by Jim Johanson
Chapter 18
The cold air stung in the inside of Billy's throat as he half-ran half-stumbled through a field near Consolo's house. Still drunk, he hung his head forward as he went, the browning grass beneath him flashing as a dizzying blur of dying plant-life.
As he approached Consolo's house, he traced the contours of Consolo’s roof with his eyes, and not paying attention to his footing, tripped over a rusted metal chain leading from the house to the pond. Billy spiraled forward, nearly doing a complete flip before landing hard on his hip. The soggy ground softened the break in his fall. Mud now ran down one side of him from his ankle up to his shoulder.
Puzzled over how he had fallen, he searched around in the wet grass with his hands for a moment before discovering the chain. As he got back to his feet, he pulled the chain up with him, causing the otherwise deathly still pond to form ripples echoing outward from the spot where the chain sank down into the murky water.
Curious what might be connected to the other end of the chain, Billy tugged at it. It budged slightly then sank back down into the water. Something was stuck, tangled in dead plants and mud at the bottom of the pond. The sensation of cold metal on his hands became irritating. Billy let the chain drop to the ground, making a point to revisit it later on.
Billy twisted the knob on the backdoor of Consolo’s house. Locked. Next he tried the sliding doors. The latch appeared undone, but a wooden broom handle stuck into the track prevented the door from opening more than a few inches.
Undaunted, Billy moved to the side of the house to check the windows, first finding the window into Consolo's bedroom. He pressed his cold hand upward against the glass. It budged just slightly. Rust had accumulated and formed a seal on the latch.
Billy rubbed his hands together and blew into them to warm them up. Taking a quick look over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, he began banging on the frame of the window.
After a few solid hits, a spot of blood appeared on the wood. Billy looked at the underside of his hand to see that his dry skin had cracked open along a crease. The red color seemed especially bright compared with the relative dullness of the wood and paint of Consolo's house and the decaying fall landscape.
Billy licked the blood from his hand, enjoying the taste for a moment before shifting his attention back to the window. The jostled frame was loose enough now that he was able to slide it upward. Paint cracked and flecked off, falling to the ground like toxic snowflakes.
With the window fully open, Billy slipped his backpack off his shoulders and tossed it inside. It landed without a sound. He lifted his body half up into the window. The bottom of the frame dug harshly into his ribs. It was dark inside. Billy could only discern the shadowy edges of objects, but figured it was safe to go in since the backpack seemed to have landed on something soft.
His legs twisted upward as his front end tumbled into the house. He tucked his feet in and allowed himself to fall into the house, landing gently on Consolo's mattress. A cool breeze followed him in through the window, cutting through the stale air of Consolo’s bedroom like a knife.
The mattress smelled musty, as though the sheets and the comforter had not been washed or changed in as long a time as it had been since the window was last opened. The repugnant smell of the bedroom was smothering.
Billy got to his feet, lifting his backpack. Forgetting his balance, he stumbled sideways into the wall of Consolo's bedroom. He breathed heavily, struggling to maintain his equilibrium.
As Billy took a step backward, he heard a sickening crunch underneath his worn-out shoe. He lifted his shoe and stared downward, long enough that his eyes adjusted to the darkness, to see the crushed skull of some kind of small animal, flattened into the carpet. Black and white feathers surrounded the fragments of bone on all sides. All of it stunk to high-hell, even worse than the moldiness of Consolo's mattress.
More bones and feathers crunched beneath his feet as Billy made his way out of the bedroom, before entering into the main hallway, then stalking around to the bathroom. He fumbled for the light switch for a moment before remembering that there was no electricity. He unzipped a pocket of his backpack and retrieved an old camping flashlight. Thankfully, the flashlight was still functional despite running on old batteries.
Billy began to move toward the bathtub but something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. The unmistakable amber color of a prescription pill bottle. Billy picked it up off the sink and examined it, shining the flashlight on the label.
Vicodin.
