Messages, a Psychological Thriller

  Lacey’s stomach turns over, but she swallows hard and ignores it, reaching a shaky hand to James’ face.

  “James,” she says, “we have to get you to the hospital. This is really bad. You need stitches. You might have a concussion.” Her voice is soft, scared. “You look like you were hit by a car. Honey, what happened?”

  “It’s okay, I’m okay, really,” he says, taking her hand. He stands and pulls her up with him. His strength reassures her. A little. He takes her short, cotton robe from the hook behind the door and hands it to her. He turns to the mirror, his expression grim. His fingertips gently palpate the area around the gash. “It does look bad, but it doesn’t really hurt, or at least, not too much. I took a few aspirin when I got in. They helped.” His eyes meet hers in the mirror as she draws the robe around herself. He smiles again, a small half grin. “You don’t look too healthy yourself, Lace. You need some aspirin, too?”

  She can’t take her eyes from his face. “James, get dressed. I’m going to take you to the hospital. You need stitches. A doctor has to look at that, I mean, even your eye, your poor eye.” Tears of empathy gather at the inside corners of her eyes, stinging. “Please, honey, you have to…”

  “It’s okay, I promise,” he says. “I barely feel it.” He bends to turn the shower back on. “Pop in here with me. It will help your hangover.” He puts his hand under the stream of water, testing it. With his back turned, everything seems fine, perfectly normal. His voice is even, the things he’s saying aren’t confused or muddled, and he’s moving well. She starts to relax, but then he turns to face her, and adrenalin pumps through her system again.

  He puts one foot in the shower and raises his hand to her, palm up. Enticing. “Join me?” he says. He smiles, and the gash releases another pulse of blood from the edge nearest his temple. It follows the course already laid down by the dried blood, going toward his ear. Her stomach tightens.

  “No, that’s okay,” she says. She realizes her voice is faint, barely audible, and she clears her throat. “I’m going to make us something to eat. Toast will settle my stomach. You just…finish up in here and…do you want eggs? Or a sandwich? Maybe some soup?” With each suggestion, she takes a step backward toward the door. She stumbles over LuLu, who is still sitting on the bloodied shirt, and the cat leaps away and hurries out the door.

  “Careful,” James says, getting into the shower. “Sandwich is fine, or soup, whatever. Whatever you feel like making.” He pulls the door closed. She stands a moment longer, watching his blurred silhouette. Should she call an ambulance anyway? Force him to go to the hospital? He’d get mad, but…

  At the thought of his anger–which is not vicious or at all violent, just coldly, numbly disapproving–she wavers. He knows better than her how he’s feeling, she thinks. Now that he is out of her sight, it is easier to dissemble; her mind and body not reacting to the visual stimulus of his injuries.

  “If you don’t leave, I’m going to be forced to drag you in here with me,” James says.

  She jumps at his voice, the thought of getting in the shower with him–that gash softening in the heat, opening up…her stomach rolls, and she turns and stumbles through the door into the bedroom. She pulls the bathroom door closed behind her and leans against it, drawing the much cooler air of the bedroom deep into her lungs. Then she begins to shiver.

  Once she leaves, James stands very still under the stream, listening. Breath held, he waits until he hears her in the kitchen, the rattle of a pan being pulled from the cupboard. Then he huffs out the pent-up breath and begins to shake in a delayed reaction. He had been terrified she’d insist on an ambulance or at the very least a trip to the doctor.

  The pain is immense. Every beat of his heart seems to send a new pulse of ache through his entire nervous system. Everything hurts: his arms, his back, his face, and of course, the worst is his head. Not just because of the cut across his forehead, that feels bad enough, but because of the headache. It is relentless. Nauseating. He had used every ounce of self-control when Lacey had been puking not to puke himself.

  He leans his head into the stream, hands planted on the tile. He has to grit his teeth together to keep from crying out when the stinging spray hits his forehead. Punishing himself with the pain. The tears in his eyes are washed away even as they leak from beneath his squeezed eyelids, and he does not realize he is crying.

  After the old lady had whispered her final message to him…I’ll take it…James stood, hands on hips, looking around the garage. His eyes bounced between the man’s body and the workbench; the woman’s body and the door to the house.

