Slowly, the knob turned, clicking like a cricket. The door cracked open. Winston heard the cop’s breathing intensify. The door swung inward. No one entered. A metallic tick, one Winston knew well.
Before the cop’s foot landed on the dirt, Winston swung the briefcase. The thud felt solid, flesh folding beneath the case. The cop grunted, fell back a step. Winston brought the case back again, his other hand raising the knife. Then he realized his screw up. Too late. Amateur. He left his torso unprotected. For one precious second.
The cop rebounded fast. He hurled into Winston, a go-for-broke leap. Winston crashed back, the cop on top of him. The briefcase dropped, but Winston held onto the knife. Dirt softened the blow to his head, still a startling internal crunch. The cop struggled, working his hand between their pressed-together stomachs. Winston felt the gun’s hard contours, its barrel dragging across his skin. With a downward plunge, Winston’s knife sliced into the cop’s back. His assailant’s body stiffened at the knife’s penetration.
But this time physics didn’t quite work the way Winston had hoped.
Reflexively, the cop’s finger squeezed the trigger. Winston didn’t hear the big bang he expected. Just a muffled phunt, stifled by their bodies, very anticlimactic. Especially considering Winston knew it was his last call.
He knew it as sure as he knew when he first fell in love with his wife. Or the intense feeling of unconditional love when his first daughter was born, a genetic desire to protect and provide so strong he thought it’d tear him up at times. Road marks in a man’s life, never again crossed. And now his impending death provided the final road stop. Something inevitable, something instinctually understood. He envied the man who’s suddenly pulverized by a car, never seeing his death coming.
His stomach burned, outside and in. He felt the lodged bullet spreading damage like a fast-acting tumor. And shock held him in its anesthetizing clutch. Just a matter of minutes, seconds, for the shock to dissipate. Until the real pain came for him, hand in hand with death.
He rolled the cop off him, twisting the knife out of his back. Winston wasn’t alone in shock. The cop’s feet kicked, his hands scratching the air. Gasping and gulping for life. Tears ran down his cheeks, a soundless mourning. Better than he deserved.
The simple act of propping up on an elbow felt like Winston’s skin ripped open, cascading his guts to the ground. The knife slipped into the cop’s throat, though, nice and easy. Before he died, the cop locked eyes with Winston, giving him a dumbfounded look, a sort of what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this look.
At least Winston accomplished something. The cop would never terrorize anyone again.
He lay back down. Above him, dimly lit webs tangled, flapping in a sudden breeze. Wind caressed his face, cooling his forehead’s sweat.
He thought of Jules and the kids, how he’d never see them again. What they’d think of him. Would they find out the truth? He didn’t know, everything rational just mere blips on his weakening radar. The trust fund he’d set up for them should be untouchable no matter the outcome. A small comfort. But he’d let them down. An ugly truth he couldn’t whitewash no matter how much paint he applied.
The gentle wind stopped. He thought he heard footsteps, soft as cotton, treading the dirt. Death coming for him at a leisurely stroll, getting paid by the hour it seemed.
Then he thought about the reason he took on his desperate rescue mission, his go-for-glory last hurrah: Rebecca and Kyra. The blood erupting from his mouth tasted like death; salty, sharp, and bitter. He let out a single chuckle, didn’t have the strength do it again. But he found the situation ridiculously ironic. Only now did he realize why he wanted to save Rebecca and her daughter. Surrogates for his family, plain and simple. And like his family, he let them down as well.
The footsteps shuffled closer. Maybe an angel preparing to whisk him to Heaven. But he knew he’d burned that bridge long ago.
Still, an angel appeared above him. An upside down head, a drifting balloon with cartoon features. Not what he expected. Thick bifocals magnified his eyes. God had stiffed this particular angel on a chin. His hair appeared greasy, thinning. An angel wearing the body of an accountant.
“Carsten.”
Carsten nervously flit his gaze about. “Keep your voice down, Harton. They’re in the other room.” His whisper came out loud. Too loud, as if Winston’s auditory skills had been amplified tenfold, better than a bat’s. “You’re dying.”
The accountant had a knack for stating the obvious. And the unhelpful. “Yeah. Listen, Carsten, find the cop’s gun. Get Rebecca … and her daughter. Take the … goddamn money. I don’t … care.” Dryness in his throat quieted his words. When he inhaled, an elephant sat on his chest. “Just … save them. Do … it for Kyra. You’re … the only …” Winston’s words simply stopped. No energy, his body’s equipment repossessed by the reaper.
