by Ronald Kelly
“Quit acting like a couple of Neanderthals!” said Maggie. “This is serious business.”
Keith considered the four illustrated cards and the dreams they had apparently conjured. “Doesn’t all this seem a little bit wrong to any of you?”
“What do you mean?” asked Chuck.
“I mean being able to mold someone’s dreams and make them seem like real life?”
“I thought it was pretty neat,” said Maggie.
“Yeah, it was neat… but it wasn’t normal. If you ask me, we’re messing around with something here that maybe we shouldn’t be.”
“Aw, don’t be such a party-pooper,” Rusty told him. “We had those dreams last night and it didn’t hurt, did it? It’s just plain old fun, that’s all. There ain’t nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure about that?” asked Keith. “I’ve heard if you dream of falling and you hit the ground before you wake up, you could die.”
“That’s just an old wives’ tale!” protested Chuck.
“But what if it isn’t?” Keith wanted to know. “What if something like that happens to one of us while we’re living out our dream? What if Rusty gets gunned down by a gunslinger or Maggie falls off the high wire, or Chuck gets blown to smithereens by a grenade? What if some gangster mows me down with a Tommy gun? Are we going to wake up like nothing ever happened… or will we even wake up at all?”
The other three stared at him for a long moment, considering what he had just said. Then Chuck scowled and shook his head. “That’s stupid, Bishop! Dreams are just something your subconscious cooks up, not flesh and blood reality. There’s no way they could end up hurting us physically. Right, guys?”
He waited for Rusty and Maggie to back him up, but they were slow in doing so. They hesitated a moment longer than he expected, giving him the impression that maybe they were swallowing the bull Keith was trying to feed them.
“We don’t know that for sure.” Keith showed them the knuckles of his right hand. They were pink and a couple had the skin scraped off them. “See this? My knuckles weren’t like this before I went to bed last night. Then I dream about punching out that little rat-faced bastard and I wake up with my hand swollen and aching. What does that mean?”
Chuck shrugged. “Maybe you hit it on the bedpost in the middle of the night. I don’t know.” He absently lifted his hand and rubbed at the sore spot near his right temple. “Anyway, tell me one thing. Why are you so down on Doctor Leech? He seems like an okay guy to me.”
Rusty and Maggie agreed.
“I don’t know for sure,” Keith admitted. “It’s something I can’t put my finger on. He seems like something more than some crazy performer riding around in an old-timey wagon, living out some weird fantasy. He seems like someone with a hidden motive.”
“What kind of motive?”
“I’m not sure, but he’s up to no good. I’d bet my life on it.”
“Aw, come on, cuz –“ started Rusty.
“I’m not kidding.” Keith’s face was dead serious. “The guy’s not the righteous dude you make him out to be. He’s like a bad apple. Shiny and delicious-looking on the outside, but full of worms inside.”
“I didn’t get that impression,” said Chuck.
“You mean you think a guy who brings dead rabbits back to life and makes spiders crawl out of his mouth is ordinary?” asked Keith. “He’s not like everyone else, that’s for sure. And, besides, the guy’s a thief.”
“A thief?” asked Maggie. “What do you mean by that?”
Keith thought of his own shoplifting escapes and almost said it takes one to know one, but he didn’t. “Well… duh! Who do you think has been stealing all this stuff around town? Wagon wheels, lumber, and cans of bright paint? He used all that stuff to fix up that old wagon of his.”
The three seemed startled. He could tell that they, too, had just come to that realization.
Chuck leaned back in his wheelchair and eyed the boy from Georgia. “So you’re just going to stop this dreaming stuff cold turkey? You’re just going to rip up that card Leech gave you and go on having the same boring, idiotic dreams as before?”
Keith thought about it. He considered the rain-soaked city and the prospect of never setting foot in it again. For some reason, he found himself feeling immediately homesick, as if tearing up the card would be an act of self-exile. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the place of his dream had strangely seemed more like home than that brownstone condo he shared with his parents back in Atlanta.
