The Living and the Dead

by Greg F. Gifune

  “Yes, yesterday.”

  “Looks like another rainy one, huh?”

  “At least it’s not coming down as hard as it was last night.”

  “Still hotter than hell, though. If it’s going to rain the least it could do is cool things down a little, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The couple moved closer. The woman was physically small and thin like her partner, appeared to be roughly the same age, and wore a floppy straw hat that looked like something she’d purchased at a yard sale. The wide brim shadowed much of her pale but pretty face, and despite the rain, a pair of dark sunglasses shielded her eyes. Dressed in a simple dress decorated with sunflowers that had the retro style of 1970s fashion, she continued to hold the man’s hand but finally offered a subtle smile. “Hey.”

  “Perry,” the man said, offering his free hand. “And this is Lennox.”

  Lana shook each of their hands in turn. “Lana.”

  “Cool.” Lennox perked up a bit. “Like Lana Turner.”

  “Right,” she said through a smile.

  “I love her.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Perry said quickly. “She rocks.”

  Lennox rolled her eyes. “He has no idea who Lana Turner is.”

  “I know who she is.” He grinned, but Lana could tell he was embarrassed. “She’s that black chick that sings, used to be married to that dude that beat her up all the time, they made a movie about her.”

  “That’s Tina Turner, moron.” Lennox turned back to Lana. “You know you kind of look like her? Lana, I mean.”

  “How flattering, thanks.” Lana moved toward the road. “I’m on my way into town for—”

  “We’re just out for a walk, too,” Perry said, “figured we wouldn’t let the rain stop us. Not like we’re gonna melt or anything, right?”

  “I like walking in the rain, actually,” Lennox added.

  “It’s nice sometimes,” Lana agreed, “isn’t it?”

  “We’re staying a ways down the beach.” Perry pointed. “Technically that makes us neighbors.”

  “Yeah,” Lennox sighed, “I’m sure she can barely contain her excitement.”

  “You know,” Perry said, reaching for but not quite touching Lana’s elbow, “I’m a movie director.”

  Doing her best to be gracious, Lana feigned interest. “Is that so?”

  “Not exactly, no,” Lennox answered for him. “He’s aspiring.”

  “Well congratulations, I hope it works out for you.”

  “Me, I’m an aspiring actress.” Lennox pointed to her sunglasses. “Or something.”

  “Terrific,” she said, subtly inching away, “good luck to you both.”

  Rather than respond, they looked at her as if weighing the sincerity of her statement. After a brief silence, Lennox said, “Anyway, we’ll let you go, talk to you later.”

  “OK, nice to meet you guys.”

  “Remember, our cottage is just a ways down the beach,” Perry told her. “Feel free to stop by whenever you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just follow the waterline. There are cottages all along this section of coast, but far as I know, we’re the only two renting. Ours is the first one you’ll come across in that direction,” Perry said, pointing again. “It gets boring around here, especially after dark, not much to do in these parts. But we’ll be around a few more days, come say hi.”

  “Thanks again.” Lana offered the warmest smile she could muster. The couple was a bit eccentric to be sure, but they seemed harmless. More than anything, she felt a bit sorry for them. They seemed as out of place as she felt. “Take care.”

  Lana watched as the couple resumed their walk, moving carefully along the sloped earth toward the section of beach below.

  A sudden ocean wind blew through the trees, briefly softening the humidity. Lana faced it, enjoyed the cooler air and watched the rain cut through the forest.

  Later, she would try to convince herself it had simply been a trick of the light or the effect of rain in her eyes, but in the moment she would’ve sworn on her life she’d seen something moving between the trees. More shadow than anything, the dark smudge darted past so quickly that she was unable to make out any specifics. She couldn’t even determine if it was a human being or an animal of some sort. All she knew for sure was that it was fairly large, had moved with amazing speed and hadn’t made any noise. In fact, the experience had been purely visual. There had been no breaking twigs or rustling branches, no sounds of movement at all. But surely something that size would have made noise. She wondered if perhaps the wind had masked it somehow.

  Filled with a sudden sense of dread, Lana backed away from the woods and brought her umbrella forward a bit to help shield her eyes. The small section of forest where she’d seen movement came into clearer view, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  The wind died, and the air again grew thick and dormant.

  Lana continued to scan the woods, but whatever she’d seen was gone. Or hiding, she thought. Hiding and watching me.

  She shook her head and continued on along the road toward town. You’re paranoid. You’re feeling guilty. No one knows where you are, and besides, you’re out in nature, it could’ve been any number of things. You can’t even be certain you saw anything in the first place.

  But the uncomfortable feeling of foreboding refused to leave her until she’d walked nearly a mile from the spot where it first began.

  11

  Despite the rain, Duck had his walk along the beach like he did every day, and like most mornings, he stopped long enough to take a quick detour across the sand and through a small patch of woods to Dempsey’s place. He stopped at the edge of the old man’s property and saw him on the porch, asleep in his rocker. Even from a distance of thirty feet or so, he could tell the poor soul had passed out drunk and spent the night in the rain without ever waking up. Once he’d stared at Dempsey’s chest long enough to determine that it was still rising and falling with regularity, he left him and returned to the sand. Duck didn’t have the heart to wake him, and besides, the sleep would probably do him good.

