Crawlspace

by Lonni Lees

  “Stupid bitch,” he muttered. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to carry so much cash? Dumb, stupid cunt.”

  Charlie slid across the seat and was exiting the car when he spotted the small body in the back seat. It was a little girl about six or seven years old. Her neck was broken. She looked like a sleeping Girl Scout in the pale green dress that was rumpled above her thighs. She looked like his little sister, Lucy Mae. He opened the back door and slid in. He put his arms around her, lifting her limp body and holding her close to him. Her head fell back. He hummed a lullaby as he rocked her in his arms.

  Charlie Blackhawk was crying.

  He laid the little girl back on the seat and watched her with sadness. It was not two strangers Charlie saw in the Mercedes. His mind was focused on his mother, Wilma Blackhawk, and his beloved Lucy Mae. The past melted into the present, confusing Charlie’s thoughts.

  “You bitch!” Charlie screamed at the dying woman in the front seat. “You’ve killed her! What kind of a mother are you? You rotten, drunken bitch!

  “Lucy Mae, Lucy Mae,” he wept.

  Charlie’s hand felt the soft green dress. It excited him. The fingers of his other hand toyed with the ruffle on her undies. “I miss you, Lucy,” he whispered. “Please don’t die.” Gently, he removed the child’s undies, rubbed them against his eyelids, then slipped then into his pocket.

  Charlie sat up, leaned against the back of the seat and unzipped his fly.

  It was time for the watching game.

  That was when Charlie saw the car on the horizon.

  The car that jolted him to the present with a thud. He judged it to be about five minutes away.

  He reached for the handle on the car door. But the bitch in the front seat moaned. She was still alive. She was dying but she was still alive. What if she wasn’t dead yet when the car reached the crash sight? What if she could talk?

  No problem.

  No problem at all.

  Charlie’s strong hands reached toward the front seat. He grabbed the woman firmly by her head.

  It was as easy as killing a chicken for a Sunday picnic.

  No problem at all.

  He walked casually back to his Nova and started the engine. He adjusted the rear-view mirror and pushed the dark, curly hair from his forehead.

  Charlie’s eyes were as grey as frozen smoke.

  His car took off. Swirling clouds of dust devils danced in its wake as it headed toward the gas stations and coffee shops of Barstow.

  Charlie Blackhawk had worked up an appetite.

  Be sure to look for more of Charlie Blackhawk in Deranged: A Novel of Horror by Lonni Lees, published by Borgo Press.

  DADDY’S GIRLS

  Dusk wrapped its dark cloak around the house as the preset exterior lights lit the front landscaping and driveway, adding an aura of warmth and welcome to the pathway that led to the front door. It was the picture postcard of deception, the pretty face that masked the darkness inside.

  Mira Vistoso nestled comfortably in the southern California foothills like a spoiled cat settled on its velvet pillow. It rose above the valley, the smog, the traffic jams and dirt of the city below. Security gates protected it from strangers. Its narrow streets wound through the hillside, lined with million dollar tract homes crowned with terra cotta roof tiles, giving them a Mediterranean flair. The houses weren’t large, but a million bucks didn’t buy much in the golden state. All it bought was a fairly nice two-bedroom with a small family room off the kitchen, but it also bought a sense of security high on the green slopes above the clamor and graffiti; slopes that burned in the fire season and created rivers of mud in the rainy season and shook the foundations in earthquake season.

  It was the American dream, California style.

  One of the interior doors slammed so hard that the pictures on the girl’s bedroom wall leaned askew on their nails, as though recoiling from the shock. One of the voices from the other room escalated to a high-pitched crescendo while the deeper voice remained a near whisper.

  “She’s at it again,” said Megan, dark locks of straight hair whipping across her face as she shook her head in frustration. She rose from where she sat on the floor and straightened the pictures for the umpteenth time. “Why is she always yelling?”

  “Oh, all moms fight like that,” said her eight year old little sister.

  “That’s not true at all, Jilly. Some mothers are nice. Some houses are quiet.”

