Up the Creek

by Alissa C. Grosso

“Did intuition tell you to marry a man you barely even know?” Caitlin asked, but she hung up before her mother could reply.

  Caitlin held herself responsible for her parents’ divorce. She knew this was typical, misguided thinking for kids from broken homes, but her case was an exception. Sure, maybe she wasn’t entirely responsible, but if she hadn’t had that dream about the murdered little girl, they never would have gone to Culver Creek and her mom would never have met Bill Brighton.

  Luanne had always been one for flirting. Even as a kid Caitlin had been embarrassed by her mother’s antics at stores, mechanic shops, or anywhere she might have the chance to chat with men. But loud, brash Luanne was always doing something that embarrassed her daughter. The flirting was just one more thing in a long line of cringe-worthy behaviors.

  Culver Creek was different. For starters, she and her mother were on their own, away from home. When Luanne read that news story, she packed a suitcase for each of them, and they hopped in the car and drove to the small Pennsylvania town over two hours away.

  Caitlin recalled her father standing in the driveway beside Luanne’s rolled-down window asking how long they would be gone.

  “As long as it takes,” Luanne snapped at him. He made his usual vague noises about this being a bad idea, but Luanne had shamed him into silence. “A little girl has been killed, and Caitlin may be the only one who knows how to find her murderer.”

  “But couldn’t you just handle this over the phone?” he asked.

  It was a question Caitlin had asked her mother as well, but Luanne was insistent. They needed to go out there. Her mother claimed that this was too important to handle over the phone and that right now the phone lines were flooded with tips from would-be sleuths from across the country. If they wanted to be taken seriously, they needed to show up in person.

  There was probably some truth in her mother’s words, but as she got a little older and wiser, Caitlin came to better understand her mother’s decision to drive out to Culver Creek.

  Her mother craved attention and loved the idea of being in the limelight, which were both things that assisting in solving a high-profile murder offered, but not if they simply made a phone call. If Luanne wanted to be in the spotlight, she needed to go to where the action was. So she and her psychic daughter trekked out to Culver Creek.

  The swamped police department didn’t have time for dealing with some crazy lady from New Jersey whose daughter had experienced a nightmare. They passed them off to some junior officer who made it very clear that he had better things to do than to write down a statement. It all might have ended right there, a scant hour after their arrival in the small town.

  But Luanne decided it had been a long day for both of them, and they should treat themselves to ice cream. She had managed to book them a room at a motel a few miles outside of town that was filled with members of the news media still covering the hot story.

  “We’ll stay overnight,” Luanne announced as they sat in the ice cream parlor licking their cones. “It’s too far to go back tonight, and maybe we can get one of the reporters interested in your story.” Luanne frowned across the table at Caitlin. “I’ll have to fix up your hair so it looks more photogenic. What do you think? Do you want to be on television? Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

  “I guess so,” Caitlin said, though she was not at all enthusiastic about the idea of going on television. On the one hand, it would be a cool story to tell at school, but on the other, the reporters were going to have so many questions about her dreams, and that would be even worse than her mother quizzing her about her dreams.

  As they sat there eating their ice cream cones, a police officer walked into the shop and walked up to the counter. Caitlin found herself staring at the Culver Creek patch sewn onto his uniform’s sleeve. Her mother, too, seemed mesmerized by the cop.

  Luanne instructed Caitlin to wait at the table, and she sauntered up to the counter beside the police officer. Even from a few feet away, Caitlin could see her mother’s shameless flirting. She shrank into her seat as Luanne all but threw herself at the helpless cop.

  It shouldn’t have worked, but a few seconds later, Luanne returned to the table with the police officer in tow. Officer Brighton was a big, beefy man with a bristly mustache that became frosted with mint chocolate chip ice cream as he ate.

  Luanne and Caitlin made a second trip to the Culver Creek police station that afternoon, but this time they were treated like expert witnesses as an enraptured Brighton took down a fresh statement and plied Caitlin with questions. He asked if they could return the next day because he wanted to bring in a sketch artist to talk to Caitlin about the man she had seen in her dream.

