A scream startled me and I turned to see a very young nude girl running beside the pool, an old man wearing boxer shorts emblazoned with Satan heads and tented with an erection chasing her.
Dawn came through the steamy darkness.
“Get up,” she said.
I stood up. I was a lot drunker than I thought I was.
“Can you drive?” she said.
“Sure.” I could drive. I probably couldn’t drive very well.
“Barcie needs to go to the hospital. She’s not feeling well.”
I then said something I was pretty sure I’d never contemplated saying before.
“Did you take the cat out of her?”
“I couldn’t get it.”
“I’m not taking her to the hospital with a cat shoved into her vagina.”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“Where is she?”
“In her room.”
“Let’s go look for tongs or something.”
I followed Dawn into the house.
We found some tongs in the kitchen. I followed Dawn upstairs and down the hall to Barcie’s room. Barcie lay on her bed in a state of semi-consciousness. I handed the tongs to Dawn.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” she asked.
“Get the cat out.”
“Ew. I don’t want to do that.”
“You put it there!”
“It’s so gross.”
“Look, I’m not taking her to the hospital if that’s still there. I don’t really care what you do. I should have stopped her from killing it in the first place.”
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m only doing this because it’s Barcie. Not because you’re telling me to.”
She got down on her knees like the world’s youngest gynecologist.
“We should really be capturing this,” she said.
“Come on.”
“It’s happening anyway. It seems like a waste if we don’t.”
She produced her phone from somewhere in her dress and held it in her left hand while she snapped the metal tongs a couple of times with her right.
“Might be easier if you try to hold her open.”
Barcie’s legs were hanging over the edge of the bed. I sat next to her and leaned over, spreading her open as much as I could. The smell wafting up from her was revolting and I had to struggle to keep the beers down.
Dawn closed the tongs and slid them into Barcie until she couldn’t push them in anymore. She dug around, opening and closing the tongs.
“Do you have your phone on you?” Dawn said.
“Yeah.”
“Can you turn the flashlight thing on? I can’t see what I’m doing. You’re probably okay to let go of her pussy.”
I took my hands off Barcie and found myself hesitant to touch anything with them.
I fished my phone out of my pocket and turned the screen on.
There was a text from a number that didn’t have a contact associated with it.
I tried reading it without acknowledging it so Dawn couldn’t tell what I was doing.
The message read:
RUN FUCKER RUN
My heart began racing as I accessed the flashlight.
“You’re going to have to shine it up in there,” Dawn said. “My hands are full.”
I got down on my knees beside her and shone the flashlight up Barcie’s vagina.
“I think . . .” Dawn said.
Her forearm muscles strained and she began retracting the tongs until I could see some wet fur in the opening of Barcie’s vagina.
“Got it!” Dawn beamed with excitement. “Grab that trashcan over there.”
There was a black plastic trashcan next to a small desk near the foot of the bed. I grabbed the trashcan and came back.
Dawn finished pulling the cat out and dropped it into the trashcan.
I fought to steady my heartbeat and establish some sort of clarity. Upon seeing the text, my first impulse was to just take off running, but I stopped myself. I didn’t think I’d get far. If I was taking Barcie to the hospital, I might be able to get away. At least I’d have a car. I wondered if Dawn was coming with us.
I was going to ask Barcie if she could walk but I figured she’d be so light I could probably actually carry her. Besides, she still seemed mostly unconscious.
I picked her up, one arm behind her knees, the other behind her neck.
“Are you coming with us?” I said.
“I can’t. I have things I need to tend to.”
A small purse sat on the nightstand beside the bed. Dawn picked it up, fished out the keys and placed the keys on top of the purse on top of Barcie’s stomach.
“Is there anything else I need to tell them?”
Dawn shrugged. “Maybe she’s had a little heroin too.”
“Jesus. Okay.”
I walked sideways down the hall and the stairs. A soft rain fell outside, almost more of a mist, and I found Barcie’s black Mercedes.
Dawn was gone.
I struggled to open the passenger door and placed Barcie on the seat, fastened the seatbelt around her, and reclined it slightly.
I got behind the wheel.
Barcie’s purse rested on her lap.
She still seemed mostly out of it.
I grabbed the purse and rifled through it.
There was two hundred dollars in cash and a wallet with some credit cards in it.
I pocketed the cash, started the car, and thought about how I was going to get away.
* * *
As a kid I remember watching horror movies about haunted houses and wondering why the family didn’t just move out. Once I reached adulthood, I realized it wasn’t that simple. While it may not be true money is the root of all evil it is possible the lack of it is the reason why many people stick around to have evil things done to them. It may also be the reason many people do evil things which possibly just verifies that money is the root of all evil. Still, I think a person has to have evil in them to perform evil acts. For those people, money is just a bonus. Maybe even just a diversion. It’s socially acceptable for a businessperson to do evil things to people if it’s under the auspices of buying a better life for themselves and their family. But they’re probably still sociopaths.
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.
