by L. L. Soares
“I know that kind of shit pisses you off. But I can’t help it. I’ve been so hungry lately. It’s like having this itch that just won’t go away.”
“I know what it feels like, Grif. And you know I sympathize. But you have to be stronger than this. You have to control the need. Not let it control you.”
“But that’s why it’s called a need. I’ve got to have it. You know that.”
Viv rolled her eyes, on the verge of giving up.
“If we go somewhere else, I’ll just keep looking around. If you don’t want to see it, then maybe I should just go off on my own for a while.”
“You really can’t control yourself for one night?”
“Let me put it this way. Do you want to bring me back to where you live?”
“I seriously don’t know.”
“Well, if I scratch this itch, it’ll be safe for me to go back there with you. If not, it will be dangerous.”
“So maybe we’ll just crash in the city tonight. Find a room. I don’t have to bring you back there.”
“I know. But I’d like to meet this Jeremy guy. You’ve told me so much about him. But I don’t want to be hurting the whole time I’m there.”
“I’m telling you right now, Grif. If you do anything to Jeremy—”
“I know, I know. I’m just trying to talk some sense into you.”
The waitress came back with the bill. She put it on the table in front of Viv. Is it that obvious I’m the responsible one here? she wondered. She got out her wallet and paid the tab.
“So we’re really leaving here?”
“I don’t know what the fuck I want to do at this point,” Viv said. “But I sure as hell don’t want to hang around and wait for you to scratch that itch.”
“Maybe it was a bad idea to come here, the way I’ve been feeling. It’s not fair to you.”
“Look, you were in town. I want you to call me if you’re coming through. We see each other so rarely as it is.”
“I know.”
“Come on, let’s get some air. It’s too hot in here anyway.”
Grif drained his glass and grabbed his bag. Then he followed his sister out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Brenda Carlisle jumped when she heard a loud bang against the side of her house. She was sitting on the couch, watching her favorite soap opera, which she’d recorded earlier in the day. She’d had to work late and was starting to nod off in front of the television. But the noise woke her right up.
“What the hell is that?” Brenda said out loud, feeling her muscles tense up. She was on her own after all. Her husband had split years ago, and there hadn’t been anyone new in a long time. Between work and raising Jessica, there didn’t seem to be time.
There was another bang. Terrified, she didn’t even want to get off the couch and look. But Jessica woke up this time and started crying. After all the time it took to get her to fall asleep!
Should I call the cops? Brenda wondered. But what if it’s just some teenagers throwing a baseball against the house or something? She could take care of that herself. She was a woman alone, but she wasn’t helpless. She could yell at some kids if she had to.
Brenda went to the kitchen. There was a drawer by the sink, where she kept her knives. She took out the biggest one she could find, just in case. She looked out the back window, but it was too dark to see.
Getting up her nerve, she flicked the switch above the microwave. Suddenly, the back yard was flooded with light.
But no sign of any people. Big, little or otherwise.
Maybe it was a raccoon, she thought, starting to relax. Then again, it could have been the plumbing or something. There had been other times when the house made strange noises. It wasn’t the most well constructed place she’d ever lived in. Which was her ex-husband’s fault again, getting them a crappy place like this that seemed to be put together with glue and sticks sometimes, for all the repairs she had to have done.
She hoped he was dying of syphilis somewhere.
After switching off the back yard light she went and sat on the couch. A glass of zinfandel was on the coffee table, on top of the latest copy of Soap Opera Digest. She picked it up and took a healthy gulp.
Jessica had stopped crying and settled back to sleep. Brenda hadn’t even considered going in there to comfort her daughter. Not that she was a bad mother, but she had just been so groggy at first, and then so scared, it hadn’t crossed her mind. She felt bad about that. Then again, Jessica seemed to fall back to sleep pretty quickly. If she’d kept crying, Brenda would have gone to check on her.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know why she was crying, Brenda thought. The noise scared me too.
If she went in there now, she’d just wake her daughter up all over again.
Sometimes she wished Jack had taken the kid with him when he left. It made her feel horrible to think that. It made her feel like an unfit mother. Maybe she was. She really didn’t know why she had had such trouble bonding with her daughter. At first she’d thought it was post-natal depression. But Jessica was four now, and she just resigned herself to the fact that some people were born for mothering, and some people just didn’t have that much of it in them. She was just happy that she’d taken enough control of her life so that she didn’t feel the urge to hit Jessica anymore. It wasn’t her little girl’s fault that her father was such an irresponsible bastard who’d ruined both their lives and ran away, leaving them to fend for themselves.
God, she hated that man. Even when she’d sometimes hit Jessica in the past. She really wanted to be hitting him. Wanted to make him hurt. Not Jessica.
It was good to know she was past that now. Thanks to Dr. Wayne. That man was a miracle worker, the way he helped her. And for the first time in her life, she felt like she was in control again, despite being alone and having a hyperactive four-year-old. Well, she was as in control as she could be, considering the circumstances.
