The Wicked

by James Newman

  Kate firmly believed that the child inside of her belonged to her husband. She reminded him that they had made love the evening before her assault. David, however—contrary to what Kate called her “motherly instinct”—felt one hundred percent sure that her rapist was the father of this baby. It should have been a gift, this child, a gift from the God Kate followed so unconditionally (and rather blindly, David often thought after what happened, but he soon learned it was best not to voice that opinion unless he wished to make things worse). David viewed it as an ugly curse. He could look at her swollen belly with nothing but contempt. Revulsion. This was no gift. It was a cruel reminder of Kate’s ordeal, a malicious memento that would never allow them to forget what happened that awful night in May.

  They had discussed with Dr. Melznick the various tests which could be done to determine who was the father of Kate’s child, but Kate insisted she would rather wait. “There are risks involved, of course,” Melznick explained as David looked on, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, “as there are with any procedures attempted in utero. I can promise you that the chance of any harm coming to this child is slight. But I must warn you.”

  Wonderful. David had known immediately what Kate’s decision would be.

  He had tried everything in his power to convince Kate to go through with those tests. Melznick obviously grew tired of reiterating the same assurances over and over at David’s request, but in the end none of it worked. Kate read books on the subject every chance she got, did her own research to be sure, and the remote possibility of miscarriage made up her mind. They would wait. Pray. And hope for the best.

  Kate was a devout Christian, had been since childhood. Her father was a Baptist preacher in Rochester, New York, and she continued to follow his beliefs as an adult. Approximately a year before they moved to Morganville, Kate had talked David into removing Becca from the public school system (which she considered a place capable of teaching their daughter only “worldly wickedness,” whatever the hell that meant), and Becca had been in home-schooling ever since. But the subject of abortion was the one upon which Kate felt the strongest, and her opinions regarding that controversial topic would never falter. Kate believed that abortion, no matter the circumstances, was a grave, unforgivable sin. If God hadn’t wanted that child to exist, He wouldn’t have created it to begin with. According to Kate Little.

  David did not understand such reasoning, could not understand such foolishness, no matter how hard he tried to see things from a devout Christian’s point of view. Several times, he nearly brought up the subject of Kate’s brother. What did her precious Bible say about that situation?

  Alas, he had refrained from such an underhanded attack. He’d been tempted, sure. But he did not wish to hurt his wife, only to make her see things from his side of the fence.

  All he could do now was wait...wait, and pray to a God he wasn’t even one hundred percent sure he believed in. Pray that the day he saw Kate’s baby for the first time, in the delivery room, it would not be a mulatto.

  Even though he knew, deep inside, that it would be.

  CHAPTER 4

  Kate had called her brother earlier to let him know they made it down to Morganville without any problems, but since it was getting late and he hadn’t expected them until the weekend anyway they agreed to reunite first thing in the morning. By the time she and David were finished for the evening, Becca had long since fallen asleep on the sofa. After what seemed like the longest day of their lives, the Littles finally had most of their belongings unboxed and put away. Now, after tucking Becca into her new bed amongst her colorful jungle of stuffed animals, it was at last time for Mommy and Daddy to turn in as well.

  In bed, David reached for Kate, touched her shoulder. Her back was turned to him. She drew away from his hand. Razor-stripe shadows lined her shoulders where the moon’s soft glow squeezed through the Venetian blinds like a voyeur watching the couple’s private troubles.

  “Kate?”

  “What.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you are,” was her only reply.

  Gently, he ran his hand down her side, where seven months ago he could feel her ribs but now felt soft, pudgy flesh. He remembered how he had adored her plump body when she carried Becca (nothing “grotesque” about it in the least, as she had always been so worried), and now he wished he could feel the same way he had back then.

  God, she had been so beautiful. With Becca.

  “Mmmm,” Kate moaned as his hand glided over her love handles.

  “That feels good?”

  “Mm-hm. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the doghouse.”

  “I’m trying to apologize here.”

  She did not move. David could hear her heavy breathing. For a moment, he thought she had fallen back to sleep.

  “I am so tired of fighting about this,” she said finally.

  “So am I.”

  “Then why don’t you drop it, David?”

  “I love you, Kate.”

  “And I love you.”

  “It’s just that...I’m so scared. I don’t understand why God would do this to us. To you.”

  “Bad things happen, David. But God never puts more on a person than he or she can handle. He promised us that, in the Bible.”

  “But you’ve never hurt a soul, Kate! You’re the perfect Christian—”

  “No one’s perfect.”

  “I thought God was supposed to look out for His people. Keep them safe. So what did you ever do to deserve what happened that night?”

  “You can’t blame God.”

  “I’m not. Really. It’s just...I guess I’m trying to understand why He does some of the things He does.”

  “God has a reason for everything, darling. We may not understand that now, here, but we will. One day.”

  “Hm.” David rolled over. “I don’t want to understand it ‘one day.’ Nevermind. I don’t know what the hell I’m trying to say. I’m just confused. I’m scared. I’m sorry for being so difficult.”

