“Jeez, calm down, Padre, all right,” said Johnathan, stuffing his recent purchase at Bud’s Guns back into the bag between his feet.
“You bought a gun?”
“Yes.”
“It fires and everything?”
“It doesn’t shoot water…”
“Well excuse me if I think it’s a little unnerving that you went and purchased a firearm at a county festival.” Jake looked up into his rearview mirror as he accelerated down Main. The sheriff was still watching them. Creepy guy. “Especially…” he stopped.
“What?”
“I don’t think you’re in the right frame of mind to be buying a firearm.”
“Really?”
“Come on, Johnathan. Don’t be like that. You know what I mean.”
“Supposedly, it’s an historic piece.”
“Are you a collector?”
“No, but—”
“—then why did you buy it?”
“Shit, man. I don’t know.” Johnathan sounded hesitant, looking idly out the passenger window. But he knew; he just didn’t want to say.
Jake cautioned a glance at his friend. “You don’t know or you don’t want to say?”
“Both…maybe,” Johnathan whispered.
“What does that even mean both?” Jake gawked.
“It means…” Johnathan hesitated.
“What man, you’re starting to freak me out a little. Please tell me why you’ve got a revolver at the fair.” Jake pointed a finger toward the neat packaging with the Bud’s Guns emblem.
“I saw him,” Johnathan said, nearly in a whisper, slowed reluctantly.
Jake jerked the wheel. The Volvo swerved, kicking rocks on the emergency lane before righting back on Main. A colored fellow stared at them as they passed, with dark skin and white hair, sitting on a lawn chair in front of some barbershop.
“I know how it sounds,” said Johnathan defensively.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You saw Ricky, again?”
“Yes.”
“Ricky? Our dead friend, Ricky?”
“Yes.”
“And you bought a gun?”
“Yes.”
“You saw Ricky and you bought a gun.”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
“Listen…I don’t know how to explain it…I’m not even sure if I believe…but I have to.”
“Can you try explaining a little more on that?”
Johnathan thought for a moment. He looked out the window, his tired gaze tracing the roofs of the old Jotham buildings. “Remember our little get-together a couple months ago?”
“Yeah.”
“You were pretty sure you’d seen…what was his name?”
Jake winced visibly. “Renfield?” he said.
“That’s right. You were pretty freaked out about it. Holed up in that cheap motel…well, you sounded freaked out, at least. We hadn’t talked in how long before then? A long time, right? And then I told you, at the bar, that I was having a similar experience, I’d seen something too.”
“Yes, but I haven’t seen Renfield since then.” Jake swallowed hard, ignoring the little voice in his head screaming about last night’s dream. “I haven’t seen him since then because he was never really there, Johnathan. He is…was some kind of symptom, brought on by guilt perhaps, because he died. He died in front of me…he died and I lived and now I feel responsible.” Jake licked his lips. His mouth felt dry, as if some glitter of sand was dangling on his esophagus, soaking up all the moisture. “Maybe…I could have saved him, done something than just hold his hand in the mud.”
“Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or he was real.”
“Johnathan…”
“No. Listen. First off, you shouldn’t feel guilty because there was nothing you could have done. Second, I’m not so sure he was part of your subconscious, super-ego, or whatever telling you fucked up. I think maybe he was real, something supernatural, but wanted you to think he was imaginary.”
Jake wouldn’t take his eyes off the road, but from his peripheral, he could see Johnathan staring down at his open palms with that same blank strange certainty when he’d found him wandering around the fairgrounds holding the big bag with the Bud’s Guns logo like some fragile thing clutched to his chest. Muttering to himself. Some queer word Jake had never heard before. Nashirimah…
“Johnathan…” Jake started again, his tone masking little the pity in his voice.
“Look…Damn it, how can I explain?” Johnathan thought for a moment, pulling at his hair. “I know!” he said excitedly. “Did I ever tell you about this guy, Barry Edwards?” Johnathan leaned back in his seat.
