Secret Memories

by J. S. Donovan

  Secret Memories

  Title Page

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Secret Memories

  DBS Publishing LLC

  Copyright 2018 by DBS Publishing LLC

  Smashwords Edition

  Chapter One

  The Dead of Winter

  Ashton, Tennessee

  December 28, 1989

  7:32pm

  The wind howled. Snow spilled from the sky’s black vault. Like Death’s shadow, crippling cold fell over the snow-capped Appalachian Mountains and trapped the residents of the quiet town of Ashton inside their cozy homes.

  Nestled high on the mountain and deep in the woods stood a small, cabin-style home. Golden light glowed in its frosty windows. Wisps of smoke wafted from the vents of its brick chimney. It was the perfect place to spend a night like tonight. Warm but enclosed in frost, it was a welcoming retreat from the world’s troubles.

  Christmas had ended yet the tree remained, filling the living room with the wonderful smell of pine sap. Seated cross-legged on the hardwood floor, seven-year-old Angela Rhymer eyed the puzzle pieces on the coffee table with an inquisitive look. She pulled her hand out from the wool blanket on her lap and pointed at the incomplete image of a picturesque cabin not unlike her own. “That one.”

  Her father, Thomas Rhymer, put the puzzle piece he was holding and added it to the snowy skyline of the fictional cabin. “Good eye,” he said with a smile.

  Angela smiled shyly at him. She had his same hazel eyes, rich brown hair, and wore a similar ugly Christmas sweater. The addition of the missing piece helped Angela make quick work of a half-dozen other pieces she needed to nearly finish the puzzle.

  Thomas watched her proudly and adjusted his rimless glasses. He was a fiction novelist, though his books were too boring and grown-up for Angela. The heroes were mostly handsome lawyers like Thomas himself that often saved some damsel in distress. She didn’t know it at the time, but Thomas had a hero complex.

  Kelly, Angela’s mother, moved quickly into the room, struggling to hold three mugs of steaming hot cocoa. She winced, hastily placing the mugs beside the incomplete puzzle. Grimacing, she squeezed her seared index finger.

  Thomas asked, “You okay?”

  “Burned myself,” Kelly said, joining them on the floor. Blonde, tall, and beautiful, she wore a blood red turtleneck and black sweats.

  Angela crawled over to her. She gestured for Kelly’s hand. “Let me.”

  Kelly showed the pink burn mark on her finger.

  Angela kissed it. “Better?”

  Kelly nodded and smiled with her eyes closed. “Absolutely,” she lied sweetly.

  Kelly took a sip from her mug and looked out the frosty window, not particularly interested in completing the puzzle. Angela noticed that her mother was distant from time to time. Though the cabin was homely, Mom was never a winter person and probably still wished she lived in South Beach. Their golden retriever wandered into the room and sat down next to her. Kelly scratched him behind the ear.

  The puzzle showed a nearly complete cabin but lacked one of the window pieces. Angela and Thomas scoured the table, but found no sign of it.

  “That’s disappointing,” Thomas said. “Where the heck is it?”

  Angela leaned down and looked underneath the coffee table, finding a few crumbs and pine needles on the hardwood. Thomas got up and brushed himself off, seeing if it had fallen into the wrinkle of his shirt. “Have you checked the box?”

  Angela flipped the puzzle’s box top on its head. Nothing.

  Kelly eyed them. “What is it?”

  “We had all the pieces last year,” Thomas said with growing frustration as he glanced about the room. Angela lifted the couch cushions behind her. She found her lost penny, but that wouldn’t help her. She pocketed it, nonetheless.

  “Did Lazlo eat it?” Thomas asked his wife.

  “Don’t blame my dog,” Kelly replied, scratching the golden retriever behind the ear.

  Thomas paced around the back of the room. Angela headed to the window, seeing if it got kicked around on the floor. She moved past the Christmas tree and knelt down at the foot of the window. She pinched the puzzle piece that had a little dog hair on it and rose.

  “Find it?” Thomas asked.

