Rage's Echo

by J. S. Bailey

  He read.

  Apparently a thirty-three year old Alexandria man named Jerry Madison had been last seen buying a bottle of Benadryl at a Walgreens on June 30, 1986. When he had not responded to phone calls for three days, his mother and father drove down from Cleveland to see if anything had happened to him. Mr. Madison’s car was still in the driveway, and none of his belongings seemed to be missing, not even his wallet and driver’s license. Mr. Madison’s parents hired a private investigator to locate their son, but there were no leads as to his whereabouts, and nobody had seen him since his trip to Walgreens. He was declared dead in 1993. A grainy photograph of Mr. Madison taken in 1983 only told Wayne that the man was Caucasian and had brown hair.

  His heart broke a little. The man in the picture was smiling, but his eyes told another story. Black emotions lay just beneath the surface; Wayne was quite sure of that. He knew the feeling well.

  Nothing in the article indicated that this was indeed the Jerry Madison that Wayne was looking for. He printed a copy of it anyway and stuffed the papers into his pocket before Charlie or anyone else came back from lunch and asked him why he was squandering their office supplies on something as irrelevant as a twenty-four-year-old missing persons case.

  He would have to show Jessica the article when he got home, assuming that she or Sidney would remember to pick him up. Then, if she agreed it was the right man, they would have to work together to try to figure out just what Jerry wanted with them.

  And, God willing, they could convince him to depart to a more peaceful eternity before one of them got hurt.

  “I HAVE something to show you,” Wayne said that evening. He unfolded the paper and spread the two-page article out on the table.

  Jessica and Sidney came around to his side of the table and leaned over to read the article. Both of them wore a haggard look as if they had experienced some ordeal while he was at work, though neither mentioned what it might have been. Further piquing his suspicion was the fact that they had acted uncharacteristically cheerful during dinner. Something had to be up.

  He carefully watched Jessica’s face while she read. At first she looked mildly curious, but then she stiffened. “Where did you get this?” she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the page.

  “From this newfangled thing called the Internet. Have you heard of it?

  “You know that’s not what I meant. How did you know this was him?”

  Bingo, he thought. Luck was with him today. “Call it a hunch. Alexandria isn’t too far from where you found him. And think about it. A mysterious disappearance? That could be part of the reason why his soul isn’t at rest.”

  Jessica slowly turned her head and stared at the foot of the staircase before refocusing her attention on the article. “He told me he was murdered,” she whispered.

  It grew so quiet that Wayne swore he heard a radio playing a Nirvana song in a passing car. “Murdered?” Brilliant. No telling what bitter feelings a murdered soul might harbor toward the living.

  Now Sidney was the one to turn and look at the stairs. “I’d believe that,” she said.

  Their behavior was giving him the creeps. He decided to choose his words with care. “Did he say how?”

  “I don’t think we should be talking about this,” Jessica said.

  “You’re the one who brought it up. Who did it?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Did he know the person?”

  Jessica shook her head. “I don’t know. I think he probably did. And he made it sound like it was a bunch of people.”

  “I saw him!” Sidney blurted. “He was cut to ribbons.”

  Jessica threw her a fearful look.

  “You mean he was stabbed?” Wayne asked.

  “No. Gutted. Like a dead animal on the road that has its innards leaking out all over the place.” Sidney’s face flushed. “Sorry. That’s what it looked like.”

  Wayne rested his chin on his hand. This new insight into Jerry’s background was more disturbing than he’d anticipated. To Jessica, he said, “Do you think it was a ritualized killing?”

  Her brow creased. “What the heck does that mean?”

  “I’m saying that if it was a group of people performing the murder, it could have been some kind of cult sacrifice.”

  Jessica snorted. “You think this is Indiana Jones? People don’t do that stuff anymore.”

  “I know it sounds far-fetched, but you’d be surprised at what some people do. Where’s the body?”

  Another glance at the stairs. “Jerry’s body?”

  Wayne couldn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. “No, Jimmy Hoffa’s body. What do you keep looking at?”

  “Nothing!” Jessica and Sidney chorused.

  A sudden chill made the hair stand up on his arms. “He’s here listening, isn’t he?”

  Sidney shook her head. “Not Jimmy Hoffa. No way.”

  “He told me his body is somewhere in the woods behind the graveyard,” Jessica said.

  No one spoke for a few beats. Sidney tapped her foot on the floor and kept eyeing the stairs with trepidation.

  “Do you realize that if somebody finds his body,” Wayne said, “it’s going to open up a decades-old case? His family could finally have closure, and maybe he would, too.”

  “So, who’s going to go dig him up?” Sidney asked. “People would wonder what they were doing out there with a shovel in the first place.”

  She had a point. “But if the case gets cleared up, he might be able to move on from here.”

  “That isn’t why he’s here,” Jessica said. “I told you, he’ll go to hell if he moves on.”

