Witness

by Denise Gwen

  Oh, Christ.

  What the hell—

  Considered, briefly, the idea of waving at him, pretending everything was fine. A cloudy day out; perhaps the child couldn’t see all the way into the dining room? How much of what’d happened in here did the kid see? Perhaps the reflection had blinded his sight; perhaps he hadn’t seen a thing. Randy thought for one second, maybe, the kid didn’t see a thing; he was still safe, when, as he raised his right hand to wave at the kid and smile, the kid opened his mouth in an O of horror, turned his head away and pedaled down the street as fast as if a herd of goblins were after him.

  God-dammit, he saw me.

  A wave of misery washed over him.

  This was bad.

  This was very bad.

  Because it meant he had to do something about the kid.

  A few minutes later.

  With terror thudding dully in her heart, Ginny tore out for home, fearing at any second the weight of a heavy hand upon her shoulder and being wrenched off her bike and dragged off into the woods for a beating, or worse, a killing.

  She took the corner with the wheels screaming in protest, and hazarded a quick, frightened glance over her shoulder as she raced away, half-expecting the bad man jump out at her, but she made it home in fifteen seconds, dropped her bike in the backyard, dumped the remaining, undelivered newspapers into the trash can behind the house, tore into the house through the back-kitchen door, and ran upstairs to her bedroom and dove between the covers and shook. Cold, oh, so cold, terror shivered through her, curdles of horror trembled in her heart, oh, this was bad, this was so bad, this was so very, very bad.

  Last Halloween, her Church youth group went on an outing to King’s Island, to the House of Horrors, and it’d been scary, sure, but oh, so much fun, and as they walked through the house of horrors—Evie was a chicken and backed out at the last minute—Ginny walked into a room called the chamber of despair. At first, she noticed nothing, but then her friend Terry nudged her and glanced up and when Ginny looked up as well, she saw, hanging high above her head, two pairs of feet dangling in the air. It took her a full moment to register what it represented, and when it hit her, she screamed and Terry laughed. She laughed too, but it hadn’t been the least bit funny; it’d been a terrible shock, and it’d frightened her deeply, more than anything else she’d seen in her life, and then she forced herself to look up again, and, oh, how gross, a wax figure of a woman—heck, she figured it was a woman—with long, ratty black hair, and her head all bulbous and purple and her tongue sticking out of her mouth and the woman hung from a noose from a high beam, and beside the woman, and hanging from another high beam, was a child wax figure—

  “Ginny, you ready?” Mommy called up the stairs.

  “Not yet, oh no, Mommy, not yet.” She burrowed deep under the covers and wrapped herself into a ball and closed her eyes tight but there was no way she could close her eyes to the horror she’d just seen, and now, with the image ingrained in her mind, she saw it now as something bigger than it’d been, an enormous, swollen monstrosity, taking on a heft and shape that grew larger with every passing moment.

  Back in October, at the house of horrors at King’s Island, she’d known it was all fake. So, fake, fake, fake, and with lots of screaming and crying and ghoulish laughter, and she’d been torn between tears of laughter and tears of terror, all at the same time, but that room . . . that one room, the chamber of horror, with the corpse of the woman hanging from the rafter and the corpse of the child, well, it’d been just a little too real for her.

  The dead child looked just like me.

  The wax mannequin of the child, with its purple, bloated face, swollen tongue, had two red pigtails, the hair of the mannequin plaited exactly like hers—

  After that, she refused to let her mother braid her hair. She preferred to let her red hair hang free than coil it up into those horrific braids, because she feared if she looked in a mirror, she’d see herself as the purple wax figure with red hair.

  It took a long time to drive the image from her mind, and for many nights afterwards, she dreamed of herself as the child hanging in the rafters. It’d been a complicated dream, a nightmare, really, if she really thought about it, and in the dream, she was at King’s Island, walking around, and someone suggested she play-act as a corpse in the house of horrors, only it became real mighty fast, and the man who put the noose around her neck was real, and even though everyone around her thought it was all make-believe and fun, she knew the man putting the noose around her neck was real and that he was really going to string her up and hang her from the rafters and when she tried telling people, oh hey, wait a minute, this is real, please save me, it was too late, and as he tightened the noose and hoisted her up to the rafter, everyone was still laughing, but as she struggled and put her hands on the rope and tried to break free, they saw what was really happening, she was really being hanged, and as she died, people finally realized this was real after all and they began to move, in slow motion, oh, in such super-duper slow motion, that it killed her to see how slowly and how stupidly they moved, and so by the time they finally reached her and brought her body down, it was too late and she’d already died.

