Abra-Cadaver

by Matt Drabble

  “Turn it off sweetie!” He tried to scream above the thunderous engine, still hoping that it was being piloted by some innocent child. “Just turn it the other way!”

  Suddenly and inexplicably the combine harvester lurched forward drunkenly and Doug struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. A child may have been able to accidently turn the engine over, but surely they would not have been able to reach the peddles.

  He staggered backwards and his overalls snagged on the quad bike handles. He fell to the ground as the very machines whose lives he had extended, seemed to reach out for vengeance for being starved of their natural graves.

  The combine harvester towered over him as it crept forward. The roaring blades span and twirled in the dying light with a ravenous appetite. Their edges were not as sharp as they once had been and subsequently they ripped his flesh apart instead of neatly slicing. Doug was sprayed across the garage floor as bone and blood painted a gory painting that perhaps McEwen alone might have appreciated.

  ----------

  The night was in full swing now and Tommy felt the creeping silence slowly edge its way over them all. They had drunk cold beers and eaten sizzling steaks. The conversations had been light and warmer than the night before at the bar when every subject seemed to come with hidden agendas and the shadows of double meanings. Now they were relaxed and in the groove again, or at least as close to their old groove as they were likely to get.

  Tommy leaned back on a steamer chair. They were all still outside as the evening was balmy and meant for outdoor living. He could feel the oncoming conversation like a Mack truck bearing down on them, out of control and careering violently. It was the inevitability that scared him the most and knew that they were all starting to turn in his direction again; turning to the leader, their spokesman, their fountain of knowledge, and yet he had none to give, or at least nothing pleasant.

  “Well I suppose it’s that time,” McEwen said with a heavy sigh.

  Tommy looked around the faces and they all seemed to nod in silent agreement. Even Dixon seemed happy to defer and Tommy found himself hoping against hope that Dixon would try to exert his new found authority. But he didn’t. This was Tommy’s group and Tommy’s show whether he liked it or not.

  “Ok,” he said standing and facing the semi-circle of upturned faces. “I don’t really know where to begin.”

  “At the beginning,” PJ said without humor. Even his voice was not quite as slurred as it had been earlier in the evening.

  “It was our fault,” Tommy said simply. “That’s the point, the inescapable point.”

  “Bullshit,” Dixon snapped with more shame than anger, it seemed to Tommy.

  “No it’s not,” Ally said quietly, “We’ve been through this Russell.”

  Tommy felt a stab in his guts at the intimacy that clearly existed between Ally and Dixon. He couldn’t help but picture them sweating and rolling around in Dixon’s ostentatious bed. What secrets did they share across the pillows? What dreams did they explore during those black night hours? He couldn’t help but picture himself in Dixon’s place and he felt cheated.

  “It was our fault,” McEwen agreed solemnly.

  “No,” Dixon pouted.

  “Yes,” PJ insisted.

  “No it wasn’t,” Dixon argued.

  “Yes,” Tommy said, adding his weight to the democracy.

  “You can’t hide behind ignorance,” McEwen said gravely.

  “We were just kids,” Dixon said with heavy slumped shoulders.

  “That’s no excuse Russell,” Tommy said kindly.

  “But we don’t know if we even did anything,” Dixon pleaded. “We were just playing around with his stuff. How can we be sure that we even did anything?”

  “Hey that’s right,” PJ said, hopefully looking around at distrustful faces. “Maybe we didn’t do anything wrong, maybe it was just an accident or maybe that weirdo really did kill his wife?”

  The rest of them fell silent as they thought around the problem. Tommy knew that they were all desperately searching for an escape hatch to their guilt.

  “You don’t understand PJ,” he said as kindly as he could. “It doesn’t matter if we caused the safety mechanisms to fail by pissing around with his stuff. It’s our fault because we kept quiet. It was Trotter’s defense that the equipment had failed and that it was all an accident. If we’d come forward like we should have, then we would have probably provided him with enough reasonable doubt.”

