October's Children: A Marlowe Gentry Thriller

by Dallas Mullican

  She arrived home near 10:00 p.m. with her mood plummeted past foul and headed toward fuck the world. Vodka would help…in time, but never soon enough. The images of children gazed down from the walls, an unspoken plea in their eyes. They haunted her, every second of every day. Little ghosts she never knew in life consumed her with their absence. Amanda wanted to scream, ‘Leave me alone. I’ve done all I can for you.’ But their voices drifted back, ‘No, not all. There is more for you to do.’ An icicle, sharp and pitiless, filled her. It spun inside, jagged edges slicing away feeling, replacing humanity with a cold, dead thing. In the movies, zombies lived on with a single purpose, a craving to eat the flesh of the living. Amanda lived on the sustenance of suffering. No peace existed for her, save that found at the bottom of a bottle.

  The phone rang somewhere distant as the alcohol lightened her head and spread warmth throughout her body. Gary’s voice issued from the answering machine, a robotic resonance lacking emotion. The words did not register, only the sound. It blended with pleasant inebriation and followed her into dreams.

  * * *

  Gary held Tommy by the arms, swinging him round and round, his little legs sailing through the air. Her son’s delighted squeal brought a wide grin to Amanda’s face. After her father died, she had thought the best part of life went with him. But in the eight years since she fell in love with Gary, and more so, the four with their son, she had come to believe the best remained ahead of her. Watching her family, hearing their laughter, tomorrow’s worries hid deep beneath the future’s promise.

  Two more turns and Gary hunched over panting. “No mas, no mas. You’ve tuckered me out, kid.”

  “Come on, Dad. Just one more time,” said Tommy, tugging at his father’s hand.

  “No can do. I think you gave me a hernia.” Gary waved to April who sat on the porch steps. “Aunt April come entertain your nephew.”

  Tommy frowned. “She can’t swing me as high as you.”

  “But I make a better tickle monster.” April lurched toward Tommy and wiggled her fingers at him. “The tickle monster’s gonna get you, my pretty.” She did her best impersonation of the Wicked Witch, crouching and laughing in a high shrill.

  “Can’t catch me!” shouted Tommy, racing away.

  “Gonna be alright old man?” Amanda smirked at Gary as he sat down beside her on the porch swing. The swing groaned under the added weight and rocked backward.

  “Eventually. I hope.” He rubbed his shoulders and winced.

  They swayed back and forth. The push of heels against floorboards, and the swing’s taut pull on the beams overhead, created creaks sounding in time with finches and robins chirping in the trees.

  Gary placed his hand on Amanda’s knee and kissed her cheek. “You know, I’ve been thinking it’s about time we got out of this house. Damn thing’s too small. We can hardly turn around without bumping into something. Since I’ve made partner at the firm, and you’re climbing the ladder within the department, we can afford a bigger place. Something nice. Give Tommy some room to grow.”

  “I wouldn’t mind. I’m tripping over myself here. Snow White’s dwarves must have lived here before us. I swear the kitchen cabinets hate me. They spit the pots and pans out every time I try to store them away.” Amanda chuckled and leaned into her husband.

  “It’s a done deal. I’ll call realtors tomorrow.”

  “Find somewhere near the water. A lake or the river. Tommy would love fishing with you.”

  “With both of us. You’ve got to put the worms on the hooks.” He winked at her.

  “True. You’re such a sissy man.” Amanda playfully shoved him.

  “And proud of it.” Gary thrust his shoulders back, his lips pursed.

  A year later, they moved into a two-story Victorian farmhouse on nine acres. The beautiful home, white and trimmed in charcoal, sat near the back portion of three cleared acres, while the remainder lay covered in dense forest. A snaking trail led roughly five hundred yards through the woods to a clearing on the banks of the Warrior River. The current ran gently past the location and allowed for fishing and swimming, the clearing a perfect place for camping under the stars.

  The next summer, the family took advantage of the spot for just those purposes. They fished, Tommy caught a single brim no bigger than his hand, but still more than Gary and Amanda managed, swam, roasted hotdogs and marshmallows, and told stories by the fire.

