by J. S. Bailey
She replaced the receiver and dashed back to the car, repeating the address over and over in her head. She could be in Cold Spring in twenty minutes if the traffic wasn’t too bad. But what the heck would she do there? Jessica obviously hadn’t shown up at her uncle’s house yet.
So where in the blazes was she?
“WE ARE going to have a talk,” Maria said, giving her daughter and son-in-law the most businesslike stare she could conjure. The couple had taken a seat on Esteban’s couch and were squeezing each other’s hands like they thought this evening would be their last.
Esteban and Sharon had brought in chairs from the kitchen. Stephen sat in a swivel office chair to Maria’s left, tapping his foot on the floor. His face was as solemn as stone, and he stared down at his loafers with the air of a criminal receiving the death penalty before an accusing jury.
“What would you like to talk about?” Rachel asked, smiling sweetly. Eric made a similar grin but glanced away as soon as he and Maria locked gazes. He acted like he was afraid of her.
It was best to get straight to the point. “You mentioned a certain name to me on the phone.” She had to force herself to say it. “Jerry Madison.”
“Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“What makes you think he had anything to do with…with Sarah?”
Rachel and Eric exchanged glances. Rachel chewed on her lip, hesitating. “Are you sure you want to know about that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Rachel let out a breath. “Okay. Earlier this week, Jessica went on an investigation at a Methodist church near Iron Springs. Well, the graveyard, not the building. Apparently she had a successful evening.”
Maria tried not to let her expression betray her. Nobody was supposed to know about that graveyard or what lay behind it.
“Successful?”
Stephen started coughing. “Sorry,” he said, rising. He went off to the kitchen. Maria could hear him filling a glass at the sink. He returned to his chair with a half-empty cup and lifted an eyebrow as if to say, Well, aren’t you going to say something?
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Eric asked.
“Me?” Maria gave a nervous laugh. “Show me one, and I might.”
“Jessica met one,” Rachel said. “He followed her home.”
“And you’re going to believe something like that?”
“She isn’t the only one who saw him. Sidney did, too.”
Levelheaded Sidney Miller? Unlikely. “And this has to do with Mr. Madison because…?”
“Don’t act dumb, Mom. You know that’s who she met.”
“I doubt that a ghost would have the ability to introduce himself to anyone,” she said, trying but failing to picture the scenario.
“Well, he did. Sidney said he was bleeding all over his chest, and he had ligature marks around his neck.”
“Don’t forget his shorts,” Eric said.
“Oh yeah. She said he was wearing smiley face boxers.”
The memory of rich and Joanna and the others dragging the sorry soul out into the woods rose like a corpse from her grave of buried memories. He had looked so frightened when they uncovered his head—so ridiculous—that she had almost laughed at the sight of him. Rachel was right. He had indeed worn boxer shorts like those she described, and there was no way she could have known unless someone present at his execution had told her.
She became aware that everyone was staring at her, waiting. Her face grew warm.
“Well?” Rachel said.
It was an effort to keep her voice at an even tone. “Well, what?”
Her daughter shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to know how we knew about him. So, what do you have to say? Does any of this sound familiar to you?”
“Rachel,” Stephen said in a warning voice. “Let it go.”
“I’m not going to let it go. Apparently Jerry is still a bit upset about what happened to him, and—”
“Upset?” Maria blurted, automatically rising from her seat as she did so. “He’s upset? Do you even realize what he did?”
“You be quiet.” Stephen said. He looked at Rachel and Eric. “Take my advice and stop right now. Nothing good’s going to come about if you dig deeper into this.”
Rachel pursed her lips. “What, are you afraid we’ll turn you in for what you did to the guy?”
Just how much did Rachel know? “You wouldn’t do that to your own parents,” Maria said, sitting back down when the room began to lurch like a funhouse ride. Nightmares of going to prison had plagued her ever since that terrible night. Incarceration was, in her opinion, a worse fate than death.
“That’s not our decision to make. You could turn yourselves in, plead guilty, and get a lesser sentence or something. But that’s not what we’re worried about.”
“We think Jerry’s going to try to hurt you for what you did to him,” Eric said.
The clock ticking over the fireplace mantle sounded as loud as exploding shotgun shells.
Esteban spoke up for the first time since Maria had ordered everyone to gather in the living room. “No offense to any of you,” he said, “but the guy’s dead. Saw it happen with my own eyes.”
“Shut up!” Sharon snapped. Her cheeks turned red.
He waved a hand to silence her. “Doesn’t matter now, anyway. They obviously know what happened. But Rachel, if he really is a ghost and ran into Jessica, how would he have known who she was?”
“She probably told him her name, and he made the connection since Roman-Dell has to be the least common last name on the planet.”
Something made a loud clatter outside. Eric jumped up from the couch and ran to the nearest window then relaxed a bit. “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Must have been one of the neighbors.”
Maria cleared her throat and brushed a stray bit of hair away from her eyes. Some of what Rachel and Eric were saying still didn’t make sense. “If this is all true,” she said, “why didn’t he come after us a long time ago?”
