Sticks and Stones

by Angèle Gougeon

  Sandra drifted, staring at the strangely shaped water stain on the ceiling. The air felt cooler than it had been the night before.

  On the other bed, Jack looked as flushed as her, hair stuck to his head. One arm had worked out from the blankets. The glass of water was empty and the Tylenol they’d left on the middle table was missing.

  Slipping from her covers, Sandra leaned over, tugged his blankets lower and made her way into the bathroom. Some cold water on the face, a toothbrush and toothpaste and her hairbrush did wonders in making her feel better. And then she crawled in next to Jack and waited until Danny returned.

  He came back bearing donuts and coffee with three papers tucked under his arm, two of them journals published by small business publications. She peered over his shoulder, getting multicolored sprinkles on the back of his shirt as he spread the papers out over the empty bed. He pushed her away when some fell down his neck.

  Jack roused at the smell of coffee. Sandra let her arm be used as leverage, and then sat beside him as he sipped from his cup. Jack’s thigh felt like a furnace. He kept one arm wrapped around his ribs and she was careful not to get him in his side with her bony elbow. She got sprinkles on him, too. But he was getting sprinkles everywhere himself and didn’t complain. Using his free arm, he switched his donut every few bites with his coffee, resting them on the bedside table. There was no napkin, and bits of chocolate melted into the bedspread.

  “What’re you doing?” Jack paused between mouthfuls.

  “Looking,” Danny said.

  “For what?” Jack had more coffee, finished his donut, and motioned with his hand for Sandra to bring the pastry box closer. He had a smear of sugar on the corner of his lips.

  “More deaths.”

  Jack grimaced, swallowed his last bite like it got stuck in his throat and chugged the rest of his coffee back as though he wished it was something stronger. Danny set the paper aside with a sigh.

  “Are they even looking for him?” Jack asked, and Danny grimaced

  “That’s swell,” Jack said, smile big and false. Danny finished up his coffee. Jack stole the last donut and locked himself in the bathroom.

  He didn’t fall in the shower and Sandra considered that a good omen.

  Nothing else certainly was.

  ~

  Another city away and Jack discovered just how sympathetic the diner and pit-stop women could be. Even beat up, he had the women flocking to his side. There were, of course, the few that scoffed and rolled their eyes at the ridiculous story he told them – kidnapped by a polite psychopath, held hostage, saved in the nick of time by his big brother and his girl. Others hung onto him – you couldn’t make that kind of shit up. Besides, he had the proof right there on his face. And if it was a lie, well, they knew his type. He was just passing through, a man of adventure, full of mystery and intrigue. Just what they preferred.

  Jack amassed a lot of phone numbers. He never called – but that was never the point.

  Another flash of his charming smile and white teeth and an older woman with a brown ponytail walked away, promising free dessert. Sandra was pretty sure it only applied to Jack. If she were pettier, she’d steal it from him. But then he’d try to grab it back and hurt himself. He already tried to do more than his body could handle. Jack’s smile took up half his face when Marybeth came back. It looked slightly grotesque, scars and bruises bunching all up.

  Marybeth smiled back like he was the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

  Daniel snorted into his coffee.

  Jack got his cake, chocolate, and dug in with gusto marred only by the pained lines around his eyes. He wasn’t moving much, but it was enough. Heck, breathing was enough. A paper had been tucked under his plate. It wasn’t a bill. Jack made a sound, full of triumph, and this time it was Sandra rolling her eyes.

  “They want to mother you.” Danny had another paper open. Sandra never saw him handing over any money for them.

  Jack made a face, tucked the phone number into his shirt pocket with a grin at Marybeth, who was across the room and wiping down the countertop. Her cheeks dusted pink and she looked down, seeming grateful when a new customer walked in.

  “Anything?” Jack asked. Sandra shuffled her plate to the side and rested her cheek on her closed fist. She expected Danny’s shaken head as he pushed the paper aside, ink staining his fingertips black.

