We Live Inside You (11 page)

He’s taking me to the place where we lost Michael.

This thought, more than the speed of the car and the sight of barely illuminated trees blurring past, cemented Laura’s unease. She hadn’t been up this way since the day her little brother disappeared, and never planned on returning. Now this “date” with Tony was dragging her back.

Laura silently cursed herself for not coming up with a better way to make money. Her current plan wasn’t getting any smarter, or easier. Could she even call it a plan? How many small town drug dealers could she seduce and steal from, before one of them caught on and decided to hurt her, or worse? Word would travel; she’d be in danger. Tony, the guy driving, seemed like the type that would own a gun.

When the headlights of the car cut through the wispy road fog ahead of them and illuminated the sign reading “Benham Falls-Fourteen Miles” she realized that this was
not
where she wanted to be. Anywhere else would be better. Then she forced herself to remember her dad, lying in bed at home, under thin sheets, lungs barely pulling oxygen while he dozed in and out of a Vicodin stupor.

He probably still wishes he had a cigarette right now. Well, we can’t afford any, damn it. I can barely afford the doctor’s appointments, so we’re just going to have to disappoint the Marlboro man.

The thought of her freshly divorced dad—mom bailed when the diagnosis dropped—and of his mounting bills at St. Peter’s Hospital, re-focused her on the task at hand. The guy in the seat next to her had to fall in love, or at least lust. The faster, the better. The last chump, he was stupid with love after just two days. Love earned trust, and trust earned secrets, like where the guy kept his cash, and that Rolex he wore only on special occasions.

A shoebox. These guys, they all want to think they’re Scarface, and they all end up keeping rolls of cash in a little cardboard shoebox.

Laura tried not to enjoy her cleverness, but failed. A smile was spreading across her face, helping to ease the piano-wire anxiety that was sinking into her chest.

She shifted in the tan leather bucket seat of the ’68 Camaro, giving Tony an eyeful of leg as her short skirt hiked up her left thigh. Tony glanced over quickly, caught the flash of skin, and turned his eyes back to the road. He grinned.

“Almost there, babe.”

It was the first thing he’d said since he picked her up earlier that evening. Laura was fine with that. She didn’t want words. She might start talking and mention the wrong thing. Draw suspicion. Or she might start talking about the time her family visited this same forest and came back missing one person. She might mention how they never even found Michael’s body.

No, she was content to play with the electricity in the air between them. Better to turn this into a fantasy. Reality could be so unpleasant.

Laura pretended to yawn, pushing her chest forward with her arms raised above her head, moving her legs slightly so that her pleated camouflage skirt hiked up even further.

It was her turn to grin as she saw Tony shifting in his seat. They were both swimming in tension, nerves on full alert as the stereo blasted and the air that rushed in through the windows grew cooler.

The road became thin and curvy as they approached the entrance to the Tolaquin County Forest, but Tony didn’t slow the car for a moment. He slammed through the corners. The rear right tire spit out gravel as it caught the soft shoulder. Laura wanted to tell him to cool it on the alpha-male stunt driver shit, but she didn’t want to disturb the chemistry of their little game.

This was a game she had to win. Till now, it had been easy. Asking around town, finding out who the local dealer was. Getting his name. Tracking him down.

In another life I’d make a great cop.

Earlier that day she’d met Tony at the Chevron. Marco at the pool hall had said that Tony kept the Chevron job for appearances, and it was an easy place for people to drive through and buy whatever Tony was selling.

Laura saw Tony squeegeeing the window of a mini-van, checked out his broad shoulders, his jet black hair, his olive skin, the way he filled out his oil-smeared jumpsuit, and shouted, “Hey, nice ass!” She loved playing the aggressor.

Tony walked over and scoped her out in return. He let a slow, straight-tooth smile bloom across his face, and said, “Thanks.”

Laura licked her lips, slow, and said, “What’s your name?”

“Tony.”

“Well, hi, Tony. You got a pen?”

He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She wrote her name and cell-phone number on a twenty dollar bill, folded it, and slipped it in one of his front pants pockets.

Two hours later her cell phone rang. “Hey, Laura, you wanna do something special?”

