Undying

by V. K. Forrest

  His eerie, juvenile giggle made her want to vomit.

  She pulled down her shorts and sat on the john.

  “Mother, we’re home?” What the hell was that all about? Didn’t he just get finished telling her he’d murdered his mother and planted her in the orchard back in Missouri?

  Macy rested her forearms on her thighs, leaning forward. There was no window in the bathroom. No way to escape. Only a place to catch a breather. Figure out what she was going to do.

  For a fleeting moment she thought of Arlan. It was after midnight. Surely he was concerned that she hadn’t shown up for dinner. Or was he lying in bed right now, watching the ceiling fan spin, waiting for the late night visit she often paid him?

  That was a better guess. And it was her own fault he was at home in bed. Not out looking for her. Not calling Fia to tell her something was wrong. Not even worried. Arlan was only following Macy’s rules. She had wanted a relationship with no emotional strings attached and people with no emotional strings died alone, with no one looking for them.

  There was a light tap on the bathroom door. “Marceline, are you all right?”

  She reached for the toilet paper; its end had been folded in a point like maids sometimes did in hotel bathrooms. “Just a second,” she called. She finished and stepped out of the bathroom.

  “Hot tea? A cold drink? What can I offer you?”

  They entered the kitchen and he flipped on the light. It was a country kitchen with yellow walls and oak cabinets. An oak table with four chairs occupied one end of the room. No knickknacks on the counters. No mail tossed on the table. The room looked like a staged showroom in a furniture store.

  “How about something to eat? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.” His expression grew worrisome. “Unless, of course, you’re tired. I’ve prepared your room for you. I know you won’t like the bars on the windows or the locks on the door, but other than that, it’s a nice room. I painted it purple for you, just like your bedroom in Missouri.”

  She’d been thirteen when she and her mother painted her bedroom purple. She wanted to ask him if he’d put up Metallica posters on the walls, but she kept that thought to herself. “Something to eat would be great. I’m hungry, too.” She wanted to stall being locked in the purple cage for as long as possible. At least here she might find the opportunity to escape or knock his block off. Something.

  “Why not sit on a stool at the breakfast bar?” He waved the pistol, indicating she should move to the other side of the kitchen island, which was higher than the countertop. He set the pistol down, again out of her reach, but within his own. “Let’s see.” He opened the refrigerator. It may have had more stuff in it than the garage, but each item was arranged equally as neatly. Condiment jars lined up in straight rows, labels facing forward. Milk and juice cartons placed just so. “How about grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup?” He leaned on the door of the refrigerator to look over his shoulder at her. “I know that’s kind of a winter meal, but it’s quick and I make an excellent grilled cheese sandwich with just the right amount of butter and cheese to be ooey gooey without being greasy.”

  The man was a total freak. She forced a smile. “Grilled cheese would be great.”

  Macy glanced around the kitchen, noting the cordless phone on the wall near the archway that led into the living room. If she could get to the phone, she could dial 911. “So you live here with your mother?”

  He set a pack of cheese slices and a covered butter dish on the counter in front of her. “Marceline, weren’t you listening, dearest? Mother’s dead. I smothered her with a blue bath towel and I buried her in the orchard under the Bartlett pear tree. She always liked Bartlett pears.”

  “But when we arrived, you called into the house, ‘Mother, we’re home.’”

  He exhaled, leaning over to take a loaf of white bread out of a cabinet. Macy hated squishy white bread.

  “Do we have to talk about this?” he asked tersely.

  “We don’t have to, Teddy.” She did the looking through her eyelashes thing again. “But I’d like to. If you and I…if we’re going to be together,” she said, “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

  “That’s nice.” He took a small saucepan and a frying pan from the cupboard. Then a can of soup. She noted that the other cans of soup on the shelf were lined up perfectly, labels facing forward.

  “So…does she live somewhere else or will I have to share you with her?”

  He giggled as he removed a wooden spoon and spatula from a drawer.

  Macy waited.

