Please Don't Go (26 page)

He felt in his pockets again, biting at his dehydrated lips. He found nothing—no keys in his pockets, and no moisture in his mouth. Nothing was the theme of the day, night, or whenever the hell it was.

Standing with calculated hesitance, Zephyr looked about Rattup’s study. The fire was roaring. Was she even able to light fires on her own? It seemed ludicrous, as did everything in the house.

He looked to the windows, studying the position of the sun. It was well after noon, but he could not be sure how far past. Two hours? Three hours? He would need to hurry. If she was vicious during the day, he could not begin to imagine how violent she would become after hours. If real life was anything like the world of film, then ghostlike entities became enraged and aggravated in the evening hours, the darkness a mirror to their cantankerous intentions.

He walked carefully to the kitchen, scanning the kitchen island. When she had first attacked him, he had been in that very spot, while Rattup packed his bags in the bedroom. When she had brought him in for his disgustingly delicious lunch, he had also been at that particular X-Y-Z of space. It stood to reason that his keys may have been left behind at some point, assuming she had not removed them from his pockets (like she had his sweatshirt) and stored them away for
safe keeping
.

Zephyr leaned down by the toppled box of DVDs, which she had not cleaned up in all her domestic meanderings, sorting through the mess, happily uncovering his keys beneath the copy of
American Psycho
. He palmed the shiny little harbingers of hope and grinned, feeling a certain sense of freedom return to his gut. There remained nothing but a direct line from point A to point B. “Vaya con dios,” he said in a triumphant tone, standing up, his hands shaking as he awaited a physical barrage. She had grabbed him previously when he had least expected it. She had reviewed her rules of conduct with him, and said that he was free to roam. But how far did that roaming extend, and more importantly, was she always on her guard of him? Did ghosts sleep? He could not feel her, and so he settled into a serene sense of positivism.

“
Where are you?” he asked quietly with his eyes squinted, awaiting an answer.

Silence. Only the crackle of the fire in the den.

He inched towards that room of passage, pausing to stare at the flame of the fire, tickling the iron mesh gate. It felt comforting.
A red herring,
he thought. She could be waiting inside of the flames, ready to jump out and tear his jugular free from his neck. Zephyr took a moment to consider that he had gone from an unbeliever to a very fervent one in short order. The previous few weeks had all felt like a bad drug trip, something colorful and strangely shaped that had never seemed possible before. All of his preconceptions about the metaphysical world had been dumped in the ashtray, and so he set to work in the confines of the purely physical world.

Zephyr felt that she was present in the room, but pretended not to care either way. His hands were trembling so much now that he could hardly retain the grip on his keys. Kiki was awaiting him, just beyond the front door, and she was the delightfully victorious chariot that he could not help but adore for her steadfast loyalty, even through all their close calls together.

Kiki was his eternal savior. Jesus with four Firestones for sandals.

He turned the knob of the front door, waiting for
her
to tangle him in her painful fangs and claws as she had before, but found nothing of the sort. Inching open the door, he breathed slow and low, releasing the sweaty brass knob, focusing on his hands with his eye, trying to will himself into a state of passive collection. “One foot in front of the other,” he whispered, stepping over the threshold and scampering across the island-stones of the front walkway with a blossoming worry that was consuming his ability to move and reason.

Why was she making is so easy on him? Had it all been a cruel hoax, after all?
Zephyr grinned in realization.

Plopping himself into the driver’s seat, he allowed himself a continued smirk. “Hey there, Kiki. You miss me? You sweet sweet betty.” He inserted the key as best he could, an act that Kiki had always enjoyed. Even with his body’s tremble better managed at the sight of Kiki’s dashboard, he was still fearful that Emily’s (or Aleesha’s?) reach had extended out of the house, into the gravel driveway. Or maybe—he pondered in a moment of dread—she had purposely ruined the engine, damaging the car beyond repair, and was watching in the window with a bowl of popcorn, cheerful, awaiting his imminent failure and fitful sobs. “Come on, show me what you got,” he said to Kiki, kissing the salty steering wheel.

