by L J McIntyre
Cracked Lenses
By L.J. McIntyre
Copyright © 2020 by L.J. McIntyre
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
FIRST EDITION
www.ljmcintyre.com
A thank you to my mother for always supporting me.
Chapter One
From my first memory until the age of nine I was beaten with an open hand. Nine to twelve, a closed fist. Twelve to sixteen, a fist and a bronze-buckled belt. If I had to say, I reckon the open hand was the worst of the three. It was like the concrete slap of a swimming pool when falling from a great height, over and over and over again on the same strip of thin flesh. He always knew which spots hurt more. My mother, bless her soul, suffered far worse. She had the emotional torture of seeing her husband thrash her son, while she endured beatings of her own that lasted longer than my body could handle.
It’s funny, when you’re a kid with bruises where kids shouldn’t have bruises, adults—even teachers—avoid you like gonorrhoea. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is, or at least it was in my neighbourhood in England. Maybe I was dealt I bum deal. But when you’re older and those bruises aren’t visible anymore, everyone with a mouth is itching to vomit their stellar advice on you whether you asked for it or not. Do this, not that. Go here, not there.
Where were they fifteen years ago?
Maybe if they’d spoken up back then, I wouldn’t be running now. Always running. At least I’ve got something to run toward nowadays.
And this guy here, he’s no different to anyone else. Crumbs on the floor. Finger smudges on the windows. Cigarette ash on the counter. Soiled milk wafting in the air. If he can’t even keep a small petrol station clean, what the hell makes him think he can offer me sage advice?
I pocket the loose change he hands me, snatch the chocolate bar and coffee off the counter and try to escape before he says his piece.
“You plan on going alone, young fella?” He puts his hands on his hips, sticks his little potbelly out: an older man trait that says, “Listen up, son.”
Shit.
“Yep. Just me.” I back away, flick my eyes to my car still parked up at pump number 1.
He speaks with a thick, curled, Kiwi accent. “Look over there.” His shaking finger points to the window and the dense forest beyond the highway. “That’s a whole lot of nothing,” he says. “You sure you want to be alone in that town with all that nothing around?”
I shrug.
He continues, “Why the hell would you want to go to a place like Nesgrove, anyway?”
I mumble, “Travel photographer.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m a travel photographer.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I’m going to shoot Lake Fisher down there.”
“Lake Fisher.” He sets his watery grey eyes on the highway outside. “If you ask me, what you want to do is…”
Here we go. The advice I never asked for.
He returns his gaze to me, his eyelids sagging over the tops of his eyeballs. “…don’t take that turn off for Nesgrove, alright. You go right past that turn-off and just keep driving down that highway until you see the sign for Milford Sound. That’s where you want to be: more beautiful scenery and more importantly, it’s a hell of a lot safer. None of those Nesgrove weirdos there. Trust me on that.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let me tell you about fine,” he leans forward and rests his hands on the counter. “Two guys driving into that town and then driving back out again. That’s fine.”
My body half swivels in the direction of the exit in the hopes he gets the hint. “Yeah, okay.”
“But that isn’t what happened, is it? They didn’t drive back out again. Police still haven’t found ‘em. That must have been…let me think…” He cranes his neck back and shouts to no one. “Hey, Bugger Lugs, when did those Christchurch fellas go missing from Nesgrove?”
A young male voice from out back says, “’Bout a year ago.”
“A year ago.” The old man nods his head. “You hear that? How old are you?”
“Twenty eight.”
“Right, these fellas were about the same age.”
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of rough places all over the world and I’m still here to tell the tale.” I inch closer to the exit.
He shakes his head and folds his arms. “Rather you than me.”
“Okay then, what’s so bad about Nesgrove?” I ask when I grip the door handle.
“Son, I’ve been living in this area for sixty nine years, working in this petrol station for ten of ‘em, and let me tell you: nothing good has come out of that town. Plenty bad. Nothing good.” He puts his hands on his hips again. “And they’re a right superstitious bunch, too. But not the good type of superstition, mind you.”