  “It’s just you and me, Marceline, I swear to you.”

  “So she’s not here?”

  He hesitated. “Actually, I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  He placed both hands on the countertop, leaning toward her as if they were great confidantes. “You’re going to think this is crazy, but…”

  Not any crazier than any of the rest, she thought. “No, I’m not.”

  “I think Mother’s a ghost,” he whispered.

  She lifted her eyebrows. She couldn’t help herself. “A ghost? Really?”

  “I hear her,” he whispered.

  She thought she noticed him twitch but it was so quick, she couldn’t be sure.

  “Can I hear her?” she said, speaking equally soft.

  “I don’t think so. She haunts me because she hates me.” He removed four slices of bread from the bag and then took his time in twisting the plastic bag just right before putting the tie back on to secure it. “She hates me, you know.”

  No surprise there, since you murdered her, Macy thought. It was strange, but she couldn’t keep wild thoughts from popping up, even in this dire situation. It was just all so…surreal. As if it was a dream, but of course it wasn’t.

  “Why do you say that?” Macy asked. “What makes you think she hates you?”

  “She always hated me. Since I was born. Rape bastard, that’s what she called me.” Again, the twitch, this time more obvious. He put the frying pan on the stove, then the saucepan. “She was attacked while sleeping in her bed when she was twenty years old. She was somewhere in Europe on a trip through her college. Her parents never believed she was raped. They thought she had ruined herself with one of the boys she was traveling with.”

  Against her will, Macy felt a pang of empathy for him. A child of rape, despised by his mother? No wonder he turned into a homicidal maniac. But that was unfair. Some children of rape became doctors, lawyers, truck drivers. It was no excuse.

  “I’m so sorry, Teddy. It must have been hard for you, growing up.”

  He smiled, shy again, not making eye contact as he opened the soup can. “Not always. Sometimes she was nice. Sometimes, she called me her Teddy Bear.” He looked up at her, grinning proudly.

  “So Teddy’s not your real name?”

  He shook his head. “Marvin. Marvin Clacker. She didn’t give me a middle name.”

  “You were raised alone? No brothers or sisters?”

  He shook his head. “Just me and Mother and the grandparents, when I was young. We kept to ourselves. Mother was…embarrassed by the situation. The orchard was her parents’ before they passed. She buried them in the orchard, too. Only not under the Bartlett pear.” He looked at her. “Water or milk?”

  Macy was the one who twitched this time. She was having a hard time following Teddy’s bizarre story while choosing from the late night dinner menu. Had Teddy really just confessed that his mother had murdered his grandparents and buried them in the orchard? Was there an entire graveyard there?

  “Marceline, do you like your tomato soup made with milk or water?”

  “Water, please,” Macy managed. She stared at her hands on the countertop. In a sick way, everything he was telling her made sense. It made sense why he did what he did. He was burying family after family, trying to rebury his mother. Trying to get rid of her. But why the grotesque disposal of the bodies? Why bury them with th
eir arms over their heads? She had to ask. “Teddy? Could I ask you something…about the families that…you did what had to be done. Why did you bury them with their hands in the air?”

  He struck a macabre pose, arms over his head, fingers splayed. “An orchard,” he said sweetly. “I always bury them in an orchard like Mother and the grandparents, but orchards are hard to find, so I make my own.”

  “You make your own?” For a moment she thought she really would vomit.

  He struck the pose again. “Don’t I look like a sapling if I stand like this?” Before Macy could respond, Teddy turned his head sharply, letting his hands fall to his sides. “Hush, Mother. Please.”

  She watched him carefully. “Is…is your mother here, now?”

  “She says I shouldn’t have brought you here. She says you don’t love me. That you could never love me. She says I’ll have to kill you.” He glanced at the dark window. “Good thing you can’t see the moon tonight. I love it, but it makes it hard for me to think sometimes, the moon.”

  The way he said it made her skin crawl. She had to get out of here. She wouldn’t survive until morning, she knew it in her bones. “Teddy, please don’t listen to her,” Macy said softly. “Listen to me.” Again, the forced smile. “Your Marceline. We’ve waited a long time to be together.”

