The joint was empty, save for the bartender—a gangly fellow with a shock of dark hair and a goatee. The man looked up as they entered.
“What can I get you, folks?”
“Do you mind if we just sit a sec?” Peter asked.
The bartender waved them in. “No problem. You want some music?”
It was Hannah who answered. “Why not?”
“A little Willie coming up.” The man ducked below the counter, and a second later, “On the Road Again” kicked in over the sound system. Peter and Hannah chose a booth and plunked down. Hannah drummed her fingers on the tabletop in time with the music. On the road again…
“You want a shot?” Peter asked.
“It’s not even noon, Mr. Larson.”
“Do you want one?”
“Yes, please.”
Peter rose and headed for the bar. The bartender was busy loading Jägermeister into a three-bottle tap dispenser.
“Change your mind?” the man asked.
Peter eyed the bottles on the shelf. “What do you have in the way of whiskey?”
“Whiskey whiskey or bourbon whiskey?”
“Bourbon.”
“Let’s see. I’ve got Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Old Crow—”
“Nix on the Old Crow,” Peter said. “Tell me, what’s the worst bourbon you’ve got?”
“The worst?”
“Seriously, the very worst. Rotgut through and through.”
The bartender raised a plastic bottle filled with a pale brown liquid. “Ballen’s. Now that’s the worst. It used to be our house bourbon, but no one could stomach it.”
“Then why do you keep it around?”
The barkeep grinned. “Why, for moments like this, of course. An extra buck and I’ll make it a beer and a bump.”
“A beer and a—?”
“Coors and a shot. Takes the edge off.”
“Why not. Two, please.”
“It’s Riggs.”
Peter squinted at the man. “Oh. Peter.”
“I’ll bring ‘em right over.”
Peter sauntered back to the booth.
“I like this,” Hannah said.
“What?”
“Being here in the dark in the middle of the day. I like the stupid little Christmas lights over the bar that you know they never take down. It reminds me of undergrad.”
“Spent a lot of time in dives like this, did we?”
"Hell no!" Hannah retorted. "This is a hundred times classier. There was this one joint I bartended back in Newark, the Rusty Nail, now that was a dive. This one time, this hooker who worked out of the men’s room—”
Peter stopped her. “Is this a true story or a fake story?”
Hannah punched him in the arm. “Why do you do that? You know I like my stories.”
“I just wanted to know if it was true.”
“No! But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t bartend.”
Peter squeezed her knee. “Okay, go ahead.”
“No, you had your chance. That story’s gone forever.”
“C’mon.”
“Nope.”
Peter rubbed his hands. Hannah responded by rubbing hers in imitation.
“So,” she said. “Are we taking the house or what?”
The bartender arrived carrying two red solo cups of beer and two shots of whiskey.
“Sorry about the wait,” the man said, setting their beer on the table. “And for the plastic cups. Our dishwasher’s gone tits up. But what’s that they say?” Suddenly, he burst into song. “Red solo cup, I fill you up. Let's have a party!”
Hannah and Peter stared at each other a moment and then burst out laughing.
“What the…?” Hannah asked between giggles.
“You know? The Toby Keith tune?”
Peter shook his head. “I’m sorry…Riggs, was it? I haven’t kept up on country top twenty.”
The bartender set down the drinks and scowled. “What kind of crack is that, you piece of shit?”
Both Peter and Hannah froze.
“No crack,” said Peter, shifting nervously. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Honest.”
“Yeah?”
“Honest.”
The man slapped him on the shoulder. “For God’s sake, Pete. It’s Riggs.”
Peter was at a loss for words. One of the video poker games let loose an electronic chirp. And then it dawned on him.
“Riggs?”
“And the penny drops!”
Peter grabbed the guy’s hand, and Riggs immediately pulled him in for a bear hug. “God, what the hell happened to your hair? You look like Einstein fucked Jerry Garcia.”
“Damn, tell me what you really think.”