“Well, I didn’t exactly say that,” he finally said. “I just think we oughta be careful. And we shouldn’t trust this Leech fellow so much. I swear, there’s something really bad about him. I can feel it.”
“Okay,” said Rusty. “We’ll do it this way. The next time we go dreaming, we’ll wake ourselves up the moment we think we could end up getting hurt or killed. Agreed?”
The other three nodded. “I don’t know about you,” said Chuck, “but I can’t wait until I’m back where I was last night. I’m ready to get back on that battlefield and kick some Nazi butt!”
“Well, we could all go home and take a nice long nap,” said Rusty. “But I ain’t done that since I was in kindergarten.”
Keith’s eyebrows arched over the frames of his sunglasses. “Oh, last year, huh?”
Rusty grinned. “I don’t care if you are some bad-ass police detective in your dreams, hotshot. Here in the real world you’re just some skinny city kid with a smart mouth and little to back it up. Anytime you want to finish that wrestling match we started in the barn, you just let me know.”
“Bring it on, Hyram,” said Keith.
“Aw, give me a break!” snapped Maggie. “You guys and your macho bull! You’re turning my sneakers brown with all the crap you’re letting fly.”
“Tell it like it is, Hot Mama!” laughed Chuck, giving her a high-five.
They all agreed to revisit their dreamscapes that night and then compare notes the following day. In the meantime, they decided to hang around Chuck’s place and mess around in the workshop out back. Keith had found plans for a glider in an old issue of Popular Mechanics his grandfather had laying around the house and Chuck assured them there was enough plywood out back of the garage to build one. Of course, they had no expectations of actually getting it off the ground, but at least it was something to keep them occupied until nightfall came and gave them the opportunity to enter their individual dream worlds once again.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Allison Walsh reached the outskirts of Harmony around seven-thirty that morning.
She crossed the Duck River Bridge and drove a half mile before she came to the first business in the rural town. Allison parked her rental car in the lot of crushed gravel and cut the engine. She sat there for a moment, finishing off a cup of coffee she had bought at a McDonald’s off the Manchester exit. When she was through, she stashed the empty cup in the white paper bag and climbed out of the Altima.
The old country store wasn’t much to look at; an ancient structure with weathered walls, a tin roof, and rusted tobacco and soda pop advertisements hanging here and there. She climbed the steps to the front porch. A handwritten cardboard sign taped to a glass pane of the door read “Yeah, we’re OPEN. Ya’ll come on in!” The invitation was a sincere one and Allison reached for the door knob, feeling as though the proprietor of this place might possibly turn out to be a bit more friendly and a lot more receptive to her questions concerning Slash Jackson than the others she had talked to during the past few days.
She opened the door and walked in. Two things startled her almost immediately. The first was the jangling cowbell that had been rigged over the upper doorframe. And, secondly, was the body of an elderly man laying on his back on the dusty hardwood floor.
“Oh my God!” said Allison. She left the door standing open and rushed to the man’s side. She set her purse aside, then studied the elderly storekeeper. His face was ashen and slightly blue around the lips,
and at first she was sure that he was dead. But when she took his hand in hers, she was relieved to find that he was still warm to the touch. Allison reached up and pressed a couple of fingers against the side of his neck. He had a pulse, but it was faint and irregular.
“Mister?” she asked, gently patting his hand. “Are you conscious? Can you hear me?”
A shallow whistle of breath exited his nostrils, but that was the only sound he made. Allison checked his pockets, but found no medicine that he might require. She left his side and went behind the sales counter. She searched the shelves underneath, as well as a couple of drawers below the cash register, but found nothing.
Allison was about to reach for a telephone that hung on the beam of a back wall, when the grumbling roar of an engine came from the road she had just traveled. She stepped from behind the counter and looked out the open doorway. An old red pickup truck pulled into the front lot with a crackle of near-bald tires on gravel. A second later, the truck lurched to a stop and a man climbed out.
