These Unquiet Bones

by Dean Harrison

  “Yeah, you told me. Care to talk about it?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  Layne’s eyes followed.

  The windows in the brick wall facing the driveway were dark, and the rusty screens made it difficult to see if her asshole dad was watching them. He jammed his fists into the pockets of his jacket. He felt them tremble. “Go ahead and tell me.”

  Amy took a deep breath and told him how she found some old family photographs in her grandmother’s old bedroom and heard a voice she thought was a ghost’s.

  Layne raised his eyebrows. A ghost? “Seriously?”

  “The man in the picture looked just like Billy,” Amy said, ignoring the question. “And the woman, I don’t know who she is but…”

  “You think there’s a connection to your mother’s murder?”

  Amy shook her head. Layne could see a hint of fear in her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know.”

  “You didn’t talk to your dad about it?”

  “That’s not an easy thing to do.”

  Layne didn’t understand. “Why?”

  “It’s… complicated. OK?”

  The pleading look on her face made Layne drop the subject. “OK,” he said. “Sorry.” He opened his arms for a hug.

  Amy pulled away a little too quickly. She looked over her shoulder again. “I better go inside.”

  Feeling rejected, Layne said. “Yeah, sure.”

  She faced him, smiling apologetically. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hurried away.

  Layne’s his temper flared. It consumed whatever sympathy he had for Amy and rendered it void.

  Why does this keep happening?

  With a clenched fist, he punched the driver side of the Pathfinder. His knuckles screamed in pain.

  Why can’t I ever get the one I love?

  The thing that hid within Layne mocked him with laughter. “Let me out,” He heard it say. “I want to play.”

  “No,” Layne slapped himself in the face. “Shut up.”

  He wouldn’t let it happen again. He wouldn’t let it out.

  But some choices were not his to make.

  Chapter 22

  Hank snatched her by the arm when Amy stepped back into the house. “Come here,” he growled, digging his fingers in.

  “Dad, you’re hurting me,” Amy cried as he dragged her into the hallway.

  “Shut up,” he barked. “Or I’ll really make you hurt.”

  He hurled her into his mother’s bedroom, shoved her toward the bureau and gestured wildly at the cracked mirror. “The hell did you do? You know how old that is? It’s a fucking antique. Your grandma is probably rollin’ in her grave about now.”

  Amy cringed. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  “And I’ll accidentally throw you through that wall. The fuck were you doing in here? You know your grandma never liked you in here. Couldn’t you fucking respect that, especially with her dead?”

  Glancing tearfully at the mirror, Amy bit her lower lip.

  “Speak up, girl,” Hank growled. He trembled with fury. How could she come in this room, the one place in the house she was not allowed? What was she thinking? What was she doing? Hank was seeing red.

  “I k-kept hearing a strange noise in here,” she said, her voice quivered.

  “What? Another fuckin’ rat?”

  “I don’t know. But I-I saw a roach up there on the mirror. I-I tried to kill it.”

  “The fuck did you try to kill it with? A brick?”

  Amy dropped her eyes. “A baseball bat.”

  Dumbfounded, Hank shook his head. “Well that would do it wouldn’t it?” He looked at the mirror, his anger abated. “She had this thing since she was a little girl,” he grumbled.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “When were you plannin’ on tellin’ me?”

  Amy sniffed. “I don’t know. You were already angry with me about the party. I was afraid to.”

  Hank ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He knew he was overreacting about this. A voice in the back of his head— one sounding eerily like his dead wife’s— told him he was, too.

  Frowning, he looked down at the old oak chest at the foot of the bed and licked his lips. He thought of the conversation he had with Joe on the phone and changed his mind. “You do anything else in here?”

  “No,” Amy said softly, her head bowed.

  Hank cupped her chin and tilted her face up. A tiny tear ran down her bruised cheek. He suddenly felt like shit.

  The voice told him he should after treating her the way he did, making her afraid to talk to him.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said, not sure if he was talking to Amy or Ellen’s ghost.

  She looked so much like her mother. More so now than ever. It was uncanny, almost frightening.

  “Guess I got a carried away,” he continued. “I love you so much. I don’t like hurtin’ you.” He realized he’d said those very words many times to Ellen after smacking her around.

  You really are a lousy shit, aren’t you?

  Feeling the heavy chains of guilt and remorse weigh down on his shoulders, Hank leaned down and kissed Amy on the lips.

  The stirring in his loins disturbed him.

  The hell is wrong with you?

  It’s the first time he ever felt such a thing.

  And toward your own daughter?

  It was disgusting.

  Stumbling away from Amy, he glanced again at the old oak chest at the foot of the bed and thought of terrible secrets, long hidden.

  “Don’t come in here no more.” He guided Amy out of the room and closed the door. “You do and I’ll get my belt and tear your little butt up. Hear?”

  “Yes sir,” Amy said, standing in the middle of the hall watching him.

  Hank saw her wary yet puzzled expression but ignored it, and hurried for the bathroom. He needed a cold shower.

  “The sickness,” said a different voice, and one he knew all too well. “You have it, too.”

