The Ashes (The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy Book 2)

by Vincent Zandri

  He recalls the thing — the animal — he took a shot at out in the cornfield, and he recalls Rebecca’s words from this afternoon.

  If you see the Boogeyman, shoot him dead . . .

  Raising the sticks, he brings them down hard on the snare. Not once but twice.

  “Bang, bang, motherfucker,” he says. “You’re dead.”

  He stands at the room-length stainless steel counter down in the windowless cement basement. He’s naked with only a blood-stained towel wrapped around his midsection. In his right hand, he holds a needle and a thread of light-test fishing line. He’s using the needle to suture the flesh wound that exists on his upper right forearm. A gift from Sam’s .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun. How the man was able to hit anything is a miracle. But then, Skinner doesn’t believe in miracles. He doesn’t believe in a heaven or a hell. He just believes in his hunger, his desire for Rebecca, for her child. For all her children. For their skin.

  How easy it has been to invade their lives. To enter onto their properties, to play Sam’s drums — if only for a brief moment — to actually touch Rebecca’s soft skin. It’s easy to take chances when it’s entirely possible to disappear from sight. Or, in The Skinner’s case, to go underground.

  He presses the tip of the needle into his thin, almost transparent skin, into the tight flesh, running it through one side of the deep gash and then up and out the other. When he pulls the filament through the flesh, it extends the elasticity of the skin. The pain is so electric, so intense, it makes him dizzy like he might pass out. But instead of harboring on the pain, he sings.

  Ring around the Rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . .

  He sets the last stitch, then cuts the thread with his razor-sharp teeth and ties it off in a square knot. Soon he will need to hunt again and to eat. But for now, he will listen to his family while they eat their supper.

  He shifts himself along the counter until he comes to his laptop computer. Lifting the lid on the laptop, he turns up the audio volume. He listens to the voice of the blonde one. The one they call Rob. And he watches all of the kittens interacting inside the small country kitchen.

  “Nice of you to show up for dinner, Bec,” Robyn says. “What uhhh, what were you and Sam doing all that time?”

  Skinner finds himself smiling while he watches the two women interact on the closed-circuit monitor.

  “You naughty girl, Rebecca,” he whispers. “You naughty, naughty little kitten.”

  The kids are already gone from the table, but their mess still remains. Robyn is standing over the sink. She’s using an artist’s smock for an apron. She’s got a white plate in one hand, and a plastic hand-held dish scrubber in the other.

  She turns, smiles. “Nice of you to show up for dinner, Bec . . . What uhhh, what were you and Sam doing all that time?”

  The look on my face gives the whole thing away.

  Robyn’s eyes go wide. “Well, it’s about time.” Setting the brush and plate into the sink, she dries her hands. “So, how’s it feel to be back in the game, honey?”

  “Wonderful.” I go to the refrigerator, find a cold beer. “In fact, more than fine. Now I need a drink. Join me?”

  “You know it.”

  I steal a beer for her too. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, we pop the tabs and drink.

  “It’s not champagne,” she says. “But what the hell. Becca’s getting laid again.”

  I press my index finger against my lips, shush her.

  “The kids,” I say.

  She waves me off with her free hand. “They’re watching the Disney Channel.” Drinking more beer. “Tell me, did you use the little latex extra-ribbed-for-her-pleasure gift I bestowed upon you earlier?”

  I feel a wave of warmth shoot up and down my nervous system.

  “Kind of slipped my mind,” I say as if I were uttering one long oops.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see how fertile old Myrtle still is,” she says. “Let’s hope not so much.”

  “I’m already menopausal,” I say. “So don’t worry yourself.”

  Little pains in my stomach. Below my stomach. Sharper this time. Not so dull like before, as if my little romp with Sam in the Jeep upset something. I think about mentioning it to Robyn but then think better of it. Like I said, it’s been a hell of a day.

  Stepping back over to the counter, I open the cabinet door, retrieve the Nexium, pour one out in my hand, pop it into my mouth, wash it down with a sip of beer. I guess you could say I’m living dangerously today.

