It reads Mister Skinner in Molly’s somewhat uneven handwriting.
“Still think we’re dealing with imagination here, Bec?” Robyn says.
“My stomach hurts,” I say.
“You gonna be sick again?”
Shaking my head. “No. I think I’m actually getting used to this. Whatever it is that’s happening.” In my head, I see my sister. See her lying in a hospital bed, her face swelled into something unrecognizable from steroids and chemo. The way she looked just moments ago standing in the living room. But then I also see Michael Sr. How I wish one, or both, of them were here with me now. Helping me cope with this.
“Michael,” I say inside my head. “Are you seeing this? Are you looking at these paintings?”
Take a deep breath, Rebecca. Lots of kids have imaginary friends. Mike Jr. and Molly are playing with an imaginary monster. The Boogeyman. It’s the only explanation . . .
“You really believe that?”
It’s the way I’d write it if this were a novel . . .
I shake my head. Back to reality.
“Let’s see my son’s,” I say.
Robyn sets Molly’s painting back on the easel and then shifts over a few cubbies until she comes to the painting my little boy has been working on. She turns it around. Molly’s painting robbed me of some precious oxygen, but this one is different. This one makes me want to scream.
It shows a man of color who looks like Sam. He’s lying on the ground. His body is intact and clothed, but his face is missing, revealing only a skull for a face. But set beside the skull is the skin that belonged to the face. The face is Sam’s.
Words are written and super-imposed over the image.
Ring around the Rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
“For the love of God,” I utter, voice hoarse and dry as a corn stalk.
That’s when I make out the abrupt sound of gunfire.
Robyn and I run out of the barn. Sprint.
“Which direction did it come from?” I bark.
“Had to be out in the fields,” she says.
The kids come to the kitchen door.
“What’s happened?” Mike shouts. “What went bang?”
“Get back inside!” I’m screaming, my brain on fire.
Robyn pulls out another cigarette, pats her pocket for her lighter. Before I can hand her the one I have stored in my own pocket, she comes out with a second lighter which she uses to fire up her smoke. Her hands are shaking. “What the hell do we do, Rebecca?”
Pain in my stomach. Like someone is trying to cut it out of me. No choice but to ignore it. My gut instinct says, let’s just pack up the kids and get the hell away from here. But the rational side of me says, take a breath. If there was a gunshot, it more than likely came from Sam’s gun. Maybe he had good reason to shoot it. Maybe he shot it by mistake. Maybe Sam is injured and needs my help.
“I’m going back out into the cornfield,” I insist.
“Rebecca, don’t go in there,” Robyn pleads.
But I’m already gone by the time she finishes her sentence.
My body is shaking, the adrenaline speeding through my capillaries and veins.
“Sam! Answer me!”
The stalks are breaking under my feet.
“Sam, can you hear me?!”
Then, a beat later.
“Rebecca, over here!”
For the love of God, he’s alive.
I pick up my pace.
“Keep talking, Sam!”
“Here,” he shouts. “Over . . . here!”
I head in the direction of his voice until I break through a section of stalks that opens onto a circular clearing. Sam is standing in the center of it, the semi-automatic gripped in his hand.
“I heard a shot,” I say, panting. “What happened?”
“I saw something,” he says, his face a mask of confusion and anxiety — something I’ve never seen coming from him until now. If I’ve learned one thing about Sam over the past few months together, he is a solid pillar of strength.
He looks one way, then the other. He looks up, and he looks down and holds his gaze as if something is about to emerge out of the earth at any moment.
He says, “I was moving through the corn stalks, not following any particular pattern, when I came upon this clearing.”
“What is this?” I say. “It’s almost a perfect circle?”
Slowly, he shakes his head. “I’m guessing it’s a deer bed.” Laughing nervously under his breath. “What else can it be?”
“What did you see that made you shoot?” I say.
“It was an animal, but then it wasn’t.”
Cramping in my gut. Painful cramping. “What’s that mean, Sam?”
“Whatever it was, it moved fast, it was like a flash.”
“It had to be an animal. You said yourself this is probably a deer bed.”
He bites down on his bottom lip. “I did say that because that’s what it looks like to me. But whatever I saw shoot out from its center and into the corn, wasn’t a deer. I wouldn’t shoot a deer during offseason. But it was on all fours, and it didn’t have any fur. It had claws and black eyes. It all happened so quick. So fast. I honestly thought it was going to attack me.” Shaking his head. “It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen or felt, Bec.”
“Sam,” I say, “now you’re scaring me. You sound like the kids.”
Another nervous laugh. But I know he is feeling anything but happy right now. I can sense the panic radiating from him. This is not the Sam I’ve come to know for the past few months.
“Did you hit it?” I ask. “With the bullet, I mean.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat like a turkey about to get the hatchet.
“I don’t think so.” He exhales. “I fought in the first Gulf War. I know when to shoot and not to shoot. Part of me thinks it was wrong to take a shot at whatever that was because it looked almost human. But then, another part of me thinks otherwise — the part that thinks it had to be an animal, like a coydog, or even a deer that was born with defects. Whatever it was, I felt like it was coming after me.”
