Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Lisa went to school with Bethany at the local community college, just as did a great majority of last year’s high school seniors. Sure, some of the smarter kids had managed to lasso a scholarship or two and escape out of this little one-horse town, but most of the new college freshmen were the same faces she had seen every day at the high school. Only now they were nobody’s, nothing like the almost-gods that they had been last year. It was like being a freshman in college was some kind of sick joke played on high school seniors to teach them exactly how important they really were.

  But Lisa and Bethany had a few classes together at the college and they worked together at the video store, so it was only natural that they become friends. The fact that they had become such good friends was something neither one of them would’ve predicted.

  Lisa Stevens had traveled in different circles in high school, and even though they had worked together, they had never really started hanging out until they began sharing classes and homework. A natural friendship had come soon after, and now they were always there for each other whenever the other needed to talk.

  But Lisa had hated David, hated the things that he had done to Bethany, and Lisa had never been one to keep her opinions to herself. Bethany had had more than her share of fights with Lisa, but they had always seemed to get past all of that. Not like her and David. They had never been able to get past much of anything.

  Bethany and Lisa shared two classes, one in Psychology and the other called Human Studies, a thinly veiled euphemism for sex ed., a very popular class with the 19-year-old incoming freshmen. They, that is Bethany and Lisa, had struck up a friendship during their shared courses at the summer session (the same session, Bethany reminded herself, where David had tried and ended his short college career after only seven weeks of classes) and now they were the best of friends.

  Lisa had been the one to suggest that they get together tonight, knowing that David was planning to leave Liberty early Sunday morning. Evidently, Lisa thought that Bethany would need something else to occupy her mind other than sitting around and thinking about what David was doing or why he was leaving.

  And Bethany had gratefully accepted the idea, thinking it was probably the best thing for her. She didn’t want to think about David out there, driving his little piece-of-crap car all the way across the country. Bethany didn’t want to think about why he had left her, or why he had decided to give up everything and everyone he knew.

  So, it didn’t make any sense for Lisa to stand her up.

  Bethany reached over and picked up the phone and hit the redial button. There were several clicks and whirrs and finally the sound of Lisa‘s phone ringing, ringing, ringing. No answer.

  Nobody home.

  Okay, now she was starting to get a little worried.

  Maybe Lisa had run into somebody she knew or something at the supermarket. Bethany knew she’d called from there. Maybe she had met a boy or something and they were talking and she had just lost track of the time.

  Yeah, that was probably it. Bethany got up and heated up some pizza and popped in one of the movies she had gotten. She tried to put Lisa and her tardiness out of her mind for a while. Maybe she’d met a nice guy - Lisa was a lot luckier that way then Bethany had ever been.

  When Lisa woke up, she could feel something hard and rough against her cheek. She tried to turn her face to look at whatever it was she was up against, but she realized after a second that her hands were caught on something. Another moment or two of struggling told her that her hands were, in fact, tied together on the other side of whatever it was she had her arms wrapped around.

  She leaned backwards a little at the neck and looked up and saw what appeared to be branches and dead leaves sprouting out above her. She was tied to a tree, one small enough that she could wrap her arms almost completely around it. Other than that, she had no clue as to where she was or what was going on.

  She remembered chasing the weird man with his white van, and she remembered finding the van, abandoned. She had climbed up inside and found those jars of... jars of things, and she was getting ready to leave when...

  The music, that was it. The music had come then, so loud that she couldn’t even think, and then HE had come with a little piece of blue lightening and put her to sleep.

  So where was she now?

  A cold breeze moved easily through the trees around hers, rustling her hair, and as she became more and more coherent about herself and her surroundings, she realized that she was completely naked.

  Suddenly, Lisa was terrified.

  She tried to look down at herself, a reflex action from realizing that the air and wind moving over her felt odd, but the arms were tied too tightly. All she could see when she looked down was the oddly flattened rise of her breasts, usually full and firm but now smashed rudely against the rough brown bark of this tree. She felt violated by the bark and the wood, and any small movement on her part caused the rough bark to claw and tear at her naked, soft skin.

  Her breasts seemed very white against the brown bark of the tree.

  She tried to move her feet but found that her legs were also bound to the tree by a length of rope tied just below her knees. She suddenly felt very exposed, sure that her buttocks were also white in the darkness. It was a strange thing to think about at a time like this, but it was what she was thinking.

  “No need to move around a lot, dear,” the voice came from behind her, and she noticed something else that she had missed before in her terror: she could hear the crackling of a small fire, not too far away. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she could pick up the faint glimmer of firelight on the tree trunk right above her head, not quite bright enough to cast a shadow.

  She heard someone get up, accompanied by audible ‘pops’ of knees cracking, and then the shuffling of feet, off to her left. She couldn’t see anything off to either side of her except for dark trees, but she strained at the limits of her vision to see him. She turned her head as she felt him come up on one side of her, even though by turning, the bark scraped at her face, her arms, her naked chest. One hot runner of blood, thin as a line from a sharp pencil, traced its way down her cheek and welled at the rounded point of her chin, finally dripping and falling to the top of her left shoulder.

