Charlie (Bloodletting Book 1)

by Joe Humphrey

  Though she'd never actually experienced it herself, Charlie became aware of the fact that she was getting high. Before she could comment on it, Caroline rested her hand on Charlie's knee.

  "Now let's talk about what we're going to do with you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean getting you back home safely. There are terrible people on the road and it's no place for a little girl to be wandering around."

  "Oh," Charlie said, feeling dread wash over her. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to stay on the road anymore either. For the first time in her life, Charlie felt like she had nowhere to go. More than anything she wanted to crawl into the corner and die. None of the options in front of her seemed like anything she wanted. The problem was that she didn't know what she wanted.

  "You've changed your mind? About going home, I mean."

  "I never decided one way or the other," Charlie said, resigned to the fact that they were going to talk about this some more. She closed her eyes. The decor of the room that had struck her as quaint and somewhat precious now loomed, chaotic, and overwhelming. She had never been drunk before, but she didn't think that it would feel like what she was feeling. In fact, she was sure it wasn't just the alcohol. She looked up at Caroline, who was watching her. Staring at her, Charlie suddenly became aware of the strange fogginess of Caroline's eyes. They seemed to be glazed over as if covered with a thin layer of dry soap.

  "Are you okay dear?"

  Caroline took her by the chin and tilted her head up, looking into her eyes. For an absurd moment, she felt like a horse being examined by a potential buyer as Caroline stared down her nose at her. She was still wearing those ridiculous white driving gloves. They felt cold and sticky against her skin. Charlie sweated profusely.

  "I need to lay down..." she managed to mumble.

  "By all means, let's get you to bed," Caroline said, hopping up from the couch and holding her hand out. Charlie stretched to set her glass on the carved wooden coffee table but couldn't quite get there. Caroline plucked it from her hand before it had a chance to topple to the floor. She set the glass on a coaster and took Charlie's hand, hoisting her up to her feet. Charlie nearly fell but Caroline wrapped her arm around her waist and kept her upright. She pulled away, hating the feeling of Caroline's pasty, cold arm across her back and under her arm. It was like being handled by a massive bony snake.

  "I guess that drink hit you harder than I expected!" Caroline said, giggling, practically carrying Charlie across the room. She had the swimmy feeling of being lifted by a giant and flung across the room and had to suppress the urge to vomit. The light fluctuated from bright to dim and back. Each time it became progressively darker until all of the light in the room seemed to be coming from the end of a black tunnel.

  Charlie was vaguely aware of the sensation of falling as she was guided into a bed and under covers. The last thing she saw before passing out was Caroline's face peering down at her from the end of that long, dark tunnel. She was smiling, her teeth white and gleaming even in the dark, and her eyes were gray and dead.

  - 9 -

  The next ten hours were a blur of sounds that might have been voices and pink lights and shadows moving behind eyelids that refused to open. At one point she drifted somewhere near consciousness and she was vaguely aware of the feeling that an animal was licking her hand. She tried to pull her arm up but it wouldn't move. She couldn't tell if it refused because she was asleep or because it was being held. She suspected it was being held. The smell of imitation vanilla became the scent she most associated with crushing, suffocating darkness.

  - 10 -

  At around four o'clock in the afternoon on what she believed to be the following day, Charlie stirred awake. It took a real force of will to pull her eyelids open and face reality. Since she'd climbed into Caroline's Cadillac, she wasn't entirely sure what had been a dream and what had actually happened.

  Stretched out in what appeared to be a small child's bedroom, she realized that most of what she thought had happened had, indeed, happened. She rolled out of the bed and fell onto the floor. It was cool against her face. Sprawled out there, she drifted back toward sleep and had to command herself up. There was a sense of danger in the air and she felt that if she were to fall back asleep, she may never wake up again. Her hand ached for some reason.

