by Edward Lee
“No, thanks, I’m stuffed.” When he imagined his stomach’s reaction to ice cream mixing with Korean spices and squid, beef, and half-cooked egg—plus all the beer he’d had today—he shivered. In all, he had to force himself to eat the cookie.
Then he imagined something else: when she raised the next spoonful to her parted lips, she froze. Suddenly she was topless and sitting spread-legged on the bench, the quirky Christian reverting to her college-tramp roots…
Her mouth sucked the ice cream off the spoon, where it sat on her tongue till it melted, and then her lips expelled it. The slew of white cream marbled with hot fudge began to run a slow line down her chin, over the hollow of her throat, and between her breasts. It stopped to pool in her belly button, and that’s when the fantasy put Collier on his knees licking it out. His hands molded her hips and slid up her ribs as his tongue followed the track in reverse. He evacuated the adorable navel, then sucked upward over a quivering stomach. His mouth could feel excited blood beating in vessels beneath succulent, perfect flesh. No thoughts formed in his own mind, just the carnal craving. She had become his own ice-cream sundae. When his tongue laved her cleavage, her breasts vised his cheeks.
When his tongue slathered over the fudge-covered cross, he recoiled—
It burned like a tiny branding iron.
“—and, see? Those are some of the very first tracks, right there.”
Collier’s head surfaced from the dirty delusion like a bubble breaking sewer water. She’d been talking but he hadn’t heard any of it.
“What’s that?”
She pointed past the cannon, to the brick-paved street. Two parallel lines crossed the quaint lane, and the lines seemed sunken beneath the bricks.
“Oh, railroad tracks,” he finally recognized. “Gast’s railroad, I presume.”
“Right. See that plaque there?”
Another old brick wall sported the plaque: ORIGINAL SITE OF DEPOT NUMBER ONE, OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY—1857.
Collier looked at the strangely rustless rails. “So the original track still exists?”
“Oh, no. Most of it was taken up after the war—for reparations. But they left these here, and there are a few more sections around the town, even with the original ties. But this site, right here where we’re sitting, is where the madness of Harwood Gast officially began in 1857. It ended less than five years later in an area in Georgia called Maxon.”
“Maxon,” Collier uttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the place.”
“That’s because it doesn’t exist anymore. The Union army razed the entire area. There’s nothing there now except scrub.”
Collier thought back. “Mr. Sute told me that Gast actually built the railroad to take prisoners to some sort of concentration camp. Was that this Maxon place?”
“Yes,” Dominique grimly replied. “And the prisoners weren’t captured Union soldiers, they were—”
“Civilians. I remember him telling me that, too. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, from a military standpoint, I mean.”
“Neither did Dachau and Auschwitz, until you consider the motivation behind it all. It wasn’t logistics or efficiency—it had to be evil.”
“So Harwood Gast was the Hitler of the Civil War?”
“Maybe worse, simply because Gast was never political. He was a private citizen,” she said. “He was never in office, and he never bid for office. He simply built his railroad and killed himself.”
Collier smiled darkly. “His service was done, the pact complete: building a railroad that had no military use during a war. Himmler answered to Hitler, but Gast answered to a higher—or I guess I should say—”
“A lower authority,” Dominique finished. “At least that’s if you believe the legend.”
“Which, by the way, you haven’t really said if you do or don’t,” Collier added, “but just a little while ago you told me you didn’t necessarily disbelieve the stories…which leads me to my next point…”
“You are one persistent beer writer,” she laughed. “All right. I’ll tell you what I saw that night.”
They walked the fringes of the main drag as the town turned over to nightlife. Carriage-style streetlamps drew floating lines of light down the street.
“Just, please,” she said halfheartedly, “don’t tell anyone this because it makes me look idiotic.”
“You have my word.”
Her shadow angled before him, a sexy cutout. “Several years ago a wedding party hired the restaurant to cater their reception. They rented the atrium at Mrs. Butler’s inn. It all went fine, but at one point just before we brought out the desserts, I looked in the far corner of the room. There are a lot of little nooks on the sidewalls where Mrs. Butler keeps all those bookshelves and display cases full of Civil War stuff. Between two of those bookshelves, there’s a little alcove that’s hard to notice—”
Collier remembered immediately. “Right. And there’s a desk there, with very elaborate carvings and little drawers and compartments.”
Dominique nodded. “And also a tiny portrait of Penelope Gast on the side, like someone hung it there to keep it hidden. Anyway, I’m counting heads for the desserts—some of the wedding party had already left, so I wanted to get the number right…and I see someone sitting there.”
“At the desk?”
“At the desk. It’s this guy hunched over the desk writing something. I hadn’t seen him before, so I figured he was a late arrival and maybe he sat down at the desk to fill out a wedding card or something. I go over there and ask him if he wants a homemade Napoleon for dessert.”
“Yeah?”
“He stops writing and looks up at me—and this guy is, like, really ugly. Real pale face, crabby hands, big hooded eyes—and something messed up about his nose—looked like it had gold foil on it or something—and there’s this bizarre-looking red hat sitting on the desk, too. He looks at me like he’s pissed off I interrupted him, and he says, ‘Napoleon? I met him in Egypt, and he was absolutely deplorable.’”