“In any case, you took a shot.”
“Yes, I took a shot to defend myself, and now it’s gone.”
I look up at the sky. The sun is setting earlier now that daylight savings time has kicked in. It’s getting cold out, too. Soon there will be a frost, and the corn stalks will grow heavy and drop. But not yet.
“We should go back, Sam.”
He nods, once more bites down on his lip.
“Yeah, we should go back, Bec.”
Stuffing the barrel of his semi-automatic into his leather belt, he walks past me, out of the clearing, and back into the corn, in the direction of the house.
“Sam,” I say, just before he disappears.
He turns. “What is it?”
“I heard drums. Just a few minutes ago. I thought it was you.”
His eyes go wide.
“I heard them, too,” he says. “But it wasn’t me. I was out here in the cornfield.”
“So who was playing your drums?”
“Nobody,” he says. “It couldn’t have come from my kit. My house is locked up. There're other houses in the area. That noise can travel a mile or more out here. Maybe some kid bought a new set.”
We lock eyes. Neither of us are blinking. It tells me that both Sam and I don’t believe his logic but just don’t want to admit it.
What the hell is going on here?
He turns, disappears into the dead stalks.
I decide to follow him. But not before spotting something glittering in the little bit of sunlight that’s left. The shell casing. I bend down to pick it up. It’s then that I make out what looks like a little piece of cloth stuck to a stalk maybe two feet above the ground. Taking a closer look, I can see that it’s not cloth at all. But instead a liquid of some kind. I touch it and pull back my finger.
By the time Sam and I bust through the corn, it’s almost completely dark. It’s been one of the more stressful days in recent memory. I’ve never been much of a drinker, and I’ve already had some wine and a taste of Sam’s whiskey, but man oh man, I could use a stiff one — or three — right about now.
“Sam, you want to stay for dinner?” I say as if asking such a basic question will somehow inject some normalcy back into our lives.
“How about I stay for the night?” He’s once more focused on the cornfield, the way the early moon shines its white light upon on the stalks, giving them the appearance of steely gray branches. “I don’t like what’s happening out there.”
In my head, I see the blood on the stalk, and I know for certain Sam shot something. Maybe what he shot was an animal. The animal that the kids have been seeing and confusing for the Boogeyman...for Mr. Skinner. But what if the thing he shot turns out to be human? The last thing me, the kids, and Robyn need in the house right now is a guy with a gun who just shot somebody, even if the verdict results in an accident.
In my head: “Christ, Michael, this whole place has turned upside down all in the span of a single day.”
You’re safe inside the house, Bec. Tell Sam you want him to go home. Tell him to get a good night sleep. You’ll call him if there’s a problem . . .
“Sure that’s not the jealous ex-husband talking?” In my brain, I see Michael standing beside me, his worn leather coat over his black turtleneck, a can of beer in his hand. His face is going from the handsome, rugged man I once knew to the skeleton it must now surely be six feet underground, and back again. Talk about imagining things? I’m as guilty as they come.
Okay, maybe there’s a little jealousy thing at work here, Michael says. And we have to think of Mike Jr. What he’d think if he saw Sam hanging around all night? He’s already having enough trouble without having his dad around . . .
I take hold of Sam’s hand.
“Come on,” I say. “It’s been a long day. I’ll take you home. Get some sleep.”
“You sure about that? I don’t mind sleeping here for a while until this thing is straightened out.”
“If Michael sees you staying overnight, it could confuse him more. We’re not ready for that.” I give his hand a quick squeeze. “Besides, you need to practice your drums. Show that kid, whoever he is, playing in whatever house he lives in, who’s the real Ringo.”
He laughs, but I can tell the laugh is forced.
After heading into the kitchen to tell Robyn where I’m going, Sam and I walk around the house to my Jeep. I dig the keys out of my pocket, and we get in. We drive in near silence until I pull into the Goodman drive, throw the transmission in park.
For a beat or two, Sam just stares out the windshield onto the house and the unfinished front porch steps as if contemplating the next move in the repair process. But then, ever so slowly, he reaches out with his left hand, sets it on my thigh. Leaning in, he brings his face close to mine, his mouth to my mouth.
I can tell immediately that this isn’t going to be limited to a little kissing and heavy petting, because, for the first time in our short three months together, Sam is unbuttoning my shirt, one slow button at a time, and I’m not attempting to stop him. I can almost taste his desire it’s so palpable, the warmth from his fingers and hands caressing my body. He removes my shirt, and unclasps the front clasp on my white lace bra, exposing my breasts. I manage to shift myself so that my legs are extended all the way into the passenger side seat well. I work the fingers on both my hands onto his belt buckle and undo it. Then, I unbutton his jeans and slip my hand inside. He is as hard as a rock. Pushing his jeans down, I expose him entirely, and in turn, he unbuttons my jeans, and pulls them down.
We’re both breathing so hard, the windows are clouding up, obscuring the white full moon. When he presses his chest against my chest, I swear I feel his heart pounding against my heart. He enters me, and our mouths connect, our tongues playing and dancing. We’re both moaning, and I want to scream, but I hold back.
