Rage's Echo

by J. S. Bailey

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So why don’t you let her be?”

  “Because I’m lonely! You don’t know what it’s like.” Her voice became strained, and she turned from him, probably hiding her tears. As if tears could bother him.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She did, but only after swiping a hand over her eyes first. “What?”

  “I have a suggestion.”

  She scooted a few inches away from him. “What kind?”

  He suppressed a smile. What did she think he was thinking? “The kind involving my cousin,” he said. “She’s off tomorrow. Go hang out with her somewhere. Someplace that might cheer her up.”

  “Oh.” She gave him a sheepish grin. “It’ll take me all night to think of one.”

  “Then you’d better get started.”

  “Yeah, maybe so.” She stood up so fast that Wayne jumped in surprise. “I should let you get some sleep. Good night. Or morning, whatever it is.”

  With that, she ducked back out into the hallway and into the other bedroom without a sound. Her door made a soft click as it latched into place.

  Wayne stared dumbly at the other door for several moments before closing his own. Why in the world was she acting so skittish all of a sudden? She had to know how he felt about her; she wasn’t stupid. If she had that much of a problem with it, she wouldn’t have accepted his invitation to move in.

  He pulled off his shirt and draped it over his desk chair. He should just ask her. They had known each other for sixteen years. But what if she didn’t love him that way? She acted like she did, but that could have been wishful thinking on his part. Besides, there were lots of things he hadn’t told her if only because he had told so few others. Her feelings might be hurt if and when she learned that he had kept certain things from her.

  And she might run.

  He returned to the bed. He could think about Jessica later. He picked up the rosary with full intent to continue praying for Jerry but hesitated and lay it down on the nightstand. The hour had just changed over into the single-digits. If he stayed up any later he’d end up falling asleep at his desk at work.

  He could continue praying in the morning. Hopefully waiting until then wouldn’t be a mistake.

  JESSICA WAS running through a dark cemetery into a forest even darker than the surrounding night. A sense of hostility hung in the air like invisible smog. She had to get away from them—had to—but no, they were without doubt gaining on her. She could feel them at her heels!

  “Wake up,” said a voice far away from her, far beyond the forest she had entered.

  “I’m…not…sleeping!” she gasped through clenched teeth as she ran.

  “Earth to Jessica and Sidney! Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear,” said a second voice. “What gives?”

  “Good lord, Jessica, did you die in here? Get up!”

  Jessica jolted fully awake. Sidney was groaning and sitting up in bed on the other side of the room. Wayne stood in the doorway.

  “I’m alive,” Jessica said, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and standing up. The final shadows of the dream faded into reality. It must have been early if Wayne hadn’t left for work yet, and the fact that he had awakened them like this bothered her. “What’s going on?”

  Wayne was wearing a white t-shirt under his peach-colored work shirt, which he had left unbuttoned. He also wore a pair of boxer shorts and seemed to have overlooked the fact that he had not yet put on pants. Jessica pretended not to notice, but her face heated anyway.

  “A slight inconvenience,” he said. “I can’t find my braces.”

  “What makes you think we did something with them?” Sidney yawned and wiped a hand across her face. “Eww, I must have been drooling in my sleep.”

  “Did you do something with them?” he asked.

  Sidney crossed her arms, insulted. “Why would you think I’d do something as low as that? I haven’t touched the things.” Her attention turned to Jessica. “You didn’t, did you?”

  Jessica shook her head. “Nope.” Taking Wayne’s leg braces would have been almost as mean as stealing a wheelchair from a paraplegic, the key difference being that Wayne didn’t always need the braces in order to walk—they just locked in the range of motion of his feet and ankles so he would have better balance. “Where had you put them?”

  “I took them off in the living room last night.” Something like fear flashed through his eyes. “Only now I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “Do you think you could have been sleepwalking and stashed them somewhere?” Sidney asked.

  “If I had sleepwalked,” Wayne said, “I probably would have fallen down the stairs and broken my neck.”

  “I guess we should get looking before you’re late for work,” Jessica said. Wayne’s boss might not be very understanding if he showed up late for having lost two items that he almost always kept with him.

  Wayne led the way down the stairs and stepped into the living room with unnecessary caution, leaning into the wall for support. “I know I set them right here,” he said, gesturing at the floor beside the couch.

  “You sure you didn’t move them anywhere else?” Jessica asked, sensing there might be more to this situation than Wayne was letting on. He acted like he was about to jump out of his skin.

  “Positive,” he said.

  Sidney got down on her hands and knees and peered under the couch. “Hey, I found a penny.” She reached her hand in and withdrew a dusty coin, which she placed on the coffee table.

  Wayne kneaded his forehead. “This is great.”

  “Well, they’ve got to be here somewhere,” Jessica said. She checked behind the couch while Sidney looked under the recliner. Old cough drop wrappers and crumbs resided between the back of the couch and the baseboard. No leg braces.

  Wayne left the room, muttering something under his breath. Moments later, cabinets started banging open and closed in the kitchen.

  Sidney straightened. “Am I the only one around here who hasn’t been acting like a basket case these last few days?”