I could have pulled a map up on my phone to find a hospital but knew if I just drove to Dayton I’d eventually start seeing signs for at least one of them. It seemed like the medical industry had gradually replaced the manufacturing industry as Dayton’s leading cash cow. Corporate America puffed the baby boomers up with a flourishing economy and cheap and abundant food and now they were getting rich by treating their diabetes, depression, and various cancers.
I didn’t know exactly what Dawn and Barcie were involved in. I didn’t even really know the extent of their involvement. But I knew I didn’t really want to be a part of it. It made me nervous, uncomfortable, humiliated, and I found it a little terrifying. I didn’t know how I could get away from it, though. I didn’t have the money to just disappear. If I stuck around Gethsemane, I either had to do what Dawn wanted me to do or she was going to send the photos to White Power Larry. I didn’t want to be around for that. I could man up and just fight the guy if it came to that but I wasn’t going to fool myself. I wasn’t a fighter. White Power Larry was legendarily violent. Since there weren’t enough minorities in Gethsemane for him to take his aggression out on, this was one area of his life where he didn’t discriminate.
I didn’t have a lot of options. I didn’t have any siblings and my parents had been dead for years. They’d left me a tiny inheritance that afforded me the luxury of not working for about a year afterward and then to be able to scrape by with shit jobs. I wasn’t going to be able to go far on two hundred dollars and I didn’t even have that much in my checking account until I got paid again.
My plan was to drop Barcie off at the hospital, drive somewhere near the airport where there wer
e a lot of hotels, ditch the car, and . . . what?
I didn’t know.
Travis was my only friend. He was missing. I didn’t know if Dawn had anything to do with that or if she’d just found his phone and was fucking with me.
“What the fuck should I do?”
I glanced over at Barcie, who seemed mostly unavailable for comment.
I pulled my phone out and re-read the text:
RUN FUCKER RUN
I called the number back, my pulse ticking up.
Barcie’s purse began vibrating.
In a state of near hypnosis she reached into her purse and extracted her phone. She opened her eyes just long enough to glance at the screen and mumbled, “Why are you callin me?”
I ended the call and sighed.
I didn’t think Barcie had sent the message to me. I didn’t think she had been in any condition to. I was pretty sure it was just Dawn testing me to see what I would do.
Did she think I would actually try to run away?
My only other option was to return to Gethsemane and try to lay low.
Or not.
If I just went back to my apartment I knew Dawn would come around again. I’d probably be disappointed if she didn’t. What would be the harm in joining them? What else was I really doing? Barcie had said not to worry about money but, being perpetually broke, I found that impossible. Was what Dawn doing actually criminal or just creepy?
I thought about Taylor Dream howling as Barcie beat her savagely with a chain.
Okay, so a lot of what they were doing was definitely not legal and more horrifying than creepy.
I turned onto Route 35 from Route 4.
The highway was virtually empty. The windshield wipers swept back and forth on the lowest setting. After only a couple of minutes, a hospital loomed like a giant beacon in the darkness.
A lighted amber sign hanging from an overpass announced:
THE POINT CENTER FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT AND RESEARCH NUMBER THREE
NEXT EXIT
I took the next exit and wondered when even hospitals had become gross and overly corporate. Did they even refer to people as patients anymore? Or were we just test subjects for their medical products?
Getting anywhere near a hospital filled me with dread and anxiety. I momentarily resolved to again quit smoking, drinking, and having sex with strange women, to try eating better once I could achieve a more stable life, and maybe even exercise more often.
I followed the signs to the ‘Patient Drop Off,’ feeling a little relieved it wasn’t called something like ‘Subject Deposit,’ and knew I wasn’t going to be able to go into the hospital, if I’d ever planned to in the first place.
There was a pull around under an awning and it felt not unlike a large hotel or an airport. The entrance was brightly lit and it was overall a lot calmer than I thought it would be. A couple of women sat on a bench to the right of the entrance, smoking. I couldn’t tell if they were nurses or janitors.
I pulled to the far side of the doors and stopped the car.
I took a deep breath.
I told myself I wasn’t a terrible person but knew, at the end of my life, I’d probably have to look back and make that decision based on my actions rather than my actual thoughts.
I got out of the car, crossed around the front of it, opened Barcie’s door, tugged her out, and placed her on the curb. Then I hurried back to the car, slammed the door, and drove away.
I glanced into the rearview mirror before pulling onto the road and was pretty sure Barcie was now standing, one of the nurses or janitors approaching her.
Had the whole thing been a put on? What would have happened if I’d gone into the hospital with her?
I pulled onto the road, devoid of traffic, and my phone vibrated.
I slid it out of my pocket.
A text message lit up the screen.
It was from Barcie.
It said: DICK.
I should have turned around but felt like I’d already committed to something, although I wasn’t sure what that something was.
