by Sergio Gomez
Oh crap, he thought.
Tommy saw the concern on his face and grinned at him. “Don’t worry, you know I’ve got you covered, my main man.”
Whew.
If Tommy weren’t here, he would have looked like a giant fool in front of everyone.
Tommy lit his cigarette up in his mouth, then tried passing the lighter to Victor.
“You mind lighting mine, Tommy?”
“Nope,” Tommy said, taking a drag from his cigarette while he lit the other. Once it was lit, he gave it to Vic.
Victor handled the cigarette even more nervously now, like it was a brittle vial containing all of the world’s cures inside of it.
“Anyone else want me to light it for them?”
“Give me that,” Gina said, reaching over and taking the lighter from him. “No one is as big of a baby as Victor.”
“Shut your trap,” Victor said to her.
While lighting her cigarette, Gina said, “Have you ever even smoked?”
“Probably smoked more than you,” he shot back.
Gina scoffed, rolled her eyes, then handed the lighter over to Twist.
Twist lit his, passed it to Jack, and when his was lit he gave it back to Tommy.
Tommy shoved the cigarettes and lighter into his pocket and then leaned back on the rock, using one elbow to prop himself up. He took a big drag from his cigarette, put his head back, and blew out a series of rings up into the air.
“You know what you’re doing?” Twist asked Jack in low voice.
Jack shook his head. “Nope. But I’ve seen my dad do it tons of times.”
Twist nodded. “Yeah, there’s not much to it. The first drag is going to burn, though.”
Jack put the cigarette on his lips. It already tasted awful, but the heat coming from the other end felt kind of good in contrast with the brisk air surrounding the lake. He inhaled, and felt the burn hit his lungs like a sledgehammer lit on fire.
He coughed, the cigarette flying from his mouth and scurrying across the sand. Bent over, he couldn’t stop coughing. It was like having the flu, only this was worse, because his lungs were on fire and he couldn’t get his breath.
Oh my God, how does Dad do this?
Victor was laughing the loudest, while the others tried stifling theirs.
“Whoa, whoa, City Boy. You gotta start slowly,” Tommy said.
Jack finished coughing and wiped the saliva from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. Through tear-blurred vision he saw Tommy grinning across from him. He wasn’t grinning in a teasing way, but more in an older-brother-amused kind of way.
“Can’t run before you learn to walk, ya dig?” Tommy said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” his voice came out like a cat’s growl. “I get it.”
“Small drags,” Tommy said, pulling on his own cigarette, “just like this.”
“Okay, got it,” Jack said, and dropped down to his knees to look for the cigarette.
“Nah, forget it, Jack,” Tommy said. “That one’s a goner. Here, take another.”
Jack got up and grabbed the fresh cigarette and the lighter Tommy was handing him. He lit it, then handed it back to him.
“Remember,” Tommy said, the same grin returning to his face as he put everything back in his leather jacket, “small drags.”
Jack did it the way Tommy told him, and this time it didn’t feel as bad. It still burned, but it kind of felt good as the smoke traveled down into his lungs. Like drinking hot chocolate on a winter night, except it tasted like crap. But the same warm sensation was what he focused on. He only coughed a little as he exhaled.
The rest of the kids had been watching the exchanges between him and Tommy, and the subsequent second drag with the intensity of bettors watching a horse race they had money on. Now that they saw Jack had the hang of it, the interest waned.
“Don’t worry about it, Jack,” Gina said in a reassuring tone. “Victor coughed way longer the first time he smoked a cigarette.”
“You weren’t even there!” Victor protested.
Gina laughed, and looked at Twist with a guilty look in her eyes. At the same time, Victor shot Twist a look of scorn. It’d been just them when he tried his first cigarette, so he knew Twist had made fun of him to Gina.
Twist laughed it off, then to Tommy said, “You gonna finish telling us about the house Jack’s dad moved into, or what?”
“Yeah, tell us your dumb story,” Gina said.
“Oh yeah,” Tommy said, sitting up on the rock cross-legged. “It ain’t a dumb story. It’s a story passed down from generation to generation in Dutch County. Surprised none of you heard it.”
Gina and Twist locked eyes. Neither one of them was sure if he was pulling their chains or not. Twist shrugged.
“Alright, alright, so as I was saying, this is the spookiest story I’ve ever heard. It’s crazy to think that your dad lives there, and that you slept there last night.”
“Just tell the damn story, already, will you?” Gina urged.
Tommy laughed, then cleared his throat. “It’s an old, old, tale…”
Gina groaned in protest at him still trying to stretch out the buildup. Tommy laughed one more time, then went right into it.
Chapter 14
Once in the living room, the young lady asked him if he’d like a refreshment. “Tea? Iced tea? Lemonade? We’ve got all the good stuff.”
“Oh, no thank you.” Raymond replied.
“Hello Mr. Gibson,” A man’s voice came from behind him.
Raymond spun around and saw Scott standing there, his shaved head freshly scrubbed although a spot or two of paint remained.
“Hello, Mr. Roberts,” Raymond said, letting one hand go of Lucas and extending his other, “good afternoon.”
