Soon more hurried footsteps came out of the dark. Wayne wondered how many of them were out there. Ten? Twenty? Sixty? Multiple sets of claws pulled him from the vehicle and tossed his limp body to the pavement face down. His eye taking in the spinning street lamps and deserted rooftop ledges on his way back to Earth. More movement skidded along the corners of his sight. Then, the whispering stopped. Only one set of feet could be heard, then nothing.
“Yo, he’s a fuckin’ cop?!” one of them suddenly gasped not so quietly to the others. They’d found the gold badge Wayne kept in his wallet and mistaken it for the real thing. He couldn't see them—only the skin of the road against his nose—but he knew that one of the figures standing over him was pointing the loaded .38 at his head.
Without warning a barrage of boots and fists came to the dead husk of Wayne’s torso, groin, and legs. Distantly he heard his femur snap under the pressure of the centipede’s heavy boot stomps, his ribs crack and spleen burst. The kicking and punching went on for minutes in eerie silence. Wayne wondered what happened to the guy with the hammer.
When the beating stopped, his body was flipped over like a meat patty. As his periscope vision adjusted, the outline of his attackers against the halo of streetlights came into focus.
Standing over him circling his chewed up remains like hungry vultures, were children.
Ages ranging from twelve to maybe seventeen, all dressed in black hooded sweatshirts with crescent red pyramids printed on the front. Like shrunken giants they loomed against the stars, waiting for Wayne to move or speak. When he did neither, they talked to each other from across the circle.
“What we gonna do with the pig?” one kid with cheeks as pale as the moon asked another with a scar on his hairless cleft chin. “You saw all that shit he had in the trunk. He’s probably one of the pigs that beat a confession out of Ty. Sick fuck.” This last line was accented by a swift kick to Wayne’s temple. His cheek slapped the road, but the rubber resistance of his neck leveled his sight back on the sky. Saved by the numbness of paralysis, the blow had no effect on his mental state. Or so he thought until his mouth and nose began to gurgle and puke thick globs of mucus and blood.
The crowd’s quiet speculation hushed as a tall statue-esc figure joined the circle. His size alone told Wayne he was the ringleader. The others were merely foot soldiers. Every hooded miniature waited as the new face got to one knee beside Wayne to get a closer look. The new boy’s face gaunt, his skin the color of soot. He had two teardrops inked under the corner of each eye, both black from the pupil outward. It was the face Wayne hoped he’d never see outside of a mirror. The face of a heartless killer.
“Finish ‘em.”
The familiar sound of Wayne’s gun being cocked was heard faintly behind the rip and roar of his pounding temples, working overtime sending fuel to the broken machinery of his body. The tears in his good eye cleared long enough to look longingly up into the night sky. Suddenly he remembered it all. He remembered the dream that brought him here.
And, as in that dream, he half expected to see himself up there, past the clouds, watching this Wayne die. Judging all his poor decisions with a detached smile that stretched the span of the equator. More than anything, though, he expected to finally see Them. True forms revealed. Laughing, crying, screaming for him from the stars as they rubbed their swollen bellies with long spikey arms and feelers.
What if we all end up there? the past echoed to him through the thawing gutters. What if we all die and become one of Them?
Questions drifted away like dead fish along the ocean of blood filling inside his skull. Their tiny slit mouths barked out these questions to a black sky, their gelatinous voices slowly fading away with the roll of the waves.
Wayne watched the fish with his mind's eye from a single raft made of skin and bone; a long, gleamy vessel pieced from the parts of all his victims. He watched the scaly corpses from the smooth deck of his ship, watched them float out to meet the horizon. Past the black neon sun where they’d follow everything else and plunge into the abyss.
Once they dissolved out of sight past the curled waves and hidden rocks, he tried hard to remember what those questions had been.
Nothing came.
As Wayne struggled to remember, the horizon started to creep its way higher against the shadow of the electric sunset. The waves got bigger too, smashing and pounding away at the sides of Wayne’s ship. The bone slick with sea water, Wayne was helpless. He grabbed the mast and unraveled the sail. A grand tapestry of young cloth.
