Saltar's Point (13 page)

“Guess I don’t get out much.”

Randall stood up abruptly, slamming his knee on the underside of the table and causing their plates to jump. “God damn, blabbering Walter. I told him to keep his trap shut.”

“Awe come now Randall.” Cletus worked his way back into the conversation. “You had to have known it was going to get out. I had to go all the way to the Exxon station ten miles outside of town, just to throw some gas in my tank. Now that’s big news around here.”

“Mommy, what’s a murder?”

Ellie ignored the question. There would be lots of time to explain to Aiden the horrors of the world, and Ellie didn’t want to start tonight. But she couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer and decided to try and pry some more information out of Randall. “Who is it? The victim I mean, is it anyone we know?”

Randall’s ears grew red. He cleared his plate from the table and made his way to the kitchen, bumping the swinging door with his backside.

“This discussion is closed. I don’t want to hear another word about it, understand?” The tone in his voice left no room for argument. They sat there silent for a moment before Ellie excused herself and followed Randall into the kitchen. Inside, she found him leaning up against the refrigerator and nursing a newly popped Budweiser, entrenched in thought. This town was like a giant sewing circle with all the residents slowly knitting away while trying to be the next person to spill some irresistible gossip. As usual, Randall sat in the middle, often the topic of conversation. The taste it left in his mouth was sickening- he was just so damn sick of it all- now he had to be careful how he questioned people or they could leak vital details to the killer himself without even knowing it. Ellie stopped just short of him, debating whether or not to roust him from his thought, afraid she might anger him further.

“Randall, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

“Forget it.” Another gulp of Bud followed.

“I won’t ask anymore questions, okay.” The silence hummed in the air. “Listen, Cletus said he would take Aiden tonight. Are you up to having some company?” It was more of a request than a question. The softness of her voice had its desired effect, calming Randall down and sending his thoughts elsewhere. He turned around slowly, gazing at her while he spoke.

“I think I would like some company tonight.”

She lay with her head on his chest, listening to the beating of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing. This was the time she relished, resting in his arms and basking in the afterglow of their love making sessions. He was a quiet man and not much for pillow talk, but Ellie was content just to be near him, to feel the energy that radiated out from him. She pulled gently at the hair on his chest with her left hand, running her fingers through it and contemplating how she was going to say what was on her mind. She decided there was no other way but to just come straight out with it.

“Randall.”

“Um hmm.” His voice was groggy with the first stage of sleep.

“I love you.” There was an awkward moment where he just opened his eyes and looked at her, not saying anything. Ellie felt like crawling into a hole afraid of how he might respond. “Do you love me?”

FOURTEEN

He had done everything right. That sniveling nosey son of a bitch Hagstrom must have found the body. What in the hell was he doing going through his own trash, like some kind of hobo. His hands were shaking again, only this time it was worse, much worse. The last time he could remember shaking this badly was five years ago when he tried to stop drinking. He had gone camping alone up near Mt. Hood in Oregon, taking with him his fishing gear and two fifths of scotch. The whiskey bit a little better than the trout that day and before he even had a nibble he had polished off both bottles, leaving him three sheets and a bedspread to the wind.

The drunken fishing turned out to be one calamity after the other; he had slipped on the riverbank and fallen in twice, scaring the fish and making his testicles leap into his stomach at the first splash of the frigid glacier runoff. Then, on what turned out to be his last cast of the day he had snared a tree limb on the opposite bank, tying up his best lure and making him livid. He had slashed his wrist nearly half an inch deep while trying to cut the line loose, causing himself to damn near bleed to death right there on the riverbank. His doc had said he was lucky to regain full use of his fingers. The decision to stop drinking was self rendered right then and there, and he made it nearly four days before the shakes and twitches had come on violently, making him act the part of an epileptic with a surly disposition.

He brought his mind back to reality and focused on his new problems, but first he needed a drink. Sobriety didn’t work then and he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t work now. He set up three shot glasses listening to their bottoms clink against the marble top bar, and then wrapped his left hand around the bottle and his right hand around his wrist in a feeble effort to steady his aim. The whiskey splashed out of the bottle filling the glasses and watering the bar, still most of it made it into the glasses and most of it was acceptable. When he was twenty-one Darrow had been in a bar and seen a businessman with the shakes trying to down a pint of ale and spilling most of it on his lap. He finally succeeded by wrapping his tie around his wrist to steady his arm. What a pathetic fuck, Darrow had thought to himself. I’ll never be like that. Now look at you Jacky boy, you pathetic fuck, shaking so badly you couldn’t hit a barn door if you had to piss. He downed the shots one by one. That ought to take some of the edge off.

