He walked away with a smile on his face, tapping the paper tucked inside his pocket. For safekeeping, of course.
15
By Tuesday evening, the skin on Jason’s arm stopped peeling.
Chapter Four
A Storm’s a-Brewin’
1
Jason hired a lawyer and found out that Shelley’s infidelity made it possible for their divorce to be finalized in months instead of the usual year’s wait. No children, the house in Jason’s name, and Shelley’s income, higher than Jason’s by a significant amount, made it an easy divorce according to Michael K. Dillon, Esquire. Easy translated to not too expensive in Jason’s mind, and he swore he saw a flash of disappointment in the lawyer’s eyes.
His mother still refused to talk about it, but her angry silence told him communication with Shelley was either nonexistent or discouraging.
The job had the same ebb and flow as always. Some days he walked into the office to panicked phone calls from users who dropped and broke their cell phones or left them behind in a taxi on a business trip, and on others, the hours passed without a crisis in sight.
Mitch left to visit her ex-boyfriend’s mother on a rainy Thursday afternoon. That same day, he received a letter from his lawyer that stated that Shelley’s lawyer agreed to all the terms, and they’d have a court date soon.
His freedom was well worth every penny the lawyer asked for. A piece of paper may have bound them together, but a new piece of paper would render that null and void. A little bit of ink, like a tattoo.
It only hurts for a little while.
It didn’t hurt, though. In fact, just the thought of that paper made him grin like an unmedicated asylum lunatic. No more Mr. & Mrs. Jason Harford.
When that piece of paper arrived in the mail, he planned to take his wedding band and flush it down the toilet, the perfect farewell to the disaster he’d signed up for, then he might frame the divorce decree and hang it on the wall where the wedding photo used to be.
His father’s words echoed in his head when he folded the letter back up.
It is what it is.
And it was all good.
2
On Saturday morning, halfway through his second cup of coffee, Jason heard a knock at the front door. When he opened the door, one of the neighbor’s kids looked up at him with very wide, very dark eyes, a girl somewhere between elementary and middle-school age who he recognized, but not well enough to remember her name.
“Hi, have you seen a gray cat?”
Her words were low and polite, but she shook hair out of her eyes with a gesture that spoke of the insolence right around the corner. Give her a few years, and she’d have a nose ring and a bad attitude and wouldn’t be caught dead knocking on her neighbor’s door. Jason stayed on friendly terms with most of his neighbors but didn’t consider any of them friends. Sure, he’d wave while he mowed the lawn or took out the trash, but Shelley had never been interested in hanging out with any of them. If they’d lived in a high-rise penthouse surrounded by money and class, it would have been a different story.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t seen your cat.”
No reason to tell her he just woke up and hadn’t been outside yet; she was still a few years away from sleeping until noon on the weekends. He thought he knew the cat she asked about, a big, gray tomcat who preferred one of two things—sleeping or hissing. The cat liked to curl up in their backyard near the birdbath Shelley picked out last summer and lay in wait for unsuspecting birds. Twice, Jason found traces of the cat’s spoils near the end of the yard.
“Okay, our cat, Shiny, didn’t come home today. So if you see him, could you call my dad? We live three doors down, in the brick house.” She handed Jason a phone number scrawled on small scrap of paper.
“If I see him, I’ll be sure to call.”
“Thanks, Mister.”
She walked away and joined up with a younger boy whose hopeful expression she dashed away with a shake of her head. Jason shut the door. Shiny? What a name for a cat. Maybe good old Shiny ran away in search of owners with a better imagination or a yard with a bigger birdbath and more victims.
3
That night, Jason went to Brian’s house, drank too much and stumbled into Brian’s spare bedroom a few minutes past 2:00 a.m., collapsing on the bed fully clothed. Brian’s dog, a huge golden retriever named Mac, climbed up on the bed, and Jason passed out with the room spinning circles in his head and Mac snoring in his ear.
When Mac’s barking pulled him awake, the room no longer spun, but it slanted one way, then jolted in the other direction. “Knock it off,” Jason said, but Mac raised his muzzle and barked louder. Jason groaned, covering his ears with his hands. The dog whined, jumped off the bed, paced in a circle, his nails clicking on the wood floor, then moved close enough so Jason could feel his breath as he let loose with a series of short, clipped barks.
“Come on, Mac, quit it.” He rolled over and buried his face in the sheets.
Brian liked to joke that if someone broke in the house, Mac would let him walk out the front door with anything as long as the intruder scratched behind his ears and gave him a dog biscuit. Mac nudged Jason’s shoulder with his snout, gave another string of barks and growled in his ear, his fur pushing out a low, musky scent.
Jason pushed himself up, but the room slid to the right, his stomach twisted and he fell back on the bed. Mac’s growl deepened, then he retreated to the other side of the room, near the door. “Okay, boy. Give me a second. I’ll get up and check it out.” He sat up, closing his eyes as the room tilted to the left. Brian was going to owe him for this one, big time. Jason swung his legs to the side of the bed, and Mac advanced with his ears back and his tail high, stopping a few feet away.
“Mac, stop it.”