  I killed them, he thought, but then his mind had clamped down, turning his eyes away from the bodies. He is supposed to take something with him. He is supposed to take it. That was the message.

  His eyes bounced from the neat row of screwdrivers to the man’s body, from the window overlooking the yard back to the woman’s body. The window had blue chintz curtains. He knows she had put them there. To try and make the garage look cheerier. Because she loved her husband. He shakes his head to clear it. His eyes bounced back to the old man’s body.

  Oh god, I killed them, he thought, tears stinging his eyes, mind scurrying, trying to think of a way to take it back, take it back…take it…she had said that, his mind soothed, it was the message. This is meant, it’s all part of it, you’re so close now…

  He felt it. That he was close. That it was all falling into place.

  And he stepped forward. Ignoring the bodies. And began his search in earnest.

  Chapter 15

  Arch skips his last class on Monday (gym, what the fuck, that shit’s for jocks, anyway) and gets a ride home with Stang. Arch is jealous of Stang’s car even though it’s just a beat the hell up Ford Escort his mom gave him when she got her new car. Doesn’t matter that the damn thing is baby blue, spews black smoke, and needs a quart of oil a week…it’s a car, man! And Arch doesn’t own a car.

  “Hey, man,” Stang says, “you gotta give me some money for gas. I cart your ass home, like, three times a week.” Stang is a mellow dude, so what he’s saying doesn’t sting.

  Arch nods, looking out the passenger window, elbow cocked on the rim of the door. It’s not hot yet, not even warm, but after that thunderstorm this morning, the air smells clean. Washed. Not that he would tell Stang he thought so.

  He’ll have to hit up his mom for more cash. They give him twenty a week for an allowance, but twenty a week maybe bought you a movie and a few slices at Brother’s. He didn’t know if his parents were completely out of touch or if they were just that poor. He’s thought about getting a job, but Burger King and Office Max are the only things really close enough to walk to. Unless he went to work at Brother’s. Or the nail salon.

  Arch snorts a laugh and sits up straighter.

  “What’s funny?” Stang asks.

  “Nothing. Just thinking I need to get a job. Maybe I could go to work at Perfect Ten.”

  Stang lets out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, man. You could, like, help with the hand jobs. At least you’d be good at it. All the practice you’ve had chokin’ your chicken.”

  They both get to laughing. Arch likes Stang a lot better when Joe isn’t around. Stang is almost normal when it’s just the two of them. Joe is Stang’s cousin, and they’ve both lived on Arch’s street since they were babies. Their moms were sisters or something. Or maybe their dads were brothers…Arch can’t remember. Joe is a fucking loser; he knows that much for sure.

  They pull up in front of Arch’s house. Arch opens the door and puts a foot out. “I’ll have to get some cash from my folks. Hit me up tomorrow?”

  Stang nods.

  Arch exits the car, and he is almost to the driveway when Stang calls out from behind him, “Tell them it will keep you from sucking dick!”

  Arch bursts into fresh laughter and gives Stang the finger as he drives away.

  The Taurus is in the road. Usually that means his mom is home and Henry is not. Arch hopes
Henry isn’t here. He’s in too good a mood to deal with that guy’s crap.

  He unlocks the porch door and enters to sit on the old wicker couch. He takes his boots off. His mom would kill him if he wore his boots in the house, but Henry never takes his off and she doesn’t say shit about it. He doesn’t think she’s scared of Henry; it’s more like she feels sorry for him or something. Like the guy’s still a baby with no fucking dad.

  He turns and looks out the back window to the Simonellis’, hoping to see Mr. Simonelli sitting out, reading his paper. He’s supposed to help Mr. Simonelli replace some of the boards on the deck and help build a new container garden for Mrs. Simonelli’s tomatoes or something. Maybe when Mr. Simonelli offers to pay him, he’ll accept this time.

  But even thinking that, he knows he won’t–he can’t take the Simonelli’s money.

  “Hey, pussy!”

  Arch jumps and turns around fast, getting his hands up just in time to block the slap Henry is directing at this head. He must have seen him coming up the walk, snuck out here. The douche.

  “Hey, Henry,” Arch says, resignation dulling his voice. “What’s up?”