  Eyes glued on the frost-rimmed window, Angela didn’t reply. She squinted at the shadowy figure standing on the front lawn.

  “Angela?” her father asked.

  Snow fell on the figure. Its dark clothes billowed in the howling wind. It was watching her.

  ***

  11:58pm

  Officer Hitch Shiffrin was behind the wheel of his 1986 Ford police cruiser, making the slow climb up the curving mountainous road. His tires slipped on patches of black ice, but he quickly corrected his course. Heavy snowfall kept his windshield wipers working overtime.

  Every other officer hated the harsh weather and this boring route, but not Shiffrin. It kept him in constant prayer, which Pastor said was important with a baby on the way. At the age of twenty-nine, Shiffrin felt it was the right time to start a family. After all, he was the last Shiffrin alive in Ashton, Tennessee, perhaps the last in the world. His father had been killed in Vietnam, his mother in a car crash, and his brother took a nasty spill down at the lake and didn’t come back up. He only had his wife Lizzy now. She was a short, plump Southern woman who stole his heart at a high school dance all those years ago.

  Shiffrin rounded a bend in the road. To one side of him was dense woods growing up the side of the mountain; to the other side was a steep drop-off into jagged treetops. In the distance, he saw the road branch into the Rhymers’ driveway. They weren’t locals, but they were decent folk. He’d seen them at a few book signings, which was an exciting event in a small town like Ashton.

  Tonight, the Rhymer’s front door was partly open and the light in their living room was flickering on and off.

  Something about this image didn’t sit right. Shiffrin turned down the gravel driveway, driving parallel to the tire tracks imprinting the snow. He pulled to a stop behind Mr. Rhymer’s 1970 Dodge Charger, picked up the hand mic from the dash, and reported the disturbance. Sydney from Dispatch gave him the all clear. “You best be careful out there, Hitch.”

  “Always am, ma’am.” Shiffrin replied and got out of the vehicle.

  He walked parallel to the sets of boot tracks leading to and from the cabin. Hand on his holstered pistol, he hiked the steps of the porch and shivered as the icy gales splashed against his back.

  The front door was open, but only by a few inches. By the powdery snow on the hardwood floor, Hitch could tell it had been open for a while. The light inside flickered.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Rhymer? I’m Officer Shiffrin. Everything okay in there?”

  No reply.

  With his gloved hand, Shiffrin pushed open the door the rest of the way. His eyes went wide and his jaw fell slack.

  Blood. Everywhere.

  The Christmas tree was on its side, the couch was pushed back, and the coffee table had been flipped on its head surrounded by broken puzzle pieces stained with blood. Nearby were the motionless bodies of Thomas and Kelly Rhymer leaking onto the hardwood floor. On her knees between them with her back toward the door was seven-year-old Angela. The back of her sweater had been cut open from the neck down to the center of her spine. The fabric opened like a book on her back. Red oozed from the wound on her right shoulder. A large golden retriever lapped at the blood spatter on her cheek.

  Shiffrin’s world spun. Instinct screamed at him to run, but his feet carried him deeper into the room
. His teeth chattered. He felt sick. He stopped a yard from the girl and saw the knife wound on her back cut in the crude yet intricately detailed shape of a butterfly.

  With a slow, jerky motion, the little girl turned to him. Her heart-shaped face was stark white. Her dark eyes were wide, red, and terrified. Her lip quivered. She spoke softly as the golden retriever cleaned her cheek of blood. “What happened?”

  Shiffrin felt the walls of his life close in. He turned back to the open door leading into the night. There was no one but him, the bodies, and the girl.

  Chapter Two

  Woman of Glass

  Twenty-Eight Years Later…

  They sat in a circle of chairs in the church’s basement. Mackie spoke up. “We pulled over at the gas station, Jimmy and I. I was getting hungry. We never had lunch, you see. So I asked Jimmy if we could get some snacks before hitting the road again. I remember he hesitated, but being the good brother he was, Jimmy obliged. And then…”

  Mackie blinked away a few tears and sniffled. He was twenty-five, good-looking, and a complete emotional wreck.