“Huh?” Collier emphasized.
Dominique’s bare white shoulders shrugged. “That’s what the guy said, so I’m thinking he’s drunk and making some strange joke. I ask him again if he wants dessert, and he kind of grimaces and says, ‘Can’t you see I’m busy? I have to pay more to Harding, out of the railroad account. Mr. Gast just put in an order for fifty more, to send to Maxon. They’re wearing them out down there.’”
“Wearing…” Collier began.
“That’s what he said, didn’t explain. But I didn’t care, the guy was a snot to me, so I left him there and went to help my people serve dessert. I ask my assistant manager if she saw when the guy had come in, and she says ‘Who?’ and I point to the alcove. ‘That weirdo sitting at that desk,’ I say. But—”
“When you looked again, he was gone,” Collier supposed.
“Right. Gone.”
Collier thought as much. “A creepy story, for sure. But…is that all?”
She playfully slapped him on the shoulder. “No! That’s just the beginning. See, I shouldn’t tell you the rest—you’ll just make fun of me.”
“Tell me the rest!”
They turned a darker corner, a side street of shops that had closed earlier, and just one candlelit bistro with people having cocktails at outside tables. Dominique’s bright white apparel and lambent skin made her ghostly now in the lower light.
“So the reception’s a big success, and the bride’s father pays the bill and tips hard. Most of the people are gone by midnight, but a few stayed past that for drinks. I let my people go home after they got everything loaded up, and I stay to serve the drinks and listen to these drunk people in tuxedos jabber. At one point I look out the window and I see someone walk by—two little girls in white dresses.”
Collier’s throat tightened. “Was…there a dog?”
She looked at him funny. “A dog? No. Just the two girls. But then something else catches my eye, on t
he stair hall. Another figure. Guess who?”
“The guy at the desk?”
“Yeah, and now he’s wearing that imbecilic red hat. I see him go down the hall. I’m positive I saw him. He even looked down at me and scowled. Could be wrong about the two girls in the window, but I’m sure I saw him. I figure he’s a guest staying at the inn, maybe the crotchety old guy with the nose was the kids’ father or grandfather or something. No big deal, right?”
“Okay.”
“By one, everybody leaves, so I’m just doing the lastminute cleanup, shouldn’t take me more than an hour. I want to get out ’cos I’m tired. Mrs. Butler shows up to see if I need a hand, so I ask her how many guests are staying at the inn that weekend, and she says none.”
“Oooooo,” Collier remarked.
“Um-hmm. Ooooo. She tells me she’s going to bed and I can lock up when I’m done. If I need anything, I can just call out for Jiff ’cos he’s around mopping the floors.”
Collier errantly touched her shoulder. “Please tell me you went upstairs to look around.”
“Of course I did. But by now I have to admit I was a little freaked. Most of the lights were out, and the place was real quiet. I’m positive that no one came down the stairs because you can see both stairwells from the atrium. So I go up…”
Collier was becoming intrigued. “Yeah?”
“It’s dark up there. The minute I set foot on the landing, I regretted it. But I look anyway. All the doors were open to air the rooms…except one. It was locked.”
“Room two?” Collier asked.
She looked surprised. “Yeah.”
“That’s the room next to the one I’m staying in. It’s also the room where Penelope Gast and her maid were murdered.”
Dominique’s look of surprise darkened. “I didn’t know that. How do you—”
“Well, I mean that’s what Mr. Sute told me,” Collier amended.
“Wow,” she paused, reflecting.
“So—come on—what did you see upstairs?”
“Nothing,” she said.
Collier felt cheated. “Nothing?”
“Nothing yet. I didn’t see the guy and when I looked out the windows I didn’t see the two girls but—and this is the unsettling part—I did smell something.”
An irrepressible chill swept up Collier’s back. Please don’t tell me you smelled—
“I smelled urine. Jeez, I’ll never forget it. Old urine, like when you walk under an expressway bridge where homeless people pee. It seemed to emanate from that door—room two. I actually got down on my knees to look in the keyhole, and that’s where the smell was coming from—right from that hole.”
Collier didn’t know what to say, or what he might add to corroborate.
“But the funniest part? It was gone a minute later.”
“The smell, you mean.”
“Right. One minute the hall reeked, and the stench coming out of that keyhole was so strong it was like steam. And the next minute…”
“Gone like it was never there.”
She nodded slowly.
Collier remained silent for several steps; then her face turned mischievous.
“Either you just swallowed a frog or…something’s bothering you all of a sudden.”
Collier decided what the hell. “I’ve smelled the same thing a time or two myself.”
“I love it!” But then her enthusiasm lapsed. “But, you know, it’s probably just a rotten carpet or something. Mildew.”
“Yeah, maybe. That would be a much more sensible reason why Mrs. Butler never rents that room. It’s just unserviceable, not haunted,” he said, but continued in thought: Haunted…by urine?
“Sure. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe I’m more impressionable than I think, and I simply thought I smelled it.”
Collier pushed his hair back. “Your mind invented it, in other words?”
“Yeah.”
“Dominique, what reason would your subconscious mind make you think you were smelling…that?”