  “Oh.” That little fact had slipped his mind during his excitement at the discovery of the article. “Then again, he doesn’t have any proof that’s going to happen since he’s obviously never been there. I mean, if that’s where he was supposed to go, wouldn’t he already be there?”

  “Not if hell isn’t real,” Sidney said. Wayne and Jessica both stared at her.

  She shrugged. “Just saying.”

  “Let’s not get into that again,” Jessica said.

  Sidney glanced at the stairs for the thousandth time and stood up abruptly. “Hey look, he’s gone. I can go upstairs now.” She hurried away from the table and took the steps two at a time. Her bedroom door slammed shut above them seconds later.

  It was amazing what a person could miss out on while sitting in an office full of bean counters all day. “What was that about?”

  “You know, Sidney’s just being Sidney. Apparently she doesn’t believe in God or heaven or any of that stuff anymore.” Jessica turned from him and started toward the living room.

  “Wait.”

  Jessica halted. Her expression was strangely blank. “Yeah?”

  “Other than the obvious, what’s on your mind?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “Articles. I’ve had enough of them for one day.”

  “What was so bad about what I just showed you?”

  “That’s not the bad one. The one I read earlier was a real eye-opener.”

  He wished she would get to the point. “And?”

  “It was disturbing.”

  It looked like she wasn’t going to elaborate unless he started badgering her. “Look, Jess. If something’s bothering you, tell me about it.” Now where had he heard that before? Charlie! God help him, he was turning into his boss.

  “Well,” she began, “I was hunting for someone’s leg braces in his bedroom this morning and opened the closet to see if they were in there, and a shoebox full of newspaper clippings sort of jumped out at me and spilled everywhere, and when I was picking them up I sort of read one that caught my eye.”

  It took a few moments for her words to register. Shoebox?

  What had she…?

  Oh, no.

  Panic seized him. She hadn’t. Couldn’t have. Not that. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  She looked him straight in the eye with a boldness she didn’t generally exhibit
. “Well, I did. Was that article about you? The one about the kid, and the mom…”

  He took in a ragged breath and uttered a silent prayer for guidance. This was the moment he’d been dreading for years.

  Either Jessica would take into account the situation he’d faced and understand that he had been left with few options, or she would think he was a freak and leave him. “Who else could it have been about?”

  Her lower lip quivered. “You mean you really…” She blinked. “I mean…why?”

  God, please make her understand. He was sweating so much now that he was starting to smell like a barn in midsummer.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you keep that article?”

  Good question. “It’s…” He shook his head, suddenly at a loss for words. “How could you understand?”

  “I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.” Her eyes were moist.

  He shrugged. “I guess it’s just a reminder.”

  “Some reminder that is. Anyone else would have thought you were keeping it as a memento.”

  Now that he really thought about it, it did seem kind of crazy to keep such memorabilia lying around. “I don’t want to screw up again,” he explained.

  She crossed her arms. “Well that’s good to hear.”

  The sarcastic tone in her voice hit a raw nerve inside of him. “Would it make you feel better if I told you that it’s been eating at my conscience for seventeen years? That for years I was sure I would be going to hell?”

  “You can’t go to hell for that. It was self-defense.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I could have run away and called the authorities. I chose violence instead.”

  She sniffled. “What was it like? I mean…how did you feel? Doing it?”

  “Mortified?” It was best to steer the conversation somewhere else before she tried to dig any deeper. He stood up and smoothed his slacks. “Hey, I think there’s a Carol Burnett Show marathon on TV Land tonight. I’ll go turn it on.” He walked past her and stopped when it became clear she had no plans to follow him to the living room.

  “Wayne?”

  He turned. She looked so small and frightened standing there in her baggy clothes that he longed to go back and hold her, reassuring her that the thirteen-year-old monster he had been would never rear its ugly head again.

  “Does Sidney know about this?” she asked.

  “Yeah. And so does Drew. They had to know. Everyone in the family did.”

  She dabbed at her eye. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

  “That isn’t why I never told you.”

  “Then why?”

  He sighed. The proverbial cat was out of its bag and well on its way to getting cornered up in a tree. “I was afraid it would change the way you feel about me. As a person,” he added.

  At first she didn’t say anything. Her mind seemed to be churning with unspoken thoughts.

  He waited, not daring to speak lest he say the wrong thing.

  “Wayne,” she said, “you’ve been my friend for as long as I can remember, and nothing is going to change that.”

  Thank you, God. “So you don’t think I’m a freak who needs to be locked up?”

  A smile peeked through her grim demeanor. “You’ll always be a freak to me as long as you keep getting manicures all the time.”

  “Don’t tell me you want me to start acting like a barbarian.”

  “I think the proper term is acting like a man.”

  “I can act like one of those anytime you want me to. Just say the word.” There. He said it. It had only taken him a million years.

  But she acted as if she hadn’t even heard him. “What were you saying about Carol Burnett?” she asked.

  “It’s on,” he said, moving into the living room and silently cursing himself for what he’d just said. Jessica had become denser than a brick wall. “Just thought you might want to watch it, that’s all.”

