Stutter Creek

by Ann Swann

  Frightened at the ferocity of her mini-breakdown, Beth reached for the bottle of water she’d bought at the grocery just before leaving town. Her throat was parched from all the sobbing, but the bottle had fallen to the floor during her wild, bucking ride.

  She checked her rearview mirror and prepared to stop and look for the bottle. Applying the brakes and downshifting carefully, Beth glanced in the rearview one more time. These gravelly shoulders could be dangerous. But she really needed a drink of water. Hopefully, she’d gotten the hysteria out of her system. She felt guilty for falling apart. She also felt guilty for thinking it was easier to lose a parent than a child or a spouse like some of the others in the grief group. Then she felt guilty for even presuming to know how horrible it must be to lose a child or a spouse. In short, she just felt damn guilty.

  Dalton had said what she was feeling was natural, called it “survivor’s guilt.” She’d heard of that, but it had always been in relation to things like war or plane crashes. Beth hoped the counselor knew what he was talking about, because he had said it would get better. He said not to lose hope, because, eventually, it would get better.

  At last, she was completely stopped. The sound of her tires crunching on gravel was very loud in the still night.

  She pulled out the little knob to engage the Camaro’s emergency flashers just as her fingers found the smooth curve of the plastic water bottle under the seat. She opened the screw top and took a long fluid gulp. Then she rolled the still-cool bottle across her burning cheeks. Crying always made her face flame and her nose stuff up. She felt calmer but still miserable. Rather than being a comfort, it was as if she’d just realized that she had stopped in the middle of nowhere, alone.

  It’s like a badly written soap opera, she thought. No one should have to go through this alone. Should have had more children, then maybe one of them would still be nearby. But of course, she didn’t fault her daughter for returning to her own life after the funeral. In fact, she had encouraged it. Beth couldn’t stand to see the hurt in her grown-up little girl’s eyes each time her father was mentioned. Seeing him at the funeral had brought it all to the surface again. Out of necessity, and perhaps a healthy dose of self-preservation, the hurt she herself felt had been put on hold.

  Maybe that’s what is coming out now—the pain of seeing Sam again. Just seeing him sitting there in the pew on the other side of Abby, knowing that his young lover was waiting for him at home, had caused a marrow-deep ache that came from the knowledge that this, burying a parent, was what the vows they had taken had been all about. But that didn’t matter to Sam. She no longer mattered to Sam.

  Closing her eyes, Beth leaned back in her car seat and took several deep breaths to make sure the panic had truly subsided. The outside air was much cooler than it had been when she’d left West Texas at lunchtime. Back home, on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert, it had been seventy-one degrees, even in January.

  But now she was nearing the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. There was a threadbare cover of snow on the shoulder of the highway, much deeper in the roadside ditches. The thin coverlet became a fluffy comforter across the darkening fields, quilting the foliage beneath the snow into patchwork shapes of light and dark. The air was moist, but no moisture was currently falling. Night was falling. She had forgotten how quickly darkness took hold in the mountains.

  As the moon rose, the snow began to shine. It was beautiful, shimmering faintly, softly reflecting both the scant moonlight and the Camaro’s headlights. It made the entire countryside glimmer like a mirror wrapped in white silk.

  Beth screwed the lid back onto the water bottle and rolled it gratefully across her burning cheeks and forehead one last time before placing it back into the drink holder. Then she opened her eyes and looked directly into the looming face of a small boy in an old-fashioned cap.

  She screamed.

  He was standing near the front of the Camaro like a little ghost, staring dully into her eyes from beneath the brim of his slouchy, too large hat.

  Her hands flew up to her face. She wanted her right hand to engage the gearshift, but she couldn’t quite make it do that. Both hands were frozen over her eyes. They would not obey her.

  The boy tapped the passenger’s side window. Beth looked; she had no choice. His face was almost touching the glass.

  She might’ve screamed again, but there was no air. Her breath was stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. She stared into his eyes.

