“My mistake.” She said solemnly.
A fresh set of tears shone in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She bowed her head, took another ball of tissue from her purse and dabbed it against her eyes.
“It won’t happen overnight but things will get better as the days go by.” Kevin said in a reassuring voice.
He took Lacey’s left hand, twined her two middle fingers with his forefinger and patted it gently across her knuckles. Lacey pondered over what he said and nodded, her eyes glistening. Harry nodded, pursed his lips and shrugged. When Kevin waived his chance to press charges, they traded more pleasantries and left.
White wished him a speedy recovery and walked over to join the three teenage boys still waiting for him in the corner of the room. The more Kevin thought about what he’d said to Lacey Graham, the more tangible it sounded. He knew deep down inside it would only get worse, but he wasn’t going to tell her that no matter how angry he still was at Harry for hitting him.
On his way out, Kevin caught a suspicious glance from the boy with the cell phone. The other two greeted Officer White with praise and complicated handshakes, but this one didn’t. His gaze never wavered from Kevin even when Officer White stepped past the other boys to greet him.
Kevin heard White say something to the boy (something about a friend) but the roar of a nearby television drowned him out. He exited the hospital through a pair of automatic sliding doors and followed a wide concrete sidewalk toward the parking lot. The cool evening breeze ruffled his tee-shirt, stroked the back of his neck and tousled his hair; tree shadows pooled across the curbs, connecting with the others that were there before them.
He was halfway across the parking lot when he swore he could feel the boy’s gaze still bearing down on him. He rubbed the back of his neck and peered over his shoulder to see if his curiosity had killed the cat or saved it. For now, the pussy was spared.
He found his car sitting in the parking lot at the end of the second row, peered through the rear passenger door window and breathed a sigh of relief. He was certain that he’d tossed his bag on the back seat before Harry attacked him but everything had happened so fast he wasn’t sure. He opened the driver-side door, found his keys sitting inside the cup holder in the middle console and sat down.
He climbed in, leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He drew back a sharp intake of air, filling his lungs with the old-car smell and sighed. He tried to wrap his mind around the situation at hand–the rubbings, the girl with the severed throat and now this–only for it to slip away.
It was too much for him to bare. With the anniversary of Terri’s death looming right around the corner, he wasn’t sure if he could keep it together. He had to though, if not for him then for her; he could become a failure in the eyes of everyone around him but not her because she was his rock.
He sighed, slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and Googled the number for a local towing company. Within ten minutes, a bright red pickup truck with a ribbed-metal flatbed and flashing amber-colored roof lights arrived. A tall heavyset man with a head of thick dark hair and a matching dark beard wearing a dark blue mechanic’s uniform and big heavy boots stepped out and greeted Kevin with a kind friendly handshake; the name RANDY was stitched across his nametag in cursive red stitching.
After the driver loaded Kevin’s car onto the flatbed, they climbed in together and drove away. They didn’t talk much save for how their day was and what happened at the cemetery. Randy cut his white behemoth through the heart of the city, its heavy engine fluctuating from a high to a low growl whenever he changed gears; the roof lights swiped a halo of amber-colored light across the street. The mingled smells of food from the local establishments they’d passed along the way wafted into the front cab and made Kevin’s mouth water.
When they arrived at Kevin’s house, the watercolor sky flared brightly over the city. After Randy unloaded his car, they shook hands and went their separate ways. Kevin waited for the truck’s taillights to disappear before hiking up along the edge of the driveway and opening the rear door to collect his bag from the back seat.
He sighed, shut the door behind him and strode across the front yard toward his house. He unlocked the front door, stepped inside, locked it again and kicked his shoes over beside the coffee table. He didn’t bother with the lights because his eyes were still a little sensitive to any kind of light.
He followed the makeshift pools of sour gray light across the house, down the hallway into the art room and placed his bag back onto the worktable where he’d taken it from. He retreated to his bedroom, stripped out of his street clothes and into a pair of blue plaid pajamas and a plain gray-tee. He padded into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, popped the lid on a bottle of pain relievers and chased them down with half a glass of water.
He closed the cabinet door and, in the shaft of sour light pouring through the bathroom window, saw the knot protruding from his forehead. He hadn’t been hit this hard since back in the eighth grade when Dominic Forrester punched him after he found out Kevin had escorted Gail Bowers to her third-period math class. It wasn’t as big of a knot as the doctor had told him but it was there just the same.
He strolled out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where he made himself of a PB and J and poured himself a glass of milk. His mind focused on both sleep and hunger, he sauntered past the living room oblivious to the tall blonde girl with the severed throat sitting on the edge of the living room couch with her hands placed softly across her lap and a silently curious look on her ghostly pale face beaming under the sickly-white glow of a newly-risen moon.
7
SHE sat spread eagled on a jagged strip of grass bordering a wide gravelly road with her left knee bent and her right leg extended. She could hear the car’s engine idling but the harsh-white glow of the headlights obstructed her view of the car that sat idling some five maybe six feet away. She winced at the pain jarring against the middle of her back as hot lucid tears distorted her vision.