  “No, listen,” said Kate. “We have a beautiful baby on the way. You’re right. I—we—have been through a lot this year. And I agree, it doesn’t seem fair. But God has a plan for everybody, David, and He’s about to bless this family more than you know.”

  “How do you figure?” David said, staring through the wall on his side of the bed.

  “I’m talking about this baby, David. It’s yours! I don’t know how to explain it, I can just feel it. Mother’s instinct. And God told me.”

  “God told you.” David tried not to sound sarcastic.

  “Yes. I never mentioned this to you because I knew you’d think I was silly, but He spoke to me, David. He said we were to have another perfect child, if we only left things in His hands.” She began to play with his hair, smoothing it down in the back where those natural curls sprang up against his pillow. “A beautiful baby with his father’s gorgeous blue eyes.”

  David wiped moisture from his eyes. “‘His?’”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘his father’s.’”

  Kate smiled. “Or her.” She seemed to suddenly spry up at the tiniest hint of enthusiasm in David’s voice as they spoke of the baby’s gender. “What do you think, Daddy? A boy or a girl?”

  But David had already lost interest. His next reply was little more than an apathetic grunt: “I dunno.” He pulled the covers over himself and tilted his head away from her playful hands.

  Kate sighed. “Contrary to what you may think, David, God does not break promises.”

  Against his back, David felt a gentle kick from the baby through Kate’s belly. Then another, as if the baby wished to punish him as well for any doubts regarding its genealogy.

  “We’ll see.” David slid forward in the bed, away from the touch of Kate’s belly. Away from the baby. Shortly before he dozed off, he muttered: “I hope to hell you are right.”

  To which Kate replied, “I am.”

  But as t
he words fell from her lips, she touched her belly, prayed she was not wrong.

  CHAPTER 5

  Less than twenty minutes after the Littles drifted off to sleep, a single gunshot boomed in the night, echoing down Honeysuckle Lane like an explosion.

  David sat up. “What the fuck?”

  Kate’s belly did not allow her such speed in rising, though she came awake just as quickly. “Language,” she scolded sleepily, but she did not dwell on it. “What was that?”

  “Sounded like a gunshot,” David said. “Jesus.”

  He leapt from the bed, peered out the window, but could see nothing. Just trees on this side of the house, a portion of their closest neighbor’s split-level home next door. A birdhouse dangled from one of those trees, its glass walls catching the moonlight and winking at him like a cube-shaped eye in the night. He rummaged through the closet until he found a rumpled bathrobe to throw on over his pajama bottoms.

  “David? Where are you going?”

  “I think it came from next door.”

  “We should call the police.”

  “Yeah. I’m gonna check it out, though.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” Kate pleaded. “Maybe you should stay here.”

  “You know me, babe,” David said. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “I’ll be fine. Go back to sleep.”

  “Not until you come back to bed.”

  He leaned over her, kissed her forehead.

  “We’re in North Carolina now,” he whispered. “What’s the worst it could be?”

  As David came out on his front porch, looking around for the source of that single gunshot, a voice called out to him from the darkness: “You heard it too?”

  David’s head jerked to the left. His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, and at first he could see only a ghostly white shape through the trees. Finally, though, he recognized his neighbor, the ex-Marine, standing on his own front porch.

  Somewhere down the block a dog began to bark. A big dog, from the sound of it.

  “It woke me,” David said, walking down the steps to stand in his yard beneath the night’s full moon.

  His neighbor nodded before crossing his own yard to approach David in the darkness. “Sounded like it came from next door, didn’t it?” The man tilted his head in the direction of a house two down from the Littles’ home.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  David extended his hand when the man stopped a few feet from him.

  “Heatherly, right?”

  The old man’s grip was firm, sincere.

  “George. I believe we met before, first time you were looking at the house?”

  “Right. You’re the one who makes the peashooters. The Marine?”

  “Retired. Good to meet you again, Mr...Little, is it?”

  Despite the obvious unease in his eyes, the old man offered David a friendly grin—a grin missing one front tooth—and David knew already that he liked this man. George Heatherly had one of those faces that was impossible not to like. David estimated his neighbor’s age to be somewhere around seventy, give or take a couple years. Other than a slight potbelly typical of men whose best years have passed, George’s frame hinted of his days as a military man, of a body once rippling with muscles. He was without a doubt one of the tallest men David had ever known, almost freakishly so. His face was a vibrant sunburn-pink, but the rest of his skin was very pale. What little hair he had sat atop his head wiry and snow-white. Beneath his open robe he wore nothing but boxers, and the old man’s thick forearms and former barrel chest were covered with more tattoos than David had ever seen on a man this age. Most were faded variations on the Marine Corps logo and its motto, Semper Fidelis, though David also spotted two or three cartoonishly-endowed nude women upon his neighbor’s biceps. Staples of an ex-tough guy.

  George turned and walked back to his own yard, gesturing for David to follow. Down the street, the dog continued its persistent barking, as if refusing to shut up until someone acknowledged its presence.