  The boy was pale, tear-streaked, and filthy. A breeze toyed with the damp fringe of hair sticking out from under the edge of his cap. As she watched, a drop of moisture slid to the end of his upturned nose and hung there for what seemed an eternity. When it fell onto his upper lip, he didn’t even seem to notice.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Beth took a deep breath, opened them, and then leaned over to manually roll down the window—but he had disappeared. From behind her came the lights of an eighteen-wheeler.

  Had she really seen a boy? She leaned over as far as possible with the stick shift digging into her side, but she couldn’t see any tracks. The snow was too thin and patchy.

  The truck’s headlights lit up her rearview mirror. They grew larger and larger as she watched, like twin orbs caught in the glass. She reached down and felt the little knob below the steering wheel to make certain her emergency flashers were still on. She was certain that would get the truck to stop. Then they could search the bar ditch together—no child should be alone on the highway. Perhaps someone was hurt down there. Maybe their car slid off in the ditch or something.

  But the truck driver blew one short note on his air horn, and then he roared past and was gone. The lights outlining his trailer looked like a carnival.

  Beth was stunned. Now what? Get out and search by myself? Intuition said no. There was something altogether wrong about a child that appeared and disappeared like an apparition. Perhaps he hadn’t been there at all, her mind whispered. Hadn’t the lady in the grief group suffered hallucinations? Could I have been that distraught?

  She rolled the window up and locked both doors. Icy fear gripped her. She looked all around, but there were no cars, no houses, nothing. Why would the boy have gone away if he needed help? Surely he knew she would help him. What if someone is hurt? Or what if he was being kidnapped and he’d briefly gotten loose? Or what if it was a trap? Last year she’d seen an MSN article about a man who had put a baby carrier beside the road in an attempt to lure women into stopping.

  She pulled out her cell phone and checked for a signal.

  No service.

  Not surprising this close to the mountains.

  Suddenly, Beth made a decision. She rammed the gearshift lever into first and stepped on the gas. Fishtailing back onto the road, she shifted up to second, and then third, keeping her eyes trained on the highway ahead. She knew the boy was no longer there, but what if he appeared while she was moving? What if he was somehow hanging onto the car like that old urban legend about the killer with a hook? What if he appeared while she was driving?

  She thought if that happened, it might be the end. It would send her right over the edge of sanity into the cavern of insanity. One hand crept back up to her face. She was afraid the boy wasn’t human. His face had seemed so pale, almost translucent. A little phantom.

  No, no, no. It was her mind. It was playing tricks on her. That had to be it.

  Staring straight ahead, she pressed the gas harder and harder, shifting up into fourth without even thinking, years of experience guiding her.

  Beth began to feel like an idiot, a complete, dyed-in-the-wool idiot. Did I fall asleep while driving? Did I pass out? Maybe Dalton was wrong; maybe I’m stark raving mad! She drove on, running on instinct and adrenalin, terrified that she’d seen a real boy, even more terrified that she hadn’t.

  Finally, her rational mind began to reassert itself. There is no way that was a ghost, and I’m not crazy, just emotional.

  Common sense kept talking. What if the
boy was real? What if he was lost, or had been in some sort of accident? What if one of those things accounted for the unearthly glow of his pale skin and the flat, shineless cast of his eye? What if he was really there and she was leaving him to die?

  Dad, she thought, I sure wish you were here.

  She scoured the sides of the road for some clue, or at least a sign of some sort.

  Dark wintry trees blurred past. The moon coated her hood with white, and the wind whistled through the tiny gaps around the windows. She thought about the radio, maybe there was a report about a missing boy, but when she turned it on, all she got was static. No radio, no phone. It was as if she had entered the Twilight Zone.

  All at once, she got a calming image of her father. She had never seen him panic. She tried to imagine what he would do, and suddenly, it was as if he were there with her. Beth imagined a whiff of wood smoke, the smell she associated with him and his love of camping and hiking. She felt better. Stronger. Once again, she glanced into the mirror. Beth never noticed the tiny colored lights that glittered briefly near the corner of her eye. She was watching for a mile marker.