As Billy held the bottle in his hand, he noticed his reflection in the mirror, framed in a ghoulish orange glow by the light of the flashlight. The fiery glare in his eyes gave him the countenance of a victim of demonic possession, a foul spirit incarnate.
Billy decided to take the bottle of pills, but just as he began to put it into his pocket, a more fiendish idea overtook him. He opened the bottle and dumped the pills into his pocket, then opened Consolo's medicine cabinet looking for any other vitamins or pills he might have. There was a bottle of Ibuprofen, but these were small red capsules and did not resemble the large, white Vicodin tablets.
Billy looked through a few more before opening an old, expired prescription for the blood-thinner Warfarin. They looked similar enough to be mistaken for Vicodin in the dark. He replaced the Vicodin prescription pills with the Warfarin tablets.
Remembering the deal that he had made with Consolo, Billy turned away from the mirror and unzipped the larger compartment of his backpack. He dumped the filth-ridden contents into the tub, contemplating briefly how much a bathtub resembles an open coffin.
Chapter 19
Consolo arrived home, letting the weight of his front door shut itself behind him. The old wooden frame of the door caught on the latch, leaving itself open just a crack. The drive home had been particularly unpleasant for Consolo, his back spasming with sharp, stabbing pains every time he hit a bump in the road.
Consolo stood over his kitchen sink, turned on the faucet, grabbed a rinsed but unclean glass from the drying rack next to the sink, and filled it. Brown stains had slowly etched themselves, perhaps permanently, into the rim of the glass. The well water from the faucet had a similar, but subtler brown tint to it, accompanied by a musty, old house with old pipes flavor. He cringed after taking a sip as the foul taste soaked into his tongue. Deciding to remedy the problem, he dumped out most of the glass and replaced the water with gin, then unscrewed the bottle of Vicodin in his pocket and allowed the last remaining pill to fall out into the cup of his palm. He swallowed it with a burning gulp of cheap gin.
Another spasm stung Consolo harshly in his lower back. He grunted, angrily refilling the glass of gin and swigging more of it down. The pain made him angry and the anger made the pain worse, his whole body tense and feeling ready to snap in two.
The Vicodin wasn't working fast enough. Leaving the empty bottle on the counter, Consolo headed to his bathroom, knowing even in the dark exactly where he had placed the other prescription bottle.
The three pills that he pulled from the bottle in the bathroom felt odd going down his throat, but thinking little of it, Consolo tried to force himself to relax, believing that the pain would soon subside.
He drew his attention to the bathtub.
Billy! He had been here.
Consolo knelt in from of the tub and dug his arms in, wrapping them around the collection of body parts that he’d ordered Billy to steal from the cemetery. Unable to see in the darkness, he moved his hands across the appendages, finding hands, arms, legs long since deprived of meat and withered down to a dried husk wrapped around a femur, and all other manner of macabre selection. Consolo was delighted.
“I can’t believe the boy actually came through. He might not be as stupid as I thought.”
Consolo continued searching through the remains until he came upon a skull. As his hand grazed over the skull’s smooth crest, a trickle of blood began dripping from his nose.
***
Eventually conceding that his efforts to console Mary were useless at best, Sheriff Ford decided to allow her to return to Jackie's house, the two girls insisting that was what they wanted for the time being. Not quite grief-stricken, but rather enraptured in a profound state of mental shock, Mary allowed Jackie to guide her into the home, their hands clasped together.
The first snow of the year was falling on the hood of Ford’s cruiser, the heat from the engine melting it away as quickly as it landed. Ford's breath was visible as he closed the rear driver's side door of his police cruiser before getting back into the driver's seat, Tim Warren stone-faced and silent as a statue beside him in the passenger seat.
