Coin-Operated Machines (15 page)

Brock was startled
by the sound of someone just escaping from underwater and gasping for a much needed breath.  Then there was sobbing.  He rushed to his sister who was suddenly alive, flopping back and forth on the bed as if shrugging a bad nightmare, weeping with her hands digging into the sheets, her eyes inflamed and bloodshot, her mouth bent in crooked disdain.  He believed his sister was having a vicious panic attack until she set eyes on Brock and stopped. 

She
muttered it like a curse, "What the hell are you doing here, Brock?"

Brock
was shocked and spoke with a limp tongue. "I, you sent me a letter.  You wanted me to visit you.  You wanted to talk to me.  You told me you were staying here, so here I am."

Her
eyes couldn't shape the scorn that was brewing in her mind.  "I'd never mail you anything in a thousand years!"

Brock backed up from the bed. 
"You sent me a letter.  I wanted to help you.  Can't you be happy to see me?  I know our relationship has taken a stab in the back, but I'm here now.  I'm here to make things better.  At least I'm here to try."

She sounded much angrier now. 
"I would rather go back to being unconscious than rekindle a relationship with you."

"
Did you know I've lost Hannah looking for you?  She was here with me.  We're going to get married, if you care.  But somebody's taken her.  If I didn't come here in the first place, we'd both be safe."
Angel wasn't affected by his speech.  "My boyfriend's dead.  This whole town's a graveyard.  I was actually hoping I was dead.  I was hoping to be dead for good."  Sneering with tears streaming down her face, she folded to her emotions.  On the bed, she whispered in a hurt voice, "Why did you wake me?  I don't want to be awake anymore."

James
tried to mend the already terrible conversation.  "You don't have much time, Angel.  He only put thirty-five cents in you."

Angel and Brock waited for
James to continue, and he did, happy he had their undivided attention.  "The man with the golden axe, he got to you, didn't he?"

Angel's eyes met James's face. 
"Yes.  How did you know?"

"Those who live in Blue Hills, we woke up changed about two weeks ago.  I'm thinking it has something to
do with the voices on the air.  Perhaps it's supernatural, because no person could alter hundreds of people so quickly.  Whatever the change did to our bodies, it turns us into machines that require money to live."

Brock recalled the man with the golden
axe, and that was the man who had attacked them earlier in the woods.  "The guy with the axe was the one who took Hannah.  Do you know where he is?  Is he making people change too?

"I don't
know where he is, but yes, he's been going after people who come into town and altering them like the rest of us have been altered.  He hides.  The man skulks about town, finding people, and he dismantles them.  He also collects the money inside of you.  What he does with the money, where he goes, where he hides, is beyond me.  The situation was terrible, but it became far worse when Chuck Durnham became who he was.  Everybody calls him the man with the golden axe because he uses it to attack everyone.  He can mutilate you, and then bring you back as a machine.  I don't know how he does it. He just does it."

Brock put the information together the best he could.  The situation didn't have to make sense, but it had to end in getting Hannah back alive and safe. 
"Then this Chuck Durnham asshole is the guy we need to find.  We can force him to tell us what we need to know to get out of here.  He'll tell us where Hannah is, and how to fix you guys." 

Brock
was determined to inspire them, but the two of them visibly failed to match his enthusiasm.  They were too scared.

"I don't want anything to do with that man," Angel confessed, curling up against the headboard. 
She was happy playing the defeatist.  In a miserable voice, "When I woke up the last time before this, my head was on a hook and my body was on a table.  Chuck was working on me.  God knows what he was doing.  Modifying me, maybe.  There were body parts everywhere, like human projects left unfinished.  Like I said, I'm not going anywhere near that man, if he is a man."

"He
used to be a local firefighter."  James checked the barricade, and happy it was solid, he focused on them again.  "Chuck's father gave him a golden axe when he got his first job in a firehouse just outside of Blue Hills, though the man lived here in town.  I don't know why Chuck became the way he became.  Whatever's changed, we're now machines that run on money.  It's like we have meters inside of us, and if they run empty, we expire."

Brock couldn't help but shake his head. 
"That doesn't explain the voices on the air, and the hot oil you described coming up from the ground."

"I've seen it too, the
black oil."  Angel suddenly had a thought, so she turned to Brock.  "Wait, I was hiding from that horrible man, and I entered a house.  A typewriter was typing out a message. Yeah, I remember it now. It was a letter to you.  The typewriter was typing by itself, but I heard voices, and the air reeked of rotting flesh.  I ran out of there and oil dripped from the walls and the floor, and the whole place sank into this pool of black oil.  The house was gone."

"So you didn't
write me."  It came out just as he thought it, all hope for saving a relationship with his sister a failure.