  “A long time to be together,” he repeated, filling the empty can with water from the faucet.

  She watched him go through the simple preparations, thinking that she had to keep Teddy talking. He was so crazy, so starved for attention, for love, maybe there was a chance she could talk her way out of this.

  Teddy set the saucepan down hard, so hard that red water splashed over the side, onto the immaculate stove top. “I’m not listening.” He covered his ears with his hands and spoke loudly. “I’m not listening, Mother. You’re dead with worms crawling in and out of your eyes,” he said petulantly. “You’re dead, and I’m alive.”

  “That’s right.” Macy rose off the stool and walked around the counter, into the kitchen. “You’re alive, Teddy.” She couldn’t bring herself to touch him, but she stood there beside him. “Look at me,” she said. “You’re alive.”

  His lower lip trembled. “She hurt me. She hit me.” He pulled up one leg of his long shorts. “She burned me.”

  Macy couldn’t help but stare at what appeared to be small round scars on his overly hairy leg. Cigarette burns?

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, surprised by the emotion she felt for him. She still hated him, but now she also pitied him. She found herself looking into his face. He had grown a serious five o’clock shadow in the last few hours; she wasn’t sure how she hadn’t noticed it until now. In fact, under the bright light of the fluorescent kitchen lamp, she took note that Teddy was a particularly hairy man.

  And he smelled funny. Strong and musky. She hadn’t smelled him in the car.

  She took a step back from him. “That was wrong of her, Teddy, to hurt you like that.” She glanced quickly at the pistol on the counter. It was still just out of her reach, but if she could distract him…

  Macy had never handled a gun in her life. But she’d seen enough cops and bad guys on TV fire them to guess what to do with it if she managed to get to it.

  Teddy squeezed his eyes shut. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up!”

  “Me, Teddy?” Macy whispered, inching her way closer to the counter. He was so distracted by the voice he heard. Maybe too distracted to realize what she was doing until it was too late. “Do you want me to be quiet?”

  “No! No, I want to talk to you. It’s her. She won’t shut up.” He covered his ears with his hands again, squeezing his eyes shut. “She says I can’t trust you. She says—”

  Macy never made the conscious decision to go for the pistol. One second she was standing in front of Teddy, the next, she was lunging for the gun on the counter.

  Teddy’s eyes flew open. His hands fell from his ears. “You promised,” he screamed at her. “You swore on your mother’s grave!”

  As Macy sprung for the pistol, she knocked into Teddy, pushing him backward. Her hand closed over the handle of the gun and wrenched around, grappling to get a proper grip on it.

  “You promised,” he shouted, his voice suddenly deep and gravely. “You promised on your dead mother’s grave.”

  She whipped around, pointing the pistol at the tearful Teddy. She wrapped her finger around the trigger. “I lied.”

  Macy didn’t know what happened next. Maybe she jumped from the present to some dream world. Maybe she’d been dreaming all along. One instant she was staring at balding Marvin Clacker in his madras shorts, the next instant, a hairy half-man, half-wolf creature loomed over her, fangs bared.

  Macy screamed and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 29

  “Did you hear that? Turn here! Turn here,” Kaleigh shouted, pointing repeatedly.

  They were traveling fifty miles an hour down a country road on wet blacktop. “Here?” Arlan hit his brakes hard.

  “Hurry!” she insisted.

  He made a sharp left and swung the truck onto a gravel driveway. “Sorry,” he muttered, glancing up in the rearview mirror at Fia, who was driving a bureau car. He couldn’t see her face because of her headlights, but he could imagine Fia was cussing a blue streak, using several variations of her favorite, Mary, Mother of God.

  “Is she here?” Arlan hit the gas, speeding down the bumpy road.

  “Did you hear that? Did you hear it?” Kaleigh’s face was pale. “A gunshot. A…a scream. Growling. He’s growling at her!”

