by Bill Bernico
A month later Matt stopped by to see his son and his new daughter-in-law at their new house. His long face gave him away almost instantly.
“What is it, Dad?” Clay said.
“Dan Hollister died this morning from his cancer,” Matt said. “Dean and Laverne were at his bedside when he passed away peacefully. Just a few seconds after Dan had taken his last breath, Laverne looked out the bedroom window and poked Dean in the elbow. At that very moment a Monarch butterfly was drifting past the window, its wings fluttering in the breeze. Laverne told Dean, ‘He’s free now’.”
Veronica sniffed and dapped at her eyes with a handkerchief. Clay turned away, embarrassed to let anyone see his eyes welling up.
Dan Hollister’s funeral was held on the following Friday. Ironically it rained that morning after not having rained for nearly four months. The attendees for Dan’s funeral outnumbered the people at the double wedding ten times over. Dan got a full police funeral with a procession of motorcycle cops leading the hearse and a dozen patrol cars following close behind. Policemen lined either side of the grave, their white gloves all in a row, looking like trained doves.
During the prayer reading, Matt stood back behind the rest of the crowd. He didn’t want anyone to see him crying like a baby under his umbrella. They lowered Dan’s casket into the ground and then Dean and Laverne stepped up to the mound of dirt and each of them grabbed a handful, tossing it into the grave. The usually stalwart Dean broke down, as did his mother. Clay came over to where Matt was standing by himself and wrapped an arm around his father’s shoulder, pulling him close.
“How are you doing, dad?” Clay said.
“He was a good man, son,” Matt said. “I’m really going to miss him.”
“So am I, Dad,” Clay said.
Veronica joined Clay and Matt and the three of them walked back to Clay’s car together. They drove back to Dean and Veronica’s house. The three of them sat on the porch with Dean and Helen, just rocking and enjoying the peaceful quiet of the day. They sat in awkward silence for several minutes, not sure who should break the silence or what they could possibly say.
“You know,” Dean said, after a few minutes. “Dad was born the same year that Mark Twain died—1910. It was also the year that Haley’s Comet came into view again. It last appeared in 1835, the year Twain was born and he liked to tell people that he’d come in with the comet and would stick around long enough to see it again. He did, but dad missed it by five years.
“You dad shone brighter than any comet,” Matt said.
“I guess he did,” Dean said. “I guess he did.
90 - Hell Is Other People
Norman watches as she leaves the mall, headed toward her car in the lot. It’s the same woman. This is confirmed when she stops next to a red Chevy Nova and opens the door. Same car, no doubt about it. This is the same woman he’d encountered earlier that day. She balances her purchases on her knee as she opens the car’s rear door and deposits her packages on the rear seat. Without as much as a backwards glance, she slides in behind the wheel and before the engine has even started she’s on her cell phone.
Norman checks his watch. Ten twenty-nine. The mall is closing for the night. He rolls up his own car window and starts his engine. His car falls in behind hers as she exits the mall parking lot. They drive for several blocks before the street leads out of town toward farm country. Nothing but back roads and darkness. No streetlights, no traffic, no witnesses.
She drives into the night for ninety seconds before the engine begins to sputter. Norman can see her brake lights come on as the Chevy pulls to the shoulder. He’s still close enough to hear her attempts to restart the engine. But it’s useless. He knows the engine will not come to life with two cups of sugar in the fuel tank. Norman glances over at the empty sugar bag on his passenger seat and smiles to himself. She’s out of the car with the hood up as he pulls up behind her. He smiles broadly as he approaches. She has an exasperated look on her face as she looks up from the dead engine. How ironic, he thinks. The engine is as dead as she will soon be.
Norman points to the area beneath the open hood. “Out of gas?” he asks, knowing full well she is not.
“No,” she answers. “I still have more than half a tank. It just died on me.”
“Let me have a look,” he says, even though he knows almost nothing about automobile engines. He knows just enough to disable them when the need arises.
She turns to head back and looks toward her front seat where her cell phone rests in her purse. He looks her way. “You see this thing right here?” He points to some indefinite area on the engine.
