Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I don’t know. How the fuck would I know? Close the glove box. That fucker’s always popping open.”

  “Can we leave it open so it doesn’t do that again?”

  “You got more pussy ways than anyone I know. Yeah. Leave it open if it don’t make you hop and yell. Most motherfuckers like to listen to the radio, they’re gonna do that hoppin’ about. But you, you got the silent drummer going on, you know.”

  There had been other incidents, not in cars. In houses. When he visited Joey, and Joey’s father closed the door, there had been images of Joey’s mother being shoved up against it, taking a whack. There were places all over that house like that. Memories hidden in the walls where Joey and his mother and siblings had been bounced by Joey’s father. That place was a smorgasbord of fear.

  It gave Harry a kind of sick stomach to be there. All that angry business hidden in the walls and furniture, the way Joey and his mom and his brother had to glide by without disturbing the air around Mr. Barnhouse. And the way Barnhouse looked at him, as if he were some interloper there to do him harm or take away his television set, which seemed to be Barnhouse’s lifeline. Without that, he would have had nothing but silence, the life inside his own head.

  Harry figured it wasn’t very nice in there, in Mr. Barnhouse’s head, and that noise of any kind, beating the wife and children now and then, was welcome. Anything but silence. Anything but being alone with himself inside his head.

  He quit going there, waited on the porch until Joey came out. Found ways to be somewhere else, have Joey meet him somewhere, like his own home.

  Home was a sanctuary. There were no horrors hidden in that old house, and his parents weren’t creating anything that might be recorded.

  Oh, there was something by the windows. Where he had fallen when he was six. Once when he stomped the floor there, killing a roach, he discovered a childhood version of himself, and the room went dark and he could see a chair and the windows were full of imagery; the drive-in theater and cartoons across the way, and he could hear loud honky-tonk music. And there had been something just a little different.

  He had felt pain.

  In his ear.

  And then his mother, younger, robed, hair loose and wild, had come rushing from the bedroom, followed by his father. The image began to fade, speed up. He saw them rushing out the door, his father carrying him in his arms. Yeah. Things were recorded—in houses and cars and furniture, and who knew what all?

  He just didn’t understand why.

  Unless it was all in his head, and he was, in fact, crazy.

  He was thinking of all this as he sat in a chair with his license in his hand, considering going out. He had use of the family car tonight, the very first time, and he wanted to go, but he was scared, and not of images, but of something more common. The highway. Parallel parking. He had barely passed that part.

  “You look nice,” his dad said.

  “What?” Harry looked up.

  His dad grinned at him. He noticed his dad looked tired, and for the first time he realized that he had grayed around the temples and there was a little less hair on top. Saw him every day, and now he noticed. God, when did that happen?

  “Said you look good. All cleaned up.”

  “Ah, you know. Nothing much. A shower.”

  Dad laughed. “And lots of smell-pretty.”

  “Got too much?”

  “Roll down the window, let the wind blow some of it off, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You going out, or you just gonna drive that chair?”

  “I’m going out. I guess.”

  “You got the car. You got your license. It’s Friday night. What you ought to do is go out. What you gonna sit here for?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “About girls?”

  “Not really.”

  “I suggest you do. Girls are pretty nice to think about. You ain’t got the fanciest ride in the world there, but you can go on dates, you know. You got to ask a girl, though. I always found out, you didn’t ask them, they didn’t show up.”

  Harry felt himself turning red. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Listen here, Harry. I know what you’re thinking. It’s about that stuff.”

  That’s what his dad always called the visions, the bothersome stuff.

  “Just a little.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with you.”

  “You think, Dad? I mean, the doctors—”

  “Hell with them.”

  Dad pulled over a wooden chair, sat down across from him.

  “Let me tell you, you’re…you know…imaginative.”

  “You mean I make things up?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You think I believe them, but they aren’t true?”

  The big man paused, put his hands in his lap. “Son, I don’t know. Truly I don’t. But it was said there was some in our family had the second sight. Can’t say it was true, but it was the story.”

  “This is sort of like hindsight, Daddy. It’s already done. It’s like I hear and see ghosts in sounds. It’s got something to do with fear, or violence. I’ve told you all this.”

  Dad sat and considered for a moment. “Hindsight, second sight, maybe it’s all the same.”

  “Who had second sight in our family?”

  “My mother. You never knew her. Dead before you were born, just like your grandpa. All your grandparents, dead before you were born. That’s too bad. Least as far as your grandmother—my mother—went. Your mom’s parents, good people. My dad, he was a son of a bitch…. You know the scars on my back?”

  “The barbed wire?”

  The old man nodded. “Them ain’t barbed wire. Told you I got tangled in barbed wire when I was a kid. That ain’t what happened. I didn’t want to tell you, not then, that your grandpa beat me with a belt. The buckle. It cut me, made them scars.”