“They religious?”
“Once, probably.”
“So, the whole town’s dangerous?”
He smacks his lips together as if pushing out an unwanted taste and shrugs. “Rather you than me, is all I’m saying.”
I open the door as Bugger Lugs from the back shouts, “Tell him about the carnival thing.”
I face the old man, let the open door settle against my back.
“That’s right,” he says. “They pulled up outside here not long ago, huge big truck with their fairground attraction. I heard the driver shouting down the phone to his boss. Said something like he shouldn’t be sending ‘em to towns full of crackheads. He was talking about Nesgrove, turns out. “Marksons Travelling Escape Room” their attraction was called. Poor guys make a living out of scaring people and even they couldn’t put up with that dump of a town. What does that tell you?”
I shrug. “Okay, well, I appreciate the advice.”
He shakes his head and sighs.
I leave the station, jump in the car and flick the ignition on. The old man’s gone back to stacking cigarettes behind the counter.
Beware the monsters, lad. They’ll get you, they will.
Jesus.
I’ve heard it all before, old fella.
News flash! The world’s full of monsters. What makes some tiny South Island town any different?
When I get there I’ll do what I always do, keep my head down and conversation to a minimum: sure-fire way to keep the monsters at bay.
An hour later, I’m wheeling down a highway so straight and dull my eyelids start drooping. The caffeine’s worn off and I fall into one of those epic battles to stay awake. The car threatens to veer onto the other side of the road until I slap my face a couple of times. It’s one of those long desolate roads you see in some place like Arizona, but trees and marsh replace sand and cacti. The sky above is that filthy grey like there never was a sun, only flatness and sadness. Reminds me of sitting in a history lesson in school, rain running down the window, teacher droning on.
Up ahead stands a rusted sign for Nesgrove 25km. I pull up and empty my bladder into a ditch by the side of the road. At the bottom of the sign where it says ‘Nesgrove’, someone’s scratched into the paint, ‘Where are you now?’ And next to that they’ve drawn with black marker pen a large triangle, inside of which is an open hand, fingers spread apart. Maybe they are a superstitious bunch. Or maybe it’s some kid’s graffiti tag.
I take out my phone, stand on my toes to get closer to the sign and take a picture. It’s a little habit of mine and a nifty online marketing trick. Every location I visit, I try to photograph something with the place name and post it on Facebook. Always gets a solid reaction, lots of Likes and comments, and helps my followers feel like they’re travelling with me. The social media game
is all about engagement. And unique content. If it ain’t unique, you’re just a con without a tent, some marketer told me once. Still not sure what it means.
I stretch my arms out, arch my back and yawn before rotating my stiff neck a few times. The air feels weighty, wet without rain. I eye the majestic mountain range that sits off in the distance. Snow blankets its jagged peaks like a perfect white table cloth draped over pointed fingernails. It’s a nice touch, nice enough to go viral maybe.
My watch says it’s 3.13 pm. I hook my finger in the back pocket of my jeans, fish out the single pill in there: my sanity in powder form. My mouth’s dry and I’ve already finished off the last of my water. The pill tickles the back of my throat, and I try to swill a pool of spit around my tongue for lubrication, before swallowing the lot.
I climb back into Betsy—the name I’ve given the ancient Ford Focus I picked up on the second-hand market when I got to New Zealand—and roll toward Nesgrove.
Chapter Two
Another sign takes me left off the infinitely straight highway and now I’m on a narrow two-lane road which is lined with grass almost waist height, and beyond the grass are tall and thick bushes. Splattered animals paint the tarmac. Roadkill’s a fairly common sight in New Zealand, and the closer to town I get, the more there is, like a sign saying ‘This way death lies’.
