by Bill Alive
“Roger is Kelsey’s guru. Kelsey could have found out from Roger exactly how long Vanessa would be gone on that trip. And then confirm that Ed would be home, alone, when he delivered the milk.”
I went cold.
Chapter 34
We raced to Helga’s farm, under a gray late morning sky that glowered dark like the day was already done.
In the bleak light, the farm felt deserted. We knocked three times on the farmhouse door, but no one answered.
Honestly, I was partly relieved. Now that I was seeing the place in daytime, it looked less creepy, but not much. There were still way too many contraptions and twining plants and excess outbuildings of dubious purpose.
Standing beside me on the porch, Mark said, “I thought you were into this kind of thing. Permaculture, right? New systems for growing food and such?”
“I like the illustrations,” I said stiffly.
Mark squinted at one of the trailers. “Hey, isn’t that where Kelsey came out the other night?”
“Maybe,” I said, hoping it wasn’t and we could get out of this creep show. But Mark was already striding away to check.
On the flimsy trailer porch, we went through another knocking routine. Long pause. No answer.
“I guess he’s not here,” I hoped.
“He’s here,” Mark said.
Eventually, Kelsey answered.
He looked messed up, with huge drooping eye bags like he hadn’t slept for days. I cringed. Mark winced.
Great start. Kelsey totally caught our reaction.
But he seemed to take it more like, Oh, so my bedhead offends you? rather than, Oh, so you think I’m a murderer?
“Hey, sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry. “I was napping. I didn’t hear you.”
“You sleep in the trailer?” I blurted. “At your mom’s house?”
He flared up. “A young man needs his own space.”
Mark intervened. “Definitely,” he said, straining for Client Mode. “Mind if we come in?”
“Sure, of course,” Kelsey said quickly. “Why not?” He made a grand sweeping gesture and stepped aside.
With some people, just walking into their living room is TMI.
The first thing that hit you was the smell of Unwashed Dude. Someone somewhere must have worked out a whole vocabulary for the spectrum of possible aromas in this genre, but Kelsey’s trailer smelled like the guy who not only wears the same socks for a week, but then stashes them next to the electric heater.
Other clothes were piled everywhere (everywhere), and the tiny sink was teetering with filthy dishes … and buzzing with flies. Multiple cheap bookshelves were bolted to the walls, packed with shabby old titles like Stories of the Catechist. Another wall was dominated by a huge black-and-white poster, framed, of a pope I didn’t recognize, with old-school glasses.
We had entered another world. A smaller, more cramped world, Kelsey’s exoskeleton, where you couldn’t even sit down without confronting his ancient briefs. I mean, beliefs. Well, both.
His darting eyes were tracking our every move. He saw me notice the poster, and he glinted with the light of battle.
“That’s Pope Pius XII,” he said. “The last true pope, before the abomination of Vatican II.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to be polite. The note of challenge was clear, daring me to disagree. The truth was, I hadn’t really heard about Vatican II, or even Vatican I, but I knew this would only offend him worse than an argument. Plus, this was no time to get sidetracked talking about his favorite movies.
“It’s true!” Kelsey said eagerly. “Every quote-unquote ‘pope’ since then has been openly heretical—”
I was totally lost now, but Mark interrupted. “Even John Paul II?” he said casually. “Isn’t he a saint now? Got shot at and everything. Practically a martyr.”
“Martyr!” Kelsey choked. His creep factor was zooming by leaps and bounds. “If God hadn’t abandoned His Church, that bullet would have found its mark.”
“I see what you mean,” Mark said, still casual, even respectful. “What’s one death to save a soul, right?”
Kelsey gaped. He started trembling.
And I finally realized where Mark was going with this.
Kelsey must have given himself all these deluded religious excuses to freaking kill the husband of a woman he wanted.
Did he even guess how much Vanessa despised him? Him and his “thing” for her? I wanted to scream it in his face.