She grabbed the remote control and turned her show back on. It was right in the middle, and the story was just on the verge of a big revelation.
There was a crash. The sound of glass breaking.
Brenda jumped from the couch. She whimpered, but her voice sounded like it was coming from someone else. She was afraid to go in the kitchen and see what had happened. She looked for the cordless phone and saw it on the carpet. She picked it up, moving slowly toward the kitchen.
The back door was smashed in. Glass was all over the linoleum floor. But she didn’t see anybody outside. She flicked the light back on. There was nothing to see.
She was about to push the buttons for 9-1-1, when something leapt at her through the smashed back door. She dropped the phone. It looked like a man. A naked man, knocking the door off its hinges, spraying more glass across the floor.
The man stood before her, breathing hard. She could not make out his face. There was a shimmering about him that made his features indistinct.
But there seemed to be something familiar about him.
Despite the shimmering, she could see that he had an erection. It was impossible to miss.
She did not move or say a word.
Then, without warning, he leapt upon her, wrestling her to the ground. Grabbing at her and clawing her body, and hurling chunks of her flesh across the room. She cried out beneath him, struggling to get away. The last thing she heard was Jessica shouting in the other room, and then she lost consciousness.
* * *
There was the deafening blast of a shotgun, and then nothing.
Colleen sat bolt upright in bed to find herself in a dark room and breathing hard. Her heartbeat was loud.
Her movements were so sudden they woke Jeremy, who had been dozing beside her.
“What is it?” he asked, half-waking. “What’s wrong?”
Sitting up, she realized that the shotgun blast hadn’t really happened at all. That it had been a dream. But that didn’t do much to calm her.
“I had a nightmare,” she said. She co
uld hear and feel him squirming beside her. “Go back to sleep.”
Jeremy sat up beside her. “You’re shaking. What did you dream?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s over now.”
He rubbed her arms. “It sure doesn’t sound like nothing. You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
She could feel him in the darkness, but couldn’t see him. His arms were around her, holding her close. Her shaking came to a stop as he enveloped her.
“I dreamt about a gun going off,” she said. “I thought it was real for a moment.”
“I’ve had dreams like that,” he said. “They can really shake you up. They seem so vivid you could swear they really happened.”
“Yeah,” she said, enjoying his embrace, and trying to forget the way the dream made her feel.
“Was there anything else besides the gunshot? Anything leading up to it that you can remember?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. Have you ever had a dream like that before?”
“Sure, lots of times,” her voice got quieter.
“So this isn’t the first time then. How long have you had these dreams?”
“You’re starting to sound a lot like Sigmund Freud or something. What are you going to do, analyze my dreams?”
“I was just curious.”
“I know what the dreams mean,” she told him. “And I don’t want to think about
it.”
“Just trying to help. You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
“No, Jeremy.”
“You know, you can tell me anything.”
“I really don’t want to go there again, Jeremy. Not yet.”
“Okay, I’m not going to pressure you.”
“Why don’t we just go back to sleep,” Colleen said. “And pretend this didn’t happen.”
“If that’s what you want.”
They both lay back down, nestling their heads on the pillows. His arm went around her, pressing against her chest, pulling her close to him. She could feel his breath on her shoulder.
“Jeremy?” she said softly, after they got settled. She was afraid he might have fallen asleep again.
“Yeah?”
“When I was a little girl, my father killed himself. He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I saw him do it.”
“My God.”
“That’s what the dreams mean. I really don’t want to think about it, but the dreams kind of force me to. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I wanted to tell you.”
“Thanks for trusting me.”
“I wanted to be honest with you. But let’s not talk too much else about it, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Now we can go back to sleep.”
“Do you think you’ll have that dream again?”
“I should be okay for tonight.”
“I hope so.” He kissed her shoulder. “I’ll have to hold you extra close.”
“That sounds good,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Charlie was awakened by something clattering on the roof.
In his half-conscious mind, he thought, Is it Christmas already? The image of some drunken Santa Claus up on the roof was in his head.
He sat up in the dark. Everything was quiet. He’d had a hard time falling asleep. On the other side of the wall behind his bed, his mother had been fucking her latest boyfriend, and they made a hell of a racket. He’d really had to restrain himself from pounding on the wall.
But they weren’t making any noise now. And they sure as hell weren’t up on the roof.
He cocked his head and tried to listen carefully.
Nothing.
And then it started again. Clattering down the side of the house.
“Charlie?” he heard his mother calling out from behind the wall. “What’s that noise?”
“I don’t know, Ma!” he shouted into the darkness. “It’s not me.”
He slipped out of bed and pulled his underwear on. He’d slipped it off earlier, when he jerked off to the sounds from the other room.
He pulled on his jeans and turned on the light.
He stopped at the door. Listened again.
