The House on Mayberry Road

by Troy McCombs

  "Okay, you ready?" The hairdresser smiled at John. He stood and got into the closest reclining chair. The woman tied a cloth around him and hooked it shut.

  "How do you want your hair cut?"

  "Uh, just a trim. Little off the sides. Not too much off the top."

  "Okay. I gotcha." She grabbed a pair of scissors and went to work. John watched her in the mirror as she snipped and moved, her facial features extremely familiar in his mind. Not old familiar, but recently. She looked like someone he had just met. Perhaps a twin or even just a sibling. The eyes, the mouth, the color hair, the nose—everything. Yet, he could not place the other person who resembled her.

  "What's your name?" John looked up at her.

  "Patricia Goodsmith. Yours?"

  "John Rollings."

  "Well, it's nice to meet you, John. I don't think I've seen you before."

  "I live in Bellsville."

  "Oh, that's where most of my family lives." She walked around, trimming away.

  Jesus, what does my hair have to do with D'kourikai?

  There was a moment of silence.

  "So what do you do, John?"

  "Somewhat of an unorthodox detective, I guess you can say."

  "Really? My big brother is the sheriff in Lecorrd."

  What?

  "Who's your brother?" John asked, very curious. He already knew the answer.

  "Charlie Steera."

  A strobe light began flickering in his head, fast and furious. Sirens blared. Rapid, rumpling thoughts scattered across his subconscious like zaps of electricity. He didn't understand what this meant yet, but he knew he was getting closer to a vital answer somebody wanted him to know.

  Patricia continued to snip his hair, her mouth moving, but John was unable to process any of her verbal words. Visions snapped vibrantly inside his mind as he dug deeper toward the truth. He pictured thin strands of golden blonde hair feather to the floor in slow motion, just like in his earlier dream. He saw Patricia, from a past decade and of a much younger age, sweeping the hair into a dust pan, then dumping it into a clear plastic sandwich bag, and then handing that to someone else, as if it contained illegal drugs. Lastly, came a true, ultimate revelation of monumental proportions. Rollings really realized why this building looked so familiar. He saw this last image as plain as day. The person's hair Charlie's sister was cutting then wasn't just some bum's, it was his—John Rollings. He had come to this shop one day as a young teenager many years ago. Somehow he had indirectly been lured here so somebody could obtain a physical specimen of himself—a lock of his hair. His vital DNA. But who would have wanted it? And why?

  He spoke. "My hair? Who did you give my hair to when I was a boy? You cut it and gave it to somebody. You put it in a plastic baggy...and—" He trailed off.

  Patricia dropped the scissors and gasped.

  How does he know?

  John gazed at her reflection in the mirror. He thought the glass was going to break.

  "How did you—know?" She couldn't believe it... "You couldn't possibly remember that." Her voice was uneasy and tense. The other barbers and customers were now looking her way.

  "I do remember. I just want to know who and why. Why did you save my hair for someone? Who did you give it to?"

  She tried to speak again, but all that would form were small yelps in the back of her throat. She eventually got herself together. "I don't know what he wanted it for. That was when—"

  "What?" John demanded. "When what?"

  "When she—when Mary—"

  "Who's Mary?" John pushed.

  Tears gleamed in her eyes. "I don't know why my brother wanted a lock of your hair. He was confused and messed up at the time. He didn't give me an explanation. I just did it for him, thinking it was no big deal. Please, don't tell him I told you. He would be so angry." She wiped away her watery eyes. To John, there was still much more to be discovered. And only one man held the answer: Charlie Steera.

  John thought about asking Patricia another question, but decided it'd be best not to. She looked upset already and he knew he would get a clearer, more picturesque answer from the main source's mouth.

  I gotta find him.

  John threw a twenty on the table and left the shop.

  The rain was stinging as he ran up the road toward the hospital, where he had a feeling Charlie was waiting for him now. He went on pure, unadulterated curiosity, dying to know what secret his new acquaintance had been hiding from him all this time. John didn't bother to look from side to side for traffic when he approached intersections; he wanted to get there at mach speed.

