Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers (21 page)

“Nikki,” she whispered.

Night began to fall over the eerily festive town of Black Water. The lights of town soon burned into view and she was strangely
relieved to be back to this place. Main Street was blocked off in anticipation of the annual parade. After turning onto a side street, Regina pulled her car into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, put the car in park, and ripped her shaking hands from the steering wheel. Sinking into the bucket seat, her wall of strength crumbled and the bank of emotion erupted from her in a tidal wave of tears that she had been struggling to hold back all day. Regina cried so violently that her chest heaved up and down ejecting uncontrollable sobs from her throat. A brief brain synaptic fire instructed her to calm herself, but she swiftly rejected it, reasoning that if she did not get it out now it would erupt in the near future at some most inopportune time. Regina tolerated the cries and the tears until they were tuckered out. Several deep breaths circulated the blood more efficiently in her body allowing her to regain some air of tranquility. She wiped away the final party of tears and reviewed her wrecked face in the rearview mirror. Her first thought was to go to Sheriff Handow, but that was quickly dismissed as the last remnant of irrationality leftover from her emotional breakdown. There were many reasons why going to Sheriff Handow was not a good idea. What would she say? Regina thought to herself.

Ah yes, Sheriff Handow, I was somewhere that I had no business being, looking for God knows what, and someone hit me. Did I see anything? Uhm, no, I have no idea who it was, but my best friend since elementary school, Nikki Valentine, may have had something to do with this whole mess, but quite honestly, I’m not sure of anything
.

Regina played and replayed the conversation in her head a million different ways, none of them leading in a direction even remotely beneficial. Besides, she thought, it could have just been some homeless person wanting her out of his or her space. Whoever it was just wanted her to get out of there, if they had wanted to kill her they could have done it. No, there was no good reason to go to the police, she decided.

A breath and a gulp of saliva tangled awkwardly in her throat, causing her to choke at the phantasmal appearance of a ghastly figure standing in the center of her headlights. The demon child’s eyes rolled around in her head, black jumbo-sized lacquered marbles,
until they finally came to an abrupt halt that focused on Regina. Greasy hair was flat against her pale brilliant white skin that became purple and blue around the sockets of her sunken eyes, but most gruesome was her smiling mouth, her unnaturally wide grin that was painted with the blood of some unsuspecting victim. The candy apple blood covered her baby teeth and drenched her chin right before it began to drip down unto her veined neck. Regina was forced to look away from the child’s all-seeing eyes.

When Regina looked up again the demonically disguised girl was laughing with two of her friends, one of them dressed like a witch and the other a vampire, which was an absolute contrast to the sheepish woman that followed closely behind them who must have mothered at least one of the little devils. The common-looking woman smiled and waved at the girl in the car, which was the normal form of greeting to friends and strangers alike in Black Water. Regina looked at the dashboard clock, which now blinked 5:32 p.m. People were headed for the parade, which probably began at 6:00 p.m. Regina had to get home.

Regina waved to the mother hesitantly, still in wonder as to why any rational adult would allow a child to look like such a wild fiend even on this holiday. A chill coasted up Regina’s spine as she threw the car into reverse and whisked out of the parking lot.

As Regina cascaded into the driveway, she saw that the lights were on in the living room as well as in her parents’ room. She prayed that they were in their bedroom so that she could clean herself up before they had a chance to see her in such dilapidated condition. The woman crept up the porch steps and tried to open the storm door with soundless precision. She pressed her ear to the front door and heard nothing on the other side. The door hardly made a sound when Regina finagled her key into the lock. In the doorway, she took a quick look around before she heard her parents’ muffled voices upstairs in their bedroom. Regina closed the door quietly behind her and began an absolutely noiseless journey up the staircase. Her legs were strained from her effort to be weightless and it took her three times as long as it usually would
have to get up the stairs. On the top step, she saw her parents’ bedroom door swing open.

“Regina,” her father greeted her.

“Hey, Dad. Sorry I’m late, just going to take a quick shower and I’ll be ready.” She spat as she leapt into the hall bathroom before her father could focus his vision. Mr. Dean had no chance to respond before the girl slammed the door.