  Jack shoved the last bite of cake in his mouth in lieu of figuring out something to say. Danny’s expression was aggravated, eyes fluttering across Jack’s bruised face.

  “At least there hasn’t been a surge in obituaries,” Sandra said, and the look Danny gave her spoke words.

  Jack snorted a laugh, and then pressed a hand to his ribs with a scowl. “Don’t do that.”

  Danny slapped a hand to the table and gently pushed Sandra’s shoulder to get her moving. “Let’s go.”

  “Slave driver,” Jack huffed, but he had nothing to complain about. They all knew they were heading back to their room so he could sleep. “That was good cake.”

  “We can come back tomorrow,” Danny said, and Jack grinned at Marybeth’s shy face.

  ~

  Sandra was in a convenience store.

  There were wire racks spread against the walls, and along the aisles. She sat behind the counter, in a gray shirt with sleeves and the collar lined in blue. She held a magazine in big hands. Alien born to 60 Year Old Chicago Woman, it said, complete with poorly digitized photograph. Oh good, Sandra thought, at least she was learning the important news of the world. Her inner disgust clearly didn’t make the man set the paper down. He did turn the page. A photoshopped picture of a man with three noses stared up at her.

  Oh Lord.

  One of the overhead lights flickered and buzzed. The man’s nails were bitten down, chapped, with red fingers and rough palms that caught against the cheaply colored pages of the magazine. Radio music came faint through the back of the store. A country singer mourned the death of his red Chevrolet.

  Sandra managed to see the pumps outside, empty of cars. The windows were big and clean, with a glass door. A fly buzzed against it.

  She watched cars appear and disappear on the road from the corners of her eyes, a fade in and out like a movie projection that jerked and flickered. The sky was filled with buildings and skyscraper clouds.

  The cashier shifted, and turned a page.

  A pigeon dove into the lot, caught an updraft and soared back out again. A sidewalk shimmered, then was gone. Sandra’s chest felt heavy. A cloud moved into the sky, a projected reel-strip right in front of the store.

  What is this?

  The man’s fingers were cold.

  Another pigeon soared down. It hit the pavement and didn’t get back up.

  Sandra wished she could move. Her throat felt thick. The walls inside bulged. The man behind the counter didn’t react, didn’t see. They curved wrong, like the plaster was alive, curling inward and down, moving toward them.

  Her heart started pounding so fast it should’ve hurt. Except it didn’t. Because the man wasn’t afraid.

  Jeremiah Epps walked in.

  Behind the counter, the cashier looked up, looked back down, and turned another page.

  Jeremiah smiled.

  When Jeremiah turned and walked to the farthest aisle, he kept his head down. He went to the cooler, pulling out a pop bottle. The cap unscrewed and the soda hissed. He was drinking when he reached the counter – put his head back down when he was done. He pulled a chocolate bar out of the display rack and plopped the rest of the drink in front of the register. The cashier sighed, lowered his magazine in a rush of rustling pages and scooted closer to the cash machine.

  “Nice day,” Jeremiah said. Sandra wished she could lean away, wished the man would notice Jeremiah’s not-quite-right smile, his dark, flashing eyes.

  The cashier
nodded, mumbled, “Sure is,” sounded tired. Sandra felt the scar on his cheek when he scratched at it. Jeremiah glanced at the camera overhead – smiled some more.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  The clerk finished punching the items into the register, looked back up, and, without enthusiasm said, “Sure.” Jeremiah motioned him closer. The man followed, leaning over the countertop. No, Sandra warned him inside his head.

  The blade slid in. Blood spattered down. It missed Jeremiah’s shirt as he leaned back.

  Sandra couldn’t catch her breath. She gurgled. Her throat felt raw. Gaping. Her fingers moved there, tried to hold the edges together and stop up the leak.

  Jeremiah never stopped smiling.

  The clerk fell over, head glancing off the counter top as Jeremiah picked up his bottle of pop and walked out the front door. On the floor, Sandra wheezed, noticed the dingy tile turn to black, to nothing as she fell through.

  The smoke swirled.

