by J. S. Bailey
He hadn’t wanted to do it. But when all was said and done and he had stared down at their dead eyes and stuffed the gun back into his pocket, he knew he had done the right thing.
He wasn’t sure how his captors knew it was him. He had made sure that each of the faces lay still, and the dead do not tattle on those who kill them. There was, however, a slight chance that one of them had held on tightly to this world until the police and paramedics arrived on the scene. Perhaps one had uttered his name on their dying breath.
A more likely scenario was that the bullets had been traced to his handgun, but in that case, shouldn’t there have been a warrant out for his arrest? Breaking into his house would not have been necessary. They could have just knocked on the door with the warrant in hand, read him his Miranda rights, and hauled him away.
This could only mean that the police had gone above the law and aided in his abduction.
He cursed himself for not having chosen a different weapon. He could have used a golf club or a knife; he owned both. However, those were more suitable for a single killing. The use of those weapons would have given the others the freedom to flee, allowing them to torment him another day—and the thought of that horrified him more than his impending death. The faces, oh, the faces…
The car turned off the road and was now bumping along a gravel lane. The destination couldn’t be too much farther ahead now, because gravel lanes tended to dead-end.
The car slowed to a stop. His emotions bordered on the edge of panic. This was it. End of the road, end of the line. He’d be dead within the hour. Maybe within the quarter-hour.
Placing mind over matter in an attempt to wiggle his way out from between his captors, he squirmed around like a dying worm and received a fist in the nose for his effort. Blood trickled from his nostrils and over his lip. The taste of it nearly gagged him.
The car door opened. The captor on the left grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him out onto the ground, which felt solid like a parking lot. The smell of fresh asphalt filled the air.
More car doors slammed. The rest of the intruders who had escorted him from his house must have taken another vehicle, and now all seven of them were regrouping here—wherever “here” was—to take care of him.
He could only hope that whatever they planned on doing wouldn’t take very long.
Sidney waited at one of the living room windows, anxiously staring out at the downpour. Heavy sheets of rain spattered against the glass with every gust of wind. Being stuck out there must have been terrible. Visibility on the highway would have been almost down to zero. People tended to forget how to drive the right way when it hadn’t rained for months, so there were probably accidents all over the place. Fatal ones, too.
A couple of cars turned onto the street, but none of them pulled into the driveway.
She forced herself to step away from the window. Standing there worrying wasn’t going to expedite Jessica’s return and would in all likelihood make the wait seem longer.
What she really wanted was a smoke. A few draws on a cigarette would calm her down. She’d have to wait until it stopped raining, though. No way was she going to stand outside in this monsoon catching her death, and no way was she going to risk smoking in the house, because she didn’t feel like listening to Wayne go on and on about black lung disease or some crap like that.
She sat back down on the couch and gazed at the black-and-white horror flick she’d found on a channel she didn’t know they had. She’d muted the television so she wouldn’t wake up her cousin. The lack of sound made the movie seem even more boring than it already was.
She yawned. The digital clock on the cable box showed the time as eleven thirty. Jessica should have been home ages ago.
“God, please keep Jessica safe out there,” she caught herself whispering. Her face heated in embarrassment even though no one had been around to hear her. Some habits were never going to die. Heck, she still went to church every Sunday morning—not because she believed in any of that stuff, but because it helped pass the time on her least favorite day of the week.
A car door slammed somewhere outside. When a minute went by without anyone coming to the door, she returned to the window to see what was going on. Maybe Jessica needed help carrying something.
Or not. Jessica’s car wasn’t in the driveway. The sound must have come from another vehicle on another street.
“Don’t do this to me, Jessica,” she muttered, returning to the couch once more. If her friend had been killed in an accident, she would have no way of knowing until she turned on the news the next day. The only people she would have left would be Wayne, her dad, and her brothers Brian and Kyle. The former two, being older, were likely to die first. And if something happened to Brian or Kyle, she would be completely alone. Then she’d probably end up living to be a hundred and five in some nursing home where the food tasted like crap and they didn’t serve Pepsi.
Headlights shining through the window grabbed her attention. She leapt off the couch and ran to the window, fully expecting to see a police cruiser sitting in the driveway even though there was no way an officer would have known Jessica was staying here, but instead her eyes were met with the sight of a forest-green Taurus pulling up close to the house. The headlights blinked out.
One benefit of expecting the worst was that she could never be disappointed. Grinning like a fool, Sidney unlocked the front door and held it open when Jessica came shuffling up onto the porch with her tote bag.
Jessica stepped onto the mat and pulled her hood back. Her hair was a mess, and she was shivering like she’d just gone for a swim in an icy pond. “Thanks,” she said, setting down her bag and rubbing her hands together as if to warm them.
“I was starting to think you’d drowned out there,” Sidney commented. She closed the door and engaged the deadbolt. There was no need to let her know just how worried she’d really been.
Jessica kicked off her shoes. “It was a close call. The car kept hydroplaning. Took me two hours to get back here.” She walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed out a bottle of Mike’s. “Do you have a bottle opener?”