  Jason, the group leader, leaned forward in his chair. “Take your time, Mackie.”

  Mackie nodded to himself a couple of times. He took a deep breath, swallowed, and continued. “We were in the candy aisle. Jimmy had his eye on Reese’s. I remember he was having a hard time choosing between them and Skittles. He eventually grabbed the Skittles. That’s when the door opened and the man wearing the ski mask entered.”

  The small group went still and quiet. Though most of them weren’t looking directly at Mackie, they listened to his story.

  “He asked the cashier for money. The cashier started emptying the register. That’s when the gunman turned back to Jimmy and I. Being ten years old, I looked at my seventeen-year-old brother for help. He was always good at handling tough situations. The gunman told us to empty our pockets. I did. Jimmy… he hesitated, told the masked man to calm down. At that time, the cashier had filled up the moneybag, but the masked man had his eyes on Jimmy and me. He demanded that Jimmy empty his pocket. Jimmy didn’t. He put his hand on my shoulder and told the man to take the money from the register and leave us alone.”

  Mackie made a gun with his finger and thumb. “Pow. Just like that, the masked man shot him. He grabbed the moneybag and bolted out of the door. I stood there. My whole body was frozen. Jimmy… he was on the floor, screaming, crying, bleeding, and dead a few moments later. They don’t show that part in the movies. They wouldn’t be able to sell any tickets if they did.”

  The other members in the group reflected on the statement.

  Mackie closed his eyes. “I try to get the image of his death out of my head, but can’t. The screwed-up part is I don’t remember Jimmy’s face. Only his body. Only his blood.”

  With teary eyes, Mackie looked at the others in the group. “It’s just not fair, you know. Like, why him? He was just some stupid teenager with the same hopes and dreams we all have. Was it fate or just a lick of bad luck? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know, and it drives me insane.”

  A few members of the group nodded in agreement. There were men and women like Mackie, with years of baggage traced back to a single tragedy in their past. Either they witnessed a homicide firsthand or were the botched kill of some psychopath. Despite the smiles they put on during the week, they were altogether a gloomy bunch.

  “Thank you for listening,” Mackie said with a weary smile.

  “Thank you for sharing,” Jason replied.

  A series of mumbled “thank yous” sounded from the group before it fell silent again.

  Jason interrupted the silence. He had a way of projecting his voice that made it echo off the walls. “Confronting our past can be very painful thing, but often times it’s necessary to start your healing process. My father, a military man, always told me that you can’t beat an enemy you can’t see. Once we bring these stuff into the light, we can work through it alone, cooperatively, and with God.”

  The others nodded in agreement. All but one. She sat away from the circle in a chair just out of the light. Her legs crossed over one another. Her heelless boots were black. She wore a navy-blue winter coat with a wolf pelt lining that was unzipped to reveal her black, long-sleeved shirt clinging tightly to her slender body. Her long brown hair flowed down her shoulders and middle back. Her heart-shaped face was fierce and well-defined, with dark, shifty eyes that were trained to pick up details at the slightest glance.

  Jason turned to her. “Angela.”

  The woman glanced up at the balding man. He was married with three kids and had a ketchup stain on his down jacket. He always wore long sleeves to hide the tattoos painting his arms. It was inked flesh from his old life.

  “Anything you want to share?” Jason asked.

  The question was loaded. This was Angela’s fifth meeting here. She had been to other places around town, but they would pry too much. It’s not that she didn’t want to share, but Angela needed to do it on her own terms. It had been twenty-eight years since that cop found her resting in the blood of her parents, but it felt like yesterday.

  She squeezed her sweaty hands together over her lap and felt the eyes of the other members looking at her with pity. Always pity. Angela inhaled deeply. She adjusted her posture, eyeing the broken souls around her.

  “Okay,” she replied after long hesitance.

  The other members were shocked to hear her speak. Angela had only ever drifted in and out of the place on Thursday nights and had a reputation for leaving early.