  He looked around as their hopes were crushed by simple logic. It was faultless. Their mistake had always been keeping quiet.

  “God, what must he have gone through in prison?” Ally wondered aloud.

  “Do you want to know?” Tommy asked to their shocked expressions.

  “How the hell would you know?” Dixon suddenly snapped. “What exactly are you doing here again Tommy? Dragging all of us through this mess again. It’s a bit of a coincidence don’t you think that you show up just as he might have escaped from the loony bin?”

  “Maybe its fate,” McEwen answered enigmatically.

  “What is?” PJ whined.

  “All of us being brought back together again,” the artist answered.

  “Look, just because the five of us hoist a couple of beers doesn’t mean shit,” Dixon snapped as he stood and started to pace angrily.

  “Six,” Ally said, barely above a whisper.

  “What?” Dixon barked.

  “There might be six of us in this reunion. Don’t forget that The Captivating Cosmo X - Master of the Unknown might be loose and heading here as we speak.”

  “You think so?” PJ bleated as he stared off into the darkness of the lake beyond the house.

  “If you had been robbed of 26 years of your life PJ, where would you be going?” She said looking out to the lake as well.

  “Jesus Christ, what a bunch of pussy assed bitches you all turned out to be!” Dixon laughed harshly. “Even you McEwen, are you going to go running home to mommy as well?” He sneered. “Let me tell you all something, if that freak comes looking for me, I’ll give him everything he can handle.”

  To illustrate his point he raised his leg and pulled up his tracksuit bottom leg. Strapped to his ankle was a small silver 38 revolver.

  “Jesus Russell,” Ally sighed. “Put that thing away before you shoot your own damn leg.”

  Dixon sulkily complied, much to Tommy’s delight. It would seem that Ally had always worn the pants in the family and old habits died hard.

  “What do you know Tommy?” Ally asked him.

  “Not as much as I’d like,” he answered. “But I’ve done some digging over the years.”

  “What the hell for?” Dixon snapped. “Why can’t you just leave it alone? Surely the more that you poke around into his life, the more likely he is to see into yours, and by yours meaning ours.”

  “You really think that any of us walked away from that day?” Tommy asked incredulously. “Take a good look around Dixon, none of us got out unscathed.”

  “Why don’t you take a look around,” Dixon snarled pointing at his own affluent home. “I think you’ll find that I came out of it pretty well.”

  “Oh yeah, you’re the picture of perfect health,” Tommy laughed. “What exactly is it that you do for a living? What job requires that you carry a gun strapped to your leg and pay for everything in cash?”

  “A word to the wise Tommy,” Dixon said, his voice suddenly low and hard. “School’s been out for a long time now. Don’t you go mistaking me for a whole other person. I’d have put you down already if we didn’t have a past, but that only carries you so far.”

  Tommy stared at the man who had once been his friend and found little of the boy remaining. Perhaps he had underestimated just how much Dixon had grown and changed. He was no longer the schoolyard bully who took lunch money but protected his friends; he was a dangerous man now.

  “Why don’t you just pull them out and measure them?” Ally quipped and the tensi
on broke.

  Dixon cracked a smile and Tommy’s heart lifted to see that actually just the smallest glimpse of the boy remained.

  “So what do you know Tommy?” PJ asked nervously.

  “I’ve spent some time over the years using my connections at the paper to pour through the old trial transcripts. I’ve managed to pull a few favors and get a look at some of the police evidence, and what I’ve found would never stand up in any regular court of law.”

  “How do you mean?” McEwen enquired, his pale face twisted with interest.

  “Well to start with there was never any real evidence against Trotter. There was supposedly nothing found on the guillotine equipment to suggest foul play.”

  “Doesn’t that rule us out?” PJ asked hopefully.