  Once she was on her feet and able to hold herself upright, she took stock of her surroundings. She was, indeed, in a child's bedroom. On the wall was a series of paintings depicting crying clowns. The kind of image Charlie associated with the most kitsch of suburban households. The room was immaculately clean and looked as though no child had ever actually set foot in it. The fact that it was dark didn't help. Charlie could see sunlight trying to battle through the shuttered windows, but it barely illuminated the creepy, pristine bedroom.

  When she raised her hands, she saw that her right wrist was bandaged. She peeled the tape away and there was a plastic valve sticking out of her skin. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she pulled at it. A thin tube slipped out from under her skin. She looked at the floor and saw where an IV stand was knocked over and a glass bottle lay shattered on the floor. Charlie guessed she must have knocked it over in her sleep. The IV tubing lay on the floor, apparently yanked from her wrist.

  Charlie stumbled into the hallway which, like the bedroom, was mostly dark, illuminated only by a green cactus-shaped nightlight plugged in at the halfway point. She wandered past the light and into the living room.

  In the darkness, the living room looked like a briar patch. What had seemed like quaint and charming Old West decorations in the light, now looked like a hodgepodge of jagged shadows and pointed porcelain and glass daggers, all threatening to catch on her clothes and fall to the floor, shattering and waking whatever was sleeping in the house.

  Oh yes, Charlie suspected that something was indeed sleeping in the house. If it was whatever had called itself Caroline last night, or some other new threat, Charlie was sure she was in danger of waking it up. Tiptoeing through the house, she felt like Bilbo Baggins creeping past the dragon, Smaug. She wished she had Bilbo’s precious ring to make her invisible. Her heart was bashing itself against the inside walls of her chest like a madman.

  She found her backpack where she'd dropped it on the floor next to the door and scooped it up. In the darkness, she wasn't sure she'd find it and was almost resigned to leaving it behind. All it carried was a change of clothes, a few comic books, and the soda and candy she'd bought at the 7-11. The clothes were the only thing she actually valued.

  Slinging the pack over her shoulder, the foolishness of her impulsive jaunt into the dangerous world of hitchhiking hit her with full force. She was going to get home and she was going to do it as quickly as possible. Yes, she had her issues with her mother. That wasn't going to change, but those issues were nothing compared to the dangers she'd only barely scraped the surface of in her brief time on the road. That wasn't even counting whatever the fuck had happened to her while she was sleeping in this weird house with this strange woman.

  She was positive that she was drugged. That much she knew for sure. Why she'd been drugged she didn't know. Waking up, she was aware of an aching in her body, but she didn't think she'd been abused sexually. Her clothes didn't feel as though they'd been disturbed and the ache in her body felt more nutritional than from any sort of violation.

  When she was twelve her appendix had swollen up and needed to be removed. More than the discomfort of the operation and the healing, she remembered the feeling of battling her way out of the anesthesia. The coppery, medicinal taste the gas left in her mouth. The raw feeling in her throat from the respirator tube. The way that even when she was awake, she felt like she wasn't quite settled into reality yet. That's how she felt as she stumbled towards the door. Instead of the taste of medicine in her mouth though, she tasted rotten fruit and imitation vanilla.

  Charlie was surprised to find that the door was unlocked. She expected to have to break o
ut of the house like some kind of demented Hansel and Gretel story, but she simply opened the door and walked out. Caroline's white Cadillac was parked in the driveway, just as she'd last seen it. Charlie closed the door behind her and walked away from the house, feeling silly for having been so scared, but at the same time knowing that there was something really wrong about that house and whatever lived in it.

  She put distance between herself and the house, casting obligatory glances over her shoulder, half expecting to see the white Cadillac rolling up the road behind her. As she walked farther down the street, she found that she wasn’t entirely sure what she expected to see when she turned around. She remembered getting into a car and sitting in the tacky living room with its cheesy cowboy decor. She remembered drinking the sickly sweet lemonade. With each block, she found herself less sure where she’d been the previous night and who she’d been with. By the time she walked past the 7-11, she was sure the last person she’d seen or spoken to was Robin, the oversized trucker who was hauling hamburger and paid two dollars and an hour-long ride in exchange for a blowjob and a sizable chunk of a fifteen-year-old girl’s self-worth. The memory of a night spent in a twisted house with a strange woman named Caroline had vanished completely.