  Kaleigh sounded close to hysterical. The girl was scared out of her pants. She wasn’t making sense.

  “Growling?” Arlan asked.

  She held on to the armrest on the truck door to keep from being thrown too hard in the confines of her seat belt. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she cried. “I kept thinking it didn’t make any sense.”

  “What didn’t make any sense?” Arlan hit a pothole and the truck bounced violently.

  “In my vision. The man who kidnapped Macy, he wasn’t…he wasn’t a man.”

  Arlan suddenly got a bad feeling. It had never occurred to him or Fia that Teddy was anything but an evil human. If they were dealing with something else, the two of them and a teenager might not have a big enough arsenal to fight it. “What was he?”

  “I don’t know. It was like…a wolf….” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “That sounds crazy. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “A wolf? Anything else you can tell me?” The bad feeling was getting worse.

  “It wasn’t exactly a wolf, but like…a wolf man. All hairy with a snout. And…and he smelled bad, like…dog pee.”

  Arlan swore under his breath as he speed-dialed Fia. Spotting a house in the distance ahead, he cut his headlights. Fia, behind him in the Crown Vic, immediately did the same thing.

  “What? Are we four-wheeling, here?” Fia demanded when she picked up the phone.

  “Something’s happened in the house. We have to get there fast. Kaleigh thinks she heard a gunshot.”

  “I didn’t hear a gunshot.”

  “Fee, we don’t have time to argue,” Arlan said tersely.

  “You’re right.” She sounded breathy. Pumped up. She had to be thinking they might finally be so close to stopping this bastard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a rare apology. “She get anything else besides a gunshot?”

  Arlan glanced at Kaleigh on the seat beside him. He wasn’t sure how much to say in front of the teen, especially when he wasn’t clear on what, exactly, they were about to encounter. “Just be ready,” he said into the cell phone. “This is going to get ugly.”

  The gun exploded with a bone-rattling bang and the smell of burning black powder. It jolted Macy’s arm all the way to her shoulder and she stumbled to stay on her feet. The monster that had been Teddy a moment before howled with pain and staggered back.


  And she still didn’t wake up from the dream.

  Run. It was the only thing Macy knew to do. But where? Which way? Deeper into the house, there might be doors she could lock herself behind, but her instinct was to get away, get as far away as possible.

  Macy sprinted for the garage door, the way she’d come. She knew Teddy had the car keys and the creature wasn’t wearing pants; she wouldn’t be able to take her car and she had seen no other car.

  She raced through the laundry room, slamming into the door to the garage. The dead bolt. She fumbled with it, one handed, still gripping the pistol, and unlocked it. He…It was getting up off the floor. She heard its nails scraping on the tile. The thing was howling like…like nothing she’d ever heard, human or otherwise. Her blood ran cold. She thought she’d hit it with the single shot she’d pulled off, but if she had, obviously the gunshot had not been fatal.

  It was coming after her.

  She smelled his hot breath on the back of her neck as she heard the dead bolt slide free and she jerked the door open. She bounded down the steps, having the sense to punch the automatic door button.

  The creature howled with fury. It barked and growled as it lurched after her.

  Terror-stricken, Macy kept running, the gun still in her hand. The garage door was rising, but too slowly. Too slowly! He would catch her before she made it outside.

  In a split-second decision, Macy threw herself on the immaculate cement floor behind her car. As she fell, she hit her head so hard that it bounced and she saw stars. The beast fell to all fours and swiped at her with his paw. White-hot pain ripped through her calf.

  Macy rolled under the door, trying to take aim and squeezing the trigger as she went.

  Arlan slammed hard on the brakes of the pickup as the garage door went up. The truck fishtailed and he heard Fia’s tires slide on the gravel.

  “Here it comes!” Kaleigh screamed. Before Arlan could get the truck into park, she was out of her seat belt and throwing open the passenger side door.

  “Kaleigh!” Arlan flung his door open. “You have to stay in the truck!” But his words were lost to the night as the teenager raced up the driveway.