Ghost Light

by Hautala, Rick

  No, he thought, feeling a rising surge of anger, he owed Cindy. One thing he had learned, one thing his daddy had taught him quite well back there on the farm in Iowa—paybacks are a bitch!

  Wouldn’t it feel just great if he could do it right now? Take her scrawny, little neck into his powerful grip and slam her fucking head as hard as he could against the bathroom mirror. No accident. No pretense of an accident. Just fucking do it! Wouldn’t it make a great sound? And wouldn’t it be just terrific to hear the sound of splintering glass and breaking bones as her skull cracked open? And wouldn’t he feel terrific, watching as her brains and blood leaked out of her head onto the counter and filled the sink? He knew he’d enjoy watching the light dim in her eyes as she faded away, knowing he had gotten back at her!

  “Yeah, goddamnit,” Alex whispered as his focus snapped back to his face, and he watched the translucent oval of fog cover the mirror, obscuring part of his face for a moment and then disappearing to reveal his own reflection in stark, startling detail.

  “Yeah, I just may have to do that.”

  His fists clenched tightly, and before he could think about what he was doing, he twisted to one side and then with a wild scream brought his fist around in a wide, whistling arc. The impact shattered the mirror into a bright, jagged spider web pattern. Rectangles of glass clinked like tiny bells as they fell to the counter. He stared at his clenched fist, nesting inside the pocket of broken glass. From the stinging sensation, he knew that he had cut his knuckles, but he ignored the pain and the thin flow of blood as he slowly drew his hand back and stared at the mosaic reflection of his face. In dozens of oddly-shaped rectangles of glass, he saw that he was smiling a wide, savage grin, and that made him chuckle.

  “Yes-sir-ee, by Jesus,” he hissed, having to restrain the rising wail of laughter that was building up inside him. “I just may have to find her and the kids by myself, and show her exactly what I do to people who steal my money and try to take my kids away from me!”

  2

  It was a little after two o’clock as Cindy crossed the Portsmouth bridge into Maine. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt a strange mixture of elation, apprehension, and… something else… something she couldn’t quite name.

  “THE WAY LIFE’S SUPPOSED TO BE” read the big road sign on the Maine side of the bridge, and her first thought was, Oh. God, if this is the way fife’s supposed to be, I don’t want any part of it!

  Both she and the kids were frazzled after spending the last two weeks—two of the hottest weeks of the summer—on the road. It hadn’t been long before the cheap motels had all started seeming the same and the food at roadside restaurants started to blend into a memory of odorless, colorless, and tasteless mush.

  For most of the trip, they had stuck to side roads, taking wide detours to avoid the major highways, where Cindy expected the police to be looking for her—if, in fact, they were looking for her. She had listened to a lot of talk radio stations on the AM but—at least so far—hadn’t heard anything about Nebraskan authorities on the lookout for a woman who had kidnapped two children from their home in Omaha.

  After the first few days on the road, though, she had found she couldn’t sustain her high-pitched sense of paranoia. She stopped panicking every time she saw a police cruiser, but the steady, grinding tension, coupled with her oncoming period, was still bearing down hard on her, making her an irritable bundle of nerves. Day after day, when the kids whined about being hungry or having to go to the bathroom, she found herself snapping at them more than she would have liked; and at night, when they had trouble falling asleep—especially Krissy, crying for her mother—Cindy found that she didn’t have the patience to deal with them as she knew she should. The children, in turn, were starting to act tense and alienated, especially Billy, who was still trying to put on a brave face. He seemed to respond to Cindy with increasing hostility and defiance, while Krissy was sulky and withdrawn, spending most of her days and nights either sobbing to herself or silently sullen. At least when she did sleep, she didn’t wake up from any more nightmares about the “blue lady”… none that she ever mentioned to Cindy, anyway. But Cindy was filled with concern because she could see that the three of them still weren’t pulling together the way they should be. She knew that she couldn’t hold out any high hopes for them getting along any better, not unless they started getting along… like a real family.