  “Hah. How would you know that?”

  “Because I’m four years older than you and I’ve been learning stuff since you were still eating your boogers, that’s how I know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “When I have a sleep-over at Taylor’s house her parents don’t fight. They’re nice to each other. And Taylor’s mother tucks us in and kisses us goodnight.”

  “Really? Do you think our mom would do that?”

  “Nope. One night I asked her. She said we were too old for that nonsense. But Jilly, I can’t remember her ever doing that, even when we were little.”

  “Daddy comes and kisses us goodnight.”

  “That’s because Daddy loves us.”

  “Doesn’t mommy love us?”

  “She sure doesn’t act like it,” Megan said, tousling her sister’s golden curls as she sat down next to her on the floor. She leaned across and put her arms around Jilly, giving her a rib crunching bear hug. “I love you,” she said. “You’re the best little sister in the world.”

  Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. The heavy footfalls echoed down the hall. Clomp. Clomp. They got louder as they neared the girls’ room. They both rose from the floor and sat side by side on Megan’s bed, waiting for the door to open.

  “She’s wearing her angry feet again,” said Jilly. “I hate when she stomps around like that.”

  The door flew open and their mother stood in the doorway. Allison was tall and blonde and might have been beautiful but for her permanent scowl. Megan could have sworn that those frown lines got deeper every day. Her mother was too young to have lines on her face. But there was always anger inside of her, waiting for any excuse to bubble up and explode. And it was beginning to show on the outside, like a subtle warning that you’d better watch out. As hard as she tried, and she had certainly tried, Megan could never figure out what her mother was so mad about. It was a permanent condition that could be set off by anything, whether it made any sense or not. Sometimes it was aimed at Daddy, who was pretty good at diffusing things, but when he wasn’t around the girls took the brunt of it. Megan doubted that he knew they got punished so much, for unnamed crimes and misdemeanors they couldn’t figure out, but they didn’t tell him. They knew better. Telling would make things worse. She’d really explode then. Besides, her mother dared her once, telling her that husbands always sided with their wives, because they all loved their wives more than their children. Children, after all, were easily enough replaced. Megan doubted that this was really true, her mother said a lot of things that didn’t seem right, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. It wasn’t worth the consequences.

  “Take your baths and put on your jammies,” said their mom. “It’s time for bed.” She turned and slammed the door, clomping her way loudly back down the hall.

  There were times that Megan had thoughts that almost scared her, and she couldn’t seem to stop them. She wondered if everybody had thoughts like that. They would surface every time their mother instigated a confrontation, every time Megan felt that she and Jilly were being treated unfairly, every time she heard her mother lay into Daddy for no reason at all. At those times fantasies would swirl around in her head, dancing their devil’s dance. Mean thoughts. Dark and nasty ones. But, just like in scary fairy tales, she always managed to give them a happy ending. Maybe that made the thoughts okay, giving them happy endings.

  “Sometimes I wish I could make her disappear,” said Megan under her breath.

  “You want to disappear her?”

  “If I could. I
’ve had a lot more years of her than you have and I’m worn out. I wish it was just you and me and Daddy,” said Megan. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Jilly thought for a minute, then said, “Do you think we’d be happier?”

  “I know we would.”

  * * * *

  Daddy was more quiet than usual as the three of them sat at the breakfast table. He prepared the girls breakfast while Allison slept. She always slept in, and he never complained. It meant there was some modicum of peace at the beginning of the day. He got himself ready for work and got the girls ready for school and drove them to their destination on his way to the office. It was nice having uninterrupted time with them, but this morning the conversation would have a serious edge and he wasn’t looking forward to it. As bad as things were with Allison he’d never seen it coming. Her refusal to go into marriage counseling should have given him a clue, his inability to please her in the simplest of ways should have given him a clue. He used to think he was doing something wrong, but he’d come to the realization that there wasn’t a man on earth who could make her happy. He was no shrink, just a boring but successful businessman, but he’d finally come to a conclusion; she was just born with something crazy inside of her that gnawed away at her nerves like a shit house rat. Something about her was always broken and there was no magical Mr. Fix-It to make the repairs.