  In other versions of the dream, nobody came to her aid and she just hung there until she died.

  “Ginny, honey, did you do your paper route already? That was fast, honey, but we gotta go.”

  “Oh, Mommy, don’t make me go, don’t make me go,” she whimpered into the pillow.

  “Ginny?”

  “Don’t make me go, Mommy.”

  “Ginny,” Mom called out, impatiently, “it’s time to go. Now.”

  Silence.

  “Please leave me alone, please leave me alone, please leave me alone,” Ginny whispered.

  Soft-yet-heavy footfalls climbed the stairs and she breathed a sigh of relief. Grandpa was coming to get her; she knew Grandpa’s footsteps from Mommy’s. Mommy’s footsteps sounded light and happy; Grandpa’s footsteps, heavy and tired. He opened the door, walked up to her bed. “Ginny, honey. Hon, it’s time to get up.”

  “Grandpa, I want to stay home.”

  “No, honey, now come on, or we’ll be late for the doctor. You’ve not been feeling well lately, and we need to check you out, and besides all that, you want to go to summer camp, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then. You must get a physical. You can’t go to summer camp without one, you know that, right, sweetheart?”

  “I know.”

  A doctor couldn’t fix what ailed her now. She debated the idea of really pretending to be sick, crying, perhaps even working up a good little fit, but then it struck her; if Grandpa stayed near, she’d be safe. If Grandpa was around, she was safe.

  She threw off the covers, jumped out of bed and clutched Grandpa’s hand as they walked down the stairs. Mommy stood by the kitchen door, her handbag on her shoulder, her keys jangling in her hand. Mommy looked mad. “Come on, Ginny, let’s go. No more lollygagging.”

  Then it hit her.

  I can’t get into Mommy’s car; it’s parked in the driveway, and if the bad man’s looking for me, he’ll see me.

  Mommy parked her car in the driveway. If he happened to drive past the house while searching for her, the bad man might see her getting into Mommy’s car, but Grandpa parked his car in the garage. She clutched Grandpa’s hand, not letting go. “Can we go in Grandpa’s car, please, Mommy? Please, Mommy? I want to go in Grandpa’s car.”

  “What? No, don’t be silly. We’re taking the Prius, now don’t be silly, Ginny.”

  Mommy looked determined, and when Mommy looked this way, she usually got what she wanted, and Ginny had to do something drastic if she wanted to protect herself and her family from the bad man, and oh, how she hated to do it, but she simply had to, and so that’s when Ginny realized she had to do something drastic. But she simply had to protect herself, and her family, she threw herself onto the kitchen floor, face-first, and screamed and wailed a
nd generally threw a decent hissy fit. “Grandpa’s car. Grandpa’s car.”

  “Ginny Wittenberg,” Mommy said in her angry voice, “you get up this instant, or you’ll get a spanking you won’t forget for the rest of your days.”

  “Grandpa’s car.” Ginny lifted her head and looked up at Mommy. Mommy simply had to understand. “Grandpa’s car.”

  “Oh, Ginny,” Grandpa said soothingly, handing over his car keys, “go ahead and take the BMW. I’m not going anywhere today.”

  “Dad, you’re letting her get spoiled rotten. I cannot believe you’re condoning her bad behavior. This is unacceptable—”

  “If it’ll keep the peace, let her ride in the BMW.” He chuckled. “Didn’t know my granddaughter had such lofty tastes as to demand to ride in a BMW. I see a future lawyer here.”

  “Dad,” Mommy said in a warning voice, but Ginny could tell Mommy was going to give in, and her heart swelled with gladness. It was the kind of voice Mommy used whenever she gave in to her Dad but didn’t really want to but was willing to allow it to happen just once, mind you, to keep things running smoothly. God, how she loved her grandfather.