  In western Massachusetts, she decided that she could be a little less cautious, so in Springfield she got onto the Massachusetts Turnpike, which she took to Route 290, south of Worcester. From there, she drove north to Route 495 and Interstate 95, crossing into New Hampshire and, shortly thereafter, into Kittery, Maine. She had a Rand McNally Road Atlas and written directions to Harry’s uncle’s camp in Gray, Maine, but the prospect of actually arriving at their destination began to fill her with a gnawing sense of worry.

  Soon it would be all over… at least this part of it.

  And then what?

  In spite of the drain on her energy and nerves, their escape from Nebraska had gone pretty much without a hitch. She had saved Krissy and Billy from their father; she had lined up a safe place to go; she had brought along plenty of clothes and a few toys and books for the kids; and she had enough money in Traveler’s Checks and in a bank she could draw onto carry them for quite a while. Hopefully, in spite of the terrible economy, Harry would be able to sell his business fairly soon and join them. Once they were together again, Cindy was determined to hire a lawyer and see about gaining legal custody of the kids in Maine. Then they could make plans to move wherever they wanted to and begin a new life together… as a family.

  It all sounded so good except for a few things that nagged at the back of her mind.

  Her worst concern, at least right now, was how seldom she had gotten to talk to Harry since she had left home. She had tried calling him several times a day but had managed to get through to him, and not his answering machine, only three times the first week and twice the second. At night, the motel bed seemed frighteningly large without him beside her. She felt lonely and scared and vulnerable without her husband.

  That in itself bothered her because she wished she could feel more confident, more courageous on her own; but there was also something else—something about the few conversations they’d had that bothered her. She couldn’t quite put it into words, and she felt uncomfortable even thinking about it, but she sensed a distance that was more than physical growing between her and her husband. At odd moments, day and night, usually when she was thinking about the last time they had talked, she would have unnerving flashes that she had been married to him a long time ago and was now divorced … and that Krissy and Billy were really her children from another marriage… or that she had never been married, except perhaps in another lifetime and that she had no idea who these kids in the back seat of her car were.

  But even the few times she had talked to Harry, he had sounded impatient and detached, almost as if he thought he was wasting his time talking to her. Oh, he kept reassuring her, and he said all the right things, asking how she and the kids were doing and telling her how much he missed her, but in each of the five phone calls they’d had, there had been something else… something… wrong with his tone of voice. She hated to think that he didn’t really mean or feel anything he was saying. She tried to convince herself that it was just the geographical and emotional distance between them and the utter weirdness of their situation that made her feel this way, but no matter how hard she tried to push it away, a faint, nagging thought kept popping up in her mind—

  What if Harry never comes here? What if he doesn’t even intend to join us here?… And what if I have to handle all of this alone?

  Especially late at night and in the long stretches of silence as she drove, that thought hounded her.

  What if I have to do all of this… alone!

  She fortified herself with the conviction that she was doing the right and necessary thing, trying to save thes
e kids and providing them with a safe, loving home.

  Yeah, some home she’d made for them so far!

  Two weeks straight of hours on end in the car, shabby motel rooms, and fast food restaurants for three meals a day. But this was the only alternative she had thought of, and she was convinced she had to do it because her dead sister had asked her to protect her kids, and Krissy and Billy were all she had left of any real family. Even if it meant losing Harry, she had to go through with her plans. Sometimes she would start to cry late at night or as she drove, and all she could do was hope that the kids didn’t notice.

  These and other thoughts tormented her, but she tried to push them aside as the highway rolled out in front of her. Long blue afternoon shadows stretched like thin rubber across the road as the exits flew past one after another. Cindy was amazed—as she had been the only other time she had visited Maine with Harry—how the thick pine trees seemed to crowd in on both sides of the road. The horizon, which out in Nebraska seemed to stretch away forever, was much too close here. At times she had the odd sensation that she could actually reach out and touch it. Distances in New England were just too damned small. Even the three lane Maine Turnpike had far too many twists and turns as it followed the rolling contours of the land. Already she felt homesick for the wide open spaces of the Midwest.