Above him, Carsten blurred, features swirling in a whirlpool. When he came back into focus, only for a second, Winston saw the accountant nodding, a silly head-wagging, eyes-closed, painful-looking nod. “Fine, Harton. I’ll do it. Or at least try.”
Who’d ‘a thought the damn accountant would be my angel?
Winston shut his eyes and departed with a smile.
*
Hell, no, I’m not going into that room!
Harold had tossed Harton a bone, nothing more, fulfilling a dying man’s last wish. If only by lip service. Harton had died. What he didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. Harold chuckled, then clamped a hand over his mouth. He shot a look toward the door. Halfway expecting to see the Dandys rushing out of it. But he saw nothing. Just heard and felt the throb, throb, throbbing coming from beyond the door.
He couldn’t believe how everything had fallen into his lap. Especially after the night he’d endured. Waiting on the steps, freezing his ass off. Every time he’d heard a shout, a scream, people running above him, his heart nearly iced over. Then when old lady Dandy stopped at the door he hid behind, he thought, Game over. How in the hell she’d smelled his sodden pants was one of life’s unexplained mysteries. One he could live without knowing the answer to.
But the Dandys had moved on. Into the green-lit room. The hot woman and her daughter in tow. He’d almost left, too. Didn’t quite know why he stayed. Actually, he did. The money, of course. But, in reality, he thought the chance of reclaiming it was a long shot at best. Then he heard the scuffle. Opened the door a hair to watch it play out. Harton and the cop fighting. To the death as luck would have it. Once the proverbial smoke cleared, he risked it all, snuck over. The money trail led to and ended at Harton.
Now Harold’s heart rat-tat-tatted as he searched for the briefcase. Too damned dark. But he couldn’t give up now. On his knees, he went spelunking, combing the dirt with his fingers. Finally, he found the mother lode.
Happy days are here again.
It felt like a reunion with a long-lost friend. Not that he’d experienced many of those. But this had to be sweeter, much sweeter.
He stepped on the cop’s wrist. The gun lay at his outstretched fingertips. While the briefcase tasted like dessert, the gun would provide the cherry on top. Protection. Out of this antique and death-ridden hellhole.
At first, the gun felt like a snake in his grip; deadly, revolting to the touch. It didn’t take long for its charms to win him over, though. Harold Carsten, snake charmer.
No fond farewells, he sure as hell wouldn’t miss the place. If anything, he’d miss his unfulfilled fantasies involving Rebecca. Pity. Just not in the cards, though.
And Kyra. Poor girl didn’t deserve whatever the Dandys had in store for her. Sure, she was a snot-nosed brat. But the only brat he’d ever known, even tolerate. She’d be fine, though, he told himself. The cops were gonna bust down the doors any second.
Loaded down with treasure, he hurried toward the door, his escape hatch. One, two, three, poof, gone like a magician’s assistant.
Yet, he hesitated.
The cops were already here,
dead on the ground. Harton saw to that. This shithole burg probably didn’t have more than one cop on duty at a time.
Not his problem.
Kyra. So innocent, a full life ahead of her. One she probably wouldn’t squander. Not like he had.
Jesus, get it together. Remember the Caribbean.
For some reason, though, his mantra sounded more like, Remember the Alamo. A morbid notion, to be sure, but one that stuck to him like flypaper, the kind he could never detach from his fingers.
A scream rose from the green room. High pitched, chilling. Kyra.
Jesus Christ …
Either blasphemy or the start of a prayer. Harold couldn’t distinguish the difference. Not anymore.
Before his balls detached — as his ex used to joke about at cocktail parties — Harold walked toward the green-washed door. The closer he came, the tighter his throat constricted. His heart raced, asking, Knock-knock, who’s there?
A foolish-assed idiot, that’s who.
He didn’t give himself time to think, rethink, ponder, change his mind. Most of his life had been spent inside his head, playing these contrary games. To no discernible end.
With the gun raised, the briefcase tucked beneath his arm, he turned the knob.
*
The pulsing green light bathed the entire cavernous room in an unhealthy display of scrub blues and pine greens. A holding cell for terminal patients, but far, far worse: a graveyard.