He turned the key. It tried to turn over, but wavered.

Of course.

He turned it again. Still nothing, but a little better than the first go, a gurgle from Kiki’s chest. “Don’t do me like this. Please,” he coached his vehicle, wishing that he would have treated her better in their previous travels together. Maybe he would have given her a higher grade of oil, and more regularly at that. Or used higher octane gas. Or even vacuumed her once in awhile. “Give me that good stuff,” he pleaded.

He turned the key again and Kiki came roaring to life, a sound which he could not compare to any other he had heard in all his life; greater than a glorious line of trumpets blaring from the pursed lips of glowing angels. Zephyr slapped at the steering wheel with a jovial yelp. “I knew you still had it in you!” he half-sang, throwing her into reverse and backing out of the driveway with a wallop of motion, sending bits of gravel kicking up into the undercarriage of Kiki and flinging on to Rattup’s grass. “Sorry about that. You get us out of here and I’ll get you a fresh paint job, a new air freshener, and seat warmers. Get us home and
everything
is negotiable.”

If Kiki was real, Kiki would have nodded her hood and possibly even winked one of her headlights.

Zephyr completed his three point turn and stuck his automotive nose out on to Holyoke Road, grateful that Rattup’s trap had been sprung faultily. He drove with a glee that he fought to contain, humming to himself a scattered melody of victory, something that was a silly hybrid of the
Ode To Joy
and
Pomp and Circumstance
. “Nice try, old maaaaaaaan,” he belted as replacement lyrics to his homegrown bastardized song. He was on his way.

No less than two miles down Holyoke Road, Kiki went to sleep forevermore, sputtering in protest and falling silent in the jittery final moments of release.

Zephyr steered off into a patch of dirt at the side of the road, cussing to himself and slapping at the wheel. “No... no... no...” he mumbled, placing his forehead against the wheel as the car came to its final resting place. He removed the key, reinserted it, and turned again. This time around, there was nothing more than dead silence, not even a grumble to the ignition process. No inkling of anything functional would even humor his dying optimism. Zephyr punched the wheel, popped the hood, and exited the car with a huff of disgust.

Staring into the guts of Kiki, he mentally bludgeoned himself for his utterly absent knowledge of vehicles. Were it the battery, he was not sure what could be done. The carburetor? The rods and pistons? The spark plugs? All of these terms were nothing more than words swimming around his head without any real application. Was it the dipstick? The ash tray? Maybe the paint job was peeling too much. He sighed, leaning back against the side of his lethargic vehicle. At least he was free of the Rattup home. Even if he had to hoof it back to the throes of mankind, that was a good enough solution to a much more enigmatic issue. Life could still move on, though he didn’t look forward to the two mile stretch of the rocks and dirt that blanketed Holyoke Road.

He was free. And that was all that mattered.

Giving Kiki one final kick to her bumper, he offered her an honorary salute and began his hike back to civilization. It felt wrong leaving her behind like an old war buddy, but he overcame that guilt with a speedy hop to his step and a continuation of his cheery whistling and mindless singing.

***

Zephyr tried to enjoy the walk back to the world he had known before Rattup, especially given that the spring flora was starting to peak through the wintery mud and frozen earth. Signs of early summer, still only approaching on an imminent vector, filled the scene stretched out before him on Holyoke Road, for as far as he could see. The twists and turns of the unpaved route gave Zephyr a sense that anything was possible around those corners, and surrounding himself with the pollen-sweet scents of a new year coming to life, it only reaffirmed that uppity feeling in his stomach.

Jackie would be off her rocker, that was for sure. He had recently come home two hours late from a class, after an impromptu study review with his Ethics professor. Jackie was a caring enough person to worry herself to death when he fell out the grace of scheduling, and without being a nag... that was endearing to him. For that reason, and a million others, he could not wait to make her his wife. In thinking this, his mind drifted as he put one foot in front of the other down Holyoke Road, longing to be with Jackie again, to hold her in his arms and tell her what he had been through. What
had
he been through, anyway? He could not say with certainty, as it all still felt to be a calamitous dream.