She tried to lift her hands to shield her eyes from the glare of the headlights but her arms failed to move. Her eyes drifted over to her right hand, then her left and her breath shuddered. Her arms had been stretched out from her sides and secured to the middle plank of a rickety wooden fence with Plasti-cuffs.
Her thin-silver necklace, which dangled loosely across her chest, glinted in the halogen-white glare of the headlights. She tugged fiercely at her restraints but her attempts to free herself were weak and futile. She hissed through tightly-clenched teeth as the knots nudged against her wrists, etching lattice-shaped dimples into her skin.
A car door creaked open on corroded hinges, spilling a patch of brass-colored light and an Iggy Pop song out into the night. The door neighed, then coughed as it shut, muffling both the light and the music.
She flinched at the sound of footsteps crunching gradually over loose gravel and combed the darkness beyond with wide petrified eyes. There was something sinister about that sound, but she was too scared to think straight.
Rock music continued to blare out from one of the open doors. A tall shadowy figure materialized from her left, stepped into the glare of the headlights and walked toward her in a slow teasing pace; a lone moth beat its wings against the right-side headlight long enough to sense what was going on and fluttered away.
A second figure followed the first while a third stepped out from somewhere and leaned against the right front tire. The first figure knelt down beside of her on one knee and gave a disappointed sigh. The second figure stopped in his tracks, tucked his hands deep into his pockets and tapped his left foot repeatedly against the ground.
“If you tell us where it is,” the figure said in a thick syrupy voice. “We promise not to hurt you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sniffled. “I don’t know what you’re looking for. Please don’t hurt me.”
The figure on her left threw an arm around his back and plucked something from the waistband
of his jeans. His left fist grasped the thick wooden handle of a large combat knife with tiny metal teeth running down the opposite side. Her lower lip trembled with fear as he turned the knife over and over, examining it in the headlights.
“I’m trying to be really nice about this, Mary.” The second figure replied. “If you don’t tell us where it is, then we’re gonna to get really nasty.”
“I’m telling you the truth.” She pleaded. “I don’t know-”
Before she could finish, the figure on her left cursed under his breath and swung the knife in a whistling arc across her–
Kevin’s eyes shot open as he drew back a long breath and sat straight up in bed. He grasped the bedspread tightly in both hands and, his spine rigid with fear, scanned the room with wide revolted eyes. A fresh sheen of sweat coated his brows, soaked the back of his head and shone off the back of his neck.
Moonlight poured through the curtains, throwing long grasping bars across the foot of the bed. He sighed, released his grip on the blankets, flexed and unflexed his hands until the stiffness dissipated from his fingers and the color bled back onto his knuckles. He bowed his head, swiped his left arm across his sweat-glazed forehead and glanced out of his bedroom window.
Full moon. No stars.
The perfect night for a bad dream.
He tossed the covers aside, threw his legs over and sat up on the edge of the bed. He rubbed the whites from his eyes with the backs of his hands until his vision cleared. He perched his right elbow on his right thigh, cupped his chin in his right hand and focused on the patch of moonlight spilling over the windowsill and down the wall.
This was the first nightmare he’d had in years since after Terri’s death. Two days after her funeral, his dreams had become nothing more than a repetitive replay of that fateful night from her last words to the sound of the gunshot and back again. When Terri’s sister Stephanie had stayed the night so she could help him go through her things, she’d heard him screaming her name across the house and hurried to his bedside to calm him until he was safe.
For anyone to be forced to relive the most tragic part of their past was more sinister than anything borne from the dark avenues of their mind where nothing existed but a black pitiless void that not even the sharpest of eyes could find solace in; where screams of horror and misery echo all around and the lingering sense of fear made the strongest of men and women weep and cower to their knees. He figured that everyone had a dark avenue of their own and that it was just as dark and sinister as his.
He reached over for the small glass of water he kept on the right-side of his bedside table, scythed in moonlight. The bright-green numbers on his digital clock sitting on the opposite end of the table next to his lamp cast odd shadows across the tabletop; it said three fifteen. He drained the glass in one swig, sighed with pleasure at the river of icy coolness soothing his bone-dry throat and set the glass back onto the stand.
He rose up, pressed his bare feet onto the cold hardwood floor and felt his skin prickle; his eyelids snapped open like No-Sale signs in an old cash register. He trudged out of the bedroom, his face still groggy from fatigue and sauntered across the hall into the bathroom. He was standing between the shower stall and the sink when he realized he’d flipped the light switch on the wall beside of the doorway.
A cone of amber-colored light burst from the overhead fixture and hit him like a shot of mace. He hissed through clenched teeth, squinted his eyes against the glare and bowed his head toward the sink to avoid it. He turned on the faucet, inched his head closer to the sink and splashed a few handfuls of cold water across his face.
When he raised his head up from the sink, tiny lucid beads of water dripping off his face, something shone in the corner of Kevin’s left eye. He glimpsed up in time to see a strobe of harsh halogen light bursting through the bathroom window. At first, he thought–as is always the case–it was a passing motorist making an illegal U-turn to get back into the city.
