The Spirit Clearing
Mark Tufo
Copyright 2012 Mark Tufo
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Editing by:
Gerald Rice
[email protected] Cover Art:
Shaed Studios, shaedstudios.com
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Dedications -
To my wife whose constant belief and helpful suggestions has turned this idea into a story I'm proud to share with all of you.
To Katherine Coynor, Gloria Marin, Sara Smolarek and Ken Keeler, my beta-readers gave me more advice and inspiration than I could have ever hoped for.
To John Ramsey Miller, just because I think you're the coolest cat I know!
To the brave men and women of the armed forces, I pray for your safety and am thankful for all your sacrifices.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE - The Drive-In
CHAPTER TWO - The Aftermath
CHAPTER THREE - The Meeting
CHAPTER FOUR - The Meeting Part Two
CHAPTER FIVE - Senior Year
CHAPTER SIX - College
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Encounter
CHAPTER EIGHT - Roger
CHAPTER NINE - End of School
CHAPTER TEN - The Wedding
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Life Changes
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Aftermath Part Two
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - 7 Cefalo Road
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Walkthrough
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Clearing
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The Past Returns
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - The Sheriff
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Sheriff Part Two
EPIL
OGUE
PROLOGUE
Hello Dear Reader, I hope you enjoy this latest installment in the alternate realities of our leading character Michael Talbot. I am very proud of this story as it is very different from anything I have written thus far. It is my sincerest hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
It was a cool fall evening the night Michael Talbot died. Why no one felt the need to tell him only the fates will ever know.
CHAPTER ONE - The Drive-In
The cars parked at the drive-in looked like they each had their own wood stove as smoke-funneled through cracked open windows. Management turned a blind eye at the numerous infractions as their tills filled with munchies money.
Mike was busy laying on coats of cheese sauce on his nachos when he listened in on a conversation better left unheard.
“I thought we were going to have to throw this food out,” Steve Trandell, assistant manager at the I-128 drive-in, had said to his boss.
“There’s a reason I did the stoner movies this weekend,” Bob Brandle, the manager, told his underling. “These kids will eat anything.”
“I know,” Steve said as he handed over a hamburger to an eager eater, that he himself would not have fed to his dog.
***
“I don’t think I could smoke any more of this if I had to,” Paul said as he handed the oversized joint into the backseat where a glassy-eyed Dennis was staring deeply into his wax-coated cup of cola. He was cognizant enough to grasp the funny left handed cigarette, although more likely from muscle memory than true thought.
“Is that thing still going?” Mike asked, exasperated as he walked back up to the car with an armload of food that only the young and unknowing or the seriously starved would consider edible.
“Man, I’m glad to see you, I’m starving,” Paul said as he reached across the seat to help his friend back in. “Dennis hasn’t said anything since you left, I think we might have lost him for the night.” Paul laughed.
The trio of friends had gone to one of the few remaining drive-ins still open in the early 80s on the East coast. Trying their best to keep their doors open in an ever changing market, the facility had decided to do an all-night Cheech and Chong marathon, what they made at the admission gate was minimal but that was more than made up for at the concession booth where lines of pimply faced teenagers paid entirely too much for small slivers of pizza, dried up corn dogs, stale nachos with old cheese sauce that smelled more like feet than anything else and flat sodas. Rounded out with chewy popcorn and butter-like sauce, the kids ate it as if it were five-star cuisine, but that had more to do with the influence of marijuana than the food itself.
***
“You know, this shit, really isn’t all that good,” Mike said around a mouthful of food.
“I know but I can’t stop eating it,” Paul answered.
Dennis still hadn’t said anything from the backseat, but now his fixation had moved to the hot dog that could be more accurately described as ‘lukewarm cat’ in his hand.
“I’m gonna get a beer to wash down this turd in my mouth. You want one?” Mike asked Paul as he twisted to reach into the backseat and fumble around with the cooler.
“Sounds good,” Paul muffled out.
“Hey buddy,” Mike said to Dennis.
Dennis slowly moved his gaze away from the hot dog to Mike’s face. A smile immediately spread across his broad features. “Hey, Mike, where you been?” Dennis asked.
“I think the same could be said about you. You want a beer?” Mike asked as he pulled his dripping can laden hand out of the frostiness.
“Beer?” Dennis asked as if he were hearing the word for the first time and was not sure of its meaning.
“You know the cold wet stuff that makes you feel all funny in the head and makes you do really stupid shit around girls,” Mike answered his friend.
Dennis had lost track of the conversation and was now watching the individual drops of water drip from Mike’s hand.
“Dude, this thing is colder than hell, do you want it or not?” Mike asked now full on smiling at how stoned his friend was.
“Man, I told you already I want it,” Paul said from the front seat. “I’m dying of thirst up here.”
“I was talking to Dennis,” Mike answered.
“Is he listening?” Paul turned to see.