  “Go on, honey, it’s all right.”

  “But what about meeting the guys at McDonald’s?”

  Grandpa met every morning with the other old men at the local McDonald’s on the main strip of Shelbyville off Highway 74. Why Grandpa made such a point of going there every day fell beyond Ginny’s comprehension; after all, he was too old to play in the play-place, but he seemed to enjoy it, and he made a ritual of going there every morning to see the fellas, as he put it.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Grandpa said. “Thanks for reminding me, sweetie.”

  “So, you’ll take your car?”

  “Nope, give me the keys to the Prius and you drive the BMW.”

  Mommy handed over her car keys. “Dad, I cannot believe you’re letting a ten-year old girl manipulate you like this.”

  “Oh,” Grandpa said, with a humorous smile and a wink at Ginny, “I’ve been manipulated by girls of all ages my whole life. I’m used to it.”

  “Oh, Dad.”

  And that ended the discussion. Hooray. Ginny had won. She got up from the floor and dusted herself off. She made a point of avoiding her mother’s eye as she led the way through the door leading into the attached garage. “I cannot believe you, Ginny. You’re turning into the biggest, the brattiest spoiled little brat I ever laid eyes on.”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  But inwardly, Ginny was smiling.

  Still muttering, Mommy pressed the button on the key fob and the doors of the sleek black sedan with tinted windows unlocked. Ginny scooted into the front passenger seat and tucked herself into the well.

  “Ginny, get into the seat properly and fasten your seat belt.”

  “Yes, Mama.” She dutifully clambered up onto the plush leather seat, pulled the seat belt over her lap, clicked it, and then lowered herself so low her head rested below the windowsill of the front passenger seat window.

  “Sit up, Ginny.”

  Ginny scooted up a fraction of an inch.

  “I swear to Christ, Ginny, when we get home, I am going to deal with you, and you are not gonna like it.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  “You are grounded. No television, no cartoons, no nothing.”

  Well, that was just fine with Ginny. She smiled up at her mother. “Okay, Mommy.”

  “No iPod, no x-box, no nothing, do you get it?”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Ginny said, her voice quavering.

  Mommy looked at her, really looked at her, and a little of the tension rimming her eyes lessened as her features relaxed. “You really are sick, aren’t you, honey?”

  “Yes, Mommy, I am, and I’d like to put my head down.”

  “All right. Do you want to lie down in the backseat?”

  Oh, what a good idea.

  “Yes.” She unfastened the seat belt and dove into the backseat quicker than lightning just in case Mommy changed her mind.

  “Put a seat belt around your waist. On top of everything else I’m dealing with today, I don’t want to get pulled over and charged with child endangering.”

  “No, Mommy,” Ginny said with an obedient smile. She pulled the seatbelt around her waist and rested her head upon the soft leather seat.

  Now the bad man couldn’t see her, even if he was walking around the neighborhood, looking for her.

  A few minutes later.

  Randy drew the curtains closed, then turned back around and surveyed the scene.

  Make it look like a suicide.

  For the moment, at least, he couldn’t worry about the little boy delivering the paper route.

  Figure the kid out later.

  Right now, time to focus . . . on cleaning up the scene and making it look, well, natural. As natural as possible as a suicide would normally look. Scrub down the evidence of what he’d done, but don’t scrub up too much, because it’d look suspicious if his prints went missing everywhere in the dining room; he did live here, after all. A team of crime scene techs would consider it odd if they didn’t find his fingerprints here; he couldn’t scrub it down too much. Brooding, he walked back into the kitchen, opened the pantry cupboard, grabbed the can of Lemon Pledge and a clean rag from the plastic drawer in a Rubbermaid storage container she bought at Target. A three-drawer pink plastic container on wheels, she stored the fresh, new towels she used only when guests arrived, in the top drawer; in the second drawer, she stored the slightly used towels, the ones they used in their daily lives, and in the bottom drawer, she stored all the tired old towels that had become rundown and threadbare, and by taking a scissors to them and turning them into rags, she gave them a final life before they finally fell apart.