He stood up from the kitchen stool and pulled the underwear out of the crack of his ass with his good hand. His thumb still throbbed every time he used it. He had pulled the bandage off to “let it breath” like his momma always told him to do, but Jesus did it ache while it was breathing. Darrow placed the thumb in his mouth, feeling the searing burn as the wound adjusted to the elevated temperature in his mouth before settling down to a dull throbbing ache. He snatched the bottle of whiskey off the counter and stumbled his way to the door, chugging half the bottle on his way and heading straight for a quick nap on the living room sofa.

Inside the living room was shrouded in darkness, outside the moon was glowing in a half crescent. Darrow watched it through the bay window marveling about the origins of the universe the way drunks are apt to do. He plopped down on the sofa, feeling the metal springs scrape against his back. The upholstery had seen better days, and the springs had worked their way through the orange felt, jutting from the fabric like needles in a pushpin. Darrow peered around at the interior of the living room, and smiled. He certainly wasn’t going to make the cover of Good Frickin’ Housekeeping. The room itself was massive, with twenty feet high ceilings and a stone hearth fireplace complete with a mantle higher than a man’s head. It had the ability to make you feel tiny while you were standing in it. To enhance the ambience Darrow had added the couch, a scuffed up coffee table, and a twenty-seven inch television set resting comfortably on the floor.

He took another long swig from the bottle and slammed it down on the oak coffee table, adding another scratch to the collection of blemishes adorning its top. His mother’s head looked up at him from the coffee table where it sat. It was most displeased.

“That’s what happens when you don’t use a coaster Jacky boy.”

“Well I’m not using a coaster now momma and I don’t give a fuck, you hear me? I could care less if I scratch the shit out of your precious coffee table, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it because you’re dead.” Darrow threw his head back and laughed, an angry morbid laugh. “You hear me bitch? YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed and the laughs subsided into muffled sobs. He clutched the bottle one more time and drained the remaining whisky, feeling the slow burn as it worked its way down his windpipe. He dropped the bottle at his feet, listening to it rattle against the hardwood before falling silent. His mothers head vanished from his subconscious, winking out in a flash and Leaving Jack alone again.

“You’re fucking dead.” It came out as a whisper.

The room was beginning to spin. If there was ever a blight cast upon alcoholics it wasn’t the vomiting, or the cirrhosis, or even the shakes, it was the damn spins. The awful merry go round that turned incessantly every time he closed his eyes, tormenting him mercilessly when all he wanted was to get some sleep. Darrow forced himself to stand, placing his hand against the armrest and pressing his body upward. He wobbled at the top, swaying back and forth willing himself not to topple over. Then he placed one foot in front of the other and began to pace the living room.
Gotta keep moving Jacky boy, or the spins will catch up to ya.

The shadow moved out of the corner of his eye. Darrow wheeled about on one foot facing the north wall, wobbling the entire time and struggling to maintain his balance. It had a comical appearance when viewed from afar, like a drunken tightrope walker performing a pirouette. What in the hell was that? It had darted across the room trying to cross the patch of moonlight while he wasn’t watching. But he had seen it, even while drunk his eyes were catlike, tracing the movement through the darkness.

“I saw you. So you might as well come out you little bastard.” The words came out slurred and slow. Christ I’m drunk he thought, I sound like Abby. “Come out you little shit, or I’ll rip you a new one!”

His words were filled with false bravado. Truth be told, Darrow was scared. And it had to be something pretty God damn freaky to break through the liquid courage that was pumping through his veins. He began to shuffle his feet slowly backwards, not wanting to make any sudden movements. His boots scraped along the floorboards. Darrow reached back behind him, feeling for the sofa. He found it and traced his fingers along the armrest as he worked his way over to the empty whisky bottle. He began to shuffle faster, assuming the worst and not wanting to be unprepared if it came for him. One thing was for sure, if that thing did have any intentions of coming for him it would get a face full of glass.

(assuming it has a face)

Jesus Jack, you’re loosing it. No need to go and get all panicky, just a little further and-

The back of his boot struck the whisky bottle kicking it into the leg of the coffee table producing a clang that sounded like a gunshot in the empty living room. He spun around prepared to snatch the bottle off the floor, instead he kicked it again sending it sliding across the room and crashing into the hearth where it spun like a top on the stone and oscillated under its unbalanced weight.

(just like spin the bottle Jacky)

Darrow dropped to his knees and began to crawl towards the spinning bottle as fast as he could.

(‘round it goes, where it stops nobody knows)

He could feel the thing moving up behind him, enraged by the clamor and his idle threats. The bottle began to slow its rotation, growing louder as its oscillations became closer together. At last he had spanned the distance between the sofa and the fireplace, his hand clamped down on the bottleneck and he flipped from his knees to his hind quarters bringing the bottle around in a swinging arc, expecting to hear the crunch of glass against bone.