But, it was too late.
At that very moment the sail of skin and hair flapped open, an eighty-foot wave swallowed them whole. Wayne found himself sinking in a sea of rust, looking up at the silver-blue light hanging on the alien skyline just above the water. He kicked his arms and legs. The water moved with him, pushing back against his every movement. Wayne sank, and sank, until finally, he felt stones press against his feet. Smooth, polished stones. He looked out and saw the ocean floor was lined with nothing but. For miles.
Unable to bend at the waist against the pull of the currents, he felt along the ground with his feet, touching their egg-like smoothness until finally coming across a rough stone. An imperfect vessel. He didn’t know how or why he needed that stone, but he pinched the cracked rock between his toes so it wouldn't float away under the ever-rising pull.
If I can just grab it somehow, I could channel myself out of here, he echoed in his mind. Turns out the new occupants of Wayne’s head knew a few tricks of their own. Through the swirling waters, he fought with unmatched veracity to retrieve the stone before it was too late.
As he bent forward, foot raised halfway to meet his hands, the roar of his snub nose .38 exploded from somewhere above the tide. The invisible bullet that tore through the waters, down to where he stood at the bottom, sent shockwaves so powerful that the ocean shuddered and split in two.
Wayne’s soul, still resting on the ocean floor and on the oil-stained roadway in Maine, went limp; an unusable piece in the cosmic game of chess: a broken pawn. No fight left to give, the current picked him up and swept his corpse along into nowhere.
Defragment. Recode. Replace.
The new voice whistled up from the deep cracks in the cobbled ocean floor. Wayne took the sign and let the dice roll. Nothing he could do now but see what lie ahead. He watched the last few bubbles of air leak through his lips and climb to the sky.
Below, the abyss also waited. It had nothing but time to wait. And eat.
Chapter 15
April 13, 2006
4:16 am
Hampden, Maine
For the second time that morning, the buzzing and clanking of a telephone echoed throughout the Bennett home. Clawing at her eye mask, Sharon lazily rolled over and reached for her cellphone on the bedside table.
If it's Rebecca from accounting calling me about the mileage forms again, I'm gonna rip that bitch's tits off—
The thought was cancelled when her hand only touched polished mahogany.
Suddenly, Sharon remembered. Her cellphone was sitting on her desk at the office.
Now completely awake, she threw the blankets off and jumped out of bed. It was a well-known fact in the Bennett house that the landline was generally used for family emergencies. Relatives would always call, most times in the middle of the night, and report the news of the dead or dying.
Who is it this time? Aunt Bev? Uncle Steve? Mom? Dad? They were all on their way out the door, each one with their own chart of ailments.
Except this time, something inside Sharon said this wasn't one of those calls. She hadn't felt right at all since Wayne left last night. No matter what she did, she couldn't shake the idea that something was wrong. Sharon noticed the harmonic shift early on, but ignored it.
What if Wayne really is having an affair? Surely if you notice the wrinkles and lines, everyone else does too. Especially Wayne. Your SECOND husband.
Sharon thought maybe Wayne was stuck between se
cret feelings of disgust and embarrassment. That would explain his behavior over the last couple of weeks. His evasiveness. It was possible he had found someone better. Someone younger. What Sharon now feared the most was that her reluctance to notice the change in her husband had cost her everything.
You're just looking for a reason to be mad at Wayne for being bored with you. It's your fault, not his. You should’ve moisturized, worked out and dieted harder. Oh well, as they say, “Use it, or lose it.” And besides, you're probably just self-projecting yourself onto the whole thing.
I'm not self-projecting, Sharon told the negative pulse in her head. There's something off about him lately. I’m his wife. I can tell.
Phone still blaring downstairs, Sharon ran blindly through the still darkened hallway to the staircase. She glided down the steps, nearly tripping over her own feet on the living room rug in her rush to get to the kitchen. The phone was still ringing when she stumbled into the room.