  Depraved laughter echoed through the dark chambers of his mind.

  It scared him to pieces.

  Chapter 23

  Kelley was fast asleep on the couch. The thought of slitting her throat occurred to Layne but he let it pass.

  She’ll get hers soon.

  He swiped a bottle of Crown Royal from the liquor cabinet in the living room and slunk out of the house.

  Time to take a load off. This hasn’t been my night.

  Looking for a little companionship in his sorrow drowning, he gave his friend Steve Matranga a call.

  “Hey, dude,” Layne said, climbing into the Pathfinder. “What’re you up to?”

  “Not much, man,” Steve said. “Just hangin’ out with Chris and Johnny gettin’ high.” There was a fit of laughter on the other end of the line. “Chris told me what happened last night to Amy. Wish I saw that. That asshole Billy was here at Sonic earlier. Looks like you fucked him up real good.”

  Intrigued, Layne slipped the key into the ignition and started the engine. “You saw him, eh?”

  “You know I actually used to be friends with that piece of crap in middle school? He lives in some old trailer off Corbin Road. I’d go over and play video games on weekends and we’d steal his dad’s beer and go huntin’ in the woods behind his family’s property.”

  “You hunt?”

  “Not much anymore. But that dude was totally fucked up in the head, man. He wouldn’t kill the animals he shot right away. He would make them suffer, getting some weird pleasure in it.”

  Layne twisted the cap from the bottle of Crown and took a swig. He winced as the fiery liquid streamed down his throat. “Oh, yeah? Did he fuck them?”

  Steve chuckled. “Not when I was around.”

  “Sick fucker.” Something in the back of his mind clicked. “Where exactly is this trailer of his?”

  “About ten minutes from the school. You turn off Main and make a left on
to Fireside. A few miles down you turn on Corbin. The trailer is close to the woods. There’s a giant Confederate flag nailed to the front of it and a lot of old cars and junk in the yard. His dad’s a mechanic, and his mother’s a whore. Why?”

  Layne took another pull from the bottle. His inhibitions melted away opening the door for trouble.

  “Just curious,” he said. “Later, man.” He hung up the phone and turned up the radio.

  Guy likes to torture animals.

  With his head swimming and his vision blurring, he tossed back another gulp of whiskey and grinned. His eyes narrowed.

  So do I.

  Chapter 24

  Peering into the darkness of her room with the alternative rock music from the mix CD Layne made playing softly from her stereo, Amy thought about her father and the old photograph she slipped into her diary.

  What does he know about it? Why did Grandma Snow keep it a secret?

  More questions spun in her head, more than she could keep up with. Her father had acted really weird once he calmed down about the mirror. What was on his mind? The past? Skeletons?

  She imagined the sound of bony fingers scratching at the inside of a wooden chest. The sound made her shiver. The music in the background softened. Amy felt a chill burrow beneath her skin. The back of her neck prickled.

  “He’s coming for you.”

  The music went silent. Amy sensed a presence in the room. Lifting her head from the pillow, she looked around and eyed every shadow, every silhouette until…

  Her eyes stopped on a shape in a far corner of the room, a shape that wasn’t there before she turned out the lights.

  The shape moved.

  By the soft moonlight spilling through the window blinds, she saw a woman with long blond hair, dark eyes, and an ethereal body that glowed with an eerie blue iridescence.

  The woman drifted toward her.

  Amy tried to scream, but her throat was constricted with fear. All that came out was a pitiful gasp of air.

  As the figure crept closer with its arms outstretched, she saw its lips moving, but the sounds they formed were drowned out by the loud shrieking in her head.

  “He’s coming for YOU!”

  Her heart rate rose. Terror followed suit. Amy wanted to fling the covers from her body and bolt for the door but she couldn’t move. Her mounting fear rendered her helpless.

  The specter closed in, hovering off the floor. Its face inched closer.

  Burrowing into her pillow, Amy clamped her eyes shut. Stop, she wanted to scream. Go away!

  She felt cold air brushing against her face.

  You’re not real!

  But it was. The face was hauntingly familiar. Amy had seen it before, in an old photograph in the shoebox.

  This isn’t happening. I won’t believe it.

  But did she have a choice? She didn’t want to believe her father knew of the Nightmare Man, but what if it were true?

  What if all her fears were true? What if her father really did have something to do with her mother’s death?

  She had to find out. If she didn’t the nightmares would continue to chip away at her sanity, until all she saw were ghosts in the night, monsters in her sleep, and bogeymen over her bed.

  Taking a deep breath, Amy summoned the courage to open her eyes.

  The dreadful blue woman was gone and so was the shrieking in her head. All she heard was the sound of alternative rock, and all she saw were the inanimate forms of furniture.

  The fear had vanished.

  She had to learn the truth.

  Chapter 25

  Drunk and tired, Billy Brown stumbled out of his father’s old rundown Chevy, chunked an empty beer can toward the adjacent woods, and spat out a thick wad of tobacco into a tangle of weeds and litter.

  With a wet belch, he scratched himself and staggered toward the trailer that crouched dark and decrepit like an ivy-choked mausoleum in dense overgrowth. Home sweet home.

