Paper Ghosts_A Novel of Suspense

by Julia Heaberlin

  I roll my body up, grimacing. I crack the door and read the clock hanging over a nurse’s pod. 10:17 A.M.

  I gather my only belonging at the moment, a scrap of paper. There’s one person in the waiting room, a large man with arms folded across his chest, asleep and snoring. I step outside and blink in the sunlight. My arm is killing me. I’m clinging to the paper and trying to figure out what I could sell on my body to get the prescription filled.

  That’s when I hear a light honk. It reminds me of Barfly’s single short, polite bark when he requires something.

  A white truck is sitting about fifty yards from me across the parking lot. The beams flash once. Twice. I start to walk toward the truck. It starts to roll toward me.

  * * *

  —

  “Did they have to grow you a new arm?” Carl asks, as soon as I open the truck door.

  This must be how Patty Hearst felt, grateful to a person who stole everything from her. The first thing I’m surprised to notice after climbing in is that my gun is sitting on the console between us. My purse is on the floor at my feet.

  The second is that there is no room for Barfly to lie down. He’s sitting up, panting cheerfully. The backseat of the cab is loaded with our luggage, the cooler, the unrolled sleeping bags, some loose dirty clothes, an open “party-size” bag of Cheetos I don’t remember. The cat is missing.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  He shrugs.

  “We aren’t going back to the hotel?”

  “Are you kidding? And risk meeting up with the assholes in that car again? They were aiming for you. You might have a death wish. I don’t. Time to go.”

  “They could have followed the ambulance. They could be watching us right now.”

  “We’ll just have to deal with that.” He hands me one of the pink Post-its that were marking pages in the photography book. I stare at a series of numbers and letters written in his distinctive scrawl. I blink a couple of times. The characters are jumping around like fleas.

  “You look dizzy,” Carl insists. “That’s the license plate of the guys who tried to run you down. Don’t you have someone who can run it so we know what we’re dealing with?”

  “You seem certain this accident wasn’t random.”

  “Not the way that motor gunned.”

  “I can’t think,” I say. “I need pain pills.” I ransack my purse one-handed and pull out my wallet. It appears nothing is missing. I count out some bills on the dashboard. I grab the ID with the name that matches the prescription. “I’m going back inside to the hospital’s pharmacy to fill this. Give me twenty minutes.”

  I’m halfway out of the truck when I remember.

  “Did you happen to run across some money hidden in the hotel bathroom?”

  “Two rolls tucked inside the extra toilet paper. They are relocated to the inside pocket of your luggage. Is that it?”

  “That’s it.” Interesting, what Carl sees and doesn’t.

  I turn back again, reluctantly. I have to ask. “Where’s the cat?”

  “Gave a pretty little waitress at the Hotel Paisano a hundred dollars to keep him for a few days. Told her there would be another three hundred in it for her when I get back. Baloney’s not the traveler Barfly is.”

  I can’t resist asking sarcastically: “Where are you getting another three hundred dollars?”

  “Where do you think?”

  I’m still holding my wallet with the wad of cash. I don’t know how much of my money Carl has left, but I count out three hundred-dollar bills anyway.

  Carl came back for me. I can pretend he’s coming back for the cat.

  54

  “Before you swallow those, I have some questions,” Carl says grimly.

  “OK.” I’m tearing open the stapled pharmacy bag with my teeth. “You have sixty seconds. I don’t know who those men are, if that’s what you’re going to ask again.”

  We are still sitting in the hospital parking lot, windows down, ignition off.

  “You seem unconcerned,” he complains.

  “I’m concerned. You have thirty seconds.” My hand is fumbling with the childproof lid. I see no reason to tell Carl about the men at the Black Pony and that I’m leaning toward the unfortunate probability that they are the same pair who just tried to run me down.

  “If you want me to open that bottle for you,” Carl says, “we need to call one of your guys.”

  “What guys?”