  She woke gasping.

  ~

  “Do you have his name?”

  Sandra shook her head.

  “A street?”

  Another shake. Danny sighed.

  “What about the store chain?”

  Sandra breathed out hard, shook her head again, and slumped onto the bed. She could feel the gash there, right above the hollow of her throat, sliced from side to side. “She doesn’t know,” Jack said. “Give it a rest.” Sandra was kind of surprised, because he looked just as disappointed.

  “Something felt wrong,” she told them.

  “You mean, other than having your throat cut out?” Jack asked, then sighed when she threw him a dirty look. “Are you sure it was even a vision – maybe it wasn’t really—” he cut off a second time at her frustrated expression, words all running together. His eyes said sorry. His lips said, “I want to find him.”

  “I know.” Sandra fell back onto the bed, carefully, because no matter what he said, Jack’s ribs still hurt. “I know. I want to, too. It’s just … I didn’t see anything that could help. So why? I mean, why see that? I hate this.”

  Jack’s fingers touched her elbow.

  “We’ll keep looking.” Danny’s eyes were kind, so understanding, and Sandra wanted to go over there and kiss him. But Jack’s fingers were still on her arm, so she just settled, dug the back of her head into the thin pillow.

  “We’ll find something,” Danny assured her. “Even if we have to stop in every convenience store from here to New Mexico.”

  Her laugh was muffled by her arm, which was just as well, since it sounded a little like a sob.

  ~

  On average, there were convenience stores every five blocks in a big city. Given the number of cities and small towns within no known radius, that was a large number of stores. And gas chains. And even more employees.

  “I don’t even know which city it’s in. Or even if it is in a city,” Sandra complained to Danny. They were in the middle of downtown, slowly checking stores off a mental list. The last one had red tiles on the walls. The one before had been painted yellow.

  “So we’ll try the next one.” Danny grabbed her hand, and then moved his grip to the hem of her cotton shirt, because they were both so hot that holding hands felt utterly disgusting. Sandra was pretty sure she’d sweated off five pounds already.

  “We’ll do one more hour,” he compromised. A suit with a phone pressed to his ear passed them. Danny brushed close, flicked his wrist, and revealed the black wallet in his big hand. Sandra stretched her legs to keep in step, biting her lip to keep her mouth closed and watched him slip the bills out, shut the wallet again and return it to the suit pocket. The man twitched this time, looked back, but Danny was already stepping to the side, stopping at some sidewalk table set up in front of a boutique, showcasing handmade jewelry and painted pottery bowls.

  “Where’d you guys learn that anyway?”

  “As a kid. I taught Jack. Then Dad found out and boxed our ears.”

  A laugh barked up out of her throat. “You haven’t lost your touch.”

  “I’ve been practicing. I’ve got to keep up with you and Jack.” Danny folded the bills, nice and neat, and tucked them into the pocket of his jeans.

  I only did it the once, she wanted to say, sarcasm all thick and heavy inside her head. And it was to save a life. She’d spent two weeks perfecting it, trying it out on the boys, and then she’d taken herself to the park where Elizabeth Rightly had been about to steal little Michael Miller and pick-pocketed the madwoman’s wallet to give to his parents.

  “It’s fine,” Danny said, as though she had spoken aloud. “It’s only the rich ones.”

  Yeah, that made it better. They reached another store and, sighing, Sandra went inside.

  ~

  The days following were frustrating. Jack had healed with a mass of thin, silvery scars left behind. One bisected his left eyebrow and he’d discovered two towns ago that it gave him a rakish air. Now, instead of getting numbers from mothering hens, he was getting numbers from cow-eyed girls, all swooning smiles and giggling behind their hands. Hotels blended together. Stores, too. It was hard not feeling like they were losing Jeremiah’s game. And, in the end, they weren’t even the ones to make the next play.

  They’d gotten dinner and brought it back to a hotel that smelled like cigarettes and citrus air freshener, with an air conditioner that only worked half the time.

