by Rick Hautala
“‘Xactly what I said,” Randy replied. “Back in high school, I knew you — at least I thought I did. Hell, maybe I didn’t know you even back then, and I’m so fucking dense I’m only now beginning to realize it.”
John chuckled softly.
“You knew me, all right,” he said, leaning forward and folding his hands on the table in front of him. “You knew me … but you know, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“What’s that?”
In the silence that followed, the two friends locked eyes. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on John’s brow. His impulse was to let it drop. He told himself he should pick up his sandwich, enjoy it — even though his stomach felt about the size of a walnut — and bullshit the time away with Randy. They were leaving the island — if not soon, certainly by spring. So let it all drop! The pressure in his chest, the cold sweat on his brow — they were the leftovers from his weekend-long drinking.
Lowering his voice, John leaned across the table and said, “Ever since I came back, I’ve been wondering about what you really know.”
“What d’you mean?” Randy asked, shrugging and looking genuinely confused. He took another bite of sandwich and chased it down with a swallow of beer.
“Come on, mn! You can cut the I — don’t — know — anything shit, all right?” John said.
Randy sill looked confused.
“It may work with some people, but you can’t bullshit me.”
Frowning, Randy nodded and said,
“Yeah ... sure. Okay.”
“You can’t bullshit me and tell me that you never knew what happened.”
“I’m not trying to bulshit you.”
“Even about what happened to Abby?”
John leaned farther across the table, scowling deeply.
“Is that what this is all about?” Randy’s voice slid a few notes up the scale.
“You know damned right well it is! I’ll bet you know exactly what happened, and I’d place a pretty hefty bet you’re the one who’s been trying to freak me out.”
“Freak you out? How?”
“By leaving those notes around.”
“Notes? What notes? I haven’t got the faintest fucking clue what you’re talking about.” Randy’s anger was beginning to rise. “Look, I was in town and thought it’d be a friendly gesture to drop by and see if you wanted to have lunch. And yeah — I’ll admit it. I feel a little bit ‘funny’ about you. It’s not my idea of a great Christmas Eve, answering an ambulance call to my best friend’s — my former best friend’s house because his father is dead!”
“Sounds good,” John said, his voice taking on a cool edge as he leaned back in his chair and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Real convincing.”
“You can think whatever the fuck you want. It’s not my problem.” Randy thumped himself on the chest and then glanced around to see if they were getting loud and bothering anyone.
“If you really want to know what I think,” John said, “I think you’ve known all along why Abby disappeared … that she killed herself —”
“She what?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t know what the hell are you talking about?”
Genuine shock — at least it looked genuine — registered on his face.
“I think you do,” John said. “I think you knew back when it happened that I knocked her up. Oh, yeah — I did. You look real surprised!”
He jabbed an accusing finger at Randy.
“You knew I knocked her up. I’ll bet she told you exactly what I said — that there was no way I was going to fuck up my life by marrying her. I’ll bet she confided in you because you were my best friend, and she thought you’d say or do something to make me change my mind.”
“Jesus Christ, John! You got to believe me. I didn’t —”
John cut him off by pounding his fist onto the table, making the silverware jump. A few people at nearby tables glanced over at them, and Randy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Lowering his voice to a hiss, John said, “Come on! She told you fucking everything, didn’t she? And I’ll bet she even told you she planned to kill herself if I didn’t marry her!”
“Come on, John — for Christ’s sake! Calm down.” Randy said. He reached across the table to put a restraining hand on John, but John tore away and glared at him.
“Cut the bullshit, all right?” John said, snarling. If his headache had retreated, it was back now in full force. Tight pressure was building up inside his chest, and spinning little dots of light tracked wildly across his vision. In the back of his head, he heard a faint crinkling … like tissue paper being torn and crumpled.
“Did she tell you how she was going to do it, too?” John snarled. “Did she?”
Randy sagged back in his chair, trying — and not succeeding — to absorb what he was hearing. He shook his head as bitter sadness filled him — for Abby and for John.
Abby Snow is dead … has been for almost twenty years!
“She never told me a thing,” he said, forcing his voice to stay steady. “You gotta believe me.”
John sniffed with laughter. A thin line of snot ran from his nose, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“You think I’m a real fucking idiot, don’t you?”
“No … I thought we were —”
“I don’t believe you! Not for one fucking second! I know you’re the one who’s been leaving those notes around.”
“I don’t know what notes you’re talking about,” Randy said.
“‘I won’t forget what you did to me!’” John recited in an irritating singsong voice. “I’ve gotta hand it to you — writing ‘me’ instead of ‘Abby’ gave me quite a jolt.”
Randy started to say something, but John cut him off.
“And you probably do know what I did to her.” John smiled. “But I couldn’t let her being pregnant ruin my life, could I? After all, I had a full scholarship to Orono. I was going to get the fuck out of town! So when I found her dead, hanging from the rafters in Haskins’ barn, you think I could let anyone else know? How could I?”
