by Mark Lukens
She turned to walk back to the pub. “Anyway, thanks. You saved my life.”
Ryan barked out a laugh. “I don’t know about that.”
Amber walked towards the building.
Ryan watched her walk way. “Hey, can I ask you something?” he called after her.
She turned around, waiting for him to go on.
“Are you with anyone? I mean, do you have a husband? A boyfriend?”
Amber shook her head no. “Nope.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to go somewhere sometime. Maybe do something. I mean, since I saved your life and all.”
Amber stared at Ryan for a moment. “You got a car?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s right over there.” Ryan turned and pointed at the parking lot like he needed to show her proof.
Amber smiled at Ryan as she took her ticket book out of her apron. She scribbled on the paper, ripped it off the book, and handed it to Ryan. “Here’s my phone number. Call me when you want to do something. I’m off tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night? That would be … that’ll be great.”
4.
Ryan turned his headlights off as he entered Carol’s driveway. He parked behind the other two cars that never seemed to go anywhere and he shut off the engine. He got out and tried to shut the door as quietly as he could. It was very quiet; the whole neighborhood seemed bedded down for the night. Ryan looked at Carol’s house and saw that the windows were dark. He hurried across the flagstones and crept up the porch, trying to walk as softly as he could across the floorboards. He opened the outer door and unlocked the front door, then slipped inside.
He closed the door, locked it, turned around and jumped. Carol sat on one of the couches with a little lamp on beside her. She had her knitting in her lap.
“Sorry,” Ryan said. “I didn’t know if anyone would be up.”
“Don’t mind me,” Carol said.
“Buddy wanted me to come along with them to a place called Charlie’s Pub.”
“I figured that would happen sooner or later,” Carol said as she knitted a few more stitches.
“I only had two beers,” Ryan said; he felt a sudden urge to explain and defend himself. “I was okay to drive.”
Carol glanced at him, and then concentrated on her knitting again.
“I am tired, though,” Ryan continued. “First day on the job. I’m gonna go on up and get some sleep.”
“Goodnight, Ryan.”
“Goodnight, Carol. And thanks for talking to Buddy about me.”
“Not a problem.”
Ryan walked past Carol and headed for the stairs.
“Something came for you today,” Carol said.
Her words stopped Ryan in his tracks. He turned and stared at her.
Carol set her knitting aside and pushed the brown suitcase away from the couch towards Ryan, sliding it across the wood floor.
Ryan didn’t move – he stared down at the suitcase. It seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he didn’t think it was his for some reason. He just shook his head no. “I don’t think that’s mine.”
Carol nodded down at the white tag wired to the handle. “That card says it’s for you.”
“Who sent it?” Ryan asked and his voice threatened to crack.
“I don’t know. There was a knock at the door. I opened the door and no one was there. Only this suitcase.” Carol studied Ryan, waiting for him to come and retrieve his suitcase.
Ryan made his legs move, made them walk forward, made himself bend down and pick up the suitcase. It was a little heavier than he expected and he thought he felt something move inside. As soon as he touched the smooth, wooden handle he felt a sense of dread slither its way up his arm and into his heart. But he smiled at Carol and nodded. “Thanks.”
Carol stared at Ryan – her mouth was just a slit. Like a razor blade.
Like a straight razor, Ryan’s mind whispered.
“I’ll have breakfast ready in the morning before you leave for work,” she told him.
Ryan nodded again. “Thanks.” Then he headed up to his room.
5.
Ryan unlocked his door and slipped inside his room. He walked over to his bed and laid the suitcase flat down on the blanket, glad to be rid of it, glad his flesh wasn’t touching it anymore. He went back to the door and locked it with the skeleton key. He set the key on the dresser next to the TV, and then he turned to the suitcase.
He would have to deal with the suitcase some time.
He walked towards it, studying it as he moved closer. It seemed old, but it looked like it might be high-quality. The suitcase might even be expensive, but he didn’t know anything about suitcases. He noted the two thick leather straps, and the two newer-looking padlocks looped through the latches that kept the suitcase locked. And he noted the musty aroma of the case.
Like the duffel bag full of money.
Is this my suitcase? he wondered.
He fished his car keys out of his pants pocket and looked at them. There were two other keys on the key ring besides the ignition key; but he didn’t know what they went to. Maybe one of them was for the padlocks on this suitcase.
He tried the keys in the locks, but neither one fit; they were both way too big for the key hole in the padlock. He needed a smaller key.
Who sent this case?
Someone knew he was in town. Someone knew he was at Carol’s house. Did that someone know that he’d lost his memory? Did that someone know that he was looking for clues to his past?
Were the clues to his past inside this suitcase?
He could look inside. He could maybe pry it open, or even cut it open if he needed to. He could find a screwdriver or pry bar in Carol’s house and jam it into the locks. Or he could buy a saw from the store. A hand saw or maybe even a power saw. He could do all of that, but he didn’t think he would.