Kyra screamed. Almost an act of violence, Rebecca slapped her palm over Kyra’s eyes, keeping her from seeing the worst.
Dear God, please don’t let Kyra have seen it.
Rebecca hoisted her daughter up, burying her face into her chest. A protective arm swathed her, shielding her from the ungodly sights. Kyra gave in willingly, shaking beneath Rebecca’s shelter.
Just beyond the door lay a rectangle of dirt, darker than the surrounding ground. Freshly overturned dirt. Next to it was another with two entwined planks of wood at the head. A grave marker. In a childish red scrawl, Jody Two bled across the horizontal timber. The line continued down the cavern, an underground cemetery. A succession of buried Jodies. Jody Three, Jody Four…
Rebecca’s stomach contracted, her chest muscles tightening. Nausea flushed through her, a fierce tidal wave. She pitched forward, coughing, dry heaving over Kyra’s head. Keeping beat with the throbbing that shook the entire room. When the empty sickness passed, she straightened. And, God, she wished she hadn’t.
Because the graves weren’t the worst sight. Not by a mile.
At the far end of the cave, past the graves, Dolores sat in a folding chair. Shifting shades of green illuminated her relaxed features. With folded hands in her lap, she looked extremely reverent. Several other chairs sat in a row, all facing the centerpiece. The blasphemous centerpiece.
A six-foot-long glass tank sat on a stand. Bubbles spewed out of a wooden box at the bottom before popping out of existence. Thick tubes of various colors draped out of the tank like dead octopus tentacles. They connected to a black, chugging machine, the source of the thumping sound. The engine — a sump pump of sorts — shook on its wooden platform, an evil, living entity. Smoke spouted from its gaskets, its manufactured snout. Behind the tank, a series of bright floodlights dimmed and brightened to the tune of the engine’s rhythm, scorching the entire room green.
Rebecca gripped Kyra tighter when she saw what rested in the tank.
A desiccated corpse. Remnants of flesh floated in the green water. A tattered dress waved like seaweed. The top of the skull was missing, only the nose and jaw left in a death grin. A wig had been attached. Black and long, drifting coal-dark shadows in the green water. Skeletal fingers waggled, a greeting from the grave. And nestled within the corpse’s other arm, cradled to its sunken chest and connected with chicken wire, rested a baby’s skeleton. Small, unformed, curled like a fetus.
Rebecca thought her stomach had nothing left to give. Her body rebelled against the idea. Dry heaves folded her over. Kyra curled up at her belly like a mirror image of the horrific tableau in the tank.
“Dear … God … my God …”
The throbbing ground down. Green light birthed, died, and began the cycle again. The color of death.
Jim stood by Rebecca, thumbs tucked under his armpits, a proud farmer surveying the fruits of his labor. His pride slipped into disappointment once he saw Rebecca’s reaction. “What’s the matter? Cat gotcher tongue?”
He draped an arm across Rebecca’s shoulder. She flinched at his touch.
Dear God, help me to keep it together. Please, God, don’t let Kyra see this …
Jim’s brow pulled down. “Come on over and sit for a spell. Let Mother tell you our story.”
The tenuous line between sanity and insanity pulled taut, ready to snap like a tightly tuned guitar string. As if Kyra felt it, she pinched Rebecca’s shoulder. An awakening, a warning not to let the tide of insanity engulf her.
Rebecca sought inner control, forcing steel into her voice. All she could manage, without breaking into screams, were tinny, one-word sentences. “Fine.”
As Jim led Rebecca to his wife, she couldn’t look at the fish tank. Her eyes flit everywhere but there. Each step closer, the green brightened. She longed for total darkness again.
“Okay, baby?” she whispered into Kyra’s ear.
Kyra said nothing. Her hair rose and fell in a nod, sweeping against Rebecca’s palm.
Dolores patted a hand on the chair next to her. The chugging machine ate whatever she attempted to say to Rebecca. One glance to her husband and she twisted the air. Jim obliged, adjusting the power on the pump. The roar diminished to a steady hum. Out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca saw dwindling bubbles, escapees climbing to oxygen.
“Now, honey, this is … I guess, you might call it our special memory room for Jody.”
“Ain’t this room a peach?” added Jim. “Back in the day, the slaves dug out the cave. Reckon they was caught before they finished their escape route properly.”