John was staring at Randy, his mouth hanging open, but he had the unnerving feeling that John wasn’t seeing him … that he was looking right through him.
“The stupid bitch even wrote a note and pinned it to the pocket of her sweater,” John said, his eyes staring wide open with the horror of the memory. “‘You did this to me!’ That’s what her note said. Did you know about that? Did she tell you I did it to her! … The stupid, fucking bitch.”
“I … I had no idea.” Randy’s voice was hushed with shock.
“Do you know where I buried her, too?” John asked as if he hadn’t been listening to Randy. “I’ll bet my fuckin’ life you know!”
Randy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mind was overloaded, and he was speechless. He was convinced that John wasn’t making any of this up. This had happened. The thought that Abby had been dead all these years was like a gunshot blast to the gut.
Unable to check himself now that the pressure of hiding that horrible discovery for all those years was flooding out of him, John gripped the edges of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. A roaring sound filled his ears. It sounded like crashing surf. His breath came in short, sharp gasps that stitched his sides.
“That’s right,” he said, his voice nothing more than a low growl. “I found her hanging in Haskins’ barn and I cut her down from the rafters and buried her out by the oak tree behind the barn. This fall, they found bones out in the field. Fucking-A!”
He shook his head and, with a shaking hand, wiped his forehead with his napkin, pausing to look at the heavy wet streak it left on the cloth.
“That was too fucking close for comfort. I was sure those had to be her bones. Turns out they weren’t, but I figure sometime this spring, once the ground thaws, I’m gonna have to dig her up and move her so they won’t find her. You can’t tell me you didn�
��t know she was buried out there! You had to know!”
“Honest to Christ, John, I didn’t.” Randy cast his eyes back and forth to see if anyone could overhear them. “You’ve got to believe me, man. I had no fuckin’ idea.”
John slumped in his chair, and for several stunned seconds he stared blankly at Randy, his mouth hanging open. The pressure inside him was so strong he thought his head was about to explode. His throat felt flayed, and his hand shook as he reached for his drink. His sandwich lay untouched on the plate.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. His voice sounded strangled, as though someone’s fingers were closing off his windpipe.
Randy leaned with both elbows on the table, his head in his hands. As much as he told himself to breathe evenly and deeply, he couldn’t slow his rapid panting. Looking up at John and realizing that he absolutely didn’t know this man, he shook his head.
“Never … never in my life did I suspect you of … that,” he said, fighting for control of his voice. “You may not believe me, but I did — and I still consider you a friend, whatever the hell that means. If you had told me back then what you just told me … Christ! I don’t know what I would have done. I mean — Jesus! She really killed herself!”
Unable to catch his breath to speak, John nodded.
“And she blamed you,” Randy said, sounding awe-struck. “Because you’re the one who got her pregnant.”
“I — I couldn’t let anyone find her ... not like that.” John’s voice almost broke. His eyes stung as long repressed emotions escaped. “How could I?”
“But … Jesus Christ, man! She was fucking dead! She killed herself because of you!”
“Not because of me,” John said, clenching his hands into white-knuckled fists. He raised his fists but didn’t know if he was going to smash them onto the table or into his friend’s face. “Not because of me! She was …”
“It doesn’t matter what she was.” Randy leaned close to John. “She’s been dead for twenty years, and … I dunno. Even after all these years, you ought to do something about it.”
He’s going to use it against me, John thought with a brilliant flash of panic. He didn’t know before, but now he does ... and he’ll use it!
Do what?” he asked. Looking long and hard at his friend, John tried to see beneath the surface of surprise and concern, and read what Randy was really thinking.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” John said.
“You hid her body. No one — her family never knew what happened to her.”
“But I didn’t kill her … All I did was bury her.”
“Without telling anyone?” Randy said. “Think about what her family must’ve gone through … All those years, wondering if she’s alive or dead.”
Biting his lower lip, John nodded.
“My dad mentioned that her mother died — what? Ten years ago or so. And her father died about a year after that. Her sister … I don’t know.” He shook his head, but whether in confusion or dismissal, Randy wasn’t sure.
“I’ve been living here all that time, and I can tell you — her parents went absolutely nuts trying to find out what happened to her. It’s what eventually killed both of them. And her sister — Sally … I know she got married to some guy from Westbrook and lived — on Spring Street in Westbrook, I think, until they moved out to the Midwest somewhere. Ohio, maybe. Every year she’d run a memorial notice in the newspaper for Abby as if she knew she had died. But I heard a few months ago that Sally —”
“Wait a minute.”
John sagged in his chair, stunned. The instant Randy mentioned Sally’s name, John stopped paying attention to anything else he said. His mind was caught in a whirlwind.
It’s been her sister all along!
Cold rushed up his back in stinging prickles.
Here I’ve been suspecting Randy all along, and I never even thought about Sally! … It was probably her I saw on the bridge during that last storm ... and she’s the one who’s been lurking outside the house … and leaving those notes …
“Jesus Christ, Randy,” he said. “I feel like a goddamned fool.”
“Randy lowered his gaze.