Maybe it was fatigue or lingering drunkenness or just burgeoning insanity, but I felt a whole swirl of emotions. I felt bad for just dumping Barcie at the hospital but felt a little better knowing she was alive and well, or at least well enough to stand up on her own. I told myself that, since there had been onlookers, it would actually look worse if I went back to pick her up. Barcie may not have been the smartest girl on the planet but she seemed to have some kind of survival instinct, and a phone, and I felt like she’d be fine in the long run. Plus there was that thing with the cat, so she deserved whatever happened to her.
My panic ramped up considerably. Technically, I was now driving a stolen car. I should have disabled Barcie’s phone before dropping her off. I hoped her first call wasn’t to the police. I needed to get rid of the car as quickly as possible.
I still had trouble wrapping my head around the situation I was in. It made me nervous and I struggled to find the tiniest sliver of hope. There were a couple of scenarios I had worked out in my head. The first was that Barcie knew something I didn’t, had some genuine concern for me, and sent the text before blacking out or whatever. I didn’t think it was likely but it was possible. That made me feel even worse for dumping her but I was ultimately doing what she had told me to do in the most efficient way possible. The second scenario was that everything had been staged and planned. Was it possible Barcie wanted us to escape together for some reason? Maybe she hadn’t really blacked out at all. Maybe she had sent the text and faked the blackout, knowing how Dawn would react. But that didn’t make a lot of sense. We’d been alone all afternoon. We could have gotten away then. Or if she’d faked the blackout, why hadn’t she miraculously come to the second we were away from the party and filled me in on the plan. Another possibility was that it was just another scene in whatever bizarre document of my humiliation Dawn was making and this was all constructed by her, the whole thing some kind of ruse to get me to the hospital for some heinous reason. I’d need to check the car for cameras before abandoning it. If there were a reason for them trying to lure me to the hospital, Dawn would have surely wanted to capture it.
I needed to sleep.
I pulled the car into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn.
I wouldn’t be able to walk too far but I didn’t want to stay in the same hotel I left the car in. I didn’t know if they’d come looking for me or not but it seemed like that would make things a little too easy for them.
I quickly glanced and felt around the interior of the car, looking for any little lights or some gadget that looked like it didn’t belong there.
I pulled out my phone and brought up a map.
There was a motel called the Pine Sweat Lodge about a half-mile down the road. It was kind of a weird name and sounded horrible. It had a one-star average review. The first three I scanned through said they wished they could give it no stars or negative stars. I was sure it would be really cheap and hoped they had rooms available.
I began walking through the drizzle. The sky had lightened to a dark gray and I figured the sun would be up within the hour. Since a lot of the terrible things I’d witnessed over the past couple of days had taken place while the sun was up, this didn’t offer me a lot of comfort. I half expected a series of texts from Dawn and Barcie and was a little surprised to not get anything.
By the time I reached the Pine Sweat Lodge, I was beyond damp.
The main building looked like a dilapidated halfway house with a couple of low cinderblock buildings behind it. Just when I started to wonder if they were still in business or not, I noticed the neon sign hanging below the hand painted plywood sign. The neon sign was struggling to be lit up and it looked like they had vacancies or, at least, ‘V——C-.’
I walked up onto the front porch, all gray wood with no paint. The front door was covered in bars. A window to the right of the door that looked like it had been cut poorly out of the house had a cardboard
sign in the corner that said: OFFICE.
A bell had been drilled into the boards of the house.
I tapped the bell. It didn’t chime, just emitted a muted sound of metal striking metal.
The window slid up, filled by a man or a woman, I couldn’t really be sure. He or she was enormous, pale, and wet looking. With greasy stringy hair hanging down to the shoulders.
“Yeah,” he or she asked through speech unencumbered by teeth.
“Do you have a room?”
“I guess.”
“I’d like to, uh, rent it.”
“Fifty bucks.”
I pulled the modest wad out of my pocket and handed the money to the creature in the window.
He or she jerked a meaty hand over its shoulder and said, “Room six. All the way in back. Checkout’s at noon.”
“Do I need a key?”
“It’s unlocked.”
I felt like I’d made a bad mistake but imagined I could sleep anywhere at this point.
I walked around the main house and into what I supposed could have been a courtyard under different maintenance. As it was it was just a yellow security lamp in a wasteland of liquor bottles, cigarette butts, trash, and used tires. There was some mostly dilapidated lawn furniture in various states of decay scattered around. A skinny old man wearing only underwear sat in a lawn chair, smoking and looking up at the sky. Birds were chirping and I heard a plane rumble, coming from or going to the airport or the air force base.
I found my room and opened the door, feeling a moment of panic. Given the area this place was in and the fact that the door was unlocked, I would have been amazed to find the room unoccupied.
It wasn’t.
Two men who looked like FBI agents sat on the edge of the bed, staring at a blank television screen. They wore identical black suits and had identical haircuts. They didn’t look like people you typically saw around here.
I didn’t want a confrontation.
“I guess you’ve rented the room?” the man on the left said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“We’ll vacate,” he said.
“Let’s vacate now,” the man on the right said.
They stood robotically, each bending to retrieve a metal briefcase, and left the room, trailing an odd chemical scent behind them.
This Town Needs a Monster Page 9