  Henry stands before him, smirking. He’s still wearing his coverall from work. He works at a combination oil change, cash wash. Henry does the oil changes, mostly. He hates being on drying duty and only does it when none of the Mexicans show up. Mostly they show, but every now and again, you know that INS has been around, sweeping ’em up.

  Henry looks at Arch’s slumped shoulders, his skinny jeans and floppy black hair. He shakes his head. “You look like a real punk, you know that?”

  Arch colors and lowers his head. Henry feels a small swell of shame. He remembers back to when Arch was a little kid. Little snot nose, but still…kinda cute and all. Said funny things. Once, when he must have been around four and Henry was sixteen, they’d been crammed around the kitchen table, eating dinner, when baby Arch said that he was afraid of a monster in his closet. Chuck, his shit dad, had told him to grow the fuck up, and for the rest of the meal Arch had pushed his food around on his plate, not eating. Unable to eat. Henry knew the feeling, and he had felt bad for the kid.

  Arch’s bedroom was upstairs, across the hall from Henry’s. Mary Ellen and Chuck’s room was downstairs. Later on, after Henry had moved out, they’d taken his room for themselves and made the downstairs bedroom an office for Chuck. That cracked Henry up. An office for that ape! Guy uses his index fingers to poke around the computer keyboard. Watches his fingers poke, poke, poke and squints up at the screen every third of fourth poke to check his progress. Fucking moron.

  When Henry had gone to his own bedroom that night, he’d heard crying from Arch’s room across the hall. Nothing major, not bawling or anything, just big sniffs. Little mews of unhappiness. He turned on the light, and the kid was sitting in the middle of his bed, shivering, clutching his blanket up to his shoulders. Big tears stood at the rims of his eyes, refracting the light from overhead. His chin quivered.

  “Hi, Henry,” he said. Trying not to cry. Trying to be a big boy. He dropped the blanket to his lap, and Henry saw that the kid was wearing a pair of Henry’s old, worn out Star Wars pajamas.

  “Hey, punk,” Henry said and sat on the edge of the bed. “Nice pjs.”

  Arch looked at himself and then back up at Henry. “Mommy said these were yours. I love them.” He grinned at Henry, tears disappearing, his front teeth missing. He looked so goofy, so happy just to have some attention.

  “Yup, they used to be mine. Back when I was a little punk like you.”

  Arch was happy that Henry was being nice, not mean. He was never sure which way Henry was going to be, but it was mostly mean. He knew that Henry didn’t like their dad, but he also knew that their dad didn’t like Henry, and that made Henry sad and then mad. But Mommy didn’t seem to know. Arch wondered how that could be.

  “Matter of fact, this used to be my room. That used to be my closet.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, deliberately not looking at the closet. “I’ll tell you a secret about it, okay? But you can’t tell anybody else or…” he leaned closer to Arch and whispered harshly…“or it might come back.”

  Arch’s eyes went round, and Henry used all his willpower to suppress a grin. Little dude really was pretty cute.

  “There was a monster in there. It lived in there a long time, before we even lived here. I heard the guy that used to live next door talking about it, way back when I was little. He said it used to come out of the closet at night and look for little kids to eat.” Henry searched his mind, trying to remember fairy tales from when he was a kid. “It was a Troll, and it…”

  “What’s a Troll?” Arch whispered. He had pulled the blanket back up to chest height.

  “Uh…it’s like a little fat man, but hard fat, and it has a beard and a little sword and hair on its feet and shit…”

  “Like Daddy!” Arch said, and again, Henry used all his might to stifle a laugh.

  “Yeah, but even grosser, and they have crubbled up toes, and they never wear shoes.” Now Henry thought he was getting this confused with that Lord of the Rings movie he saw, but fuck it, it was going pretty good. “They wait in the closet until you’re asleep, then they pounce. Especially if you’ve been bad and shit,” he added, remembering that there is always a moral.

  Arch was shaking his head, and the tears were starting again. “Henry, I’m scared of that Troll guy. He’s in there, and he’s gonna…”

  “No, see, that’s the thing, Arch…I got rid of him.”

  Arch’s eyes were bigger than ever, like he couldn’t contain his astonishment. Like it might burst right out of him. “You did? How did you?”

