Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  Busy days are good days, he reminded himself.

  When the lunch rush receded to a steady pace, Kevin hurried out of the kitchen to wipe down the table next to the trash receptacle on the far-right corner of the lobby. He glanced out the side door and beyond the parking lot at the activity going on at the park across the street. A middle-aged woman wearing brown leather sandals with matching braided straps, a pair of purple-cotton shorts and a white tee-shirt tossed a bright red ball at an eager Dalmatian puppy with a bright blue collar; a pair of college students in hippie clothing sat under a tree playing guitar and a bongo drum in front of a small crowd who grinned and nodded their heads to the music; children played and people laughed.

  A family of four glided across the bike path stretched across the rear of the park on a black and gold tandem bike. The ecstatic stares on their faces reminded Kevin of an old chewing gum commercial he’d seen back in the eighties but that one had featured two twin girls in white shorts and a red tee-shirt. Patches of sunlight and shadows spread evenly along the curbs and sidewalks; birds flew overhead, their swift origami shadows floating above the park.

  From the recessed speakers inside the restaurant, Mazzy Star sang “Fade Into You”.

  Two little children–a chubby blonde girl in a pink-tee and bright blue shorts and a skinny dark-haired boy in a red-tee and denim coveralls–occupied a nearby booth bickering at one another while their mother scrawled through her cell phone and pretended to care. A liver-spotted old man in dark slacks and a thin-striped white shirt occupied the table nearest the entrance leading into the kitchen, picking the pepperonis from his slice as if they were contagious. There were a few college students in summer attire—shorts, sandals, sneakers with socks and loose-fitting shirts—laughing at something one of them said while a few of them gaped at their cell phones.

  There weren’t many customers around and when there were they didn’t stick around for long. This had been the usual sort of traffic that flowed in any time after the lunch rush had ended; it would only be a few hours before he clocked out and headed back home.

  After a red pickup truck rumbled past, something emerged out of the corner of his left eye. He peered through the same glass door and saw a strange figure standing on the far-left corner of the lot under the shadowy canopy of a leafy oak tree deeply-rooted between the restaurant and an optometrist’s office. He glanced at the customers filling the row of tables facing the front of the restaurant and wondered why no one could see her.

  Upon further inspection, it was her but she looked much different than before.

  She glanced back at him, her arms still slumped down by her sides; the thick pockets of damp black mascara dripping down her face had gnawed away the skin below her eye sockets, exposing thumb-sized crescents of slick red flesh. Her sleek blonde hair fluttered in the breeze with reckless abandon, caressing her face like a quivering pillow of golden feathers. Her red plaid skirt wavered around her hips, dividing her curvy black shadow stretching across the asphalt; larger pockets of rotting flesh spread down her thighs, calves and legs to reveal more highways of flesh, muscle and sinew.

  He took two deep breaths to quell his anxiety. His fist tightened around the dripping wet dishtowel, sending thin rivers of frothy-white suds cascading down his fingers. A mix of fear and curiosity rooted his feet to the floor, closing tightly around his throat and denying him a voice.

  Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead, streaked the back of his neck and pressed his work shirt to his ribs. Their gazes locked onto one another, strong and hypnotic like star-crossed lovers. His heart stammering, he failed to gather any saliva to coat his bone-dry mouth.

  She extended her right arm out from her side, curled her fingers into a half-fist and waved, beckoning for him to come closer. He dropped the towel inside the bucket, inched his way toward the door and gripped the U-shaped metallic handle in his slick foam-covered hand. He pushed the door open, stepped out of the restaurant and onto the parking lot; lucid snakes of heat wriggled off the pavement, sending a fresh torrent of sweat sliding down his body.

  She took a gentle step back, her shadow lengthening across the yellow lines stretching across the road and mumbled. He stepped past a white minivan with a company logo (ABBY’S DRYWALL) plastered across the driver-side in dark blue font and heard a soft-spoken whisper in his ears.