  Carefully, she picked up her cell phone and tried to call 911 again. She could feel the adrenalin leaving her body. She vowed to keep trying to call until she reached the DPS. They would check it out. She would tell them she thought she had seen a child. She didn’t have to admit that she thought it could’ve been a ghost.

  Her cell beeped.

  Still no signal.

  Damn.

  A child.

  She slowed and downshifted to execute a u-turn. There’s no way I can drive on if there’s a chance that child was real and not a figment of my tortured imagination. She leaned over and checked the lock on the passenger side door.

  Surely it wasn’t a real boy. I would rather it be an apparition, or even a hallucination . . . anything but a child alone beside a snow-filled bar ditch.

  If I can’t find him, she decided, I’ll drive in to the next town and locate the Police Station. I can’t take a chance that there might be a real little boy out there, alone.

  Chapter Five

  Cursing the big rig, Kurt yanked Danny back down into the ditch. It had been simple to throw the kid, and himself, down into the fluffy white drift of snow. He had only pulled off the road into the trees to grab a few minutes shuteye after putting a good distance between himself and Pine River. But when he awoke, the car had been completely covered in a thin shroud of snow.

  He thought the crunch of tires on gravel might be what had awakened him, and when he’d seen that the driver of the silvery blue Camaro was a woman, alone, he’d sent Danny over to check her out.

  Amanda had been such an easy target. He couldn’t wait to try it again—even if this one wasn’t on his list.

  The list—and more importantly, the plan—was the thing that had kept him going while he was in prison. It was all he thought about. He wasn’t even going to allow himself to get wasted again until he had completed his plan. Kurt knew he was smarter than everyone else. Now he was about to prove it.

  As soon as he had gotten out of prison, he’d gone to work on the plan. The first part had been easy: finding the girls. Now that he was sober, they seemed to be everywhere, and with the help of certain “business” associates, they were extremely easy to locate. One of his “businessmen” from Albuquerque—Dave, the cokehead with the penchant for young women—even gave Kurt access to his computer dating site. These were not hookers masquerading as dates. Nope. This was an honest-to-God dating website made up of fresh-faced college girls. It encompassed most of New Mexico.

  That’s where he’d found Amanda’s picture. She was young and blonde. He thought she would fit perfectly into his plan.

  He immediately contacted her through the site’s message board, and they began to chat. He could be quite charming when he wanted to. On the computer he quoted Rumi and Deepak Chopra, two authors of poetry and enlightenment whose books he’d flipped through while he was in prison.

  Amanda seemed to be somewhat smitten. He made sure he didn’t come across as just another beer-swilling college jerk. Kurt was certain she saw those all the time on campus, or in her job as a nighttime waitress at the Water House Bar & Grill.

  Amanda had agreed to meet him at the mall. Kurt knew she was being cautious, insisting on meeting in a public place. But that was okay. She seemed to be somewhat smitten.

  There was only one thing. She would be looking for someone tall and lanky, with streaky, sun-bleached hair and glasses. She would be looking for the “businessman” he had met in prison. The one who would agree to anything if it involved free drugs, which is exactly how Kurt had convinced him to hand over the password to his dating profile.

  When the man she was expecting didn’t show up for their rendezvous, Mandy had simply headed back to the dorm. Kurt suspected she had soothed her injured self-esteem with a pint of ice cream the way Sherry used to do when she got mad or wasted.

  He wondered if she had gone straight in and deleted the dating site that had caused her to humiliate herself by sitting alone in the mall food court for almost an hour, waiting for Mr. Wonderful. He hoped that she had. It would just be that much harder for the police to trace later. But again, he didn’t care. By the time they got that far in their investigation, he planned to be hundreds of miles away.

  In the food court, Kurt had sat at a different table, watching her closely. She’d been easy to pick out of the crowd. She’d done exactly what he’d asked her to do when they had agreed to meet. Just like a little sheep, he thought. Or a lamb to the slaughter. And who would have believed her photo looked exactly like it should have? It wasn’t made up to look better the way some girls did when posting on those sites.