She reached the porch by the time the fellow was on his way up the front steps. He was a tall, lanky old man, probably in his mid-nineties, with a face like tanned leather and thick crop of silvery hair.
“You’ve got to help me!” she gasped, frightened for the life of the man inside. “We’ve got to call someone!”
“Just hold on there, little lady,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“There’s a man lying in the floor here,” she said. “I think he’s had a heart attack.”
The expression on his face changed from curiosity to terror in an instant. “Damn!” he said, pushing past her and running to the unconscious man’s side. From the way he had reacted, Allison could tell that the two were close friends.
“When did you find him?” he asked.
“Just a minute ago,” she told him. “I walked in and there he was on the floor. I was just about to call 911.”
A sad look crossed the elderly man’s long face. “We’re just a little mudhole in the road, miss. We don’t have even have cable TV, let alone 911. We’ll have to call the paramedics over at the fire hall.”
He gave Allison the number and she quickly called it. A moment later, she hung up the phone. “They said they’ll be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, whatever that means.”
A hint of relief crept into the man’s wrinkled face. “That means they’ll be here in about two minutes. The fire hall is no more’n a half of a mile from here.” He stared at his friend helplessly, then began to search through the pockets of his companion’s shirt and pants.
“If you’re looking for medicine, I already tried,” she told him. “I couldn’t find any.”
“Damn!” he cussed, forgetting that he was in the presence of a lady for the first time in his life. “Edwin always keeps them in his shirt pocket.”
“Is that his name?” she asked, standing there feeling fidgety and helpless.
“Yes, ma’am. Edwin Hill.” He held out a big calloused hand. “I’m a friend of his. Jasper McLeod.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m Allison Walsh. I was just passing through.”
“You must’ve made a wrong turn and got lost then,” he said, attempting wry grin and failing miserably. “The road through Harmony doesn’t go much of anywhere. It hits a dead end, smack dab in the middle of a patch of woods.”
“No,” answered Allison. “Harmony was where I intended to go.”
Jasper McLeod turned his attention back to his friend. He lifted one of Edwin’s eyelids with the ball of his thumb. The pupil underneath was unresponsive. “You just hang in there, you old dog,” he whispered, gripping the old man’s limp hand in his own. “The cavalry is on its way.”
“I’m sorry,” the brunette said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
A moment of silence stretched between them. Then Jasper spoke. “Are you here in Harmony to visit someone, Miss Walsh? Kinfolks?”
“No,” she said carefully. “I just wanted to ask some questions. About something that happened on the interstate a few days ago.”
“And what would that be?”
“A man was found murdered a mile or so from the Harmony exit,” she explained. “His throat was slashed.”
Jasper nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that. You a police lady or something?”
“A reporter,” said Allison, not straying too far from the truth. “I was going to ask some of the merchants here in Harmony if they’d seen the man that was supposedly responsible.”
“I didn’t think the state cops had a description of the killer,” said Jasper, puzzled. “What does he look like?”
Reluctantly, Allison conjured the image of Slash Jackson in her mind.
The way he had looked at the gas station outside of Atlanta, not naked and bloody in the candlelight of that abandoned house near Adairsville. “He’s tall and thin, but muscular. Long black hair, with a mustache and chin beard.”
Jasper shook his head. “I ain’t seen no strangers like that around. But that doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t. Drive into town and ask around. I’m sure folks’ll be glad to help you out if they possibly can.”
Allison was encouraged. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
A second later, they could hear the shrill wail of a siren in the distance. By the time Allison stepped to the door and looked out, a white and orange emergency van was pulling into the gravel lot, throwing a cloud of gray dust in the air.
She watched as two paramedics worked over Edwin Hill, stabilized him, and then loaded him onto a stretcher and carried him from the general store to the back of the van. She walked to the front door with Jasper McLeod, watched him take a brass key from the sill over the doorway, and lock up once they stepped outside.