But Mark flashed me a warning glare.
Don’t antagonize him, idiot.
Had I vibed that or just guessed? I didn’t care. I thought back, Oh, I should act all buddy-buddy with a MURDERER? Like you?
But I managed not to say anything. And thank Goddess for that.
Still shaking, Kelsey said, “What do you two want?”
“Dude,” Mark said, gently. “I’m sorry you feel abandoned.”
He sounded so … kind. I almost didn’t recognize his voice.
But Kelsey only looked more enraged.
“Judge not, Mark,” he growled. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
I shrank toward the door, fear icing my back. I didn’t quite get what the hell either of them were talking about, but in another second, Kelsey might lunge at Mark’s throat.
Mark just looked sad.
He pushed the flimsy trailer door and walked out.
I scuttled after him and got to Thunder first. I darted into the car, relieved to have metal and glass between me and Crazy Pants. As Mark backed away, Kelsey shot us a final glare. Then he closed himself into his tiny trailer.
“Please tell me you got the vibe that he did it!” I shouted over the roar.
“Oh, he did it,” Mark said. He pulled out his phone.
He sounded so certain, it creeped me out, like he was just confirming the time for a dentist appointment.
“Okay,” I shouted, “but how’re we going to prove it?”
He was already talking into his phone. “Gwen? Listen, I’ve just — what?”
I couldn’t hear Gwen over the engine.
“Yes, I heard about Roxanne, I’m sorry,” Mark said. “But — Gwen, just hold on and listen to me! It’s Kelsey. Kelsey poisoned the milk. He’s obsessed with Vanessa, and he knew when she’d be gone because her ‘business trip’ was a retreat with Roger—”
Gwen must have interrupted. Whatever she said, Mark looked shocked.
“You knew about that trip?” he said. “Have you not talked to this Kelsey guy? He’s a real-deal religious nut job … I know it was vet poison, can’t you pull his Internet records, prove that he ordered it? Gwen! … Yes, I vibed that he’s guilty. I just talked to him … What?”
He groaned in disgust, hung up, and slammed the dashboard with his fist.
“Maybe she’s having a rough morning!” I suggested. “With Roxanne and all?”
“We really need to get this muffler fixed,” Mark said. “Like, today.”
Ugh. Apparently it’s illegal in Virginia to have a super loud muffler. Whenever Gwen gets really mad, she makes sure to remind us.
“So she’s not going to arrest him?” I shouted.
“Nope. Roxanne was the star suspect, and as far as the cops see it, a suicide overdose is a clear confession of guilt.”
“Crap! Now what?”
He shrugged. “No idea. We could always take a break for actual life stuff.”
Oh yeah. It was getting on to noon. Work might be good.
Except, wait, first…
“Vanessa’s check!” I cried. “We should cash it!”
Mark brightened. “Good call. I guess the morning wasn’t a total wash.”
We chatted happily about all the things we could do with the money, like, not lose the house. And get groceries!
Sadly, the stupid credit union put a hold on the check; they apparently do this for any unfamiliar check that’s over twenty bucks or so. This dampened our spirits, but at least they let Mark have a little money to
buy food. When he finally dropped me off at Valley Visions, he was on the phone wheedling the mortgage people for an extension.
The rest of the day was ordinary and boring. I wish I had savored it.
Because the next morning, I awoke to loud banging on my bedroom door.
Freaked me right out. I sweltered in a sudden wave of fear and grief.
I thought, Crap, am I vibing?
No, you’re just freaked by waking up to someone banging on your door. Get a grip.
But when I opened the door, Mark looked haggard.
“Dude, what?” I demanded, with an edge of panic, both at the fear itself and the fact I might have vibed it.
“Gwen called.”
“Oh no! Is she really going to confiscate Thunder over that stupid muffler? Crap, and Ceci’s all mad at me, she’s never going to—”
“Pete.”
His stone-cold voice shut me up.