“No…I don’t think so,” said Jake, cautiously. “Listen, say your right, say Renfield was real. To what end? Why would he want me to think he wasn’t real? To what end, Johnathan? To what end?” Jake held the panic in his voice at bay as well as he could, but what Johnathan was implying was too fantastic, hell…bizarre couldn’t even describe it.
Johnathan went on. “Barry Edwards…he’s a soldier, or was. They called him Bucky, the VA folks did. Not sure why. But I guess nicknames don’t always have to make sense, not like the way we call Maggie, Mags. You know? Well, I met Bucky through the Wounded Warrior thing. Sometimes I’d go out to the VA hospital, I’d do my spiel. Afterward I might talk with veterans, one on one. Give them the personal treatment, you dig? Bucky was a special case. They had him locked up in the psych ward, getting ready to transfer him to long term care. You should have seen him, Jake. His hair was torn out in patches. His eyes were dirty yellow, like jaundice, or like those folks with liver damage. I mean hell, Jake, Bucky looked crazy. The special thing about Bucky was that for him, the war never ended. He was still in it, in his mind. I tried talking with him, the wizards thought maybe something I would say could reach him, I don’t know, but every few minutes just when we thought we were finally reaching Barry, his eyes would glaze over and he’d look at me and ask when his leave was up, when he could go back. When he could go back and be with his friends, his unit. I’ve met a lot of messed up veterans during my year with the WWP. From the burnt, to amputees like me, to even the blind and deaf, to the most hideously scarred. And even those who don’t have a single mark on them, physically. But, much like Bucky, they’re FUBAR on the inside. They’re lucid one minute and the next reality gets glossed over with dementia. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I know the symptoms. I know how easy it is to lose it, you know? But I’m telling you, Jake…brother, I’m not Bucky. You’re not Bucky. We’re not losing it. Ricky was real…and I think so was Renfield. And I think there is something going on with that house Mags bought. We were there as kids, but we can’t remember any of it. And when Mags bought it, she…I don’t know. It’s…doing something to her.” Johnathan huffed irritably, patting his pockets. He reached for the cigarette pack sitting near the Volvo’s gear shift. He pulled out a Camel and lit it with a green Bic lighter. He took a long languorous breath, coughing weakly as he exhaled.
Jake looked at him and then back to the road. “You don’t smoke,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I know.” Johnathan took another puff and then cracked the window.
Silence swelled the cab, neither willing to speak. Jake turned off Main and pulled onto Route 77 feeling numb and perhaps more than a little dumbstruck. Real? Renfield…? No. There’s something else going on. Some other explanation. But with Maggie…maybe he’s right. Maybe…? No. Houses don’t harm. Am I really sure though? How was my house growing up? How was life living under pastor dad and pastor mom? Hell. Every moment. But it wasn’t their fault. It’s the way they are. And perhaps that’s what’s going on with the house and Mags. Maybe it’s what’s in the house and not the house itself. But what’s in the house, what’s hurting Mags as Johnathan seems to believe…?
“What’s…in the…house? Is it…?” Jake stuttered, his words hanging in the air. It
was all just so ridiculous. He was hoping that Johnathan would finish his inquiry so he wouldn’t have to. If he did…And he’d be right? No! Entertaining the notion of haunted houses and ghosts felt too far, too much. Things didn’t work like that. There was right and there was wrong. For Jake, demons didn’t exist. People, not devils, did bad things. People, as banal as it sounded, could be capable of the cruelest and kindest acts depending on their environment. Ultimately, people decide what they’re going to do. Dead friends didn’t come back from the grave and give warnings of some impending evil. No matter how hard the subconscious may make you think they are, it just wasn’t possible. And if it wasn’t possible, then Johnathan had more problems than Jake first realized; more than his drinking habits or his obviously collapsing marriage. His PTSD was worse, dangerous even. If this wasn’t real, as it most likely was not, he’d have to handle Johnathan carefully, especially now with that gun sitting between his legs…leg.
“I don’t know if it’s the house or something else,” said Johnathan, killing his cigarette, letting the wind take it through the cracked window.
“What then?” Jake asked, fighting to control his hands, to keep them from shaking.
