Messages, a Psychological Thriller

by Chris Dougherty

  Nothing but old newspapers in this one. They fit neatly from side to side, but not end to end. It gives the stack a shuffled, haphazard look. James tries to shuffle them together, but there are too many, the weight and rough texture of the newsprint makes them resistant to tidying. He realizes he will have to pull them out and restack them, preferably with something in the back of the drawer holding them in place this time. He scans the shelves. There is a smallish cardboard box sitting on the workbench, the box a phone came in. That might do the trick, he thinks. He reaches up for the box, and as his hand closes over it, the garage is filled with a burst of white, white light. Terror washes through James, and his hands fly to cover his eyes, retinas contracting painfully. He turns to the door that leads to the house, expecting to see the man standing there. But there is no one. The door is still closed. Then James hears the rumble of thunder and realizes…it was only lightning. It’s only the storm.

  He takes a shaky breath. Takes another. He has been blinded by the sudden flash. He crouches in front of the files, very still. He closes his eyes and bright bursts bloom behind his eyelids. It makes him think of the doorway again. The black empty, the portal of fear and ecstasy. The garage slips away as he huddles there, eyes closed. It is replaced with the ROOM, the BARS, the DOORWAY. He is on his back, looking to his right, waiting, waiting. Sometimes he sleeps. He looks into the gloom above him. A mobile hangs dispiritedly, not moving. He does not know it is called a mobile, he just knows it is there, a part of what he is aware of. Sometimes it moves. Sometimes soft music comes from it. He likes when that happens.

  He turns his head again, staring at the DOORWAY, the black yawning rectangle. He knows enough to know that sooner or later, someone comes through the rectangle. He is desperately anxious for this to happen, but also…terrified for this to happen.

  His thumb is tucked securely into his mouth. It helps with the hunger, the constant want, want, want from his belly. He has eliminated, but he isn’t really aware of it yet. He will become aware if he eliminates again, and then again. Sometimes that happens, too, before someone comes in. Then his skin becomes soft, too soft, and then raw, rotting where the damp sits too long against it.

  There is another flash of lightning, and James is back in the garage. He hears thunder, still a good distance away. He is trembling. The memory of the crib is too much. The sense of hunger, abandonment is still with him. The sense of fear. Of not knowing. Not knowing what will happen next. James suddenly sees himself, huddled near the filing cabinet, arms around himself, shaking. He feels pity and then disgust.

  He takes the papers from the filing cabinet, anxious to set them to right. If he can get them ordered and stacked, this will get better. The fear, the anxiety will go away. He pins his mind to the task, laying out the papers, checking dates, rearranging. So intent is he on the task at hand that he never hears the door to the house open behind him.

  Chapter 13

  Antoinella Simonelli keeps a heavy ceramic container on her counter when she cooks. She puts scraps in there–potato peels, bits of fat she has cut from the meat, egg shells, green bean ends, strawberry stems–and then she always adds the coffee grounds. For William to put in his compost pile. He’s asked her time and again not to put the animal fat in the mix, but Antoinella thinks that’s just silly. In nature, animals die and contribute to the soil. She’s seen it on the National Geographic on the television.

  This morning, she puts in three eggshells, a scrap of stale bread, and the grounds from the coffee maker. At the table, William cuts into his omelet. This is their Monday morning routine.

  “Leave that,” he says. “I’ll take it out after I eat.”

  “I’ll take it,” she says.

  “No, I’ll do it. I want to, Antoinella,” he says. He is adamant that certain jobs are his, others hers. Antoinella doesn’t mind. It is the way she believes the world should be. But sometimes, especially since she has become so homebound, she wishes there were more she could do for him. Wishes she didn’t always seem to be putting him in the place of being the one who goes out. But she is terrified of the spaces beyond her kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Even the few stairs to the garage worry her. She feels so tottery on them.

  “Are you sure?” she says.

  He looks up from his omelet and smiles, deep creases forming around his eyes. “Of course, mi amore,” he says and touches two fingertips to an imaginary hat.

