“Mornin,” Jimmy said.
“Man, do you owe me, bro,” Chris answered as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his fingertips.
“What do you mean?” Jimmy asked, although his grin belied that he was well aware of the meaning of Chris’s comment.
“Holy shit man, the sounds coming from the tent when we came back from the head, man you guys were rockin it. We just couldn’t invade your space,” Chris said. He smacked his lips and searched then located his beer bottle. “Sorry, my mouth is full of cotton,” he said after swallowing a guzzle and stretched his arms up over his head. “How was it?”
“Fuckin amazing! Man, she is the real thing bro. I could love her forever,” Jimmy said, there was a far-off look in his eye as he tried to remember details from the night before. He glanced at Amy then back at Chris. She still had her dress on although Chris was naked on top. “What about you two?” He asked.
“Just keeping each other warm,” he said. “She’s into chicks.”
“Whoa, wow, didn’t see that one coming,” Jimmy said. “Thought I saw sparks between you two.”
“I dig her, and she digs me, yeah, but not like…not in the same way as you and Jenny.”
“Can you make coffee?” Jimmy said. I suck at it. I’ll get some wood but I just wanna take a quick shower, okay?”
“No problem, man.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy was coming back from the shower with a towel wrapped around his midsection. When he reached the campsite, the fire was blazing, and a pot of coffee was balanced on the grill. Amy was sitting on the bench sipping from an aluminum cup and Chris was leaning against the car looking at his Mobil guide.
“I don’t think I wanna leave today, man,” Chris said. “I mean, does it get any better than this,” he knew that he would get no pushback.
“Read my mind bro,” Jimmy said, smiling with his whole face. “I think I’m in love.”
Amy stood up and started walking towards them. “Did I hear the L word?” she asked. “I mean, you guys sounded like two more forest animals in heat last night but L O V E? Really?”
Jimmy’s smile had not faded and the feeling inside was one he had never even thought could exist. This had to be love, he thought.
They sat there talking about their plans. L.A. or wherever, staying here or leaving, disappearing together into some netherworld where the four of them became a family. Chris cooked some bacon and eggs on the grill and when they were just about done, he asked if perhaps they should wake Jenny. “She’s gonna be pissed if she misses breakfast, don’t you think?” He said. “Agreed,” Amy replied, “I’ll get her,” and with that she put her coffee on the bench and walked over to the tent, disappearing inside.
Jimmy walked over and poured himself a cup of coffee in the other aluminum cup they had, and the warm liquid was just what he needed. “Thanks for saying we should stay another day. She’s fucking amazing man and for what it’s worth, so are you.”
Just then, Amy emerged from the tent. She looked like one of the zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.” Her gaze was vacant, her eyes soulless, her gait stiff and machine-like, going through the motions without animation. Slowly a sense of place came over her and she looked first at Jimmy, then Chris, then back to Jimmy.
“Amy?” Chris said questioningly. “Amy, are you okay?”
The scream that came from her, started as a deep low rumble, increasing in pitch and volume as they watched, motionless and stunned.
Jimmy moved first, running quickly over to her, and putting his two arms on her shoulders, then moving them to either side of her face as he tried to get her eyes to focus on him. “Amy, what’s wrong? What the fuck?” he said and glanced quickly back at Chris as if to say, check the tent.
“Dead,” she said.
“What?” Chris asked, frozen in his place.
“Dead, she’s dead, so cold and so dead.” She collapsed to her knees, her legs as good as rubber bands to hold her weight.
Jimmy released his hold on her and raced to the tent, diving headfirst inside.
* * * * *
Chris had still not moved. He moved his eyes around the campsite, everything looked perfect, there was nothing wrong. How could anything be wrong, they were just a bunch of kids having fun. Amy must be mistaken. Amy, he looked for Amy and found a crumpled pile of rags and hair laying outside the tent. Vacant eyes stared at Chris, unseeing he thought, and waited, waited for the confirmation to break the silence. Amy was in shock. Silence, why was it so quiet, he thought. It seemed like an eternity before the lamenting wail began inside the tent, the tomb, the crypt. When it finally stopped, and the silence of the woods crept back over them, a dog barked nearby. It was an anxious sound.
Chapter XXII
The man walking in from the road looked remarkably like his father, Jimmy thought: Older perhaps, unsteady in his hobble. But this was not his dream again, this was real. Jenny was dead and everything else was meaningless. Chris didn’t matter, Amy didn’t matter, the old fuck with the dog certainly didn’t matter and now, he didn’t matter. All that mattered was that this girl, this perfect, loving, beautiful girl with the amethyst eyes, was no more.
“Do you need help?” the ancient voice creaked, but no one answered him. He continued walking toward them. Jimmy was on his knees just outside the tent, watching him approach through the splayed fingers that held his head up and covered his face. His tears blurred the vision making it even more surreal. He looked around at them all, trying to make sense of it, wrestling with the reality if indeed this was real.
