Dig
Page 44
***
“Robyn,” Rusty said. It was no longer a shout., but more of a whimper. He was exhausted, confused and maybe still a little drunk. He was scared and he was vulnerable and he was crying. He was alone. Or so he thought.
“It’s worse than you think,” he heard.
The voice was familiar and at the same time brought him calm and raised gooseflesh. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. A young girl sat at the other end of his cot. She smiled at him. “How you doin’, twerp?”
She was a teenager, as solid as a real person, but there was no way she could’ve gotten in the cell with him. When she smiled, he saw his mother and then he realized he was looking at…
“Laura?”
“Yeah, little bro. It’s been such a long time. Are you glad to see me?”
She was whole again, pretty like he remembered her. Her hair was in a ponytail that hung to her shoulders and she wore a long sweater and stirrup pants like she just walked off the set of an eighties pop music video. Her makeup was bold around her eyes. She was a bright spot in a very dreary day.
“Tell me this is a nightmare or that I’m in a coma or something. I wrecked The Bat on the way out of Chicago and I’m in a hospital somewhere. This is morphine or something, right?”
“I wish. But it’s worse than that,” she said.
“So you know what’s going on?”
“Yep,” she said sounding chipper. “Ghosts know stuff.”
Christ. She is a ghost. My dead sister is here. The cop is crazy. Murder. Suicide. This place smells like a cesspool and the entire town is fucking nuts.
He walked across the cell, wincing at the site of Thomas’s dead body.
“Don’t stress, Russ. You can’t fix this. It’s just more of the old Clemmons dumb luck.”
“Fix what? What is happening? Did he know anything?” he pointed at Thomas. “Can you ask him what the hell he was talking about—she is coming?”
“He’s dead,” Laura said.
Rusty did a double take and looked at her. “Aren’t you dead?”
“That’s different.”
“What does that mean? Dead is dead?”
“No, little brother. Dead like me isn’t final. Dead like him…” she looked at Thomas. “That’s dead.”
“I still don’t understand any of this. Can you explain this to me?”
Laura laughed. “Relax, man. Take a pill.”
“I can’t relax. Have you been out there?”
“I’ve been out there for over two decades watching this build up. You showed up right at the end, little brother. Like I said, it’s just dumb luck.”
Rusty blinked and took some cleansing breaths. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and looked at his sister’s ghost, still not sure he wasn’t insane.
“That lady—Loretta Gates—the one we used to make fun of?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, she happens to come from a long line of crazy.”
“Okay,” Rusty said.
“She has been digging a hole in the ground underneath her house.”
“Okay. So?”
“So, it’s the same hole her father dug. And his father and his father and his father and so on. Seven generations worth of Charlie Manson insanity.”
Rusty nodded. He understand the words, but not the point she was trying to make.
“That hole leads to an evil place. Maybe the most evil place if you pick up what I’m setting down.”
I’m picking it up. It doesn’t compute. But walking skeletons. Faggoty-queer stuff. Jack Everett and his story.
“Hell. You’re talking about hell. You’re telling me someone dug a hole and found hell?”
Laura shrugged with her shoulders and her face. “You noticed the smell, right? That rotten smell?”
Rusty nodded.
“That poison has been leaking out of the Gates’ place over the last hundred and eighty years, maybe longer. Each year and every foot deeper that hole got, the worse things got around here. My death was a direct result of that hole.”
“I thought a tire blew.”
“No, Russ. Jack…”
Her mouth was on my cock…
“I talked to Jack.”
She shook her head. “I know. I was there. He lied to you, bro. He didn’t mean to…it’s the poison.”
“What happened? For real?” Rusty said.
“Jack was…he was rough on me.”
“He beat you?”
“Once. It was that day. He pressed me for sex and I wouldn’t do it. He picked me up that day from school and we parked out on the ferry road. To talk.”
“I don’t need all the details, sis.”
It felt good to call her sis. He’d missed her more than he thought.
“I punched him in the face.”
“You what?”
“He needed it. So I punched him. On the way home, we started arguing and I punched him again. He lost control of the wheel and the car wrapped around a tree.”
“I never knew that.”
“That’s because I’m the only one who knows. Well, me and Jack. I think he became a minister because of that crash. Because of the way he treated me, and then because he was driving when I was killed.”
“Why haven’t you come to me before now?”
“You left. By the time I figured out how to do this whole ghost thing, you were gone. We don’t travel so well.”
“What about Mom? Dad? Have you seen them?”
“No, twerp. To tell the truth, I haven’t looked. It isn’t lonely on this side of things. I don’t have that need to be with people, the need for conversations or social gatherings. I’m here now because you need me. Not because I need you.”
Rusty stared at his sister’s ghost with no idea how to respond. He changed the subject instead. “So when he says she’s coming…who did he mean?”
“Let me finish my story. I’ll get to that.”
Rusty shifted in his seat as if easing the soreness in his ass cheeks would somehow ease the craziness that surrounded him.
“Like I was saying, each year that hole has gotten deeper and the shit that leaks out of there has driven these people crazy go nuts. You remember that? Saturday Night Live?”
Rusty didn’t and he shook his head.
“Crime has risen, especially violent crime. Children have gone missing. Horrible things have happened here, most of it unreported.” She waited for a few seconds before continuing. “And then last night, Loretta broke through.”
“Into what?”
“She opened it up.”
“What?”
“A rift, Russ. A hole into the damned place. She let the devils out.”
“Devils?”
“Demons. Monsters. Whatever you want call them. There are multitudes of them. Pain, Despair, Fear, Hatred, Revenge, Rage, Wrath, Gluttony. All the sins, all the dark emotions, all of the things people don’t like to talk about. Everything is represented in one big fucked up dysfunctional family and they’re walking around town for your high school reunion. Yours had a much better turn out than mine did, by the way.”
“So who is coming? Who was the she he was talking about?” Rusty nodded again towards the corpse in the other cell.
“She is the end of it all, little bro. When she gets here, it’s all over.”
“Who is she?”
Laura’s eyes went blank, her expression cold. “Death.”
“Death? Like death for me? Death for Robyn?”
“Oh, yeah. Robyn’s cute. Too bad you won’t have more time with her.”
“What does that mean?”
“Death for all, little bro. When she gets up here, it’s game over, no more quarters.”