  He completed his walk along the beach then turned around and headed home. Like always, it was a good way to clear his head and keep his blood pumping. The rain made it feel like a baptism, and he welcomed that. He didn’t get the regular exercise he once had, and sitting in that cab all day didn’t help any. It often provided too much time for thought, for remembering times he’d spent years trying to forget. Walking the sand at dawn each day did the same, but he spent that time focused on other things, like the magnificence of the ocean lapping the shore near his feet, the beauty and majesty of the sun slowly rising over the horizon, the songs of birds and seagulls soaring overhead, and now and then, prayer. Though Duck had turned his back on God and spirituality for a good portion of his life, he’d tried his best to remedy that of late. He still believed and always had, and during his walks he felt he could not only talk to God, but see Him and feel His presence there in nature. And for the first time since he’d been a child, Duck believed there was a chance God had again begun to listen.

  He’d been up too late the night before, sitting with Striper and watching the woods. Eventually he’d turned in for the night, and in the morning everything was fine. Neither the cats nor their house had been disturbed. Striper was back to normal and none of the other kitties seemed bothered or on edge at all.

  Still, something had spooked that cat the night before, spooked her something fierce. And now, in the light, Duck was able to admit he’d felt it, too. He couldn’t clearly discern what it was, but he had the sense that something wasn’t right. Something was askew in all that rain and darkness, he could feel it instinctually. The old version of him had not only come to rely on such things, he’d been trained to listen for and to them. Intuition, instinct, a sixth sense—whatever one chose to label it—was to be respected and honed. After all, failure to tap into who might be waiting for him on the other side of
a door, in the thick cover of jungle or beyond any given tree, ridge or hill, could spell the difference between life and death. In his former life that’s how he’d lived, if one could actually consider that sort of existence living. While those skills never completely left him, over the years they’d faded and weakened to the point where he’d sometimes question if he’d ever truly possessed them in the first place. But last night he was right, there was something out there, he was sure of it. Coyote maybe, God knows there were plenty of them around. They traveled in packs, had caused some problems in town before, and were not only night hunters but lethal and cunning predators too, known to often sit back and consider their prey for extended periods before attacking. Yeah, he thought, probably coyotes.

  Duck did his best to believe that.

  * * *

  Once back at his cottage, he took a shower then headed out and drove across town to Main Street. Like most days, Duck grabbed a newspaper and a breakfast sandwich at the General Store before hitting the more heavily populated spots to the south where an independent taxi like his could find fares. There wasn’t any money to be earned in Tall Tree Junction unless it was driving somebody in from somewhere else or a local to some other location—but that was rare. The real money was elsewhere, so he made the drive every day all summer long, usually working fifteen to sixteen hour days and pulling in as much cash as he could so he could survive the quiet winter months that followed. On off-time from driving he’d make a few extra bucks tending to Dempsey’s cottages, then once summer was over he had to get by hustling seniors to grocery stores and doctor appointments, or on low-tipping mini-runs from one little town to the next.

  Duck parked in front of the General Store and started in on his breakfast sandwich. The street was drenched but nearly empty, only an occasional car moved past and there was virtually no one on foot. The downpours had become a misty rain by early morning, but what had at first appeared to be the tail end of the storm proved instead to be a mere break in the action, as the rain had already regained its ferociousness from the night before. And it just kept coming.

  He switched on the radio, heard an announcer talking about flooding and problems the rains had already caused all along the eastern seaboard, and how much of it was likely to worsen as a band of historically enormous storms trudged across the United States, one moving behind the next in a steady line. It would rain steadily for at least the next several days, the announcer said, and a coastal flood warning for their area was already in effect. Radio and TV meteorologists were famous for their melodramatics, but Duck recognized a genuine sense of concern in their voices this time, an uncharacteristic attempt to downplay things that gave them away.

  Before he had time to think anymore about it, Lana moved around the corner, an umbrella in one hand and a small purse in the other. Alone in the rain on the empty street, she walked with an efficient but uncertain stride.

  Two mud-covered pickups loaded with men roared past, lumbering down Main Street and disappearing around the bend. The men in back, many just boys, were all armed with rifles and shotguns and had a look of menace Duck had seen before. The ruckus distracted him long enough to lose sight of Lana as she slipped into the General Store.

  As he took another bite of sandwich, Wendell Hopps, Tall Tree Junction’s chief of police, strolled from the station across the street, his uniform rumpled and wrinkled as ever and his expression set in its usual desperate attempt at appearing serious and official. Wendell had first become chief in his late twenties, more than a decade before, and had two full-time officers and three part-timers beneath him. His father had been chief back in the town’s heyday, when it had meant something and when they’d had an actual force, but Wendell held the job now mostly due to the fact that no one else in town wanted it. In addition to Wendell’s limited mental capacity, he’d also let himself go physically. Sporting a pot belly and ruddy complexion, the chief looked like he couldn’t run a block with a gun to his head. But with so few people to police, most town folk considered that irrelevant. The police generally had little to do other than break up the occasional fight, drive locals home who’d had too much to drink, or deal with vandalism or petty thefts, so the position didn’t exactly call for Charles Bronson. No one took him terribly seriously, but everyone knew that more often than not Wendell meant well.