All was quiet.
Charlie went back to his bed and grabbed underneath it for the aluminum baseball bat he kept there. Just in case.
He opened his bedroom door and went out into the hallway. He got to the kitchen and looked out the window into the back yard. The sun was just starting to rise. There wasn’t any sign of life out there.
“What is it, Charlie?” a masculine voice said behind him.
He turned. It was his mother’s new guy. Some jerk named Phil. A big, dumb-looking guy who switched on the kitchen light and was holding a gun.
Charlie was fascinated by the sight of the weapon in the big man’s hand.
Shit, I wish I had a gun like that, he thought. Think of how many assholes I could wipe off the planet with a big-ass gun like that.
“I don’t see anything out there,” Charlie said.
“Well I heard someone on the roof,” Phil said. “You heard it, too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I heard it. Might have been a tree limb banging against the house or something.” All the time, Charlie did not take his eyes away from the pistol.
Phil looked out the window. “Could have been. But you can never be too careful. There’s a lot of fucking nuts out there, you know.”
“Where did you get a gun like that?”
Phil smiled. “You like it, huh? Maybe I’ll take you to the firing range sometime and you can try it out yourself. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great,” Charlie said. Suddenly Phil didn’t seem so bad.
“I’m going to go outside and check things out.”
Phil opened the door and went out into the yard.
“What is it?” Charlie’s mom said, coming into the kitchen. “Is there somebody out there?”
She was dressed in an old bathrobe, but she hadn’t tied it up and he could see her breasts through the sheer fabric of her nightgown.
“I didn’t see anybody. Phil went out to check it.”
“That was so weird. Sounded like someone was on the roof.”
“Yeah.”
Charlie was feeling real uncomfortable and wished he could just go back to bed.
But he wanted to find out what the noise was all about. He wanted to go outside, too, but for some reason he felt like he couldn’t move.
Phil came back in. “Looks okay. Must have been a tree limb or something, like Charlie said.”
“Is that what you think, Charlie?” his mother asked.
“The tree’s right next to the house. It makes sense.”
“That sounded like a person to me,” Phil said. “Sounded like they scrambled down the side. But I don’t see anybody, and I went all around the house. Believe me, if they were out there, I would have taken care of them.”
“You went outside with that gun?” Charlie’s mother asked. “What if the neighbors saw you?”
“It’s not even dawn yet,” he said. “Besides, I was protecting you two, I don’t give a shit who saw me.”
There was a crash in front of the house.
“What the fuck?” Phil said and ran down the hall.
“Oh my god,” Charlie’s mother said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Stay here,” Charlie said, and was running after Phil. He couldn’t help hoping something would happen. Something horrible.
Before he even got to the living room at the front of the house, he got his wish. He heard a shot go off. Phil finally had a reason to use his gun.
He could hear Phil struggling with someone and turned on the light. Phil was on
the carpet, on his back, and someone was on top of him, punching him over and over in the head.
A naked man.
The gun was a foot or two from Phil’s out-stretched hand. There was a crunching sound each time the naked guy’s fis
ts pounded into Phil’s skull.
Charlie raised the baseball bat and screamed. It wasn’t a sound from fear or horror. It was a cry of rage.
The man who was pulping Phil’s head looked up. But for some strange reason, Charlie could not focus on the man’s face. It was blurry, like looking through an out-of-focus lens. He couldn’t even tell what the man’s reaction was to his screaming.
Charlie ran at the man, swinging the bat.
The man stood up and grabbed the bat in mid-swing. He tore it from Charlie’s hands and threw it across the room. Then he slapped Charlie with the back of his hand.
Just once. But once was all it took.
* * *
Charlie’s mother entered the room then. The naked man stood over her son, looking down at him, when he noticed someone new had entered the room. He looked at her with his out-of-focus face.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound.
She noticed the gun on the floor and tried to decide whether she should go for it.
The intruder leapt at her, using the weight of his body to force her to the ground.
She didn’t have a chance to cry out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Viv turned her key in the lock. “Now be really quiet. They’re probably sleeping.”
“Okay, okay,” Grif said softly.
It was against Viv’s better judgment to bring her brother here. He had a real knack for causing problems. But he needed a place to crash, and she didn’t have the heart to make him go to a hotel or something. Besides, it didn’t seem like he could afford very much these days.
They went inside. The kitchen light was on, but there was no sign of anyone awake. Viv led Grif down the hall to her room.
She closed the door.
“Now please don’t make any noise,” she told him.
“What, do you live in a museum or something?”
“You know damned well what I mean. We’re not the only ones here.”
Somehow, she’d been able to get his mind off his need. Or at least she thought she had. Who knows what he had done out of her sight, like when he’d gone to the bathroom at the clubs they’d hopped. Well, if he had done anything, she didn’t want to know. She was just grateful he had stopped talking about it. It was making her antsy.