  “Remember our first visit to the doctor after we knew you were pregnant?” asked Gary.

  “I think so. Why?”

  “The woman with the infant sitting across from us in the waiting room, her baby had colic or something.”

  “I do remember. What a set of lungs. It shook the walls.” Amanda snickered.

  “She got so annoyed with us.”

  “Because we couldn’t stop smiling.” The memory tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “Turned out, she had three kids counting the newborn, so this was old hat for her. But for us—”

  “The beginning. Every little thing was special. That baby in her arms, we could picture ours.”

  “Yep, and even crying to high heaven, it was the most precious thing we had ever seen.” Gary grinned, and intertwined his fingers with hers.

  “Tommy didn’t have colic though. Thank God.” Amanda laughed and put her hand over her mouth to muffle the noise. She glanced to Tommy who had not stirred.

  “Nope. The perfect baby.”

  “And the perfect little boy.”

  Gary nodded and smiled. “Momma, we done good so far.”

  “That we have. Think we can keep it up?”

  “No doubt about it. We’re naturals.” He pecked her on the forehead.

  A wave of emotion washed over Amanda, a tear forming in her eye. “I’ve never been so happy.”

  “Me either. Life is good, baby.”

  Amanda, a blanket wrapped around her, snuggled next to her husband and watched the flames flicker in the moonlight. “It’s so beautiful here.”

  “You are so beautiful.” Gary raked the back of his hand along her cheek, the contact raising goose pimples on her skin and igniting warmth inside.

  They kissed and cuddled late into the night, whispering of future plans and recalling past memories. Tommy lay sound asleep a few feet away. The day wore him out, and no surprise, he had not slowed for a second. He passed out mid-sentence, still going on about the fish he caught. Undaunted by the miniscule size, he could not wait to tell April. Anyone would have thought it Moby Dick to hear his account. Gary, so patient with him, sat there with him for hours, lines in the water, without a single nibble. A look of relaxation and gratitude covered his face, along with a beaming smile.

  One moment in time, enveloped in each other’s arms beneath the night sky and the twinkling stars, their son so close, all so happy, a microcosm of their lives together. Gary’s scent filled her nose, her head nestled to his neck—her partner, lover, and best friend. Tommy’s soft breathing drifted to her ears—her son, peaceful and safe under watchful eyes.

  The forest stilled. Crickets and the flowing river grew quiet. Gary and Tommy, the fire, the sleeping bags and supplies, dimmed and vanished. A faint drone tickled at the edge of Amanda’s perception. Sorrowful, a lamenting moan filled with emotion. Weeping…her own.

  From the blackness, a new image emerged. Pallbearers lowered Tommy’s body into the ground, the gleaming wood of his casket slowly obscured by loose dirt until the earth swallowed all but his memory. The coffin, so small, a blasphemy and a contradiction to the natural order, no mother should bury her child. She should not live on while her son decayed and deteriorated to nothingness. Amanda belonged beside him, keeping his bones warm and staving off the isolation of death.

  Gary touched, kissed, and caressed a woman Amanda did not know. Someone he had met at work long after Tommy’s death. Amanda pushed him away, so he found solace in the arms of another. A stranger replaced her in her husband’s bed, making love to him, easing his
grief and helping him move on while Amanda remained lost and forlorn. Robbed even of her hatred, she belonged alone as much as he deserved someone new, someone capable of returning his affections.

  The darkness fell again, a massive cold fist closing around her.

  Pain. Suffocation.

  Water seemed to solidify into stone and rested on her chest. She hacked, sucking in copious amounts of thick, fetid liquid. Thrashing arms tugged her body upwards and gained the river’s surface. The struggle from the river sapped her strength, the forest, with its razor sharp tentacles grasping and ripping, diluted her will. Amanda finally broke the edge of the woods, leaving the monstrous trees behind, and stepped into the painting depicting her home, the colors still wet from fresh brush strokes streaking the sky and landscape. Tommy stood in the yard, facing her. His mouth moved, but the voice emanated from somewhere in the back of her skull.

  Mommy, I’m scared.

