Dead Echo

  Chapter 31: The Girls

  Four days later, a Thursday, Jester sat parked in his mailtruck on the lip of the ditch that curled around the pond to the highway. His hands were still shaking so badly he feared he wouldn’t be able to drive home. He could just see how that would look at work, leaving Federal property unattended on the side of the road. It’d just serve to confirm the disquiet he knew to be breeding and it was really the goddamndest thing. He was throwing it all away, this job, his life. He could feel it slipping through his fingers and there was not one damn thing he could do about it. Everything had changed since Old Shake had been killed. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since that night, and even though he lay for hours lost in the agony of insomnia, his mind racing like a runaway locomotive in the night-light gloom of the bedroom, sleep never got any closer. And he knew why.

  There were things out there in the woods. There were things out there and they were coming to get him. He hadn’t the slightest idea why, but this knowledge was concrete. They were coming to get him and if he gave whatever it was the slightest edge he was a dead man. It was that simple. Every night he could hear them edging around the house, dragging long devious nails along the walls. He’d actually taken to firing shots through his fucking bedroom walls, and then, in the daylight, he’d watch the little circle of lights meander across the floor like marbles. He heard things howling too, late in the night, things in pain, sometimes sure it was Old Shakes’ bitch, but others not because he’d never heard her in pain before, and the sound sent razors along his spine. He’d barely been able to function the last week. Thompson, his boss, had called him into his office just yesterday, trying to feel him out (Jester knew this), but he hoped he’d revealed nothing. The foot was still all wrapped up and hurt like a motherfucker but at least that was starting to get better; he could now walk around on it without the crutches.

  But this whole fucking thing was craziness. There was only one person in the world he felt sure would have had the slightest edge on this thing but she’d been dead for going on twenty years. Just thinking about his grandmother made him want to roll up into a tight little ball and hide his head, but he knew if he went that far there’d be no return. Someone would find him, perhaps days later, shit-fouled and piss-stained, crumpled in the corner, half dead of starvation mumbling to himself and hiding from the light. Because that, my friend, was what crazy motherfuckers did. If those goddamn things in the woods didn’t get him first.

  He looked out the dirty Jeep windshield and ran a hand over his dry, cracked lips. He’d been gutting it out lately, trying to plow through the impossibility of his thoughts to some safe place, but as each day passed he felt that figment of a place receding into some lost darkness. Death was close on and he didn’t think it was going to take no for an answer.

  He tried to pull his mind away, looked over his shoulder to the back where all the mail was. Still so much to do. He hadn’t gotten through half the deliveries yesterday before the fear came on him so fast and strong that he’d been forced to turn around and go home. And Jesus, talk about crazy. What had he done? Sat hunched in his room, the gun in his hand, his finger hard on the trigger, looking at his foot propped there on the chair. His eyes ticking off the seconds of the clock until first light. And now here he was.

  He hadn’t even brought any lunch today (his religion in the past) but it wasn’t going to make much difference. He hadn’t eaten much in two weeks; he’d dropped almost twelve pounds. “Whathafuck…whathafuck,” he whispered looking far down the street. Like some kind of fucking ghost town, he thought, and that didn’t help much. He’d had the route for years and even though a lot of the other guys bitched about the heat, he’d never let it bother him. Sure it was hot, but in the summer there were more people out and about. Kids and he liked that. But not now. Not here. This place was becoming like an old, forgotten cemetery in the country. Not a damn soul in sight. Not a car moving along the roads. Nothing. People weren’t even going out to check the mail, for Christ’s sake. There were a couple of houses back here with so much back-dated shit in the box he’d have to start bringing it back to the postal hub.

  Then his eye skirted sideways to the torn bucket seat beside him. It was empty save for a thin bundle of circulars and random correspondence caught up with a rubber band at both ends. Patsy Standish and the address, though he didn’t need it and never would. He knew more about the woman than anyone else back here and she’d lived here the shortest time. He knew she was a widow, even at her age, knew she’d had a daughter who was dead too. And also, worse, he knew she was in trouble. But the worst thing, the very worst, was the fact that he had no idea how or even why he knew any of these things. He’d never talked to her, had only seen her once or twice in passing, had never heard anyone else talking about her or her situation. Not a single thing.