Amy was sitting on a bench staring into the fire. She had apparently found something in there of note. Jimmy followed her gaze and found an odd shaped piece of wood that was standing up and burning. He watched as the fire seemed to consume it from the inside out until the shell of the log collapsed in on itself and the ash flew off with the breeze. She was in shock, Jimmy realized. As he pulled his eyes from the flames.
Chris, who had still not moved, was leaning against the hood of the car, looking down at his dirty bare feet. Jimmy saw nothing on his face at all. No sorrow, no outrage, no anger. There was just nothing. The old man’s voice brought him back to the moment.
“I heard screams,” the man said. His dog followed close behind him. It was a muddy brown animal with matted hair and a head that seemed to belong to a much larger dog.
“She’s dead,” Amy said. “She’s cold and dead, there’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do.” Her voice was a sing-song monotone.
“We need to call the police,” Chris said. “Should I get the Ranger?”
Jimmy looked up from his knees at Chris, then at Amy and finally, his gaze settled on the man who looked like his father. “What do we do?”
* * * * *
“We get the Rangers,” Chris said, a bit more emphatically. “What the fuck are you asking him for?” He had been in a daze but was grasping at reality now. He hadn’t quite found it, but he was at least looking for it.
“Easy son, not so hasty,” said the old man, whom Chris just realized bore a striking resemblance to Father Flynn. “Oh, how I envy your youth, the world of opportunity spreading out before you. I am jealous of your talent son,” he said, directing his gaze now to Jimmy. Chris noticed that the dog had gone and settled himself at the entrance to the tent, a silent sentry.
* * * * *
Amy was the only one of them who saw the man as what he was, to her, the only thing he resembled was a corpse, a gaunt, emaciated figure whose taut skin was stretched hard over his bones in a way that made it look as though he had no muscle beneath it. His sunken eyes showed no sign of humanity. One of his front teeth was gone and the rest were a cadaverous shade of yellowy brown. The fire, which had been raging just moments earlier, was completely out. She somehow knew that if she reached out and touched a log, it would be cold, cold as a marble tombstone in January, cold as Jenny. The blue had drained from the sky and its new color, this cold steely gray, settled ov
er everything.
* * * * *
“I think you need my help, son,” the old man said as he approached Jimmy and came within a foot of him. He kneeled in front, so they were now eye to eye. Close enough that Jimmy now smelled the rotting decomposition of his aged existence. “Kidnapping, rape, murder, they’ll lock you away forever, if they don’t fry you that is. They gots the death penalty here ya know, none of that sissy injection shit either, the fuckin chair.” His voice was low and conspiratorial so that only Jimmy could hear every word, the others just caught bits and pieces that came through. His breath was foul and seemed to visibly propel the words that left his mouth.
“Huh? I…didn’t do anything, I didn’t…kill anyone,” Jimmy said.
The old man stood up now and walked in a circle around Jimmy. He put his nose into the air and made a gesture of smelling. “I smell a dead girl, Jimmy,” he said louder now so that they all heard. Jimmy wondered whether anyone had used his name since the old man arrived, but didn’t think they had. “In fact, I smell a fucking heart attack, brought about when a weak oversized heart that no one even knew was there, was introduced to cocaine.”
“Cocaine?” Amy asked. “Did you give her cocaine?”
Jimmy looked at Amy, then at the old man. He narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow, this was not happening. “How could you possibly know that?” he asked. Jimmy was suddenly riding in a car that was sliding across an ice-covered road toward oncoming traffic.
“Not important son. All I need to know right now is if you need me to fix this fucking mess you got yourself into?” His voice was calm, part patronizing and part comforting.
“Who are you?” Jimmy asked, at the exact same time that Chris said, “Fix it how?”
“You wanna be a rock star Jimmy, don’t you? Well, it all starts right here, you know, today’s the first day of the rest of your life and all that good shit.” He chuckled, like they were all just friends standing around the general store telling stories. “It all begins right now, with the answer to one simple question: Do you want me to fix this?” With that, the old man stood up and pulled the hood from his mold blotched cloak, over his head. He peered inside the tent and turned around with a disgusted look on his face. “Such a shame, what a pretty, pretty creature. She’s a natural blond, isn’t she?” He seemed ravenous, as though there was something there that he aimed to devour. “It’s really very simple son, rock star or fry chair?”
* * * * *
“He a crazy old coot Jimmy,” Chris said. I’m going for the Ranger. But he didn’t move, his eyes were welded to Father Flynn.
“Why don’t you come into the transept and help me get the communion glasses Christopher, I have a special surprise for you tucked inside my robes.” Chris was stunned into silence. No one knew what Father Flynn had done to him, no one, not even Jimmy. He had never told a soul.
“Can you bring her back?” Jimmy asked, suddenly sounding like he believed this thing was indeed something other-worldly. It had become the time when the brain can believe in miracles…and monsters.
“Jimmy, you can’t be serious. He’s a crazy old man. We need the police,” Amy said, beginning to regain some sense of place and events.