  “Not exactly. All of the reports by the so called experts can’t be found anymore. There was purportedly a flood in the town records’ basement and the report was one of many things that were destroyed. The trial was a mockery. There’s no way that anyone should have been convicted on the evidence that the prosecution presented. There was conjecture and supposition by the bucket load. Mary Trotter was painted as a saint; a paragon of virtue that had been stolen from the arms of her loving family by the weirdo outsider. By the time the prosecutor was finished, I’m just surprised that the jury didn’t carry Trotter out onto the town square and lynch him then and there. By the way do you know who his wife was?”

  “Just a local girl I thought,” Ally said.

  “Well Mary Trotter was once Mary Todd,” Tommy replied.

  “Todd? As in the Todd’s?” McEwen asked.

  “The same.”

  “What does that prove?” Dixon asked a little awkwardly.

  “Man, the Todd’s practically run the whole damn town you know that,” McEwen answered. “Her old man would be Adrian Todd and that guy has serious juice around here. If his only daughter was dead, he’s the sort of guy to take a real personal interest in seeing justice done.”

  “Didn’t you do some business with him?” Ally asked Dixon. “I seem to remember you mentioning his name a few times?”

  “No, never. We wouldn’t exactly mix in the same circles,” Dixon said curtly.

  Tommy had interviewed enough criminals and witnesses in his job to know a lie when he heard it. Adrian Todd was a big deal in Denver Mills. He owned the largest track of farmland and employed more people in town than anyone else. He also knew that the man sat on just about every committee and chaired most of them.

  “What else?” Ally asked Tommy as she yawned, “The hour grows late.”

  “Well I know that Trotter protested his innocence the entire time that he was in prison. I also know that at some point he was attacked inside. I’ve never been able to discover the full details, but I know that it was savage enough to send him right over the edge. Apparently he was already in a fragile enough state of mind and whatever happened to him in there finished the job.”

  “How do you mean?” PJ asked apprehensively.

  “He was transferred to Blackwater Heights,” Tommy answered.

  “The mental health hospital?” Ally asked quietly.

  “The same.”

  “Poor bastard,” PJ spoke for all of them.

  “And now he might be loose,” McEwen stated to the dark night.

  “If he’s out there, then he might be coming home?” Ally asked with a trembling voice.

  “Honestly I don’t know,” Tommy answered. “I do know that after he was convicted he promised revenge on everyone who had sent him down.”

  “But that was over two decades ago,” PJ whined. “He’s been locked away in a mental asylum, surely he’s not even capable of thinking clearly any more, let alone start constructing some master plan of vengeance?”

  “How would he even know about us?” Dixon said optimistically. “I mean we were all just witnesses and none of us were even called to testify.”

  “That’s true,” Ally said, “Even if he was on a mission, this isn’t a movie, this is real life. Chances are that he’ll be picked up sleeping rough in some barn somewhere or just wandering down the road hitchhiking. And like Russell said, he doesn’t know what we did, or didn’t do.”

  “You sure about that?” Tommy asked holding her gaze.

  “I’d stake my life on it,” she replied confidently.

  “We all just might,” Tommy said as the mist rolled in across the lake and they all shivered despite the warm night air.

  ----------

  Larry Taylor pulled up the long sweeping driveway that cut through the dusty brown land and marked the boundaries of his property. The huge spread of land dominated the horizon and everything that lay before it. His home was a majestic sweeping castle that protected him day and more importantly night. The area was dry and barren and as far removed from the lush green fields of Denver Mills as he could get. The weather was always a dry heat and the sun burned mercilessly hot.