  She followed him and plopped down on the couch. He switched on the television and set it to the appropriate channel.

  The image of Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence in their “Went with the Wind” skit filled the screen.

  Jessica curled up on her side and gripped a throw pillow to her chest. He may have misread her expression, but it looked like she was wincing. “What are we going to do about Jerry?” she asked.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” he said as he removed his ankle-foot orthotics and set them on the floor. God willing, they’d still be there when he got up the next morning.

  “I’m at a loss.”

  “Sorry.”

  On the screen, Carol Burnett strode out in her curtain dress, complete with a giant curtain rod that stuck out past her shoulders on each side.

  “I have an idea,” he said. It was a lousy idea but better than none at all.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, he’s been acting angry. Right?”

  She lifted her head. “Only to you, and maybe Sidney. And I sort of sensed this angry feeling when I was singing in the bathroom, but that might just mean he doesn’t like Aerosmith.”

  He’d suspected as much, though those last bits surprised him. “So we should be nicer to him. Show him that we really do want to help him out.”

  “That’ll just make him want to stay.”

  The thought had crossed his mind. “True, but I was thinking that if he knows we care, he might listen to us and move on.”

  “No offense, but your idea stinks.”

  “I never said it was a good one.”

  The skit ended minutes later and went to a commercial break.

  “There is another thing you can do,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Try to find out more about who he is and where he came from. Maybe we’ll be able to come up with a way to help him out based on that.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”

  “Then ask politely. But try to hurry, because quite frankly, my dear, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for a dead guy who hates me.”

  Sidney stared at the dark ceiling of the bedroom. Her heart was pounding too hard for her to relax and fall asleep, plus every time she closed her eyes all she could see was the phantom bloody corpse thing that had dropped by her room for a visit.

  The bedroom walls creaked. She drew her comforter tighter around her body. The sound was probably caused by the temperature change outside, because ghosts didn’t make noises when they walked around. Or did they even walk around at all? More likely they just glided from place to place and made it look like they were walking because that’s how they had moved around in life.

  Something clicked beside her head, and she nearly screamed because her nerves were wound so taut. It sounded like somebody rapped a fingernail on the bedside table where her alarm clock sat. The lighting in the room was too dim for her to see if Jerry was standing there trying to frighten her. It didn’t make sense for him to be such a jerk. All she’d done was get out Jessica’s blasted recorder and ask him a few questions.

  The tapping sound came again. This time it was directly overhead, up on the ceiling.

  Mice. It had to be mice. Cute, stinky, smelly mice.

  Tap. Now it was on the wall by her headboard.

  Tap. Back to the bedside table.

  Tap. The middle of the air between her bed and Jessica’s.

  Sidney pulled the blanket over her head. God, please make it go away and never come back here ever, ever again.

  At that moment she didn’t care that she was agnostic and probably wouldn’t get her prayers answered by a deity or any other unseen power. She just didn’t know what else to do. Sleeping out in her car would be stupid. Running away would be even dumber than that.

  Jessica rolled over in her sleep. “Make them stop looking at me,” she said in a garbled voice. “Don’t like their eyes…monsters…”

  As if on cue, Wayne let out one of his customary drea
m-yelps from his bedroom.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Gotta kill them, make ’em go away…” Jessica mumbled.

  Tap. Tap-tap.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you do it?”

  Tap.

  Sidney could take no more of it. Dumb or not, she had to leave the room or she would go insane.

  When she sat up, she looked over at Jessica’s sleeping form. It may have been her imagination, but the room seemed even blacker where Jessica lay, as if the scant light from streetlamps and the alarm clock had been sucked into a void.

  A single sentence intruded upon Sidney’s thoughts. We don’t want you.

  The shadows over Jessica’s bed grew even darker.

  Hoping that all of this was her imagination getting the better of her, Sidney slipped on her glasses, wadded up her blanket, and tucked it under her arm. The living room couch would be vacant tonight. But not for long.

  JESSICA WAS viewing the world once again through a man’s eyes.

  She—he—was sitting at a table in an unfamiliar kitchen, staring out the window at a bright-green lawn. No fence separated the yard from the one behind it. A woman at the neighboring house was hanging out her laundry on the line. Her baby sat in a stroller parked beneath a broad maple tree. An older child of six or seven rode her bicycle in circles through the grass, making vrooming noises as she went.

  He couldn’t stand to look at them, so he turned away. Abigail had just called. Said she had just gotten back from the women’s clinic. He’d had no idea she planned on going—how could he, when he hadn’t seen or spoken to her for months? But the deal was done, she said. There wasn’t any going back. She’d written the check from their joint account. Served him right, she said. He’d helped make the thing.

  But why? he had asked. I would have taken custody.

  She’d laughed.

  He demanded to know where she was. The line went dead.

  A pain greater than any he had ever known filled him then. He rose and staggered to the bathroom and started retching over the toilet like a hung-over teenager. Nothing would come up but acid that made his throat burn.