  She smiles and curtsies. She is wearing her favorite housedress, soft cotton patterned with cheerful flowers. She has flowerboxes at the front windowsills filled through the winter with daffodils and daisies–plastic ones. She likes the color, even though she had overheard her daughters-in-law laughing about them with some of the grandkids. As if there is something comical about her plastic flowers. Like so many others slights, Antoinella works to put it out of her mind.

  Now that it is May, she’ll ask William to plant real flowers. She’ll wrap the plastic ones in plastic–that is a little funny, I guess, she thinks–and put them away until next fall. Once the late pansies die off, she’ll put the fake daffodils and daisies back out. It reminds her that winter will have an end. The older you get, she has noticed, the more you need to be reminded of that fact.

  She wipes the stove, even though it is already clean, and thinks about Florida. Her niece, her sister’s oldest, had moved there years and years ago. Antoinella’s sister, Margaret, was always showing her the pictures. The letters. Well, email as everyone calls it, but Antoinella still thinks of them as letters. It is always warm in Florida, this niece says. She wants Margaret to move there. And Margaret wants Antoinella and William to move there, too.

  William brings his plate to the sink and rinses it. He sets it on the bottom of the sink, knowing that Antoinella won’t run the dishwasher today or for the rest of the week. She only uses the dishwasher on Saturday and Sunday when she has enough to fill it all at once. She hand washes the rest of the week.

  William takes the ceramic canister, thinking about the compost for the garden he has yet to turn over. It is just a small kitchen garden for Antoinella. Herbs, four kinds of tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, greens. But still, small or not, the tilling in the spring is getting to be too much. Has been for a while now, actually. Probably he will ask Archer to come and help. He has to do it soon. May is getting late. Should have been done in April, really.

  William goes through the dark laundry room to the garage door. He doesn’t turn on the laundry room light; he doesn’t need to. He knows his house inside and out.

  He opens the garage door, and the first thing he sees is the spread out newspapers. Not understanding, his immediate thought is that the wind from the thunderstorm outside has blown the recycling around. But there is no movement of air in the garage. It is dark and still. Then the lightning flashes, and William sees a form huddled near the workbench. Forgetting his age, not thinking even once about the potential danger of the situation, he calls out, “Hey!”

  The figure turns and straightens in one fluid movement that scares William badly. The form moves like an animal, full of smooth, unconscious grace and power–the power of the young.

  William reaches to his right and turns on the overhead light. It is the man from the Impala. The one he has seen several times. The one he saw just this morning.

  “What are you doing in here?” William says, his voice loud, and the guy takes a step back.

  “Uh…I uh,” James says and then nothing more.

  William looks around the floor at James’ feet. “What are you doing to my newspapers?” It seems a ridiculous thing to ask, but he can’t help himself. It is the most immediately apparent thing wrong.

  James looks down, too. “Organizing them,” he says. His voice is faint. Confused. Then he looks back up at William, open-mouthed as if surprised by his own answer.

  Christ, the guy’s crazy, William thinks. He takes a firmer grip on the heavy ceramic scrap pot curled in his left arm.

  “You best get the h
ell out of my garage,” he says.

  It is almost as though William has hit the guy with a stun gun. He steps back, and his eyes round in surprise, and his hands go up, palms toward William.

  “Ten into thirty,” the man says, voice faint. Awed. “That’s ten into thirty…”

  Christ, he’s really crazy, William thinks. Then he hears Antoinella behind him in the kitchen, her voice raised. “William? Who are you talking to?”

  “No one,” he yells to her, not turning around. He turns to pull the door closed behind him and then stumbles down the three wooden stairs and into the garage, still clasping the ceramic jar.

  The man comes forward, arms out, almost as if to catch him. The outstretched hands scare William badly, and he raises the ceramic jar and brings it down hard against the man’s head. The man’s scalp splits above his eyebrow, and a torrent of blood cascades down his face. He drops to his knees, shocked, and lays three fingers on the cut. His fingers come away slicked with blood, and he stares at them and then looks back up at William.

