by Mark Lukens
Amber pulled out the knife from Carol’s kitchen, she held it up and stared at it with wide eyes, and then she turned to Ryan and giggled. “Big knife.”
Ryan nodded. “I stole it from Carol’s kitchen. I hope she doesn’t mind.”
Amber put everything back in the basket and closed it. She held onto the basket, like she could barely contain her excitement. “Where are we picnicking?” Then she thought for a split second. “Picnicking? Is that how you say it?”
“I guess.”
“Picnicking. It sounds like something rich people say. Like on Downton Abbey.”
Ryan couldn’t help laughing – he didn’t know what Downton Abbey was, but it was obviously Amber’s idea of rich. It felt good to laugh; it seemed like something he hadn’t done in a long time. “Uh, I don’t know where to go … picnicking. I hadn’t really planned that far ahead.”
Amber’s eyes lit up. “I know a place we could go. It’s outside of town.”
“Off Winter Road?”
She gave Ryan a strange look. “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.” She studied him for a moment as he drove. “If you’ve never been here before, then how do you know about Winter Road?”
Ryan wouldn’t look at Amber as he drove. “I don’t know. I’ve done a lot of driving around since I got here.” But Ryan knew this wasn’t true. Winter Road was from his memory, he was sure of that. It had something to do with his past. Maybe the secrets from his past were beginning to break through his foggy memory whether he wanted them to or not.
CHAPTER TEN
1.
The black Lincoln pulled up into the dusty parking area of the Starlight Motel where Ryan had stayed only two nights ago, where Ryan had woken up with no memory of his past. But his past was pulling up now and parking right next to the motel office.
Jake put the car in park and glanced at Lita. She checked her gun, making sure a bullet was chambered, and then she tucked it away into her jacket pocket. Jake glanced at Mr. Murdock in the backseat. Mr. Murdock didn’t say a word. He held a photograph in his gloved hands. He always wore gloves, day or night. He leaned forward and handed the photo to Jake.
Jake looked at Lita and they got out of the car. They walked through the dust to the office door. Lita wore dark clothes that fit her athletic body nicely but didn’t reveal the small gun tucked away inside her jacket. She wore knee-high, black leather boots. Jake wore a dark suit coat and pants with a crisp new white shirt underneath his coat. They both wore dark sunglasses.
The same clerk who had checked Ryan out of his room two days ago sat behind the counter when Jake and Lita entered the office; the bell dinged as they opened the door. The clerk didn’t look up when the bell dinged; he was in the same chair, his feet up, his interest in his phone still as intense as before, his focus on a new game he had downloaded. The small TV on top of the filing cabinet was on, but the sound was turned all the way down.
“Help you?” the clerk asked without looking up from his game.
Lita waited by the door as Jake approached the scarred counter that could use a wipe-down and maybe some disinfectant; he didn’t even want to touch it. He pulled out the photograph from inside his suit coat pocket.
“I need your help with something,” Jake told the clerk.
The clerk looked up and saw Jake; he saw the photograph in his hand. “Help with what?”
“I need to know if you’ve seen this man before.”
The clerk seemed upset at this distraction. He got to his feet and the chair creaked as he stood up. He walked to the counter and sighed. “I don’t have time for this. You guys want a room or not?”
Jake hadn’t moved a muscle, his face was set in stone, his eyes behind his sunglasses were on the clerk’s every move. He held out the photograph for the clerk, waiting for him to take it. “Have you seen this man before?” he asked again; there was more of an edge to his voice now.
The clerk tried to keep up his tough act, but there was something about the tone of this man’s voice, something about the way these two were dressed, the way the woman waited by the door, the way they both watched him from behind their sunglasses.
He gently took the photograph out of Jake’s hand. He looked at the photograph of Ryan for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders and handed the photo back. “Not really sure,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before,” he added even though he remembered Ryan – he just didn’t want to get involved in whatever these two were doing.
Jake didn’t take the photo back. He stared at the clerk. “Take another look.”
Normally the clerk would be kicking these two out of here and threatening to call the police, but instead he did as he was ordered. He looked at the picture again, and then looked up at Jake. “What are you guys, cops or something?”
The clerk handed the picture back to Jake who tucked it back inside his suit coat pocket.
“No, we’re not cops,” Jake answered.
“Why are you looking for this guy?”
“Did he say where he was heading?” Jake asked, ignoring the clerk’s question.
“I didn’t say that I knew him.”
“It shows on your face.”
The clerk’s eyes darted from Jake to Lita, and then back to Jake. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to get involved.”
Jake stared at the clerk. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move a muscle, he just stared at him.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” the clerk said, his voice squeaking just a bit. “I mean, what’s in it for me?”
Jake still said nothing.
“I’d like you two to leave now,” the clerk said. He had meant it to come out as a threat, but it sounded more like a plea.
Jake and Lita didn’t move a muscle.
“Now!” the clerk yelled. “I want you to leave or I’m calling the cops!”