  The tar creature slithered along the ground, ever closer to her son as she watched in horror, powerless to act. It rose up and hovered over Tommy, eager to devour such a tender morsel. For the first time in four years, the nightmare altered. The slick, rotten substance popped and gurgled, changing, morphing into a new form, vaguely human. Unseen hands molded and sculpted hideous features—spindly arms flopping at the sides, thick dripping trunks for legs.

  And the face—indentions at the eyes, the ridge of a nose—took form in excruciating increments. The thing shrieked in agony, a high-pitched wail reverberating through the painting. Colored oils hardened, cracked, and shattered, stained glass raining down. Amanda knew this face, a face absorbing all her hatred and helplessness.

  Sam Ewell’s face.

  * * *

  Amanda shot out of bed, the lingering effects of alcohol vanishing with each determined pace across the floor. She gazed at her altar—a wall adorned with the faces of children, the lost and forgotten. She tore into them, rending them in fistfuls of shredded paper. Each vicious rip grated in her mind, a thousand chitinous claws scraping against bone. Confetti floated in the air like so many dead leaves before drifting to land at her feet. In place of the flyers, she tacked a single photo. A new god upon a new altar. A god who embodied cruelty and the murder of innocence. A god she would worship with retribution. She would pull him down from the heavens and crush his head to pulp beneath her sorrow and grief.

  Reborn in a pure, sanctified hate, Amanda stared at the photo.

  The photo of Sam Ewell.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Alabama 2011

  My girl waited for me in the terminal at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International. Army flew me home commercial, which was fine by me, a lot nicer than a C-17 Cargo. Their dime, so no sweat off my balls. My pace shot up, my pulse tagging right along for the ride, when I saw Daisy standing next to the luggage conveyor. Daisy’s not her name, just what I call her. A pet name. Called her Buttercup ‘cause The Princess Bride’s our favorite movie, but she didn’t care for it. As a joke, I switched it to Daisy, and it stuck.

  “You look good,” said Daisy.

  “You look amazing. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so beautiful.”

  I kissed her. She smiled and stiffened a little to my hug, but that’s understandable. Daisy wasn’t thrilled with my leaving. Never could make it plain to her I had no choice in the matter. Sign on the dotted line, your ass belongs to Uncle Sam. Plus, we weren’t married yet and hitching up after taking the oath wouldn’t change how the Army saw it. No worries, we’d be back to our old selves soon enough. Just needed to knock off the rust, get familiar again, and remember each other. Like we used to be.

  When I took our baby from her, terrified I’d crush the little gal, tiny fingers wrapping around one of my own, that shit hole I left across the world evaporated like waking from a bad dream. If I died on the spot, I could go knowing I’d done one good thing in my life. I guess the pride on my face loosened Daisy up a bit. She moved close, and we stood there slack jawed fools staring at the wad of blanket with a chubby little face poking out.

  We went back to her apartment—a low-income complex, but the only rental apartments in town, home to mostly immigrant farm workers. Daisy kept a clean house, no doubt about that, not a speck of dust anywhere, everything nice and tidy. The furniture looked straight from Goodwill, or one of those places that gives stuff to poor single moms. A sofa, faded from some flowery print to faint outlines on shit brown, a crib that appeared a bit shaky in my opinion, and an old 19 inch television set complete with rabbit ears—thing probably didn’t even get the local channels—was about it. Made me sick to know my girl and daughter lived here.

  “Why are you living in this dump?” I asked.

  “It’s what I can afford.” She wouldn’t face me, but her tone made clear who she blamed.

  Daisy worked at the Waffle House just off the interstate down in Kost. Said she put in double shifts most days. Place stayed open twenty-four hours, so likely did shifts ‘round the clock from week to week. Not a hot spot for business, a low wage and barely any tips couldn’t float her very well. Even the extra hours probably didn’t clear enough to buy much more than the basics.

  “Where’s the baby stay while you’re out?” Maybe a bit too much bite in my voice.

  “Ms. Rodriguez next door watches her.” Daisy reddened. She knew I wouldn’t shine to a stranger watching over our kid all day.