She stops, pivots and returns to the front of the car, bending over to have a look. “What am I supposed to be looking at?” She says, puzzled.
Before she realizes that the guy is no longer at her side, she feels the hand with the moist cloth clamp over her mouth. She struggles for a few seconds before the black hole swallows her up. She goes limp in the stranger’s arms. Norman deposits her in the back seat of his car and drives off into the night.
Consciousness swirls around her head as she blinks, trying to focus on her surroundings. She moves her head ever so slightly before she realizes that even that small movement causes her pain. She stops and blinks again. From almost directly over her head a single light bulb illuminates her small world. Her line of vision comes to rest on a workbench a dozen feet in front of her. She sees an assortment of hammers, saws, wrenches, drills and electrical cords. At the end of the workbench she can make out a small cast iron pot on a stand. Next to that there stands a dozen or so soldiers in various poses. She’d seen these figures before in her brother’s bedroom. Only they were molded in green plastic. These seemed to be cast in pewter or lead. She tries to turn her head to the side but quickly realizes that it’s been restrained with some sort of wide leather apparatus. She tries lifting her arms but they’ve been tied to the arms of the chair. Her legs won’t move, either. The long, plastic tie-wrap restraints around her ankles are tight and begin chaffing her. Beneath her she notices a large sheet of plastic laid out under the chair that holds her.
From somewhere behind her she can hear the faint sounds of footsteps shuffling toward her. They sound like heavy footsteps and now they’re right behind her. A large hand grabs her shoulder and she jolts in her seat.
Then the voice. A deep baritone voice that sounds like it’s coming up from a dry well. Low in volume at first and then louder. “Hello Stacey,” the voice says. “Comfortable?”
How did this person know her name? And who was this person? Stacey figured whomever it was must have gone through her purse and then her wallet. But why? What did he want from her?
“Who are you?” Stacey says, timidly. “What do you want?”
Norman leans down with his mouth to her ear. “You, Stacey. I want you.”
Stacey feels something wet on the outer rim of her ear. His tongue. It probes and searches and winds its way into the inner part of her ear. She finds it strange that she could feel like laughing and screaming in terror at the same time. He withdraws his tongue and pulls her long blonde hair away from her neck and nuzzles it down to her shoulder. The small hairs on the nape of Stacey’s neck snap to attention and her arms fill with goose bumps.
The chair vibrates with the effort she’s putting into freeing herself from the restraints. It’s no use. She can’t budge. She screams with all she has until she can scream no more. The baritone voice laughs a deep, guttural laugh that trails off. The figure steps in front of the chair and for the first time Stacey can get a good look at her captor.
It’s the same man who stopped behind Stacey’s car and looked under her hood. Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth but the scream won’t come. Tears run down her cheeks and she whimpers. The man steps over to the workbench, picks up a small blowtorch and flicks his lighter under the nozzle. The flame jumps to life and the blowtorch hisses. He adjusts the dial at the back of the torch and the flame turns from red to bl
ue with a white tip. The man turns toward Stacey and smiles a broad smile. She manages a scream.
“Go ahead, Stacey, scream,” Norman says. “Scream all you like. No one can hear you.”
She watches in horror, waiting for the man to step up to her but instead he turns his back toward her and picks up one lead soldier. He drops in into the cast iron pot. Then another and a third and a forth. Then he holds the torch flame into the pot and the toy soldiers melt into a bubbling mass. He picks up the cast iron pot with some sort of pliers-type device that wraps around the pot. He turns toward Stacey and take three steps toward her. Stacey can’t take her eyes off the still bubbling pot and he steps up right next to the chair that holds her tight.
“You might not want to watch this next part,” Norman says with obvious false concern.
Stacey’s eyes widen and he tilts the pot toward her lap. Several ounces of the molten lead spill out of the pot and onto Stacey’s lap. The lead burns through her jeans and sizzles as it burrows itself into her thighs. She screams again and again and again, the pain almost too much to bear. She thinks she may pass out but can’t. The pain is too intense.