Lita locked the office door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. She twisted the plastic blinds closed on the door’s window.
The clerk stared at her in disbelief. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing, lady?”
In a blur of movement, Jake reached inside his suit coat pocket and pulled out a large hunting knife. He stabbed the knife deep down into the filthy counter top.
The clerk stared down at the knife with wide, terrified eyes. “Holy shit, man,” he breathed out.
While the clerk was distracted by the knife for a second, Jake slammed his fist into the clerk’s face and knocked him back into the desk and chair. Papers and the clerk’s cell phone crashed down onto the floor around him as he collapsed to the floor.
Jake hopped over the counter in a flash and grabbed the clerk by his shirt before he had a chance to try and get back to his feet. Jake picked up the heavy man by his shirt and dragged him across the floor and shoved him into the wall.
The clerk gasped for breath. His nose was already bleeding. He shook his head no.
Jake pulled the clerk forward and then slammed him back into the wall again, dislodging pictures from the wall. The clerk’s head rocked back and his eyes rolled to their whites for a moment as he clung to consciousness.
“I tried to ask you nicely,” Jake said. “One last chance now. Did this guy say where he was heading?”
The clerk tried to clear his head and stammer out an answer at the same time. “He … he … he asked how far Edrington, Oregon was. I asked … asked him if he had some family up there or something, just trying to be friendly and make conversation. And he said he was going to see a friend. He looked kind of … kind of …”
“Kind of what?”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” the clerk blubbered, afraid he might be giving the wrong answer. “He looked like he was … lost.”
“You’re sure he went to Edrington?”
“Yes,” the clerk spit out. “He said he needed to go there. He said he was going to see a friend, that’s exactly what he said.” He sniffed up some of the blood
that was running out of his nose.
Jake let the clerk’s shirt go and he smiled at him. “Now, was that so difficult?”
The clerk slid down the wall on legs of jelly. He shook his head no, already close to passing out.
Jake left the clerk on the floor and came out from behind the counter by way of a small door. He pulled his knife out of the countertop and stuck it back into the holster hidden inside of his suit coat. He nodded at Lita who opened the blinds and flipped the sign back to OPEN. She unlocked the door and stepped outside.
Jake looked back at the clerk on the floor. “We were never here, right?”
“No, of course not,” the clerk said through his bloody lips. He even tried a smile through his blood-stained teeth, but he wasn’t very successful at it.
Jake left the office without a look back at the clerk and he slammed the door shut. The bell dinged violently.
The clerk shuddered on the floor, holding onto himself. He wiped at his bloody nose with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked down at the dark smear of blood on his sleeve. “Shit,” he muttered. “I don’t fucking believe this.”
Jake caught up with Lita at the Lincoln. The back window was down and Mr. Murdock already had his black leather-gloved hand out, waiting. Jake handed him the photograph of Ryan. “He went up to Oregon, Mr. Murdock. A town called Edrington.”
Mr. Murdock didn’t reply. He pulled his arm back inside the car and the tinted window rose back up silently.
Jake and Lita glanced at each other and then got back into the car. Jake started the car and then punched in the words Edrington, Oregon into the GPS on his cell phone.
2.
Ryan and Amber found a spot for their picnic; they were in a meadow with the woods all around them and the mountains in the distance. They sat on a checkered blanket that Ryan had spread out on the tall grass. The picnic basket was right at the edge of the blanket, holding a corner of it down. Some of the cheeses and meats were scattered around the basket. The neck of the half-empty bottle of wine stuck up out of the top of the basket. Ryan and Amber took up the other half of the blanket.
Ryan sat with his back against a large rock, and Amber lay down on the blanket with her head in his lap. The day was warm, not too chilly yet, and the sky was mostly clear of clouds for once.
It was a perfect day, she thought.
“It’s beautiful here,” Ryan said.
Amber looked up at Ryan. “I told you it would be.”
She smiled up at him as he looked around at the rolling hills and meadows and the trees in the distance. But there was something strange about his look, she thought. She couldn’t describe his expression, like something about this place was puzzling him, or maybe unnerving him.
As she studied his face and the strange look in his eyes, it occurred to her that she didn’t really know much about this man. She knew his name, she knew that he worked with Buddy at the construction site north of town, and she knew that he was new in town – but she didn’t know anything else about him.
Well, it was time to find out.
“You know everything about me now,” Amber said as she looked up at him, “but you never talk about yourself.”
“Not much to tell,” Ryan answered without looking at her.
“I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know where you’re from. What you used to do for a living. Nothing.”
Ryan still wouldn’t answer her or look at her – he still had that strange look in his eyes that was starting to give her the creeps. He seemed like he was getting suddenly agitated. Was it because she was asking him questions about his life? No, she thought, it was this place that was making him nervous, this meadow, these woods all around them. She didn’t know why she was so sure about that, but she was.
Amber sat up and stared at him, and her smile faltered. “I’m serious, Ryan.”