Regina stood with her back against the bathroom door.

“Was that Regina?” She heard her mother’s garbled voice through the walls.

Regina moved to stand in front of the mirror and tried to contort her head to a position where she could see the back of her neck while still keeping her eyes to the mirror. There used to be a handheld mirror in the towel closet she remembered as she opened the closet door and shuffled through one of the plastic bins finally fishing out the old, cracked mirror. Regina turned her back on the wall mirror and used the handheld to get a good look at the back of her head. She lifted her hair slightly to reveal a blotch of dry blood a little smaller than a fist on the back of her neck. Separating the hairs on her scalp, she could see the wound that lie underneath her thick mane.

She winced in pain when she pressed her fingertips too close to the wound. Luckily, it was no longer bleeding and she could forego formal medical treatment. In the closet, she found pain relievers and popped four into her mouth as she turned on the shower. Steam rose in the bathroom until Regina was barely able to see her naked reflection in the mirror as the last piece of clothing dropped to the floor. She sucked the warm air deep into her chest. For years, she had been making her showers so hot that she could barely stand them. As a nurse, her first order of business when she got home after a long shift was to place herself under a waterfall of scorching, plump, fast-paced droplets of water to burn from her skin all foul impurities that she may have picked up in the hospital—bacteria, dirt, remnants of some kind of virus, but most importantly blood. As conscientious as Regina tried to be about washing thoroughly after dealing with a trauma patient there were
days—bizarre, other-dimensional lapses of time—when she would return home from work, step into the shower, and in the ritual of cleaning every part of her body in the systematic order that had become routine—first her face, next her arms, after that her abdomen, finally her legs and feet—on rare occasions she would spot the culpable droplet of blood that had somehow slipped under her scrubs and dotted her belly or left a small strike across her chest, and the sight was maddening. On those occasions, she would scrub every inch of her body with the force used in decontamination.

“Out,” she whispered to the blood.

Regina took a somber look at her cloudy reflection in the bathroom mirror of her mother and father’s home; she found an inconspicuous new line making its soft trail across her forehead, then noticed a freckle on her face that she had never seen before. It sat low under her left cheekbone, a foreigner among the natives. Through the steam, she could see only the faint glimmer of one of her brown eyes, sporadic bits of her image reflected through the fog, revealing a bewildering duplication of her. She pressed her fingers into her face shifting the splintered pieces to slightly different positions, which did nothing to permanently change the archetype, but at last, she surrendered to the certainties, waving her white flag in the face of herself and stepped into the scalding water. The fiery soak cleansed her. While a horizonless time passed, she dangled helplessly under the water.

“Regina,” her mother called with three swift knocks on the door, smiting the nurse back to the shower, inside of the bathroom, inside of the house, in Black Water.

Regina’s heart jumped.

“Are you OK?” her mother added.

“I’m fine, Mom, just another minute,” she demanded.

She pinned her short hair up with a clip, lathered the soap in a rag and began washing away the dried blood at her neck. The pain-killers began to take their effect.

Regina squeezed her rag and pressed it against her face long and hard one last time before hanging it on the towel rack and cutting off the water. She dried and wrapped herself in a fluffy
towel. Once more Regina placed herself in front of the mirror and inspected her neck to make sure that no sign of the menacing blood remained.

In Regina’s room, the light was on and her mother was standing over the bed. Mrs. Dean’s face lit up as she saw her daughter gliding down the hall, she made a quick movement and held up a black cat suit with one hand, and in the other hand Mrs. Dean held a headband with kitty ears. Regina could not hide the grossly questioning expression that she was sure was apparent on her face.

“Isn’t this cute!” Her mother seemed excited and was making a statement rather than asking a question. “We saw it in town and I just had to get it for you. I thought maybe you could wear it to the parade tonight.”

“Uh …” Regina bit at her bottom lip lightly. “Mom, I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“I know, I know, but we always dress up and I thought it would be fun.”