  Thrifty little woman. And organized. Organized and tidy.

  He stopped a moment and blinked, noticed moisture behind the eyelids.

  Oh, Miranda, why’d you drive me to this point?

  He’d loved her, he’d honestly loved her. He very nearly abandoned the idea of attempting to cover up the crime; he’d be found out, for sure. But then he considered it some more and decided he’d at least make the effort. Clutching the Lemon Pledge and a rag, he walked back into the dining room and looked at the table. It looked disgusting. Feces, urine, some other strangely colored bodily fluid . . . did he really need to bother? But no, if she’d done this on her own, she would’ve stood calmly on the dining room table, looped the rope around the fixture a bunch of times, and then hanged herself. There wouldn’t have been this mess on the table. A little urine, yes, at the moment of death, some excrement, sure, but nothing anywhere near resembling the carnage he now saw.

  Had to clean it up.

  He set to work, and it quickly became clear to him he needed to scrub the table down first, so he went back to the kitchen, found a bucket under the sink, filled it up with hot water and poured in hand dishwashing liquid. The bucket sloshing a little, he walked back into the dining room, and scrubbed the mess off the table, and realized, after he’d finished, he should’ve left a little bit of the poop that’d fallen out of her panties.

  Oh, well. I’m sure there’s some poop stuck in her panties. It’ll look real enough.

  He hauled the sodden bucket and dishrag out to the downstairs bathroom and poured the contents of the bucket into the toilet, retching as he did so. Oh, it was so gross, so disgusting. He then rinsed the bucket out and scooped out a little turd that landed in the hair catcher above the tub drain and tossed that into the toilet and flushed. The bucket now as clean as he could get it, he took it back to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and stacked it upside down to dry.

  He went back to the pantry and pulled out a fresh garbage bag and tossed the soaking wet dishrag into it.

  Pulled a fresh dishrag from the bottom drawer of the Rubbermaid bin, walked back into the dining room, picked up the Lemon Pledge and sprayed it all over the table; one good thing about Miranda; a stickler for cle
anliness, it wouldn’t be untoward for her to want a clean dining table, even on the day she decided to end it all.

  After wiping down the table, he studied the dining room, paying close attention to the powder blue carpeting, and to the entrance area where the swinging door led into the kitchen, and where they’d struggled. A crime scene tech might find a strand of Miranda’s blonde hair and blood in the carpeting. He found bits of hair and mass and blood and, cupping it all in the palm of his hand, walked it into the kitchen and dropped it down the garbage disposal in the sink and ran the machine.

  Walked back into the dining room and studied it. Miranda vacuumed up after every meal in this room; would she have vacuumed before she hanged herself?

  No, probably not. Not even Miranda would do that.

  Put the Lemon Pledge back onto the shelf in the pantry cupboard, dusted off his hands, and studied the kitchen. Except for the tomato basil soup still bubbling in the saucepan, making his stomach knot up with hunger, the kitchen looked pristine. Didn’t know what to do with the soup; would a woman, planning to kill herself, even bother to make soup on the morning of her death?

  No, she would not.

  He took the saucepan off the stove, turned off the burner, and, with no other idea what to do with it, placed the saucepan in the fridge.

  Miranda would never do something like this; she’d put the soup in a Tupperware container.

  But where did she hide the fucking things?

  He took the saucepan out of the fridge and set it back on the stove, then rummaged around in the cupboards until he finally found the Tupperware crap. She’d organized it in this complicated way, with brightly-colored containers sealed with their matching lids, and the largest containers on the bottom and the smallest containers on the top, but when he tried reaching with one hand into the cupboard for a large container, while holding up the ones above it with the other, to set them down in its place when he pulled out the large container, the entire pile of Tupperware containers clattered to the floor in a heap. Cursing and screaming, he scrambled for the containers and by this time he didn’t care anymore how the containers got stacked; he’d become enraged and nervous, and besides all that, it didn’t matter anymore, did it, because Miranda was dead, and she wasn’t around to tell him how to organize the fucking Tupperware cupboard anymore, was she?