  “You have connections. How else would you know all you do about me? Shit, you have my old camera in the back of the truck. I know for a fact that was in a police vault. Read off that license plate number to someone and get us some useful information.”

  So Carl did find George during his hunt in my truck bed. I’m picturing George, in jagged pieces on the ground. Regret curls up for that impulsive decision. I might have needed that camera to bargain with. Now I’m closer and closer to just pointing a gun at Carl’s head.

  “I don’t particularly want…any of my guys to know where we are,” I say.

  “Then make the call and throw your phone out the window. You’ve got two more of them burner things in your backpack.” Carl clearly wasn’t taking a nap or counting his gold while I was at the hospital—he was snooping through my stuff.

  “I want to make something clear: You and me? We aren’t a team.” I toss him the pill bottle.

  “Make a call. I’m not opening this or starting the truck until you do. And you can’t drive with a broken chicken wing.” Carl reaches in his shirt pocket and hands me my phone. It was in the street the last time I saw it. When I press the button, it still works.

  I lay the phone on my knee and punch out the cell number from memory, half-hoping it has been changed.

  He picks up on the second ring.

  “Where the hell are you? Are you alone?” Either Andy’s lying, or I successfully destroyed all of his GPS trackers.

  “Two men tried to run me down last night. I have a license plate. Will you run it?”

  Silence.

  “I told you to stop this. Why won’t you?”

  “Do you know who they are?” I ask.

  “Just read me the damn plate number.”

  The numbers have settled in place on the pink paper, so I do.

  “Do you want me to call you back on this number?” Andy asks.

  “No, I’ll call you.”

  “I will pick you up anywhere.”

  “You’re very sweet to help out,” I say into the phone, thrusting a thumbs-up into the air for Carl’s benefit.

  “Wait…”

  I end the call, pull the battery out, and toss the phone out the window, under the bushes.

  Andy knew more than he was saying. I also have to consider that he knows exactly where I am.

  I pick up the Glock from the console and check the magazine. Still fully loaded.

  “I’ve been wondering if you ever killed someone with that thing,” Carl says as he backs the truck out of the parking space.

  It doesn’t seem to be a question, so I don’t answer.

  55

  I’m alone, drowning in white. The walls are white, the floor is white, my dress is white. The only hit of color is the pink Post-it note in my hand. I’m stuck in a panic room, with only fifty-seven seconds left to get out. I know it’s a nightmare. But I can’t fight my way to consciousness.

  This panic room is nothing like my trainer’s—a boring middle-class living room, a stopwatch strapped to my wrist, clues to the combination lock on the door hidden God knows where. Consequences.

  How can I be dreaming and remembering at the same time?

  I stare at the pink Post-it. Twenty-four seconds left. Now twenty-three.

  I recognize the riddle. It’s the same set of letters and numbers that Carl gave me for the license plate. They’re now jumping off the tiny piece of paper, climbing up the walls, tickling my arms.

  Someone is calling out. Trying to shout the answer through the wal
ls? I strain to hear. Only four seconds left.

  I open my eyes to blinding sun.

  Carl is vigorously shaking my shoulder. We’re perched on the side of the road with an eighteen-wheeler rumbling past, so close it shakes the truck like airplane turbulence.

  I’m groggy. Surveying the new scenery. This doesn’t look like West Texas anymore.

  “Where are we?” I bark. My arm and head are throbbing. “I thought you were driving us to Muleshoe. To your grandfather’s farm.”

  “I’m taking you back to Fort Worth. You’re a goddamn ticking bomb. I was looking for a pleasant little road trip and a lot of Whataburgers. Not this.” He’s easing back onto the highway, driving as carefully as a good father.

  I’m the bomb.

  “Why were you shaking me so hard?”

  “I couldn’t tell if you were breathing.”

  “What route are you taking?”

  “We’re on 67.” Not the fastest way, but he’s on track.

  I hadn’t meant to sleep. Just shut my eyes a little. “Can you tell if anyone is following us?”