  After about an hour, she saw up ahead a sign announcing “EXIT 8 PORTLAND AND WEST-BROOK, 2 MILES.” The sun had become lost in the afternoon heat haze and cast an eerie pall over the land. She didn’t need to glance at her watch to know that it was already late afternoon.

  “Hey, is anyone hungry? Want to stop and eat here?” she called out, her voice holding a light, happy tone in spite of her bleak thoughts.

  Before either of the kids could respond, a loud explosion sounded from underneath the car toward the back. Cindy immediately eased her foot off the accelerator. Her hands reflexively tightened on the steering wheel when she felt the rear end of the car sway to the right, pulling hard.

  “Oh, shit!”

  A loud slapping sound shook the car, gradually lessening as she applied the brakes. Fighting the drag on the steering wheel, she eased into the breakdown lane and killed the engine.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” she shouted as she pounded her fists on the dashboard. “Just what I need! A flat tire!”

  After glancing over her shoulder at the oncoming traffic, she slid across the front seat and got out on the passenger’s side. The air was oppressively hot and alive with insect noises. Grasshoppers and crickets shot up from the knee-high grass along the roadside. Before shutting the door, she looked at the kids in the back seat. “You guys wait here while I change the tire, okay? It won’t take long.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Billy asked. He still didn’t smile, but she could see a subtle excitement brightening his eyes.

  Cindy regarded him for a moment, then, biting her lower lip, nodded and said, “Of course I do.”

  “I can do it for you, though. My dad showed me the right way to do it tons of times,” Billy said excitedly. “I know all about how you have to loosen all lug nuts first before you jack the car up, and once you take them off to put the lug nuts inside the hubcap cover so you don’t lose ’em.” He unsnapped his seat belt and shifted forward, reaching in front of Krissy to open the car door.

  A car sped by, and the wind of its passing blasted into Cindy’s face like an open furnace. “No,” she said mildly, “you’d better stay in the car where it’s safe. I think I can handle this by myself.”

  “Come on, you don’t know the first thing about changing tires.”

  “Oh, really? And just how do you know that?”

  For the first time in what seemed like days, Cindy saw a sly smile creep across Billy’s face. “Well, because rule number one, my dad always told me, is to make sure nobody stays in the car when you jack it up. If somebody moved around, it might snap the jack out, and you could bend the chassis if the car fell.”

  Cindy considered for a moment, then, realizing she could use this to her advantage, said, “I suppose that makes sense. Well then, what do you say we take care of this together?”

  She stepped back and opened the back door. In a flash, Billy crawled over his sister and jumped out onto the roadside before Cindy helped Krissy unbuckle. The little girl remained silent. She stepped out of the car and walked into the deep grass, moving like a robot when Cindy directed her to stand well back from the highway. Several cars went past, hitting them with hot wind blasts and raising swirls of dust that shimmered like pollen in the heavy air.

  Reaching across the front seat, Cindy pulled on the emergency flashers and took the keys from the ignition before going to the back of the car and opening the trunk. She groaned when she realized that she would have to unload their suitcases before she could get at the spare tire and jack, but Billy set to work with an eagerness and energy that she found endearing. Within seconds, he had the suitcases stacked neatly on the roadside and was struggling to get the spare tire unbolted from the bracket inside the dark trunk.

  “If you can’t see what you’re doing, there should be a flashlight in there somewhere,” Cindy said.

  Billy felt around, then glanced back at her and shook his head. “I don’t see one.”

  Sighing with frustration, Cindy went back to the car and fished under the front seat until she found it amongst the litter of empty soda cans and hamburger wrappers. When she clicked the switch, only a faint orange glow like a dying ember lit up the bulb. She swore under her breath and threw the flashlight back onto the floor.