“Easy,” Rachel said. “He didn’t have a vehicle.”
“And now he does?”
“Yeah. Unfortunately for Jessica.”
WAYNE WAS filling his gas tank at a station along Alexandria Pike when he caught sight of a very familiar Toyota Camry passing by in a long line of traffic. The car was gone before he could get a better look, though he was certain he knew whose it was, because it looked like the driver had red hair. Sidney.
Somehow, he found he wasn’t surprised.
“TWO TWO three Martin Court,” Sidney said. “Two two three Martin Court.” She had no idea where Martin Court even was, so she started turning down side streets at random. The word “court” made her think of a dead-end street; therefore, it would be unlikely for Esteban’s home to be out on the main strip.
Cars lined both sides of the first street she chose. Houses were sandwiched together too close for comfort. The sky was growing darker, so porch lights had come on at some of the homes, illuminating the posted numerals of their addresses. She passed one 223 but did not stop, since she wasn’t on the right road.
She sighed. This was going to take a very long time.
THE NIGHT was serene. Jessica strolled along the sidewalk, grateful that she didn’t have to live in this neck of the woods where the houses were all practically built on top of one another like books competing for space on a crowded shelf. If she ever made it big doing something or another, she could save up enough money to buy one of the fancy estates hidden among the hills outside of Eleanor, and she could have her own library and office and never have to worry about seeing the neighbors’ mocking brats flaunting their gift of life in front of her face because there would be no neighbors, only books to keep her company until the end of her days.
Where was she, anyway? Oh yeah. Cold Spring. She’d parked her car on another street and had been walking for about five minutes. No need to hurry. She’d get to where she was going soon enough.
Feeling somewhat elated as she
imagined her book-filled dream home, she entered the shadows where the light from the two nearest street lamps did not quite reach. A figure stepped out in front of her. A man.
“Hey there,” he said, his voice slurred. “Where d’ya think you’re going?”
She halted but remained relaxed. No one could hurt her, not even intoxicated creeps.
“Just for a walk,” she said in her most jovial voice. “You want to come, too?”
Evidently the discussion was already over, because the man lunged at her. She tried to dodge him by stepping to the side, but he still managed to grab her by the arm and pull her to his chest. His breath was rancid. She nearly gagged.
“Scream,” he said, “and I’ll slit your throat.”
She giggled. “What for? Do you like to rape corpses or something? ’Cause that’s just gross.”
What are you doing? a voice in her head shouted at her. We have work to get done!
“But this is funny,” she said aloud. “He thinks he’s going to hurt me.”
The man let out a grunt and forced her to turn right into the hedgelined yard of an unlit house. He brought her to the porch and placed his free hand on the doorknob when suddenly Jerry’s voice cut through the darkness. “I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”
The man released her, swearing, and whirled around to face the unseen speaker.
As much as she longed to stick around and see what Jerry would do to the guy, instinct told Jessica to run. If the man had acted on his sick desires (whatever they were), she wouldn’t have been able to complete the task she had been assigned by the murky presence, whose name was Vindictam. She dashed through the yard, hurtled herself over a low hedge, and ran down the sidewalk until she got a painful stitch in her side. She realized that her cheeks were damp with tears of mirth.
When she slowed to a walk, she felt Jerry return to her. “You shouldn’t have left your car so far away,” he said. “That could have ended far worse than it did.”
She nodded. “Thank you. For stopping him, I mean.”
“Anytime.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” But something in the back of her mind told her that she really wasn’t glad, that she was making a terrible mistake by allowing him and the other presence to remain with her. She and Jerry had been arguing about something not long ago, but it must not have been over anything too important. Like her earlier argument with Rachel, the details were lost in the fog.
Jerry didn’t reply. Maybe scaring the daylights out of the weirdo who’d grabbed her had drained too much of his energy and he needed to reload.
The street she was now on seemed very familiar. The houses here were spaced a little farther apart from one another, kind of like the way they were on Sunset Street in Eleanor. The house numbers that she could see got higher the farther she went. One fifty. One seventy-two. Two hundred. Two thirteen. Two twenty-three.
Light shined through thin drapes in the front window of the latter house. Misshapen shadows glided across the fabric like wraiths.
Anger replaced her joy in an instant. They were in that house.
The people who had murdered not only a man but her entire childhood and interred both in unholy ground.
The murky presence prodded at her mind like a fist rapping lightly on a door. Don’t allow yourself to be seen.
She giggled again. This was too weird, like how she knew the presence’s name even though no one had told her what it was.
Weirder still was the realization that Vindictam had been nearby for days, ever since…
Her lips twisted into a frown. Ever since when? Her memory span only extended back to that afternoon, and though she knew that an entire lifetime had transpired before that, her memories of it lay just beyond her grasp.
Suddenly Jessica was standing on the porch of 223, staring at the front door.