  “They murdered me.” She sighed. “They murdered me. They murdered me.”

  She tipped her head back in the same forty-five degree angle, brought her left hand around and pinched both sides of her throat with her thumb and forefinger. The red line still etched across her throat opened, spraying a stream of dark blood across the air onto the pavement, its thick coppery smell wafting in the breeze.

  When he reached the strip of asphalt separating the parking lot from the street, Kevin watched in horror as the blood oozed across the searing hot asphalt. He stopped in his tracks and, the wind rushing him from all sides, watched the pool of blood coagulate to form a coherent phrase.

  THEY MURDERED ME, it’d said.

  The mingled odors of hot copper, heat and rotting flesh stung his nostrils and churned the pit of his stomach. He tried to say something, anything that could decipher the distance between sanity and insanity when something tugged on the back of his work shirt and cinched his collar tightly around his throat. Some unseen force wrapped around his stomach, lifting him off of his feet and jerking him back with such force that it trapped the air inside of his lungs.

  Kevin fell backward, nearly jerking his head back between his shoulder blades and collided with the pavement. Air exploded from his lungs as tiny phosphenes burst across his vision; his teeth clacked together, spreading a bone-jarring pain across his face. His right hand skated across the sidewalk in front of the building, leaving a bright red abrasion across his palm.

  He hissed between tightly-clenched teeth and, writhing like a child in a supermarket, slapped frantically at the thick muscular arm hugging his stomach. A cool breeze swept across the parking lot, tousling his hair and pulling him back into reality.

  “Calm down, killer.” A familiar voice pleaded.

  He stopped and peered over his shoulder at a familiar face. Behind him, the customers had rose from their seats and watched with wild-eyed interest; a bleached blonde college student–to no surprise to anyone–held her cell phone up to the glass and said something to one of her friends. He rolled over and pushed himself up onto his feet, his hands warm and red from the hot black pavement.

  “What the hell was all of that about?” Fred scoffed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good.” Kevin said, giving him a dismissive brush of his hand. “I had a bad weekend and I saw her standing—”

  “If I wasn’t serving Misses Bowers,” He shook his head in surprise. “you’d be a slab of fucking roadkill right now.”

  When he peered over his shoulder and gazed at the middle of the street, Kevin felt his heart sink. The girl was gone, along with the pool of blood and the message that’d been scrawled across the pavement.

  “Who did you see?”

  “I’m sorry.” He said and looked away. “I thought I saw someone standing in the middle of the street.”

  Angel burst through the front door on the opposite end of the restaurant and jogged toward them, her dark brown bun bobbing against the back of her head. His cheeks flushed with both shame and guilt, Kevin leaned against the front of the building and saw a mix of terror and relief etch itself across her face.

  “What the hell?” She had a motherly inflection in her voice. “Are you trying to give me a fucking stroke?”

  “It’s alright, Angel.” Fred brushed his hand at her. “He’s not feeling good.”

  Bracing her hands against her hips, she asked, “How many sick days do you have?”

  “I don’t know.” He said. “And I don’t really care to know.”

  “It’s not up to you, Kevin.”

 
He hadn’t used any of his sick days since Terri was shot.

  “I want to see you after you’re done.” She said sternly. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  After they followed her inside, Kevin gathered up the trays while Fred offered to take out the trash from both cans in the lobby. With Angel’s “insistence”, he agreed to a week vacation.

  “I hope that helps.” She told him.

  As Angel gave him a hug, Kevin apologized again and clocked out. He thanked Fred, consoled an wildly sobbing Erin Deeds and reassured Jacob. Walking out the back door, he chided himself for being so blind to what the girl was trying to tell him.

  As far as he was concerned, they weren’t even delusions.

  He didn’t know what they were but there was only one way he was going to find out.

  9

  WHEN he eased his car onto his driveway, Kevin glanced out of his driver-side window and Mrs. Langston sitting on her front porch, reading the morning paper. He snatched his cell phone from the middle console, killed the engine, climbed out and shut the door behind him. It felt a little odd for him not to be at work right now but then maybe Angel had been right for once; he had been so overwhelmed that he hadn’t made enough time for himself.

