Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned

by J. F. Gonzalez

  Victor took Mary Beth’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Can we settle the issue with our stolen property in the morning? We’re very tired and would like to check into a motel and get some sleep.”

  “Of course.” Paul reached for a pad of paper and scribbled a number on it, noting to himself that it seemed strange that neither of them expressed any kind of sympathy for Ms. Beechner. But what the hell...they’d had a rough time themselves. They were probably still in shock from everything. As he jotted down the information, his gaze flicked to Mary Beth’s rigid form. It was hard to believe this woman had hid that extraordinary body beneath the kind of garments Old Order Mennonite women usually wore—solid color calf-length dresses, their hair pinned back beneath a white prayer cap, or a bonnet in the winter. Compared to the customs of her upbringing, she had taken a radical departure. “Call Gary in the morning. He’ll give you the number for the locksmith that secured your front door.”

  Victor took the scrap of paper and folded it. “Thank you.”

  He and Mary Beth rose to their feet.

  “There is one thing,” Paul said.

  “What’s that?” Victor asked. He and Mary Beth stopped just shy of the door.

  “Charles Williams, the man who shot at you, was clearly on a hallucinogenic drug. He told me that he didn’t see you in bed when he burst in your room. He saw something else.”

  “Oh?” Victor frowned.

  “Yes,” Paul said, meeting his gaze. “He said there was a blob-like creature on the bed. A shapeless mass of flesh that was constantly shifting and moving. And that it was attached to a very thin, emaciated woman.” Paul’s gaze shifted to Mary Beth. “He obviously took you for this woman, Ms. Martin. Whatever his hallucination was, it was really strong. That’s what freaked him out...but it wasn’t what caused him to empty his firearm into your bed.”

  Victor was still frowning. “But it has to be. I’d freak out myself if I saw something like that.”

  “Mr. Williams states that a face came out of the shape,” Paul continued. “He said it shifted from a man’s face to a woman’s and that once it had taken form, it smiled at him.”

  Victor looked incredulous. Mary Beth looked doubtful. “It smiled at him?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Paul said, his gaze directed at Mary Beth now. His eyes flicked back and forth between the couple. “He was very adamant about this. His terror was genuine. Whatever hallucination he’d suffered, it was strong. I just hope to God that whatever it is he was on is something easy to identify. I’d hate for this to be the start of a new street drug epidemic.” Paul paused for a moment, then decided to take the plunge. He reached for the folder on his desk, rifled through it, and extracted a sheaf of photos. “My partner, Detective Julie Mowry, asked Mr. Williams if he got a good look at any of the faces. We were trying to empathize with him, get him to see we were on his side. He opened up pretty quickly and told us the woman’s face was the one that sticks out in his mind. Keep in mind that everything he told us, he told the arresting officer first. I was aware of what he claims he saw and had a hunch about this woman’s face. So I asked Jesse to return to your home and retrieve a few photographs. I mixed them in with some others of different women and made a quick Power Point demonstration that I printed out.” Paul pulled some papers out and handed them to Mary Beth, who took them. Victor peered over Mary Beth’s shoulder at the photos. “I wanted to get a good cross-representation of women’s faces here. See?”

  Mary Beth nodded. “Yes.” She was studying the presentations closely. There were two pages, each consisting of six photographs of different women, arranged three by three.

  “Julie asked Mr. Williams if he could identify the face he saw,” Paul continued. “And if he could identify her, did she resemble any of the women in these photos. He zeroed in on this one immediately.” Paul pointed at one of the photos and watched for a reaction in Mary Beth’s face. There was none.

  “That’s you, hon,” Victor exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” Mary Beth acknowledged. “That’s me, all right.”

  Paul watched them, noting their body language, their facial expressions. The overriding factor with both of them was fatigue. But just beneath the surface there was something else. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “You’ve never seen Mr. Williams before, Ms. Martin?” Paul asked.