  She saw him. It was the guy from the van, all right, but now she got a much better look at him. His face was tanned and bearded and the lines around his mouth and eyes seemed to betray an ancient, aged quality, even though he was probably only 40 or 45 years old. The eyes, they looked much older, like they had seen so much...

  The beard was scraggly, unkempt, and graying in parts. He wore a dusty leather jacket over a blue, stained tee-shirt that looked like it had seen a whole year of better days, and gray trousers, or at least as much as she could see.

  As he stepped even closer, she saw that his face was leathery like old parchment.

  And his eyes.

  Lisa couldn’t help staring at them, drawn to them. They were gray and deep and, with a flash of memory, she suddenly recognized them.

  They had shown her class films about World War II in history class back at LHS, and in one of those films they had shown a fuzzy, almost obscure sequence of one of those SS Nazi guys ordering groups of Jews to their deaths in a gas chamber. Lisa remembered that the man on the screen had pointed at his subordinates and ordered them to drive the helpless, naked women and children into the concrete rooms, and the SS general’s eyes had betrayed not a single ounce of feeling, not a single spark of emotion while he was doing it. The guy had even lit up one of those oddly thin cigarettes as he ordered those people to their deaths, a cigarette like none Lisa had ever seen before. There had been a lengthy discussion period after that particular short film, but Lisa had not participated. She had not been able to get over that man’s eyes, staring blankly at the women and children filing past him, being led to their deaths. The victims had shuffled past the man, looking like they were already dead, at least in the eyes. All that was good in t
he world, and that enjoyed hope and goodness and light, had abandoned these poor women and children to their awful destiny, and now a monster was watching them as they went to their deaths. The victim’s eyes were haunted and sunken and terrifying, but the SS man’s eyes looked even worse.

  She could see in this man’s eyes the same blankness of expression, the same careless disregard for suffering and torture and death, but there was something even more, lurking around in their in the blackness behind his eyes. His eyes also held a look of what could only be called amusement, almost as if he enjoyed the pain and torture he must’ve inflicted on so many people and was about to inflict on these poor souls. No one could have eyes like those who had NOT killed and maimed and hurt people, but at least the SS General’s eyes had only held a spark of the love of killing and torture.

  No, this guy enjoyed whatever he did for a living, and Lisa felt all the hope and goodness and light in the world turn away from her, abandoning her to her fate, whatever it might be.

  She suddenly knew that she would never leave this man’s gaze alive.

  Jack Terrington held her eyes for a long time, feeling her size him up, watching her as she watched him warily, as an injured animal might watch as the hunter approaches, gun in hand. Right now, the best thing he could do would be to wordlessly convince her of the power that he now held over her, the control that he could now exercise over her. The fear, the outright terror that he craved so much, what he yearned for, that would come soon enough.

  He was much better at this than he had been the last time he’d killed in this little town.

  Now came the test. He walked slowly up to her, moving to face her and he stood, looking at her, sizing her up. He wanted to take her now, to have her in every possible way, but that all would have to wait a little while. She would be his, but he wanted to have her mind first, before all other things. She must give herself to him, at least in her mind, first. Her breasts and her beautiful round ass and her long flowing blonde hair would have to wait.

  He could see her trembling, probably a combination of her fear and her body reacting to her nakedness in the rapidly cooling darkness. With agonizing slowness, Jack Terrington curled up the ends of his lips to form the worst, most frightening grin he could muster.

  And she screamed.

  Bethany was in her car, driving over to Lisa‘s house. Her curiosity and her concern for Lisa had gotten the best of her, and she’d stopped Lethal Weapon III and donned her coat, leaving a short note on the front door in case Lisa happened to show up while Bethany was out looking for her.

  She’d tried the Steven’s phone number again before she left, but there had again been no answer, and Bethany had remembered that Lisa had told her that her parents had gone into D.C. to see something at Ford’s Theater or the Kennedy Center or someplace. She left a message anyway. Now, she could remember Lisa making a joke about how both sets of their parents were away and neither of them could think of anything better to do then eat pizza, a joke that Bethany had not laughed at, missing David and remembering the plans she had made for them while her parents were away on that cruise to Alaska.

  After leaving the message, Bethany had decided to drive over here to the Steven’s house. She had to get out and do something - the sitting around, waiting for Lisa to show up, was just killing her.

  But there was no sign of Lisa at her house. Bethany parked and went up and knocked on the door, but there was no response. She saw that there were lights on in the house, and wondered if Lisa’s parents had left them on, or if Lisa had stopped by on her way over and turned them on. Either way it was dark out now, and the lights were a good idea.

  She debated about what to do for a second or two, and then she went back to her car and rummaged around in the glove box, finding paper and a pencil to write a note. She didn’t want to frighten Lisa‘s parents, but they would, naturally, be very concerned if their little girl was missing.