  He’d had no problem following her back to her car, and then to the dorm. No one noticed a short, scruffy-looking guy on a college campus. He certainly wasn’t the tall, blond businessman Mandy had been looking for.

  That evening, when she’d left for work, he’d followed her then, too. It had only taken a few days to get a handle on her routine. Then it was easy to find a deserted spot to station Danny. Just for fun, he’d even gone into The Water House Bar & Grill and requested her section. Being that close to someone he planned to kill was the most exciting thing he’d ever done. Not that it was the first time he’d taken someone’s life; it was more exciting this time because he was still in the planning stage. There was definitely something to be said for anticipation. Besides, for once, he’d been stone cold sober.

  Kurt couldn’t believe how easy it was to find the girls to put on his five-year list. Yep, finding them was the easy part. But he didn’t get them all through the dating site. That would make connecting the dots way too easy for the cops. Instead, he also checked out Facebook. Lots of girls actually had their work places listed right on their profiles. That’s where he had found his first victim, Sherylyn. Amanda was victim number two.

  Kurt felt as if he had been invited to a smorgasbord each time he logged on to his friend’s computer. A lot had changed in the few short years since he’d gone to prison. And he hadn’t even visited Craigslist yet. But he planned to, one of these days.

  So far, it had all been very simple. Once he knew where his target worked, all Kurt had to do was watch them for a few days to learn their routines. And the rest, as they say, would become history.

  Of course, while he was waiting to carry out his plan—finding the girls and watching them—he had to have cash. But there were so many ways to make money if one wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.

  His needs were very simple: cash for food, cigarettes, and drugs. He could get all three by trading favors on the street. He’d never been averse to trading sex for drugs, in fact, that was one area where his wiry build, ice blue eyes, and high cheekbones served him well. Certain types of men would automatically assume he was for sale just because he was somewhat delicate looking. Often, they found out the hard way that there was nothing delicate about
him. But he was definitely for sale.

  Kurt didn’t want drugs yet, though. Not for himself. That would come later, after his entire plan had been carried out and he was ready to kick back and relax on some South American beach. For now, his drug of choice was murder. The street drugs he acquired were strictly for bargaining.

  After he’d snatched Danny and worked out his list of girls, Kurt was finally ready to implement the rest of his plan.

  He’d thought this part out, too. When he was done, he would send a note to the news media and to Carol Jones, the prosecutor, telling her where to find the bodies so that she could see that even though she may have won in court, he was the winner in real life. Once he’d made his point, and the bodies were piled up at her proverbial doorstep, then he might be ballsy enough to follow her home and learn her routine. Being a woman, he was certain she too would stop for a little boy standing beside a lonely road. But that wasn’t a given. That would be like the cherry on top of the sundae.

  Tonight, though, he had to put a few more miles on his buddy Dave’s old car. He’d slept longer than he anticipated, and he wanted to make it to his mountain hideout before morning. It was very near the place where his next victim worked.

  He’d located it with the use of Google Maps. He couldn’t believe how easy everything was now. And since the freaky old broad in the Camaro had sped away, he didn’t even have to give Danny a reward.

  Chapter Six

  Completely exhausted, Beth was thankful it was only a few more miles to the cabin. If it hadn’t been, she might have turned around and gone home. Except home—the beautiful split-level for which they had scrimped and saved and finally paid off—was the place she was desperately trying to avoid. It hurt to walk through rooms she had once thought of as sanctuary, and which were now somehow worse than just empty.

  Even sweet little Ladybug was gone. Ladybug was the tiny mixed breed stray that had hung around the elementary school one day. The office was going to call the pound to come and pick her up, but Beth took pity on her, took her home and placed an ad in the paper. No one claimed her so Ladybug simply stayed. Unfortunately, she hadn’t lasted long. The little dog was elderly. But at least she had died knowing she was loved and wanted. Beth thought that was what the little thing had been looking for. In a way, she felt like Ladybug now; tossed aside when she was no longer young and cute.