  “Never,” Mary Beth said. She was still looking at the pictures.

  “And you never noticed any unfamiliar people in your neighborhood in the last few days?”

  “We’ve been asked this three or four times, Detective,” Victor said.

  “I know.” Paul’s gaze deflected a moment to Victor, and then settled back on Mary Beth, who was handing the photos to him. Paul placed them back in the file. “Just wanted to make sure.”

  “I’ve never seen these men before in my life,” Mary Beth said. She seemed to get her energy back. The color was back in her cheeks, her eyes looked livelier. She really was a gorgeous woman. Her eyes met his for a brief moment and Paul looked away.

  “You said he was hallucinating,” Victor said to Paul. “Maybe that was it. Maybe he subconsciously picked her photo out of that lineup.”

  Paul placed the file back on his desk and changed the subject. “Regardless, you both are very lucky. It’s a wonder neither of you were hit.” Paul glanced surreptitiously at them. The EMTs had pronounced both of them unharmed at the scene. Even weirder was that one of the EMTs, a guy named Geoff, swore up and down to his supervisor that Mary Beth had looked like a holocaust survivor victim. Geoff had been told to leave the scene for fear he’d upset the victims and he’d complied. It was obvious to the other responders that Geoff was under stress—the guy had been on duty for almost forty hours straight with no sleep.

  Paul walked around the desk and ushered them out of his office. Victor asked, “So what will they be charged with?”

  “Forcible entry, assault, attempted murder, second degree murder, robbery, breaking and entering. Multiple counts.”

  “Is there a chance they’ll get out?” Mary Beth asked. She was walking with a stronger sense of purpose now. Paul noticed it; her neck was slender, her head held high and proud. For a moment, Paul thought back to an earlier case he’d worked on. A woman in Lititz claimed her brother’s girlfriend was a supernatural creature—a succubus—that was draining his emotions and physical energy. She claimed her brother had changed suddenly too, much like what Ella Beth Martin was insinuating. The man in question later went on a rampage and killed his parents and his sister before turning the gun on himself.

  “They won’t be getting out for a long time.” They reached the lobby and stopped. Victor and Mary Beth turned to thank him. Paul shook their hands. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Mary Beth said as she took Paul’s hand in both of hers. When Paul looked at her he was struck by the woman’s incredible sensuality. Mary Beth smiled at him, and the smile seemed to carry him away. There was something about that smile, something about her eyes, that seemed inviting. “Thank you so much. We appreciate all you’ve done for us.”

  “It’s all part of the job,” Paul said. He had to force himself to take a step back. “You know the way down to the parking garage. Be sure to give Gary a call tomorrow morning.”

  “We will, Detective,” Victor said. He smiled at him too. “Thank you.”

  Paul watched them leave, and then locked the door to the precinct. He turned and began heading back to his office.

  He closed the office door behind him and sat behind his cluttered desk. Framed photos of his wife Angie, and his son and daughter, Luke and Jenny, were set at eye level. He couldn’t look at Angie’s picture without thinking of Mary Beth; how she’d smiled at him, how it made him feel. He thought about the case, about Mr. Williams’ testimony, about the testimony of the other players in the case. Mr. Williams had obviously been on something. He had a history of hallucinating strange things. No doubt he’d been on something
when he and his crew broke into Ms. Martin’s home. The only thing the gangbanger got right was the part about Mary Beth’s smile.

  Detective Paul Harris opened the file on the case and pulled out the photo collage he’d made. He looked at the photo of Mary Beth. Those eyes reflected back at him from their pixilated image. And that smile.

  Detective Paul Harris spent the rest of his shift in his office, fantasizing about what it would be like to sleep with Mary Beth Martin.

  Story Notes

  This story was written exclusively for the limited edition of The Beloved published by Altar 13, an imprint of Delirium Books. It’s actually a sequel to another story in this volume, “Christian Woman”. I suppose I wanted to know what happened to the characters in that story. When the opportunity came to write a story related to my novel The Beloved, I grabbed it.

