Fled

by Jason McIntyre

  When he looked down at the orange and green face forming in the photograph, that’s when his panic attack finally set in on him. This was it. And it wasn’t just the proof—the instant photo in his hand. No, it was the sight of the man, himself. Lifeless, in the muck of his resting place before him, it made him feel like his steak and lobster plus two beers would be coming back up on him and out—all over the corpse. He put his hand to his mouth to stop it, and with his Colt and the photo, he turned tail and he ran.

  11.

  He didn’t go back for a roll with Fanny Mae Banks. He finally made painful water, turning a patch of snow yellow before he reached the road, tucked himself back in his trousers and padded over the disappearing trail he and Munn had made a few minutes earlier. He stopped once and doubled-over sure that the vomit would come. It didn’t. But a pressing need to pee returned. He made more water, this time burning less. He got back to the Caddy without pissing any more and without any further stops. He drove Munn’s Cadillac with the heater blasting until he got back down to Main Street. He turned up one of the Avenues and parked. He looked at the instant photo only once—and just to confirm it was the proof his creditor would want. It was. And it burned into his mind. He ran the engine most of the night, sleeping in fits and starts that showed him the image of that hole forming in Munn’s forehead over and over again. Clean forehead. Black hole. Clean forehead. Black hole.

  The movies in his head were silent, like the reels he saw with big brother Kel when they were boys and got a nickel for the picture shows on a Saturday evening when Dad went to the bar.

  No blood, Charlie thought in his sweaty, chilled stupor clinging to the reclined seat of the Cadillac. The snow continued but the heat from the car kept it wet. The Caddy was a monster of lumpy, half-opaque ice.

  No blood, just that hole.

  That’s because you ran before the blood came, you tottering ol’ fool, his mind blared back at him. It probably froze inside his head and never came out. But you ran like a boy. You ran before you ever saw it flow.

  And then that image of a dead squirrel on the shoulder of side road #94. Congealed blood there in that dark pile in the gravel, all kinds of guts and fur and squishy things made sticky and hard in the cold.

  Denny Munn would look a bit like that by morning.

  (—But there was no blood—)

  But Scobie would be gone and he’d never see death in Denny Munn.

  (—Not real death, just the death of his imagination, the death inside that black hole—)

  No sir. For Charlie’s money, he’d be on the first ferry off this rock.

  At four a.m., he pawed through his grocery sack and found the tattered ferry schedule. There was one on tap for departure at six a.m. He’d be on it. He’d slip away while it was still dark. He had two fives left and he’d break one of them for his fare and use the other for the Cadillac’s fare.

  (—Yes! The Cadillac! It was the next knock of opportunity!—)

  Halfway between Dovetail Cove and the mainland he went out on deck, fighting against the bitterly cold wind to get to a sheltered spot where he was sure no one would see him. He got down on all fours and lit the old picture of Denny Munn on fire, cupping his hands around it to keep it lit. The ferry schedule and the grocery receipt with Dennis Munn’s name in block letters went into the messy pile too. The yellow flame bit into the scraps and turned them to black dust that dissipated on the wind as it howled in Charlie’s ears. Dust to dust, the bits went away to nothingness.

  Then he got up, stood in the icy sea spray, against the grey-on-grey of coming morning on the Pacific and let the Colt pistol go overboard. It was light enough to witness the little black shape of it turn to a dot against the furl of icy white, then become nothing. And then it was gone.

  He’d sell the Caddy, sure, that’s what he’d do, he thought. And the money would buy a him a new start.

  Still sleepless, he saw that bullet hole form and dissipate, form and dissipate, over and over again whenever he blinked, whenever he tried to close his eyes. He’d sell the car to some guys he knew. Some reseller guys. He’d take 1500 for it, and not a penny less and those guys, they were experts. They knew how to take a stolen car and make it disappear. Just like the pistol, he thought.

  Just like the burned photo and the grocery receipt. And just like me.

  The old Charlie Scobie had to dissipate.

  And a new one had to form.