(or whatever that thing is made of)

Instead he found himself alone. Like the pathetic fuck of a drunk that he had become, alone and drunk and scared. He disgusted himself. He tried to rise from his seated position but lost his balance instead, falling backward and smashing his head against the stone, creating blinding pain behind his eyes and rattling his molars.

“Son of a bitch!”

Darrow hurled the bottle against the far wall in his anger, striking a steel support beam underneath the drywall. The bottle exploded with a loud pop and then seemed to fall to the ground in slow motion, the tiny shards of glass illuminated briefly in the moonlight like a child’s fourth of July sparkler, and then they were gone, disappearing into the darkness below. Darrow placed his head in his hands and wept. He cried like a scared little boy, and in many ways that’s exactly what he was.

At first Abby was terrified, Brenda had an uncanny knack for waking her up in the middle of the night when the sky was darkest and the room was chilled with inactivity. She supposed ghosts didn’t adhere to common etiquette rules concerning calling after hours. Tonight Brenda had chosen a rather chilling way to roust Abby from her sleep. It was not intentionally malicious or even planned out in any way, but the result was terrifying nonetheless. Abby heard a peculiar sound that filtered its way into the cortex of her brain, and incorporated itself into her dreams.

CHHT. CHHT. CHHT.

Abby’s mind struggled to find an image for the strange sound. She had been dreaming about the days she spent as a teenager, by Tuscar’s Lake. The hot Arizona sun pounded down on her and her friends while they swam and frolicked about on the lakeshore. Suddenly her father was there, sitting Indian style and whittling a piece of driftwood as he often did during those days. Each stroke of the knife coincided with the sound filling her ears.

CHHT. CHHT.

She could visualize the tiny shavings of wood with precise accuracy as they flew from the knife blade and collected in a tiny pile at the base of her father’s feet. But the picture she had drawn in her head did not fit the sound of whittling, not quite. Her mind struggled again to find the proper image for the familiar sound. And then she had it. It was the sound of a hairbrush making its way through shoulder length hair. The constant stroking produced such a soothing sound as the bristles separated each hair from one another freeing them from their entanglement. The image of her father was replaced with that of her mother, slowly working the comb through Abby’s knots and tangles. It was a comforting memory, filled with love and compassion. Oh how Abby longed for her mother. She cursed the day she left the safety of her home to explore the open road with a rodeo cowboy, wanting once again to be with the mother who had nurtured her so tenderly. But the image of her mother began to fade as she slipped quietly away from her slumber and slowly awoke to the reality around her. The sound was filling the room.

CHHT. CHHT.

Abby opened her eyes to see Brenda sitting at the foot of her bed facing away from her, running a brush over the base of her scalp and through hair that was no longer there. It was a grisly sight; she was horribly disfigured. There wasn’t an inch of skin left untouched by the searing heat of the flames. Any flesh that she had left rose and fell in striations of sinew and scarring that ran along the contours of her body without rhyme or reason. At its thickest her skin was nearly three inches deep, other places white bone could be seen poking through the charred flesh, making it difficult to look upon her but near impossible to look away. She was clad in what Abby could only assume was once a nightgown; the fabric had been burned into her flesh, melting into her body at the seams, producing an awful spider web pattern. Despite her lack of hair, the brush still emulated the sound of the grooming ritual, sending shivers up Abby’s spine.

Tears welled up inside of Abby as she stared at this child, an innocent creature of God trapped in limbo between two worlds. She was six years old when she died, stranded on the second floor along with her little brother, separated from their parents by a towering wall of white flame that incinerated everything in its path. At least when Abby died the pain of her mangled body would be nothing but a painful memory. This poor child could spend the rest of eternity in her current state. Suddenly Abby felt shame for all the times she cursed her miserable life, not knowing that there were others that suffered more.

“Duss Id hurd?”

Brenda paused and rotated her head slowly around 180 degrees, not turning her shoulders in the slightest. It had an unnerving effect on Abby, God she hated when she did that. Brenda smiled, the charred remnants of her lips crackled as the skin separated exposing her small white teeth.

“Hi Abby. Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt, it tickles.” A small laugh escaped her. “Why? Does it hurt when you brush your hair?”

“Ihaben braush my air ina long ime.”

Brenda paused. “How come?”

“Ma harms et oo ired.”

“You don’t have to speak out loud Abby. I told you, I can hear your thoughts.”

Brenda had mentioned this last time they spoke and to Abby’s amazement she found it to be true, although the process of communicating without using her voice was difficult to get used to. Still, she enjoyed the freedom of being able to speak the way she did before the accident. Abby focused her mind and concentrated on her thoughts.