“Hello?” she answered, taking quick shallow breaths under the palm of her hand so the person on the other end wouldn’t hear.
A man's voice, stern and deep, said, “Ah, yes. Is this–” Sharon heard the feathering of papers on the other end, “–Ms. King; Sharon King?”
“Mrs. Sharon King, yes,” she corrected. The voice held no significance to her. Not a family member. It had the flat, emotionless tone of a cop or high school principal. This strengthened her worry.
“Right… Ms. King, this is Officer Adams of the Hampden Police Department. I'm sorry to wake you, but we’re going to need you to come down to the station. There’s been a–”
“Why? What happened?” Sharon interjected. “Is there something wrong?”
Torturing Sharon, a muffled voice, secondary to the call, addressed the cop on the other end. “Ms. King, I'm going to have to ask you to wait on hold for a second.” Before Sharon could argue, the sound of thin jazz music filled her ear.
Ten minutes went by, and just as she was about to hang up and drive down there to get answers in person, the jazz stopped.
“Ms. King,” an even deeper, manlier voice said, “this is Lieutenant Bushwell of the Maine State Police. I’ve gone ahead and sent a squad car to come get you at your home. We need to disc–”
“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” Sharon growled. She was no good in the A.M. if she didn’t have her morning cup of coffee and bagel with low fat cream cheese spread. Without it, she risked going into full diva mode. Jade at work could account for that. Sharon’s absent left hand rubbed at her forehead. She sighed, “I'm sorry, but can someone please just tell me what's going on?”
“You will be briefed on the situations once you arrive at the–”
“Situations? As in, plural??” The bubbling pot of worry was starting to boil over in her head. She could feel the waters scalding the cold skin of her bare feet from the inside.
“Yes, Ms. King, but I really think we should discuss this in—”
Sharon broke.
“For the last fuckin time, it's MISSIS King. Not MISS. MISS-IS. I haven’t been a lil miss anything in over ten years! You got that Lieutenant Tightass!? Or do you want to pass the phone to one of your little butt-boys in blue over there and see if third time's the charm?!”
Once the venom was out, Sharon eased back onto her heels. Apprehensively, she waited for what would come of her little outburst.
The voice on the other end was silent for a few moments, then said somberly, “Well, actually, Ms. King, that's one of the reasons we need to talk...”
***
A police car was at Sharon's door within fifteen minutes after she got off the phone with the lieutenant. With only enough time to change out of her pajamas and brush her hair, Sharon held herself together the best she could. When she asked the cop that came to drive her down to the station why she was being picked up, he responded flatly with, “Because we have your car, ma'am.”
“My car? My car should be parked in the garage…”
And, for the first time that night since her fight with Wayne, Sharon remembered Ashley.
A picture started to form:
Sharon stepping down a flimsy wooden staircase. A cool, dark basement glows in a ghoulish grey light at the bottom. The stench of formaldehyde hangs on every cobweb and jar. Led down through a row of steel tables covered in white sheets, Sharon knows it can be only one of two people. A single light hangs low over a solitary table in the corner. The crisp whiteness of the sheet; fuzzy under the naked light. An ugly man in a green rubber smock steps forward from the shadows and folds back the sheet.
There, twisted and torn, is Ashley.
Sitting in the back of that squad car, Sharon was convinced she was about to live every mother’s worst nightmare.
When she arrived at the station, she ran into the front lobby and scanned the chairs for her daughter. The room was empty except for herself and two officers behind a glass cube in the far wall. About to collapse right there on the lobby floor, Sharon spun in circles, looking at every inch of the room for Ashley. No one. Just her. She was nearly in hysterics when a loud buzzer went off on the other side of the room. A big metal door to her left swung open.
Led by two cops were Ashley and Kieffer.
At the sight, Sharon flung herself at Ashley, bearhugging her with everything she had. The tears had finally won. They cried quietly in each other’s arms.