  But nonetheless, he knew. Knew it like his own right hand and as if in confirmation looked down where it lay limp in his lap, and he thought about insanity a little more. He also thought about what it was he would have to do. It made his gut tie up like a leather knot in the sun and sweat break across his brow but he didn’t see any other way around it. He was going to have to warn her. And that’s where his ideas ran out because when he considered it from her point of view he realized he’d really gone off around the bend. He was thinking like a fucking lunatic and that’s the one thing he feared the most. He could understand crazy; hell, people went batshit all the time. Killed their wives, shot their children, burned up complete strangers in their homes. This was nothing new. All you had to do was turn on the fucking TV and you could have all you could stomach. Only thing was, he wasn’t considering doing any of that, as if shooting up his own house in the middle of the night wasn’t enough to convince just about anybody he was ready for the fucking nuthatch already.

  He was going to try and help her. He honestly believed that and that’s what scared him the most. Going up to a strange, white woman he didn’t know from Adam and trying to convince her that she was in grave danger and should get the fuck out as quickly as possible. He could see her face right now in his mind’s eye. Oh no, there was no doubt about it; she’d think she was in jeopardy all right. She’d probably hightail it inside the minute he was out of the driveway and call the cops for sure. Because that would be the reasonable thing to do.

  Hell, he reminded himself, it might even be the right thing to do.

  So…

  He looked back at the bundle of banded mail. No time like the present. All he had to do was start this fucking Jeep and drive a couple of blocks down the road and all that could be done in one nice little deal. He looked at the keys dangling from the ignition, mocking him. Then he looked at his hand. Just turn the key and the business would be on. He brought his left hand up and scratched at the back of his neck, grimacing. That’s all it would take…

  And the sudden laughter scattered his thoughts to the wind. At first he had no idea where the sound was coming from. He glanced up from his lap, left out the driver’s side window and saw nothing. But still the playful laughter continued. He swiveled his head right, skirting the length of the windshield, seeing only a frontage of closed up houses and empty yards. Continued on until his eyes found the passenger side window…and stopped.

  Two young girls were far out across the span of rapidly growing grass, right out there in the small grove of trees he’d had lunch at a couple of times. They were not looking his way but that’s where the laughter was coming from all right. He leaned across the seat to get a better view. No doubt there were two, poking something before them with a long stick. Laughing, poking and then jumping away. Every once in a while the bigger one with the stick would strike down overhanded upon whatever they were toying with and then back again. Odd…

  Then, she turned his direction and pointed. Still laughing. They both wore identical white dresses, frilled at the arms and knees. Totally out of place. They had to be sisters, their aspects almost identical across the
expanse of the field. And pointing his direction. Seemed to be motioning for his attention. Well, they damn sure had that.

  He worked the handle on his side and stepped carefully out into the sunlight, mindful of his foot. Limped around to the front of the Jeep and stood off from the hood. They weren’t laughing anymore but they were definitely looking his way. The smaller of the two waved (he heard a faint but tinny laughter bounce off the lake and wash over and through him) and seemed to beckon again. Unconsciously he put a hand to his chest as if their roles were reversed and he was being called to task. The taller one laughed and hit down with the stick again.

  He felt his feet moving in that direction without any volition of his own. Found himself wading through the ditch, moving off through the knee high grass, not even thinking much about his foot now. The girls went back to whatever it was they were messing with. Totally oblivious, it seemed, to the man coming toward them. He thought to call out, then didn’t. Just kept moving. When he got to the edge of the clearing they quit what they were doing and turned their attention back toward him. Both stood motionless, the one with the stick letting it hang down at her feet.

  He mincingly stepped forward. Before him circled a large expanse of dirt, scrubbed by many feet and bicycle tires. He noticed, not far away, ten feet perhaps, in the reach of a pine tree, the remnants of a treehouse long gone to neglect. Both the girls were still looking at him. He stopped. Then the bigger one said:

  “Hey mister. You look tired.”