Friggin’ old man. He’s put me on the track to Paranoid Station. No doubt the town is a dump, just as he said. But in a couple of days it’ll be forgotten, merged into the murky memory of every other backwater town I’ve ghosted through.
The turn off for Lake Fisher flashes by my window. I manage a quick peek down the narrow, tree-lined path that will take me to my photo. My heart beats a little faster.
My hands clamp tightly to the steering wheel as the road to Nesgrove gets bumpy. I mean shaky-voice, face-wobble bumpy. Stones flick out from under the tyres. Some thud off the underside of the car. I slow down in the hopes of avoiding a puncture and realise I haven’t checked to see if there’s a spare tyre in the back.
Before long, the road bends around and takes me past a small farm with two crooked wooden barns to my right. Ribbed-skinny cows and patchy-coated sheep are grazing in a field. There are a few chickens, too, milling about by the side of the road.
Immediately after, I spy the town; the rusted petrol station first. A man is standing outside, lit cigarette dangling from his lips, apparently not bothered about the feisty relationship between an open flame and petrol. It’s not surprising he’s lost an arm. Attached to the back of the petrol station is a car workshop named ‘Four Wheels Fix’.
In the centre of Nesgrove, I slow the car down to a crawl and pass the pub, the old name of which is still visible on the sign outside. ‘Susan’s Hole’, it was called, but someone’s run a line of black paint through it. Underneath a new name, ‘The Devil’s Breath’, has been written in runny red paint. A man dressed in a long leather jacket is leaning in the pub doorway, swilling a glass of something. Above him a crackling neon sign saying ‘Paradise This Way’ sets his hair ablaze with blue and yellow. He sees me, brings the glass to his lips for a sip, his eyes linger on me the whole time, and then he swallows and turns to go inside.
On the same side of the street as the pub is the convenience store, then the café, a school, tiny police station, hunting shop with crossbows and stuffed rabbits in the window; and that’s the town—just those things—apart from timber houses, lots of weeds and trees, and a derelict-looking factory sat behind everything.
If this were a western movie you’d see tumbleweed. Instead congregated litter cartwheels across the street, left and right, at the whim of the wind. It’s grim, there’s just no better description for it.
The few people I’ve seen look grimmer than the town, greyer than the weather. Especially the man standing on the pavement outside the motel. He looks like he could be in his fifties, skinny with stalk legs and a pointy shovel chin. He’s wearing a black pinstripe suit and black fedora hat. He carries the essence of an undertaker and he’s looking at me with a soft smile. As I drive past, he raises his hand in a wave.
After I turn into the car park of the motel, I glance back at him, but he has his back to me now. His legs seem impossibly skinny as if he’s a small man balancing on stilts. This place is pushing the boundaries of eeriness.
The motel has two floors, a faded green metal sign on the wall above saying “Your Motel” but the “Y” has fallen off at some point, leaving a Y-shaped sun-stain in its place, and the car park’s empty. The motel sign suddenly flickers, lights up bright green, reflects off the bumper of my car as if it waiting for me, waiting to welcome its first guest of the day. The letter ‘M’ is blinking Morse code, fast then slow. I lean forward, look at the rooms. No lights on in any of them. Damp and fungus have crept up much of the lower floor wall and left the cream paint flaking. I crane my neck, look inside the reception and see the back of a lady with a telephone receiver to her ear.
Outside it starts to rain. Nothing heavy, specks here and there tapping on the windscreen, and a gust of wind rocks Betsy. I run my hand over my head, feel a tuft of hair sticking up at the back. I try to push it down with my fingers but it pops back up again. I’ve got my mother’s hair, fair and frizzy, so I keep it short, try to keep it manageable for the road.
I can’t wait in the car all afternoon. Need to scout Lake Fisher before the light starts to fade. I grab my camera bag off the passenger seat and dart outside, and at just that second the clouds off-load a mountain of hefty rain. It soaks my T-shirt through quicker than I can get under cover. I barge the glass reception door open, and when it bangs against the wall behind, I wince and say sorry without looking at who I’m saying sorry to.