Peter turned to his wife. “Hannah, this is Eli Riggs. We went to high school together.”
Hannah, who had held her breath for the last minute, exhaled a great ahhh!
“Good ole MCS. Of course, I was a lowly freshman and he was a seniorino.”
“We also worked a summer together at the county pool.”
“That’s right, the pool!” Riggs cried. “All that pee!”
Riggs leaned over Hannah. “What did you ever do in life to deserve a bozo like this?”
“I lost a bet.”
Riggs chortled. “Ho! She’s a good one. You’re a good one. Lemme grab a brewski and join you.” He leaped up and practically ran back to the bar. “You two in town long?”
“For awhile. Is this your place?” Peter asked.
Riggs grabbed a cup from the stack, flipped it in the air and caught it coolly. “Naw, this is just my part-time, mostly full-time gig. I manage the joint. Summer’s are easy. But come fall things are going to get downright ugly.”
“Why’s that?” Hannah asked.
Riggs returned with his beer and hovered over the table. “The college kids. As soon as they step foot in town, they’ll be right back here. And I just lost my best drink slinger. Love the shirt, by the way, Hannah.”
“Thanks.”
“Mighty fuckin’ sweet. You want me to play some Leppard?”
“No thanks.”
“Yeah, it may not look like it right now, but the old Rock can rake in the dough.”
Peter glanced around the room. Now that he thought about it, there was something about the place that looked familiar. “This wasn’t always here.”
“Ding-ding-ding!” Riggs sat with a plop. “Used to be Pizza Carl’s, but they shut that shithole down years ago. Rats in the garbage disposal. Hey, at least they were trying to get rid of them, know what I mean?” He raised his cup. “Here’s to rattlesnakes and condoms—two things I never screw with.” Hannah snorted. Soon, all three of them were laughing.
“So, Pete,” Riggs said. “You know how glowing my future turned out to be. What line of work did you end up in?”
“I’m a narrator.”
“What, like on the Discovery Channel?”
“Nope, never had the knack for that. I record audiobooks.” He already knew what was coming next. It was almost too easy to predict.
“Really? That’s amazing. I check out tons from the library. Most self-help stuff. Tony Robbins and such. Always thought I’d like to try that. Maybe you’ll give me some pointers?”
There it was.
“Sure.”
Riggs turned to Hannah. “And how about you, sweetness? You making any babies for my buddy, here?”
Hannah went pale.
Riggs instantly realized his mistake. “Oh, Jeez. Did I—?”
Hannah forced a smile and put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. Will you excuse me?”
Peter started to rise. “Hannah?”
“It’s okay. You two boys catch up. I’ve got to pee.”
She extricated herself from the booth and dashed past the scolding poker machines, escaping into the women’s room.
“Aw, man,” Riggs sighed. “I put my foot in it, didn’t I? I’m always doing shit like that. My ex used to say that if there was a pile
of crap within a hundred square miles, my fucking foot would find it.”
Peter got up. “I’m going to go check on her.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Peter headed for the restrooms, leaving Riggs surrounded by plastic cups and shot glasses. “And that’s why I drink alone.”
* * *
Peter found Hannah leaning against a graffiti-covered wall.
“I miss him,” she said. “I miss my Michael.”
“I know.”
“I miss him so much!”
He held her close as her sobs shook them both. And he made the decision for her. They were moving into the house—the house of the broken bird. They were moving in and fixing everything. The house, themselves, the whole goddamn world.
They made love as soon as they got back to the motel. It was wild and necessary. Neither of them even had the chance to undress fully. And when it was over, they attacked the pizza Riggs had sent them home with by way of an apology.
Home.
At that moment it meant the Intermission Motor Lodge, and that was okay.
The clock radio told Peter that it was 3:30 in the afternoon, that there were hours left to hide away in before the dawn of their new lives. And so, hide away they would.
Hannah stole the last piece of pizza out from under his nose. “Mine!” she grinned. He let her have it.
