Bad Games- The Complete Series

by Jeff Menapace

  “Well maybe you’re not so pissed after all,” the man said after Patrick backed off. “Me? I would have ran up on this porch and taught me a lesson.”

  The words were out of Patrick’s mouth before he could snatch them back. “Put that gun down and I’ll show you how pissed off I am.”

  The man with the shaved head held the gun up to his face, gave it a curious look and said, “What? This? Is this the reason you won’t grow a pair and come on up to defend your wife’s honor?”

  Patrick said nothing.

  “You’re thinking I’d shoot you if you came up here?” the man continued. “I couldn’t shoot you, pal. I could never hurt anyone. Just isn’t in me.”

  The man walked towards a wicker table in the center of the porch and set the gun down. “There.” He splayed empty hands. “All gone.”

  The man then turned those open hands into fists and put them up in a classic 19th century boxing stance, one fist behind the other, chin ludicrously high. “Come on then, stud. Let’s do a bit of fisticuffs, yeah?” He made small circles with his fists as though ready for the opening bell. “Come on, you don’t want your wife to think you’re a pussy, do ya? Because no matter what they might tell you, it’s always the knight-in-shining-armor shit that gets ’em wet. You see, a woman will make love to a pacifist…” He smirked. “But she’ll fuck a knight.”

  Patrick twitched again.

  The man exaggerated his stance, raised his fists high. “So what’s it gonna be, stud? You gonna be the knight or the pussy?”

  Patrick started forward.

  Amy lunged after her husband, grabbed his arm with both hands. “No!” She fronted Patrick and placed both hands on his chest. “No, Patrick, he’ll grab the gun as soon as you go up there. He’s the pussy!” She turned and faced the man, one hand still on her husband’s chest. “YOU’RE the pussy!” She turned back to Patrick. “We’ll call the police. We’ll go home right now and call the police.” Back over her shoulder again at the man, “WE’RE CALLING THE POLICE!”

  The screen door to the cabin opened, a metallic bang declaring it shut once the porch’s newest occupant appeared. He was a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a welt on his cheek. He was holding a doll. “What the hell is going on out here?” the man asked. “Can’t a guy play with his doll in peace?”

  Patrick’s mouth fell open.

  Amy leaned forward and squinted. “Is that…?”

  “Arty,” Patrick whispered.

  Arty held up Josie the doll. He made one of the plastic arms wave at the stunned couple. “Howdy, Penn State fans.”

  29

  “We’re leaving tonight,” Amy said. “The second the kids come back, and the second the sheriff arrests those assholes, we-are-leaving.”

  Patrick sat at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water. Frequent jabs of ire flooded his limbs and tempted him to squeeze until the glass shattered in his hand.

  “They know each other,” he said. “They fucking know each other.”

  “It makes sense,” Amy said. She was pacing throughout the kitchen. “Arty knew which car was ours from the gas station. For all we know he was there with the bald guy at the supermarket.”

  “They’re fucking with us,” Patrick said with a pitiful laugh. “They’ve been watching us and fucking with us this whole time.”

  “They couldn’t possibly live in that cabin could they? I mean there’s no way, right?” Amy asked.

  “No,” Patrick said. “No way.”

  “Well how does that work then? If they don’t live there—”

  “I don’t know, Amy. Maybe they broke into the place.”

  “Well if that’s true, then what about the people who do live there? What happened to them?”

  Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose hard. “I have no idea. We need to let the sheriff go and check the place out.”

  Amy paced some more before taking a seat at the table. “It was all too weird—all this bullshit in such a short period of time.”

  Patrick nodded. “It’s how they’ve managed to stay ahead of us—working together the way they were.”

  “You still think that finger was a prank from a kid?” Amy asked.

  Patrick took a drink of water. “I don’t know.”

  “You still think it was a rubber finger?” Her tone was condescending.

  Patrick shot her a look. His wife was frustrated and scared, and Patrick knew an outburst on his part would solve little. He swallowed his anger, steadied his breathing. “I really don’t know, Amy. Right about now I would have to say the damn thing was probably real.”

  Amy snorted a disgusted smile and began massaging her temples with both hands.

  Patrick looked away. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “I should have listened to you.” His voice was softer now. “We should have left when you said.”

  Patrick was surprised how quickly his wife said, “No.” She took both hands away from her temples, sat upright in her chair. Her face was apologetic for her snide remarks. “No, I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay. And you knew that…”

  Patrick kept his profile to her; eye contact didn’t feel right yet.

  “I just needed you to convince me, to tell me everything would be okay.” She reached across the table and took one of his hands. “It’s what you do. It’s why you’re my rock.”

  In a matter of seconds, Patrick went from wanting vengeance to wanting to cry. He still found it hard to look at his wife. If he did he was certain his eyes would leak.

  “It is what I do,” he said. “But I do it out of necessity and sincerity.” He took her hand into both of his, finally looking at her. Tears did come, but sorrow was only a fraction of their makeup. Intense resolve was the remainder. “I’ve said the same things to you a million times over the years. But I know you don’t mind. I know you want to hear them. You want to hear me tell you that you’re beautiful in your new dress even after I’ve told you twice already. You want to hear me tell a funny and romantic story about us at a dinner party that you’ve heard a thousand times before. You want me to stop running the lawnmower and look over at you, hard at work in the garden—stained jeans; dirty hands; sweaty face—and hear me tell you that I love you, and that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, even though I’d said it just ten minutes before.