It doesn’t take but a few precious moments for us to come to that special place together and when it’s over we hold onto one another behind the wheel of the Jeep like we’re a couple of silly teenagers during our very first time together, or at all for that matter. In a way, we are that young right now, right this minute. Sure, Michael’s face shoots through my brain, but I have to believe he wants nothing more than for me to give myself over to someone as kind and as brave and as good as Sam. Sam Good Man.
Blood on the corn stalk . . .
After a time, Sam shifts himself off me, and it’s then we get a good look at one another’s faces. We both start to laugh. Shifting myself up, I button up my clothing, and he does the same.
“Was it good for you too, baby?” Sam says.
“The best, big fella,” I say. “You’re a good man, Good Man.”
We share another laugh until he sighs, and once again searches for my hand with his. When he finds it, he gives it a squeeze.
“All kidding aside,” he says, “I really am falling for you. And what we just had right here, in this Jeep, was one of the most special moments of my life. Do you believe me, Rebecca?”
My eyes fill. I want to cry. Christ, I’ve always been the type to shed a tear or two after sex. I’ve always attributed it to biology . . . hormones. But this is different. This time, with Sam, was one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve shared with anyone in years. Silly and wonderful, and it made me feel alive and young again. During a day when I’ve felt so entirely vulnerable and out of control, Sam has made me feel protected, secure, and at peace. Or what the hell, maybe I’m just horny.
Enjoy the moment for Christ sakes, Molly says inside my head. God, Sister Mary Rebecca.
I have to admit, the ghosts that live inside my head have been good to me today.
We hold one another for a few more minutes. Then Sam asks me if I want to come in for a beer. But he already knows I’m going to decline since I need to get back for supper. Or, hell, I’ve probably already missed supper. Truth is, as wonderful as it was having sex with him, I feel the sudden desire to run. Run back home. Help Robyn tend to the kids.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, opening the door. “But remember, if you need to call me. I’ll be there in a flash.”
Suddenly, the old worries intrude once again, all the way to my perpetually cramped stomach. Maybe it has something to do with all the physical activity over the past few minutes, but something comes over me, and I sense the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. This is not a good sign. But I don’t want anything to ruin these wonderful few moments, so I’m not about to dwell on it. When I get back home, I’ll pop a Nexium.
Sam leans in for one more kiss. I reciprocate with my lips closed this time.
“Sorry,” I say. “Lunch coming up on me. How’s that for making things real?”
“I’ll love you anytime, burps and all. But I hope you’re not feeling sick again.”
“Not at all,” I say. But I’m not sure even I believe that.
He slips out, closes the door behind him. Turning the engine over, I offer up one last wave, then pull back out of the driveway. It’s been one hell of a day, but I drive home with a smile on my face.
I pull around the back of the house, park the Jeep at the far end of the School of Art art barn lot. Exiting the Jeep, I can’t help but feel like something is watching me from the cornfield. A set of eyes laser beaming holes into my skin. Eyes from The Skinner, maybe. Or is that ridiculous? Perhaps eyes from the ghost of Michael or my sister Molly. I prefer to believe the latter.
In the light of the moon, I swiftly walk the short, slight downhill to the door off the kitchen, and enter into my home sweet home.
Rather than step on the brand-new pine stair treads with his work boots, Sam Goodman decides to walk around to the back of the house and enter the kitchen through the back door.
“You gott
a learn to lock the door,” he whispers to himself as he enters the big country kitchen, flipping up the wall-mounted light switch.
For a brief moment, he stands there, staring at the big round table, at the wood cabinets and countertops, at the stainless steel covered sink and gas oven he recently installed himself. He senses that’s he’s alone, but at the same time, he feels as if someone or something else has been here in his absence, and the sensation is enough to raise the short hairs on the back of his thick neck.
Instinct kicks in, and he draws his semi-automatic, the same way he’d draw his sidearm on the streets of Kuwait City back during the Gulf War. It’s his way of staying alive, of neutralizing any threat that might exist. He asked Rebecca to come inside for a beer. But maybe she was better off declining. He doesn’t like the feel of the place right now.
He crosses over the kitchen floor, finds the cellar door. He opens it, flips the light switch, slowly begins making his way down inside the brightly lit, renovated space. At the far end of the room is a riser, his drum set occupying it. He crosses over the carpeted floor, his eyes peeled down at it, searching for any signs of footprints. But there are none to be observed.
He comes to the drums, spots the wood drum sticks set out on the snare drum. They are exactly where he left them the last time he played. He goes around to the throne, sits himself down behind the kit. Setting the pistol onto the floor tomtom, he picks up the sticks, and stairs out at the opposite wall and the wood staircase that leads back up into the kitchen.
“Were you down here, Mr. Skinner? Was that you playing my drums?”
He inhales a deep breath. There’s something in the air. A moldy, musty odor. Like a wool sweater left out in the rain.
“If I ever catch you breaking and entering into my house or Rebecca’s house,” he says, as if The Skinner can hear him, “I will shoot you dead.”
The Ashes (The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy Book 2) Page 7