  “Why are you telling me now, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. I think you ought to know. Don’t know why, but thought you ought to.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When he hit me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wasn’t nothing I could do. I was a kid, and he was big and mean and always drunk…. You stay away from that liquor, hear me? You might have the tendency. I drank a little when I was young, and I had the tendency. It brought the mean out in me. Your mama, she got me away from that. Told me she’d go out with me, but not if I drank, and if I drank she was through with me. I ain’t never taken another drop…. Thing is, Harry, there’s shit in your life you don’t expect. Ain’t all of it good. But you got to get around that, got to grab the good, got to get your mind wrapped around that, and let the bad things go. Otherwise you just get caught up in hating or being mad, or being worried all the time. You got what you got, son. But you’ll deal with it.”

  “You think?”

  “Hell, boy, I know…. Here’s the keys. It’s got a full tank.”

  The old man opened his wallet, and Harry could see there was a twenty in there, three or four ones. Daddy took out the twenty, handed it to him.

  “No, Dad, that’s all right.”

  “Take it. You might want a Coke or something. Might want to buy a girl a Coke. Take the car out, you ought to try and have a little money. Take it, son.”

  Harry took the twenty. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Hey, that’s what dads do.”

  “Sure.”

  Harry stood up.

  “You be careful out there, son.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “She idles kind of heavy at lights, stop signs, but she’s okay. I’ve tuned her up and gone over her good. She’ll run like a spotted-ass ape.”

  Harry laughed. “And how do they run?”

  Dad grinned. “I don’t really know, son. Just an old saying.”

  Harry suddenly grabbed his Dad and hugged him. “I love you,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, you too, son. Hey, you’re getti
ng quite a grip there.”

  Later on, Harry was really glad he did that.

  That night, out on the town, doing his thing with Joey riding beside him, Joey drinking a bit, whiskey in Coke, offering him some, but him refusing; out there trying to pick up girls, being awkward and unsuccessful about it; out there on the highways, circling the Dairy Queen, waving at friends passing by in their cars, having the time of his life, his old man, home, sitting at dinner, suddenly stood up from the table, and his mom would tell it like this: “He was just fine: then he stood bolt upright, said, ‘I feel kind of off,’ grabbed his left arm, and then he dropped.”

  Heart attack.

  Dead and gone.

  Things were coming apart.

  10

  For a few months Harry’s life rocked and floundered. He was so rattled that when he read about Kayla’s dad in the Tyler paper, he felt for her, but there just wasn’t enough left in him to respond.

  And there was the fact he hadn’t seen her in years. Thought about her from time to time, but that was Kayla then, not Kayla now. There were times when he thought about her and felt as if a piece of him were missing. That puzzle part. But it was probably just wishful thinking. Kid memories.

  Maybe a good word would make her feel better, maybe not. He didn’t know if he had a good word left, or that she would really remember him, not the way he remembered her.

  Still, it was surprising, way it had gone down, her dad’s death.

  He zeroed in on parts of the article:

  Jerome Jones was found dead in his part-time garage on High Street, hanging by a lamp cord from a door inside the building. He was discovered by his daughter about eight P.M. Thursday after he failed to return from work. Suicide is suspected, but not confirmed.

  Poor Kayla, he thought. What was she doing back here? Had she moved back? Was she nearby?

  Goddamn. To hell with Kayla.

  He tossed the paper aside.

  And the beat goes on.

  11

  The ceiling had shadows on it that looked like the blades of a fan, and this was because the light fixture on the ceiling had little slats inside.

  The big man lay on the bed looking at this, considering something or another about it, but he was uncertain what. A spider crawled out of the light fixture and dangled out to the side of it, and he thought, if it falls, it will fall on her.

  He turned and looked over at the woman beside him, then at his partner, who was on the other side of the female sandwich, grinning. His partner was up on one elbow looking at him, so he rose up too, and grinned. They were just a couple of Cheshire cats tossing grins across the room.

  The big man swung his feet to the side of the bed and sat there and looked toward the open door of the bathroom, thought about the car. They had to get rid of the car, and they needed to do it soon. It was good to stretch out for the moment—all the activity, the adren-line, had made him tired—but you could stretch your time too far, and if you kept stretching, the whole thing was going to snap. You had to think about that. Had to.

  They had found her at the motel. It was one of the places they liked to look, and mostly they weren’t lucky, but this night they were. They cruised in, and out back of the place, getting out of her car, heading toward the row of rooms, was the girl.

  Quick was their middle name. They were out of the car and had her before you could blink an eye, hand over her mouth, pulling her into her own ride, hitting her with a tire iron, dropping her down onto the floorboard, taking her keys, him driving her car, his partner following in theirs. On out to the woods to leave their car and take her car back to the motel room. She had a key. Number seven. There could be a man in there. A family. That was all part of the game.

  They took her back to the motel and into number seven and there was no one else. It was easy, and they did to her what they wanted to do. Had fun.

  He looked at the young woman lying in the center of the bed. Her dead eyes looked at the ceiling in the way his live eyes had, but she saw nothing. He had seen shadow slats and a spider. It was all shadow to her and no awareness of shadow.