Norman steps back, returning to the workbench. He sets the pot back into its holder and grabs three more toy soldiers, dropping them into the pot and melting them with the blowtorch. Once again he grabs the pot and brings it over to Stacey’s chair, looking her over the way a cat eyes a mouse. His eyes come to rest on her hands.
“Are you right handed or left handed?” He demands. “Which is your dialing finger, or are you one of those thumb dialers?” Then he recalls when he first encountered the young lady on the street. He and Stacey had come to a four-way stop sign at the same time. Only he stopped and Stacey hadn’t. She was talking on her cell phone and sailed right through the intersection, narrowly missing his car. If he had not slammed on his brakes she’d have T-boned him. Even after he’d laid on his horn, Stacey just drove on, oblivious to the accident she’d nearly caused.
He’d followed her for several blocks, making a note of her license plate number. She hadn’t even noticed him following her but he could see her through her rear window, still talking with that damned cell phone plastered to her right ear. Norman wrote down the address of the house where Stacey had parked. With just these two pieces of information he was able to set into motion the very plan he now found himself executing. He’d just bide his time until an opportunity presented itself. Tonight it did.
“Ah,” he says, satisfied with his mental picture of her on her phone. “You’re a righty, aren’t you? Think you can still gab on that damned cell phone using your left hand?”
Norman leans over and pours some more of the molten lead onto Stacey’s right hand, especially the index finger and thumb. She screams loudly again but still can’t budge.
“Now now,” he said. “It can’t be as bad as all that.” He hesitates for just a second or two before adding, “Then again, maybe it can. And you know what, Stacey? You look like the kind of girl who could dial that cell phone just as well with your left hand.” He sidesteps and pours more of the liquid lead onto her left hand. Stacey passes out.
Stacey came to a few minutes later, dripping with water that the man had thrown in her face. Immediately the pain comes back to her lap and both hands but she can’t scream. She’s going into shock.
The man returns to the workbench and drops four more lead soldiers into the pot, melting them again with the torch. He picks up the pot again with his right hand. In his left hand he holds a small funnel.
Stacey’s mouth tries to form words but all she can do is whimper. The man steps over to her chair again and shoves the small end of the funnel into Stacey’s right ear. She still cannot move her head and the man has no trouble pouring just a few drops of lead into Stacey’s right ear. The flesh sizzles and Stacey’s head quivers.
He steps over to her left ear and mumbles, “I don’t think you’ll be listening to any more cell phones with that ear, do you? But you know you could always get one of those hands-free headsets for you left ear. What do you think?”
Stacey tries to shake her head but it is still held fast by the leather strap. The man steps back one step and assures her that he would not rob her of her only good ear. And he keeps his word. Instead, he shoves the funnel into Stacey’s mouth and says, “Come to think of it, I don’t think you should ever talk on the phone again, do you?”
She struggles in vain and he pours the remaining molten lead down Stacey’s throat, some of it spilling onto her chin and running down her neck. Stacey stops struggling and goes limp. At just that moment the cell phone in Stacey’s purse sounds off with a tinkling version of “Fer Elise” and keeps it up for twenty seconds before Norman flips it open and announces, “Stacey can’t come to the phone just now. Leave your name and number and she’ll call you back. Second thought, she won’t.” He flips the phone shut, throws it on the floor and stomps on it with his heavy work boots. The phone breaks into several pieces and scatters across the floor in an unrecognizable lump. He laughs, content with his accomplishments.
Norman returns to the workbench and picks up the last remaining lead soldier. It is posed on one knee with a bazooka perched on its shoulder. He drops the miniature warrior into his shirt pocket, turns out the light and climbs the basement stairs.
A minute later his own cell phone vibrates in his left pants pocket. It continues vibrating until he fishes it out, flips it open and says, “Hello. Oh, hi, mom.”
“Norman,” the elderly lady’s voice squeaks. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing important,” Norman says. “Just playing with my toy soldiers. Yes, I love you, too. See you tonight. Bye.”