  “You want to hear these things again and again because they make you feel safe and cherished. And that’s something you only realize when those words aren’t spoken for a while.

  “So my repetition may appear to be a necessity, but it’s always genuine, always sincere. And I’ll never get tired of telling you. And I’ll never let you feel what it’s like to miss those words.

  “So I’ll say it again; and my sincerity with this one is stronger than anything my soul can possibly manage. I love you with all my heart, Amy. And I’d die a million deaths to protect you and our children. You call me your rock—well you guys are mine.”

  Amy started to cry. She stood up and walked to her husband’s chair, sat on his lap and hugged him tight. “I love you so much, honey.” She kissed him hard, her nose and tears wet against his face. “When the sheriff gets here, we take him to that cabin and have him arrest those guys. We then wait for Norm and the kids, pack, and be on the road and back in our own beds before we know it. Far, far away from here.”

  He kissed her. “God damn right, baby.”

  • • •

  “Two nights in a row,” the sheriff said as he strolled up the Lambert’s driveway. “At least you caught me a little earlier this time.”

  The sheriff made no attempt whatsoever in hiding his cynicism, but Patrick was past caring; he wanted no time wasted. “We’ll take you to the cabin,” he said immediately.

  “Whoa, slow down, son. Let’s clear some things up first,” the sheriff said, hoisting his belt, belly bouncing. “You said on the phone that you walked passed a cabin here that was housing the man who harassed your wife in the supermarket? The sa
me man who allegedly looked in your bedroom window as well? That right?”

  Patrick nodded quickly. “Yes.”

  Amy flashed a look of contempt when the sheriff over-emphasized allegedly.

  “And this other man?” the sheriff asked. “The other man you claim was at the cabin?”

  “He’s the one who’s been following us. He has our daughter’s doll,” Patrick said.

  “Come again?”

  “It’s…it’s hard to explain. But the guy is bad news, and he’s with the man from the supermarket. That’s not a coincidence,” Patrick said.

  The sheriff stayed quiet.

  “I told you on the phone he pulled a gun on us,” Patrick said. “That counts for something doesn’t it? I mean that has to carry some impact with you.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat—a wet, gravelly sound. “It could. When and why did he pull it on you?”

  Patrick went to answer but stopped, something suddenly occurring to him. He had attempted to charge the man’s porch—to set foot on his property. Patrick was not too sure about the laws around here when it came to home security and guns, but perhaps the man had been legally justified to pull the gun the moment Patrick’s foot touched that first step of the front porch. But this begged another question: whose front porch was it? It couldn’t be theirs. It couldn’t be. All this time? To have them be so close?

  Patrick did something he would have never done in any other circumstance. He lied to an officer of the law. “I don’t know why he pulled the gun. He just pulled it and began taunting us.”

  Amy acknowledged her husband’s lie and never flinched. They were sharing more than the same page; they were sharing the whole damn book.

  “Taunting?”

  “Yes!” Amy piped up. “Admitting that he had been watching my husband and I make love last night. Admitting that he was peeping through our bedroom window like some sick—”

  Patrick took his wife’s hand to stifle her outburst.

  The sheriff’s expression made a sudden shift from skepticism to surprise. “A confession?” he asked.

  Amy gave a pathetic chuckle. “And then some.”

  “So he pulled a gun and confessed to being on your property last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this other man—you say he stole your daughter’s doll?”

  “Not exactly,” Patrick said. “He bribed her with candy at a restaurant. He’d been following us.”

  The sheriff’s chin retracted. “What would a grown man want with a child’s doll?”

  “Well you know what, sheriff? We’ve been asking ourselves that very same question,” Patrick said, his sarcasm impossible to suppress.

  The sheriff stroked his long gray moustache. He swallowed the sarcasm silently, appearing to let it pass for now.

  “Does it matter though?” Patrick continued. “We could care less about the doll. The point is, is that these two men have been playing games with us the second we got up here, and it’s escalated to the point where we now fear for our safety. Hell, I’d be willing to bet that the cabin we saw them in wasn’t even theirs.”

  “You believe they broke into someone’s home in order to antagonize you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well if that’s the case, then maybe we’ve got something serious going on here. But then we’ve got to ask ourselves, where does that leave the true owners of the cabin?”

  “I don’t know…in danger? I’m telling you there’s something very bad about these two men, sheriff. I mean for Christ’s sake we even found a finger in our bait container this afternoon.”

  The sheriff turned an ear to the couple and leaned in. “Say that again?"

  “We went fishing today, and there was a severed finger in our bait container,” Patrick said. “Right about now I’d bet good money those two men were behind it somehow.”

  The sheriff leaned back, raised one of his gray, bushy eyebrows. “A finger in your bait container? Why on earth didn’t you call me then?”