She
refused to console him.  "Like I said, it was them, whoever's in the air.  It's supernatural or...or it's..."

"It's death,"
James broke in, his fingers posed contemplatively on his chin, rethinking everything he believed about the predicament in Blue Hills.  "These voices are obviously doing things to bring in people from the outside, including you, Brock."

"It brought me
here too," Angel conceited, getting up, and searching through the mini-fridge and discovering a bottle of rum.  The fridge was already open.  Angel told them she'd put money into the slot without knowing what it meant and the door opened on its own.  She tilted the bottle into her mouth, sucking it down, and Brock was surprised when she offered him a taste.  "I'm sure you need this as much as I do."

"I'm sober now."

To her, it was a fuck you. 

She asked
James, "How about you?  You get your life together too?"

"Maybe later
I'll have a drink," he said.

Not discouraged
by their declines, Angel downed the rest of the mini-bottle and claimed another one in the fridge, but not before saying, "I was led here with my boyfriend.  He's a drug dealer.  He said he got a call about a cheap deal going down in Blue Hills.  The details were sketchy, but it brought us here.  That's when the man with the axe got a hold of us.  Then I woke in a room, my head was on a hook, and my boyfriend, I don't know what happened to him."

She mentioned the deta
il without any shift in emotion.  She was still addicted.  Her boyfriend was a resource, a tool to receive drugs and nothing more.  The front of sex and fake romance won most dealers over.  Nothing much had changed since the last time Brock talked to her when she left the rehab clinic in Beverly Hills. 

"So
this force in town, it's bringing in new people," James said to himself and then snapped his fingers once.  "Yes, it makes sense.  To bring in more money, right?  How else would this horrible place keep trickling on?"

"But why create this situation in the first place?" 
Brock refocused the conversation to getting out of this room and searching for Hannah.  "I have to find Hannah.  I think this axe guy, what's-his-name, Chuck Durnham, is the only way to go forward.  We have to get him in a position where he'll tell us what he knows.  We can talk all we want, because it's only guesses.  We're wasting our time in here."

"Good luck
getting to him," James scoffed.  "He's too dangerous.  He'll turn you into us.  Cut you into pieces and bring you back to life, and then you'll need money to survive too.  Problem is, there's not much of it around here anymore.  Money's next to impossible to find."

"And it's not dangerous
being here doing what we're doing now?  It's not safe anywhere.  What makes you think you'll live that much longer being a coward?"

Angel sipped on the bottle, making a whistle sound with her lips. 
"What makes you think we want to live at all?"

Brock ignored her. 
"I know you want to live, James.  I know your wife is gone, but what about your friends? What about your life?  Look into the future.  There has to be something about life that you still want to enjoy.  You don't have to be the victim."

He appealed to Angel this time, returning to the optimism that created this trip
and the hope his sister would one day care about him.  "You can hate me, Angel, and I can be mad that I'm here indirectly because of you, or I can help you.  We can save each other.  How about it?"

"Big brother
comes to the rescue.  Man, fuck off.  Some therapist told you that you needed closure or a good cry with me.  That's why you're here, and that's the only reason."  Her drink was starting to kick in.  She gave him a vicious smile that could cut through glass.  "The feel good plan has blown up in your face, big bro."

"I'm here because I'm better now
.  I want you to be better too.  That won't change, no matter what gets in the way."

"Shove the greeting card bullshit right up your
greasy butthole.  I remember how you used to be, and you know what? You could be lying about your being clean.  Once a junky—"

"
'—Always a junkie.' I've heard that crap, and I don't believe it.  I'm off it.  I've got a job.  I've got a good life."

"
Hah
, being a judge on a talent show?" Angel forced herself to laugh.  "You're a monkey with a tambourine.  You're washed up.  People like washed up famous people on TV.  Washed up assholes make viewers feel better about themselves.  You're still the man who squandered our father's fortune.  You're still the coke-nosed brat who fell from the top of the world and landed in the gutter, so don't tell me about your being clean, or how I could be like you if I tried.  Just fucking shut up about it already."

Brock raised his voice and
grabbed her shoulders, really digging his grip in deep.  His face was inches from hers.  "I'm engaged to Hannah.  You remember her?  She's working on a movie.  She's working again.  She's clean too.  I love her, and I'm happy.  I want you to be my sister, but right now, it's me, your brother, telling you I want us to be a family again.  Perhaps even friends, like old times when the walls weren't falling down around us.  I mean it what I'm saying to you.  I miss you, Angel.  I want you to be a part of my wedding.  I want to be involved in your life somehow.  We have problems, but let's grow up and be adults.  All I'm asking for is an honest fucking chance, Angel, so quit playing the victim and let's escape this town with our lives."