  Bethany didn’t have any tape or anything to stick the note she had hastily scribbled to the door, so she held it up and closed the screen door on it, hoping that would hold it. If it blew away when they opened the door...oh well, most people were looking at a door when they opened it, and hopefully they would see the note before they opened the door.

  She returned to the warmth of her car (it had gotten REALLY chilly out there, she thought as she cranked the car up) and waited for a while, but Lisa didn’t show up.

  Suddenly, Bethany missed David terribly. He would’ve known what to do in a situation like this - he always knew the right things to do or say. They had been such a good couple, why had they broken up? It was a question her mind seemed eager to return to every five minutes or so, and Bethany was getting tired of trying to figure it out. The same answers kept popping up in her mind, only leading to more and more questions. Had he been that unhappy? Had she done something to drive him away? Had she asked him too many times about his family, or his lack of ambition, or his casual, almost careless outlook on the world at large? Maybe so, but she got the feeling that the breakup had been all about him and very little about her. She knew that he had wanted to leave town, to get out of Liberty and try and make a name for himself somewhere else, but she had never thought he would act on it. One thing about David that she had hated was that whenever things got a little sticky, or it looked like things weren’t going to go exactly like he wanted, he would just clam up, refusing to discuss it further. And if that didn’t work, if she pressed him on something, he would just get up and leave.

  Getting up and leaving was something David Beaumont did very well.

  Of course, she would never, could never know what it was like to be the only son, the only offspring of the famous Sheriff that everyone in this town had grown up hearing stories about. How did someone deal with that, with being compared with a dead man for years and years and years? Could she have dealt with that kind of attitude from everyone she knew? And what would it have been like to grow up with no one to look after you except for one drunken aunt? Bethany had heard the stories, all right, and she knew that David had had a tough time of it, growing up. But did that mean he had to take it out on her?

  The questions darted around in her mind until she made a conscious effort to stop them, and then, they only retreated to a darker corner of her mind, continuing on with their background murmur of whys? and who's? and when's?

  She looked down at her watch. 6:52. Lisa had been off for almost three hours, and no one had seen her since.

  Maybe someone at the Food Town would remember. Lisa was a pretty girl, hard to forget. Maybe Bethany‘s luck was about to change.

  A few minutes after Bethany pulled away in her Dodge Colt, a particularly strong breeze moved through the neighborhood containing Lisa Steven’s parents house, and the screen door rattled and moved away from its jamb by a quarter inch or so. Not really far enough for the wind to get a handle on the door and yank it all of the way open, but enough for the note Bethany had left to slide down and fall onto the Welcome mat just below the door.

  Another breeze followed and the folded up note skittered across the concrete step and fell into an empty flowerbed off to one side of the front door.

  Bethany had no luck at the Food Town, and even though there had been a couple people that remembered her face, no one seemed to know when Lisa had come and gone, or even what she had bought. There were phones outside of the Food Town and Bethany was pretty sure that Lisa had used one of those, but after that, nothing else came into her mind. There was nothing else she could do. Lisa’s car wasn’t there, so she’d obviously come and gone.

  Bethany went home, anxious to pull up in the driveway and see Lisa‘s little red Tercel there, but it wasn’t. The wind was picking up and Bethany was happy to get inside, but her concern for Lisa had grown to almost panic proportions, and she didn’t even take off her coat before she picked up the phone and called Lisa’s house again.

  Ring, ring, ring, no answer, as usual.

  She hung up but didn’t
put the phone back down in its cradle. She wanted to talk to David and started dialing his number before she realized that he wasn’t there anymore and hung up before his greasy roommate could pick up.

  What to do? What should she do? She had been everywhere, and there was no sign of Lisa anywhere. For a long second she wished her parents were there - they would’ve known what to do. What would they tell her to do if they were there right now, watching her get hysterical? What would her dad do?

  And then she knew what she needed to do, amazed that she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Liberty Sheriff’s Department.

  Several hours later, Lisa Steven’s parents returned from a performance of Showboat at the Kennedy Center in downtown D.C. and parked in their garage. They were momentarily concerned that their daughter’s car was not in the driveway or parked on the street in front of their house, but then Mrs. Stevens reminded her husband that Lisa was over at her friend Bethany‘s house and had probably decided to stay over. The mother then related the story of Bethany and her ex-boyfriend, as Lisa had told her, and the story took them all of the way inside the house.

  Neither one of them saw the note on the ground as they entered the house. Neither one of them, for reasons that would haunt them both for the rest of their days, checked the answering machine and its blinking red light until late the next morning. And because the phone in their bedroom was not set to ring, there were four blinking flashes on the machine by the time they checked it the next morning, and only then did they hear the edgy, almost frantic voice of their daughters’ best friend, wondering where they were.

  The first three messages would be from Bethany, and the last would be from the police.