Companions in Ruin

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  When she finally got home that evening, she kicked her shoes off in the foyer and let her purse drop from her shoulder like an albatross. Hearing a noise from the kitchen, she walked down the hall and pushed through the swinging door.

  The four dwarves—little people, they liked to be called—sat at the kitchen table, counting the money. They looked up at her and smiled. She noticed their masks sitting on her countertop.

  “Went like clockwork,” said George, the rabbit, talking around the cigar in his mouth.

  “Almost.” Betsy fixed her gaze on Patricia, the panther. “Why’d you shoot Charlie? I mean, you guys had what you came for, were making a clean getaway. There was no reason to kill the old fart.”

  The little woman with the worn, wrinkly face just shrugged. “He pissed himself. A man like that don’t deserve to live.”

  Tony, the pig, smiled up at Betsy. “Well, we got the money all divided up. Now we just need the rest of our payment.”

  Betsy sighed and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Can it not wait until tomorrow? I’m exhausted.”

  Geraldine, the duck, said, “Hey, a deal’s a deal.”

  “You’re right,” Betsy said as she started to unbutton her blouse. “So one at a time or all four of you at once?”

  BY THE LIGHT OF DAWN

  Dawn Abbott stood in the middle of the child’s bedroom, still and silent as a statue, her eyes closed. She’d been this way for almost ten minutes. The child’s parents stood in the doorway, watching Dawn without speaking. Mrs. Tanner had her hands clasped beneath her chin as if in prayer, a look of hopeful desperation twisting her face. Mr. Tanner, in contrast, had his arms folded tersely across his chest and looked as if he could barely contain his annoyance.

  Finally Dawn opened her eyes and turned to the couple. “Donna’s presence is very strong in this room.”

  A sob burst from Mrs. Tanner like a belch. “I know, it’s like I can still feel her here. I pass by the room and I can almost believe she’s in here playing.”

  Mr. Tanner just snorted. “You know,” he said to the psychic, “I saw you on that talk show last year. You told that couple that their missing teenaged son was safe and sound in Maine and would be contacting them soon to explain why he ran away, but then two weeks later his body was found all the way out in California and he’d been dead for weeks. Guess you were a bit off on that one, huh?”

  The slight smile on Dawn’s lips froze then stretched tightly across her face. The incident on the talk show had been embarrassing and painful, causing the public and the psychic community itself to doubt the genuineness of her talents. “Mr. Tanner, this isn’t an exact science. Sometimes the messages I receive from the other side are incomplete and garbled. I do the best I can with what I’m given to work with.”

  “Awfully convenient, isn’t it? When you’re right about something, it isn’t just dumb luck but your extraordinary gift, but when you’re wrong about something, it’s the fault of the spirits who give you shitty info.”

  “Charles,” Mrs. Tanner said, swatting her husband on the arm, “I won’t stand for you talking to our guest this way.”

  “Shut up, Valerie. It was your idea to have this fraud come to our house, not mine. You know, Ms. Abbott, I haven’t seen you on many talk shows since you got that faulty information about the dead kid in California. Could that be why you’re making house calls for a hundred bucks a pop?”

  Mr. Tanner looked as shocked as Dawn felt when Mrs. Tanner suddenly slapped her husband with force. His head rocked back, the meaty smack very loud in the room, and a bright red handprint was tattooed on Mr. Tanner’s cheek. “Get out,” Mrs. Tanner hissed through clenched teeth. “I’m paying for Ms. Tanner’s services out of my own money, so you don’t even have to worry about it. Now just go, I don’t want you here for this.”

  “Valerie, please, can’t you see this woman is just preying on your grief?”

  “You’ve given up, Charles, I know you have. You’ve decided in your heart that Donna is dead, and emotionally you’ve already buried her.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Sure it is. You hardly even talk about her anymore, and she’s only been gone a month. Well, I’m not so ready to forget our daughter. If you can’t support me in this then I don’t want you around.”