Ryan finally looked at her, but he still said nothing.
“Where are you from?” she asked him, her voice a little more stern now.
Ryan still wouldn’t answer her.
“Ryan,” she said. “Why won’t you tell me anything?”
3.
Ryan shook his head as Amber kept on asking her questions. He felt like he needed to tell someone about his missing memory, he needed to trust someone. Why not Amber? He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.
“You probably aren’t going to believe me,” he said as he looked at her.
She stared at him, and he could see that she was bracing herself for some terrible revelation.
“I can’t remember anything about my past.”
Amber stared at him for a moment, confused. “What? What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
Ryan stood up and walked away from the blanket. He stared at the trees in the distance. There was something about this place, not just this meadow, but these trees, all of these woods around them. There was something he was beginning to remember, something murky in the shadows beginning to swim up to the surface of his memories. And he could almost make it out now. He was remembering some kind of place in the woods off of Winter Road.
A house? A shack?
That’s it, he thought. The same one from his dreams.
“Ryan, what’s wrong?” Amber asked as she watched him.
Ryan hurried back to the blanket and repacked the food into the picnic basket. He needed to hurry, he was afraid the memory might slip away if he didn’t act on it right now.
“What’s wrong?” Amber asked again.
He picked up the picnic basket and looked at her. “I think I remember something. Let’s go.”
4.
Something was wrong, Carol thought as she kneeled on the rug in her den – the rug that covered a secret. She didn’t hear any more dripping sounds in the room as she prayed, and she didn’t feel the presence in the room with her, but she could feel a crushing weight of despair all over her. This wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to – something had gone terribly wrong.
She got up and blew out the candles. She left the den and went a few steps down the hall to her bedroom. She got her light jacket out of her closet and shrugged into it. She caught a glimpse of her husband’s face in the framed photo next to her bed. A moment of loss caused her heart to ache. She turned away from the photo and left her bedroom.
She hadn’t seen Victor and Tom all morning – probably sleeping the day away as usual. She loved those two to death, but they could also annoy her sometimes.
Carol left her house and walked across her flagstone steps to the driveway. She got in her car and started it.
She needed to go and see him. She needed some answers.
5.
Carol pulled up in the driveway and turned off her car. She got out and walked up to the front porch of the neat and tidy house. His car was in the driveway so she knew he was at home. She knocked on the door and waited.
A moment later, Walter answered the door. He seemed a little surprised to see her, but he covered it up quickly with a warm smile. “Carol. What a surprise.”
Walter invited her in. “I was just making a pot of tea.”
“That would be lovely,” Carol said and gave him her razor blade smile.
“Come sit down in the dining room,” Walter said and then he hurried into his kitchen where a tea kettle was whistling away.
Carol sat down at the dining room table. The house was tastefully decorated, but now Carol noticed subtle clues in the decor that others might miss – a painting on the wall with strange squiggly symbols in it if you looked closely, a gargoyle head on top of a bookcase built into the corner of the dining room. In that bookcase were books on strange occult subjects squeezed in between other books.
Walter, who seemed a little too feminine to Carol, came back with a silver tray in his hands. He was a thin man, and he was as neat and tidy as his house. On the tray were a ceramic teapot, two cups, and some cookies. It was almost like he had expected company and had already b
egun preparing the tea.
That made Carol slightly nervous.
Walter, and the things he claimed to know, made her nervous.
He sat down and poured a cup of tea for each of them. “I hope you like green tea,” he said. “It’s very healthy. Helps you live a long life.”
Carol nodded. “Thank you.”
“Try a cookie,” he offered.
Carol didn’t make a move for the cookies and she only took one sip of her tea. She hadn’t come here for tea and cookies. She needed answers from Walter. And she suspected that he knew why she was here.
“Walter,” Carol said. “I did everything you told me to. I followed all of your instructions to the letter. But it isn’t working.” Carol thought for a moment. That wasn’t exactly true, was it? She rephrased her sentence. “I mean, it’s not working the way it’s supposed to.”
Walter sipped his tea and smiled at her. It was a fake smile, and his light eyes bored into hers. It almost seemed like he was amused by all of this, like a child might be amused by torturing a bug on the sidewalk. He didn’t answer her.
“I don’t know what to do now,” she said and hated the miserable sound of her voice.
“It’s what you asked for,” Walter finally said.
“Is it him?” Carol asked. It was the question she had really wanted to ask. She had believed at first that it was him, but now she wasn’t so sure, and she needed to know the truth now. “I’m not sure if it’s him,” she added.
“You need to be patient,” Walter said.
“I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake,” Carol finally spit the words out. She hated the sound of her voice, the hitch in it like she was on the verge of helpless tears. “I’m afraid I’ve done something really terrible.”
She didn’t see any mercy in Walter’s eyes.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then he sipped more of his tea.
“Don’t like the tea?” he asked.
Fuck your tea, she wanted to say even though she rarely cursed. But she smiled and nodded. “No, it’s wonderful.”