Regina hated to dampen the spark that flickered in her mother’s eyes, the flare that had been ignited by her little girl being home, but even more she hated the thought of walking around all night in a glorified onesie. Mrs. Dean was dressed as a cowgirl and Regina secretly thanked God that her mother’s costume was not too ridiculous. A pair of fairly fitted dark denim jeans, a cowboy shirt, cowboy hat and cowboy boots made up her mother’s simple costume.

“You look really cute, Mom, but …” Regina started to defend her stance on not wearing a costume when her mother cut her off.

“Just try it on, OK? Your father and I will be waiting downstairs. Hurry up!”

She smiled before she laid the suit across the bed again and scurried down the hall. After closing the door, Regina sighed and flounced unto the bed, burying her face in her fabric-softened quilt. She lifted her head and did another exasperated review of the cat suit that lay next to her on the bed and sighed again. For sure, she was not wearing that abomination, there would be absolutely
no negotiation on that fact, but she thought that maybe she could still appease her mother by finding something festive.

Fifteen minutes later, Regina plodded down the stairs to her parents that were watching TV in the living room. A brief moment of disappointment crossed her mother’s face when she saw that Regina was not wearing the fun costume that she had purchased, but it was superficial and faded fast. Regina wore a tight, long sleeve black shirt with dazzling rhinestones in the shape of a skull across the front; she wore fitted black jeans with the bottoms tucked into a pair of leather riding boots.

“Sorry, Mom, your costume gave me a major camel toe.”

Her mother frowned.

“A what?” Her father’s face was rife with confusion.

“Never mind, Charles let’s go.”

The streets of Black Water were a jungle, wild with titillating amusement. Regina’s father parked about a block from Main Street. As they began to make their way on foot toward the nucleus of the celebration, the happenings that unraveled all around them were stimulating enough to appease all the senses. Streetlights marked every corner, lambent points of navigation adding to the romantic draw of small town U.S.A. Whoops, hollers, screams, and shouts penetrated the night as children of all ages laughed, frolicked, and crisscrossed the friendly streets. Regina inhaled the unmistakable aroma of funnel cake, which made her smile. Happy clowns, evil clowns, angels, and super heroes overflowed the sidewalks, jumping, wiling, and moaning. An expressionless Michael Meyers eyed her hungrily through the two black eyeholes and Regina was amused by the costume, but she still recoiled when he suddenly reached out for her, causing him, his friends, and even herself to explode into laughter. Mrs. Dean purred at a rotund infant dressed as a bumblebee.

Regina forgot her reality and drowned in the magical world that unfolded, swept around, and enraptured her. The entire town had shown up for Lola’s macabre welcome home party.

People that Regina had not seen in years greeted her with inviting smiles and open arms as she and her parents engaged in
lively conversations with many passing couples and families that they knew. Regina noticed a vibrating hum emanating from a white mobile trailer where a nun stuck her head out of the window.

“CUPCAKES, GET YOUR SWEET CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES!” The ragged nun yelled with the curbed enthusiasm that was expected from a person that performed the same job year after year.

Charlie Dean bought himself and his two favorite girls chocolate cupcakes with orange icing and candied spider webs. They continued to stroll along Main Street until they found a comfortable nook along the side of the street under a tree to set up their lawn chairs.

Just before the parade began, Regina scanned the crowd looking for any sign of Barron, Nikki, or even Natalie, but unless they were under the cover of one of the many masks that danced deceptively past her, none of them was there. Reality dealt its hard blow again as she contemplated the idea that even if they weren’t under a mask, she still did not know them anymore. Her neck began to throb.

Drifting along the breeze were the sounds of the high school band marching up the street playing a hideous symphony, seconds later they came into view. The Oakley High School band dressed in tight black outfits with skeletons painted on the fronts of them. White paint covered their faces and black makeup circled their eyes, cheeks and mouths. Regina gazed up into the sky at the silver dollar moon that occasionally masqueraded behind slivers of dark clouds as it floated silently across the sky; she shivered and rubbed her hands together.