  “I missed you today,” Lance said as they came downstairs after putting Adam to bed.

  By the time he and Adam had returned home, both looking exhausted from their boys’ day out, she had realized how crazy her runaway thoughts had been. Maybe she had more of her mother in her than she realized. She didn’t think she would ever marry someone on a whim, but there was a touch of her mother’s penchant for being overly dramatic.

  “Oh God, I almost forgot to tell you,” Caitlin said as they went into the living room and sat on the couch. “My mother got married.”

  “What?” Lance said. “When? To who?”

  “Stu,” Caitlin said. “They went out to Vegas.”

  “Is Stu the retired postal worker?” Lance asked.

  “No, he’s the one who has an insurance agency. She’s unbelievable.”

  “Maybe she just wanted to be a little more financially secure,” Lance said.

  Well, of course Lance would say something like that. Just because Raquel married for money didn’t mean that was what was going on with Luanne, and Caitlin almost said it aloud, but then she realized she couldn’t really pick on Raquel, not today anyway. Much as her mother-in-law annoyed her, Luanne’s latest antics were making Raquel look like the normal one.

  She was trying to work out how to casually bring the bloody sock into the conversation when Lance slipped his hand beneath her shirt. His touch sent a current of excitement coursing through her body. He leaned in and pressed his lips to the side of her neck before delicately teasing her earlobe with his tongue. She turned to him and gently pulled his lips to her own, and as she shifted position, pressing his body firmly against hers, she forgot entirely about socks, bloody or otherwise.

  17

  Lance pecked away at his keyboard doing his best to draft the monthly progress report Doug insisted he file. Writing these things always reminded him of being back at Ryerson and trying to type up an essay or term paper. One thing about going to boarding school was it meant you learned how to work through any manner of distractions. A soccer game going on in the hallway? No problem. Half a dozen boys in your dorm room shooting the shit about whatever movie or band was the in thing at that moment? Nothing but background noise. And a cell phone that wouldn’t stop ringing? Lance told himself he barely heard the thing, but he did slip open the drawer where he had stashed it to take a look at the display.

  It was the damn dream whisperer again. He had been dodging her calls for days. Well, he had himself to blame for that. He’d actually answered the first time she called. It had been his intention to apologize and try to set things right with her. She responded by suggesting that he should bring Adam back in for a follow-up visit, at no charge. He assured her that was generous, but used the excuse that he was busy with work. She had countered that with suggesting that Adam’s mom perhaps could bring him in. So he had to lamely say that his wife was busy too. It should have been enough, but for all her mystical intuition, Phelicity Green seemed to not be able to take a hint.

  He didn’t answer any more of her calls, but that didn’t seem to deter her. She left one voicemail message after another. There was a lot of new-age mumbo jumbo interspersed with her assurance that she wasn’t after his money, an assurance that to Lance’s trained ears meant most assuredly she was after his money. Sh
e had no doubt taken note of his watch, his shoes. Maybe she had even spied his Audi parked on the street. She knew he had some dough, and now she just needed to figure out her best strategy for parting him from it.

  His phone chimed to let him know he had a new voicemail message. He should ignore it and get the damn progress report done, but curiosity got the better of him. The dream whisperer’s voicemail messages had been growing increasingly more bizarre, and he wanted to hear what she had to say this time around.

  He set the phone on the desk and switched it to speaker. Her tinny voice spilled out of the device. “Mr. Walker, I’m sorry I missed you.”

  “Yeah, I bet you are,” he muttered to his empty office.

  “I can’t stress enough how imperative it is that you and Adam come back to meet with me,” she said. “As I’ve explained previously, there would be no charge for the visit. I detected a certain psychic energy when I spoke with Adam, and I think it’s very important for me to see you and him again so that we can explore this further. I must emphasize that there could be grave consequences if we do not address this issue at once.”