It now appeared to her that by “do something special” he meant “drive out to Benham Falls and get naked.” At least that was the subtext to the tension that hung heavy in the speeding car. Laura was just happy her plan was working. Her dad and home were over a hundred miles away. She’d need a place to sleep tonight. Hopefully Tony had a nice, big bed with a down comforter and some thick pillows. Hopefully Tony had a heavy, hidden shoebox, and slept like the dead.

Hopefully we can head back to town soon, and get the hell out of this place.

The Camaro rolled to a stop as they approached the gate between the paved road and the dirt passage that led to Benham Falls. He hopped out, swung the gate open, and slid back into the car.

He turned to Laura. “They don’t want people up here in the spring. It’s still pretty cold at night, and the area around the waterfall can get icy.”

“So?” she said, trying to maintain her attitude even as she cringed at the idea of stepping into the freezing cold in a short skirt and thin, black tank top.

“So,” he said, “people have died up here.”

She pictured her own little brother, five years old, smiling in front of the waterfall on a sunny afternoon.

Is that my last memory of him? Has to be. This is the last place I ever saw him.

Laura tried to stop remembering, but the echo of her parent’s panicked voices screaming her brother’s name still entered her mind. Instant gooseflesh, shivers.

“Don’t worry, though, I’ll make sure we stay warm.”

Tony slid a calloused hand over her knee, then drew it toward the inside of her thigh. As his hand shifted a feminine-looking bracelet, with blue and black beads, slid down his forearm to his wrist, jangling on its way down. The beads formed the outline of a horse’s head, raised and proud. Laura wondered if it was a trophy from another conquest, or if he just felt comfortable wearing pretty jewelry. Either way, this guy was different enough to be interesting, and the warmth of his fingers made her cheeks rosy. Laura didn’t expect these feelings. Romance, so far, hadn’t been par for her twisted course.

She smiled at him and said, “Just make sure I’m taken care of.” Laura laughed, trying to come off sly, to ignore her urge to hop in the driver’s seat once he got out and drive as far from here as fast as she could.

They drove for four more minutes and then he slowed, killing the lights and the engine. Laura could hear the roaring waterfall through the glass windows of the Camaro. She immediately hated the surging volume of it. It was the soundtrack to the worst day of her life. Laura pushed those feelings down. Right now had to be about Tony, and nothing else. She had to earn his trust or soon she’d lose another family member.

He could be dead right now. While you’re away robbing lowlifes for medical money, he could have wheezed out his final breath. Alone.

Laura ignored the voice. Listening to her conscience was not an option.

She stepped out of the car and slammed the door, instantly feeling the cold bite of the higher altitude and the dampness of the waterfall’s backspray. Tony walked over to Laura and grabbed her delicate left hand, enveloping it with his.

“Follow me. I’ll show you something.”

She followed him through the woods in the dark of the moonlit night, towards the sound of the waterfall. He walked with a sure-footedness and Laura briefly pictured herself as a notch on his bedpost.

“You bring all your girls up here, Tony?”

“No,” he said, through laughter, “just the special ones. My family and I used to live in a house bordering the park so I’m pretty familiar with the area. Used to play here as a kid.”

Laura was surprised by how much she liked Tony’s voice. The first guy she’d stolen from, her old boyfriend Mark, and the second guy she robbed, Adam, they both had something nasty in their voices. A greasy sort of power. Tony sounded different. Still, she was cold. Her feet hurt. She wore platform shoes with crisscrossing straps on top, picturing this as more of a booze/cigarettes/dancing type date. She didn’t plan on this nature hike with Ranger Tony. Still, the firmness and warmth of Tony’s hand made her feel safer.

Tony guided her past a patch of trees into a clearing. Laura hadn’t seen Benham Falls since she was small, and she was still stunned by its sheer grandness. The nearly full moon reflected off the water, giving the whole area a shimmering, light blue glow. The hundred foot wide river was raging over the lip of the waterfall, about three hundred feet above them. The water roiled furiously at the point of impact, sending out a spray that within seconds coated her like cold sweat.