  He got there in less than ten minutes after his departure from Barber's Paradise, dripping wet and out of breath. The sliding glass doors of Lecorrd Medical Center opened for him. He entered the premises with an interested glare in his eyes, which often happened when he felt psychically in-tune, as he did right now. And sitting there, in a cheap ugly chair by the main desk, was he. Charlie Steera.

  "John. Hey, I was looking for you.” He stood. "You all right? Jesus, what happened? Where have you been? Looks like you've been running in the rain."

  The interested glare in John's eyes turned more serious.

  Charlie looked confused. "Is everything all right?"

  "Charlie, I saw and talked to your sister. I must know what you intended to use a strand of my hair for before I was even a teenager. I need to know now. No lies, no tales. The truth."

  Charlie dropped his head, sighed, and rubbed his face harshly with one fat hand. "Shit. I didn't want you to find out. Not this way."

  "The truth." John stared him down.

  "The truth. I wish someone could have told me that too." Steera took three deep breaths. This was the first time John had seen him utterly vulnerable.

  "Find. Help. Mary." Charlie nodded. "Help me find Mary, is the phrase I think you were picking up on. Mary was my wife, John. When you were only twelve, she disappeared. I went to work one day and when I came home, she was gone without a trace. No leads, no witnesses, no nothing. It's like she vanished off the face of the earth. I turned this whole tri-state area upside down looking for clues or any evidence of her I could find. Haven't found so much as a shred. Then one day I was investigating a suspected drug house out on Mayberry Road—not the one we've been working on. The criminal saw me and took off running out the back door. I chased after him, through the woods, where I eventually lost him. That's when I came to the Mayberry House we've been working on. So I went inside, on a hunch that that's where the man was hiding, perhaps waiting for me to move on and look elsewhere. At the time, I knew nothing of that terrible place. But as soon as I entered, the beast materialized before me. Christ, John, the power off that thing was like a nuclear bomb. It talked to me without moving its mouth. I could not move. I don't think I could breathe. It somehow just knew about my wife Mary. It knew things about her only she and I knew. Very important, intimate details. It told me that it could track her for me, lead me right to her! I loved her so much. I said I would do anything. I made a deal with it—that demonic freak—that I would bring it a small, tangible specimen from a young male child with powers no other human procured. Someone with the third eye. Psychic intuitiveness. And only months prior, I read an article in the Herald Star about a young man who wasn't even a teenager yet...a young boy who was able to see dead people and know things before they came true. It was you, John. D'kourikai didn't give me a reason why it needed a piece of your DNA. It just said it needed to trace you until the time was right. God, I am so sorry. And that fuck lied to me! It never found Mary for me. It gave me bad dreams of what might have happened to her. When I threatened to burn that house down, it threatened to bring me into its world...its stifling, liquidy world of true abomination. I did nothing after that. I could do nothing. But it needs you to survive. I need you to help me kill it. You're the only one. It's afraid of you."

  "Why hasn't it attacked you since we've started?" John's mouth began to pucker.

  "I don't pos
e a threat. It thinks I'm too weak to do anything."

  "Nobody who’s gone in there has posed a threat."

  "That's because it's trying to show us who's boss. It wants us to be afraid so that it can't be afraid. It wants to split the barriers between dimensions. It needs a power of earth to do it. You're that power."

  "You're sure of this?"

  "It told me."

  An air of silence fell between the two men. Neither of them spoke or looked at each other for a while. Nothing much else could be said. John was still absorbing the information. It was like trying to digest his grandmother's meatloaf. It took time, patience, and maybe a few tums, which, in this case, may have been a long period of meditation or escape from the truth.

  "John, I know you don't have a place to stay. You are more than welcome to live at my house until you figure things out."

  "No. That's my problem, not yours."

  "It's no trouble at all. Really. Besides, I could use some company, anyway."

  John gazed downward, indifferent. "I will find my own, Charlie. But thanks. I have a friend I haven't seen in a while who moved back in town not long ago. I may stay with him."

  "Okay. Well, the offer stands on the table if you change your mind."