  There was a rap on his door, and when he looked up, Corey was standing in the open doorway. Lance quickly silenced his phone.

  “What’s that all about?” Corey asked and nodded toward the phone. “Sounds serious.”

  “Just some nutter,” Lance assured him.

  “You’re not sick or something are you?” Corey glanced back out into the hall to see if the coast was clear, then stepped into Lance’s office, closing the door behind him.

  “Trust me, I’m fit as a fiddle.” Lance looked hopelessly at his computer screen where the two lackluster sentences of his unfinished progress report seemed to taunt him.

  “Yeah, well, check this,” Corey said. “I go into the doctor a few weeks ago because I feel like the old ticker’s maybe not working like it used to, right? Honestly, it was Evelyn who made me go, you know what with my dad having his heart trouble and all. So Doc goes and gives me a prescription for these pills. Well, next thing you know, I can’t get it up.”

  Lance abandoned any pretense of trying to work on the progress report.

  “Probably just an off night,” Lance said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too, I mean, it was Evelyn, who, let’s face it, could probably shrivel up the testicles of even a sex-starved prison inmate with just one glance, but then the other night I’m with this fucking model, and it was just not happening, man.”

  “Maybe you should talk to your doctor,” Lance said.

  “I did one better. I took a look at that little paper they give you with the pills. You should see all the side effects this thing has. I mean, it’s like a mile long in microscopic type, and right there in black and white: impotence. I threw the whole goddamn bottle in the trash.”

  “Is that such a good idea?” Lance asked.

  “Look, I’d rather get felled by a heart attack than be some limpdick loser,” Corey said. “So all I’m saying is you watch out for these doctors. Who knows what the hell shit they’re trying to shove down your throat.” Corey nodded at the phone still sitting on Lance’s desk.

  Lance stared, transfixed by the words on his computer screen. After Corey had shared his story about the heart pills, Lance was reminded of something he wanted to look up. He had meant only to track down the sleeping pills Caitlin claimed couldn’t be picked up in the local drug store. He thought he might be able to track some down online. Instead he found an article about the pills having been discontinued and a statement about the host of side effects that had prompted this.

  Like Corey’s heart medication, the side effects list was lengthy, but there were some particular symptoms that jumped out at him. Prolonged use could lead to cognitive dysfunction, memory issues, mental fog and periods of confusion. Right away he saw their oven in flames. He heard Caitlin’s panicked voice on the other end of the phone when she called to tell him about her car accident. He had chalked up her recent mishaps to work stress and trying to balance her career with the equally demanding task of being a mother, but what if it was all side effects from those damn sleeping pills?

  He blamed himself. It had been clear to him for some time that she was addicted to the pills, and a part of him was troubled about her overuse of the drugs, though not troubled enough to try to help her. It had been pure selfishness on his part, because having a wife who slept soundly through the night was a huge benefit to him. There were a million things he loved about Caitlin, but the fact was he never would have considered the two of them moving in together and then later marrying if he had learned that she was a light sleeper or someone who woke often during the night.

  Now Caitlin was suffering from the cognitive dysfunction that was listed in the side effects, and it might have all been due to his own selfishness. He might have saved her from herself without realizing it with his mad bathroom cleaning, but he also wondered, if the drugs were that habit-forming, if quitting them cold turkey might have serious repercussions.

  There were other sleeping pills out there, ones that were still sold legally. Certainly their side effects couldn’t have been anywhere near as severe as the Pacifcleon list. Weren’t there even some herbal sleep remedies? If all else failed, maybe he could purchase some sort of magic sleep amulet from Phelicity Green.

  That last idea made him laugh out loud in his empty office.

  “I need to head out a little bit early,” Lance said, peeking his head into Doug’s office. “Have an errand I need to run.”

  “Did you have that monthly progress report?” Doug asked.

  “I’m gonna finish it up tonight,” Lance promised as he started backing out of the doorway. “I’ll email it to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Doug might have protested, but Lance had already made it so far down the hallway that his friend and boss would have needed to physically get up and intercede, which Lance knew wasn’t going to happen.

