Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  A chorus of muffled voices muttered from behind the shadows, each one sounding just as incoherent as the other. He wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t hear them because he could barely remember bits and pieces of what happened before he was blindsided. He gathered the courage to raise his left hand and rubbed the cobwebs from his eyes until his vision became clear; elation washed over him as his senses returned to normalcy.

  “...get this done...”

  “...not fuck around then...”

  “came for and leave...”

  He found himself inside of a spacious living room with soft blue carpet and lime-green walls pimpled with gilded picture frames that dated back to an era where bloodlines were born and legacies were created. A large flat screen television sat atop of a wide polished oak credenza flanked by a DVD player and a large cable box similar to the one he had back home. He peered at his reflection in the television screen and caught another reflection beside of his own.

  He snatched a quick breath, peered over his right shoulder and found Harry Kline and Lacey Graham were huddled together in front of an overstuffed white couch. She leaned her head against the front of his short-sleeved tee shirt, tears glistening in her eyes. A small bib of blood had caked the right side of Harry’s mouth and made a bee-line toward the tip of his chin.

  He peered past the top of Lacey’s head and beyond, scanning the right side of the house for where the voices were coming from. Instead, he found a stuffed deer’s head hanging on the wall above a stone-hearth fireplace with a white-marble mantel; two straight-back wooden chairs sat at an oblique angle in front of the fireplace like set on an episode of Masterpiece Theatre.

  Kevin pressed his hands against the floor and gradually sat up. He leaned back against the couch, sighed and shielded the sunlight from his eyes with the back of his hand. When he peered back at them, Lacey was the first to see him, then Harry; she wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live.” Kevin sighed. “You?”

  “The big one got a shot at me.” Harry said.

  “I see that.”

  Lacey tried to say something when a herd of footsteps paraded into the room and stopped. They strode into the room one at a time with the same smug and confident demeanor they had back at the waiting room in the ER two days ago.

  The bald one, whom Kevin remembered burying his face in his cell phone, wore a gray tee shirt, jeans and black sneakers. The spiky-haired boy wore jeans, a pair of brown hiking boots and a light-blue Abercrombie and Fitch tee-shirt. The heavyset kid wore the same tie-dye shirt, gray sweat pants and black leather sandals he’d worn back at the hospital.

  They stopped and stood in front of the television and stared down at them like disappointed parents. The only sounds they could hear were their labored breathing and birds still chirping outside.

  “It looks like somebody’s awake.” The heavyset kid said in a daunting voice.

  “We can see that, Greg.” The bald teen shook his head.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kevin asked.

  “We’re the ones in charge, asshole.” The spiky-haired teen said and kicked Kevin’s right foot. “We’ll be the ones asking all of the questions.”

  Although his brain still felt light-headed, Kevin didn’t take too long to decipher who was who. If Greg was the heavyset hippie, then Dylan was the spiky-haired boy and James was the bald one.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” The spiky-haired teen inquired, kicking Kevin’s left foot.

  “Lacey called me and told me to come over.” Kevin said through loosely-clenched teeth. “She said she had someth–”

  “I didn’t call you.”

  He glanced at her with a confused expression on his face.

  “Did you call him?” She asked Harry.

  “I was in the kitchen when these goofballs showed up.”

  A cloud of unease filled the house like invisible electric. It raised the hairs on the back of Kevin’s neck and arms; Harry and Lacey glanced back at the three boys and Kevin followed suite.

  “Hey, old man.” Dylan roared, his arms spread out from his sides. “Don’t talk about us like we’re not in the fucking room.”

  “That’s not important, Dylan.” James said to him, then said to Kevin. “What does any of this have to do with you? I know you’re not a member of the family because I’ve met all of them before so why don’t you enlighten us.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Kevin sighed. “Why should it even matter?”

  James opened his mouth to say something when Dylan dismissed him with the wave of his right hand. Greg ambled toward the fireplace, shook his head and leaned his enormous bulk against the back of one of the chairs sitting in front of the fireplace. Kevin drew his knees up to his chest to keep James from kicking him again and massaged his temples with the first two fingers on each hand to soothe the pain pounding against his skull.

  “It was just a misunderstanding between us and Kevin.” Lacey replied. “It’s nothing for you or anyone else to be concerned about.”

  “If that’s the truth, then fine.” James said to her, then at Kevin. “We’ll just stick around here until get what we came for.”

  “Bullshit.” Harry grimaced.

  “Do you even know what it is?” Greg snickered. “Do you have any idea what we’re here for?”

  “I could give a shit.” Harry said. “I want you out of my sister’s house right fucking now.”

  Dylan cupped his chin inside of his hand, flashed Greg a narrow sideways glance and peered casually up at the ceiling. Greg snickered, pushed himself away from the back of the chair and stormed across the living room with the gait of a colossal giant invading a small medieval village. Each footstep sent the picture frames sashaying across the walls, vibrated the floor beneath them and drove spikes of fear deep into the marrow of their bones.