“I don’t think so,” Mike said, waving the can back and forth across Dennis’ field of vision. Dennis’ head would swivel to follow but with a pronounced delay.
“Mike, give me the beer, he’s sitting next to the cooler if he wants one he can get it.”
“I’m not sure he’d be able to figure out how to open it,” Mike said as he reached into the cooler and grabbed another beer, turning back around for the start of the second movie in the three movie set.
***
Paul and Mike had met two years previous when Mike’s parents had moved from his downtown Boston home and right into a Norman Rockwell painting that was a suburb called Walpole. They had become fast friends when they realized they both had a serious dislike for anything that resembled authority. Dennis had come into the mix the following school year when his father’s job had been transferred from New York City to Boston. The only part of Dennis that Paul and Mike could not reconcile was that damn Yankees hat he insisted on wearing everywhere. Other than that he was one of the coolest kids they knew.
At the ripe old age of sixteen-and-a-half, Paul had been the first of the trio to get his license;
it had taken three months and some heavy convincing of his father and stepmother that he was trustworthy enough to take the family car and his friends to the drive-in.
“This really is a sweet ride,” Mike said as he tried to rub away the cheese sauce he had dripped onto his seat.
Paul started laughing as he watched Mike. “I don’t think that’s gonna work.” Paul smiled as he handed over a napkin.
“Sorry,” Mike said, looking up with pleading eyes.
“Don’t worry about it, that’s where Barb (his stepmother, but not really wicked, just no clue) sits.” Paul and Mike both started laughing, it was no secret that Paul and Barb rarely saw eye-to-eye. She constantly tried to enforce her book learned child rearing authority and Paul thwarted her every attempt.
Mike felt a frantic tapping on his left shoulder and turned so quickly he was almost rewarded with a red hot cherry from the end of the joint into his left eye. “Shit, Dennis! You almost burned my eyeball,” Mike said, jumping quickly back.
Dennis didn’t seem to notice as he felt his notification period was done and dropped the lit joint onto the seat.
“Dammit!” Mike said grabbing for it quickly, but not before it burned a none too flattering hole in the fabric, it looked like an old puckered scar.
“If I wasn’t so wasted I think I’d be concerned,” Paul said rubbing his finger over the charred wound.
“Man, I’m sorry!” Mike said, fixating on the burn. He was fairly certain if he came home with a burn hole in his folks’ fifteen year old piece of shit station wagon he’d get thrown out. This was no old rolling Wally wagon. Unless that was what they were calling 1983 Saabs these days.
“Mike, don’t sweat it, we’ll end up having a big family meeting about it and how this is a good learning experience,” Paul said, still smiling.
“Your funeral,” Mike said as he took another toke he did not want. It was such an ingrained motion he completed it without even thinking about it.
The conversation quickly subsided as the screen lit up and their attention was pulled in its direction.
***
Four hours later, Mike had to wake Paul up as the roar of multiple engines starting up disturbed his slumbering.
“Whoa, what time is it?” Mike asked, trying to pull the imaginary cotton from his mouth. He took a drag from the warm beer still wrapped in his hand. “Ugh, that was no help,” Mike said, opening the door to pour the contents out. He peeked back in to the other occupants in the car. “Well, it’s only a party foul if someone else is there to witness it,” he said, the tepid liquid sloshing to the ground.
Dennis was passed out sideways on the backseat, he was using the cooler as the world’s least comfortable pillow. Paul had at some point reclined his chair and was snoring loudly, a fine line of drool running down the side of his chin.
“Shit, wish I had known the seats went back that far,” Mike said as he rubbed his stiffening neck. “Hey, buddy.” Mike shook his friend.
“Yeah?” Paul asked cracking one eyelid to see who dared disturb him.
“I think we missed the third movie.”
“There was a third movie? What fucking time is it?” Paul said, adjusting his seat into a more driver-friendly posture, but not by much.
“Three,” Mike said, looking back to the concession stand and the oversized clock hanging on the outside.
“Dammit, my curfew is two. I’m screwed.”
Mike didn’t think now was the time to bring back up the seat burn that was poking uncomfortably in his thigh. Mike’s curfew was ‘whenever he got home’ thanks to a broken home, but he was in no way complaining. At least something good had come out of his parents’ constant bickering.
Paul fumbled with the keys, starting the car. “Where’s Dennis?” Paul asked, trying to reestablish some normalcy to his skewed reality.
“Backseat. He’s crashed out,” Mike responded.
“Dude, are you going to get in trouble?” Paul asked, concerned.
“Not me, man, my dad is up in Maine for the weekend and my mother is off playing cards until sometime late Sunday. I won’t see either of them until then.”
“I envy you sometimes, Mike.”
“Don’t, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“What about him?” Paul asked, wondering if Dennis would feel the wrath of an angry parent.