“Something. Ricky called whatever it was Them. Not really sure what that even means, but it can’t be good,” said Johnathan, tucking his hands under his armpits, shivering.
“No. I suppose not,” said Jake.
“Whatever Them is, all I care is getting Mags outta that house. Ricky said it was too late, but fuck Ricky. I’m not going to leave her alone, not again.”
“What if she doesn’t want to go?”
Silence.
Neither said another word on their drive back to the house on Oak Lee. Jake watched the road, his mind wandering over the things his friend had said. Of what was real or delusion, he didn’t know, but one thing was for certain, Johnathan believed them, every bit. He believed Ricky came back from the grave to warn them. He believed Maggie was in danger. He believed he needed to purchase a gun. These were the things Jake knew. What he didn’t know was which of those things he believed. Rain began to pelt the front windshield. The wind knocked the car around. Jake flipped on the wipers, leaning forward in his seat, peering out at the horizon.
Fantastic. Perfect time for a storm.
***
Johnathan
The house looked queer, too normal almost. The lights burned brighter than he recalled, making the place feel welcoming compared to the torrential downpour soaking the earth with cold March rain. As Jake rounded the Volvo and parked next to the oak tree where Tabitha had spotted the large cicada yesterday afternoon, Johnathan gawked at the absolute warmness of the place. The two story white picket fence home looked absolutely cozy, setting that dead chill that clung on his heart since his encounter with Ricky in the Jotham County Fairgrounds restroom into a frantic swing. It wasn’t right. This place isn’t right. Compared with the blackening sky, the house looked like some beacon on a hill, a lighthouse on the coast of some rocky Northeastern shore. Beams of light penetrated the encroaching gloom of the nighttime storm. The house looked picturesque, but in its glowing perfection something malignant was festering, of that Johnathan was sure. He could feel it, something beneath the skin and paneling, beneath the brick and mortar, beneath the flue and glass, beneath the well-tended garden and grass. It was all, all so wrong.
Here we are. Are we too late to save Maggie? Ricky said it was, but Ricky also said to get a gun. If it was too late, than why tell me to get it, right? Jesus, listen to me. I’m reasoning the words of a dead man. He turned toward Jake who had shifted the Volvo into park, his eyes as well settling uncomfortably on the house before them.
“So,” Jake said.
“So,” said Johnathan.
“How do you want to do this?” Jake leaned back in his seat, looking at Johnathan with a look about him reminiscent of the way nurses look at mental patients with HIV who have a nasty habit of biting their own tongues and spitting at them.
“How about we get her really drunk and when she passes out, we’ll load her up in the Volvo and drive back to Houston. We’ll go to my place, in the morning Karen can make us some scrambled eggs and bacon.” Johnathan laughed, but in his throat the laughter felt brittle and fake. Mags hasn’t had a single drop of booze this entire trip… Maybe we can hit her really hard on the head and drag her out. If it is the house, would she change, would she be herself again outside? If it is the house…?
“I suppose that could work.” Jake laughed drily, shifting in his seat.
Johnathan glanced at his friend. He doesn’t believe me. Can I blame him? In what scenario can such a thing exist? Houses that cause harm? Dead friends coming back? Waking up in the middle of the wheat field with little to no memory of the night before? I credited the beer and Jake Daniels for that, but I wonder…
Or, Jesus, what if…what if I am really losing it? Do schizos know they’re schizo? Did Bucky? Have I gone too far down the rabbit hole? Am I Tyler Durden caught in the self-propitiating spiral of self-destruction? Could I at any moment wake up in a totally different place or as a totally different person? No. No, I’d know. I’d know damn it. I’m not crazy…but then again, isn’t that what crazy people say, in the end, that they’re not crazy? Shit! I’m a fiend with an itch, like those chronic masturbators the VA sends down MacGregor Way, where the UT students get to watch the crazies, the girls shoving things into their vaginas and boys jerking it with a grasshopper in their Vaseline coated palms, fucking looney tunes man.
