Borderland

by S. K. Epperson

  She gave her head a small shake and returned to the kitchen. The skinny old man had devoured her baked chicken and the green beans and new potatoes. There were only a few spoonfuls left for Cal and Nolan. She would have to prepare something else when they came home.

  If they came home.

  No, dammit, now stop that, she told herself. You had a hallucination, nothing more. You're not psychic and you're not losing your mind. That vision was a product of the fear you've been living under. Cal's wasn't among the bodies you saw on that bed. You were imagining things.

  She rubbed her eyes and sat down on her stool. She was tired, that's all. Cooking, cleaning, and taking care of everyone. Just like back home in the bad old days.

  Only now you don't do ironing for a dollar a shirt, she reminded herself. And you don't have to change dirty diapers or set your mother's hair with old brush rollers every night. You don't have to save butcher paper to draw on, listen to your illiterate father yell about the lousy tips your mother makes at the café, or hear your brothers and sisters cry because they're hungry and you've only got enough to buy a loaf of bread.

  You don't have to dream about where you'll be in twenty years, Myra Millicent Parker… you know.

  Myra put her face in her hands. She didn't want to think about this. She didn't want to feel like this. She'd meant to do better. She'd wanted to do more, have more, and give more. Sometimes she wished there was someone to hand the reins to, someone to be in charge while she took a rest. Someone to hold her and tell her everything would be all right. She wished...

  The back of her neck began to tingle and she looked up in alarm. The fine hair on her aims had risen.

  Lightning? Hadn't she read that somewhere? That if your hair stood up you were about to be struck?

  She rubbed an arm. Ridiculous. That was only if you were outside. She left the stool and walked to the screen door in the pantry. The sky was in fact growing dark with clouds, but she saw no electrical activity. A cool sensation at her back sent her out the door and down the steps. She knew that feeling, and if she was going to have another "hallucination" then she wanted to be well away from any stairs.

  She stood in the yard and took deep breaths while she resisted the vision of the bodies.

  The white Buick rolled up the drive, Cal at the wheel. He was grinning ear to ear. Myra stood motionless as the car left her field of vision. He was parking it in front of the house. A moment later she heard them putting up the top. Small, stingy drops of rain were beginning to fall around her. She waited until she heard activity in the kitchen before moving. Apparently, no hallucination was coming. Thank God.

  Inside, Cal stopped grinning and laughing long enough to tell her they had eaten frozen pizzas at Al's place. He then described his driving lesson, making Myra smile at his ebullience. It made her feel better to see him so animated and happy. She supposed she had Nolan to thank, but even as the thought entered her head he wordlessly left the kitchen. Cal stayed and ate the leftovers as he talked, then left to see what was on television, leaving Myra to wash up. When she finished in the kitchen she found him sound asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. With a sigh she returned to the pantry and hefted up the metal washtub she had been using to catch rainwater for her hair.

  The gentle but steady rain dampened her clothes and hair almost immediately as she carried the tub around the house to find the spot with the most runoff. She did a double take when she glanced behind the garage and saw a nude Nolan holding a bar of soap and lathering himself in the rain. He was humming.

  Though his back was to her, Myra's face and neck grew hot. Good sense said to go before he saw her, but her feet seemed reluctant to move.

  Her gaze followed his movements as he made lazy sweeps with the soap. The rain pelted away at the lather and made sudsy rivers that ran down his tanned back and crossed the whiteness of his buttocks to stream down the backs of his thighs.

  Nice, she thought, and for a moment she found herself wishing he would turn around. Then she noticed something: a round gouge like scar in his left buttock. A bullet? she wondered, remembering what Cal had said earlier. Bullets, broken bones and burns. Maybe Cal was right, she thought. Maybe Nolan was different.

  Reluctantly, Myra turned away and went back to the pantry door. In the house she retrieved a towel from the bathroom and carried it upstairs with her so she could dry off in her bedroom. She decided to follow through with what she had told Christa and make an early night of it. An extra hour or two of sleep certainly wouldn't hurt her. It might even make the cold, hair-raising hallucination sensations go away. The decision made, she stripped down to her cotton undershirt and pulled back the cover sheet on the bed. Within seconds of placing her head on the pillow she felt herself begin to relax. As she drifted off, she realized that she was more than weary. The bed itself seemed to be pulling her into sleep.