  “Kevin.” She bellowed, squinting at him through her glasses. “Is that you, Kevin? What are you doing home so early?”

  “We weren’t that busy today.”

  It was the only lie he could come up with on such short notice. He’d garnered a knack for that lately and thought maybe he should write a book about them; call it On Such Short Notice. He’d make killing off that for sure.

  “Well, if you get bored today.” She bellowed. “I’d appreciate it if you could–”

  “I’ll be very busy today, Mrs. Langston.” He replied. “I’ll be available tomorrow.”

  “Oh ok.”

  He waved at her before heading into the house. He kicked the door shut with the tip of his boot, hung his keys on the rack beside the door and carried his to-go container into the kitchen. He didn’t have much of an appetite right now, but he knew later on that he would.

  He ran into the bedroom and headed for the closet. He eased the massive mirrored doors aside, slid some clothes to the side and found it exactly where he’d left it. A dented cardboard box marked TERRI’S OFFICE in quick black scrawl sat on the far-left corner of the floor; a dark blue sticker of a VW Beetle was stuck to the top of the lid amongst a scrim of dust from years of neglect and ignorance, the words HMMM BUG blooming across the bottom of the car in a bubble-gum pink font.

  The sticker struck a chord deep inside of him, brought him back to a place he didn’t want to go. With everything that’d gone on for the past two days, this wasn’t the best time for him to think about her now. No matter how hard he tried to push it away, it was still there like a hard lump inside of his throat.

  She’d bought the sticker from a little machine beside the exit doors of a nearby restaurant where they’d gone to celebrate her acquisition of what else but a bright-pink VW Beetle. He implied that she should put it on the back bumper of her car and kissed her as they’d made their way out to the parking lot. The week after her death, he’d found the sticker in the top drawer of her desk while he was gathering her things together and stuck it on the top of the box.

  It only seemed fitting that he’d put it there considering how much the car and the sticker had meant to her. He swallowed the ball of sadness swelling in his chest, swiped the tear away from the corner of his eye and set the box on the bed. He flung the lid aside and dug through the contents until he found her laptop sitting in the bottom amongst an old stapler and an unopened box of Number-Two pencils.

  He set the laptop aside, closed the box back up and slid it back into its original place in the bottom of the closet. He carried it out to the table, fired up her laptop and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Once the coffee maker was finished, he filled a cup and returned to the table.

  When he sat down, an array of colorful icons were scattered around the festive backdrop of a winding country road strewn with bright red-orange leaves and flanked by an encroaching forest. He guided the little arrow across the screen and accessed his web browser. A few seconds and a slight blink later, the screen came alive, exposing Terri’s favorite search engine.

  Shafts of mid-afternoon sunlight seeped through the curtains, swarming with teeny dust motes. He typed in the name MARILYN GRAHAM and waited. A small hourglass appeared on the screen, spinning one direction and then the next and then back again.

  After the screen blinked again, a list of possible websites appeared on the monitor. Two pages later, he found a website for the city’s local paper—The Shallow Rock Gazette—and clicked it. The web page offered such features as allowing viewers to watch the city council meetings (yawn, Kevin thought) via web cam, a local movie critic’s article on the latest comic-book movie (which didn’t sound good when he saw the headline), agricultural tips, sports news, obituaries and local happenings.

  He clicked on the Obituaries tab, took a sip of coffee and waited for the screen to load. Once the page loaded, the first local death he’d seen was of an old man who escaped from a nursing home only to be clipped by a drunk driver. He shook his head, his chest clenching with sadness, and tapped the arrow on the right side of the screen to access the next page.