  - 11 -

  Seven hours and a lot of frustrated, scared wandering later, Charlie was getting into a yellow VW Bug. She had no way of knowing that she'd fled from one monster directly into the jaws of another.

  When he introduced himself as Chris Hagen, something pinged in the back of Charlie's mind. It wasn't that she recognized the name or his face, but she understood almost immediately that he wasn't being truthful. She knew his name wasn't Chris and she didn't know why he was lying to her. She let it go. She was just grateful to be off the road. The Bug was familiar and comfortable to her. Charlie’s mother had owned one for the first half of her life. She associated the worn bucket seats with rides home from school and T-ball.

  Besides, the guy was young and charming and not bad looking either. Maybe he lied about his name because he didn't want his wife to know he picked up teenage hitchhikers. Maybe Charlie was wrong and his name really was Chris Hagen. Maybe she was just road-weary and paranoid.

  Chris said he was heading north up through Utah and Idaho and then West to Seattle. He said he could take her all the way up to Nephi. That he'd slept all day and was planning to drive on to Salt Lake City and would be passing right through Nephi. Charlie couldn't believe her luck. Chris was a chatty guy.

  "I like to pick up hitchhikers on these long drives. It gets lonely driving alone all the time. I only pick up the ones who look nice," Chris said. By this point, the sun had completely disappeared and everything beyond the side of the road was black. Even the stars seemed to be taking the night off.

  "I guess I must look nice then," Charlie said with a smile. She was uncomfortable but that was expected considering how the last couple of days had gone. She'd been weighing out in her mind for the last hour whether or not he was going to ask her to do anything, and if she should preemptively offer just to get it over with. She didn't want to, but at least he wasn't gross like the other two had been. On the surface, Chris seemed like a good guy, though there was something about him that felt on edge. Something reptilian about his eyes. She felt like a baby rabbit in an aquarium with a snake. She never quite felt like she could relax. She certainly didn't feel comfortable falling asleep.

  "Do you want to listen to some music?" he asked as he switched on the radio. The familiar glow of the old stock radio reminded her all over again of riding with her mom. The music was nice and upbeat, which put her at ease. Pleasant Valley Sunday by The Monkees. She'd always liked The Monkees, even though she publicly denounced them along with her friends for being phony and manufactured. There was no getting around the fact that Micky Dolenz had a voice that instantly put a smile on her face.

  "I love The Monkees. Just love em," Chris said, his face orange in the warm glow of the radio.

  "Me too. Micky's my favorite."

  "I like Mike. He's quiet, but when he has something to say, he means it. Micky runs his mouth too much. Davy's too much of a pretty boy. Mike though... he's the guy you gotta keep an eye on because he'll surprise you."

  Charlie had never met an adult with such a vested interest in The Monkees before. She felt like she should be comforted by this, even amused, but somehow it put her off. Like his fake name, it felt calculated and manufactured. Not only phony but tailored to what he thought she would want to hear. It was like what she imagined an alien visiting earth would incorporate into his disguise as a human being. An awkward approximation of a teenager, but not quite hitting the mark. She tried to tell herself that she was being cautious, yet she couldn't help but feel like this guy she was riding with was trying way too hard to convince her that he was normal.

  Curiosity battled against her better judgment. The curiosity demanded to know why he was pretending to like The Monkees and why he was lying about his name. Her better judgment was screaming at her to just shut-up shut-up please god just shut-up and leave it alone.

  "What's your favorite Monkees song?" he asked her.

  "The Porpoise Song. Yours?"

  "Listen to the Band. It's a Mike song," he said, trailing off at the end, almost mumbling.

  "It's a good one," she said. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Chris seemed to be wrestling with something he wanted to say.

  "Do you do drugs Charlie?" he looked at her for an uncomfortably long time.