  She soon discovered why.

  Myra knew it was a dream and she also knew that she didn't want to be there. She wanted to wake up and get out of the strange house in the dream before something terrible happened. She was still wet, her hair still dripping, but her clothes were different. And the people in the house were different. Cal was there… and Patrick. They were all eating at a table with smiling strangers. There was talk, but Myra couldn't understand it. She could hear fine, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't understand what was being said.

  Then Patrick and Cal were gone and she was alone in a room, looking out a window. Outside the window people were shouting, but again she couldn't understand them. They were doing something to a car… no…a wagon? A scream from somewhere inside the house dragged her attention away from the window. Suddenly she was running up countless flights of stairs and looking in rooms for… oh no... please, not Cal's room... not again. The corpses. So many of them. Oh God, help.

  Another scream. Cal. Where was he? Another door, the right one this time, and then…Patrick, dead again, just like the last…the terrible blue dent in the pale temple…eyes full of surprise. Cal? Cal, where are you? Down the stairs again, screaming without sound and tripping over this stupid

  …dress? The kitchen. Strangers in the kitchen and Cal with them. Holding him. Keeping him from her. Oh God, to kill that... that beast holding him. Kill her and take Cal away from here as quickly as...

  Her forward movement was abruptly halted as a pair of hands clutched her. She clawed and kicked at the feel of cold steel on the tender, heated flesh of her neck. She wasn't going to make it. She wasn't going to reach Cal. The metal was slicing flesh. She could hear and finally understand that one sound. She was going to die. She could already feel herself slipping. The tears on her face were mingling with the blood flowing down the front of her dress and someone was saying …hush.

  Hush?

  She opened her eyes.

  "Hush," Nolan said. "You'll wake up the kid."

  Myra sat up. Her face was wet. Was she really awake? "Where is he? Where's Cal?"

  "He's asleep. Or at least he was."

  "Are you sure?" Her voice sounded shrill even to her own ears.

  "I just came from there." Nolan lifted his hand and wiped at her cheek with his thumb. "Must've been a pretty bad one. I could hear you from my room."

  Myra fell back to the bed and turned her face to the pillow to muffle the first sob. Her stomach muscles clenched and released as she gave way to the pressure behind her eyes. She could still feel the blade at her throat still hear Cal's screams above the slicing sound. When she moaned she felt the mattress heave beneath her. Warm hands cupped her shoulders as he sat down.

  "It wasn't like a dream," she cried into the pillow. "It was too real."

  Nolan patted her back and reached over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand. "Tell me about it."

  Myra sobbed once, choked back another, then turned her head away from the pillow. Her voice cracked a dozen times as she told him the details. When she finished, her hand went automatically to her throat, as if to reassure herself.<
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  "They wanted Cal," she added. "They were going to keep him for their own. Somehow I knew that."

  When Nolan said nothing she lifted her head to look at him. He was staring at the far wall.

  "What?" she said to his expression.

  He blinked and looked at her. "Nothing. Are you okay now?"

  Myra shook her head. She didn't want to be alone. "I'm afraid to go back to sleep."

  Nolan's mouth curved. "I think I would be, too. You want some water or a cold washcloth? Your eyes are pretty swollen."

  "No." She hid her face again. "Right now I just want to forget the dream. It was so real." She turned slightly and put out a hand to touch his arm. This was real, she assured herself. He was real. He breathed, he spoke English, and he smelled like soap. Real.

  "Want me to tell you a joke?" he said.

  She looked at him. His eyes had that familiar teasing light. Her muscles began to relax. "No. Tell me where you go at night. When do you sleep?"

  His chest expanded and deflated as he heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Okay, I confess. I go out to the woods and whack off while fantasizing about your breasts."

  "I'm sure. We don't have any woods, Nolan."

  He smiled. "And you don't have any breasts. That's the fantasy part."