Ashley weakly hugged her back. “Mom, I – please stop. I can't breathe.”
Sharon pried herself away long enough to wipe her daughter’s cheeks. Collecting herself, she confronted the two cops. “Can someone fill me in now on some details? I don't care who spills it.”
The two officers glanced at each other uncertainly, and just as one of them raised his head to speak, Ashley blurted out, “I snuck out and took your car to go see Kieffer. We got bored driving around town, so we took the interstate–”
“You did what?!” Sharon fumed, tears evaporating instantly. The relief she found in seeing her daughter alive was burned up in a flash like gunpowder.
“I'm sorry,” Ashley pleaded, knowing how crazy her mom got when she was pissed. “I won't do it again. I swear.”
“I bet you won't. You're lucky I don't let these guys lock you in a cell for the night. See what sneaking out and stealing will get'cha.”
Sharon turned from Ashley to Kieffer, ready to dish out a little bit of motherly wisdom to him also. Since entering the room, he had been completely silent, almost translucent. Pale face just as sad and guilty as Ashley's, Kieffer refused to make eye contact with anyone for more than two seconds at a time. He was hiding something. A mother knew.
“Since this is Ashley's first offense,” one of the standing officers butted in, “we’re going to give her a warning. She turns sixteen next month, we don't want to mess up her chances of getting a license.” Turning to Ashley, the heavily mustached man said, “So, until then, stay off the road. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Ashley said, unusually respectful.
Sharon took Ashley by the arm and jerked her away from Kieffer’s side. “Okay, that's settled. I have an important meeting at the office later, so if there’s paperwork I need to sign–”
As if on que, a plump little man with an inferior moustache stuck his head out of a side office. “Um, Ms. King. Lieutenant Bushwell would like to speak with you for a moment in private.”
Worrying about when the registration on the Buick expired, Sharon left the kids in the lobby and followed the little man to an office lined with larger men in blue and green uniforms.
As she entered the room a solitary gentleman, Kleenex box in hand, broke from the crowd and approached her. The gold bar pinned to his chest read “Lt. Bushwell.”
Holding out the tissues, he said, “Ms. King, I have some terrible news about your husband...”
***
State police told Sharon the entire story. Or at least what they’d pieced together.
At approximately 2:20 a.m. in the East dist
rict of Portland, an off-duty cab driver came across a body stretched out and bloodied in an adjacent alley roadway. The driver stopped and used a nearby payphone to call 9-1-1.
At 2:42 a.m. Wayne was pronounced dead on sight by Portland General EMT's.
Minutes later, police and crime scene detectives showed up and did a thorough sweep of the area. A mid-sixties model Volkswagen Beetle was found in vocation to the body. Blood in and around the vehicle directly connected it to the murder. Detectives didn't find anything unusual in the car, aside from a few crumpled Bazooka Joe comics under the passenger seat. If there was ever anything of value in the vehicle, it was long gone. Passing bums and junkies of the area had probably picked it clean within minutes of the murder. Wayne's body was quickly identified by some insurance papers left in the glove box. His wallet laid open in a gutter on the other side of the alleyway. All it held was a Maine State driver's license and a business card for a taxidermy supply store in Dexter.
Through the power of deduction, detectives figured that Wayne for one reason or another pulled off the interstate. Possibly looking for directions to a gas station. He stopped along the road and asked the first person he saw for help, and they in turn killed him. And judging by the extensive injuries on Wayne’s body, the murder was intentional. Another late-night mugging gone bad. No defensive wounds were found on his body.
The official autopsy showed that Wayne had been stabbed multiple times in the face, beaten, then shot once at close range in the head. The murder weapon was never recovered. Only a screwdriver was found at the scene. Forensic teams later theorized that the caliber and make of the gun was most likely a .38 revolver. A policeman’s special. No bullet or shell casings were ever found. With no witnesses and the only physical evidence from the crime being a Phillips Head screwdriver with no prints, the investigation into Wayne's murder went cold in under four months.
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