  “Well, I tricked him, okay? I put pillows under my covers to make it look like I was in there. Then I said, ‘Goodnight, Mom!’ and then I turned off the light. I tiptoed across to the corner and I waited…”

  “Henry, I’m too scared,” Arch said, and now tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  “Well, listen, I’m getting to the good part…when I caught him and threw him out the window!”

  Arch looked over Henry’s shoulder to the closet. “You threw him out the window?”

  Henry nodded. “Hey, you know how tough I am, right?”

  Arch nodded emphatically. He didn’t know anyone tougher than Henry. In fact, he was pretty scared of Henry himself.

  Henry read the fear on Arch’s face and realized the kid was afraid of him. Well, he already knew that, kinda. But it was different seeing the kid trying not to be scared of him, hoping he can help with something that scared him even more. It kind of made him feel like shit.

  “Yeah, look, each house has one Troll, it’s like, a rule or something, okay?”

  Arch nodded.

  “Okay, so the Troll we had, I chucked his ass out the window, so…no more Troll, okay?”

  Arch nodded. He believed Henry wholeheartedly about the one Troll per house and Henry kicking it’s ass out the window. Big tears of relief were rolling down his cheeks when his dad looked in.

  “What the fuck are you doing to him?” Chuck asked. His voice was loud and slurry. Henry could smell the beer from six feet away.

  “Nothing! I was telling him a fucking story, okay?” Henry was on his feet, fists clenched at his sides. Sick of this. Sick of being accused of shit.

  “A story, huh? That sounds like a story to me.” Chuck moved the rest of the way into the bedroom. It wasn’t a big room, and with the two of them standing face to face, it was crowded, claustrophobic. Arch sat frozen on the bed, the Troll forgotten; his fear of the closet forgotten. Here is where real fear is. Between these two volatile people, squared off against each other.

  “Yeah, your pussy little girl here is scared of her own closet,” Henry said. He had an instant of regret that Arch had to hear this, but it was replaced with satisfaction when he saw Chuck’s face darken.

  “You little fuck,” Chuck said, “are you calling my boy a girl? You? You’re the fucking pu
ssy around here!”

  “Chuck?” Mary Ellen called from the bottom of the stairs. “What’s going on?”

  Without taking his eyes from Henry, Chuck said, “Nothing! Except your girl here is getting her period!”

  “Fuck you!” Henry said.

  “Fuck yourself!” Chuck said in return. “And watch your fucking mouth around my son.”

  Henry’s closed fist finally left his side, and though he was full of rage, he had never tried to hit Chuck before, and the punch was tentative. Chuck blocked it easily, and a grin of grim satisfaction spread across his meaty features. “Want to fight, pussy? That what you want?”

  Henry felt fear tighten his stomach and then his balls. How did it always come to this? Over that little shit, Arch…Chuck’s real kid. Henry fucking hated that little brat.

  Chuck bunched his big hand into a fist and grabbed Henry’s shirtfront with the other. He was still grinning, but it was more a grimace. Rage and anticipation for what he was about to do darken his face even more, it was almost purple now. He was excited to put this punk in his place. Show him who’s in charge around here.

  Henry’s arms were coming up, crossing over his head, and Chuck pulled his arm back. A split second before he swung, Mary Ellen yells from behind him.

  “Chuck, no! Don’t you hit my baby!” Then she was on him, holding his arm, pulling him backward. Henry stepped back, and his knees connected with Arch’s bed, and he sat down hard, nearly falling. He looked at Arch, and Arch was crying in earnest now. Henry felt a mounting disgust. And rage.

  The rage felt good.

  “The fuck are you crying about, you little fuck?” he screamed directly into Arch’s face.

  Arch jerked back in shock, his head connecting with his headboard, hard. Chuck shoved Mary Ellen back and pushed Henry viciously aside, tumbling him over the end of the bed. Arch was stunned, the pain in his head immense, the tears stopped from the shock. Mary Ellen screamed again, her eyes darting between both ‘babies’, and then she made a decision and started toward Henry–Chuck was with Arch, after all, he was taking care of Arch, she needed to see if Henry is okay–when there was a harsh knock on the front door.