  Part III

  Misled

  “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” ― C.G. Jung

  1.

  Charlie blacked out. That was the only reasonable explanation. A blackout caused by his exhaustion and that whole bottle of bubbly filling an empty stomach. Mayday, Mayday, Charlie’s going down like a fighter pilot on the beach the very morning after his big wedding…

  (—But first a hallucination. A blackout and a hallucination—)

  And when he came to, he had a memory mixed with a view of the cove. And in that view of the cove, there was a man coming down from the lighthouse.

  (—Impossible. That lighthouse must be three miles away—)

  But, nonetheless, there he was, come down from the mountain, as it were.

  And it wasn’t a ghost. It could be. But, somehow, it wasn’t.

  It was Denny Munn. He wore his tweed overcoat to match his salted hair, looking so much older than in the burned picture. His eyes didn’t wear the blank look of his last half-second. No, they shone in a knowing stare. And above his left? A single black hole.

  Blink, blink, fade and dissipate.

  Then, eyes opening, the memory going away, the man going away.

  Time was full of holes now. It passed, but how fast, he couldn’t know for sure.

  Charlie rolled in the wet sand. Pebbles or seashells scraped his back and sent a chill, reminding him of a snowy night.

  And then there was the man again. No, a different man. Not Denny Munn. No tweed coat, no salted scalp of aging grey. This one had red hair.

  Then, hovering over him in the dark, only moonlight painting faint features and the glow of bright red hair, curly with youth much less mature than Dennis Munn had been. And the forming of words.

  Best make sure a man’s dead before you up and run.

  That’s what the man said. And it echoed in Charlie’s brain.

  Best make sure. Best make sure.

  Best make sure a man’s dead before you up and run.

  Then gone. A blur of darkness and a smear of redness, then gone. Dissipated.

  Now. Nothing but the sound. Coming up from the silent picture show of his youth back in Blue River and then, later, Portland, the north side where his dad would give both boys a nickel to see a picture show so he could go drinking.

  But no Denny Munn. And no redheaded man either. Just that sound. And what sound was it?

  The sound of the ferry, churning and churning while the shape of the black pistol turned to a dot and then to nothing.

  No, it wasn’t the ferry. But it was the Pacific. And it was roiling at the wide open mouth of the cove. It was May Day again, well, the morning after May Day, six years along the road of life since that chilly night when the snow came in at them sideways and a woman named Fanny Banks grabbed him through his pants and said, Too bad, we’d a made a lot of noise, you and me.

  And, now, on this morning, Charlie Scobie came awake, barefoot and with sand and cold water in his pants.

  He lay in the surf, while the cold salt water washed over him and morning light from the east peered across him and the beach.

  It washed over him, but it didn’t clean him.

  2.

  He made it back to his room before Chrissy woke. A shower took care of the chills and the sand. He couldn’t tell if his chills were from seeing Denny Munn’s ghost walking towards him in the surf with that lighthouse framed behind him. Maybe it was the memory of that awful night holed up in the Cadillac and wondering how much gas he
’d burn before the first ferry was due.

  When he finished, that drip-drip-drip of the tub faucet was still there. He reached back in and squeezed it shut with all his hand-strength.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Chrissy was looking at the newspaper she’d probably gotten from the hall. She’d put on her housecoat and returned to bed. The morning was azure blue beyond the big windows at the end of the room.

  “Morning,” she said and yawned without looking up at him in the bathroom doorway where he was drying his hair.

  “Morning,” he said. He waited a beat for her to pipe up about his late entry. But she said nothing more, only scanned the paper.

  Good. She had no clue that her new husband spent most of the night in the dirty sand, drunk and blacked out. He looked around for his socks and shoes. Those would give him away if she saw them. But they weren’t in sight.

  “Breakfast?” he said.

  Absently, Chrissy said, “Sure. I’ll get dressed.”

  In twenty minutes, about half past eight, they were seated downstairs in the dining room. Four tables, two empty and another with an older couple at it starting on bagels and cereal. A young Mexican gal came around to pour coffee. Charlie took his black and Chrissy reached for the sugar bowl.