  “A black sedan. Then it disappeared. Are you high? You seem a little high.”

  “I’m fine. I had a…dream. Let’s just talk. About anything. Tell me about Invisible Girl.”

  “She deserved better. Not a good subject. Brings me down.”

  “OK. How did you get the scar on your chest?”

  “This feels like Truth or Nacho.”

  “How about Muleshoe?” I ask impatiently. “You know, growing up.” I feel the pressing need for information, any information, about that farm. In testimony, you said Muleshoe was a perfect beginning.

  “What do you want to know? My brother and I would get up before dawn in the summers to work twelve hours in the fields. We came back to the house every night with all that West Texas sand and dirt in our teeth, in every crevice of our skin. Whatever my grandmother cooked that night was the best food we’d ever eaten. My brother liked to set the wheat fields on fire and watch them burn.” Carl glances at my face. “It was a controlled burn, to get rid of the residue after harvest.”

  “Oh.” Right. The same brother who was a fireman, who watched the Armageddon blaze in Waco.

  “Myself, I liked to plow up and down the fields all alone on the 4640 John Deere. My grandfather owned a thousand acres. I just stared into infinity. It was monotonous, beautiful solitude. It trained me to like my own company. It trained me to see pictures. I could watch big storms moving across the sky from way out in the distance. It was like a little movie only I could see.”

  I wonder if that boy ever felt like he was in an old rerun of The Twilight Zone. I’d felt that way as a kid sometimes, when I’d prowled a neighborhood in the dark, while everything slept.

  I picture young Carl on a monster machine, nothing stretching out in all directions but land and sky. Was he ever frightened that the storm was coming for him? Was it terrifying staring into an orange inferno of burning fields?

  Or was that boy already developing into a savvy killer with nothing but time and space to make his plans?

  The pain in my arm is unbearable.

  “Try to sleep,” Carl says. “You look like shit. I got some pain pills out for you a while ago. They’re right here.” He taps the cup holder. “I’ve been thinking. I might be able to help you find your sister. If you’re not pushy.”

  I toss down the pills, but there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to sleep.

  56

  I jolt straight up in the seat, disoriented. We’re slowing down on a two-lane strip of black, a wall of forest on either side. It’s night, and this isn’t a dream.

  The moon hangs directly over the open sunroof like a half-shut eye. The sunroof was closed before, wasn’t it?

  How long have I been out? The air is tickling my nose, sweet and spiced. The signal on the dash is blinking, beating in time to the dull throb in my arm.

  That must be what woke me up—the steady, clicking sound of the signal, like a camera that won’t stop shooting. Either Carl has forgotten to turn it off or we are going left, eventually. I’m trying to process why Carl has strapped a piece of duct tape over the clock. The gas gauge is at a quarter-tank. My neck is struggling to hold up my head. I have no idea where we are or what time it is, if I’ve been out for three hours or ten.

  “Hard to see on this road,” Carl says grumpily. “Our shortcut is four-point-two miles past the Deer Crossing sign. Town still hasn’t cleaned the graffiti off it. Some ass drew the D into a B. It’s disrespectful to deer.”

  What sign? What town? The pine trees indicate we overshot Fort Worth and are deep into East Texas, unless I’ve been out longer than I think and we’re in the woods of Oklahoma or Arkansas. Exhaustion and a little pain have tricked me into godforsaken nowhere. It’s like I never trained.

  “Where are we, Carl?”

  “Changed my mind again. Decided to follow your map east.”

  My eyes are hypnotized by the blinking light on the dash. It takes extreme effort to pull them away. The drugs, still a woolly blanket cuddling my brain. Without warning, Carl powers down the front and back windows.

  Damp, delicious air rushes in from every side, scattering my hair and every piece of paper and fast-food napkin on the dash. Half of it flutters into the night like space debris.

  “This air will wake you up,” Carl says. “Smell it. Nothin’ like it.”