Brock
couldn't read her expression, because her face had turned into a blank slate.  She collected her thoughts, and he was immediately disgusted by what she had in store for him.  The smile on her face, it was one that admitted it knew every word she said would hurt him, and she loved inflicting the pain.    

"I'm sure Hannah's still a junkie, and you've found someone who enjoys lying to themsel
ves as much as you do, Brock.  So enjoy your new coke whore.  Fuck you, Brock.  I'm not buying a word you're telling me, so go back to your new buddy and figure it the fuck out because that's all I care about right now; not you, and certainly not your life's progress."

What he wanted
to unleash upon her was preempted by James who had stripped the barricade down piece-by-piece.  James pressed his hand against the door as if to push it forward.  The man's face then turned confused. 

James
gasped in horror, "
No, no, no, no, no
." He turned to Brock as an infectious panic spread on his face.  "The door, it changed.  We can't escape!"

JENNA SHARPE

The woman who came from the bridge holding the gun was named Jenna Sharpe.  Willy dated her when he was sixteen for two months.  It was a hold your hands in the hallway of your high school scenario and kiss and hug before class situation.  Jenna was also the prettiest girl in the school.  She was also the captain of the cheerleading squad and in the dreams of any red blooded adolescent school boy.  Now in Blue Hills, Jenna's face was sullied by the snarl of pure animosity.  Cruelty replaced beauty.  She despised him, and he didn't know why. Her clothing was wet from crossing the creek.  She visibly shivered when the wind picked up.  Her black hair was disheveled and pasted onto her face.  Her face was cherry, burned by the wind.  Jenna was malnourished looking, twenty pounds too skinny. 

Closing in
on Willy, Jenna demanded, "You're going back to your car, and you're driving me where I tell you to go.  No questions.  You try anything, I'll shoot you.  All I want you to do is drive."

Willy turned back towards the car, praying he didn't get a bullet in the back.  She was sh
aken and disturbed.  Maybe she had seen some horrible things today as well.  

She kept whispering to herself.  "
Why am I the one?  Why me?  Why do I have to do this?
 
I never wanted any of this in my life
."

"Who's making you do what
?"  Willy blurted out.

The gun's nozzle was jammed into his back.  "Say nothing to me!  My family's dead.  My husband's dead.  I had to shoot them
both.  I killed them because they tried to kill me.  Over five dollars. 
Five fucking dollars
.  You don't think I'll kill you too?"

"Whoa, whoa, I'm sorry.
  It sounds like we both need the police.  You see, back at that historical house, some people—"

"Say nothing else!"  The Oldsmobile was right in front of him.  "Get in the car.  Drive where I tell you to drive and shut your mouth.  This is all because of you.  They're dead because of you."

"What the hell did I do?  I just arrived in town hours ago.  Whatever's happened, I assure you it's not my fault.  I'll help you any way I can.  Please put down the gun.  Let's talk and sort this out.  I'll drive you anywhere, Jenna, I promise.  It's not a problem."

She didn't hear him except for the word "drive."  "Yes, drive.  Cross the bridge.  I'll tell you where to go after that.  No more talking.  Just drive."

Jenna had jittery hands, including the finger that hovered over the trigger.  She had a nervous tick.  She was seeing things as her eyes strayed to the horizon, as if re-living terrible things.  He could sense it the way her eyes tensed and un-tensed.  Willy decided it was best to leave her be.  He would drive to where she told him to, and maybe the destination would answer a few questions about her and what was happening in Blue Hills.  What occurred at the reading of the will could've been happening everywhere else too. 

Willy
still didn't understand what exactly had happened at the reading of the will. 

There was no way to explain som
eone's body parts popping off.

Driving beyond the bridge, they traveled
along back roads and among heavy woods.  He didn't see much else.  Town was up north a few miles, but Jenna wanted him to hang a left at an unmarked side road.  Of all the things he guessed would've happened today in his old home town of Blue Hills, Willy never imagined being held at gunpoint by his ex-girlfriend he hadn't seen in years.  Talking to her was like begging for a bullet.  If she thought he was responsible for what was happening, then she must've been terrified of him.

Knowing this,
Willy kept his question simple.  "Are you going to kill me?"

The twitch of a smile, her neurons were firing all wrong.  Her face was a living jigsaw puzzle of emotions.  "No, I'm not
going to kill you."

She said it as if she regretted it.   

The wheels kept turning, and Willy wasn't sure where they were driving to, but he soon recognized the back road.  Houses would crop up out of the thick every so often.  Finally, the two story yellow painted house appeared and Jenna asked him to turn in the driveway.  He couldn't help but give a start doing this.

It was his uncle's house. 

The one that burned down fifteen years ago.