  He liked to think about that, try and understand it. What was it like to be nothing, to know nothing? How was it to be dead? He didn’t want to experience it himself, but in her eyes, in that last moment when he fastened his hands around her throat, after she had come awake from the blow to the head, after they had finished with her, he thought, for just an instant, in her face, in her eyes, he could see the shadow of death move into her head behind the windows of her soul.

  It was quite a feeling.

  The big man got up and started for the bathroom, scratching his naked ass as he went. Behind him he heard his partner get up, and when he looked, he saw he was getting dressed.

  That didn’t surprise him. They had used protection, condoms, and they had disposed of the condoms down the toilet, but his partner wasn’t even going to wash his dick. He ought to wash it just because he ought to. Had to be some real nasty on that dude.

  He turned his attention to the woman again.

  Still dead.

  She hadn’t miraculously come back to life.

  They had had that happen once. Thought a gal was dead, had her at a drive-through eatery, covered in a blanket, down on the backseat floorboard, and while they were waiting on their burgers and fries, looking at the kid on the other side of the window hustling around at the register, they heard a sudden gulp of breath.

  The woman they thought dead was not dead.

  He remembered it as if it were yesterday, though it was…two, three years ago. She had gulped air, and with his partner at the wheel, he had reached back between the seats as she rose up like a zombie from the dead, the blanket over her head and body, and he grabbed her throat. Grabbed it right through the blanket and squeezed, cutting off the hose, not letting the fuel get into her system. Held her tight.

  She thrashed. Her arms came out from under the blanket.

  He looked at his partner, who saw what was going down, then he glanced at the kid behind the register, gathering up a sack now, turning his pimple-painted face toward them, reaching for the sliding window, and with all his might, he pushed down with his hand, squeezed with his fingers, and the woman—girl, really—kicked a couple of times. But the kid, he didn’t notice shit. There was music inside, and you could really hear it now that the window was slid back, some canned shit that ran all day long at the place, and he was saying, “Two burgers, all the way. Fries. Two Diet Cokes.”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” his partner said, and gave him a bill.

  A big bill.

  Damn.

  Now they had to wait for change, and there he was, trying to hold that bitch down, and she was goddamn strong, and it was work, doing it with one hand stuck back between the seats, trying to look casual, hoping the burger doodle guy didn’t see her feet moving around back there, didn’t hear them against the seat. All that, and his partner gives the guy a big bill and waits.

  Later, his partner would say, “Shit, man. It’s what I had. Don’t want him to remember I gave him a twenty, some such thing, said keep the change, something like that, ’cause he sure would remember that, don’t you think? So I had to wait on the change. Had to.”

  And of course he was right. But there was the kid, passing sacks and drinks along, taking the money, and there he was, his hand tight on the woman’s throat, doing what he thought he had already done, and then, as her arms, way out from under the blanket, thrashed and she dug her nails into the back of his hand and he gritted his teeth to keep from yelping, the kid closed the window and his partner juiced the car.

  He looked back through the rear window, saw a car behind them, some kids. But they weren’t paying lots of attention. And when they drove off, the kids pulled to the window and stopped. He let out his breath. When they turned the corner and went back on the road, he turned and slipped between the seats, catching his shoe and pulling it off on something or another. He dropped down onto the floorboard, brin
ging his knee into the middle of her, jerking off the blanket, letting go of her throat, hitting her three, four times with his fists.

  And when she was out, slowly, carefully, he went back to squeezing, feeling her neck bones crackle beneath his strong fingers. He strangled her, finished her. And then when they were out in the woods, he cut off her fingers and they shoved her out and he took the fingers with him. Later he dug his skin out from under the nails on the fingers and trimmed them down, and put the fingers in an ant bed; after a while, a week or so, he went back and dug them up and put them in a bag and carried them out with him fishing, left them in the water out by the dam, each one with a fistful of sinkers tied to them.

  But this one, lying on the bed, she wasn’t coming back from nowhere, and she hadn’t scratched anyone. She had gone over. She was dead, dead, dead. ’Cause he knew how to do it now, how to be certain.

  “You gonna run the water?” his partner asked.

  The big man snapped back to the job at hand.

  “Sure. Give me a minute; then bring her.”

  His partner, completely dressed now, walked to the curtains and stood in front of them. The bright yellow sign with the red light that blinked MOTEL throbbed through the curtains and made the room pulse like a heat blister.

  “I get worried,” his partner said. “I have fun, and I’m okay, but afterward I get worried. Always think there’s DNA all over the goddamn place. Some skin cell off my ass or something.”

  The big man paused, put a hand on the bathroom door as he looked at his partner. “See my hand on this door? Think I’m fucking scared? Think I’m worried about prints?”

  “You ought to be. You know we ought to be.”

  “All right. There’s some fear. Wasn’t any fear, would you do it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I wouldn’t. I don’t think you would either. Thing is, I’m gonna wipe the place clean. I’m gonna run a tub full of water, and we’re gonna clean her, and then we’re gonna let her soak in the water. Where guys who do this fuck up is, they take souvenirs. We aren’t going to take any. I mention that, ’cause I saw you eyeing her ankle bracelet.”