Rebecca focused on Dolores. The lesser evil in the room; maybe not. Beneath the green light, she noticed Dolores’s eye for the first time since her plunge down the stairs. A hideous blood moon, the white obscured behind red clouds. Rebecca hoped she’d get the chance to finish the job for good this time. Make it a double Dandy drop.
“If it’s … okay, Dolores, I’d … I’d rather Kyra not see this.” Usually, Kyra would rise to the challenge, a dare to peek. Not tonight.
Dolores narrowed her one good eye, the blood-filled one inert. “Well, I don’t rightly know what the bother —”
“I mean for now, at least,” Rebecca blurted. “She needs … time.”
“Ah, let Kyra rest, Mother.” Jim dropped into the next chair, his knees cracking. “She’ll come along given time. Her momma’s right.” Jim Dandy to the rescue. Bastard.
“I suppose. Anyhoo, this is our daughter.” Dolores gave a half-hearted gesture toward the corpse. Her chest swelled with a deep sigh. “Now we know our daughter — and our granddaughter — ain’t alive. We’re not off our rockers.”
“Absolutely right.” When Jim dropped a hand on Rebecca’s knee, she jerked.
“Of course not.” Rebecca’s words rang false. She just hoped the Dandys wouldn’t see through her subterfuge. Every word, every movement counted for survival.
“But, after the incident …,” continued Dolores, “… that awful day, we wanted to remember Jody. Remember her as she was.”
As a corpse? The back of Rebecca’s throat bucked, threatening another round of dry heaves. She said nothing, couldn’t if she wanted to.
“It happened so long ago … but seems like yesterday, really.” Dolores stared into the tank, green light catching the tears dripping from her good eye. The red one remained dry. “Jody’d ran away. Just seventeen at the time. Eight months later she showed up out of the blue. Like nothing had happened. ‘Cept for the telling belly bump.” Jim sniffed, cleared his throat. “A baby out of
wedlock. Can you imagine?” Dolores stared at Rebecca, clearly in her mind, the idea of a bastard baby more horrific than anything in the cellar. “She said she was leavin’ with the baby daddy. Then she’d … she’d …”
As if psychically linked, like all long-time couples, Jim took up the narrative. “Give the baby up for adoption. She knew we was against such a thing. We told her we’d raise the child as our own, wouldn’t have it no other way. And she stood right in front of me with a big ol’ grin and said she wouldn’t let us lay a hand on the child. She came back just to taunt us, enjoying every minute of it. Well … we wouldn’t have none of that, no sir. I ran for my shotgun. Course I never meant to use it. Just put the fear of her parents, of God, back into our child. But, stubborn as a mule our Jody, she went right on down the stairs. I went after her. She turned on me, clawing and screamin’. And … oh, Lord … the gun went off. An accident … a stupid accident …” Jim sunk his head, sobbing into his hands. Kyra snuck a quick peak before retreating to her shelter.
“It’s all right, Poppa. It was a terrible accident, not your fault at all.” Dolores reached behind Rebecca, stroking Jim’s shoulder. His chair quaked, his shoulders tossing. “But, the worst part? The worst part, Rebecca? You know what that was?”
Rebecca didn’t know, nor did she want to. But as a captive audience, she didn’t have much choice. She shook her head, playing at empathy, hiding her terror. She squeezed Kyra tight, so tight they were one.
“I felt the baby kick in our dead daughter’s belly. I swear to you I felt her kick.” Dolores looked lost and swept away, oblivious to her surroundings.
After a moment’s silence, a proper grieving period, Jim continued. “Growin’ up on a farm and all, I’d done delivered my fair share of foals. So … I performed an operation, spur of the moment, mind you. Tryin’ to save one life after the loss of another. But somethin’ went wrong. Terribly wrong.” He reached the hollow place people do after a good cry: emotionless and passive. His lifelessness jarred Rebecca more than his fits of rage; a matter-of-fact detailing of a macabre event that would give sane people nightmares forever. “Baby rolled out, deader than a doornail. I tried smackin’ her little behind again and again. Tryin’ to whup the life into her.” Kyra’s tremors shook Rebecca. The chair’s leg hopped, digging a circle into the dirt. “But it was no use … no use. That day, God — a dead-to-me God — took both our babies from us.”
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