  The house was a large three storey construction of his own design. He had watched the original Psycho movie back in 1960 and been fascinated by the house that seemed to loom over the screen, towering over all below as the world cowered in its shadow. He had loved the idea of being in an elevated position with which to see anyone coming in all directions; a king on his throne. The architect had laughed as the drawings closed in more and more on the image that Larry held firmly in his mind; the high front of the building with columns that surrounded the front door beneath a sheltering porch. The tall structure had a sloping pitched roof and a round central attic window. The slatted wooden cladding all added to the idea that Larry had kept in his mind for many years, always praying for the day when he could afford to turn his dream into a reality. He knew that his dream home was a morbid obsession, but he had never been intoxicated by Disney Princesses and white castles. His was a mind for the darkness, a mind that dreamt of handcuffs and restraints, of syringes and captives. It was a darkness that he had forever kept under tight control. He liked to tell himself that it was a high sense of morality that kept him clean, but he knew that it was rather a sense of cowardice that kept his demons away. He’d had to content himself with expensive trips to establishments that catered for his particular wants and needs.

  Larry had run the police department in Denver Mills for almost 40 years before his retirement. He was a big man who had grown larger and softer with age. His jowly face was topped with a snowy dusting of white hair in a vanity sweep that he couldn’t quite let go of. His eyes had once been a twinkling crystal blue that had dropped the panties of many a bored housewife, but they were now dulled with age and a couple of decades of regret and guilt.

  He had been proud to wear the uniform and be the face of law and order in his home town. He’d greatly enjoyed the sense of power and respect that his position demanded and he was never shy about claiming his perks. Whether it was a blatant grope of a passing through female motorist or just a free slice of pie at the diner, it was all his for the taking. It had been a simple job in many respects. There was very little crime to speak of and certainly nothing of a serious nature. He had swelled his meager earnings with a healthy pension fund provided by Adrian Todd. Despite the Todd farm being the largest for many counties, it actually produced a secondary crop that was lucrative, but none too legal. Because of the nature of a small town like Denver Mills it would have been impossible for Adrian to operate without at some point being stumbled upon by one nose or another. He knew that drugs of some description were being harvested at the Todd’s, but he hadn’t cared to look any deeper than that. He kept an ear out for any possible discovery of the operation, and he maintained a safe distance. He was paid handsomely for his discretion and it would have all been sweet and easy, until Mary Todd’s death.

  Adrian had gone on the warpath after the death his only child. He had demanded that Arnold Trotter be turned over to him for a little private justice. For the first time Larry had found the strength to stand up to the grieving father. He knew that there was
no way in the real world that Adrian could get away with murder; the father had been too overwhelmed with his heartache to see straight and he would have brought them all down with him. Eventually Larry had reluctantly agreed to help fix the trial to ensure that Trotter was found guilty and locked away for the rest of his natural life. Larry hadn’t even wanted to go that far, but he had enough self-preservation about him to realise that Adrian held enough dirt to put him in a cell next to Trotter’s.

  He had falsified evidence of the examination of Trotter’s equipment that had indeed found a compromised safety mechanism. He had allowed the prosecutor to present false facts about the investigation into Trotter. He had leaned on the defense lawyer to put up a less than competent defense and he had watched as Adrian’s friends and cronies had occupied 12 jury seats. The trial was a farce and there was only ever going to be one outcome. The only fly in the ointment had been Gaines. Gaines was the town’s first real officer to take up a post with any sort of experience of being a real cop. Worse than that, he was actually a real investigator. He knew that removing him from the case would undoubtedly raise suspicions, but he’d had little choice. Besides Gaines had some strange idea that a group of traumatized kids at a birthday party were somehow culpable and Larry thought that theory was surely too ridiculous for words.

  After the trial and the inevitable outcome, he’d expected life to go back to normal again, but he’d been wrong. As the years passed his guilt grew along with his stomach as he tried to smother his feelings with gravy. It was a dark festering secret that took strong roots in his guts and poisoned his days. He counted down the time until he could take the earliest retirement possible and at least spend his blood money on getting as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.

  He drove up to his house enjoying the gothic view. The sun was fully down now and the night pervaded and combined with the building’s eerie lighting to produce the required effect. His was a heart of darkness and it was matched by his home.