She grabbed two remotes from the nightstand—one for the ceiling fan, the other for the TV—and set the fan on high and the TV on HBO. She pulled the comforter up around herself, leaving him the sheets, and ate her pizza.
“Comfy?”
“Very,” she said. “Very very.”
“Good.”
Hannah stopped at the crust. She never ate her crusts. “Do you remember what his favorite pizza was?”
“Mushroom, all the way.”
“That’s right.”
“Just like his dad.”
“Disgusting.” Hannah curled up her nose. “You two loved the fact that I can't stand them. He'd always sneak one onto one of my slices. Oh, and was he crafty? Sometimes he'd sneak it under the cheese."
“That’s my boy.”
They both paused at his use of the present tense, letting it hang in the air between them.
“He would’ve liked this,” Hannah said as she dropped the ceiling fan down to medium. “He always loved a motel.”
“Swimming.”
“The ice machine.”
“Finding the Bible in the nightstand drawer.”
“Or the Book of Mormon. Remember that?” Hannah smiled. “What a can of worms that opened.”
“Where was that? Iowa?”
“Nauvoo. Remember? It was the day your dad took us all down to Keokuk to look for geodes, and a hot air balloon suddenly appeared in the sky, floating over the Mississippi? Remember?”
“I remember,” Peter said, but the memory was foggy. That day, like so many others he’d spent with Michael, was already slipping away. Like a dream.
Hannah reached out for his hand.
“You’ve got sauce on your fingers,” Peter protested.
“Take it, you big dope.”
He did.
“We did the best we could, right?”
“One hundred percent right.”
“He didn’t want for anything.”
“Not a thing.”
“We did our job. And now it’s time to move on. Right?”
“That’s right, sweetheart.”
She sat back, content to leave it there. But Peter wasn’t finished. If they were talking, they were talking.
“You’ll never try to hurt yourself again, right?” He had said the words to her a hundred times in his head since that day—since Hannah’s Bad Day—but hearing them aloud felt like stepping to the edge of a cliff, not knowing if he’d fall or not.
Hannah offered him her open face, and the sorrow and shame Peter found there broke his heart.
“Right,” she said. She crawled over, took his chin between her thumb and forefinger and kissed him.
* * *
Peter rose in the middle of the night and slipped into the bathroom, careful not to turn on the light lest he wake Hannah.
He hadn’t slept a wink. He had watched as the clock doled out the hours like a miser and now, at 4:02 in the morning, he had given up any hope of falling asleep.
It wasn’t the bed—it was comfortable enough. Nor was it Hannah’s night prattle. She had always mumbled in her sleep, and it had never kept him up. He found it comforting, in fact, to listen to her dreamy commentary—a reassurance in the night that she was there.
What stole his slumber was the clicking of the ceiling fan as it spun round and round. He had tried to fish the remote out from under Hannah’s arm, but every time he tried, she’d stir. The last thing he wanted was to rob her of her sleep.
He rose and tiptoed to the bathroom. He flipped the light switch, and blue-whiteness filled the room, illuminating a framed poster of an old Maple City Fall Festival poster, circa 1974. Rides, games, a tractor pull and a haystack scramble for the kids. This year’s Fall Festival Queen: Shelly Harding! A photo of Shelly sat in the corner of the poster, wearing her tiara and waving. Probably the best day of her entire life, Peter thought.
He held his arm out over the sink and examined the claw marks the ruthless crow had gifted him. Not too deep, but red and angry. Three parallel scrapes. Like exclamation marks without the dots.
Hannah has the dots.
And suddenly, Hannah’s Bad Day came lumbering into the room, elbowing its way into his consciousness before he could fend it off. He gripped the edge of the sink.