  Myra groaned in disgust. "If you're trying to get my mind off sleep you're doing a fine job." Then she frowned. There was nothing wrong with her breasts. Who was he using for comparison?

  "Gotcha, didn't I?" he said. "You were looking at your chest there for a second."

  "I was not," she lied. "There's nothing wrong with my bust size. I'm perfectly happy with it."

  "Guess it doesn't take much to make you happy," Nolan said with a chuckle.

  "If that's the case, you could probably make me delirious," she responded. "I saw you showering earlier."

  He stopped smiling.

  "Gotcha," Myra said with a low laugh.

  He nodded and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. "Feel better now?"

  She did and she didn't. She touched his arm again. "Nolan, I'm sorry about those things I said today. I was angry with Cal for—"

  "I already said you were right," he broke in. "And you were."

  Myra held his gaze. "I don't think so. And I'm apologizing to you. Will you please accept?"

  "All right, I accept." He stood up then. "I'm not going anywhere tonight. Just try to go back to sleep now, okay?"

  "I'm not sure I can," she admitted. "Do you want something to eat? I'll get up and fix something."

  Nolan looked at the ceiling. "I want you to go back to sleep. All levity and flirtatious fun aside, it's not comfortable for me to comfort you, Myra. I am a testosterone-producing male in my reproductive prime, and if I spend another minute in your scantily clad company I will either rip off those cotton undies or soil the front of my shorts. Now, unless you want me to physically keep those bad dreams away for the rest of the night, you'll close those puffy little eyes and go back to sleep."

  "The rest of the night?" Myra couldn't resist.

  He exhaled through his nose. "Physical angle, my ass. You're still a goddamn tease. Goodnight, Myra."

  "Thank you," she said as he moved away. "Thank you for being…here."

  He waved over his shoulder and went out, leaving the door open behind him. Myra stared at the space he had occupied for a long moment, wondering what he'd meant by physical angle, and why she had the feeling there was something he had wanted to tell her and didn't.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jinx had been keeping his eye on Ed Kisner, and he didn't like what he saw. The man's weakness was legendary. His pansy attitude and his cowardly views on the running of the town had been recorded at every meeting. But now there was slyness to his features, a secret, bubbling resentment that simmered on a back burner in his brain and occasionally boiled over into his eyes. And there was a new stealth to his movements as he went about town, almost as if he knew he was being watched and wanted to avoid any suspicious behavior.

  It was all suspicious to Jinx. He had known Ed Kisner forever, hated him even longer. Ed's resentment, of course could be blamed on the council replacing him as lawman. It was a matter of pride, nothing more. There was nothing to the job, really, just squabble-settling among the few townspeople who didn't have the brains to shut up and walk away from an altercation. Come to think of it, there had been more than the average number of squabbles in the last few years, even an assault with a beer bottle Sunday night at the Bingo hall. Vic had been quick to stop it, though. A shove here, a snatched collar there, and the two women had been separated. Water on a catfight.

  Young women. Young men. None of them being instilled with the values Jinx himself had learned at their age.

  He sighed to himself and went to the back room of his diner to finish his load of fixings for the fertilizer plant. While there he noticed that the bag of clothes he had asked Gil Schwarz to burn last Saturday was still in the corner.

  "Damn idiot," he muttered to himself. What was today? Wednesday? Five days that bag had been here. Five days too long. The men in the gray Buick had worn pretty fancy duds, expensive as hell, but Jinx wanted everything burned. It was crucial to leave absolutely no evidence—not even teeth—this close to Denke. Gil knew that. What manure cart that retard had fallen from was an enduring mystery. And the old fool was still letting his worthless libido lead him into grabbing anything with tits. Just last night he had dragged some limp little redhead in the back door. Said he'd found her out on the highway with a flat tire. She was traveling alone, so Gil had stopped, and after mauling her there in his truck he had decided to knock her senseless and bring her into town to show the others. The idiot. Jinx had been forced to send Tom Hamm after her tiny yellow MG. Stupid Gil had left the thing sitting in the road for any state patrolman to find.