Either way, she would have some heavy assessment to make on Rattup’s mad plan. She had warned Zephyr of the sickly twists of the writer’s mind, that all men of his fabric were destined to go batshit. But if that was so, Zephyr wondered, was
he
prone to those same inclinations? He hoped not.

Deep in his own thoughts, his heart skipped a beat or two when a car horn blared from behind him. Stepping off the road, into the dirt and grass, Zephyr paused to look at the passing driver, a man in a pickup truck. He was grinning with wild eyes and lips, a cloud of dust following behind in careful obedience, like the dirty kid from the
Peanuts
cartoons.

A few yards down the road, the bright red taillights on the rear of the truck sparked to life and the vehicle stopped short. The window rolled down and the man stuck his head out, craning his neck back towards Zephyr. “You need a ride, son?” The man smiled from ear to ear and Zephyr noticed that several teeth were missing from his mouth. Such was the Maine standard for the kind of man who would unselfishly offer a young traveler a much needed ride. They were in high demand, but hard to look at.

***

“
Holyoke Road ain’t no place for walkin’. People drive like shitheads around these corners,” the man said to Zephyr, spitting into a coffee can wedged between his thighs, precariously hanging from the edge of his seat. The middle-aged fellow had a practiced method, for the brown spit wad arrowed directly into the center of the can, echoing a distinct plunk. “Where you headin’? I can only take you as far as Old Country Road, but from there you might be able to catch a bus back into town.”

The man smelled of beef jerky and sauerkraut, of tobacco and sweat. Zephyr bit back his gag reflex for the sake of not offending the charitable traveler. “That would be fine. And I appreciate it. I can’t even begin to explain what I’ve been through,” Zephyr replied, rubbing at the throbbing sensation in his temple. He had inhaled enough of the oily mouth-rag that it had scrambled his brain, not to mention being choked several times by
her
. She may or may not have drugged him, to add to all of that malarkey. He had never been much of a drug user, but something had not yet settled into place. Somebody needed to press his RESET button. Whatever she had given him, natural or unnatural, was still clinging to the edges of his mind with worn fingernails.

“
No need. Sometimes life can kick our teeth in, you betcha’ ass,” the man stated, winking in a knowing way. He was taking his sweet slow time down Holyoke, barely crawling above five miles per hour, which was reasonable considering the post-winter state of the road. Come summer, some of the locals with tractors would fill in the muddy frost heaves and level everything out again, but until then the potted road called for extreme caution. It was part of the Maine flow of things, and so all drivers were significantly aware of their vehicles and the road in the spring.

“
You have no idea,” said Zephyr, letting his rigid muscles loosen a bit.

“
Well I can say for damn sure that you look like shit, boy. Like you done gotten eaten by a werewolf or somethin’.”

“
More like a shark,” Zephyr answered, picturing himself as Brody at the end of Rattup’s beloved
Jaws
; he and Hooper swimming back to the mainland on buoys. He could recall as a child the first time he had seen the movie. Being already accustomed to the built-in mechanisms of horror films, the young Zephyr had half-expected the shark to come propelling out of the water, to drag Hooper and Brody to the murky depths of his brackish dwelling, to act out his final bit of vengeance upon their meaty bones.

“
Smoke?” the man behind the wheel asked, pulling from the chest pocket of his flannel shirt a pack of hand rolled cigarillos. “They ain’t cigarettes, but they’ve got a hell of a kick. Fuckin’ cherry flavored.” Zephyr was astounded that the man was engaging in both chewing tobacco and smoking tobacco at the same time, and something in that called for a certain level of bizarre respect. It didn’t seem feasible. The pungent savage was dedicated, to say the very least.