“It’s Kelsey,” he said. “He shot himself. In the mouth.”
“Oh my God.” I sank back onto my bed. “It wasn’t … it wasn’t anything we said, right? Did he leave a note? He really killed himself?”
“Yeah. But first…” Mark took a deep breath, steadied his voice. “First he assaulted Vanessa. With a baseball bat.”
His clinical, detached tone terrified me.
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “Is she okay?”
“No,” he said. “She is very much not okay.”
Chapter 35
We rushed to the hospital. Mark wouldn’t say anything else, only that Vanessa was in intensive care.
At the hospital desk, I recognized the huge nurse who I’d always somehow known had tons of cats. She beamed up at Mark. “What can I do for you, baby?”
When he asked for Vanessa, her smile evaporated.
“Is she alive?” I asked. My voice was thin and high.
In a low rumble, she said, “Yes. She’s alive.”
With slow reluctance, she heaved herself up and lumbered down the hall.
My dread was deepening to panic. I nearly bolted.
The nurse seemed to plod down the hall in slow motion. It felt like half an hour before she finally stopped and nodded at an open door.
In a small corner of my mind, I realized that I must be making Mark feel even worse. And for an empath, just being in a hospital to begin with was already Kryptonite.
But I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen any real injuries, not like a car accident or anything even close. Flashes from violent movies were torturing me, blood and guts and gristle.
I walked in.
She was worse than I’d imagined.
Not with gore. They’d cleaned that all up. But she was entirely a creature of pain.
Tubes pricked her everywhere. Huge machines crowded close, like robots sucking her blood. And her face … her face was demolished.
My memory flashed a scary old book cover from when I was a kid. The Invisible Man. This invisible guy had had to keep his power secret by covering his face entirely in bandages. Even his eye holes were covered in black glasses. And that smothered mummy face had been the cover, done in that old amateurish sci-fi painting style that was so much creepier than any computer stuff they do now. I’d hated that cover.
But now I wished that Vanessa’s face had been totally bandaged. The parts you could see were like a bashed pumpkin. The wreck of her nose, her eyes swollen shut…
Beside me, Mark was slumped against the wall, stricken.
Then she moved. A little. Her breath was rasping and guttural.
At first, all I could imagine was how much she must hurt. Gradually, I realized that she was unconscious. That reduced the horror a bit, at least enough that I could think.
And then I realized … I wasn’t thinking of her as Vanessa.
I could not believe that this was the same person. I couldn’t find one single point of contact between this mass of suffering and the hot woman I’d wanted so bad. The disconnection was complete.
She was a total stranger.
If I could want her so much, and now feel absolutely nothing … what the hell was the point?
A nurse bustled in. It took me a second to see that it was Ceci.
We locked eyes. Her first reaction was a flash of the same fear and anger from the other night.
But I must have looked devastated enough, because she softened, and touched my arm.
Then she bent toward Vanessa, and started to change an arm bandage that had gone all yellow and hard with dried pus.
I thought, What if it were Ceci destroyed on that bed? It could just as well be Ceci trapped beneath that monster face.
Except … I would still know her.
Ceci would still be Ceci, kind and loving and, sure, occasionally a trifle bitchy, but overall … herself. My precious friend.
How many people could I say that about?
She finished, and turned toward Mark and me. Her face was inscrutable.
“Hey,” I said. “About the other day—”
“Me too,” she said. “That was both of us.”
I felt like we should hug. Or was I vibing Ceci now too? I didn’t hug her, though. I was afraid we might not let go.
Mark said, “What’s going to happen to her?”
Ceci’s lips pressed in a grim line. “She’ll live,” she said. “But she sustained some very serious injuries. She’ll probably need reconstructive surgery, and even then…”
Mark winced, and covered his face.
What Ceci did next totally shocked me.
She went over and rubbed his shoulder. I hadn’t expected she would touch the man, ever.
“At least the guy’s gone, right?” she said. “He can’t hurt her anymore. Or anyone else.”