“I don’t think so, his folks are pretty lenient. Can’t do shit about it now, anyway. You alright to drive?” Mike asked, just as Paul was about to put the car in drive.
“Fine, I think,” Paul mumbled.
“Then you might want to take the speaker box out of your window first.”
“That would probably be a good idea,” Paul said rolling down his window and hanging up the heavy speaker onto the hook on the pole. “That would have sucked.”
Mike cringed as Paul came within an inch of the speaker pole on his side.
“That was close,” Mike said when they got safely by it.
“What was?” Paul asked as he looked bleary-eyed out the window.
“You sure you’re alright?” Mike asked again, an uneasy feeling beginning to take root in his stomach.
“Never better,” were the words Paul was shooting for, it came out more like ‘nebah butter’.
Mike didn’t know how to respond, he knew he was certainly in no shape to drive and besides, he only had his learner’s permit. ‘We’ll be fine’. His inner psyche said, trying to calm his nerves. ‘We’re teenagers, we’re indestructible.’ It wasn’t verbalized it was only a feeling, a feeling that had cost more than one young adult in waiting life and limb.
Mike thought Paul seemed mostly alright as they got onto the road outside the drive-in, he had only crossed over the double yellow lines twice… nope, three times so far. But that wasn’t the scary part, it was when he would drift too far over to the right and begin to kick up dust, dirt and debris on the shoulder of the road, the steel guardrail loomed large in Mike’s field of vision every half mile or so as Paul cycled through his swerves.
It’s like the damn thing is magnetic, Mike thought when Paul got particularly close to the rail again.
“I’m a little fucked up, Mike,” Paul said, looking over to his friend with a sickly grim smile.
“You might want to keep your eyes on the road, buddy,” an alarmed Mike said when Paul kept staring at him as if he might have an answer that could help. Mike really didn’t see what good him keeping his eyes on the road would really do, though, Paul’s eyes were as wide as coin slots and what little was showing was blazing red.
“Music would be good Mike, help me concentrate,” Paul mumbled.
I would think driving your parents new Saab with your two friends in it would be enough, Mike thought, but kept to himself. A rising sense of dread kept percolating in his gut, there were many times over the following years that he wished he had heeded the prescient feeling.
Mike immediately moved to the stereo lest Paul have to take one of his white-knuckled clenched hands off the steering wheel. Paul was hunched forward as if the six inches he gained from this position would help him avert a disaster.
“This is WAAF The Rock and Roll Air Force!” screamed through the speakers. Paul violently swerved into the oncoming lane trying to get away from the assault on his ears.
“Shit, sorry, Paul!” Mike yelled as he fumbled with the balance first and then the treble level before finally lucking out and getting the volume knob. “Man, my ears are ringing.”
“My dad got the stereo upgrade package for this car.”
“Damn, I guess.”
“It’s time to get the Led out,” the rock DJ said. “It’s after three in the morning I’m pretty sure my boss isn’t listening. I’m going to play forty-five minutes of commercial-free Led Zeppelin A bong bubbled in the background.
“Rock and roll!” Dennis yelled sitting up for a half second, fingers splayed out in the traditional heavy metal sign, he may have even stuck his tongue out for dramatic
effect but it happened so fast Mike and Paul had not been able to see him clearly as he plummeted back down into his previous passed out position.
‘Whole Lotta Love’ was first up. Mike did not think this was the best song to garner focus, more than once he had found himself lost in the progressions of this hard rock mind trip of a song, over the last few months.
Paul passed with flying colors merely because he didn’t bounce the car off of anything for the entire eight minutes and forty-seven seconds of the song.
Three songs later, Mike was feeling better about their chances of getting home unscathed. They had just passed over the town line ‘Welcome to Walpole, Incorporated 1724’, but instead his feelings of impending doom kept growing.
‘In the Light’ started along simultaneously with the high pitched squeal of tires as Paul misjudged a curve. The car lurched to the right as the wheels fought to seek purchase on the wet, leaf-strewn road. Paul had twisted the steering wheel as far to the left as possible, had not so many competing sounds been happening at the same time he would have been able to hear the power steering belts whining from the force being applied to them. Might as well have been a sheet of ice for all the hold his car had on the roadway.
Mike quickly looked to his right where his seatbelt hung uselessly, he placed one hand against the passenger side window and one against the center console as a copse of trees dominated everything on that side and in his sight.
“Fuck!” Paul screamed as he fought in vain against the inertia. The front tires spun uselessly as he applied more gas hoping he would be able to force-of-will himself out of this death slide. The speedometer read seventy but time had almost stopped for the two teenagers who were painfully aware of their situation. As the right front tire slid off the road and onto dirt the car almost righted itself, Paul whipped the steering wheel back to the front, his foot still planted firmly to the floor on the accelerator as the cops would write it down in their investigation. The car rocketed straight forward, the road, however, did not.