  Mr. Tanner stood there for a moment more, and his eyes looked wounded. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but in the end he merely turned and walked away. A moment later, Dawn heard the front door open and close.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Mrs. Tanner said, turning back to the psychic. “My husband just finds it easier not to believe, not to hope.”

  “I understand completely.”

  Mrs. Tanner nodded, the desperation returning to her eyes. “Do you sense anything, Ms. Abbott? Anything about my daughter?”

  Dawn walked over to the bed, meticulously made with a dozen stuffed animals resting on top of the comforter. She reached down into the menagerie and picked out a stuffed pig wearing a cowboy hat.

  “That was Donna’s favorite toy,” Mrs. Tanner said, tears glistening in her eyes.

  Dawn held the animal to her chest for a moment then said, “Mr. Gordo.”

  At first Mrs. Tanner seemed too stunned to speak, her mouth merely hanging open as if her jaw had become unhinged. “How did you know that was what Donna had named it?”

  Instead of answering, Dawn merely smiled down at the stuffed animal and continued. “She used to pretend Mr. Gordo had escaped from a farm down south, running away from a cruel farmer that wanted to turn him into sausage links, and he showed up on your doorstep in need of sanctuary.”

  Mrs. Tanner was now sobbing so hard that she couldn’t speak. She merely nodded furiously, her head bobbing up and down in a blur.

  “In reality,” Dawn continued, “Donna’s grandmother on her father’s side gave her this as a birthday gift last year. Her grandmother died only weeks later.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Mrs. Tanner said in a strangled voice. “If Charles were here now, there’s no way he could deny your gift. You couldn’t possibly know these things.”

  “Mental images,” Dawn said with a wave of her hand. “It’s like that sometimes, little mind movies that play behind my eyes. I believe Donna’s grandmother is here now, in this room with us.”

  Mrs. Tanner’s eyes began darting about the room, as if she would actually be able to see the spirit of her mother-in-law standing in one of the corners. “Do you see anything else? Anything about what happened to Donna that day?”

  Dawn stepped over to a white dresser and touched a framed photo of the girl, her fingers just barely brushing the glass. “She was playing at her friend Jessica’s house. They were in the front yard and Jessica’s mother was watching them, but she stepped inside for a few moments to answer the phone. When she came back out, the girls were gone. She found Jessica out back, crouched down behind some bushes. She said they had decided to play hide-and-seek, and she’d left Donna in the front yard, covering her eyes and counting to twenty. That was the last anyone saw of your daughter.”

  Mrs. Tanner nodded, wiping her eyes with a tissue. She didn’t seem overly impressed by this show of Dawn’s knowledge, as this was all information that could have been gleaned from the local papers. But then Dawn hissed air in through her teeth, as if in pain, and said, “There’s something else though. The day she disappeared, Donna was wearing a yellow jumper with matching ribbons in her hair, but her shoes…something about her shoes.”

  Mrs. Tanner suddenly got very quiet, and she stared at Dawn with an intensity that was almost unnerving. “What about her shoes?” she said, and her voice was strained.

  “Something unusual about her shoes. Not sneakers or sandals or anything like that. She was wearing…I can’t quite see it but…yes, there it is. She wasn’t wearing shoes at all, but a pair of bedroom slippers that had faces on them. Cartoon faces. Bugs Bunny, she was wearing Bugs Bunny slippers.”

  Mrs. Tanner gasped and sagg
ed as if her knees were going to buckle; she had to put a hand to the wall to keep herself upright. “The police haven’t released that information to the media. They said they wanted to withhold it in order to weed out any crank tips they got. We bought her those slippers only four days before she disappeared, and she was just in love with them. Wanted to wear them everywhere. It was all I could do to convince her not to wear them to school.”

  “Yes, I see it clearly now,” Dawn said with a smile, but then the corners of her lips began to twitch until her smile withered. “I see…oh dear, I see…”

  “What? What do you see, Ms. Abbott? Please tell me.”