  William stands with the jar over his head, breathing hard, ready to strike again. The eggshells and coffee grounds are scattered across the floor and dribble down onto his shoulders. “Stay back,” he says. His voice is shaking. Ridiculously, part of him wants to help this man. Get a bandage for the cut. Call Antoinella to help him. But then the man falls forward, and William thinks he is lunging toward him, and reflexively, William brings the crock down again, this time connecting with the side of the guy’s skull.

  James falls onto his chest, his head ringing, ringing a headache pulsing into horrid life. He feels nauseous and dizzy. He has to put a stop to this. He can’t have come all this way, done all the work, to have it end like this.

  He heaves himself to his knees, hand going to the wall to steady himself, and it happens on the handle of the shovel William and Arch had used to right the Simonelli’s mailbox. He yanks it forward as he stands and swings it across at his attacker. The shovel connects with William’s arm, causing him to drop the ceramic pot, and it crashes onto the garage floor, breaking apart. The rest of the coffee grounds fly out and lay like a Rorschach on the gray cement.

  William grabs his arm and stumbles right, pain shooting up his shoulder. He’s sure his arm has been broken. He stumbles toward the workbench, thinking dazedly of the hammer on the pegboard. If he can get the hammer, maybe he can…

  James sees William coming for him, undeterred by the blow from the shovel, and he closes his eyes, terror shooting through his body, and swings the shovel with all his might. It connects, and the force makes it feel as though his arms are being ripped from their sockets. The dense, wooden handle vibrates in his hands, and he drops the shovel, opening his eyes.

  William is lying before him, eyes open, hands opening and closing near his shoulders. The shovel blade has severed his neck, cutting it nearly in half. James can see a flash of bone, the spine, and then a gout of blood obscures everything. James jumps back, mouth open in horror. What happened here? He wonders. What happened? How did I…

  He starts forward, thinking there must be a way to help the old guy, set this right. His stomach has knotted and panic ices his thoughts. Maybe the cut isn’t as bad as it looked at first, James thinks. He reaches a shaking hand toward William, unaware that he is talking.

  “S’okay, don’t worry, it’s probably not that bad, don’t worry, I’ll get it fixed, I can fix it, I can fix it…”

  The old man’s eyes have glazed, and he is no longer looking at James, he is no longer looking at anything. James shakes his head. A small laugh leaks from between his grimacing lips. Not possible, he thinks, oh no, not possible. He sees the newspapers spread out under and around the old man, and then he blinks and sees himself from the perspective of the stairs leading to the house. Sees the blood, oh god, all the blood, sees his own grimacing face, hears the odd, choked laugh, the old man’s head, almost separated from his body, then he blinks, and he is himself again.

  He hears a soft sigh behind him and then a laundry sack tumble and a thick, muffled thud. Like a watermelon dropped from your arms, cracking open wetly on the sidewalk.

  He turns, and there is an old lady at the bottom of the stairs. Colorful housecoat beginning to soak up the blood from the split in her skull. She had fainted and fallen down the stairs into the garage.

  Her slippered feet are still on the middle stair. They twitch violently, and one slipper falls off her foot and to the side of the steps. James crawls cautiously forward. He hears a voice. He’s not sure if the voice is outside or inside his own head.

  He crawls another foot to the left and now can see her face. She is on her stomach, head twisted to the side. Her face is flattened on the side where it has connected with the concrete floor. Her lip is split. Her skull has cracked open like an egg. A tremendous amount of blood surrounds her. Her lips are moving, and her eye, the eye James can see, is open.

  He crawls closer, just close enough to be out of the tide-line of her blood. He leans toward her in a girl’s push-up, knees on the floor, arms shaking.

  “I’ll take it…” she says. It is barely audible. More of a breath threaded with sound. “I’ll take it…” She hitches one more breath, then one more, “I’ll take it,” then no more. Her eye remains open and fixed. Urine mixes with the blood as her bladder lets go.