It was a short trip down the road to Consolo's house, where Ford believed they might find Billy Greer to break the news, having been told by Mary that Consolo had been watching over Billy after his injury and subsequent brain damage. Ford wondered whether in Billy's current state of mental awareness if he would even be able to understand what had happened to his mother. Ford wasn’t looking forward to having the conversation. Attempting to comfort Mary, and to a lesser extent Jackie, was difficult enough for a man not instinctively keen to the subtle sensibilities of others' emotions.
They found Consolo’s truck in the driveway. Ford and Tim exited their vehicle and strode woefully up to the house. Ford sighed and looked over at Tim, Tim's lower lip hanging slightly agape in trepidation. Ford nodded. Tim knocked on the door. The door budged an inch or so inward with the force of the tapping of Tim's knuckles.
"Sheriff's department!" said Tim.
The call was met by nothing but an eerie silence.
Ford cleared his throat.
"Mr. Consolo, this is Sheriff Peter Ford, are you home?"
Still no answer.
Ford reached forward with his stubby hand and pushed the door open a crack so that his voice might carry further inside, repeating his inquiry.
"Sheriff's department. Mr. Consolo, are you home?"
Ford again made eye contact with Tim as if to give him a signal. Ford placed his right hand over the clasp of his revolver and pushed the door open. The room smelled strongly of alcohol. Though inside it was dimly lit, Ford quickly managed to spot a broken glass on the floor in the corner where the kitchen met the main entryway.
The two officers walked cautiously into the residence, and upon peering around the corner, they met with the humbling sight of Michael Consolo bent over onto the ground, panting heavily. Blood gushed from the edges of a piece of glass stuck in his palm.
Consolo seemed to be trying to say something, but only muffled whimpers and unintelligible groans were able to escape his mouth. He attempted to look at Tim and Ford but lost his balance in the process and came tumbling to the floor over a pile of glass, the label of the gin bottle still partially attached to the shattered fragments. His face was contorted into a figure of grotesque horror, one side drooping, saliva dripping from his mouth.
"Stay with him, Tim, I’m going to radio an ambulance.”
***
Ford dug into his jacket pocket to retrieve a half-crumpled soft-pack of cigarettes. He tore out the cellophane and stuck one in his mouth as the ambulance pulled out of Consolo's driveway, lights flashing, with Consolo on a stretcher in the back.
"Sheriff?" said Tim, "I thought you quit?"
"I did."
"Your wife's gonna be awful mad if she finds out, won't she?"
"Too much blood today, Tim. Too much..."
Ford flicked his Zippo lighter, but the fluid had long evaporated and it refused to light. Empty sparks. Ford sighed. The breath leaving his mouth looked like smoke in the cold, seeming to mock his inability to light his stale cigarette.
"Come on now, let's get back to the station."
Ford took not more than a single step forward when he noticed the frame of a young man sitting crossed legged on the ground beside a tree in Consolo's front yard, covered by a black, hooded sweatshirt, the hood draped up over his head. Tim took a step back, apparently startled by the unsettlingly quiet and until then unnoticed person that had been sitting not more than twenty feet away presumably the entire time that they’d been standing on the front step of Consolo's house.
"Well Tim, I think we just found Billy."
Ford began walking toward the figure that was either completely unaware of or completely ignoring their presence. He approached like he would a stray animal, not yet sure whether it was friend or foe.
"Son? Billy? Billy Greer?"
The figure began rocking back and forth, pale white fingers sticking out of hoodie pockets clasping onto either side of his waist, as if wrapping himself in a blanket of arms.
Ford began walking in a circular movement around the boy, like a wolf circumnavigating the object of its pursuit without spooking it. Tim nervously let the palm of his right hand fall onto the butt of his service weapon, his left wrapped around the heavy flashlight on his opposite side. Ford got close enough to see Billy's pale white face sticking out of the black hoodie.
"Billy, I’m Sheriff Peter Ford."
Billy did not respond, seeming not to have even heard him speaking. Shivering, shaking, and rocking back and forth in a mechanical manner, he acted in a way not befitting of a living creature, and perhaps owing to his injury, in a way that is what he had become: a crude automation, operating automatically on instructions left by the master long after his departure.