  “I hope Simms is okay,” the old man said.

  “Simms?”

  “Randall Simms. Guy next door. Morgan County’s Fire Chief.”

  The wind swept through the leafless branches of the surrounding trees, rattling them together like bones in the cool night air as the men made their way toward the yard adjacent to Heatherly’s. David crossed his arms and shivered.

  “Simms is a good guy, but I worry about him,” said George. “He hasn’t been the same since what happened.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked, but then George never had time to reply as a muffled scream came from the very house toward which they were walking.

  “Jesus!” George Heatherly’s stroll through the grass became a quickened trot. “Martha!”

  David followed, but found himself wishing now that he had stayed in bed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see whatever had caused that scream.

  Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong.

  That dog down the street must have sensed it, too. Its pesky barking grew more furious than ever, a mad yipping as if the thing was being beaten.

  George led the way to Randall Simms’ house, a quaint brick home surrounded by a low picket fence that had once been white but was now somewhat weathered and yellow. Against the curb at the front of the property a late-model Dodge Ram sat bumper-to-bumper with a blue Cadillac. Octagonal slabs of smooth concrete spaced a foot or two apart led visitors from the curb, through the yard, and up to the patio of the middle-class home, where a wooden sign hung from the awning. WELCOME, it proclaimed, in cursive script.

  With the athletic grace of a man half his age, George Heatherly leapt over the picket fence. He motioned for David to follow.

  George took the patio steps three at a time, knocked several times fast upon the door of the Simms’ house. David stood at the foot of the porch, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, feeling horribly out of place.

  In the distance, the dog continued to bark, almost as if to spite the ex-Marine. It took everything David had not to turn around and scream down the block for the damned thing to shut the fuck up.

  “Godammit, Sparky, would you shut the fuck up!” George suddenly shouted, his head tilted in the direction of that mad barking as if he had read David’s mind. He appeared to be genuinely perturbed, and David couldn’t help but emit a nervous chuckle at that. The guy really looked like he might take off down the street if his demand went ignored, strangle the wretched thing where it stood.

  Just as quickly, though, George reverted back to an air of seriousness, back to the business at hand.

  “Martha!” he shouted, knocking on the door again. “Martha, open the door!”

  He waited a minute before knocking a few more times, harder. “Martha, what the hell’s going on?”

  David couldn’t help but notice that Sparky had stopped barking. Silence assaulted them on all sides. David almost wished for the barking to begin anew, as the night’s unnatural quiet seemed alive. Even the sound of crickets chirping in the night was conspicuously absent. The silence was almost smothering.

  David was quite sure he could hear his own heartbeat, could feel his pulse in his throat.

  Finally the two men heard the sounds of a chain being undone, a lock disengaged. The door swung inward.

  George jumped back with a start as a large form spilled from the foyer of the Simms house and fell upon him.

  An obese middle-aged lady in a flowery nightgown cried, “George! Oh, George!”

  “Martha, calm down, honey. What’s the matter?”

  “You gotta help him, George,” the woman cried. “He’s hurt. Randall’s hurt. It’s bad. Please help him!”

  George pried Martha Simms’ arms from around his neck with considerable effort before motioning for David to follow. A stranger, David at first felt wary about entering this couple’s home, but when Mrs. Simms disappeared inside with Geor
ge in tow, he sensed he might be needed. He entered the dark house, where no lights burned save for a single bright glow toward the rear of the home.

  “This way, George!” Martha Simms’ voice called to them from the blackness. “He’s in the bathroom!”

  David barely had time to register the appearance of the home—nothing fancy, the typical living quarters of a couple slipping from middle-age into their golden years, spotlessly clean and tinged with the smell of last night’s dinner (beef stew, David thought)—before George let out a loud gasp. The old man stopped walking, and David collided with his neighbor in the darkness.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What is it?” David asked.

  Heatherly turned to David, whispered, “Keep her out of here.” In Mrs. Simms’ direction he shouted, “Martha, you’d better call 911.” He motioned for David to enter the bathroom behind him. “911’s not gonna do much good, though, I’m afraid.”

  David stepped forward into the brightly lit bathroom, peering over George’s shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ...”

  Randall Simms lay crosswise in the empty bathtub, his legs splayed over the side. The back of his head had been blown off, a Rorschach Test pattern of bright red blood and chunky gray matter splashed upon the wall behind him. Some of it had collected between the tub’s shiny tiles like pulpy red-black grout.

  Randall Simms’ right hand still grasped the .44. His other hand, open atop his knee, seemed to beckon to the men standing over him, a pose that reminded David of the homeless contingent by whom he’d been accosted so many times in New York. A crumpled, handwritten note was safety-pinned to the man’s gore-spattered pajamas above his left breast, but that too was drenched with blood and was therefore illegible.

  Never in his life had David seen so much blood. He gagged, tasting bile in the back of his throat. He covered his mouth and quickly looked away from the corpse.