I half expected Mark to shrug her off. But he let her stay, and just stared at the floor.
“Gwen was right,” he said dully. “I should never have talked to him.”
“Hey!” Ceci said, her tone sharp. “You did not do this.”
“I could have stayed with him. Followed him. Hell, cuffed him, why not?”
“And then Gwen would have cuffed you and let him go.”
“But it might have scared him off.”
“Mark, that guy was crazy. I see crazy every day. So does Gwen. So does anyone who tries to do anything outside their little bubble.”
“But if I’d just—”
“Perfectionist much?” she snapped. “Geez, Mark, you think this is bad? Try giving someone medicine, and they react wrong because their charts were screwed up, and they die. It wasn’t my fault, right? I didn’t make the charts! But who stuck in the needle?”
Mark winced, clearly picking up her memory. “That’s different.”
“Yes, it’s worse. And that’s my life, Mark, I get up to that every single day. Because there’s other people I can save. People I won’t save, if I can’t take seeing the ones I lose.”
“I shouldn’t lose anybody,” he snapped.
“Then go do your websites. And lose them all.”
Mark humphed, crossed his arms, and frowned at the floor.
At last, he grumbled, “I’m glad you hate the websites too.”
Ceci shrugged and looked embarrassed, as if he’d actually said thank you, instead of just meaning it.
I cut in. “Mark, listen, I’m the one who was this close to ripping into him about Vanessa, how she despised him. Remember? I was totally going to goad him.”
From the bed came a sudden, grinding croak.
“GOAD.”
The machines screeched. My adrenaline surged. Vanessa writhed on the bed, and she was moving wrong, like Frankenstein’s monster coming to life. She was croaking and moaning in a wracked ruin of a voice.
“Goad … God … goad of God … goad goad goad God …”
Ceci rushed to the machines, tweaked them out of panic mode, and started making soothing noises and stroking Vanessa’s one uninjured shoulder. “Calm down,” she said, “calm down, honey…”
> But Vanessa kept struggling. “Goaded I was goaded … you damn … adulteress … I never would be doing this on my own…”
Her swollen eyes wrenched open into burning slits.
“Get him off me!” she shrieked, thrashing. “Someone help me!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ceci said. “He’s gone, honey, you’re safe, you’re in the hospital.”
“Hospital?” The slits of Vanessa’s eyes blinked and seemed to refocus. In a slow daze, she cocked her head toward Ceci. Her disfigured face twisted with pain.
“Fuck, it hurts,” she moaned. “What did he do to me?”
Ceci scrambled for the morphine drip. “It’s okay, hon, it’s okay, give me one second…”
Vanessa reached up to her face. “Oh my God,” she moaned, as she touched her swollen cheek. “Oh my God.”
She clawed away the covers, fighting to get up.
Ceci said, “Honey, wait, you’re connected—”
“Get the fuck away from me,” Vanessa rasped. She lurched from the bed and lunged toward the bathroom, gasping as the tubes either wrenched free or dragged devices on wheels. “Where’s the mirror? What did he do?”
Mark yanked my elbow and propelled me around her, rocketing us out of the room.
But we didn’t get away before Vanessa’s first scream.
PART 5
Chapter 36
We left the hospital and went grocery shopping.
I don’t even remember who suggested it. We just had to do something normal. We had to walk around people who were worrying about losing coupons and missing soccer practice and maxed-out credit cards, not looping the screams of a demolished widow.
We didn’t say much. I felt like a robot. Catatonic. And just when a cart full of food should have felt so good.
When we were driving up our mountain, Mark finally talked.
“We have to end this,” he said, quiet.
“End what?” I said dully. “Kelsey killed himself.”
I didn’t have the energy to shout over Thunder, but it turned out, Mark heard me just fine. Duly noted.
“You heard Vanessa,” he said. “She was obviously reliving the attack. She was quoting him say he was goaded.”