“Please, have a seat.” He turned to Maria, and with a twinkle in his eyes said, “Stay a while, why don’t you?”
Maria rolled her eyes as the two men walked past her and to the center of the living room. Scott sat down on the loveseat, but Raymond remained standing.
“I was just asking Mr. Gibson if he wanted anything to drink. Do you want something Scott?”
Scott shook his head. Maria sat down close to him, their shoulders nearly touching.
“I think I’ll stand,” Raymond said. “I’ll be able to put on a better show that way.”
“Oh,” Scott said, feigning surprise and excitement. “We’re being treated to a show?”
Raymond cleared his throat nervously. “Now, neighbors, I am no ventriloquist, so if it is subpar, please forgive me. Though, I think my creation is alive in its own right, so he’ll do most of the work for me.”
“Sure, sure,” Scott said, as if that made perfect sense. “What’s his name?”
“Lucas.” Raymond put his hand into the dummy, and sat him on the crook of his other arm, and worked its jaw.
It must have been in his head—had to be—but he felt something like a bolt of energy shooting from the carved wooden boy and up through his arm. It coursed through his whole body. Like there was a stronger connection opening up between them.
Calm down, you old kook. He chided himself. Performance adrenaline, that’s all.
“My name is Lucas,” the doll said. “Pleasure to meet you.”
The old man’s voice had changed when he spoke through the doll to sound like a little boy’s, enough that Scott was thrown off by it. Next to him, he felt Maria shift in her seat—the effect had worked on her too.
“You do voices, Mr. Gibson?” Scott asked him.
Raymond shook his head, but kept his adoring eyes on Lucas. “No, but like I told your wonderful fiancée, it’s like young Lucas here has a life of his own.”
“I’m a good boy, I promise,” Lucas said.
“You’re quite good at this for never doing it before, Mr. Gibson.” Scott said. He tried to hide the edge in his voice, but he didn’t do a good job of it.
“You really think so?” Raymond grinned at him.
“I’m a real boy, Mr. Roberts. No need to watch my father’s lips.”
Scott almost jumped off the sofa. The old man’s lips had barely moved, and the child’s voice came through loud and clear. Almost as if the dummy had spoken on its own.
“That’s very cool,” Scott said, then turned to look at Maria. “Don’t you think?”
She swallowed before slowly nodding. “Yeah, neat talent.”
Raymond beamed with excitement. “You really think so? You are too kind.”
“No, no, it’s really cool.” Scott rose out of the sofa. “We’d love to see more, um, however, today is not the best day.”
Raymond’s smile faded away to a straight line. “Oh, that’s unfortunate.”
Scott nodded in agreement, then looked down at the specks of paint on the front of his jeans. “Yeah, have some work to do around the house.”
“Yes, yes. Well, I… I certainly understand.”
Scott turned to Maria, and she encouraged him with an arch of her eyebrows and widening of her eyes to walk Mr. Gibson and his freaky doll Lucas out of here.
“How about one more before you go, though?” Scott suggested.
The words peppered the old man up, but didn’t quite bring him back to the excitement he’d had before.
“Okay, sure thing.” Raymond picked Lucas’s head back up again. “It was nice to meet you neighbors. I hope you’ll have me back again, real soon.”
Then he moved the dummy at the waist to make it take a bow.
Scott and Maria met eyes, and then Scott started clapping. Maria joined him with reluctance. After a few seconds, the clapping died off.
Scott reached out and ran his hand through the dummy’s hair. “Nice to meet you too, bud.”
They laughed, then Raymond started for the door. “I’ll see you around, good neighbors.”
“See you around, Mr. Gibson.” Scott said.
“Have a good day.” Maria said from behind him.
They waited and watched as the old man walked down the front porch steps and off their lawn to speak.
“That was weird,” Maria said, stating the obvious. Something about that “show” had her rubbing her arms to keep herself from shivering.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “I see why you ran up to get me. Can’t deny he has natural talent, though.”
“Did you see how realistic the dummy was?”
Scott laughed, and turned to look at her. “Yeah, I meant the ventriloquism, but yeah.”
“It was almost creepy.”
Scott turned back to watched Mr. Gibson walk down the sidewalk, the dummy tucked under his arm. There had been some strange juju coming from the old man and his toy that he wasn’t going to admit to Maria, but she was right. It was the reason he had ended the talent show so abruptly, but now that he was out of the house and getting farther away from his home, the feelings seemed silly.
He walked her back to the couch, and they sat. Scott wrapped his arms around her. With his lips close to her cheek he said, “Our neighbor is a strange one, huh?”
She turned her head and kissed him for a few seconds. The warmth of the kiss dispelled the oddness the old man had brought into their home.
“Hey, isn’t Jack out with his friends?” she asked.
Scott nodded. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Her response was to kiss him, and then undo the front of his belt. “Yeah, I’m thinking you need to get out of those pants before you get paint all over the couch.”
Scott laid back, and let out a hefty laugh. “Tease.”
Chapter 15
“After his wife left with the kids, he went upstairs and used a noose to hang himself.”
Tommy let the words hang out in the air dramatically. They’d all involuntarily leaned forward in their seats and scooched closer to one another while Tommy had been telling the tale of 1418 Dudley Street behind a thick haze of smoke from their cigarettes.