For some reason he was in no hurry to open the suitcase and see what was inside. For some reason that he couldn’t explain, he was afraid of what he might find inside there. It was like he already knew what was inside, but he was afraid to let himself remember.
He grabbed the suitcase by its worn-down wooden handle and he shoved it under the bed.
Ryan walked away from the bed and took his shirt off. He kicked his shoes and socks off and headed for the bathroom. A nice long shower after a hard day’s work sounded great. He pushed his thoughts away from the suitcase and wondered about Amber. That made him feel better. He wanted to get to know her. He wanted to see her again.
After his shower, Ryan turned on the TV and lay down in bed. He wore the pair of sweat pants that he’d bought at the Super Wal-Mart and nothing else.
He watched TV for a few minutes, flipping through the channels with the remote control.
His eyes began to close and he drifted off into …
6.
… pitch black.
Ryan stumbled through the endless darkness, his hands out, trying to feel his way along. He walked carefully, afraid that he was going to stumble over something. Or into something. His breathing was heavy, and it sounded so loud in his ears. He could hear his own rapid heartbeat thundering in his chest.
Then he stopped, frozen in the darkness for a moment.
He heard something.
The sound of a knife blade being dragged lightly across stone.
Or a straight razor.
“They don’t know how you managed to do it,” a voice said – a voice that belonged to the red-haired man. “But they want you back.”
Ryan felt like bolting, he felt like running away blindly into the darkness, running anywhere as long as it was away from that voice. He turned away from where he thought the voice was coming from, trying to move away from the red-haired man.
But then he stopped as a red light appeared in front of him, the light filtering through the darkness like lights in the fog. And out of the red mist the red-haired man materialized. He stood right in front of Ryan with his wide, creepy smile of ruined
flesh. His mutilated hands hung down at his sides, they were dripping blood and puss, and in one hand the man held a straight razor, its blade open.
Ryan backed up a step, then another, trying to back into the darkness, trying to get away from this monster. “No! Stay away from me!”
The red-haired man took a step forward. “You can’t get away from me.”
Ryan shook his head no as he backed up a few more steps, but the more he backed up, the more the red-haired man and the red lights moved towards him. “What do you want from me?” Ryan screamed.
The red-haired man’s mutilated smile widened. “I want to take you somewhere. I want to show you something. There’s a place you need to see. A place you know very well.”
“No,” Ryan breathed the word out. “I … I can’t go back there.”
Ryan turned and ran into the darkness. And suddenly he was …
… drowning in the dark swirling waters. He swam up towards the surface, up towards the light. He reached out for the light that shined down into the water, the light that shined right onto his eyeless face …
7.
Ryan sat bolt-upright in his bed. His breath was caught in his throat, a trapped scream of terror.
Something scratched at the window.
Ryan could see the shadows dancing around the room, an eerie creation from the lights of the TV. He turned towards the window.
It can’t be him … he won’t be there ….
Only the branches scraped at the window. No red-haired man levitating outside the window in the night air.
Ryan let out a long breath, more like a shudder. His body trembled with dread. He remembered his dream. The red-haired man claimed to know him. He wanted to take him somewhere. A place Ryan knew very well.
Where?
Ryan felt like he might know where the man wanted to take him, he seemed to know in the dream, but now that he was awake it was like his mind was blocking it.
But he needed to remember. That was why he had written down this address. That’s why he came to this town. He needed to remember something that had happened here. And it had something to do with the red-haired man and the place he wanted him to see in the dream. It had something to do with him floating in the water with his eyes gone. It had something to do with the brown suitcase underneath his bed that someone had sent to him.
Did it have something to do with Carol? Tom and Victor? Amber?
Ryan closed his eyes and shook his head no. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to just grab his money from underneath the mattress, stuff it all back into the duffel bag, and run out to his car and leave. Just drive. East maybe. All the way across the United States. Just head east until he ran into the ocean.
But he couldn’t leave. He needed to be here. And there was someone following him, he was sure of that. Someone from Oakland, from his old life. And they would follow him wherever he went – even all the way east. They would never stop looking for him.
Ryan looked at the small digital alarm clock that Carol had let him use. It was almost five o’clock in the morning. He didn’t need to set the alarm because he wasn’t going back to sleep. He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, he watched the flickering lights and shadows that the TV made on the ceiling.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
At six o’clock in the morning Ryan went down to the kitchen. He halted for a split second when he saw Tom and Victor sitting at the small table. They were both hunched over plates of breakfast that Carol had made for them. He didn’t know why they were up so early; he didn’t think that either one of them worked, but he wasn’t sure. They never told him anything about themselves.
“Good morning,” Ryan said and he smiled at them.
Victor and Tom both stood up without a word to Ryan. They took their plates to Carol. “I’m done, Carol,” Victor said. “That was a wonderful breakfast.”
Carol glanced down at their plates. “You didn’t even finish all of your food, Victor.”