The memories—the sounds of her parents’ voices crumbling and growing hoarse as they yelled for Michael, the look of instant despair on the face of the park ranger who couldn’t help them—all of it wanted in to her head. Laura knew she had to stay in motion to keep from thinking. Maybe Tony could distract her.

She leaned in, ran her tongue lightly up the salty skin of Tony’s neck and then whispered in his ear. “It’s beautiful.” Somehow it wasn’t a lie. The falls couldn’t be denied their majesty.

His hands found the curve of her lower back and he kissed her. She could feel the beads of his funny bracelet pressing against her skin, strangely warm even through the fabric of her tank-top. Then they were kissing, intensely for a moment, then slowly pulling away. Laura found herself thrilled at the newness and willingness of Tony’s kiss. The kiss was good enough to make her think maybe this night could be okay; that maybe she was meant to come here and create good new memories to erase the old. The start of a new life. Tony pulled away.

“You’ve gotta see the cavern.”

He grabbed her hand and they continued down the trail towards the base of the falls.

“This used to be called Sotsone Falls, after this Indian lady. She was a princess, like an Indian princess, with the Tolaquin tribe, and back when they were relocating her tribe, she came up here and jumped off the falls in protest. Some way to go, huh? Well, supposedly, she’s
in
the falls, haunting them, cursing them, whatever. You’re supposed to be able to see her face in the falling water during a full moon. Anyway, people kept dying up here, falling and drowning and stuff, so they renamed the place Benham Falls in the thirties. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah.” Laura said. “Pretty weird.”

Inside she was trembling. She fought to keep it from showing; Tony was just starting to open up to her. She wanted to tell him that changing the name of the falls didn’t stop anybody from dying up here.

Then she looked up to the top of the falls and for a second she saw the Indian woman up there, staring back at her, pointing at her with one long finger.

She shook her head and turned away. A trick of the moonlight off the mist.

They reached the bottom of the falls and Tony led her across a series of lichen and moss-covered rocks that played hell with her slender ankles. Soon they were behind the waterfall, standing close to each other beneath the low ceiling of a cavern carved out by the falls. The smell of minerals was sharp, and the sound of the falls was deafening. The cavern was barely illuminated with the thin, gray light cast by the moon’s reflection off the falls. A cold drop of water fell from the black cavern ceiling and splattered on Laura’s scalp dead center. She was about to complain about the cold and her shoes and the hike, to say, “Hey, this cavern’s just lovely but we should go
now
,” when Tony grabbed her and pulled her in for a deep kiss.

Tony’s kisses were so sweet, so genuine in their urgency and attraction, that for a moment Laura was capable of forgetting again. He bit her lip playfully; he kissed her ears. He chewed at her neck and kissed the corners of her lips.

She sighed with pleasure; the shaking exhalation turned to thin vapor. She watched her breath float upwards, away from the shimmering light coming through the waterfall.

Tony kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. His lips felt so good on her skin, like a release from the ugly thoughts this place had forced on her, from the sickness that had permeated her new life with her father.

She tilted her head back, exalted, smiling.

That was when she saw the dead boy on the ceiling of the cavern.

Michael.

Her brother had black sockets where his eyes should have been, two holes in a pale, angry face. Thin trickles of blood ran from his open mouth. His little corduroy pants and yellow t-shirt were tattered and soaked dark crimson. He was floating down from the ceiling towards her, his arms and legs spread wide, and she was frozen with fear, oblivious to Tony’s urgent kisses.

The little boy floated closer to her and one tiny hand reached out toward her face. She could not move as she felt four cold fingers press against her forehead.

A black veil fell over her eyes and she couldn’t tell where she was, or who she was, or where Tony was. All she could do was
see
.

A small boy, at the top of the falls, picking up an old, beaded bracelet. The child, attracted to the bracelet and its horsehead pattern, slid it on to his wrist. Little Tony was a lucky boy that day. All smiles.

She saw that same boy pushing her brother into the river just north of the falls.

NO! Where were my parents? Where was I?

The vision provided no answers. It could only show her what her brother knew from that point on. The intimacy of his pain.

Michael, in his yellow t-shirt and corduroy pants, went over the falls and hit the water so hard his eyes were forced from his head.