“What am I gonna do?”
Randy’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
A fool? … No … Crazy is more like it.
“Here I’ve been thinking you knew what happened and because you’ve —” He stopped from saying anything about his suspicions about him and Julia, and looked at his fists clenched in his lap. “Jesus Christ, man …”
“Hey … what’s done is done,” Randy said with a mildness that wasn’t genuine. “But you gotta report what happened. Even after twenty years … You have to.”
“No I don’t,” John said, shaking his head firmly.
“They’ll find her eventually,” Randy said. “With all that construction out there? Sooner or later, someone will be out for a walk with their dog, or some kids will be playing in the woods, and they’ll find her bones. If you don’t come clean with what you did, when they do find her, they might think you killed her.”
“Is there something wrong with your sandwich?” The waitress’s voice, speaking so suddenly behind him, made John jump and look around quickly.
“Uhh, no … not at all,” he said. “We were —” Smiling weakly at Randy, he finished, “having a pretty intense discussion.”
“I can wrap it for you to have later,” the waitress said. “With this storm comin’, the manager’s talking about closing early.”
“Yeah — That’d be fine.” John handed her the plate but didn’t take his gaze away from Randy as he took a bite of his sandwich.
Once the waitress left their table, Randy looked at John intensely and said, “You’ve got to do it, man. You’ve got to report what happened!”
“And if I don’t?”
Randy shook his head.
“No way! I can’t do it. Julia doesn’t know a thing about this, and I’m not about to tell her.”
A small voice in the back of his mind was whispering, All you have to do is make sure you get Sally off your back … Make sure she doesn’t do anything to blow it … How much could she know, anyway?…
Plenty, another, fainter but colder voice said. She could know everything if Abby told her before she hanged herself …
Now that he thought about it, it all made sense that Abby’s sister was doing this to him — leaving notes around, sneaking around outside the house at night, trying to make him —
What?
Give himself up?
Destroy himself with the guilt over what happened?
He wasn’t sure exactly what she was up to, but he didn’t intend to find out. What most surprised him, shocked him, in fact, was that he had never suspected Sally … hadn’t even remembered her until now.
Sally had been a couple of years ahead of Abby and John in school, maybe three or four … enough so John had paid no attention to her other than noticing how much the two girls looked alike.
But now that he remembered her, he thought if he had seen her outside the house at night … during a snowstorm … or with her back to him in a candlelit church, he could easily have mistaken her for her sister.
So he had been wrong about Randy, and it was too bad he had blown it by spilling his guts to him, but … someone was tormenting him, stirring up things that should have stayed buried and forgotten, and he had to find out who so he could stop it.
Randy let out a low, whistling sigh as he scratched his neck.
“I don’t see how you can live with it, man. I mean — knowing someone you loved killed herself because of something you did — or what you wouldn’t do?”
John took a sip of his ginger ale and, for the first time, actually tasted it. He smacked his lips, wishing it were something stronger — a beer or, better yet, whiskey.
“I’ve had to learn,” he said with a casual shrug. Then, leaning forward and giving Randy a cold, steady stare, he added, “And I sure hope
to hell you can, too.”
Slowly, and resenting himself for doing so, Randy nodded his agreement.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice so low John barely heard it above the other sounds in the restaurant. “What are friends for?”
Smiling thinly, John held out his hand for Randy to shake. Their clasp was cold and hard.
Like his soul, Randy thought bitterly.
“Done deal, then,” John said, squeezing Randy’s hand and smiling at him. “You’ll carry this to your grave!”
V
But this isn’t the end of it, John thought as he and Randy left Carbur’s and walked out into the dark afternoon. The storm had picked up considerable strength, and now snow was falling in wind-whipped, blinding sheets. The streetlights were on, illuminating the sidewalks, which were already slippery with several inches of accumulated snow. The few cars that passed were moving at a crawl. At the corner of Exchange Street and Middle, a Chevy had skidded into a telephone pole, crimping its front fender.
As they walked back to John’s office building, both men huddled into their coats and were silent, each thinking about what he had learned and how distant they were even though they now shared a horrible secret. At the front door to the office building, they stopped and awkwardly looked at each other.
“So,” John said, holding his hand out again for a handshake, “we understand each other?”
Randy nodded and quickly broke off the handshake, sticking his hand back into his pocket.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice almost lost in the deep-throated howl of the wind. “I’m parked down on Commercial Street. Probably ought to get on home before the roads are total shit.”
“Probably are already.” John smiled tightly as he contemplated his own drive home. He figured people had already started leaving the office but decided he’d go upstairs for a minute to clean up a few things.
“So — uhh, I’ll catch’cha later,” Randy said tightly as he backed away from the doorway. Even with only a short distance between them, his features were lost in the swirling snow. A menacing chill took hold of John when he remembered that other figure he had seen looming out of the snow at him.
“Sure thing,” he said, reaching for the door handle. Before he went inside, he turned and called out to Randy, “Oh … before you go. Do you remember Sally’s married name?”