  Duck dropped his window as the chief approached. “Morning, Wendell.”

  “What do you say, Duck?” He wiped rain from his balding head and leaned in against the driver-side door. “Some kinda rain, ain’t it?”

  “What’s with the truckloads of townies?”

  “They’re trying to beat the storm before it gets any worse. Had an incident in town last night.”

  “An incident?”

  “Happened over at Phyllis Michaels place, down off Mountain Road.”

  An elderly woman with diabetes who lived alone, on several occasions Duck had driven her to doctor appointments several towns away. “What happened?”

  “Poor Phyllis was sitting in her trailer and said she got a feeling like she was being watched. Said she looked up and seen a set of glowing red eyes staring at her through her front window, you know, the way animal eyes light up at night? Scared her so bad she said she saw her husband Cornel standing in the next room. ‘Course Cornel’s been dead for more than twenty years now, but she swears he was there. Now how bad you got to scare somebody to make them see the dead?” Wendell chuckled. “Anyway, she went straight to her bedroom, locked the door and hid in the closet until whatever was out there left. She said whatever it was, it was tall.” Wendell hitched up his pants for effect. “Of course I personally conducted a thorough investigation of the crime scene and determined it was more than likely a bear.”

  Duck felt a chill. “A bear, huh?”

  “Phyllis is just beside herself, let me tell you. Her nephew’s driving up from Bangor to get her. She’s gonna stay with him and his wife a while. Can’t say as I blame her. Hell, she could’ve been killed if that thing had gotten inside.”

  “Wendell when’s the last time a bear broke into a house around here?”

  The chief looked away, as if searching for an answer. “I’ve heard of it happening before, but not here,” he said. “I figure it was a renegade, come down out of the deep woods and got hungry.”

  Duck nodded, remembering the strange sensation he’d experienced the night before. “So you’re letting those fools loose on the countryside with guns? Christ, knowing that crowd if they’re not drunk off their asses already they will be by noon. Then they’ll be shooting at anything that moves.”

  Wendell laughed, mistaking Duck’s criticism for droll camaraderie. “Come on now, them boys is all experienced hunters. I gave them permission to do a quick search of the woods around Phyllis’s place, that’s all. Another hour or so the storm’s gonna be so bad they’ll have to hunker down inside like the rest of us. Not to worry. Damn bear’s probably long gone anyway. But if it ain’t, we need to find it and put it down before it tries something like that again. You know Darren Johnson’s dog disappeared last night, too? Darren come in this morning to let me know, said something snatched it clean out of its collar, tore the chain and pulled the post it was attached to clear out the ground. His dog could’ve gotten loose, I guess, but he’s not strong enough to do that to a heavy chain like Darren had him on. Now I’m thinking it was that same goddamn bear. Bastard probably come along and ate Darren’s dog then found Phyllis’s trailer, see?”

  “Just make sure those rednecks stay clear of my place, Wendell. Got some cats I’m caring for out back. That bear posse comes into my yard waving guns around and you’ll have another crime scene on your hands.”

  “They know better than that, Duck.” The chief’s face grew serious. “Nobody’s gonna bother you out to your place or anywhere else.” When Duck offered nothing more he smiled and gave the roof of the taxi a playful slap. “OK, you drive careful in this rain, you hear? Have a good one.”

  As We
ndell continued on to the General Store, Duck watched him through the steady sway of the windshield wipers, the chief’s earlier words echoing in his head.

  Scared her so bad she said she saw her husband.

  Duck wrapped the remains of his breakfast sandwich in a napkin, tossed it on the seat then lit a cigarette and wearily exhaled a stream of smoke out the still open window.

  How bad you got to scare somebody to make them see the dead?

  “Pretty bad,” he sighed. “Pretty goddamn bad.”

  12

  The steady spatter of rain sprayed and thudded against the plastic umbrella, muffling sounds of nearby ocean. Waves roiled toward shore, and somewhere from the farthest reaches of gray horizon, the wind gained momentum, rode the waves and crashed solid ground. The sea disturbed, an assortment of smells from deep within churned free, carried by the wind as it whistled past the stretch of rocky shoreline then continued up to the trees behind and above it.

  For the first time since they’d left the cottage, Lennox removed her sunglasses. As her eyes adjusted, she tilted the umbrella to protect them, watching the world through rain-blurred plastic. “We should head back,” she said, voice just possible above the wind.

  “Glad I brought my video,” Perry said, shooting the ocean with small recorder. “This is great stuff.”

  Lennox nodded but her mind was elsewhere. The strange occurrence the night before, when their cabin had suddenly turned cold, had left her unusually spooked. Though she hadn’t felt it again, the mere memory made her tremble.