by Greg Enslen
He looked bad—like someone had finally gotten the better of him. His right arm was tied up in a makeshift support. It was broken, she thought, and he’d used a dish towel from downstairs to support it. There was a maroon sweatshirt tied around his waist, one she didn’t recognize. It looked like it said “California State University.” How...what did that mean? Where had that come from?
She screamed. She couldn’t help it—everything was going wrong—
Vincent shuffled forward, coming toward her. She had no idea what to do. It was too much to understand. He was dead. He’d been dying in the car and it...there had been fire, and it wasn’t possible that he was here. Who would have saved him?
His face was twisted up into a strange leer, and Judy suddenly realized that she was going to die.
It wasn’t going to take long, and there wouldn’t be time for forgiveness or excuses or lame attempts to convince him otherwise.
There was nothing else in the world except her in the bed and Vincent coming slowly toward her, his left hand behind his back.
Like he was bringing her a surprise.
“You...little...bitch!” he said, walking slowly to the side of the bed. There was thick runner of blood coming from one side of his face, running down his cheek and dripping slowly from his chin. “No...nobody...” he started, then seemed to resign himself.
“Please,” she pleaded, and some part of her was disgusted. Why are you begging? it asked. He’s going to kill you anyway. “Please, don’t hurt me, again, please,” Judy begged. “I’m sorry about the accident! It wasn’t supposed to be like that....”
She realized that she was calling out to Chris in her mind, calling to the only person who had ever really meant anything to her. The screams were incredibly loud and at the same time silent. All she could think of to cry was “Help!” over and over again, screaming for a boy who had long since forgotten her.
There was nothing else to do.
Vincent’s arm came around, and she saw the knife. It was the largest, sharpest knife they had in the house. It had a serrated edge that could probably cut down a tree.
The breaking glass she had heard earlier was the glass covering of the hall light, because now, as he held up the knife, its wicked edges caught the reflection of the suddenly bright light in the hallway.
The light made the knife look even bigger.
“Shut up...you don’t know who you’re messing with, but you’re going to find out, I guarantee it. Things were going so good...” her husband said, stepping closer to her.
He wasn’t moving very fast, but the very notion of trying to get away had not even occurred to her—she was in shock. Too many things were happening too quickly, all crowding together, and now she wondered somewhere in her mind if she really did want to just die.
“You don’t even know what you did, you stupid whore. I had it all set it up...” he said, starting to cough hard. He spat blood onto the white carpet. “That’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll be okay,” he said to himself, and for a moment, it looked as though he’d completely forgotten about her. The knife wavered in the air, and she began to slowly slide backwards on the bed.
Then his eyes cleared. He looked down at her and smiled. “But you won’t be.”
The knife went higher into the air.
Vincent hesitated a moment at the top of the arc.
Did he still have something in him, something good? Judy didn’t think so. Maybe he was just trying to think of something clever to say before he killed her.
No. He’d stopped. He was listening to something.
Judy strained to pull her thoughts away from how sharp the edge of that knife looked. She realized someone was pounding on the front door, beating on the door with something that sounded like a pipe.
How had she not heard that before—had she been unable to hear or see anything else except for Vincent and the knife?
His face twitched and he stepped back, lowering the knife. “Don’t think about going anywhere, bitch. This isn’t done, not by a long shot.”
Vincent turned and slowly left the room, taking the knife with him.
The crying came instantly, and she couldn’t stop it. The tears of sorrow and joy and fear all crammed together, trying to get out of her. For a long moment, her body shook with the tears of a pardoned man moments from the electric chair.
She could hear voices downstairs, and it was the sound of other voices besides Vincent’s and her own that brought her out of the tears, brought her around to think about her situation.
Judy hadn’t been pardoned—her execution had only been stayed temporarily. This place was truly her prison, and the warden had only momentarily stepped away from the switch. In a few minutes, he’d be back to finish the job.
If she was ever going to do something about it, it had to be now. Right now.
She stood up.
There were no other doors out of this room except for the main door, which led out onto the landing and looked down onto the foyer and the front door. If Vincent was down there, talking to cops or whoever had come, he’d be able to see her. If there were cops down there and she asked for help, she didn’t think they would act. The Lucianos were just too powerful.
The window. It was the only option, and she went to it, pulling the window open. She was wearing only her pajamas, but she didn’t care.
Outside the window was the slanted roof of the garage—she had never been able to figure out why they needed a garage plus another building near the house to park cars, but now she wasn’t asking. She could see the barn and the broken cars parked around it, and beyond that was the muddy field and the road.
If she could get to the road, she could get away. He was hurt, and, for once in her life, she could outrun him. It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was better than sitting here, waiting for her husband to come back.
She slipped out the window and down onto the cold roof of the garage, looking for a way down. Judy didn’t want to climb down on the front side of the house—she could see the police cruiser there, and surely she’d be spotted by Vincent and the cops. She needed to find another way down, and then she’d run.