  “What, you think he stuffed them somewhere and doesn’t remember doing it?”

  “They certainly didn’t walk out of here on their own.”

  Jessica suddenly had the feeling that Jerry was watching them. Her heart skipped a beat. Jerry! Surely this couldn’t be some sick game that the man had chosen to play. Sure, his moods were as unstable as a two-legged stool, but this? This was juvenile.

  Wayne returned to the living room and sank onto the couch. “I don’t believe it. I’m going to be late for work. Charlie’s going to kill me.”

  Charlie Korman was one of the partners at the accounting firm. Jessica had met him a few times when her parents had worked for him. He seemed like the kind of guy who’d expect his employees to show up even if they lay on their deathbeds, which was probably the reason her parents had been hired in the first place. They and Charlie were kindred souls.

  “I could drive you there,” Sidney said. “If they turn up, we can take them to you.”

  “Come on, I’m still able to drive.”

  “And what if you step on the wrong pedal? I don’t want to have to scrape you off a phone pole with a spatula.”

  Wayne glanced at the clock on the wall. “Fine, if it makes you happy. Just don’t forget to pick me up this evening, because there’s no way I’m walking home without braces on.”

  “Don’t forget to put on some pants before we leave.”

  He glanced down at himself. “But I can walk home without those.” He stomped back upstairs.

  “You want me to stay here and keep looking?” Jessica asked Sidney, eager to interrogate a certain someone about the whereabouts of the braces.

  Sidney eyed her with suspicion. “Yeah. You do that.”

  “JERRY, ARE you still in here?” Jessica called out as soon as Sidney’s Camry left the driveway. “If you’re the one who hid Wayne’s braces, that isn’t very nice.”
r />   Their unintended guest failed to make an appearance.

  Having nothing else to do, she gave the living room and kitchen another cursory inspection then checked the first-floor bathroom to see if Wayne might have left his braces in there. He hadn’t.

  Where did that leave? Wayne wouldn’t have gone into the mudroom or junk room at the back of the house last night, though that didn’t mean his braces hadn’t been hidden there. They also could have been in the basement, however unlikely that was. The more logical thing to do was to first search the places where she knew Wayne had been.

  Like his bedroom.

  She ascended the stairs and pushed open his bedroom door.

  Unlike the man’s wardrobe, most of the décor in the room was done in shades of cream. Cream walls. Cream carpet. Cream pillows and bedspread. The place was as spotless as an operating theater, though it smelled like vanilla instead of disinfectant.

  She didn’t remember seeing the braces last night when she had been in the room. And why had she gone in in the first place? Lead us not into temptation, the prayer said, and she marched right into it anyway. She could tell Wayne hadn’t wanted her to leave, so she did the intelligent thing and got out before anything improper happened between them. Jessica: 1, Temptation: 0. She could only hope she hadn’t hurt his feelings.

  But anyway—the braces. Maybe they had been kicked under the bed.

  The bed was centered in the room with its headboard pushed against the right-hand wall. A nightstand to the left of the headboard held a lamp, a worn Bible with a bookmark sticking out of the middle, and the prayer book and rosary that lay on the bed the night before.

  She lifted the edge of the bedspread and only saw an assortment of Rubbermaid containers filled with old papers. No braces.

  A wooden writing desk sat in the left corner closest to the door. Wayne had neatly stacked up a bunch of old issues of People and Better Homes and Gardens on top of it next to a cup of pens that was shaped like a miniature watering can. A cork bulletin board covered in Post-It notes and newspaper clippings hung on the wall above the desk.

  A wallet-sized copy of her senior picture was tacked to the edge of the board. Awkward, seeing her face pinned there like an idol in a shrine.

  She moved into Wayne’s private bathroom, which connected to the bedroom along the left-hand wall. Dirty clothes had been piled into a hamper. A toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, and a comb lay in a perfect row on the vanity. A Glade plug-in beside the sink puffed the vanilla smell into the room.

  Still, no braces.

  Nobody could misplace two objects that were over a foot long each and made of plastic and metal. They were too large to get squashed somewhere out of sight like missing socks or to be accidentally thrown out like an unwanted electric bill.

  The only explanation for their disappearance was that Jerry had taken them, which still made no sense, because he had nothing to gain from it.

  She left the bathroom and made one final inspection of the bedroom. Where else was there to look? The closet, of course. Wayne could have been so tired while getting ready for work that he might have carried the braces there while he was getting his clothes and shut them inside without thinking.

  She slid the door aside with a bit too much force, and the vibration from it hitting the frame sent a precariously placed shoebox tumbling off a shelf onto the floor. The lid fell off on impact, sending a confetti of newspaper clippings across the carpet.

  There were no leg braces in the closet. She had made a mess in vain.

  Hoping that the clippings hadn’t been arranged in any certain order, Jessica stooped down and started stuffing them back into the box, not paying attention to what any of them said until one headline caught her eye.

  “Police: Boy Killed Own Mother in Self-Defense,” it read.

  Startled, she brought the yellowing paper closer to her face so she could read the tinier print.