Hannah’s Bad Day, a flip term his mind had come up with to lessen the blow of what he had seen that afternoon in their apartment. He had just completed recording the first book in the Benjamin Coffin series at the Flatiron studios. It was a Tuesday night, and the Larsons had always been true to Taco Tuesday. Jesús’ Taqueria made Hannah’s favorites, and so he had swung by on his way home, bringing a hulking bagful of soft shell tacos and all the fixings.
Nothing seemed amiss when he had dumped the food in the kitchen, nor when he hung up his bike and quickly checked his email. But when Hannah hadn’t answered, when he saw that the YouTube clip of Michael’s third birthday at Liberty State Park was frozen on the TV screen, Peter’s heart had grown loud in his chest.
He’d made a beeline for Michael’s room, and found his wife sitting up against the wall next to the radiator where the hospital bed once stood. She’d had an old IV line in her hand, its needled point dripping red, her other arm peppered with nasty self-inflicted wounds, weeping blood.
“You’ll never try to hurt yourself again, right?”
Peter opened a small courtesy soap, lathered up his arm. The scent of lilac filled the air. Michael always hated lilac.
He stole a moment to look at himself in the mirror before heading to bed. The face he saw was tired and burdened. He’d have to change that. But not tonight.
After peeing and flushing the toilet ever so slowly, ever so quietly, he returned to the bed. Hannah still defended the remote.
“More than it was going to be…” she said to no one.
And so Peter endured the offending fan. Click, click, click. Over and over again. In time, the sound became the clicking of a bird’s beak—open, closed, open, closed—bringing visions of broken wings, squirming bundles and bubbles on the surface of the water.
The crayon snapped in the boy’s hand. He took a huge intake of breath, filling his lungs to the point of bursting.
Awake!
He was alone in the room. The thing—the nightmare thing—was gone.
The boy could feel his heart racing like a rabbit in his chest, feel the uncomfortable dampness in his pajama bottoms. He was miserable, but he was awake.
He looked down at the drawings scattered in front of him on the floor. Stick figures dance
d on each in violent tangos, seemingly in another’s hand as he had graduated from stick figures years ago.
The most recent lay before him in all its bloody splendor. A grey, crooked man curled around a cowered woman, and there was blood in his teeth. The eyes of both figures were wild, crazed—his in anger, hers in unhinged fear.
The man’s fingers dug into the woman’s head. This is where the majority of the red crayon, the crayon he had snapped, was used.
A scrawled caption accompanied the tableau.
BAD
As he stared at the drawing, it began to move. The stick man circling the stick woman, much like the thing from his nightmare circled his room. The man gnashed his scribbled teeth while the woman fled, weeping waxy tears.
The man pursued. BAD. His mouth moving closer. BAD. Teeth bared. BAD. Biting down. DAD. Ripping her apart.
The boy grabbed the first crayon he could find—the black, YES, the black—and attacked the drawing, murdering the image, blotting it from view.
His hand circled like an incantation. The figures beneath raced, trying to avoid his scrawl, but they were no match for the boy’s fevered efforts.
Soon, the page was filled with black, the crayon worn down to a nub. Colors beneath tried to claw their way out, but the boy’s mark was too strong. The red faded, bowing to the black, and the drawing ceased its restless movement.
The boy tossed aside his used-up crayon. He rose and ran for the doorway, passing through it and into the darkness, heading for the stairs beyond.
The man at the Ryder truck lot was none too pleased when Peter called to inform him that they’d need the truck for a couple more days.
“How many?” the guy on the other end of the line grumbled.
“Two, maybe three,” Peter said.
“You just pissed all over my shoes, mister,” the man said and hung up.
Hannah reached out to Lillian Dann about getting someone in to give the place a good clean before they started moving their prized possessions and learned that her preferred cleaning company consisted of her son, her nephews and a family friend.
“I am so glad this is going to work out for you!” she crooned. “I’ll have my Tad round up his gang. They’re family, so they’re good.” She lowered her voice. “Except for Juan, of course. Not that he’s not good, but…you know. He’s just not family.”
The Nightmare Room Page 5