A gust blew by, making the branches of the trees around them rustle against one another, adding an exclamation point to the spookiness of the story. Victor took a drag of his cigarette, which was followed by a coughing fit.
Once he was finished with that, Tommy turned to Jack and said, “It might’ve even happened in the room you sleep in, Slick.”
“Well,” it was Twist who spoke up, “what happened after he killed himself?”
“He’s a ghost now. Roams around the house, paces back and forth waiting for his wife to return with the kids.” Tommy held their attention there for a minute while he took a drag of his cigarette.
“You’re an idiot,” Gina said to him. “Don’t tell me you guys believe anything he said?”
“Hey, hey,” Tommy said, snickering, “I didn’t come up with this, toots. It’s a legend that’s been passed through generation and generation of Dutch County residents.”
“How come none of us ever heard of it, then?” Victor argued.
“Because you guys are J-R’s.”
“Junior teens” or “J-R’s” was the name the older teens gave to those that had just turned thirteen. It was to let them know that even though they were teens, they still weren’t as cool as them.
Gina rolled her eyes. “I’m not, and I never heard of it.”
Tommy sat up on the rock and laughed. He slapped Jack on the shoulder. “Hey, man, lighten up. I just made all that crap up.”
“Of course, you did,” Gina said, vindicated in her criticism.
“And you were listening to every word,” Tommy taunted.
Gina took a drag of her cigarette, but continued to stare him down.
Tommy put his own out against the rock. “Alright, cig time is over.”
They all looked down at their cigarettes, but since Tommy was older and more experienced, they assumed he knew what he was talking about. They followed his lead and crushed their cigarettes against the rocks they were sitting on. Except for Victor, they all flicked their butts onto the ground.
Victor shook his head, and started picking them up. “Freakin’ litterbugs.”
“Just leave them, Vic,” Twist said. Then to everyone else, “I’ll race you guys to the bikes—”
Before he even finished the sentence, Gina took off.
Victor scrambled to pick up the last two butts in the grass, and then started running after the others. He almost lost his balance as he jumped up and went into a sprint.
“Dang juniors,” Tommy said as Vic blew past him.
He didn’t have to race any of them to the parking lot because he was cool no matter what place he came in.
Tommy fished his cigarettes out, took one out, lit it, and smoked it as he strolled back to the parking lot.
Chapter 16
“That was quite the show we put on, huh Lucas?” Raymond said, setting his son down in the recliner.
He went to his workshop and grabbed a comb off his desk, then returned to the living room. “Too bad our performance was cut short, huh, Son?”
“We’ll get them next time, Dad,” Lucas said.
For a second, Raymond tricked himself the way he’d tricked the neighbors into thinking the dummy was doing it all on his own.
He chuckled.
“I’m surprised how convincing I was. My first crack at it in front of a live audience, and I blew them away.” Raymond started combing Lucas’s hair. The combination of the wind and the neighbor’s grubby paws had it out of place. “You were fantastic, Lucas.”
“It’s almost like I’m alive. Like I’m a real boy.”
Raymond laughed again. “You are a real boy, Son. You’re real to me.”
He stopped combing, and stepped back to admire his work. It was neat and perfect. Only the best for his boy.
“I love you, Lucas.”
The dummy’s glass eyes seemed to be staring through him—staring into his very soul. His limbs were still,
and there was no movement of his chest or anything else to suggest the dummy was alive. The only thing Raymond knew for sure was that he loved Lucas like his own flesh and blood.
“I love you, too, Father.”
Raymond smiled.
And then realized he wasn’t sure if his lips had moved when the words had been spoken.
His smile grew bigger.
Chapter 17
There was nothing to do at the lake in the cool of a Fall afternoon, and they’d already shown Jack the bank, but there were plenty of biking trails that went around the park. Many of the trails looked like the one they had to go through to get to the lake, except paved and wider.
Autumn was in full effect and the wind would occasionally shake off the last remaining leaves on the branches of the surrounding trees. The leaves danced in the air around the gang of kids as they rode through Myers Park like flakes in a snow globe.
As usual, Tommy was in the lead, riding his motorbike at a measly ten miles an hour so the others could trail behind him. The change up in their formation was that Gina rode close to him, and they were talking. Talking a lot.
Victor, Jack, and Twist hung in the back in a loose V-shape.
“You really did make that stuff up, right?” Gina asked Tommy.
Biting down on another cigarette and talking at the same time, the way he’d seen his Uncle Joe do with cigars, Tommy said, “Yeah, yeah. You can rest easy, Homeschool.”
“Why’d you make it up, though? Just to scare the others?”
Tommy laughed, and looked at her. He had his sunglasses on, even though the trees shielded most of the afternoon sunlight from the trails, but Gina could feel his dark eyes staring at her. “Just to get your attention.”
“Is that so?” Gina said, grinning.
Tommy let go of one handle and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Only reason I came is for you.”
Gina blushed. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s true,” Tommy said. “The guys are cool and all, but I only ever come to Dudley Street for you.”
“You’re…you’re yanking my chain, aren’t you?”