  Georgetown—Most people facing assault will not hesitate to harm the assailant in order to save themselves. For one local teenager, that meant ending his own mother’s life.

  The woman, whose name has not yet been released, reportedly beat her thirteen-year-old son with a fireplace poker when he refused to bring her a glass of vodka and instead emptied the bottle of alcohol down the drain. The boy managed to wrestle the poker away from her and bashed her over the head with it, instantly knocking her unconscious. He called 911, but the woman was pronounced dead when emergency personnel arrived at the scene.

  “Evidence indicates that the teen has been subject to extreme abuse multiple times in the past,” said Officer Harry Watson, who was present at the scene. “He’s lucky

  to be alive.”

  When asked why the boy was limping as police escorted him out of the house, he told them that he suffered from cerebral palsy and that the ankle-foot orthotics he was required to wear were several sizes too small—his mother had apparently refused to get him fitted for a larger pair.

  “As grim as this case is,” Watson said, “the child is fortunate to have been removed from this terrible situation. We can only pray he’ll have a brighter future ahead of him.”

  The boy has been temporarily placed in foster care. It is

  unclear if charges will be pressed against him.

  “Oh no.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…”

  She was vaguely aware of the sound of a key turning in a lock down below. The front door opened, and light footsteps crossed the entryway floor into the living room.

  “Jessica?” Sidney’s voice carried up the stairwell.

  Jessica crammed all the clippings back into the box and shoved it back onto the closet shelf. She walked out onto the landing and forced herself to speak. “What?”

  Sidney returned to the foot of the stairs, holding a familiar blue and black flame-patterned leg brace in each hand.

  “Where did you find them?” Jessica asked. Her mind was still too numb to fully process the fact that Sidney must have seen the braces as soon as she set foot inside the house.

  Sidney’s voice was strained. “They were sitting on the floor. Right next to the couch.”

  How did they get there?” she asked dumbly.

  Sidney’s eyes narrowed. It was becoming her most common expression. “You tell me. You’re the only one who could have put them there.”

  “But I didn’t.” At least she could use the reappearance of the braces as an excuse for her shock at finding the article.

  “Don’t try to tell me the ghost did it.”

  “What else could it be?” She descended the stairs into the entryway and crossed her arms.

  Sidney transferred the one brace from her right hand into her left and pushed her glasses further up on her nose. “I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore.”

  “Wayne believes me. Just ask him.”

  “That’s because he’s infatuated with you! Of course he’s going to believe whatever you tell him.”

  Jessica’s temper began to rise. “I’m not lying.”

  Sidney’s gaze bored two holes into her. “You wouldn’t lie to save your own life.”

  “Then what makes you think I’m lying now?”

  “I don’t think you’re lying. I think you’re nuts. Now excuse me while I return these to their rightful owner.”

  Sidney strode out the door and slammed it behind her, leaving Jessica standing speechless at the bottom of the staircase.

  “You have an interesting way with your friends.”

  Jerry was sitting on the end of the banister, looking bored.

  Jessica planted her hands on her hips and tried to stifle her anger so he wouldn’t get mad at her, too. “And you have an awful lot of nerve doing that to Wayne.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Do I have to be specific? You tell me.”

  He frowned. Frowned, for crying out loud! As if he really hadn’t a clue.

  “I’m starting to wish I’d never gone to that cemetery,�
� she said. “Then maybe my best friend wouldn’t think I’ve flipped my lid.”

  “Maybe you have.”

  “You’re avoiding the issue.”

  He studied her. “Which is?”

  “You barged into our house like you own the place, and now you keep messing with us like you think it’s funny. Why are you trying to ruin our lives?”

  “How am I ruining anyone’s life by being here?”

  “First off, you tried to hurt Wayne last night, and second, you took his stuff. Not to mention Sidney’s acting like a jerk with me.”

  He was silent for a moment. “If you think that arguing with a friend about spiritual matters constitutes ruining a life,” he said, “you’ve got a lot of growing up to do. Did you already forget that I said I was murdered?”

  “No.” Her face flushed.

  “So don’t you think that saying that I’m ruining your life by being here is a little melodramatic?”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” Now that they were on the subject, she had to ask him one of the questions that had buzzed around in her head since the day before. “How did that end up happening to you?”

  “It’s a very long story.”

  “The longer the better, right?”

  “Not in my case.” His stare drifted away from her, and he seemed to be gazing at a point far beyond the confines of the room. “But since you absolutely must know, I was taken from my house in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, if you will. They drove me from Alexandria to that graveyard at the Methodist church. There’s a clearing way off in the woods. They made me walk there all the way from the parking lot even though I was still half sedated from whatever they stuck in my arm. Shall I go on?”

  Jessica nodded.

  “They bound me to a chair and took the bag off of my head so I could look at them face to face. Someone came up behind me with some rope and pulled it tight around my neck.” He grimaced. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? It’s awful. You can feel the fibers cutting into your skin, and your esophagus starts to collapse, so it’s like something huge is stuck in your throat and you can’t get any air around it. I thought it would be all over within seconds, but before I could pass out, he let go.” He broke off. “I’m not sure how to put this in a way that won’t offend you.”