Norman closes his phone, tucks it into his pocket, takes several steps down again and walks up behind Stacey’s limp body. “Mom says hi,” he tells the corpse, as he tips the chair over with Stacey in it. Norman reaches down and snips the plastic restraints from Stacey’s wrists and ankles. He pulls the wooden chair away and slides it up against the wall.
Norman grabs Stacey’s ankles and stretches them out, straightening the body as much as he can. He lays her arms alongside her body and then folds the plastic sheet up and over Stacey, rolling her up like she was a rug. Once he reaches the end of the plastic sheet, Norman stops rolling and retrieves a roll of gray duct tape from his work bench. He folds the excess plastic up over Stacey’s legs and tapes it in place. He does the same with the excess plastic over the girl’s head. He attaches some of the duct tape to the plastic and rolls the package again, wrapping it several times with duck tape.
When he’s satisfied with the secure package, Norman tosses what’s left of the tape roll onto his bench again. He bends down and lifts the plastic wrapped package, tossing it over his shoulder and hauling it up the basement stairs. He carries it through the kitchen and into his attached garage. Holding the body with his left hand, Norman selects his trunk key and slips it into the trunk lock of his car. The lid opens and Norman drops the body into it, closing the lid again. Time to dispose of the body and begin looking for his next offender.
Norman drives to the dump on the outskirts of town. He checks to make sure no one is in the area before he stops, opens his trunk and dumps Stacey’s plastic-wrapped body onto a pile of burning rubbish. He slams the trunk lid and drives away.
Norman has had his sights set on another person for the last few weeks, studying the habits and routines and the routes of his intended victim. He has seen the man on several occasions and there is no doubt that this man will soon pay the prices for his lifestyle. The man he’s stalking has both arms slathered full of tattoos. He’s heard these called ‘sleeves’ by some of the other lowlife dirt bags who have disgraced themselves with body ink and the sight of these people makes Norman want to puke.
The particular man that Norman has set his sights on is a guy who goes by the street name of Weasel. Both of Weasel’s arms are covered with tattoos from the shoulder to the knuckles with very little
skin that hasn’t been colored in with ink. On the knuckles of Weasel’s right hand are letters that spell out HATE and on the left hand, when Weasel makes a fist, the letters tattooed on that hand spell out COPS. It’s obvious that Weasel likes to spend a lot of time with both fists extended, letting law enforcement know what he thinks of them. That’s too bad, because even the cops won’t be able to save Weasel once Norman has him secured in his basement work shop. Weasel also has both ears and both eyebrows pierced with silver rings.
Norman knows from weeks of surveillance that Weasel usually frequents the same bar every night and leaves the bar at closing time, and he’s usually alone. On this particular night, as Weasel is walking back toward the alley where he always parks his motorcycle, Norman is waiting in the shadows. Norman had a hard time grasping the fact that Weasel could even make it home in one piece on that motorcycle after a night of hard drinking.
As Weasel stands alongside his chopper, searching his pockets for his keys, Norman steps up behind him and clamps the chloroform-soaked handkerchief over Weasel’s mouth and nose and presses tightly until Weasel goes limp. Norman stuffs the wet handkerchief into Weasel’s denim vest pocket and drags the limp body to the back of his car. He dumps Weasel into the trunk, closes the lid and drives back to his house, parking in the alley that leads to his back door.
Weasel’s head is pounding as he regains consciousness and blinks his eyes. He tries to focus but his eyes won’t cooperate. He shakes his head back and forth several times before his surrounding come in clear. He tried to scratch his head, but soon realizes that he can’t move his arms. He is bare-chested and his wrists have been secured to a wooden armchair. Weasel’s ankles have been strapped to the legs of that chair. Weasel tries to force his arms up, hoping to break whatever it was that was holding him down. It was useless. Weasel noticed three plastic tie wraps around each of his wrists. He could move his head just enough to see to his ankles. They had duct tape wrapped around the bottom of his blue jeans and around the chair legs.