Lightning streaked the sky, burning the mass of blackened clouds overhead. Thunder chased the flash a moment later, booming with its celestial angry growl. Fat rain impacted the dirt and gravel like miniature mortal shells.
“Johnathan?” prodded Jake, the same painful cautious look on his face as before.
“Let’s just see what happens.” Johnathan opened the passenger door, cane and Bud’s Guns bag in hand, and jumped out into the rain.
CHAPTER 25
WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?
Lucy
The house on Oak Lee was filled with the aroma of beef and slow cooked greens. Lucy Fetcher stood in front of the stove in a rose colored apron, sweating, stirring the pot, and chewing her nails. Nothing was as it should have been. Everything was as those boys coming back from Vietnam called, boocoo. She had her concerns with the house from the very beginning. Moving from Lynchburg, Virginia, all the way to Jotham, Texas, was not like skipping apartments across town. Not to mention they had no family support in Texas. No family whatsoever within a fifteen hundred mile radius, but she trusted Jim and she knew they needed the job. Without it, they’d either starve, beg on the streets, or worse, forced to make that call to her parents for help. And between the two, Lucy Fetcher would rather beg than face the shame of her mother. And besides, she knew Jim well enough to know that he wouldn’t have accepted any kind of handout. And a part of that is why the move bugged her so much. Jim didn’t take handouts and what this fellow Glenn Myers had done seemed very much like a handout to her. His letter and the call he’d made to the school where Jim was eventually was hired, as kind an act as it was, it bugged her to no end.
What does a John Wayne cornbread want to do with us?
Her fears were elated, though, the moment they pulled up the drive on that warm summer day in 1976 and saw the house they’d blown their entire savings on—and then some—for the very first time. The house was more than Jim had described. It was more than just the white picket fence American Dream. It was a fresh start; a good place to grow roots. And most certainly a good place for their girls, Jane and Darcy…better than what they’d had in Lynchburg, to say the least. Lucy had never felt comfortable living in a southern state with the name lynch in it. ‘Too much blood in the water,’ as her father was known of saying.
Lucy had marveled at their good fortune, using up the entire summer to settle in, unpacking their lives inside the two story house. The girls explored the stalks of wheat and
the barn that Jim had mentioned rebuilding and filling with livestock, much to her unease. However, despite a few morsels of preserved anxiety, she let the girls play and went about nesting, as expectant mothers tend to do. Hanging drapes and putting away dishes in the cabinets. The house was already furnished with nicer things than what they owned, but still, it needed a motherly touch, in her modest opinion. The kitchen, however, was more than adequate. It was modern, with a touch of tradition, with a sizeable General Electric oven and stove, a refrigerator, and a pantry large enough to feed an army.
Jim had done very well indeed.
And now school would be starting soon. Jane and Darcy were full of excitement. Lucy knew this all too well. Hadn’t it been yesterday they’d clung to her legs? Now they couldn’t be kept still. Ants in their pants, as the saying goes. Itching to grow up. She could hear them now, giggling upstairs in their room. It’s amazing how much can change in such as little time. This realization had a darker undertone of which Lucy also knew all too well.
Since their trip into Jotham, shopping for school dresses, Jim hadn’t been the same. He’d changed too. But not in a way Lucy would have expected. Jim typically got just as excited for the start of a new school year as the girls. This year was different. He seemed distant and cold.
Why?
The Supremes were jamming on the box RCA radio from the kitchen window sill. Lucy had been pleasantly surprised to discover an R&B station this far south. In Virginia, they had to buy records if they wanted to taste a new band. Here in Texas, she’d assumed the AM was full of nothing but honky-tonk country twang, Dolly Parton and that Coal Miner’s Daughter stuff. She’d found KTJR when they first moved in and set about nesting the kitchen when all of a sudden The Temptations came through those tiny nosey speakers with, “Baby, Baby I Need You.” And not just them, but also the Four Tops, and Junior Walker, The Funk Brothers, The Isley Brothers singing, “Nowhere to Run,” the very best of Motown right in her little space in the soul of Texas.
Emerging (Subdue Book 2) Page 19