  Sandra wrinkled her nose at a burger that looked like shoe leather and grabbed the fries instead. Danny had more newspapers on the table, which Jack was slowly dripping ketchup onto, using them as a place-mat. It was the only reason they noticed.

  They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jeremiah Epps for five weeks. And then he showed up, wanted, in county-wide papers.

  The convenience store worker was dead. Sandra put her fingers to her throat and watched Danny and Jack start to pack up the room.

  It felt too much like her dream. The one that had started everything. The one Jeremiah had obviously seen. The one where they’d kept looking and moving and chasing… The one where they had lost.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The police didn’t know Jeremiah’s real name.

  All they had was a picture – grainy and fuzzy from the store’s camera feed, bright eyed and grinning and not even attempting to cover his face. In Tampa Bay, Florida, he’d reached over the counter and slashed a man’s throat.

  For no reason at all. The cashier had been left bloody, dead, on the floor, money still in the till.

  By the time they reached Tampa Bay, Jeremiah was gone.

  He killed another man two states over. Then a woman in Jasper, Mississippi. He left a path of delicately slashed necks, always walking away without anyone the wiser, no more than a drop of blood on his fingers. On his shirt. On his shoes.

  Sandra continued to dream.

  Jeremiah’s taunts grew more obvious with time.

  The heat wave broke that night. Sandra woke to rain pounding the corrugated steel roof of the motel, curtain sticking wet to the wall from the opened window, a slippery shine through the dark. The air smelled fresh and damp.

  A car drove past the motel, rumbling loud, and Sandra settled her head back into Danny’s arm. She breathed in the humidity of his skin as he sighed and pulled her close. Far off thunder rumbled.

  When she slipped back to sleep, everything beyond her eyelids settled into shades of blood and shadow. Something unseen and vicious ripped at her, slashed at her skin, and tangled in her hair. Distantly, the world was screaming. She was at the very heart of a raging storm, and it threatened to tear her to pieces.

  ~

  She had her next vision in a coffee shop two weeks later.

  Danny and Jack were downtown, swindling good folk out of their money. Probably picking pockets on the side. The walls were yellow and th
e floor looked like stone. She’d been sipping Chai tea from a paper cup, until suddenly she wasn’t.

  A tremor of dread settled into her spine and Jeremiah Epps walked through the door.

  Sandra was in a house. There was gray carpeting under her toes, hair thick around her shoulders, curly and smelling of herbal shampoo. For a brief moment, Sandra wished she could make the woman walk out the front door. But that wasn’t the way it worked. Sandra couldn’t make the woman do a damn thing. She closed the door behind Jeremiah. His eyes slid over her, slick and slow, leaving dirt behind like oil – and then he was across the landing, up the two stairs that led to the rest of the house, hand pulling her behind.

  What are you doing? Sandra thought as the woman said, “Thought you’d never get here.”

  Jeremiah gave a slow, tilting smile, pulling her into the kitchen and then past the dining room and into the family area, the small room filled with a large television, a beige couch and a tall, but mostly empty, bookcase. She’d been reading a letter when he arrived. The envelope fell to the ground when he pushed her, back thudding to the living room wall, Jeremiah laughing.

  He kissed hard until her mouth felt swollen, nothing gentle in his actions, body riding every burning inch of her. Sandra wanted to scrub off her skin. He felt like rot. His tongue tasted like mint toothpaste but his breath was stale.

  Jeremiah’s fingers wrapped around her shoulders, pressed into the skin there, stretching past the thick straps of her sleeveless top. The skin turned white and then red and the woman didn’t seem to mind, though Sandra did. The woman moaned into his mouth and closed her eyes and pushed her hips against him. “Fuck me. Don’t you want to fuck me?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, lips on her perfect skin, on her lily-white throat, hands under her shirt and pants pushed around her knees. He had a condom but Sandra didn’t think he cared about DNA because he didn’t care about anything; especially not the police. The woman moaned and gasped, said, Yeah, baby, do it like that and Sandra pushed, backed away, didn’t want to be here.

  The sudden silence was disorienting.