  The biggest reason why John was opposed to staying with Charlie was this: the Sheriff had basically signed his soul over to the beast with twenty-two eyes. He understood the man missed his wife, but everyone missed somebody. John missed his deceased parents. He missed a dead little girl back in Oregon. He knew other people who missed relatives, friends, and acquaintances, as well. There was no stopping death. There was no stopping bad things from happening in the world. But for Steera to place an innocent preteen boy on D'kourikai's list was uncalled for. Ignorant. Most of all, selfish. Rollings had been watched for more than half of his life by the thing in the Mayberry House. Every time he ate, it saw him. Every time he spoke, it heard him. There was no way of escaping it...

  At least not yet.

  "John, can you find Mary for me? Is there any way you can see where she is? What happened to her?"

  "No, I can't. Not right now. My brain is fried."

  "That's okay. In time maybe. Do you need a ride anywhere?"

  "Don't worry, I'll find one." John turned and approached the sliding glass doors.

  "I'll keep in touch."

  "You do that, Sheriff." He walked out the doors without looking back.

  ***

  Later that day, during the onset of dusk, an arm reached out from an undisclosed patch of darkness and a clinched fist knocked on a worn, paint-chipped door. John stepped into a small shaft of reflected blue streetlight. He was standing on a concrete porch, where a wooden swing lay in a broken heap back by the far railing. A rusty mailbox hung from one screw beside a cracked screen door. John checked the address on it again—1609 Chestnut Street—just to make sure he was at the right place. He was. But there were no lights on in the windows. There was no sound from within. Was anyone even home?

  A noise eventually sounded from behind the front door, and an outside light burned to life. John stepped back just as the main door swung open and the stingy odor of cigarette smoke entered his lungs.

  Yep, this is the right place.

  "Well, you're not dead. Those ol' cancer sticks haven't gotten to you yet, have they?" John grinned. The confused man inside, who was completely bald, bone-thin, and ravaged-looking, removed a lit Camel from his lips.

  "Do I know you—John?"

  "I guess my psychic visions don't always come true."

  The man removed the cigarette from his lips. "That's because you're a hack. You're not intuitive at all. You suck. Jesus, man, how the hell you doing? Holy shit, I haven't seen you for what? Three? Four years?”

  "Something like that."

  "Well, come in. Come on in."

  The man opened the door for him. This was Ben Krambers, a childhood friend of Rollings. John had never known a soul outside his family as long as he had known Ben, who had been there for him through thick and thin. Both men had little in common, had different opinions on many things, and had lived different lifestyles. Regardless, they were like brothers, or had been at one time. It was when John's psychic powers really matured that they eventually drifted apart. Ben became afraid of the startling predictions his best pal made, especially when they came true. Right now, he missed this freak of nature. John missed him, too.

  "You look good, man. I figured you would have been possessed or something by now." Ben coughed and closed the door.

  John snickered.

  "Just take a seat. Excuse the mess."

  The living room wasn't a mess, it was an abomination. The carpeted floor was sticky where it wasn't littered with mounds of trash or dirty clothes. Newspapers were randomly placed over spots (where his cat had peed or pooped). The walls were cracked, and the ceiling was ripped open where the roof was leaking. A bucket sat in the center of the room to collect the water. However, the odors were almost worse than the sights. It was so unbearable that John had to hold back from coughing. Urine, fecal matter, rotten food, and cigarette smoke were all mixed together.

  Great, he thought, this is my new stay.

  John sat on an ugly, lumpy couch. His friend sat across from him in a rocking chair and lit another smoke. Ben's hands were shaky, unsteady, indecisive, quite unlike the ones John remembered during childhood. His face was rough, ragged, blemished. He didn't look almost thirty, which he almost was, he looked past forty.

  What happened to you, Ben?

  "Sorry I didn't contact you sooner when I heard you came back in town." John looked down, away from Ben. "I meant to." John looked up, at Ben.

  "Oh, don't worry about it." Ben waved his bony hand. "You're here now. I've only been back for a year, anyway. I know you've been busy. I have been, too."

  "What have you been doing?" John suddenly wished he hadn't asked that question.

  "Well..." He thought about it. "I finally souped up my Hemi. Runs awesome now. We'll have to cruise sometime."