Sensing no immediate danger from the boy who appeared to be frightened, Ford decided to step closer to him, eventually kneeling down in front of him.
"Son, I want to take you down to the station with us. You're not in any trouble, but there's some things we need to sort out. Does that sound okay to you?"
Billy suddenly snapped back to reality, a sort of glaze disappearing from his eyes. His pupils shot around in his eye sockets like a pinball machine before locking onto Ford. He nodded spastically.
"Alright, good, come on now. Let's stand up, and we're gonna get into the car, okay Billy?"
Billy rose to his feet and allowed the sheriff to lead him to the police cruiser. Ford opened the back door and bade Billy to enter. Billy reached into his front pocket, causing Ford to take a modest stance of alarm, but his trepidation was quickly allayed when Billy produced a butane lighter. He handed it to Ford as if presenting a gift. Unknown to anyone but Billy, this was the same lighter that he'd used to start the fire that burned off the skin of his leg. Ford allowed half a smile to creep across his face. He took the lighter, and after making sure Billy was in the car safely, lit his cigarette.
"Come on Tim, let's get this over with."
"Sheriff, uh, we're not supposed to smoke in the car, right?"
Ford took another drag.
"Come on or don't. Don’t think I’m sending another ride for you."
Chapter 20
Sheriff Ford filled up a glass of water from the police station’s water cooler and handed it to Billy, who took it by the hand and immediately drew it to his face, drinking half of it in one gulp. He choked and coughed, trying to clear the water from his throat. He was visibly shivering.
"Tim, see if we ain't got some kinda blanket in the back to wrap around this young man," said Ford.
"Right, sir. Think we got something or other 'round here I can give him."
"…and take your time finding it."
Ford clasped his hands in front of his waist, eyeing Billy as if he were a stray dog.
"Now, son, listen to me now, you hear me?" said Ford.
"There's been a disturbance at your home, and your mother, well, someone gone and did something terrible to her, and I'm sorry to say that... well, your mother's passed on, son."
Ford waited to see what reaction Billy might have to hearing the news, but Billy’s face remained cold and emotionless, as if he had either not understood what Ford was saying, or was legitimately unbothered.
"Do you understand what I've told ya?" asked Ford.
Billy scratched
his face along the jaw-line.
"Water," said Billy.
"You got half a glass still there..."
"Water!" Billy shouted.
Ford took the glass, refilled it, and walked back to Billy who took the glass in both hands and nearly dumped it onto his face as he drank from it with great enthusiasm. Tim walked back into the room with an old military blanket.
"This is all we got, Sheriff."
"Wrap it around him," replied Ford. "Boy must be shivering his balls off."
Billy gazed blankly down into his glass of water, eyeing the ripples as they moved outward from the center then bounced back again from the edges. He appeared not to notice Tim putting the blanket around him, though he soon seemed comforted, ceasing his shakiness.
Ford sat down at his desk. The old chair creaked under his weight. He picked up the phone and began dialing. Tim took a seat at his own desk, glancing over casually at Billy, who was still staring at the glass of water as if he had never seen one before. Billy lifted his head to make eye contact with Tim. Tim immediately looked away and pretended to busy himself with papers on his desk. He could still feel Billy watching him, a blur in the corner of his eye. Billy's gaze struck him as being particularly unsettling, like there was something that Billy could see in him that he wasn't able to see himself, like a ghost on the other side of a mirror.
"Oh yes, hello, this is Sheriff Peter Ford of the Racine police department. Yes, you as well. Well it certainly does, I think we might even be in for a bit of a winter storm if things keep up this way. Yes ma'am.
“Listen, I was wondering if you could help me out, we called an ambulance for a fella not too long ago today, a Michael Consolo, had himself a stroke… We had him brought down to your hospital, and I wanted to know when we might be able to come in and speak with him."