She started to push the doorbell but hesitated. Don’t allow yourself to be seen. Maybe she was a ghost. Yes, that made sense. She was dead and had been that way for so long that all memories of her life had expired like her flesh.
And what ghost would need to ring a bell in order to be admitted inside a dwelling?
Standing out front like this made her nervous. She felt vulnerable. Exposed. Paying heed to the voice, Jessica slipped into the shadows between 223 and the next house. Her foot caught on something that felt like a watering can, and she stumbled—luckily, she didn’t twist her ankle. Though, of course, since she was a ghost she didn’t have to worry about breaking any body parts.
What was she thinking?
The back yard was much darker than the front. Jessica felt her way along the back wall of the house until she located the rear door. Faint light spilled out from a grid of square panes. She held her face close to the glass and watched as a dark-haired female passed by inside.
She tried the knob. Locked. A curse slipped from her mouth. Breaking a pane to reach for the inner lock would make too much noise, and being heard was just as bad as being seen.
Try it again, the presence urged.
She did. Something clicked, and the knob turned.
Ever so quietly, she crept inside.
“OUR FATHER, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” Wayne kept praying, but it didn’t seem to be working. He had been driving around for ages, he didn’t know where Esteban lived, and he had no way of calling Sidney to tell her that maybe they should team up and put their heads together.
“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
His headlights caught a flash of dark green. He slammed on the brakes. To his right, parallel-parked along the curb, was Jessica’s Taurus.
He threw the truck into reverse and backed it into an empty place behind the Taurus, his heart hammering at light speed. He climbed out as fast as his legs would allow and peered into the driver’s side window of the car. No Jessica.
The house both vehicles were parked in front of was dark. The porch sagged in the middle, and a piece of particleboard had been hammered over a window. Abandoned, by the look of it. The Roman-Dells’ Lexus was nowhere to be seen.
A horn honked behind him when he was about to knock on the door just in case the Reyeses really did live here. He turned. Sidney’s Camry had stopped in the center of the road. The window rolled down. “Hey!” she shouted. “This isn’t the right place!”
He limped over to her car and leaned against the passenger door to take some of the weight off of his legs. “She parked here.”
“So? I got the address. It’s 223 Martin Court. We’re on Brookstone Street.”
“Where’s Martin Court?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know. I’ve been looking for ages. But we can’t be too far off if she ditched her car here.”
“What if she hasn’t gone to her uncle’s house at all?” The thought had crossed his mind a couple of times in the past hour. The fact that Jessica’s car was parked in front of this shack only reinforced that idea.
“There’s nowhere else she could be. If her car’s in this part of town, she’s there, plain and simple. Right?”
He glanced back at the abandoned home. “Sure.”
“Come on, you can follow me in the truck.”
She was right. The only problem was that Rachel had not called to inform him of Jessica’s arrival, so she either hadn’t shown up yet, or Rachel had been unable to make the call.
Sidney waited until he had started the truck back up before moving forward. He checked to make sure no cars were coming and eased away from the curb. Sidney crawled along at a snail’s pace and stopped at an intersection where a road came in from the left. The sign read “Oak Ct.” Sidney made the turn without using her signal, and Wayne followed.
They came to a cross street a minute later. Wellington Court. A “No Outlet ” sign was posted on the right, which is the way Sidney chose to turn.
He
hoped she knew what she was doing.
Wellington Court led them to an Owens Drive, which had to have been a dead-end street too if Wellington Court was one.
They were approaching another street on the right. The headlight beams from Sidney’s car illuminated the sign for Martin Court.
Wayne took a deep breath. This was it.
The presence told Jessica that the woman who had walked past the door was named Maria. A few memories of the woman resurfaced. Maria was the one who had never loved her. The hateful one who had taken Jerry’s life. The one who deserved to die.
Jessica paused in the back hall. More memories trickled into her consciousness. This was her uncle’s house, and if Jessica remembered correctly, there was a closet right about…there. She found the knob and pulled the closet door open slowly so it wouldn’t make a sound.
A babble of voices was conversing in the next room. That was good; they’d be too distracted to hear her if she accidentally banged into something. She stepped over some pairs of boots that were piled in the bottom of the closet and latched the door.
The space was cramped, and the only light she could see came through the crack under the door. The coats hanging above her smelled like mothballs. Hopefully there weren’t any spiders shut in with her. Something tickled her arm, and she nearly screamed, but then she realized it was just a strand of her own hair that had fallen out of its ponytail.
Her sinuses began to tickle. Aunt Sharon needed to vacuum up all the dust in here.
Wait a minute. If she were a ghost, she shouldn’t be breathing, and therefore she would not have the urge to sneeze. But she had to be a ghost, because she was slowly remembering what it had been like to be alive. Old friends. Family gatherings. A blonde woman in a wedding dress walking up a church aisle toward her. She could even remember dying in front of all those people in the forest. She remembered their hatred and the pain. Then the sudden cessation of feeling as spirit separated from flesh.
She remembered it all. Even the names of those conversing in the other room.