When Jason stood up, Mac took another step forward, baring his teeth. The room twisted, he sank back down on the edge of the mattress and the dog moved back with another growl. Jason held out his hand. The growl deepened.
“Mac?” he said, his voice whisper-soft and liquor-heavy. What little moisture he had in his mouth vanished.
The dog crouched low, his liquid eyes focused on Jason’s as his lips pulled back farther from his teeth, a posture suggesting violence, suggesting all the dog biscuits in the world wouldn’t help Jason now.
No way, not Mac.
“Come on, boy. Good dog.”
Mac growled once in reply. Jason stood up again, holding on to the edge of the nightstand, and Mac sprang to his feet. Forgetting about his pounding head and his racing heart, Jason staggered forward. The room filled with high-pitched barking, loud enough to echo off the walls, and the thick scent of fur as Mac approached.
Jason backed up with his hands raised until the mattress pressed against the back of his legs. “Mac, knock it off right now.” He tumbled back, pulling his legs up and away only seconds before Mac’s jaws snapped in the air where his right ankle had been.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jason said.
Mac withdrew, his paws heavy on the floor, until he reached the doorway. He bobbed his head up and down twice, whined long and low, then ran out. Jason had only a moment to wonder before the room shifted in front of his eyes. Everything turned gray and blurry, and he spiraled down into the dark hole of drunk nothingness with the echo of Mac’s barking still ringing in his ears.
4
When Jason walked into the kitchen the next afternoon, he found Brian hunched low over a cup of coffee. Mac sat on the other side of the room with his head on his paws and his eyes closed, but Jason caught the twitch of his ears from the corner of his eye when he sank down into one of the scuffed chairs.
“Is Mac okay?”
Brian glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, he’s fine. Why?”
“Didn’t you hear him last night?”
“I didn’t hear a damn thing. What happened?”
“He woke me up in the middle of the night, barking like crazy, and when I got up, he snapped at m
e.”
“Mac? He wouldn’t snap at you. He’s known you since he was a puppy. Maybe you were dreaming.”
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t a dream. If I hadn’t moved my leg away, he would’ve bitten me.”
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe he heard something that spooked him. It’s happened once or twice, but I’m guessing you just imagined the snapping. You were pretty tanked after all.”
“Maybe. Maybe I did. All right, I’m heading out. I need a long shower, a handful of aspirin, and a nap.” He picked up his car keys and walked past Mac to the door. The dog instantly reared up, pulled his head back and gave a low whine. Jason looked back at Brian. “Do you see that?”
Brian swung around in the chair and patted his leg. “Mac, come here.”
Mac gave Jason a wide birth as he padded across the room to sit at Brian’s feet. “He’s fine. Maybe he doesn’t like the way you smell this morning.”
“Right. After living with you all these years? Just keep an eye on him, in case he’s sick or something.”
“Sure, sure I will.” Brian patted Mac’s head. “That’s my good boy, yes.” The dog swung his head around fast and gave a low growl. “Silly dog, it’s Jason.” Brian looked up and smiled. “Sorry, man. You do smell pretty ripe.”
Jason kept his eyes on Mac’s and didn’t smile back.
5
Thanks to copious amounts of water and aspirin, Jason woke up from his nap hangover-free. He listened to his voice mail—two messages, one from Mitch saying hello, another from his mom asking him to call her back—tucked the phone in his pocket and walked outside.
The sun hung low in the sky, but the day still held enough light for a quick pass through the backyard with the lawn mower. As he pushed the mower back and forth, the grass brushing against his ankles, he thought about Mitch and couldn’t help the stupid grin that rose to the surface. Contrary to Brian’s belief, he wasn’t ready to ask her to move in or marry him, but he liked her a lot. Maybe a little more than a lot.
The mower gave a small lurch in his hands and he turned it off, breathing in the scent of freshly cut grass, and flipped it on its side. It never failed. The neighbor’s maple tree dropped branches into his yard all the time, and he always forgot to check before he started. One of the blades had a smear of something dark and red. He walked back over the patch of grass he’d just cut, looking for a rabbit hole or maybe the remains of a bird, courtesy of Shiny.
Something gray and white, about four inches long, lay partially concealed in the grass. Jason bent down to look closer. “Shit.” The bright, sickly-sweet smell of rot rose up, strong enough to taste. He gagged and stood up, backing away. The gray was perfectly still, but the white moved in a macabre dance like a shore-bound wave.
Oh God.
He hated maggots. Give him spiders, slugs, or even roaches, but maggots? He shuddered, walked back and forth across his lawn and took several deep breaths to clear the foul smell from his lungs. He found a large rock that would have either dulled or chipped the mower blade, a small tree branch, a scrap of white paper, but no more evidence of a cat, living or dead.
Shiny wasn’t in his yard, well, most of him anyway. The cat had either messed with the wrong dog or raccoon or fell victim to a neighborhood kid playing a sadistic game of vivisection. Nice. Wasn’t that one of the early signs of a serial killer? Come to think of it, the boy across the street did seem strange, but strange enough to play Dr. Vet from Hell? Jason didn’t know and didn’t care.
He went back in the house for a plastic bag, not sure if he should call the neighbors or not. ”I found a piece of your cat, I think,“ wasn’t exactly good news, but maybe they should know Shiny was…wounded.