  The roots of this one go back to the spring of 2001 when I moved from California to rural Pennsylvania. I was astonished that so many people in these little towns didn’t lock their doors or windows. Some still don’t. After all, murders are extremely rare where I live. They’re so rare, news magazines like 20/20 run special features on murder cases that happen in my neck of the woods. The locals in my area will tell you its been like that here forever. People just tend to trust each other in rural communities. That’s fine, I guess, but I don’t trust anybody. My mother-in-law still doesn't lock her front door and she makes fun of us for taking that extra precaution. I figure, why make it easier for shitbags to break into your house?

  This mindset fascinated me and I knew I would have to write about it. I wrote about two thousand words of a story with no title featuring the character Top Hat. The story was about a crew from the inner city of Lancaster, which is a small city of about 60,000 people east of Harrisburg, who find the idea of rural suburbanites never locking the doors to their homes so tempting that they decide to take a little drive out and commit some burglaries. Easy as pie, right? Simply case the place, wait for the owners to leave, then approach the house, if the place is unlocked, great! In you go, grab what you can, and get out.

  That’s as far as I got. The story remained a fragment for almost a decade until Shane Ryan Staley asked me to write a tie-in story for The Beloved. Because the characters from “Christian Woman” were still on my mind, I saw the opportunity. And because I knew a crime was going to be committed, I used the interrogation method after-the-fact as my way of telling the story. Dean Koontz used that method in his story “The Interrogation”. That worked really well, so I figured if Dean could do it, why can’t I?

  Christian Woman

  MEETING VICTOR AT work was only the first step in a long and arduous process of self-discovery.

  Mary Beth was the middle child in her family. She had two older siblings and three younger ones, evenly split between the sexes. Her siblings were very close to her parents; Mary Beth had been the apple of their eye until she started dating Victor.

  She loved her parents, but they did not know her. Not really.

  She put on a good show.

  Oh, she was still prim and proper. Her clothing, ankle-length plaid dresses usually, was still modest in accordance to the religious beliefs she’d been raised in—strict Christian upbringing, member of the First Mennonite Church of the Brethren. She even still wore a prayer cap in public. Likewise, her siblings were still devout and belonged to the church. The difference between them all was that her siblings had chosen to follow in their parent’s footsteps of serving the Lord; two of her brothers were studying abroad for the ministry, one of her sisters was living in El Salvador performing missionary work, her oldest brother was the leader of his church in nearby Adamstown, and her younger sister was involved in youth ministry.

  Mary Beth worked for a financial services company as a secretary.

  Her parents had never approved of this.

  Mary Beth had been the only one of her siblings to not stray from the fold. She’d never rebelled, never dated outside of the church; she’d never really dated at all, to be truthful. Her siblings, on the other hand, had rebelled against their parents at some point in their lives. Bobby Joe had racked up a DUI in his early twenties. Earl had experimented with LSD and pot and had gotten into heavy metal music. Emily and Jessica had gone through periods of wearing tight jeans and chasing the kind of boys that wore their baggy pants halfway down their legs—Emily had dated so many of them that Mary Beth lost count. And Jacob...Jacob had become a party animal in college.

  But eventually they’d all grown out of this and returned to the fold.

  Mary Beth had never left the fold. She’d never rebelled. Never saw the need to intentionally disappoint her parents the way her siblings had.

  But somehow, her parents had been more disappointed in her for choosing to work outside of the family business, which was running the furniture store they owned and, as time allowed, perform missionary work.

  And now it was worse because of Victor.

  “I don’t like him,” Mother told her when she’d brought Victor to the house to meet her parents for the first time. Mother pulled Mary Beth aside and had a talk with her while Victor and Dad looked at the old Chrysler Dad kept out in the barn. “He strikes me as the kind of man who’s only after one thing. I get a certain feeling about him that doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “Mother, he’s fine! What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see it?”