  Lance picked up one of those little baskets on his way into the drug store and navigated to the sleep aids aisle. Insomnia was clearly big business, judging by all the competing products that promised a good night’s sleep. And this was only the over-the-counter junk. There was a whole market of prescription-strength stuff as well.

  Lance started off reading the fine print on the back of each package, trying to compare them to each other, but there were too many different products, and he found he was losing track of which box had said what. He had a better solution. None of the packages were overly expensive, and since the ultimate decision would come down to Caitlin anyway, he would just buy one of each and let her decide what she wanted to use. She could even experiment with the different pills to see which worked best for her—well, if that was advised.

  A woman stepped into the aisle as Lance was filling his basket up with sleeping aids.

  “Wow, you must really have trouble sleeping,” she said.

  Lance chuckled politely. He waited for the woman to move on to the next aisle before he finished his sleeping aid shopping spree as quickly as he could. He didn’t want to attract any more attention to himself.

  When his phone rang, he thought it would be Caitlin wanting to know where he was, but when he looked at the display, he saw it was Phelicity Green calling again. He went into his phone’s settings and did something he should have done about five phone calls ago. He blocked the dream whisperer’s number.

  18

  It wasn’t Lance’s fault. He didn’t understand why none of the sleeping pills he had bought for her weren’t what she was looking for. It was her own fault for not explaining that it wasn’t sleep that she craved so much as sleep that was uninterrupted by dreams. In fact, from what she had gleaned from online forums, some of the pills Lance had purchased were all but guaranteed to give her all manner of crazy dreams. She would have gladly gone without sleep entirely rather than put herself through that torture, which was why, out of desperation, she was spending her day schlepping all t
he way out to some godforsaken place called Mudmound Township, Pennsylvania.

  Caitlin glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Adam strapped into his car seat happily playing with his stuffed kangaroo. At least for now he was occupied, but their journey had only just begun, and they had a long way to go. She feared he would get restless long before they reached their destination. When she had done a quick calculation of how long it would take them to get to Mudmound Township and back—nearly four hours round trip—she realized she had no option but to take Adam with her today instead of dropping him off at school. She wouldn’t be able to make it back in time to pick him up.

  Should the issue come up, she would tell Lance that she kept Adam home from school because he was complaining of a tummy ache, but she didn’t plan on telling him about driving all the way out to Pennsylvania and back, mainly because the reason seemed borderline insane, and because when he was showering her with his treasure trove of sleep aids last night, he kept stressing over and over again that Pacifcleon was too dangerous and that she needed to stop taking it at once, blathering on and on about cognitive dysfunction and such. The problem was that he couldn’t begin to understand the cognitive dysfunction that would most certainly ensue when she started having her awful, terrible psychic dreams again.

  When she failed to find any new online listings for Pacifcleon, she had decided to go more guerilla in her shopping methods. The media was always full of stories about the retail apocalypse. So she reasoned there had to be more than one drugstore out there that had closed up shop but still had some unsold inventory. There wasn’t actually a database of closed pharmacies, so tracking them down took some serious internet searching, but her hard work had paid off.

  After contacting a pharmacy in Connecticut that had liquidated all their remaining inventory in an auction and another in Maryland that said they had no more Pacifcleon in their inventory, she finally got ahold of Wright’s Pharmacy in Mudmound Township, PA. The woman who answered the phone said the pharmacy had closed its doors after her husband, the proprietor, passed away, but while Caitlin was on the phone, the woman had gone into the storeroom to check and assured Caitlin they still had a case of Pacifcleon in stock. They made arrangements to meet at the shuttered pharmacy to pay cash for the expired old pills. Perhaps sensing the note of desperation in Caitlin’s voice, she quoted a price that was the equivalent of highway robbery, but Caitlin didn’t care. She considered it a miracle that the store even had the drug, because as of the previous evening she had officially exhausted her supply.