“In the drawer under the microwave.” Something wasn’t right. Yeah, the drive home would have been stressful, but it shouldn’t have stressed her out to the point of needing alcohol to soothe her nerves. “Everything okay?” Sidney asked. She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.
Jessica joined her a moment later and pried the lid off of her drink. She took a sip and grimaced. Her face was chalk-white. “That depends on what you mean by okay. I mean, I’m alive, so I must be okay. Right?”
“You don’t look okay. What happened?”
“I think I’ve made contact.”
Sidney blinked. Jessica made it sound like she’d encountered an alien spacecraft. “With?”
“The things I’ve been trying to make contact with for years.” Of course.
“You mean you actually saw a ghost.”
“Not just saw. Talked to.”
“Really.”
Disappointment showed on Jessica’s face. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. Just tell me what happened.”
Jessica raised the bottle to her mouth and gulped down more of the drink. “You know, this stuff tastes better once you get that first mouthful down.”
“You do know that’s Wayne’s personal stash.”
“I can buy him more tomorrow.”
Sidney waited. “Well?”
Jessica set the bottle down on the table. “There was a guy hanging out in the graveyard when I got there. Mid-thirties, probably. We got to talking, and he said his name was Jerry Madison. He didn’t look dead.”
“Then how do you know he was? He could have been some jerk trying to scare you.”
“That’s what I thought at first, too. But then he jumped on me. And he didn’t weigh anything.”
Though she was a self-proc
laimed teetotaler, Sidney contemplated getting a drink for herself. “What did he do that for?”
“He wanted to come with me, but I was able to ditch him at the last second.”
Sidney drew her arms closer to her body. “Were you able to record any of it?”
“I’m not sure. My equipment was on, but I don’t know how good the footage is going to be.”
Sidney stood up and walked toward the counter, where Jessica had set her tote bag. “Then let’s check it and see!”
Jessica shook her head. “I’ve had enough for one night. I can look at it tomorrow.” She finished the alcoholic lemonade and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “If I don’t wake up and find out this has been some screwy dream, that is. You never know when high EMFs are going to fry my brain.”
Sidney didn’t know what an EMF was, but she did know one thing: she did not want to wait until morning to look at Jessica’s footage. Jessica never got freaked out on ghost hunts, so it was evident that something had happened out there.
Half an hour after Jessica went to bed, Sidney turned off the television and lights in the living room. She returned to the kitchen and stared at Jessica’s black tote bag. Had Jessica really seen a ghost? The existence of ghosts would suggest some kind of afterlife, which in turn would suggest that there was a higher power in the universe. That was something that just couldn’t be. Stories of a supreme being governing all of creation were only fairy tales meant to give comfort to the ignorant.
But Jessica would never lie to her. If she said she had met a spirit, then she had met a spirit, plain and simple.
Of course, Jessica may have been delusional. That was the only possible explanation that she’d be able to accept without having to alter her beliefs.
The tote bag seemed to beckon her. Jessica might be upset if Sidney rummaged through her equipment without permission. Some of it had been quite expensive. She could be careful, though, and put everything back in the bag so it wouldn’t appear to have been touched.
She bit her lip. Should she, or shouldn’t she? The truth might be terrifying.
The truth might be extraordinary.
She pulled a voice recorder out of the bag.
THAT NIGHT, despite nearly an hour of tossing and turning, Jessica fell asleep and dreamed that she was a man.
She found herself seated at a round table in a bar with three other men in their early thirties. Even though nobody had mentioned them, she knew their names: Phil Knippenberg, Andy Schlosser, Garret West. The bar was crowded with more men than women. A live band performing on a stage off to one side attempted to play Aerosmith’s hit “Dream On.”
The smell of liquor and clouds of cigarette smoke hung like fog in the air of the poorly lit room. A waitress whose blouse exposed an ample amount of cleavage brought four foaming glasses of Bud Light to their table, left, and immediately returned with a tray of nachos.
Jessica’s comrades dug in like wolves on a fallen doe. She had no appetite and stared down at her man-hands, feeling emptier than the deepest void of space.
“Come on, eat something,” Andy urged her.
She shook her head. “I ate before I left the house. And I’m not hungry.” A man’s voice came out of her mouth. This was one weird dream.
“He’s probably thinking ’bout that broad again,” Phil said, his mouth full of cheesy tortilla chips that dripped with grease. Jessica could tell from the slur in his speech that this beer was not his first or even his second of the evening. “He’s got that funny look in his eyes.”
“I can think about whatever I want to,” Jessica snapped.
“Get over it, man,” Garret said.
“And just how am I supposed to do that?”
Garret gestured over his shoulder toward the bar counter, where a pair of busty women with feathered haircuts were laughing with the female bartender. “I’ll give you a dollar if you ask one of those babes out. Doesn’t even have to be a date. Just take her home tonight. Heck, let’s make it five dollars. I’m feeling generous.”
Strangely, the thought of taking an unknown woman to bed was somewhat appealing. And it had been such a long time, much too long… No. Never again. Relationships of any kind only led to ruin.