  Harry released his grip on Lacey’s hips, set his mouth into a hard line and squared his shoulders like he were ready for a fight. Greg pivoted on his right hip, grunted behind tightly clenched teeth and drove his right foot hard into Harry’s face. Lacey coiled herself into a tight ball, drew her knees high and tight against her chest and shielded her face with both arms; Kevin reared his head back, scrunched his face together and peered over his left shoulder at a small overstuffed sofa sitting against the wall.

  The impact whipped Harry’s head back between his shoulders, squeezing a painful grunt from deep inside of him; a stream of blood and two broken teeth flew across the room and splattered against the carpet. Harry’s head slumped back down and, his mouth twisted into a lopsided grin, propped his chin onto his chest. James snickered and clapped, his cheeks beaming beneath the wide pleasing grin on his face.

  His chest heaving with exertion, Greg wheezed, “Shut the fuck up, old man or I’ll bury you right next to that little bitch.”

  Greg wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his left arm, flared his nostrils in anger and stalked back to the left side of the room. Lacey reached over her shoulder, plucked a few Kleenex from the dispenser sitting on the end table beside of the couch and dabbed them gently against Harry’s bloody mouth. He took them from her, nodded at the three boys and gave her a reassuring pat on the meaty part of her left shoulder.

  Dylan stepped forward and glanced down at Kevin. “You still didn’t my question, Kevin?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “After we went home from the hospital that night, I snuck Ned’s notebook out of his pants pocket while he was asleep and took a picture of the page with your name written on it. I thought about paying you a visit but it didn’t really make sense because you didn’t have what I’ve been looking for. When we came here to get back what was ours, you came knocking on the door and everything just fell into place.” Dylan said.

  “How do you know my girlfriend?” James asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “Stop lying, asshole.”
Greg cautioned.

  “Like I said before you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Dylan shuffled closer and knelt down in front of them. He gave an exhausted sigh, made a steeple with his fingers, reached his right arm around and groped at the back waistband of his jeans. When he flung his arm back around, he gripped a nickel-plated 9mm tightly in his right fist.

  Everyone except for Dylan and Greg flinched in terror. James turned his head away and clenched his fists together; Lacey slapped her left hand across her mouth, her eyes wide with surprise and buried her face into her brother’s tee-shirt to muffle the scream bursting from her lips. Kevin went stiff for a moment, braced the carpet with his fingertips until they turned white and sighed; Harry held his sister’s face tightly against his chest, tears brimming in his eyes and whispered softly in her ear.

  The sight of the gun brought a bad nostalgic aftertaste to the back of Kevin’s throat and conjured his most darkest memory. Although Terri had been shot with a Smith and Wesson .38, a gun was still a gun.

  “You better start talking.” Dylan said, sweeping the gun across their faces. “or I’m gonna splatter your brains all over that fucking couch.”

  Kevin sighed and glanced over at his fellow hostages. Lacey raised her head up from Harry’s chest and met Kevin’s gaze, her brows separated by a thin faint line.

  “I don’t know how to say this any other way but I know it’s going to sound crazy.” He said in a generous voice. “All I can tell you is that you’ve got to believe me.”

  He held nothing back, starting with the afternoon it all began, added the melee at the cemetery and ended with their present situation. When he was finished, Greg glanced sardonically at Harry and back to Kevin.

  “How hard did he actually hit you?”

  “I ought to shoot you for wasting my fucking time.” Dylan suggested.

  “Hey, asshole.” Greg chuckled. “Did your supposed rubbings tell you how all of this is going to end?”

  “I want what I–”

  James crept away from the living room window and tugged on the back of Dylan’s left sleeve. Dylan hissed through his teeth, craned his head around and rose up from the floor.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “What?”

  James gazed hesitantly down at the pistol in Dylan’s hand. Beads of sweat glinted off his acne-scarred forehead, glistened off of his brows and slid down his cheeks. The uneasy look on his face told Kevin that James had thought about whether or not he should mention having it around.

  “The gun?” Dylan inquired. “Did you forget why we’re here? Did you actually think we were going to let them walk away after we got what we came for? We’re in this situation because you and your cock-tease couldn’t keep it together. I’ll use whatever means necessary to save my ass and my football career whether you like it or not.”

  He raised his left hand in the air, shook his head in anger, flicked James across the tip of his nose and flashed him a wide obnoxious grin. He sighed, turned his attention back to the three hostages and leveled the gun in Lacey’s face.

  “Hand it over right now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her lips wet and quivering.

  “We know you have it.” Greg grimaced. “Tell us where–”

  “Mary never confided in me all of the time. If she has something that belongs to you, it’s the first I’ve heard about it.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “No I’m not.” She pleaded, then glared at James. “I didn’t know about Mary ever dating him until three months after they made it official at school.”

  When Dylan eased closer to her, Lacey curled up into a ball and raised her arms over her face again. Her face eclipsed by the shadows of her arms, she let off a loud agonizing sob that brought a smile to Greg’s fleshy white face.

  “There’s no need for this.” Harry pleaded.

  “Shut up, asshole.” Greg advised.