------
Gary could see fine, but in the silence, he could hear even better. It didn’t look like the cops were planning to arrest Vincent—from the snatches of conversation he could pick up, it sounded like they were trying to get him to go to the hospital. The conversation also seemed good-natured. It looked like Vincent Luciano was in good with the cops.
After a couple of minutes, Vincent disappeared back into the house and then reappeared, handing something small to each cop. Gary didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess.
He began to understand why the cops had told him to get lost.
The old woman at the bakery might’ve even underestimated the amount of influence the Lucianos exerted in this town.
Something caught his eye.
Gary glanced away from the cops and saw someone on the roof of the garage. As he watched, he saw the person drop down onto one of the junk cars on the opposite side of the garage from the cops. They scrambled off the car and disappeared.
Gary looked back at the cops and their chummy conversation with a drug dealer and made a split-second decision. He took out his keys and reached up, turning off the car’s dome light. Slowly, he opened his door, climbing out quietly and closing the door before ducking down behind one of the other cars. He walked toward the back of the house.
As he came around the corner, he saw that the person was already well across the muddy field that separated the house and barn from the road beyond. It was a slight figure. It looked like a woman in her nightclothes.
Gary started to run. After a minute, he caught up with the woman and grabbed her arm, turning her around.
Gary saw her face and even though he’d been preparing himself for this moment, seeing Judy’s face was like being struck by lightning. The intensity of the massive, skull-piercing headache k
nocked him to the ground, his knees buckling. He fell to the ground, landing with a thud in the muddy field, and passed out.
------
She had climbed down from the garage and was running as hard as she could across the muddy field when she heard someone chasing her. Someone’s feet pounded the mud behind her, and when she felt the hand on her shoulder, tugging her around roughly, she’d known it would be Vincent, though she knew he was hurt.
Him or one of the cops. Either way, she was dead.
She spun around and saw a young man that she didn’t immediately recognize. In the next moment, the man threw his hands up to his head, crumpling over as if she had shot him, falling into the mud.
Judy wasn’t sure if she could take many more surprises.
She dropped and rolled the man over, looking at his face.
It was Chris.
Somehow, beyond all logic or wishing or hope, it was Chris O’Toole. Chris laying there in the muddy field next to her house, his eyes closed to the stars above them.
She screamed.
It was out of her before there was anything she could do about it. Her hands flew up and clapped over her mouth.
What...what was he doing here?
What strange fate had brought him to this field? After so many years of wondering what had happened to him, how had he ended up here, tonight?
There was nothing else for her to do. Judy leaned over and kissed him.
“Chris? Chris, can you hear me?” she asked him, gently tapping his face.
His eyes came open and he jerked away from her, sliding away on the mud. He sat up slowly, looking look at her; Chris was squinting, like he was looking at the sun.
She didn’t understand, but she tried to move toward him.
He put up his hand, stopping her.
“Just give me a moment. Don’t move...don’t move, okay?” He was rubbing his temples roughly. And he was crying.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
“Are you okay, Chris?” she asked. At the mention of his name he jerked again, as if he had been stung by a bee. He bent over, looking like he might pass out again. She put a hand on him to steady him, amazed that he was real. Solid, not a figment of her troubled, racing mind. The phantom that was Chris O’Toole wavered for a moment in the mud and then sat back up again.
Chris looked at her again, squinting.
“Please, don’t say my name anymore,” he said. “It hurts too much.”
He looked down at her clothes and the tears on her face, and she could see the concern in his eyes. It was a look she hadn’t seen in anyone else’s eyes in a very long time.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Judy nodded, smiling at him, and then shook her head. There were too many emotions running around in her mind.
“I have to leave, and now,” Judy said quickly. “Vincent...he’s my husband. He’s...very upset with me, and I think he’s had enough. I was leaving, going to the road to see if...what are you doing here? It’s been so long, and you never called or wrote or anything. What’s going on?”
Chris looked over his shoulder at the house, then back to her.
“I’ve been having some dreams...no, we don’t have time. Vincent might come looking for you. I’ve got my car over by the barn—if we can get there without your husband or the cops seeing us, we can leave once the cop car leaves. And then we can go somewhere, and talk.”
That sounded like heaven to her. To be away from Vincent would be enough, but now that Chris was here....
She saw the police car pulling away.
“They’re going,” Judy said. “Vincent probably paid them off to not report the accident.” She suddenly hated the man more, if that was even possible. Not only would he kill her if he could, he probably would get away with it. It only took a few handfuls of cash, pressed into the right palms.
“Let’s go,” she said, moving to help him up from the ground.
“I’m okay,” he said, waving her off.
Chris didn’t want her touching him, or calling him by his name—what did that mean?
They headed for the car, and she saw that he wouldn’t look at her—he kept his eyes focused on the muddy field, glancing up at the house every few seconds. She wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but when she tried, he asked her to be quiet.