  The other couple twittered to each other. The woman—who was at least ten or fifteen years older than Chrissy—whispered something in her husband’s ear. The husband—who was another ten or fifteen years older than her—smiled and let out a little laugh. She cuddled up to him and took a spoonful of his cereal. She smiled and crunched on it while she looked deeply at him. He picked up a copy of the Island Press laid out before him and started looking through it.

  The Mexican gal came over to refresh their coffees. He put his hand over his cup but the woman let hers get a top-up. She looked up at the server and said, “Did we get any rain? I thought I heard thunder last night—”

  Mimicking the woman’s snuggle up to her man a moment ago, Chrissy leaned in to Charlie with all her warmth, stole his hand, and whispered slyly, “That was us.” She popped a strawberry in her mouth and beamed a smile, one that was contagious enough for Charlie to wear in a half-second too. He put his arm around her and palmed her smooth shoulder. He raised an eyebrow as if to say, Sure was.

  The other three didn’t hear Chrissy. In stiff English, the Mexican server said, “I don’t think so, Miss. Clear skies to-day.” She gestured to the window. The cove was calm out past the shallow dunes of the beach and the framing of the yard’s foliage. Captured nicely within the vista was also a massive chunk of electric blue sky.

  “Huh,” the woman said, then under her breath. “It really sounded like thunder.”

  Her fella patted her knee and took the spoon back. He put it down and got a new one from another place setting at his table and used it to take a mouthful of his cereal. “I have to get back to town around noon,” he said in a low voice. “I have some things I need to tend to. I can drop you.”

  Charlie noticed. The man didn’t say, “I can drop you at the house” or “I can drop you at the grocery store.” Charlie was probably reading too much into such a simple statement, but for some reason, he didn’t think so. He knew people. And people were naturally unscrupulous. It was something about how he had said it, as if he was about to say, “I can drop you off...somewhere...” but then caught himself and didn’t say the specific place.

  Ah, Charlie was just tired. And a bit hungover. He pulled a long draw of hot black coffee and rubbed his eyes. Having that hallucination from his old life out on the Dovetail beach had done much more to fray him than the sex with his new wife had done to fatigue him.

  But who was Charlie kidding? As his dad would have said to him after a few drinks, “You’re being a real horse’s ass, Charlie Scobie.” He hadn’t believed it was a hallucination. Not really. At the time, he’d believed it was a real person. And it may well have been. Someone who passed a resemblance—

  (—but in the same grey coat?—)

  —to Denny Munn from six-odd years back.

  Anything was possible. And especially after the kind of day it had been—with all those relatives cooing and tussling over the most minute of wedding details. After the cake had gone missing and then been found, half toppled. After tears from Chrissy and tears from his own mother. Then all that champagne on an empty stomach. That last part, that was the kicker—

  “You folks staying on the island long?” It was the woman from the other table.

  Chrissy was the more sociable of the two Scobies, that’s for sure. And she didn’t miss a beat when the woman aimed her conversation starter in their direction. “For a week,” Chrissy said. “It’s our honeymoon—” she drew out her hand and showed off her ring. It was sizeable. Charlie had definitely turned his life around in the last half-decade. Between visits to this island, he’d amassed, well, a fortune. And he’d augmented it substantially by getting in on the second floor of what Chrissy’s dad playfully called the Banatyne Corporation. That is, her parents’ business interests, land and investments.

  The woman coo’ed like middle-aged ladies do—at babies and big rocks on younger women’s hands. Charlie noted as the woman leaned forward, she didn’t have a band on her own ring finger.

  The woman smiled and said, “Just lovely. Congratulations, you two.”

  “I’m originally from DC,” Chrissy continued. As if anyone had asked her, Charlie thought.

  “Oh are you?” the woman said, but not as if she really much cared. She glanced sideways at the man with her. He gave a look then put his eyes back on his newspaper.