“Because of the story!” she exclaimed as though it were obvious. “You know. The whole ‘Mrs. Tinkle’ thing. I’m sure J.G. Sute told you about that, didn’t he?”
“No, but Mayor Snodden did. Some kinky ‘water sport’ fetish is what I assumed.”
“No, no, that’s not it.”
“Well then what is?” Collier insisted. “Why did people call her Mrs. Tinkle behind her back?”
Dominique almost blushed. “Same reason they called her ‘Penelope Piss.’ You don’t know?”
“No! So tell me!”
She seemed coyly uncomfortable now. “That’s what she’d always have her secret lovers do. You know. You never heard of Redneck Birth Control?”
“What?”
“A Southern Douche? Jeez. I guess I have to explain everything…as gross as it is. Whenever her lovers were…done…”
Collier finally put the pieces together. They urinated in her after they came, to wash the sperm out. For shit’s sake! “All right, I get it.”
“And the rumor is she always took her lovers to the same room—the door marked room two now—and that’s why it always reeked of urine.”
“How charming,” Collier muttered. Yes indeedy. A Southern Douche.
“It didn’t always work, of course,” she added. “Penelope had several abortions.”
“Sute was kind enough to point that out.”
A stasis passed as they walked. Collier presumed her story was over. “Oh, look,” she said and immediately stood on her tiptoes.
Collier’s sudden leg fetish raged. Her shapely calves tensed as bare heels elevated in the sandals. Then he pictured her standing like that bent over nude…
Pervert. The word clacked in his head like two stones smacking. Pervert, pervert, pervert…
“The moon,” she said. “Tell me that’s not creepy…”
They’d walked to the end of the side street. There were no streetlamps here. Crossing the road at an angle was another length of track sunken in the bricks. It extended past the street and seemed to continue into scrubby grassland. Collier walked out farther with her and actually found the rail still mounted securely on century-and-a-half-old railroad ties. An oblong moon the color of brick cheese glowed eerily in a shallow sky.
In the oddest vertigo, like a snippet of nightmare, Collier saw a woman’s face, grinning in a wanton evil, then skeletal hands rising up toward the moon.
The face of the mirage belonged to Penelope Gast…
“I second that,” he finally said. “Perfect setting for your ghost story.”
“And that’s the land, right out there. God knows how many acres, not used for anything anymore.”
He realized after the fact that they were holding hands.
Something almost like a hidden terror trembled in him. Who did that? Me? Her? He didn’t know…
“And it never will be,” she continued, gazing. “People really do believe the land is hexed by what Gast did out there.”
Staking the heads of slaves and hoeing them into the earth, he remembered. It was monstrous, but…
Collier wasn’t particularly focused on town history anymore. Oh my God, this girl… His blood felt like oil heating up on a stove top, just from the warm sensation of her hand.
“And in a way, even though all that scrubland out there is pretty ugly…there’s still something beautiful about it.”
“Yes, there is,” Collier agreed without even getting it.
The low moonlight on her face surrealized her features, leaving lines and wedges black but luminescing the rest. Now her eyes looked bottomless, the swell of her bosom and the moonshine on her legs a threshold to something that transcended the reality of his lust. Collier had never seen a more beatific face in his life.
Who turned whom, then? Collier didn’t know. She remained on tiptoes when he suddenly found himself kissing her. Her grip on his hand tightened and grew hotter; the tips of their tongues met. Her other hand stole around his
back and urged him closer, and when he slid his mouth off her lips and ran it down the side of her neck, she sighed in what could only be desire.
Collier felt he had stepped into a precious demesne, a place where desire was more than instinctive brain cells firing to compel reproduction. He was overjoyed to be in that special place—the first time, truly, in his life. But he also knew it was a place he did not deserve to stand in…
Her could feel her nipples go rigid against his fake Tommy Bahama shirt; he could swear he even felt his own nipples sensitize. Another hot, liquid sigh, and she pulled his mouth back to her, and sucked his tongue, inhaled his breath…
Her hand opened on his chest and she pushed back.
“Time to stop—”
SHIT! “I don’t want to,” he said, and tried to recaress her. But her opened hand remained firm.
She seemed disappointed and awkward. “Justin…I’ve only explained some of myself, not all. There’s stuff you don’t understand about me. I’m just the way I am, I can’t help it, and I don’t want to.”
Collier felt like a popsicle that had just been run over on Arizona asphalt. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I want to know what you mean. I want to know everything about you.”
“It just wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair? To who?”
“To you.”
The reply stunned him. Next, she was leading him by the hand back to the bench. “It’s too soon.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” he nearly pleaded. “I’m very patient—”
Her chuckle fluttered in the dark. “Yeah, right.”
I’m fucking crazy about you… “I can wait till it’s not too soon.”
“No, you can’t. Shit, in this day and age there’s probably no guy anywhere who’d wait that long…and you’re distracting me, anyway.”
“Distracting you?”
She turned on the bench, still grasping his hand. “You’re the one who wanted to hear my story. I didn’t want to tell you, but you insisted.”
“And you told me. It’s a great story, and I believe it. But what’s that got to do with—”