  “Any leftovers?”

  “Spaghetti,” she says. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” But the last thing I want right now is food.

  “Plans for tonight, Bec? Or all that sex wear you out?”

  “A little web research.”

  “Anything you plan on sharing with me?”

  “Not right now. But I’ll ask if I need help.”

  She goes back to the sink. That’s when I realize I never grabbed my computer out of the art barn earlier.

  I’ll be dipped . . .

  “Rob, I left my computer in the barn,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  Somehow, the thought of going back out into the night frightens me. But then, I’m being entirely irrational. Sam might have shot at something in the corn earlier, but that’s all it was. Something in the corn. A rabbit. A small deer. A coydog, more than likely.

  So be a big girl, Rebecca, I tell myself, and go get your computer.

  Setting the beer onto the counter, I head out the kitchen door into the night.

  The sky is darker than before, the moon now obscured somewhat by thin cloud cover. The air has cooled considerably since this afternoon. A dampness has set in and seeps through my clothing into my skin, flesh, and bones. I fold my arms over my chest and speed-walk my way along the slight uphill, and across the gravel packed parking lot, passed my Jeep and Robyn’s black Volkswagen.

  The wind blows through the cornfield, the stalks rattling against one another, making a noise that reminds me of a million old voices competing with one another. Voices of the very old and very dead. Ghosts trapped inside hell, struggling to get out. If only I could shut off my imagination, my ability to see bad things that really aren’t there at all. But I’d have to be dead for that to happen.

  There are maybe twenty feet separating me from the doors to the art barn, but I suddenly begin to feel as if I’m walking in mud. I can’t seem to walk fast enough because my booted feet have grown impossibly heavy and cumbersome. I don’t want to look over my shoulder at the cornfield and the dark, black woods behind it, but I can’t help myself. In the cloud-shaded light of the full moon, I can make out the jagged stalks as they sway in the wind and I once more feel the eyes upon me.

  I’m walking, making my way to the relative safety of the door, but I feel exposed and vulnerable. Like a target. My senses are on edge, my every nerve ending raw and standing at attention. My skin tingles, goosebumps sprout, and my throat constricts. Needles prickle inside my stomach, poking at the already sensitive lining.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I pick up my pace, make a run for the doors. My hand on the opener, I pull the big wood door open, let myself inside, and shut the door behind me.

  Only then do I breathe.

  “What the hell is the matter with you, Rebecca?” I say aloud to myself as if I were talking to my own ghost. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing out there that can hurt you. No Skinner. No Boogeyman. It’s all a figment of some very imaginative brains. Yours included.”

  But what about the blood on the stalk, Bec? Molly says.

  Molly’s right, Rebecca, Michael says. There was blood on the corn stalk. Sam must have shot something out there in the cornfield. You don’t just suddenly come upon blood unless something is bleeding. I’m starting to think it’s not a good idea to stay in the house tonight.

  “Take it easy, everyone,” I say. “You’re right. There was a little blood on
that corn stalk inside the little round clearing. But listen to this: Sam described an animal that moved on all fours, had claws and fangs, and looked like a dog only without fur. Sound like a coydog to you? Well, it does to me. And maybe a rabid one at that. Oh, and by the way, have you seen mine or Rob’s credit card balances as of late? The best hotel we could afford would no doubt double as a crack house.”

  I steal a deep breath. The air smells moldy. Sour. Funky. I don’t like it.

  In the dimly lit barn, I see Molly standing in the middle of the wide-open wood plank floor in her braids, cut-offs, and Keds sneakers. She’s sucking on a Bomb Pop, the thin wood stick stuck inside the frozen red, white, and blue Popsicle, gripped between the index finger and thumb on her right hand.

  Michael is standing beside her. He’s dressed in his white, roll-neck fisherman’s sweater over blue jeans and cowboy boots, his salt and pepper hair thick and a little longer than usual, his face clean shaven except for a three or four-day stubble. He’s drinking a Budweiser from a long neck bottle, just like he used to do when he was done writing for the day.