  He’s not wrong. Just like that, my senses are flushed and alive again, cranked with oxygen that has been cleaned and filtered by the pine needles of a thousand trees. I feel a rush—hope, energy, resolution? Like something important is happening.

  “Where…?”

  Carl suddenly cranks the wheel left. We’re veering off the road, straight into the trees.

  I want to scream but nothing comes out. I brace for impact. Instead, it feels like we are speeding through the rough and tattered brushes of an old car wash. Branches poke me through the open windows, sweep along the sides, feather across the top.

  A road is slung inside here, hidden by undergrowth and kudzu, nature wild and abandoned to its own will. Carl was aiming for this forest opening by feel.

  “That deer sign and the odometer have never failed me,” he confirms. “Four-point-two miles.”

  He’s slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road and switched on the high beams. Thirty to forty yards ahead, the headlights illuminate a bumpy asphalt road that drops into oblivion.

  It’s the kind of night and the kind of road where you have to edge forward trusting that there will be another thirty yards, and another and another. We are sitting less than a quarter-mile off the highway, yet it’s like we’ve left earth.

  The sky is no longer visible through the sunroof. Barfly’s nose is at work behind me, whispering, orgasmic with hundreds of new scents. I turn and his tail whips me in the face. He’s poking his neck out the back window, stretching like a hungry giraffe.

  I’ve read about dogs that can hang their noses off a boat in the middle of a lake and signal to searchers where a corpse rests at the bottom. Dogs that can sniff out the unmarked graves of Civil War–era slaves and archaeological remains a thousand years old. The soil chemistry is changed for centuries when flesh dissolves into the earth. Dust to dust, everything composting for the new life to come, the way it is supposed to be. Some dogs can smell that old death in the soil.

  Barfly’s paws are suddenly braced up on the window, his body now leaning so far out into space that I am sure he is going to tumble out. “Barfly, come,” I say sharply. Miraculously, he obeys. “Roll up the windows halfway,” I order Carl, and he obeys, too.

  Two small things, but it makes me feel like I’ve wrested back some control.

  “Where the hell are we, Carl? Where are you taking me?”

  “My darkroom.” He floors the gas, and we shoot into black.

  57

  Carl forges the truck ahead with little regard for speed or a dark, bumpy road unfurling bit
by bit.

  “There’s a deep ravine on your side,” he mentions, squealing around a serpentine pass. “My uncle named this section James Dean Drive. About six cars a year used to go down there. It’s a big junkyard jungle now, vines and moss creeping all over everything. They lost a wrecker or two before they figured out it’s too much trouble to pull anything up but the bodies. This curvy part just ahead? My uncle called it Marilyn Mon-road. Get it? Curvy? He liked his old movie stars. Of course, he’s long dead now. He lived out here with my aunt for fifty years.”

  “Please slow down.” My voice is tight. “I don’t need you to be a tour guide.”

  “Relax,” he says, “I’m a blind man who knows the way. All my senses heightened. You like maps. Well, it’s mapped perfectly in here.” He takes a hand off the wheel to tap his temple.

  To my relief, he does ease his foot off the gas. It’s not to appease me, I learn shortly, but to wheel off on a dirt road. I picture us driving around inside Carl’s brain, a giant asteroid floating in space, packed with craters and holes. We can travel forever but never leave.

  My head knocks back against the seat as Carl smacks into a particularly deep rut. I think about rough terrain puncturing the tires and only one spare riding in the back. Running out of water, food, and gas. Hiking or driving out of here with a broken arm and limited supplies.

  All of these loom as threats just as big as Carl right now. The last time I glanced in the cooler, which was yesterday, it was a chocolate-tinged lake of water and scattered ice with one Ozarka water bottle, a Stella, and two Hershey bars.

  I don’t expect help. We’ve crossed the desert into the Pine Curtain. People out here thrive on isolation and survival. We had to carve our way in. The road is neglected. I’ve glimpsed the shadows of a few abandoned, sagging cabins.