  "No. I don't," Charlie responded, smiling, relieved. Was that what he was acting weird about? He thought she was a drug addict?

  "Are you sure? You never..."

  He mimed puffing a joint. The squareness of it all was too much to take. Charlie burst out laughing.

  "NO! Jesus! I live in Nephi, Utah. There's no grass in Nephi!"

  Charlie was laughing even harder. Eventually, Chris started laughing too. A stilted, stuttering sound that made Charlie’s skin crawl. Ah-huh ah-huh ah-huh. It was as though he wasn’t sure exactly what laughter was supposed to sound like, but was taking a stab at it anyway.

  "Okay, okay! Good!" Chris said.

  He forced himself to stop laughing and looked at her again.

  "That's really good because I don't like druggies."

  He was staring at her again and it was then that she realized that she wasn't just paranoid. There was something wrong with this guy. She didn't know if he was dangerous, but she knew he was somehow fundamentally broken.

  "I only ask because that song, The Porpoise Song, was from that movie. It was a drug movie."

  He was looking at her again. Charlie wanted to scream out in frustration. Did she have to get picked up by every fucking weirdo in the western United States?

  "I don't do drugs! I didn’t even see the movie. I just like the song. It's a good song. That's it. No drugs, okay?"

  He looked at her for another uncomfortable moment. Then he smiled that big phony smile. To Charlie it looked like a rotting jack-o-lantern with real teeth, crooked but sturdy.

  ”I believe you. Sorry. I spent all day yesterday listening to the news station and they were talking about the Manson Family trial. I guess I just got nervous."

  "It's okay."

  There was another long, uncomfortable silence. Charlie rested her head against the window and watched the darkness slip by. She hoped he would think she was asleep.

  "You're not... involved... with them, are you?" he finally said, breaking the stillness.

  "OH MY GOD!" Charlie burst out. "Are you serious right now? Are you seriously asking me if I'm in the Manson Family?!"

  He laughed dismissively, again, that stilted ‘ah-huh ah-huh ah-huh’ that reminded her of Elmer Fudd.

  "Of course you aren't. I was just kidding. You know, playing around. I know you're not, okay?"

  Charlie looked at him for a long time, baffled. Part of her wanted to understand what was up with this guy, but the rest of her didn't want to learn any
more about him than she had to. The more she learned, the stranger he became.

  "I don't do drugs. I'm not in the goddamned Manson Family. I didn't steal The Lindbergh baby and I don't know where Amelia Earhart is. Cool?"

  "Okay. You don't need to swear at me."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't even realize I’d sworn," Charlie said, wishing that they were at the end of their long trek north rather than the beginning.

  "You said G.D.," he said, in a short, clipped tone.

  "I'm going to try and get a little sleep, okay?" Charlie said, wanting to end the conversation.

  "Oh, okay. Sure. Do you want me to turn the radio off?"

  "No, it's fine. Goodnight."

  Charlie stuffed herself into the edge of her seat and against the door as much as she could. The glass was cool against her face. She decided that she was going to do everything she could to keep from actually falling asleep. She just didn't want to give him any more opportunities to flash that creepy, fake grin. What originally struck her as charming and even attractive now came across as forced and plastic. Part of a disguise. She suspected that his real smile was completely different, and probably even more uncomfortable to look at than his fake one.

  They rode in silence for fifteen minutes. The songs on the radio cycled. The Animals, The Who, Lovin' Spoonful. Chris reached down and turned the dial, looking for a new station.

  "I don't like that hippie shit," he muttered. Charlie didn't know if he was talking to her or if he had forgotten she was there or thought she was asleep and was talking to himself. She suspected the latter because his voice and demeanor were different. He settled on a station playing the Everly Brothers singing Love Hurts. After a moment he began singing softly to himself along with the music. It was the creepiest fucking thing Charlie had ever heard in her life. She prayed silently to a God she didn't believe in, that the song would be over soon so he would stop singing. The idea of throwing open the car door and tossing herself onto the asphalt as they puttered down the highway crossed her mind and she briefly considered it.