  By the time she got back to Billy, he already had the spare tire out on the ground and was fumbling with the pieces of the jack, trying to fit it into the base. The angled tire iron was on the ground at his feet.

  “It’d be better if we had a star wrench,” he said.

  Cindy nodded, having no idea what he meant.

  “You know, maybe we should wait for someone to stop and help us,” she said, nervously watching as cars kept zipping past them. No one had bothered to stop at least so far.

  “Naw, this’ll be easy. Well be done in no time,” Billy replied.

  As it turned out, though, it took them better than twenty minutes to change the tire because they had so much trouble loosening the rusted lug nuts. Standing side by side, they gripped the angled tire iron, counted to three, and then pulled for all they were worth. It took more than a dozen tries on each nut, and before long they were sweating and panting, but eventually all of the lug nuts loosened with loud, complaining groans. Again, leaning close, side by side, they jacked up the car, took off the flat tire, and put on the spare. Cindy was grateful that the spare wasn’t flat, which was what happened to her the last time she’d had a flat. Once the tire was on, they eased the car down and were just setting to work to tighten the lug nuts when she heard a car pull to a stop behind them.

  “Uh-oh,” Krissy said. Her voice was almost lost beneath the buzzing insect sounds and the roar of passing cars.

  Cindy’s heart gave a hard kick in her chest, and her body froze for a moment. She licked her lips and tried to swallow down the dry lump in her throat, hoping to hell she could manage a smile. Just as she was turning around, flickering blue lights came on and, above the rushing sound of passing traffic, she heard the faint squawk of a police radio.

  The tightening in her chest got worse. Her legs felt suddenly all loose and rubbery. Her hand let go of the tire iron, and it fell to the ground, clanging as loud as a school bell.

  Oh. Jesus—oh, shit—they’ve found us!

  Chapter Seven

  Phone Messages

  It was a good thing that Debbie had a key to her sister’s house, and it was even better that Harry apparently had known nothing about it. At least so far he hadn’t asked to have it back. If he ever did, Alex thought, it would make it a shitload tougher for him to get anything done. His kids had been missing for two weeks now, and he still wasn’t sure what he planned to do about it. At l
east he had one major obstacle out of his way: he had access to Harry’s house whenever the hell he wanted it … as long as the son of a bitch wasn’t home with his goddamned security chain locked. Alex’s blood boiled whenever he thought about what had happened that night he had first discovered the kids were gone. He fumed with trembling rage whenever he remembered how badly he had wanted to smash that mother fucker’s front door open, rip it right off its hinges, and beat him to a bloody-fucking pulp with it.

  It was a little past noon on Thursday, and like the rest of the week so far, Alex had called in sick at work. The whole time he was showering, shaving, and sobering up, he had been constantly turning over ideas about what he should do. Finding the key in the kitchen drawer with Cindy’s name on the attached name tag had certainly brightened his prospects, but he immediately started thinking that this had fallen into place a little too easily. In fact, he had never even noticed the key in the silverware drawer before, and that made him a little bit suspicious about it.

  What if it was part of the setup, too?

  Debbie had never told him she had this key. Why had she even had it—to water their plants when they were away on vacation? Or had the cops placed it here sometime in the last few weeks? Was it here—for whatever reason—to help them nail him for killing his wife?

  A ray of afternoon sunlight coming in through the kitchen window reflected off the key, making it sparkle like a fishing lure in the palm of his hand. He didn’t like the vague, worrisome feeling that he was the catch this lure was designed to snare.

  A little after two o’clock, after he had dressed in a faded blue t-shirt and jeans, ate a light meal of toast and coffee, he tucked the key into his jeans pocket and left the house, being mindful to lock the door. The day was heavy with humidity as he got into his car. The temperature had to be at least ninety degrees. Wanting to keep his mind clear, Alex tried to forget about the beer he was craving so badly as he started up the engine and pulled the car out into the street. He cautioned himself that he had to stay alert and on his guard. Just like when he was in Vietnam, he could never let his guard down, even for an instant. It might be fatal!