  “See what?” Mary Beth still didn’t know what her mother saw in Victor that made her immediately dislike him. Victor Collins was not the kind of man her mother was making him out to be. He’d been nothing but kind and respectful to Mary Beth, and while she could sense he was physically attracted to her, he’d never once tried to force the issue. Victor was handsome, kind, smart, and he loved her. He was patient and respectful too, something she couldn’t really say about her siblings’ life-mates, whom she had various degrees of love/hate relationships with. One of them, Emily’s husband, was as phony as an eight-dollar bill.

  “He’s too worldly,” Mother finally said. “There’s something about him that is very heavy with worldliness.”

  Mary Beth had tried bringing Victor to the house a second and third time. Her parents never thawed out in their obvious dislike of Victor, and Mary Beth knew why. Her parents had always held to the idea that you either served the Lord by being a Christian or you served the Devil by not being a Christian. She’d been raised to believe this herself, but Mary Beth had secretly thought such views were ridiculous. Now she was seeing their reaction to a non-Christian first-hand. That had been the end of it for Mary Beth. There was no way she could continue to bring Victor to the house for family get-togethers. Not when mother was going to react to Victor like that.

  She’d been a little taken aback by Victor at first. The way he’d asked her out one afternoon at the end of a long Friday. She thought he’d been joking. He had that way about him; sly, mischievous almost. A devil-may care kind of attitude. He’d invited her to Happy Hour with the rest of the staff and she gave in and accepted. She’d wound up having a good time, too. She and Victor had talked quite a bit, in a corner of the booth they were sequestered in. Mary Beth didn’t drink—partly out of her religious beliefs, partly for health reasons—but she sat with Victor as he drank Martinis and regaled her with stories from the trenches of when Corporate Financial started their East Coast division. Unlike the others at their table, he never once said, “Hey Mary Beth, why don’t you have a beer?”, or “Hey Mary Beth, what’s with that white beanie on your head? You getting signals from outer space with that thing?”, or “Hey Mary Beth, what’s it like to be Amish?” She’d grown used to such catcalls, and easily ignored them. Victor had ignored them too, and she didn’t even think he was aware of them until one point in their conversation when he made an aside. “We work with the rudest, most ignorant people on the face of the planet.”

  Mary Beth laughed. “You can say that again.
”

  Victor stood up and held out his arm. “Then let’s get out of here and leave them to their foolishness.”

  She was afraid at first. She’d heard stories about such men; how their only interest was in what lay between the legs of women and not what resided in their hearts and minds. She almost told him no, she was going to go back to her apartment, but thank you for the invitation. Victor smiled broadly and was so persuasive in his tone of voice and demeanor. “That’s quite alright. I was merely thinking we could walk down to the coffee shop at the corner and talk some more.”

  Well, if Victor only wanted to talk more...

  They talked at the coffee shop, sharing a corner booth where they had coffee and pie, until the place closed at two a.m.

  They’d been inseparable ever since.

  Her parents might not like Victor, and her siblings might think he was too worldly for her, but the girls at the office thought Mary Beth had quite a catch.

  “Victor really likes you!” Joanne gushed over lunch one day. “You are so lucky!”

  They’d taken lunch one afternoon at Chili’s on Manheim Pike, not far from the office. Mary Beth had been taking lunch with the girls from the office quite a bit recently; Joanne from Accounting, Diane from Purchasing, and Susan from Customer Service. They were nice girls, all from different Christian backgrounds, but more solidly based in the world in their spiritual walks. Still, they were good women. Only the Lord knew their hearts, so who was she to judge?

  “You know how many women fantasize about going out with Victor?” Susan added.

  “All of them,” Diane said.

  “Even the married ones,” Susan laughed.

  Mary Beth dipped her head down so the others wouldn’t see her blush. She took a bite of her salad, chewed, and swallowed. “He’s very nice. A real gentleman.”