  The man was out of control. That's all there was to it. He knew better than to snatch someone so close to Denke. It was too dangerous. But he had done just that, without waiting to find out where she was from, where she was going, or anything else.

  And it could be trouble, Jinx thought, because her license said she was from Kansas City. Was it a coincidence, or was this Carrie MacArthur acquainted with Vic Kimmler in any way? He couldn't be sure, even after calling the work number listed on her pretty little business cards, because when he asked for Carrie MacArthur he was told she was on vacation. In a friendly but urgent voice he asked where he might be able to reach her. The harried man on the phone didn't know. He thought she mentioned a visit to her brother in Denver.

  Denver. A drive from Kansas City to Denver wouldn't necessarily include a foray into Denke territory. Had she told anyone she was coming this way? Was someone in a neighboring town expecting her? Jinx didn't know, and because he didn't, he thought it unwise to kill her. The men in the gray Buick were different. They were up to no good and they deserved what Gil had done to them. Cal's grandmother couldn't exactly call the cops and report that her kidnappers had disappeared, now could she?

  Miss Carrie MacArthur was another story. At the moment she was blindfolded and still in a deep sleep in his bedroom. During the night he toyed with the idea of hauling her to Santa Fe in the trunk of his Caddy and dumping her somewhere when Vic wasn't looking. Gil was the only man she had seen. The moment the giant doofus brought her in Jinx summoned Doc to give her an injection to keep her unconscious. That morning, however, before Jinx had time to prepare another syringe she woke up and asked where she was, as if it made a difference. Jinx said, "You're in Colorado." Then he taped her mouth (no more rag gags after the ingenious suicide of Ed's last victim—it had ruined everything) and gave her the needle, knowing she believed his lie from the incredulous arch of her brows above the blindfold.

  Jinx chuckled a little at that. He didn’t know insurance investigators could look incredulous about anything. Mostly they just nodded and wrote things down with one expression: sneering disbelief.

  She would really have something to get worked u
p about when she woke up on the side of the road somewhere in the wilds of New Mexico. Even the cops would be confused when she told them about the big bad man who had kidnapped and molested her on a Kansas highway; how he had drugged her, stolen her little car, and dumped her in Colorado.

  "So how did you get to New Mexico, ma'am?"

  "How did… where?"

  If the cops didn't haul her off to the nuthouse they'd probably think she was a victim of some kind of interstate crime ring. There would be no connection with Denke or the surrounding area. No connection and with any luck, no investigation.

  The plan was feasible, Jinx decided. The MG was in excellent shape, a real good-looking car. Prissy Coral Nenndorf took one look at the cute little thing and asked for it to be painted baby blue and given to her. Jinx laughed right in her painted face. The sorry cow was an excellent example of why women needed to be kept out of the loop. What did these people think with? Cars were like clothes: traceable evidence.

  He looked lovingly at his meat grinder. Nothing traceable came out of that big metal baby. He was lucky to have it. Everything else from the original Denke home place now belonged to young Victor. It seemed sacrilege, but there wasn't much Jinx could do to alter the situation. The old home place had been in Kimmler hands as far back as he could remember. Exactly why, he wasn't sure, but that's the way it had always been. He really enjoyed his Sunday visit, looking at the old bathtub and remembering the old stories. If he had been left alone for a minute he would've liked to hunt around for the family Bible old Darwin claimed to have lost a few years ago, about the time the Callahan’s showed up. Jinx never believed a word. One didn't lose a family Bible, not even Darwin Kimmler.

  Jinx had seen the Bible only once, in his youth. He wanted to see it again. He might even like to preserve it in plastic or something, just the way it should have been preserved and made available to those of his generation.

  Things were different now, of course. The bloodlines had been polluted over the years and there were folks in town who knew only the most basic facts about the history of Denke: the boarding house, the adoptions, and the community farm agreement. But that Bible would provide affirmation of Jinx's faith in the Denke way of doing things. In his opinion, it was a way that shouldn't be teetering on the edge of extinction. Times were still hard and people were even harder. The government wanted you to beg for help when crops failed. Banks looked forward to it.