dead. I promise you he’s not.”

  Brad eyed the button near his bed, the one he refused to use even when he needed help. He was an adult, not an infant, though the staff at Meadow Farms Nursing Facility, located just twenty miles south of Marlowe, seemed to forget that. Now it called to him like a beacon of hope. It was miles away, especially with the wheelchair.

  The man caught him staring. He tsk-tsked and tossed the button across the bed. It landed on the floor with a thud. He sat down on the comforter and winced. “You actually sleep in this thing?”

  “I’d like you to leave now. Or I’ll call for help.”

  “Try it. I’d love to see you open that mouth of yours and actually get a scream out. No one’s going to hear you, Brad.”

  He noted the change from his last to first name. Less formal. This part, more than anything in the last few minutes, scared Brad. “I don’t want trouble. Just leave me be.”

  “The problem is trouble found you. You wanted to know my name. It’s Zeke. I’m a fan of your son’s work, have been for a long time. You may have thought he was a sicko but to me—hell, to all his fans—he’s more than that. He’s a role model.”

  “A role model? My son needed help. Psychiatric help. I should’ve sent him away before it was too late.”

  “You made your son into a monster, Brad. Whether or not you want to believe that. What he became, all those people he killed—that was mostly your doing. You can either feel guilty or proud but you’ve got to feel something. You can’t sit around here, pissing your pants and pretending the past didn’t happen. That’s why Tucker sent me. We’re going to have a family reunion.”

  The thought of his son, all grown up, living and breathing after killing so many people, gave his heart a boost of adrenaline. He tensed, made to roll out of his chair, but the man—Zeke—was already standing and holding him back. “Tucker said you were a stubborn bastard. He wasn’t kidding.”

  Brad stared him in the eyes. They were vacant, the pupils dilated beyond return. They were, he realized, exactly how his son’s had been. Too similar to be a coincidence.

  This freak has my son’s eyes.

  Before he could make sense of this revelation, Zeke pulled from his pocket what looked like a syringe. “Your son is a genius, you know. Not only is he a talented killer but he has a way with knowing things a normal person couldn’t. Like exactly where the sedatives are stored in this place.” He popped the cap off, flicked the needle so the air bubbles escaped. “This will only hurt for a moment.”

  He stabbed it into Brad’s arm. It took effect quickly. His body grew tired. His muscles relaxed against his will. His eyelids tripled their weight.

  “Don’t fight,” Zeke said. “Just go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be back in your old home, back in Marlowe, with your son. He’ll be so happy to see you.”

  SIXTEEN

  “YOU’RE BLEEDING,” ETHAN said. “Both of you.”

  Ivy looked at her arm. There was a small incision, leaking freely. She grabbed a napkin and held it against the wound. Her face contorted with pain but it was a superficial wound.

  They both turned to Amy. She hadn’t been so lucky. Her mouth was open in shock. A shard of glass stuck out of her leg, just above the knee. Ethan wondered how deep it went.

  “Can you walk?” Ivy reached over the table and helped her up from the mess.

  Amy shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She tried standing but her scream was answer enough. They carried her over to the bar, leaned her against the metal.

  “We’ve got to clean it,” Ivy said. She didn’t sound as calm anymore. Whatever change had taken place since they saw the
crack in the earth, whatever bravery she’d gained from all this, was slowly fading.

  Ethan sped into the kitchen, came back with a glass of water and a dirty rag.

  “Are those clean?” Amy said between hyperventilating.

  “Probably not.” Ethan handed the rag to Ivy. “But it’s the best we’ve got.” He poured the water over the wound. “We’ve got to get the glass out.”

  Amy shook her head. “No way. Don’t they say to keep it in? Don’t they say that makes it worse?”

  “He’s right,” Ivy said. “It could get infected.” Without waiting for a response, she tied the rag around Amy’s thigh and tightened it. “This might hurt a bit.” She pulled the glass out quickly.

  Amy thrashed in place, nearly convulsing. Ethan cleaned the wound once more. The water turned red. He found another rag behind the bar, stiff with age, and tied it around the open wound as tight as he could manage.

  It wasn’t until they calmed Amy down some that Ethan remembered the object that had been hurled through the window. It lay on the table. He squinted, couldn’t make it out from his location. For a moment, he thought it was a severed head. Perhaps Annabelle had followed them here. He rubbed his eyes. They must have been playing tricks. When he looked again he saw it was not a head but a large rock. A rock with a note attached by a rubber band.

  He took his time walking toward the table. He did not want to read whatever was written on that piece of paper. If he avoided it, if his eyes never saw the message, then he’d be safe. He could figure out how to leave Marlowe and go back to his real life, no matter how stressful it had been. He knew it was a stupid theory, one his mind conjured as a coping mechanism, but it felt valid nonetheless.

  He reached for the rock as he would a snake, holding his hand steady, certain it would uncoil and sink jagged fangs into the flesh of his palm. Sending poison into his blood stream, just like the cancer had done to Lisa.

  When the rock did not bite, he uncoiled the rubber band and retrieved the note.

  And wished upon all wishes he hadn’t.