  Angela’s heart rate quickened, but her face was calm, almost jaded. She met eyes with the other members. “I don’t remember much of what happened that night, only that I saw the stranger in my front yard.”

  Angela saw the silhouette now. He lingered in the shadow of the room, watching her, just how he did when she found the missing puzzle piece.

  “I woke up in the hospital the next morning. The police. The doctors. Everyone was asking what happened. I couldn’t answer their questions. It was--is like the memory is fractured. I only recall pieces. Blurred, incoherent images.”

  The silhouette stared deep into Angela’s soul. Flashes of blood flickered in her mind as fast as a camera shutter. Her parents’ bodies strewn across the floor. The broken puzzle. A pain burned brightly at the back of her right shoulder. Her scarred flesh throbbed with every hasty heartbeat. She felt the scripture-covered walls of the church expand and then contract, pushing near to her and pulling away. Her chest tightened.

  She turned to Jason. “How do I confront something I can’t remember?”

  “Well, if you can’t bring it to the light...” Jason said, thinking. The others looked at him for guidance. “I suppose you let what little you have of it die.”

  Angela smirked. “You contradict yourself, Jason.”

  Jason smiled to himself. “Different people, different solutions. You have something the rest of us don’t, Angela. A chance to forget.”

  “Lucky me,” Angela said, looking at the shadow lingering in the corner of the room.

  “Think of these fragmented memories as weeds,” Jason said. “What you feed grows. What you starve dies.”

  After the meeting was finished, Angela didn’t stick around. She pushed out of the church’s double doors and stepped out into snow-covered sidewalk. Light flurries twirled in the air. Old-fashioned street lamps lined sides of the street and cast a yellow glow. A car raced by. Footfalls sounded behind Angela.

  “Hey!” Mackie called out as he jogged through the church’s door. He ended his trek next to her, slightly winded. “I’m glad to hear you share tonight.”

  “Yeah, you too.” Angela replied. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  Mackie scratched the back of his head. “No, I just wanted to tell you not to feel bad about not remembering. Heck, I’d trade anything I have to erase my brother’s murder from my mind.”

  Angela didn’t reply.

  Mackie nervo
usly looked around. “If you ever wanted to talk about it, we can get lunch or dinner sometime.”

  Angela warmed her hands in her coat pockets. “I can’t, Mackie. Sorry.”

  “Oh,” he said disappointedly. “Is there, uh, someone else in your life?”

  “No, I just don’t date,” Angela admitted. “It’s not personal.”

  Mackie’s shoulders sunk. “Right. Of course. Sorry for asking.”

  “I’ll see you next week,” Angela said politely.

  “Uh-huh. You too,” Mackie replied, trying to play the rejection off as cool as he could.

  Angela walked down the sidewalk, her scarlet scarf billowing in the wind. Snowflakes flakes landed on her sloped nose and rosy cheeks, melting within a second. She headed to her 1970 Dodge Charger. It was midnight black with little rust spots on the bumper and metal hubcaps. She climbed in, getting comfortable on the old leather seats. She turned the key in the ignition, turned on her favorite rock station, and peeled off down the road. Her heater didn’t work, so she squeezed the rigid steering wheel with her gloved hands for warmth. Her breath misted. Buildings blurred by as she sped down the road. She reached the three-story office building and hung her parking pass next to the air freshener tree on the rearview mirror. She got out, warmed her hands with her breath, and started inside. All the businesses were closed at this hour. There were two small-time lawyer practices, a handful of start-ups, and a life insurance company that shared her same building. Angela’s office was on the top floor and at the very back of the hallway. The window had pebble glass with the words “Rhymer Investigative Services” on it.

  She jimmied the key in the lock and gave the handle a jiggle. She really needed to get that door fixed. She entered the room. Light spilled from behind her and across the carpeted floor. Directly ahead were two windows with Acacia hardwood Venetian blinds. The streetlamp beyond them cast an orange light through the gaps in the blinds and made jail bars across Angela’s face.