  He reached over for his coffee mug when a familiar face bloomed across the screen; the same face who’d strummed the strings of his sanity day and night until her song could be heard, one whose lyrics spoke of pain and desperation, of sadness and loss. The name MARILYN ROSE GRAHAM was located on the left side of the article in bold red font. On the opposite end of the name was a five-by-seven photo of a heavyset blonde girl smiling brightly for the camera; she wore tight black pants and a button down white blouse with a black tie.

  She’d been valedictorian in her class, received Honor Roll three times and even became a member of The National Honors Society. She never went out for a spot on the cheerleading team nor did she try to become part of the in-crowd like everyone else; the time that she’d spent tutoring most of a handful of ninth and tenth-grade students had put her onto the path to becoming a teacher. At first glance, she could’ve been a follower, but she’d taken the role of leader and wanted nothing more than to make a difference in this world; had he and Terri became parents, he was certain Marilyn would’ve ended up their child’s teacher.

  Her father, Gerald Graham, worked as a steel-mill operator for fourteen years before he was laid off due to the rash of financial failures that still grip the country today. Three months after, when jobs had begun to become scarce, he’d hung himself in the basement of their house in Trinity Estates. Sadly, little Marilyn had been the one who found her father dangling above the floor like a cheap Halloween decoration.

  He liked to think that she’d excelled in both academics and in life so that her father would’ve been happy about how she’d turned out. In a way, it’d driven her to be who she was long before she’d left this world at such a young age.

  He read the obituary two more times, took another sip of his coffee and set it back down.

  “‘Her body was identified by her parents after it’d been found shackled to an old wooden fence along Taylor Run Road two weeks ago’.” He read aloud.

  He clamped his right hand across his forehead, gave a deflated sigh and pondered his next move.

  Where had he heard that name before? As a kid, he’d heard plenty of stories back in high school about what people did up there and quickly brushed the thought from his head. He closed his eyes and shook his head, his head reeling with a mixture of worry and confusion.

  Realization hit him like a ball of steam, snapping his senses alert. He raised his head up from his hand, craned his head over to his left shoulder and peered down the hallway. He leapt out of his chair, stormed down the hall in two quick strides and pushed the door open that led into the art room.

  He padded across the
room, his bare feet pressing softly against the carpet and gathered the four rubbings. He carried them out to the dining room, set them on the table and unrolled them one at a time until he found the right one. He spread them out across the tabletop, gathered a few heavy knickknacks from the shelf in the far-right corner and set them onto all four corners of the page to hold them down.

  He unzipped the canvas bag, retrieved his chalk tray and set it on top. He scanned the array of light and dark colors, selected the right one and gently rubbed it across the page below the word TAYLOR. As the chalk gave a comforting shush against the paper, he stopped every so often to blow off the excess and took a tentative step back from the table to survey the results.

  When he saw the words RUN ROAD appear on the page, Kevin drew back a long breath and clamped his hand across his mouth. His body rigid with terror, he spun away from the table and sighed. His hand tensed around the piece of chalk until his fingers and knuckles turned white; his heart thudded with fear.

  Everything he’d gone through these past few days had finally become clear. He’d never felt more like a fool until now.

  She was a desperate plea for help, a cry that would go ignored for years to come long after it was buried under a stature of limitations. She’d unlocked a deeply profound part of himself that he never knew existed and pulled back the cloth that separated the realm between the living and the dead he knew had always existed.

  She wanted to bring her killers to justice, but she couldn’t do it herself. She needed someone who could act as her eyes and her ears; someone who would understand her message and act as professionally as possible. Since Terri’s death, the only thing he’d done to help the dead was to preserve their name and timeline inside of cheap gilded picture frames and plaster them across the walls of his hobby room.

  He hurried back to the table, took a sip from his mug to swallow the bitter taste in the back of his throat, slid back into his chair, clicked on the ARCHIVES tab located along the top right-hand corner and waited. After a few seconds, a chronological order of back issues starting with the paper’s first printing (December 1942) bloomed across the screen in a bright green font. He clicked on the one marked MARCH Two-Thousand-Nineteen, rubbed his hands together and watched the tiny hourglass swirl in the middle of the screen.