  James gasps and pushes himself back onto his knees. Nine letters divided by three syllables. “I’ll take it,” he says. “I’ll take it.” What does it mean?

  As he puzzles out this next part of the message, he relaxes. He reaches up and scratches absently at his forehead where the blood is just starting to dry. Obviously, he has to take something from here, but what? He looks around, his eyes skating over the two bodies. He is no longer concerned with their deaths.

  He realizes it is all part of the plan.

  He doesn’t know why he keeps having doubts.

  It’s silly.

  Chapter 14

  Lacey wakes when she hears James in the shower. She looks at the bedside clock: eleven a.m. The room is dim thanks to the black-out shades James had installed on the windows when he moved in. She pushes the covers back, and LuLu, who’d been curled behind her knees, squeaks out a very un-cat-like protest.

  “Sorry, Looney,” Lacey says, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her voice is rough. She rubs her eyes and tries to think through her mini hangover. She’d had four glasses of wine last night; not enough to put her in throw-up mode, but certainly enough to feel scrambled. Muzzy headed.

  She tunes in again to the sound of the shower and then checks the clock. She saw it right the first time; it’s just past eleven. Why is James still here at this time on a Monday? Then she remembers; he had quit his job last week. Strong white light burns a line down the quarter inch of open bathroom door. A wisp of steam curls out. LuLu leaps to the floor, goes to the door, and paws it open a few inches, enough to slide herself through.

  Lacey stands, and a small wave of nausea burns through her stomach. A warning shot over the bow, James always calls it. She stands still for a minute, eyes closed, letting her stomach settle. Then she pulls her T-shirt over her head and takes her panties off and throws them in the corner to the hamper. She’ll get in the shower with him. The hot water will help to clear the hangover from her head, and she loves showering with James.

  She pushes the door open, and the room is dense with steam. It’s unusual for James; he doesn’t normally take such a hot shower and certainly never one of duration–too wasteful. The only time he dallies is when they are in together, but sometimes she’s not sure if it’s because he enjoys making love in the shower so much as he appreciates the instant clean up.

  She sees him, opaque in the shower stall, and then her eyes drop to LuLu. She is sitting in the middle of James’ discarded shirt. At first, Lacey thinks that the cat has hurt herself, that the blood on the shirt has come from her. Her next realization is that the blood is already dry, mostly dry, and is hardening to a dark m
aroon, almost brown. The muzzy feeling clears her head all at once, and she realizes that James must have hurt himself. Somehow.

  “James!” she says. “Are you okay?”

  She pulls the shower door open, and he turns toward her, startled. For a split second, she thinks it is a stranger in the shower, not James at all, and she takes a sharp step back. There is a large gash above his eye, the skin around it nearly black with trauma all the way to his temple. The edges of the cut are ragged, chopped looking. His eyelid is a swollen, purply-green. There is a large clot of dried blood in his ear and another below his jawline. As she watches, fresh blood trickles from his forehead. She feels all the color drain from her face, and last night’s wine rises through her throat as though strong hands have squeezed it out of her stomach. She turns and drops to her knees, lifting the toilet seat, and vomits. She heaves two more times, diaphragm contracting violently, and then a wet, hot hand is on her shoulder.

  She tries to pull away, but another contraction of her diaphragm forces her to heave. This time it’s just a yellow dribble of bile. The hand tightens on her shoulder.

  “Lace?”

  It is his voice that sets him in her mind. Of course this is James, she thinks. She tries to turn to him, and her diaphragm contracts, not as viciously this time, and then her midsection relaxes. She thinks she has finished throwing up. For now.

  She leans back against the wall across from the commode and tilts her head back. She opens her eyes and looks at James. The trauma is still terrible to look at, but now she sees him under the horror of his injuries. His eyes are dark with concern; his forehead contracted in worry.

  “You okay, Lacey?”

  “Me? Jesus god James, what happened to you? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Must look worse than it feels.” He smiles, and it causes the gash on his forehead to open again, leaking more blood. His swollen eyelid looks like a squeezed purple grape, shiny from the pressure within. About to pop.