Her hesitation must have been too obvious. Andy let out a chuckle. “He’ll never do it, because he won’t let himself get over dear Abby, that’s the problem. Am I right?”
Jessica felt her temper begin to build. “I’m not going to be able to just forget what she did as if it never happened.”
Phil lifted his glass into the air. “This might help.”
“I’d kill myself before stooping to your level.”
Phil grinned. “Then go right ahead.”
Jessica gave a hollow laugh. “That’s one way to meet the kids, isn’t it?”
“Fatherhood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Garret said. “Enjoy your freedom.”
Freedom? “Do you understand how much it killed me when she told me? She even made me pay for it, for crying out loud!”
Phil took a swig of his Bud Light. “You act like what she did is some big deal. I made Sherry get two of’em. You shoulda seen her crying and hanging onto her stomach like it was gonna help. Told her I’d throw her out in the streets if she didn’t do it. Gave in like a beat dog.”
At first she was too stunned to speak. Surely this Phil creature could not have been that cruel! “But why?”
Phil shrugged. “Didn’t want no brats running around. World’s too full of’em anyway.”
Bile rose in Jessica’s throat, and the next thing she knew, she was on her feet and had her man-hands locked around Phil Knippenberg’s throat, fully intent on crushing his esophagus. She heard the chair crash into the floor behind her. “You filthy monster!” she screamed in Phil’s reddening face. “How can you even sleep at night knowing what you did?”
Phil tried to speak but couldn’t. He reeked like alcohol, and for all Jessica cared he could have drowned in it.
Several sets of hands pried her off of her victim, and Phil drew back, gasping for air. His chest heaved up and down.
“Go to hell,” he breathed. Murder shined in his eyes.
“Gladly,” Jessica responded as the hands dragged her away from the table out into the night, leaving her alone in the darkness.
The dream changed, and Jessica was that man again. Clad only in boxers, sitting on the edge of a bed. She turned a black pistol over and over in her hands. Six bullets nestled in their proper places. Six shiny passports that would enable her transport from this bleak world to the next.
“God,” she rasped in her man-voice, feeling her throat constrict with grief, “if you’re really there, if you care about me at all, you’ll make this painless.”
She put the tip of the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
The weapon clicked like a child’s toy gun. She lowered it, dumbfounded. There was no reason for it to have failed to expel the bullet. She pointed the gun at the floor and fired a hole into the rug. The sound of the ensuing blast reverberated throughout the room. Her ears started ringing. Hopefully the neighbors hadn’t heard it, too.
So the gun had jammed. It would not happen again.
She returned the gun to her mouth so she could properly execute herself and fired the gun a third time.
The faulty gun emitted another inadequate click. Enraged, she threw the gun to the floor and kicked it across the room.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she shouted. “Can’t you let a man end it all in peace?”
Thou shalt not kill, said a voice deep within her mind.
She laughed. “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill. Tell that to them!”
The dream faded away when Jessica awoke to a dark bedroom. She had the faint sensation of something ominous slithering around in her mind, but the feeling dissipated within minutes. Dreams were dreams. There was nothing sinister about them.
Yet she still lay wide awake in bed for a long time aft
er. Wondering.
Wayne had already left for work when Jessica crawled out of bed aching at nine o’clock. Sleeping in that late was not her usual custom, but after the previous evening’s occurrences, she deserved to indulge herself with a little extra sleep—not that she’d gotten much of it. Forget the insomnia. Everything was so sore.
In the kitchen Sidney was hurriedly finishing a glass of orange juice and holding a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand.
“Running late?” Jessica popped two slices of bread into the toaster. The breakfast of paupers.
“Forgot to set my alarm.” She set her glass in the sink. “I already called Travis to let him know. He said not to worry because hardly anyone’s been in this morning anyway.”
“What’s new?”
Sidney cleared her throat then glanced down at the table. “So, how are you feeling?”
“Awful. You?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m kind of worried.”
“What the heck are you worried about? I’m the one who went on some kind of mental trip last night.”
“At least we’re on the same wavelength. Just don’t kill me.”
Jessica didn’t like the look in Sidney’s eyes. It was the kind that puppies on television gave their masters when they’d made a mess somewhere. “What did you do?”
“I kind of peeked at your footage last night after you went to bed.”
Oh, boy. “Did you see anything? Like Jerry?”
“No. They’re all blank.”
“You’re kidding.” Her heart sank a little. Well, maybe more than a little. There had been photographs and clips from investigations going back six months saved on various memory cards. Even if she had had a mental lapse out in the graveyard and forgot to turn the equipment on, the other tracks should have still been there.
“I’m not. I checked everything. It’s like they’ve never even been used before. You’re sure you turned them on?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” Sidney had to have made a mistake, and to prove it Jessica snatched a camcorder from the tote bag. She pressed the power button and swung the screen open, where a tiny menu appeared. Yesterday there had been about fifteen old videos stored on the card. Today there were none. “I don’t believe it. All my other videos are gone, too.” She flipped the screen closed and set the camera down. “This doesn’t make any sense.”