  But he never saw this coming.

  Megan noticed the suitcase in the back seat and her inquiry gave Daddy the opening he dreaded. “I won’t be home tonight,” he began, then paused and took a deep breath as though it might be his last. “I might not be home for awhile.”

  “Where are you going?” Megan asked.

  “Your mother and I haven’t been getting along and she felt we needed to be away from each other for awhile....”

  “Daddy!” cried Jilly, “You can’t just leave us. You can’t! Let us come with you.”

  “I’ll work it out, but it’ll take time. In the meantime, I’ll be seeing you every weekend. I promise. I’d never forget my angels.”

  “Why can’t you just stay home?” asked Megan.

  “When your mother gets an idea in her head there’s no reasoning with her. It’ll just take awhile before she cools down,” he assured them, but his voice held no conviction. There was never any reasoning with Allison. There never had been. He’d been walking on egg shells since the day they said “I do.” And playing the passive role of peacemaker never made it any better. He was ready to get their marriage annulled in the first three months but by then she was already pregnant. He’d thought when the girls came along things would be easier, but she carried the burden of motherhood like a martyr, as if her children were a punishment instead of a blessing. The girls, on the other hand, made his life easier, giving him a reason to weather Allison’s storms. The car pulled up in front of the school. “We’ll work it out,” he repeated. “I promise.”

  The girls got out of the car, and Megan looked back at her father as he sat behind the wheel. There were tears in her eyes and she thought she saw tears in his.

  “This really sucks,” she said to him as she turned and walked away.

  “You said a bad word,” said Jilly, quickening her pace to keep up with her sister. “Suck is a bad word.”

  “There’s a lot of words worse than that. And right now I want to say all of them.”

  “Better not. You’ll really get in trouble.”

  “Not if you don’t tell, I won’t. Shit, shit, shit, damn! So there.”

  “Shit, shit, damn,” repeated Jilly. “And, and—dog poop.”

  The girls held hands as they walked to the school gate, turning to watch their father’s car as it drove down the street and away from them.

  “I don’t want to be alone with Mommy,” said Jilly. “You wanted to disappear her so we could be with Daddy, but she’s disappearing him instead.”

  “She’ll let us go with him, I’m sure of it Jilly. Why wouldn’t she?”

  * * * *

  That afternoon the school bus came to a stop at the entrance gate to Mira Vistoso. Megan and Jilly got off and started their uphill trek towards home. Tonight there would be no Daddy to kiss them goodnight, no Daddy to diffuse their mother’s anger, no Daddy to make them feel safe and loved. But they still had each other. Megan loved her little sister and would give her all the love and protection that she deserved. And soon Daddy would be back home again to make it all better. Jilly was right. Megan had always dreamed of her mother somehow going away . Then she and her sister would live with their father and everything would be great. It never dawned on her that the opposite might happen—that Daddy would be the one to leave and they’d be stuck with their mother and worse off than ever.

  They could hear the yelling before they reached the front door, their mother’s voice at its usual shrill pitch. Was he already home? Megan’s heart beat double-time in anticipation. But as they entered the house they could see her on the kitchen phone, pacing and damn near frothing at the mouth like some crazy pit bull on the attack.

  Their hearts sank.

  “No, you can’t see them this weekend, or any weekend unless I decide you can. You’re out of here for good and I’m in charge. You hear me? I’m calling the shots now, so just suck it up.”

  The girls tiptoed to the foot of the stairs.

  “If you don’t like it, then tell the lawyers.” She slammed down the receiver.

  Megan and Jilly scurried up the stairs and into their bedroom, closing the door behind them.

  “She can’t do that, can she?” Jilly sobbed. “I want my Daddy.”

  Megan hugged her close and said, “Don’t worry, Jilly. I have a plan. Just let me think a minute.”