  “Born and raised,” Chrissy said, returning her gleaming hand to her place setting. “Left years ago. I’m Christine Banatyne, My dad is Chris—”

  “Oh, why yes, of course. Everyone knows the Banatynes,” the woman said. She cleared her throat and looked down at her own tablecloth. “We’ve had them over for penuckle games at Sunday brunch—”

  “Do you remember me, Dana?” Chrissy asked. “Your kids are a bit younger than me but we had some of the same teachers.”

  “I do, dear, I do,” Dana said, smoothing the table and then getting her napkin from her lap. “I have to run upstairs,” she said to her companion. “I think I may have left my curling iron plugged in—” He grunted agreement and she got up from the table, pulling the white cloth askew as she did. “Very nice to see you again, Christine. I hope your honeymoon is...fun.”

  And off she went, disappearing the way that Charlie and Chrissy had come down from their third story deluxe suite.

  Her male companion scooped the last of his cereal—it looked to Charlie like soggy Special K—into his mouth. Then he took the second half of his bagel clamped in his teeth and stood up. He folded the paper under his arm, took up his coffee mug, and gave Charlie and Chrissy a disgusted look before squeaking his chair away from the table and walking to the door that let out onto the back deck.

  It slammed behind him.

  Chrissy waited a beat. Then she looked over to the kitchen doorway. The Mexican server girl had disappeared somewhere along the line. When Chrissy had confirmed they were alone she looked at Charlie and gave a big, gape-mouthed noise like she’d just had a miniature orgasm. Then she mouthed, “Oh-my-gawd.”

  Charlie looked at her with a barely-there shrug of his shoulders. He had no clue what was going on here. A pang of his hangover hit him square between the eyes and he squinted back from it. “What?” he said to Chrissy. “What-what?”

  “Do you know who that is?” Chrissy was doing her darnedest to keep from shouting but it came out in a wretched little whisper, the kind that a high school girl makes when she’s just been asked to prom by the cutest boy in school but she doesn’t want anyone to hear her telling her friends in the hallway.

  Again, Charlie shrugged. It was an honest, no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about look. Was this Dana some kind of local celebrity? Had she eaten the most clams at a Lobsterfest back in ’69 and the record remains unbr
oken? Or was she some kind of escaped mental patient from some hideous asylum up north where no one ever goes? And now she’s out and about as if she hadn’t drowned her three children in the cove one spring morning.

  Chrissy took a deep breath and fanned herself in an almost funny-looking school girl way. “Dana Parson. She’s quite a bit older than me—but she still looks good, huh?—”

  Charlie didn’t answer. He was still lost. He picked up his own bagel but Chrissy quickly smacked his wrist, making him drop it.

  “My step-mom tried to get her to invest with them in some kind of power development thing but she’d already spent the Parson nest egg on a pyramid scheme to build some fancy church. Word is, she never even told her husband. He still thinks all their retirement money is safely tucked away in an account at Island Trust. He handles their hardware store and she looks after the family finances. I bet he’ll rue the day he made that arrangement—”

  Charlie frowned. “So what, Chrissy? Some town gossip. Big de—”

  “I know, I know,” Chrissy said. “Big deal. I still have twenty years left before I’m an old hag with nothing better to do than tell my tales out of school. I hear you. But that’s not the juicy part. I’m just trying to give you some perspective. I know these people, Charles.”

  I know these people. Charlie held himself from mimicking her in his Chrissy voice. He’d had it up to here with how she was a local at heart, born and raised, blah-blah-blah, about how she knew the island ways, blah-dee-blah-blah.

  “And this is it, Charlie. The juicy part. That—” She pointed forcefully at the door where Dana’s companion had left to go and read his paper in solitude. “—Is not her husband.”

  Charlie looked over to the window showing the deck and part of the man’s boot. The man had found a chair and was likely sitting back and finishing his newspaper and his cream cheese bagel out there in the morning sunshine. “Really?” Charlie said. Never one for gossip, he still found this compelling. And, most importantly, he’d been right that the man had been holding something back when he said to his gal that he had something to take care of in town this afternoon.