  He stumbled forward a few more steps into the enclosure of the dusty circle and stopped. “Sorry?” he said.

  She stepped forward, away from the one who had to be her sister. “I said,” she repeated, “you look very tired.”

  He looked down at his feet and shrugged, wondering if he was imagining the hint of sarcasm in her tone. He looked back at them. Considered a retort and all he could come up with was, “What are you two doing?”

  The girls looked at one another and giggled into their hands. “Playing,” came the response. Again from the older-looking of the two.

  “Playing?” It seemed he was lost in some strange dream. His sight hazed before him. And then, when nothing was forthcoming, “with what?”

  “This,” the younger of the two said, and pointed down at her feet. His eyes followed her finger and he saw a large, overturned can in the dirt. He hadn’t noticed it before and looking at it made his skin go cold. He shuffled back a step, wished he had the crutches.

  “Don’t,” the older one said and he stopped.

  He found his voice far down in his throat. “What are you doing girls?” Something urgent was pressing him now to know.

  She smiled and stepped toward him. “Playing,” she repeated.

  And then, because he could think of nothing else, “Where are your parents?”

  They looked at each other again and he thought he heard their strange laughter though he didn’t see their mouths move. The older one looked him straight in the eye and this time she was not smiling. Definitely not smiling. “I told you already,” she said deviously. “Playing…come see.”

  He felt his feet drag him forward another couple feet. “What is that?” he said, not wanting to know.

  “Nothing much. Come see. Really.”

  At a loss he found the same question. “Where are your parents?” and he saw now their dresses were fouled and ripped, as if they’d been involved in some sort of recent accident.

  The smaller of the two pointed off through the trees toward where the houses were. “Over there,” she said and he turned his head. For just a moment he thought he saw the burly form of a man standing just off on the other side of the ditch by the road and his breath whistled sharp. The memory of the old man he’d come upon weeks before, smiling and spitting before he meandered off into the underbrush curled in his imagination, but their renewed laughter broke him away from these thoughts before they got a very deep purchase. He heard the stick ting off the can again. And then something else.

  “You should mind your own business, mister. That’s what daddy says,” and he immediately forgot about the man by the road. Jerked his head back to the girls. The older of the two was looking at him and this time her eyes were cold evil. One side of her mouth was tied up in a snarl. “He says people who mess in other people’s business is bound to get hurt.” She smiled now, maliciously, and Jester watched as the younger one broke away to flank him.

  “That what he says, huh?” he said, trying to keep them both in his field of vision, but not daring now to take his eyes off the one with the stick. He thought about his damnable foot again; he might as well be stuck in cement. She laughed and hit the top of the can with the stick again. She nodded and Jester saw what he thought to be a bloody knot of hair at the base of her neck. She seemed not to mind. He lost the other one off to the left and he stepped up another two steps though that was the last thing on earth he wanted to do right now. “What is that there?” he demanded, hating himself to the depths of his soul for asking.

  “Oh it’s just nothing,” the girl said and there was definitely blood caked along the back of her neck, down the back of her dress. She took the stick and hit the can a little harder, tipping it slightly and he could see it was covering something. His eyes would not turn away. “Never was,” she continued and this time she grabbed the stick with both hands and swung it like a baseball bat, connecting with the can right below the rim. It caught for just a bare moment on something and then came free, rolling off into the dust like a loose wheel off a child’s racer.

  The head beneath it had been dead for a long time. The skin was black and loose-looking, the eyes rolled out on crusted stalks. What must have been a tongue, now a black cancer of corruption stretched the mouth widely. He felt something whack him hard just below the knees and he went down in the dust, his mind spinning at the thing in the dirt. The neck was ragged as if it’d been pulled rather than cut off. He felt his stomach heave, saw the girl with the stick get closer. “Should mind your own business, mister,” he heard, staring at the black mess of blood clotting the dirt below and around the severed head. He saw some hair clinging to the side of the rusty can, felt the presence of the other sneaking up from behind. Still, he could not take his eyes away.

  “It’s time,” she said and he did look now, caught her coming toward him, tried to scream in the broad daylight of the bright summer day as the point of the stick drove straight through his right eye and directly into his brain.