------
Gary’s head felt like it was filled with a thousand marching bands, all competing for the “who could be the loudest” prize. It felt like his mind was threatening to ooze out of his ears.
The connections and organizations in his mind had collapsed like a rickety house of cards. He concentrated on getting to the car, but his hand went unconsciously to the deck of tarot cards in his jacket pocket, holding it like a lifeline. Dr. Myers had said the cards were like his talisman. Gary knew it was all crazy hocus pocus crap, but it still made him feel better, especially now, when his mind felt like it was going on strike.
It felt like someone was using a spatula in his head, flipping pieces of his mind over on some kind of hot mental stove.
Thinking about anything else, or even glancing at Judy, made his head hurt even more. He smelled cigarette smoke, even though there were no cigarettes in this muddy field. Maybe the cops had been smoking, or Vincent, but it smelled so strong, and reminded him of alternating lines of white and dark. He had no idea what any of it meant.
Gary saw the rental car. He got out the keys, letting her in the passenger side before going around the car and climbing in behind the wheel. He hoped the field wasn’t too muddy to get the car through. It took three tries to get the key in the ignition—he was having trouble doing the simplest of tasks. He couldn’t see through the red tide of pain that had taken over his mind. He glanced over at her again and instantly wished he hadn’t; more waves of pain crashed over him every time he looked at her.
Gary wondered what had been going on inside that house to make her climb out of the second-story bedroom in her pajamas and run away. He smelled cigarette smoke again. None of it made any sense.
He finally got the key into the ignition and was about to start the car when he glanced up.
Someone was standing in front of the car.
Judy screamed. It reverberated loudly inside the car. If he hadn’t already had the worst headache of his life, the noise would’ve given him one.
It was Vincent, holding an axe. He lifted the axe high, up over his head with one arm, and then brought it down. The axe planted itself firmly in the middle of the rental car’s red hood, burying itself up to the head in the sheet metal.
Judy screamed again.
Gary’s mind offered up another useless piece of information: it had been a good idea to get the rental insurance.
Gary saw Vincent working the axe handle back and forth, freeing it from the metal car hood. The man, his face covered in blood, stepped away from Gary and around to the passenger side of the car, looking at Judy. After a moment, he swung the axe wildly at the passenger window. Judy ducked down and away from the passenger window as it shattered, the axe head swinging through the car and decapitating the headrest off of the passenger seat.
Gary started the car and floored it. He kicked the gas pedal so hard, he heard it smack against the floor of the car. He spun the wheel, reversing away from the man and his axe. The car fishtailed in the muddy field as Gary tried to back away and turn at the same time, and he crashed into one of the junk cars.
Vincent jogged up as Gary’s rental car came to a stop. He didn’t pause—to Gary, the man looked like he was on autopilot, running on adrenaline and anger. Vincent reached into the passenger window and grabbed Judy around her neck, pulling her up. He was trying to drag her out of the window. Gary grabbed at Vincent’s hand, but it was slippery with blood and Gary couldn’t free her. Judy was cut in a dozen places by the shards of broken glass around the passenger window, and now she was bleeding too. Vincent pulled, lifting Judy’s head and shoulders through the car window.
Gar
y knew that if he floored the accelerator again, with her hanging halfway out the window, she’d get hurt or killed.
He jumped out of the car and raced around to the passenger side.
“Let her go!” Gary yelled, coming at Vincent.
Vincent glanced around and clearly dismissed him; he was a little busy, trying to drag his wife out of the car window. Vincent was working from an awkward angle, using just his left arm to pull Judy out by her neck, but he was turned around and couldn’t get any leverage.
Gary punched him as hard as he could in the right elbow, where the arm appeared to be broken.
Vincent screamed and dropped Judy, stepping back.
She collapsed against the passenger door, the bottom half of her still in the car. Her hands went to her throat.
Gary turned to Vincent and the punch caught him straight in the face, knocking him to the ground. Vincent leaned over him, shouting.
“Who are you, boy?” Vincent screamed, his eyes wild. “People around here know not to get involved. You think you’re gonna take my wife from me? Do you have any idea who I am?” Vincent leaned into the rental car, reaching over his wife to pull the keys out of the ignition. He stood, throwing them away into a field.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Vincent shouted. Gary stood, wondered how they would get away now, without the keys. He didn’t have long to think about it.
Vincent came at him, and Gary flailed out, catching him again in the arm. Vincent bellowed—it sounded like an injured bear—and punched Gary in the face again. Gary felt blood spray from his nose as he staggered back from the punch. Then, a big wet hand tightened around his throat, and suddenly there was no air. None at all, nothing for him to breathe.
Gary swung and hit the broken arm again but the grip did not lessen. Vincent was looking at him and smiling.
Gary started to lose feeling in his legs, and his hands scrabbled at Vincent’s dirty hand as it gripped his throat, and then suddenly the pressure was off and Gary could breathe. He fell to the ground, sucking at the air, taking in so much that he coughed.