  For now, the ghosts look perfect. Just the way I want to imagine them in life and death. But I know that soon my imagination will betray me, and they will appear as dead and destroyed as the day I buried them.

  “Mol,” I say, “you remember how Super-Duper-Trooper Dan used to warn us to stay away from the coydogs? How Dad used to go after them with his hunting rifle?”

  That a series of questions, Sis? Mol says, licking her Bomb Pop. Or back to back statements of fact?

  Molly . . . always giving me a hard time. I turn to my ex-husband.

  “Michael, what’s the golden, yet unspoken, rule for the deer and bird hunters?”

  You see a coydog running around, or worse, chasing down a helpless deer, you shoot it on site. Don’t stop to ask questions or weigh the situation, because, by the time you think it over, the dog will be gone baby gone. And that goes for in season or out of season.

  Leave it to my published author ex-husband to make things more dramatic than they have to be. What was it he used to say? Show me a cow, and I’ll write a paragraph around it. Or was that something another, more famous, writer said?

  Inhaling a breath, I slowly blow it out. I close my eyes tight.

  “Okay, you ghosts,” I say aloud, “be gone with you. I’ve got work to do.”

  I open my eyes, and all I see is an empty art barn. I also spot my laptop resting on my desk all the way on the opposite side of the wide-open structure. I go to it, fold it up, unplug it from its power source. Stuffing it under my arm, I make my way back across the floor.

  I’m not half way across when I feel it again.

  The eyes burning holes into me. These aren’t ghosts I’m sensing. This isn’t the long deceased Molly and Michael. This isn’t my imagination. I hear something clicking and scratching on the floorboards behind me, like the tip of a six-penny nail being run across the rough wood surface. An icey shockwave shoots up and down my spine.

  I turn quick.

  “Who’s there?” I demand, my mouth dry and my throat so tight I can hardly form the words. “Is anybody there?”

  I scan the corners of the barn. They are dark and seemingly empty. But in the far right-hand corner, I begin to make out the shape of something. A man, or an animal standing up on its hind legs. Then, two dark eyes in the moonlight that radiate through the skylight. Two eyes that look like shiny dark stones.

  “What are you!?” I shout.

  But all I get is silence. Pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I press the flashlight app and shine it into the corner. It’s a face all right, but the face of a mannequin the students use as a model. I turn the flashlight off.

  My God, I must be losing my shit.

  Sprinting across the length of the barn, I exit through the door. Without so much as glancing at the cornfield, I head into the house, lock the door behind me.

  With the computer still tucked under my arm, I go straight for the beer I left on the counter and drink the rest down in one swift pull.

  “Thirsty, are we?” Robyn says from the sink where she’s finishing the last of the dishes. “Must be all that sex.”

  Scratching on the art barn’s wood plank floor . . . A pair obsidian eyes looking out at me from the dark recesses . . . My imagination. A mannequin taking up space in the darkness.

  Or is Skinner for real?

  I might elaborate on my reason for getting a buzz on ASAP, but I don’t want to push the issue with the mysterious creature that supposedly lives in the corn. After all, it’s one thing for a child to believe in that kind of thing, but for a grown woman to start spouting off about werewolf-like creatures stalking them is a one-way ticket to the looney bin.

  “You’re right, Rob,” I say. “Must be the sex.”

  “Well, before you get shitfaced, the kids need baths, and you’re it.”

  I do something entirely not like me. I retrieve a second beer from the fridge, pull open the tab, take a deep drink. “Didn’t they have baths like three days ago?”

  “Exactly,” she says.

  For a beat, I stand there, the cold beer feeling good in my hand. Then, an idea comes to be. Reaching into the cabinet, I pull down an empty, plastic coffee-to-go cup. I pour the beer into it, screw the lid on tight.

  “What the hell is that?” Robyn smiles.

  “Beer to go,” I say, heading out of the kitchen for the stairs in the vestibule.