  “This is bullshit. You should’ve stayed with Pops. He’s got that big ol’ house. Plenty of room.” I paced about, not keeping my cool too well.

  “He offered. But I wasn’t comfortable with it. Not without you there.”

  Shying from my ranting, Daisy stared at her feet like a kid in trouble with dad. Made me feel two-inches tall. I’m just home, and I’m laying down the law. She managed fine without me for more than a year. Didn’t need me saving the day. Even so, I wanted her in a decent place where her and our baby would be safe.

  “Fine. We’ll remedy the situation ASAP. Pack your things,” I said.

  Daisy didn’t put up a fuss, but set to gathering what little she and the baby had. By the end of the week, we were moved in with dad. He looked a bit worse for wear, like he’d aged a hundred years while I was gone. Farming’s not easy work for an old man, hell, not for anyone, especially by himself. Said he had two Mexicans working for him, but one got deported, and the other never showed afterward.

  A touch under five hundred acres—big white house with a wrap-around deck, barn, the works—pretty much what you’d picture for a rural southern spread. Crop fields, pastures, a couple of watering ponds for the cows. Pop hit sixty-four a few months back, I figured it time he took life easy. I could do the heavy lifting for a while.

  “Let me buy the place. I’ve got enough for a down payment, saved everything I didn’t send back to Daisy.” I knew there couldn’t be more than a couple of payments left, even with the second mortgage he and mom had taken out during a really bad spell several years back.

  “I don’t know, son. I plan to leave it to you, but don’t seem right putting it on you now, with you just home. Get yourself settled in first.”

  “It’ll help get me established. You know, with credit and all. Plus, you don’t need the stress of dealing with the business and money. You’ve got enough worries.”

  He hem-hawed around, but finally agreed, and we planned to see the banker as soon as we found time. The farm had been in the family for six generations or so according to dad. Some distant patriarch bought it after jumping off a ship from Ireland, way back when. Likely a true story, judging by the volumes of old black and white photos he had stuffed into a trunk in the attic. Back in the day, herds of cattle and some horses lived on the farm, but in the last decade, after mom passed, dad cut down on the numbers. Now less than two dozen cows grazed the fields along with a single tired, old horse named Sue Bell. Some chickens and a pen full of pigs rounded things out. We’d sell any excess hay and sometimes firewood if we needed to do some clearing. R
eturning the place to a money-maker would take a ton of work, but we’d never shied from a little elbow grease.

  All in all, things looked up. Daisy liked the farm, the open space and roomy house. I talked her into quitting her shit job. She went from cooking and cleaning for strangers to doing it for us. I joked I’d made a proper housewife out of her. Not sure she thought it was too funny, but did seem to like working on her own time and able to stay home with the baby.

  In the mornings, I took walks around the property, partly to inspect the fences, but more so just to get some alone time. A creek ran through the fields and into the woods. The livestock enjoyed cooling their loins from the heat in the pond up by the barn, but did their drinking from the stream. Strange animals. My hike took me through the fields on the south side, along the creek and into the woods, finally coming out on the west side behind the house. Did it every day for a few months until one morning something scared the bejesus outta me.

  I started out early, right at sun up. Once I hit the tree line, the canopy clamped down on the light, pushing the forest an hour back into nighttime. A pleasant stroll along the water, tossing in stones to mess with the crawdads, led me near what we always claimed was an ancient Indian burial mound. Wasn’t though, just what stayed behind after a big tree fell. The tree was long gone, no roots or anything, nothing but an odd shaped hill popping up outta nowhere. Well, all a sudden the birds’ tweets, cricket chirps, the squirrel barks, everything went quiet, the leaves stop rustling in the breeze. Like the whole forest had puckered up its ass and held its breath. Didn’t think much of it at first, but then something shifted to my right, seemed to come out the back of that mound. In the dim light, I couldn’t get a good look at it, thought someone trespassed on our land. It kinda half-walked, half-floated to a spot where a ray of sun poked through the limbs, and I caught not much more than a glimpse, but enough to send me racing home fast as a jackrabbit with a coyote on its bobtail.