The reception hums of vinegar and the walls are dark green and showcase a horror of stuffed animal trophies that turn my stomach. Closest to me by the door is a deer head, its long antlers branching over me, its eyes bulging and round. The other walls don rabbits, possums, dogs and a whole array of different birds with wings stretching their fullest span as if trying to break free from their wooden chains.
Behind the reception counter is a woman who looks old enough to be Napoleon’s mother, or the first mother there ever was. She’s really flippin’ old. On the wall over her right shoulder, in amongst the dead animals, hangs a cheap trinket that came in and out of fashion in the space of about a week a few years ago. It’s a green rubber fish stuck to a wooden board, at the bottom of which is a red button. Press the button and the fish starts singing.
The lady’s smiling at me with her mouth, but her eyes are wide open and bloodshot. Her eye make-up looks like it was applied with a paintbrush. Pink lipstick is painted around her lips—I think her lips had fallen off at some point last century—and some of her teeth are speckled pink, too. One tooth is all pink, pink and distracting.
I approach the desk but realise she’s hasn’t blinked or moved at any point, and for a brief moment, I wonder if she’s also a stuffed corpse.
“Welcome to Your Motel.” Her voice is breathy and croaky. Clearly she’s not a stuffed corpse. A robot? Her name tag says ‘Maggie’.
“Would you like a room today?”
“Yes, please.”
“That’s $40 per night.”
“That’s cheap.”
I catch movement over her shoulder. She hasn’t noticed it, keeps looking straight ahead at me. Behind her the rubber fish swivels its head around, opens its mouth but no sound comes out.
“Pay with cash,” she says.
Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. The fish starts signing a Talking Heads classic tune but in a James Brown-esque voice. It flaps its head back and forth, gigantic lips open and close out of time with the lyrics.
Maggie doesn’t look at the fish. She sighs and shakes her head. A thin vein appears at her temple.
“Cash is fine,” I say over the singing. “Can I pay on a rolling basis? Probably just staying one night, but I can’t be certain.”
Take me to the river. Drop me in the water.
The music stops and she hesitates.
“Yes—” she tries to respond just as the singing starts again.
Take me to the river. Drop me in the water.
“—Just pay when you check out,” she manages in between verses.
The music stops again but the fish still flaps back and forth, its mouth looks like it’s gasping for air.
“Can I have a room on the ground floor?” I ask.
“Umm…the ground floor…umm…” She examines the cracked skin of her bony hands which are resting on the desk, her yellow-stained fingertips twiddling around.
I think she’s glitching so I say, “Whatever you have is fine.”
Take me to the river. Drop me in the water
This time her eyes swivel quickly to the fish. She leans down and picks up a broom on the floor and wallops the fish as if swatting a giant fly.
The fish’s voice slows down, gets deeper until it sounds like Darth Vader in slow motion. It stops moving, stays frozen in the air, and finally the singing dies. It slowly returns to its resting place against the wooden board.
Maggie drops the brush and opens a draw which is holding a single key. “Room 218. Here is your key.” She rests her hands on the counter again.
“Thanks. Do you need my name or ID or something like that?”
She looks down at her fingers. “umm…no…everything is fine.”
I try not to react to the oddness of her response. Maybe some backwater towns around here don’t give a crap about paperwork. “Okay, well, just in case, my name’s Jack.”
She looks down at my camera bag and asks, “Where you from?”
“Newcastle, England. You know it?”
She nods but doesn’t say anything. After a few more seconds of silence she offers me a wide, unnatural smile, in the middle of which is the pink tooth, and says, “Well, I hope you enjoy your stay, Mr Coulson.”
I walk to the reception door and just as I grab the handle, the gravity of those last two words hit me. How the hell does she know my last name? I see her reflection in the glass. She’s still smiling at me. I let go of the door handle, turn around and look at her.