  “Wow,” I overhear Robyn remark as I climb the first step. “Sam must be a freakin’ dynamo.”

  ***

  When the baths are finished, I get the kids dressed in their pajamas and usher them to their respective bedrooms. While Robyn says prayers and reads to Molly, I do the same with my little boy. He’s wearing the set of Batman vs. Superman pajamas that he spotted in Target a few days ago. Who can resist a little boy when he’s looking up at you with big brown eyes, a smooth round face that bears a spot or two of ketchup, and thick disheveled hair, pleading, “Please, please, please . . .”

  Of course, I cave in. Happily cave in. The pajamas might have cost me twenty-five bucks, which isn’t small change on an artist’s salary. But the result is a happy child. And a happy kid is priceless.

  He slips under the covers, and I tuck them up tight under his chin. He loves when I do that. In fact, so did his father.

  “How come Superman fights with Batman?” he asks after a time.

  Reaching out, I run my hand through his hair and across his face. Hard to believe that one day he’ll be growing a beard out of this smooth-as-silk-skin. I pray I live long enough to see it.

  “I’m not sure I understand that plot either, Boo,” I say. “But I guess sometimes even good guys don’t get along.”

  “What if Superman kills Batman? Won’t that mean Superman is evil? Or what happens if Batman kills Superman? Would it mean the same thing, Mom?”

  Philosophical and ethical questions from a seven-year-old boy at eight thirty in the evening after a long, if not frightening, day is not quite my specialty. But I know he’s not going to allow me my freedom until I at least attempt a satisfying response.

  “You’re right,” I answer in a low-toned, almost whispering voice. “Both Batman and Superman are good, honest people—”

  “—Superheroes.”

  “Right, superheroes . . . But I guess sometimes even superheroes can get into discussions that are so heated, they feel they have no choice but to duke it out.” I make like a boxer with my fists and toss out a few air jabs.

  He processes this for a moment. Tries to process it, anyway.

  “Is that what happened with you and Daddy? You had too many ummmm, heated discussions?”

  I’m a little bit taken aback by the question. Because, obviously, he’s been thinking about what happened to Michael and I. I never once assumed that he would contemplate why we split up. Have I, in fact, told him his father and I divorced? I must have somewhere along the way. Does he even
know what divorce is? I’m guessing he must if he’s asking about it.

  “Why do you ask, Mikey?”

  “Because you are both my superheroes. But you fought one another, and now Dad is dead.”

  My stomach . . . constricting, paining. By his logic, my son must think I’m evil.

  “Daddy and Mommy loved one another very much. We just couldn’t live together anymore. Daddy was going through some very hard times and he needed to work those things out all on his own. Do you understand what I mean, Boo?”

  He looks at me with half an understanding expression and the other half totally confused. But I sense he’s okay with what I’m telling him. For now. After all, Batman and Superman are comic book characters, and his father and me are real-life flesh and blood. Rather, his father is flesh and blood that has now become the ghost that resides in his overactive, super-creative imagination. At least, that’s the way I imagine Dr. Cuther putting it.

  Once more, I run my hand over his face. “Try and get some sleep, Boo. Tomorrow is Monday. School awaits.”

  I go to get up, but he grabs hold of my sleeve. “Wait.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why is there evil people in the world?”

  “Why are there evil people, you mean? In terms of grammar, that’s more better.”

  A grin. “You know what I mean.”

  Again, I have to think. I have to answer him in the simplest but most direct terms possible.

  “Some people say that in order for there to be good in the world, there has to be bad. Because if there was no bad, how would you know what’s good?”

  He chews on that, puckers his lips.

  “I think I see what you mean,” he says. And after a beat, “The Skinner man that lives in the corn. Do you think he’s evil?”

  The soreness in my stomach, now accompanied by ice in the veins. I’m once more standing outside the house, on the driveway by the cornfield. I’m feeling the eyes staring at me through the stalks.

  Lifting my hand, I extend my index finger, tap his forehead.