A cat could live without part of its tail, right?
6
Jason’s boss held up his watch and gave it a shake when Jason walked past his office on Monday morning.
Asshole.
Jason had called him when he woke up at nine, he’d told him he overslept, and it wasn’t a lie. He didn’t tell him he overslept because he had a nightmare and refused to go back to sleep for several hours until the nightmare faded. He fell back to sleep with the mad chittering of waking birds in his ears, then turned off the alarm clock when it beeped its cheerful good morning at six-thirty.
He’d contemplated calling in sick, but in the end decided going in late was better than not going in at all. When he finally got to his desk, he regretted the decision. The company had a use-it-or-lose-it policy for vacation and sick days; last year, Jason called out sick twice and forfeited the remaining five sick days.
I should’ve stayed home.
The three cups of coffee he drank at home only pricked the surface of his sleep-deprived mind. He read through his email, and when he got to the end he had no idea what he’d read. He stared at the time display on his phone, wondering how he’d manage until five o’clock. The caffeine had made him jittery, but far from awake. Maybe he should just claim illness and leave early, but if he fell asleep and had the nightmare again…
He’d dreamed of a white room littered with the corpses of small animals, some without heads, others without tails, in pools of congealed blood turned a shocking red against the white of the floor. Maggots squirmed and danced on the rotted flesh, and the breeze blew its foul stink down Jason’s throat. When a feathery rustle filled the room, he knew, with the surety that only comes in dreams, that soon his body, broken and battered, would lie on the floor, his blood would mingle with the animals’, the maggots would cover his flesh then eat and eat and eat until he existed no more.
And somewhere, hidden in the horrible white room, someone had laughed and screamed and called his name. He’d woken up shouting incoherencies, and in the darkness the flapping of wings sounded real.
When his desk phone rang, he jumped and pushed the nightmare away. It was going to be a long day.
7
He picked Mitch up from the airport on Tuesday night, and she folded into his arms with a warm smile and an even warmer kiss. After he loaded her suitcase into the trunk of his car and pulled away from the airport, she slipped her hand into his.
Maybe it’s not the right time, but she feels like the right girl.
“Did everything go okay?” he asked.
“It went a lot better than okay. I’m glad I went. Adam was a pain in the ass, but I just ignored him. His mom was really happy to see me, and that made it all worthwhile. Except at the end, when she told me I should go see my mom. Ugh.”
“Why is that bad? Don’t you two get along?”
“I haven’t seen her in years,” she said. “We talk on the phone sometimes, but that’s it, and we don’t really talk, just exchange words, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. You just described the last few years of my marriage.”
“What about you? Are you close with your parents?”
“We’re pretty close, but lately, it’s been weird. My mom is taking the whole split-up pretty hard. She liked my ex, and she blames me for the split. It’s my fault, really. I should’ve said something earlier about the problems, but I just didn’t want to look that close. I’m really good at looking the other way.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mitch said and paused to give his hand a light squeeze. “It’s human nature. You know what they say about hindsight being 20/20. And sometimes it’s easier not to say anything, because then families feel like they have to get involved and help fix things.”
“My mother definitely would have. My dad is a different story.” Jason tapped the fingers of his left hand on the steering wheel. “There’s no love lost there. He tolerated her, but never really liked her.”
“A man after my own heart.”
They both laughed.
“Yeah, he’s a good guy. He’s one of those quiet types.”
And strong on the inside, where it counts.
Jason smiled.
“What?” Mitch asked.
“Oh, sorry.
I just thought about something he said to me.”
“Do you want to share?”
Jason shook his head. “Really, it’s nothing.”
“With a smile like that, it’s more than nothing,” Mitch said.
“When I told him about Shelley, he said I’d be fine because I was strong on the inside, where it counts. It surprised me.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never thought of myself as strong.”
“Of course you are. You lived with your ex, didn’t you? I could tell what kind of person she was the minute she walked in your kitchen. You’d have to be strong to put up with that.”
“But I wasn’t. She jumped, and I asked how high.” The minute he spoke the words, he wanted to take them back. His cheeks flooded with shame.
“Maybe you just forgot how to be strong for a while. Adam used to push me around, too. It took a long time before I realized if I stayed with him, I’d lose myself completely.”
“But you left.”
“You would have, too. I’m sure of it.”
“I did get your message, by the way, but I didn’t want to intrude or call at a bad time. I figured it was better to wait and talk to you when you got home.”
She gave his hand another squeeze. “I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.”
When he stopped at a red light, he looked over. She’d kicked off her shoes and sat with her legs tucked up and her cheek resting on one knee. “You look tired.”
“You look tired, too.”
“Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping all that well. Just work stress,” he lied.
He’d not had a nightmare since Sunday night, but he’d woken up on Monday at 4:00 a.m., sure he’d heard a bird in his house, but after checking every room including the attic, he went back to sleep, convinced he’d been mistaken. Last night, he’d woken up with the distinct feeling of being watched, and even after he’d turned on all the lights, the sensation had remained. He’d ended up late again for work, but luckily his boss wasn’t there.
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