  “Why don’t you shut–”

  The sound of fingers snapping cut them off in mid-sentence. They stopped and traced the sound back to Kevin.

  “The two glass doves.” Kevin said, brandishing a peace sign.

  Her face sagging with disbelief, Lacey flashed Kevin a perplexed look. James buried his face in his hands, sighed and shook his head.

  “How did you know about the doves?” She mumbled, her eye still red from crying.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then how did–”

  “How else would I have known?” His voice was gravelly and sympathetic. “I wasn’t lying when I said Marilyn was talking to me through my rubbings.”

  “We don’t care to hear about your sex life.” Greg snickered. “We just want what we came for.”

  “Where are the two glass doves?”

  “They’re in her bedroom on her–”

  Before she could finish, Dylan lowered the pistol and snatched her by the crook of her right arm. She yelped in protest as he jerked her up from the floor and onto her feet like a child throwing a tantrum in a crowded supermarket. When he pressed the barrel of the gun against her right temple, her knees buckled with fear.

  “Since she knows where they’re at.” He said to Greg. “Follow her into the little whore’s bedroom and see if this whacko is telling the truth.”

  He grunted and pushed her away. She stumbled across the room in a drunken pirouette, her short brown hair swirling around her face, and collided with Greg. Greg trapped her in a tight hug, buried his face in her hair and slid his tongue slowly across her right cheek.

  When he saw the repulsive look on her face, Harry grunted and tried to push himself up from the floor. Kevin threw his left arm across Harry’s chest to keep him from making anymore sudden moves.

  “If you try anything,” Dylan said, then shrugged at Kevin and Harry. “I’ll kill them and then I’ll come find you. Now go.”

  Greg clutched the crook of Lacey’s left arm in his fat pale hand, led her out of the room and down the hallway; Harry peered over at Kevin and nodded. Silence enveloped the house save for the intermittent sounds of hurried footsteps and shuffled objects. They caught the familiar sound of wood sliding against wood, followed by a guttural incoherent threat and then a second wave of footsteps parading back down the hall.

  Lacey returned first, Greg not too far behind. Her head bowed, a fresh set of tears streaming down her face, she slumped back down onto the floor in front of the couch and curled up next to Harry. Kevin had never seen two people come together from a tragedy like Harry and Lacey partly because he’d never had such a strong kinship with his own brother and sister.

  For them, it was a time for clean slates and good memories that made up for all of the bad ones. Death broke their hearts; courage helped glue them back together.

  His face creased by a wide satisfying grin, Greg handed a small plastic CD case over to Dylan, shook his head and glanced over at them before glaring back at him.

  “I knew that little cunt was lying to us the whole time.” He said through clenched teeth.

  “Is it the right one?” James asked, staring incredulously.

  “It looks like it.”

  “Then let me see it.”

  “Hell no.” Dylan chuffed. “The last time I let you hold it we ended up in this godawful mess.”

  James nibbled on the corner of his bottom lip, gazed solemnly down at the floor between his feet and braced his hips with both hands. It wasn’t the only time he was reminded of it and in a way he knew it made Dylan feel good; it gave a sense of power that fed his insatiable ego.

  “The only way we’re going to know is if we watch it.” Greg suggested. “We don’t want to do all of this for nothing.”

  Dylan and James glanced awkwardly at him.

  “What about them?” James asked, prodding his shoulder at the three hostages.

  “We can’t show it to them.”

  “Is it gonna matter?”

  They shared a long pause that made Kev
in feel uneasy; the air inside of the room became thick and suffocating. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, whether or not it was what they were looking for, all three of them were going to die.

  With Lacey’s assistance, they turned on the television and set up the DVD player. After Dylan and James found the small skinny black remote sitting under the television, Greg slid the DVD onto the tray, pushed a button the upper left hand corner of the machine and waited for the disc to load.

  12

  The footage began in the corner of a large room.

  The camera zoomed back, revealing a wall lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one side; neatly painted characters and a few lines of inspiring remarks were painted along the top. Treadmills, stair climbers and weight benches sat on a slick marble-gray floor, shafts of sunlight streaming through the wire-mesh windows; thick leafy tree shadows bled across the corners of the windows like cryptic burn marks.

  Three inches away from the camera, Dylan sat on the edge of a weight bench, wearing a plain-white tee shirt, sneakers with ankle-low socks and gray sweat pants. His clean-shaven head was slick with sweat; it bonded his tee-shirt to his xylophone-like ribs.

  “Watch that fucking thing.” Dylan rustled, flinging his right arm out in front of him.

  The camera jostled, filling the screen with a momentary series of sporadic blurs. When it realigned itself, the camera panned back to Dylan who was now pacing back and forth between a stair climber with black-rubber praying-mantis like arms and a slanted weight bench stacked with five gunmetal-gray plates.

  “Be careful, asshole.” James said from behind the camera. “If you break this, my dad will kill me.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What time did he say he’d be here?”

  James stretched his hand across the front of the camera, exposing a thin bony wrist fitted with a giant gray digital wristwatch. It didn’t stay around long enough to show the time.