  Or at least it had been ever since his parents shot each other in a domestic squabble. Before that, it was prison.

  Reaching the front door, he heard crumpling aluminum. He stopped in his tracks and turned his head toward the sound.

  “Here piggy, piggy,” said the figure stepping out of the woods.

  “What the fuck?” Billy squinted his bleary eyes, trying to make out just who was coming toward him with a mean-looking knife. “Whozat?”

  “The butcher boy,” said the stranger, who was stark naked. “And it’s time for the slaughter.”

  Part Two

  Family Matters

  Chapter 26

  “Shit, don’t touch it!”

  “Think I’m crazy? I just want a better look. Never seen a naked chick up close before. At least, not a dead one.”

  “You’re sick. Look at her. Look at all the blood!”

  Wincing from the putrid stench of rotting flesh, eleven-year-old Ty Schwamberger pulled his shirt collar over his nose. “Should we call the cops?”

  Ty kept his eyes on the decomposing body tied to the pine tree as he pulled out his cell phone from a pocket.

  “How long you think she’s been here?” Asked Thomas Erb, who was the first to spot the fly-infested corpse as he and Ty explored the woods.

  “Beats me.” He dialed 911.

  When the dispatcher picked up on the other end, Ty lowered his shirt collar. “Yeah, um, me and my friend found a dead body. Thought, uh, someone might wanna know.”

  Chapter 27

  Hank leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table and processed what Joe had told him over the phone.

  The victim’s name was Amber Frey, and she was only a few days shy of her eighteenth birthday when her parents reported her missing from their home in Mobile.

  When found this morning in Wilmer, her long blond hair was streaked with blood, her brown eyes bulged lifelessly from the sockets of her skull, and her throat was slit from ear to ear.

  “Christ,” Hank muttered. He took a sip from his morning cup of coffee. “Find the murder weapon?”

  “Have guys scouring the area now. What’re you thinking?

  “You know what I’m thinkin’.”

  Joe sighed. “That it’s your guy?”

  “I know it is.”

  “She could’ve known her killer. Maybe a jealous ex-boyfriend?”

  “It ain’t no ex-boyfriend, trust me.”

  “If you say so.”

  After hanging up the phone, Hank pushed away from the table with his coffee and walked down the hall to check on Amy.

  He paused at her door. The last time he stepped in without knocking she was changing, and he saw parts of her that weren’t meant for his eyes. His face had turned red in embarrassment.

  But looking back on it now, in light of the forbidden longing he felt after kissing his daughter last night, he realized something he hadn’t before. His gaze had lingered Amy’s half-nude body that time he walk in on her, and a part of him liked what he saw.

  The sickness. You have it too.

  Hank tried to deny it, but deep down he knew it was true-his father’s lecherous curse tainted his blood.

  Shaking off the thought, he pressed his ears to Amy’s door. He could hear her snoring softly signaling it was safe to take a peek. He opened the door.

  Hank leaned against the doorjamb and appraised his little, sleeping peanut. He was sure Ellen would be proud of the bright young woman Amy had become despite what she has been through.

  He just had to make sure he continued protecting her, that he kept those shields he erected around her fragile world from tumbling down and crushing everything she knew about life. About family. About the true nature of man. About his curse, a curse that could also be hers.

  Amy groaned in her sleep. Her breathing accelerated at an alarming pace. Her face scrunched painfully. She groaned louder.

  Hank was afraid she was about to have another one of her screaming fits. He stepped into the room, intent on waking her, but her features s
moothed, her breathing softened.

  Bemused, Hank towered over her and contemplated why she was having these night terrors again. It’s been years since the last batch. What was the problem now?

  She’d never tell him, at least not truthfully.

  But then again, Hank was never truthful with her. He was never truthful with anyone which in hindsight was the cause for all the ghosts that plagued his life.

  Staring at his sleeping daughter, Hank sipped his coffee and thought about long buried secrets that continued to haunt him. About those unquiet bones refusing to rest.

  He thought about an uncollected debt, a failed sacrifice, and a curse borne by a chosen few.

  “You’ll never escape us,” said the snickering voice of his father. “We are you. You are us.”

  And that was Hank’s greatest fear.

  Chapter 28

  Layne woke with a headache threatening to split his skull open with its merciless pounding. His mouth was bone dry; his naked body splattered in blood.

  “Holy shit!” He stared down at himself in horror. His mind screamed: what happened?

  The answer, however, was obvious— he released it: the thing that should not be.

  Zero.

  That was the name he had given to his darker half, the half of him void of anything civilized, the half that relished depraved acts of ultra-violence.

  Zero.

  After court-appointed therapy and medication, he thought he had conquered the problem. He thought he was cured.

  He was wrong. The blood on his hands proved it.

  “No.” From a bed of pine needles and rotten leaves, Layne scrambled to his feet.

  “NO!”

  He spun around scanning the woods for a sign of what he had done, but saw no clues. Panicking, he closed his eyes and searched his memory of last night for the answer. He drew a blank. “FUCK!”

  Head pounding, heart racing, Layne ran.

  Chapter 29