  John nodded and looked around the disorganized room. "That's nice. You ever go back to school? Get your diploma?"

  Ben got quiet. His eyes glowed like the cherry on his cigarette.

  John held up his hands. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to dredge up old memories or advice you don't want to hear."

  Ben flicked some ashes onto his carpet and rubbed them in with his heel. "Oh, it's okay. I'm over it. We haven't seen each other since when? Eleventh grade?"

  "Yeah, when you...quit."

  "I don't consider what I did as quitting. School just wasn't for me. I always saw myself as a freelancer doing whatever job I wanted depending on how I felt. Now I make my money off the government."

  "How?"

  "Disability."

  John hated hearing that. His old friend was in even worse shape than he'd originally predicted.

  "You still into digital photography?"

  Ben sucked in on his Camel. "No way, man. It's a waste of time and energy. I haven't done that forever. Nobody buys shit like that anymore. Not even on Ebay. You gotta go to college for that and you know how little I like school."

  John glanced over at Ben while he wasn't looking. The most basic, most soul-consuming emotions filled his face: desperation, pain, and hopelessness. Was this even Ben anymore?

  "I heard about the United Apartments burning down. It's a shame. You lived there for a while, haven't you?"

  John nodded. "Since you left."

  Ben shook his head and finished his cigarette. "You are more than welcome to stay here, man. You know that."

  John looked again at the mess. Without even looking at him, Ben responded, "Yeah, I know what you're thinking, John. You feel sorry for me. You think I'm a bum. A waste. A loser. A piece of scum who never achieved anything in life because I was selfish. I've never even kissed a girl before, just as you said would happen when we were teens. I'm always going to be alone, just as you predicted. Sometimes I ask mysel
f if I would be somewhere else, someone better, if I hadn't heard what you told me back then. Maybe if we'd never known each other I would be a famous photographer."

  John looked heartbroken. "Ben, I'm sorry. Whatever I said when we were—"

  Ben interrupted: "Don't be sorry! You were right. Everything you said, you were right about. Even the lung cancer."

  John swallowed hard. "What? Are you sure?"

  "Yes. Three opinions. They say they can try to help me with Chemo, but it's so far advanced now that they don't think it'll really help all that much. I'm days away from dying, John. I don't want to be helped or saved. That's why I refuse to go into the ER."

  "Ben, listen, maybe there's another way. Some doctor in—"

  Ben interrupted him again. "No. As I said, I don't wanna be saved. If there's half a chance of there being a better world than this, as you used to say—a heaven—I want to go there. That's the place where all my dreams will come true. That's where I want to be."

  "So you're giving up? Just like that?"

  "What do you want me to do? You want me to show you what I cough up in the sink when I wake up? That I can't breathe when I'm lying there trying to sleep? That I—fucking hate my life!" Ben shoved a slew of empty beer cans off a nearby stand. John didn't flinch.

  "Heaven, Ben, is where you go after you complete your journey. You haven't even started yet."

  "But God wants to end me." Ben pointed to his cigarette and stamped it out.

  "You made some bad choices. It's not your fault."

  "Oh yeah? Well, I can't turn back time, can I?"

  John was quiet.

  "That's what I thought. Hell, heaven isn't gonna take me, anyway. I'm fucked. Always have been. Nobody was ever there for me...to help me."

  "No. You were never there for you. I tried to help you, but you didn't want to hear my advice. It's the same story with everyone else who lent you their helping hand. You think your way is better than everyone else's. You're stubborn. You were since I first met you. But don't throw in the towel! I don't care if you're puking blood and can't breathe. Sometimes you have to say fuck God and live, regardless. You're like my brother. If you're dying, you're dying, but don't be weak and say the hell with it. There are others who aren't dying and say that very same thing. When we were kids, you never gave up playing guitar … until you became a teenager and a few people said you weren't any good. Fuck them all, Ben. Believe in yourself, not the negativity. I don't have to be psychic to see that people are always lying, insecure and egocentric. You should do what you want to do regardless of how good or bad you are at it. Do it for you, not for them."