  “I see a van. Solid black. Rolling up to the curb in front of Jessica’s house. The side door sliding open and a man with dirty blonde hair jumping out, snatching Donna, a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.”

  “Oh no, no, leave my baby alone!” Mrs. Tanner screamed as if the culprit were here in the room.

  “He drags her into the van and then they peel off. The driver is another man, short and stocky, bald.”

  Mrs. Tanner suddenly seized hold of Dawn’s wrists, digging her nails into the psychic’s flesh. “Where is she? Where did they take my Donna? Can you see?”

  Dawn closed her eyes and titled her head. “I see a cabin. Really more of a shack. Dilapidated, falling down, roof partially collapsed. In a wooded area, nothing around for miles. Not nearby, I sense it isn’t in this county at all. Accessible only by a dirt trail that is so overgrown most people don’t even realize it’s there. That’s where they took Donna.”

  “Where is this cabin?”

  Dawn frowned and shook her head, reaching out as if she could snatch the information out of the air. “I’m sorry, but I’m not getting an exact location.”

  “Try, damn it! Try!”

  “I am trying, but it’s not coming, and I can’t force it. However…”

  Mrs. Tanner apparently could read what was coming in Dawn’s expression, and she let out a wail that was high-pitched and pitiful, the emotional equivalent of nails down a blackboard. “No, not my Donna. It can’t be. My baby can’t be gone.”

  Dawn put a hand on the hysterical mother’s shoulder, her own eyes moistening. “I am sorry, Mrs. Tanner, but I’m telling you only what is revealed to me. It pains me to have to tell you this, but I’m afraid that your daughter is dead.”

  Mrs. Tanner collapsed into the psychic’s arms and wept.

  ***

  Dawn steered her Mazda down the rutted, weed-infested trail. Tree branches reached out and scraped along the side of the car like fingernails. She rounded a slight curve and stopped the car, staring out the windshield at the familiar cabin. It was as rundown as she’d told Mrs. Tanner, a condemned structure that looked as if it might cave in on itself if she even breathed on it.

  Stepping out of the car, Dawn glanced around nervously, but she was very much alone. The woods were quiet, even the birdsong muted. She walked slowly to the cabin, pausing on the porch. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door, which hung askew from one hinge at the top. She stepped over the threshold, squinting into the shadowy gloom until her eyes adjusted.

  There was Donna Tanner, huddled in the corner, a dirty rag stuffed into her mouth with duct tape covering it, her hands tied to an old radiator. The girl was dirty and had soiled herself, but she was very much alive.

  Dawn hurried to the child, kneeling next to her. With one quick jerk, she ripped off the duct tape and pulled the gag out of the girl’s mouth. “Hello Donna.”

  The girl cringed back into the corner, her upper lip quivering. She did not speak.

  “It’s okay, Donna. I was at your Mommy and Daddy’s house today.”

  “Really?” the girl said in a quiet voice. “You saw them?”

  “Yes, your Daddy wasn’t very nice to me, but your Mommy is worried sick about you.”

  “I want to go home,” the girl said, tears spilling silently down her cheeks.

  “I want to thank you for all the information you gave me,” Dawn said with a smile that never touched her eyes. “All that stuff about Mr. Gordo and your grandmother. It all proved very useful.”

  “Can I go now? You said if I told you things then you’d let me go.”

  “Well, I can’t exactly let you go, but I am going to call your Mommy and tell her where to find you.”

  “You are?”

  “Oh yes. When I was at your house today, I told your Mommy that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where you were, but I’m going to call her tomorrow and tell her it came to me in the night. I’ll tell her exactly how to find this place.”

  “So I get to go home tomorrow?” the girl asked, the naked hope in her eyes almost heart-breaking.

  “I didn’t say that.” Dawn reached into her purse and pulled out a large butcher knife, the kind killers always favored in horror films. “I have to prove that my prediction was correct. Maybe then I’ll regain my reputation in the psychic community and the talk shows will start calling again.”

  Dawn leaned in close to the girl, and Donna Tanner screamed. Only once and briefly.