Chris noticed that the old man had circled around the fire and was now standing behind Amy, at the forest’s edge. Two tall, dead, leafless trees stretched up above him, trees that Chris was sure had leaves on them yesterday. He wanted to say so, but fear had swallowed his words.
“She loved these woods, you know. She said so; growth and life from death and decay. She would have wanted you to say yes, Jimmy,” the old man said. “Live from her death, grow from her decay…”
“Yes,” Jimmy whispered, without raising his eyes from the ground. Chris was stunned into silence and he watched to see what the priest did next.
For the first time, a small hint of a smile hovered around the cracked brown lips of the old man as he turned to face Chris. It was the most terrible smile Chris had ever seen.
“And you son? Can I help you?” He asked.
“Do what you want, you’re fucking crazy. Jimmy, please, let’s just get the police. We don’t need this ass hole.”
But Jimmy had already gone somewhere else. Once he gave up, he let the demons crawl in and take over, he never stood a chance. “Yes, yes, I need your fucking help!” Jimmy screamed. “Fix this, please.”
The old man took two steps forward and leaned down to cradle Amy in his arms. She looked up at him. Chris saw nothing where his eyes should have been. Whatever was there had rolled up into his head. A rigor of paralysis seemed to grip Amy, and she was powerless, she didn’t move, she did not even blink. Chris wondered if he was going to brainwash her or take her memory somehow and then his rational side returned, and he thought again that this was crazy. But he couldn’t say anything, he suddenly could not speak so he decided he would scream, scream as loud as he could for as long as he could until help came. But the scream was trapped in his throat raging against his closed mouth to open, open, open, and let me out.
When he snapped her neck, the crack sounded like a tree limb had just broken from a tree, the noise echoed off the sandstone bluff and reverberated over and over and over again, not fading but remaining at the same loudness. And then it just ended. All the life in the forest seemed to pause and hold its breath, not a bird tweeted, no frogs croaked, no bees buzzed. There was no air, no breeze, and the trees stood perfectly still, not a leaf moved.
Chris threw up: A violent spewing of everything that had been in his stomach projected out and splashed on the forest floor. When he looked up, with the vomit dripping from his lips, he saw the old man pick Amy up like a rag doll, throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the tent. The dog followed. After a few moments, the old man stuck his grinning head out, blood and sinew dripping from his mouth. “You boys can go now,” he said, “you’re gonna have to leave the tent.”
Chapter XXIII
After fifteen minutes of silent driving, Chris finally said, “What the fuck was that thing?” Jimmy didn’t answer. He had his hands in the 10:00 and 2:00 positions and he was leaning forward in his seat like he was driving in white out conditions. His knuckles were pale and bloodless from the vise-like grip he had on the steering wheel. His cowboy hat lay on the seat between them and he was wearing the same clothes as the day before, they both were.
The faint scent of dampness in the car had been replaced by the pungent odor of human fear. For the third time since they’d left, Jimmy pulled to the side of the road and stopped the car. He took his cheap aviators from the cup holder and placed them carefully on his face. The sun was ablaze in a cobalt blue sky that did not have a cloud in it. In fact, as soon as they had pulled out of Rocky Arbor, the sun had been there, like it had been waiting for them.
Jimmy pulled the keys from the ignition and got out of the car. He walked around the back and over to the passenger door where he handed the keys to Chris through the open window. “I can’t fucking drive,” Chris said. “Look at me, I’m a mess,” he added and held the keys back out the window, his friend made no move to take them. “I guess we’re just gonna sit right here then, cause I ain’t driving Jimmy, I’m serious.” Jimmy didn’t move and didn’t speak. After a few minutes, Chris’s door opened, and he grabbed the keys back from Jimmy. “Dick,” he said and walked around the front of the car. Jimmy went through the open door and Chris got behind the wheel. He adjusted the mirrors and pulled from the shoulder onto the highway, there was not a car in sight going in either direction.
“Whatever that thing was, it knew shit about me, shit that no one knows. And, this is crazy, I know but, it looked just like the priest I was altar boy for when I was eleven,” Chris said, checking the speedometer to make sure he was just going the speed limit. “Weird,” Jimmy finally said, the first word since they’d left the campsite. “He looked like my father to me. I don’t suppose your priest looked anything like my dad, did he?” Chris just shook his head from side to s
ide.
“I think he was right though, I think we both would have fried in the electric chair if we had called the cops. I mean to us it was just, you know, we were having some kicks but to a jury, goddam if we wouldn’t be made out to be child rapists, kidnappers, and yeah, murderers.” Jimmy slumped down deeper into the seat.
“So, what do we do now?” Chris asked.
“No fucking idea. We’ll keep driving west a couple more days, we can sleep in the car. Then we head south and back East as far away from Wisconsin as possible,” Jimmy said. “I want to keep talking about it because maybe we’ll be able to figure something out. I don’t know what but something, maybe.”
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