  But she didn’t have a plan. Not yet. She sat there, silently, her thoughts slowly coming into focus. When she’d sleep over at her friend Taylor’s house, they watched a lot of movies and old television shows that her parents would rent from Netflix. At home they were pretty well restricted to Disney movies, but at Taylor’s house her parents treated them like grown-ups. They got to watch crime shows and old television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And they’d all sit and watch them together with a huge bowl of popcorn, just like she was family. Of course Megan never told her mother about the movies. That could well be the end of her sleep-overs. There was one episode of Hitchcock, Lamb to Slaughter, where the wife beat her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb. She cooked the lamb in the oven, then fed it to the cop at her kitchen table, watching calmly as he ate the evidence. Could Megan do that? She thought about it and decided that it wouldn’t work. Even if she could catch her mother off guard, which was unlikely, the police would know it was no accident. People just don’t get their heads bashed in by accident. The cops wouldn’t let up until they figured out who did it. She’d seen enough of those shows to know that cops look for motives and motives gave people away. And she had plenty of motive. No, she’d have to figure out something else.

  Something that would look like an accident.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Jilly.

  “Oh, nothing,” Megan lied. As much as they disliked their mother, she was sure Jilly wouldn’t approve of where her schemes were leading her. Jilly wasn’t worldly like her big sister and hadn’t been around long enough to know how truly awful things were. She didn’t know there was anything else. And sweet as she was, she sure as heck couldn’t come up with a solution. Besides, Megan’s job was to protect her little sister from the bad stuff, even more so now that Daddy was gone.

  * * * *

  The next morning Megan got up early. It was Saturday. Jilly was sound asleep in her bed and their mother wouldn’t be up for hours. Saturday was laundry day and Megan had figured out how to make it the best washing and ironing day her mother would ever have. She tiptoed from the bedroom into the kitchen, leaving the lights off. She opened a kitchen drawer and felt around until she found a small steak knife. Holding it firmly in her grasp, she felt along the wall
with her other hand until she came to the door that led to the half-basement. She turned the knob and opened the door slowly. Putting one foot down, she felt for the first step. Her toes felt for clothes scattered on the stairs. Her father called it “the lazy man’s laundry chute” because they all had the habit of tossing dirty laundry down from the landing. Some of it would hit bottom, and some would remain scattered on the stairs. Slowly, feeling out one step at a time with her bare feet, she crept down the stairs, kicking items of clothing out of the way as she descended into the darkness. When she reached the bottom, she walked over to the laundry corner where the washer and dryer were located.

  The first hint of daylight filtered through the small window, illuminating the ironing board just enough that she could make it out in the semi-darkness. It was set up near the washing machine. The iron sat atop the board, its cord hanging off the side and reaching to the floor. Ironing was one more chore her mother considered beneath her. It always provoking sighs and mutters, as if she were being chained in a dungeon. Well, the room did look a bit like a dungeon, she had to admit that. It was laced with cobwebs and smelled damp. Like in one of those old swashbuckler movies she’d watched at Taylor’s house. Her mother spent Saturday morning chained there by that ironing cord and her own irrational thoughts. Megan wasn’t going to waste any more time trying to figure her out. It was an unsolvable puzzle.

  At least now she had a solution.

  Megan lifted the cord and went to work, scraping the knife’s sharp serrated edge along a section of the cord, slowly and carefully. It had to look like it was frayed from wearing out, not like it was cut. That would be a dead giveaway. About twenty minutes later she was satisfied with the result. She walked over to the small rinse sink, filled a cup with water, and poured it on the floor between the ironing board and the electrical outlet. Now all she had to do was wait.

  Problem solved.

  * * * *

  When Jilly woke up her sister was fast asleep in her bed.

  By early afternoon the morning cartoons were over and the girls were bored. They watched as their mother gathered up the laundry for her afternoon of drudgery. Megan looked up at her and smiled. “Can Jilly and I go out for a walk? It’s a beautiful day.”