Victor shot a glance at Ryan, and then he looked at Carol and gave her a smug smile. “Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite.”
Tom nodded in agreement. “I need to get going. There’s some stuff I need to get done.”
Carol eyed Tom. “You don’t do anything except sleep all day. What could be so important now?”
Tom stared at Carol, his mouth moved as he tried to think of an answer. He glanced at Victor for help.
Carol shooed the two older men away and gave them a disgusted scowl. “Go on, then. Get out of here.”
Ryan moved out of the doorway to give the men room to scuttle out through the doorway. He entered the kitchen and stared at Carol. “If I’m disrupting things around here, I can find somewhere else to stay.”
Carol scraped the plates of half-eaten food into the small kitchen waste can. “Nonsense,” she snapped at him. She gestured at the small table. “Go on. Sit down.”
Ryan sat down in the chair, his body rigid and tense. “I can tell they don’t want me here.”
Carol looked at Ryan. “This isn’t their house, is it? It’s my house. They don’t make the rules, I do.”
She poured Ryan a glass of orange juice and brought it to him.
Ryan took a sip, but it didn’t taste the same. Everything seemed better yesterday, fresh and new and exciting, but today the dark dread was washing over him, clouding everything, ruining everything.
“You okay, Ryan?”
Ryan nodded and gave Carol a half-smile. “I just haven’t been sleeping too well lately.”
“Something wrong with the bed?”
“No,” Ryan answered quickly. “It’s just me.” He smiled at her and then added: “I’ll be fine.”
There seemed to be something in Carol’s expression that Ryan was trying to pinpoint. She seemed concerned about him, overly concerned for a total stranger. But there were other emotions mixed in – sadness and fear underneath her expression. And there was something strange about Carol; she seemed to know things about him, but she didn’t seem to want to reveal too much, and for that reason Ryan felt it was best not to reveal anything to her either.
Did she know something? Ryan asked himself. How much did she know? Was she going to help him or hurt him? Could he trust her?
Carol must be a part of this, he thought. He was sure of that; he just didn’t know what role she played right now. And since she wasn’t going to volunteer anything, he would have to find out more before he could trust her.
He sipped his orange juice as he watched her prepare a plate of breakfast for him and another bag lunch with two sandwiches inside.
2.
Ryan needed to get away from Carol’s house, and driving to the construction site made him feel a little better. He looked forward to the hours of mundane work ahead of him; tasks that he could totally concentrate on instead of letting his mind wander and torture himself with questions about his past – questions that he couldn’t answer right now (or didn’t want to answer, his mind whispered). It was blissful to just work and forget about everything for a while.
After Ryan parked his silver Chevy Impala, he walked across the dirt parking area to the buildings. He met up with the always-cheerful John who gave him a list of jobs to do. John wasn’t overly friendly, but he wasn’t mean either, like he had gotten used to the idea of tolerating Ryan for the moment.
Hours later, Ryan felt a little better. He had swept up some empty rooms in one building, getting them ready for the painters. And now he pushed an empty wheelbarrow to another building which he was going to clean up and get it ready for the drywall hangers. He pushed the wheelbarrow past another laborer that he’d seen yesterday. Ryan nodded at the guy, he was pretty sure his name was Miguel.
“Morning,” Ryan said as he pushed his wheelbarrow past the man.
Miguel nodded as they walked past each other.
“Drip, drip,” Ryan heard Miguel say after he was a few steps past him.
Ryan stopped in his tracks. He dropped his w
heelbarrow down to the concrete floor with a crash and turned back to Miguel who was still walking away. “What did you say?” he called after him.
Miguel turned around and stared at him. “What?” he asked.
Ryan ran up to Miguel and stood in front of him. “You just said something when you walked past me. What did you say?”
Miguel stood his ground, but there was an uncertainty in his eyes, a growing fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
“You got something to say to me?” Ryan asked. “If you know something, then spit it out.”
Miguel shook his head. “You’re loco, man.” He turned around and walked away quickly.
Ryan watched Miguel walk away, and then he went back to his wheelbarrow.
3.
Ryan picked up scrap pieces of metal, wood, wire, and pipe in a room in the next building. The walls were filled with pink fiberglass insulation and there were stacks of drywall leaning against the metal stud walls.
Something on the floor a few feet away caught Ryan’s eye as he was about to pick up some scrap pieces of metal. He walked a few steps over to the spot on the floor and stared down at it. It was a small dark spot. It was still wet. It looked like blood.
There was another drop near this drop. And then another drop beyond that one – a trail of blood drops. He looked up to see where they were leading to and he saw the red-haired man. He had been in the doorway that led out to the hall, but he was already gone, just a blur of movement of his dark suit, red hair, and pale skin.
“Hey!” Ryan shouted. He could feel an anger boiling up inside of him. Why wouldn’t this man leave him alone? What did he want?
Ryan ran out into the wide hallway of metal studs and insulation. Work lights were strung along the ceiling.