Then he heard the chain-smoking cough of unoiled car door hinges, followed an explosion of loud rock music. His mind kicked into overdrive and cleared the veil of sleepiness from his brain. They were the same sounds I’d heard com–
Before he could fathom their origin, a pair of shadowy figures slinked into the streams of light and crept toward the window. One of them wiggled what looked to be a large knife in their hand while a chorus of soft whispers echoed off the light-blue tiled walls.
“Tell us where it is. Tell us where it is, tell us where it is, tell us where it is, tell us where–”
The voice surged into a loud echoing demand.
“Tell us where it is, TELL us where it is. TELL US WHERE IT IS! TELL US WHE–”
His body surging with adrenaline, Kevin released his grip on the sink and pivoted on his heels; his bare sweaty feet squeaked across the white linoleum floor. His heart thundered as he drew back a sharp intake of air, his eyes wide with horrid fascination. His hands curled into white-knuckled fists, skin prickling with fear, he paused and gazed out through the bathroom window.
Nothing but darkness.
No headlights.
No voices.
No loud music.
Nothing but the clear night sky and cones of monochrome light bleeding across the cul-de-sac from the street lights. He lowered his hands, his fists slowly unfurling and took two deep breaths to calm his nerves. He shook his head, hoping that one of his neighbors weren’t passing by in time to see him acting like this.
Fear subsided as he looked away from the window. He snatched a hand towel from the bottom shelf of the rack fixed to the wall above the toilet and dabbed it carefully across his face. His thumb tapped the knot on his forehead and spread a river of pain down his face.
He made a mental note not to do it again and tossed the towel into the wicker brown clothes hamper standing against the wall across from the toilet. He sighed, stared at his reflection in the mirror and leaned over, bracing the sink with both hands.
“What the fuck am I doing?” He asked himself.
It was one of those questions that no one would have the answer for but him.
All he wanted to do was continue a long-standing tradition that he and Terri enjoyed together; to carry that other half of her around with him in his pocket as a reminder that she’d never strayed too far from his thoughts. He’d never had this much trouble in the past, so why now?
Why was such a harmless hobby playing tricks on him, pulling and tugging on his psyche like a department store brat with a sweet tooth? He was sure no one else’s hobbies of this type had taken such a chaotic turn like this. Would a stamp collector find a hidden message inside of a stamp? Or maybe even a coin collector?
Maybe he could move onto one of those after all of this was over; whenever that would be.
He killed the bathroom light on his way out and glanced over his right shoulder at the mixed carpet of moonlight and shadows flooding his house. He padded back into his bedroom, peeled off his tee-shirt and used it to wipe the film of sweat from the back of his neck.
He shook his head in disbelief, sighed and tossed his sweaty tee shirt onto the floor below his bedroom window. He slid the top drawer of his bedside table open, retrieved the bottle of sleeping pills and examined the bottle in the light. Stephanie had left them here over a year ago after her last visit just in case the dreams came flooding back again.
He chewed the pill, closed the window and sent the curtain slumping against the wall. He slid back under the covers and watched the odd moonlit shadows stretch and oscillate across the ceiling until sleep finally took over.
8
“HEY, Kevin.” Erica said, her face beaming. “How was your weekend?”
“It was okay.” He nodded, filling the massive steel sink with hot water. “How was yours?”
“Mom and I went to Davidson Park and walked The Lincoln Trail.” The gleeful tone in her voice made it sound like they’d gone to Disney. “And then we did some swimming and had a picnic. We were so t
ired from all the fun we had we crashed as soon as we got home.”
“I’ll bet.”
Angel, Erin and Jacob handled the customers in the lobby whilst Kevin scrubbed every pizza pan and cutter in between him wiping the tables and checking the trash cans. Fred, Angel’s most reliable delivery man, had even pitched in with the customers when he wasn’t running around town in a dark-blue Ford Escort with a white plastic ANGEL’S PIZZA sign attached to the roof. It was twelve-thirty and the lunch rush was starting to—as Angel had stated twice today—turn into a more of a “lunch riot”.
The mingled smells of tomato sauce, cooked meat and fresh vegetables were pushed out through the kitchen by the large coils of heat wafting from the tall brick-style pizza oven sitting along the left-side wall. The brown-tiled floor stretched past a large refrigerated countertop that sat along the right-side under a spine of florescent light fixtures with eight inside compartments stocked with freshly-made toppings; it then spread out in front of a white marble counter stacked with touch-screen cash registers.
The dining room consisted of round Formica-topped tables sitting on a marble-green floor with gilded picture frames dotting across coarse white walls; recessed light fixtures spilled soft cones of whiskey-colored light across the room. A local radio station spewed through the recessed speakers reminding everyone that they played nothing but “the classic hits of today and yesterday.”
As he wiped down the tables, Kevin could hear Angel in the back barking orders to the others to make sure they were getting done on time; those same employees had probably wished they were washing tables instead of working inside of a hot, muggy kitchen with a five-foot-six brunette who could flip her “bitch-switch” (as Jacob liked to call it) at any given time. Once the customers received their orders and left, three or four more would take their place and so forth. The rush seemed to go on forever; Jacob slid one pizza into the oven after the other and sighed with contempt for every customer who pulled up into the parking lot.
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