  Patrick glanced at his wife who returned an equally frustrated look. “A dog…he…” Patrick sighed. “He ate it.”

  “A dog ate it?”

  Wait for it, Patrick thought.

  “Are we talking about a finger here, or some homework, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert?”

  Ta-Da!

  The sheriff delivered his remark with subdued delight, his huge gray mustache failing to mask a smirk.

  Amy’s face reddened, her hand squeezing Patrick’s. The couple chose silence, hoping the sheriff was finished with his questioning and was now ready to take action.

  “Well alright then,” the sheriff said, hoisting his belt, the belly bouncing again. “Why don’t I go check out that cabin?”

  “We’ll take you,” Patrick said.

  “Oh no,” the sheriff said. “No, you folks are staying right here. Lock your doors and stay put. I’ll come back to you once I’ve checked—”

  “Do you even know which cabin it is?” Amy blurted.

  The sheriff tilted his head and gave a patronizing smile. “No I sure don’t, Mrs. Lambert. And if you’d given me a chance to finish my sentence I might have gone and asked.” He turned and spit on the driveway, a dark, heavy wad the size of a quarter. Patrick realized he was dipping tobacco. “So…let’s try this again.” He wiped his mustache clean with his thumb and index finger. “Do you think you folks would be so kind as to point me in the direction of that cabin?”

  30

  The time that passed before the sheriff returned to the Lambert’s cabin after his search had been agonizing. Every click or crack heard from outside caused Amy and Patrick to flinch. Worse yet, Norman had yet to return with the kids.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, but there isn’t a soul in that house,” the sheriff said. “No signs of forced entry either. Truth be told, it even looked as if they cleaned up and shut down for the season.”

  Patrick, Amy, and the sheriff stood on the Lambert’s front porch. The sheriff’s previous skepticism to the whole ordeal (which, for a fleeting moment earlier, Patrick hoped was gone; he and Amy had finally managed to convince the sheriff that something foul was indeed afoot, and perhaps Sheriff Holmes might actually find something beyond the tip of his whiskey-reddened nose) was now back. Back and seemingly fixed in steel, going nowhere.

  “Shut down?” Amy said.

  “Sure,” the sheriff said. “Summer’s gone, autumn’s here, and more than half the folks around the lake will disappear until decent weather returns. Gets cold and dark up here sooner than you’d think.”

  “Did you go inside the house?” Patrick asked.

  “Yep.”

  “How?”

  “How?”

  “Yes. How did you get inside the house?”

  “Through the cellar ’round back,” the sheriff said.

  “It was unlocked?” Patrick asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well doesn’t that tell you something?” Amy said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well if these people were leaving for the winter as you suggested, then why would they leave their home unlocked for six months?”

  The sheriff smiled. “This isn’t the city, Mrs. Lambert. People tend to be a bit more trusting up here. It’s one of the advantages of living out here in the sticks I suppose.”

  Patrick believed the sheriff had enunciated “sticks” as if the man felt he was a minority amongst bigots—seemingly certain that Patrick and Amy had frequently used such terminology in jest to describe the place he called home.

  “Besides,” the sheriff continued, “it’s not uncommon for families to leave a door unlocked to have a service come through for maintenance during the winter months. Leaving a cellar door open is actually quite common. In fact, it was the first door I checked before entry. To tell you the truth though, I even wondered if it was necessary—I didn’t even spot a car in the driveway.”

  “Maybe it was in their garage,” Amy said.
>
  The sheriff snorted. “Closest thing you’ll find to a garage at Crescent Lake is a carport, Mrs. Lambert. And you can see right into those. Of course it doesn’t matter much cuz these folks didn’t even have one.”

  Patrick’s frustration was now past courtesy. He spoke from the hip with zero concern for subtleties. “You searched that entire house?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And found absolutely nothing?”

  The sheriff pursed his lips, breathed deep through flared nostrils. “Yes, sir. Like I already said, that house is empty, whether you want to believe it or not. I even called in a little background check. Place belongs to a Maury and Lois Blocker—older couple in their sixties. There were positively no signs of them in that house whatsoever.”

  “Then they left. They knew you’d be coming and they left. We told them we’d be calling you,” Amy said.

  “Looked to me as if they left a long time ago,” the sheriff said.

  “I’m not talking about the owners; I’m talking about the two assholes we saw. They knew you’d be coming, so they ran.”

  The sheriff glanced around, bored now.

  “These guys are smart, sheriff,” Patrick said. “They’re having fun with us. With you too.” Patrick’s last comment was a desperate attempt to bring the sheriff onto their playing field. The sheriff, unfortunately, took the comment the way Patrick feared he might. He looked as if someone kicked his ego in the nuts.

  “Nobody’s having fun with me, son. If I’m telling you there’s no one in that house, then there’s no one in that house. Got me?”

  “Well you can’t possibly think we’re making this up can you?” Amy asked. “What in God’s name would we have to gain by doing something like that?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “I never accused you folks of making anything up. But you asked me to check the place out and I did. And like I’m telling you now for the third time, there were absolutely no signs of forced entry, or of persons recently occupying that cabin.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Amy threw up her hands. “So what are you going to do?”