“I’m gonna meet ‘em over at the hospital in Manchester,” he said, taking two porch steps at a time. “I appreciate your help, Miss Walsh.”
“I just hope he pulls through okay,” she offered, not knowing quite what to say.
Jasper forced a good-natured smile. “Aw, Edwin’s a tough old buzzard. He’ll be all right.”
Allison could detect a tone of uncertainty in the elderly man’s voice. “Well, I hope so.”
She stood next to her car and watched as Jasper jumped into his truck and took off after the emergency van. When both vehicles were gone from sight, she sighed deeply, shaken by the events of the past several minutes. Then she climbed into her car and headed toward Harmony, to try her luck there.
~ * ~
Unfortunately, her luck turned out to be all bad.
Later that evening, Allison returned to her room at a seedy, thirty-dollar-a-night motel off the Fairfield – Bugscuffle – Harmony exit. She closed her door and slid the security chain into its brass cradle. Wearily, she set a greasy paper sack on the nightstand next to the bed. It contained a BLT and an order of fries she had purchased at her last stop in Harmony; a little Mom and Pop café called the Friendly Corner.
Allison laid her purse on the full-sized bed, then stepped into the bathroom. The citizens of Harmony had certainly been friendly, as well as cooperative. But they hadn’t been the least bit helpful. According to everyone she had spoken to, no one had seen anyone who even remotely resembled Slash Jackson. By the time five o’clock had rolled around, she felt as though she had talked to every man, woman, child, and dog in the little farming community and not received one shred of useful information in return. All had been kind and considerate, but that wasn’t what she needed. She needed a lead that would eventually take her right to Jackson.
But, sadly, that lead hadn’t presented itself that day.
Feeling lonely and depressed, Allison sat down on the commode, buried her face in her hands, and cried. She remained that way for a long time, venting her frustration in a torrent of angry tears. When she had finally cried herself out, she lifted her face and stared into the mirror over the bathroom sink. It was like looking into the face of a Holocaust survivor; hollow eyes, su
nken cheeks, and the grim expression of one who had stared death square in the face and lived to tell about it.
Why are you doing this, Allie? she asked herself bitterly. Have you gone completely crazy?
She stared at her reflection again. All she saw there was a small, frightened child, not a hellcat avenger with a loaded gun and the nerve to pull the trigger.
With a shuddering sigh, Allison decided to take a hot shower. Maybe that would clear her mind and help her determine whether she was acting foolishly or not. She turned on the warm spray of the shower, undressed, and folded her blouse and slacks over the bar of the towel rack.
It was when Allison turned back toward the bathroom mirror that the decision of whether to go home to St. Louis or continue with her search was made for her. Staring back at her starkly, in puffy pink flesh and ugly brown scabbing, was the word that Jackson had so meticulously and gleefully carved into the flesh of her chest, just above the swell of her breasts.
Rage suddenly rose from deep within her, screwing her tearful face into a mask of anguish. “You bastard!” she screamed shrilly, flailing out with her right hand. The heel of her palm struck the bathroom mirror forcefully enough to bring a pattern of spiderweb cracks to the steamy surface.
With the anger came pain. She turned her hand and found that she had cut herself. It was a shallow gash, but it was bleeding profusely. Breathing deeply, Allison turned on the cold water of the sink and held her injured hand beneath the icy stream until the flow of blood slowed to a trickle.
Allison wasn’t regretful of her impulsive act. Instead, she relished the pain that throbbed through her hand. It reminded her of the not so distant past. Of similar and much greater pains administered by knife, fists, cigarette, and teeth in the flickering light of a single candle. She found herself actually wanting to remember, not to punish herself, but to keep the hatred within her burning brightly.
She knew at that moment that doubt would never plague her again. She would find the demon that put her through hell and, when she did, she would kill him.