  SENTINEL

  “Is it Halloween and someone forgot to tell me?” Louise asked from the passenger’s seat.

  Clark had been driving on autopilot, letting his mind wander. “Hmm?”

  Louise pointed out the windshield. “There, in that vacant lot. See?”

  Clark followed her finger and saw what she had spotted. A figure standing alone in the lot, wrapped in what appeared to be a white sheet. His first thought was KKK, but there was no hood over the head. Instead was what looked at this distance to be a skull mask.

  “Is that a person?” Clark asked.

  “I don’t know. If so, he’s awful still. Some kind of scarecrow maybe?”

  “A scarecrow in the middle of an empty lot? What would it be scaring the crows from?”

  Louise looked over at him, and he groaned because she had that look in her eye. The look that said, “Wanna have an adventure?” They’d been dating almost a year now, and that look had gotten Clark into more than a little trouble.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.”

  “Who says I was thinking anything?”

  “Seriously, Louise, we’re running late for the movie as it is, so don’t get any ideas.”

  “Let’s just pull over and check it out.”

  Clark barked a sharp laugh. “Are you nuts? Some guy is all dressed up like some freak—”

  “We don’t know for sure it’s a real person.”

  “Yeah, but what if it is? Do you really want to mess with a guy that would get all ghouled up like that and stand out by the side of the road?”

  “You’ve seen way too many Scream movies,” Louise said with a smirk. “Real psychos don’t dress up, they tend to look just like everyone else.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring. Thanks for that, I’m sure I’ll sleep great tonight.”

  “Come on, let’s just stop and see if it’s a person or not. And if it is, maybe we can find out what’s up.”

  “Probably just a pledge from one of the fraternities at the college.”

  “Could be, but point is we won’t know unless we ask.”

  “Forget about it,” Clark said and they drove on past the skull-faced figure. “Let’s just get to the drive-in.”

  Louise leaned back in her seat, silent for a moment, but Clark knew she hadn’t given up. She still had the look. “Tell you what,” she said, and she was using her “negotiating” voice. “If you stop, I’ll do that thing tonight.”

  “What thing?”

  “You know which thing. That thing you like so much but which I’m rarely in the mood for.”

  This got Clark’s attention, and he lifted his foot from the gas. “Are you for real?”

  “Cross my heart. And you don’t even have to reciprocate.”

  That was all he needed to hear. He pulled the car over onto the gravelly shoulder and stopped. “Okay, but we�
��re just going to check it out and get right back in the car. If we hustle, we’ll still make the movie on time.”

  “Quick like bunnies,” she said, leaning over to kiss him.

  The two got out of the car and held hands as they walked back toward the still figure.

  ***

  Ernie was driving down the road, jamming to some classic Aerosmith. Toys in the Attic. Back before they started doing all those poppy ballads and Steven Tyler sold out and became a host on American Idol. Back when their music still rocked, man!

  He was going well over the speed limit, not really in a hurry to be anywhere but just loving the speed. He slowed down a bit though when he caught a glimpse of something strange up ahead.

  And the closer he got to it, the stranger it seemed.

  “What the fucking fuck?” he whispered to himself. He’d had a joint before leaving the house, sure, but he wasn’t so stoned that he should be seeing things. But the sight out his window certainly seemed like it could be a hallucination.

  Without giving it any real thought, Ernie pulled over on the side of the road. “This is fucking trippy,” he said with a laugh, getting out of the car.

  Then he started across the vacant lot toward the three still figures draped in white sheets with skull masks concealing their faces.

  FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  Benny had been sitting frozen staring at his computer screen for the past five minutes. It took that long for his mind to process what he was seeing.

  When he’d logged into his Facebook account, he’d found a new friend invite waiting for him, which wasn’t unusual. But the name of the person who had sent the invite was what had stunned Benny into immobility.

  Edward Castle. That was a name Benny hadn’t thought of in years.

  And yet that wasn’t really the truth. It was a name he’d been trying to forget for years.