Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He roped on down, and when he got to the tree he put his back to the twisted trunk and took a rest. He pulled the rope off and rolled around so that his belly was against the trunk. He got the flashlight Tad had given him out of his coat pocket and moved the beam around.

  There was so much brush you couldn’t tell shit about much of anything. Tad was right. The body could be anywhere, and this was no easy place to search.

  Harry decided he would work his way to the bottom, or at least until his rope played out. He had a lot of rope to work with, maybe two hundred feet, but he couldn’t tell dick about how far it was to the bottom. Taking a deep breath, Harry worked the rope around his waist again, and with his back to the tree, digging his feet into the ground and leaning back out into the wind, he began to work his way down.

  He had gone only a short distance when his shoes bumped something.

  It wasn’t a body. Of that he was certain. It was something more solid.

  Harry turned for a look, saw that his feet were on something metallic. There was another tree about ten feet beyond what he was touching, and as before, he made that his target.

  When he was up against it, he found the trunk took a kind of dip and that its roots were buried deeper into the slope than he had expected. When he came to rest, his back against the trunk, he saw through a burst of foliage that he was looking directly into the dark windshield of a car.

  49

  In a moment he realized he was actually looking at where the windshield used to be. This one was knocked out, just a few starred fragments jutting up from corners of the frame.

  His feet were on the hood, and the hood was crumpled, and brush grew all around it and vines overlapped it.

  Could Vincent have had a car?

  If he did, they’d have to have disposed of that as well. But that didn’t quite work in with his theory.

  He thought about a way to find out, but thinking about it made him feel cold. He leaned back and took a breath and looked up through the branches of the tree and spotted a star and held his vision on that.

  He was tired, so tired of being scared.

  He had to know. And there was only one way to find out.

  The phone in his coat pocket rang.

  He positioned himself solidly against the trunk of the gnarled pine and took the phone from his pocket. While he spoke, he looked up to see Tad’s head hanging over the ledge. He was on his belly, and his face was a faded gray mask without features.

  “Barbershop,” Harry answered.

  “How’s it look for a little off the sides?”

  “Well, I should have answered Used Car Lot. I’m standing on top of a car hood, leaned up against a tree.”

  “I see you…. A car. No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anyone in it?”

  “I’m afraid to look. The windshield is knocked out, and I’m thinking of going inside that way.”

  “It could shift, kid. You and it could end up down there at the bottom of the hill, you trying to pick a transmission out of your ass.”

  “Only way this thing would fall is if someone went at the brush and vines with a chain saw. It’s wrapped up tight, Tad. Been here a long time.”

  “Maybe you could get it running. It’s bound to be better than that piece of shit you drive.”

  “Maybe some new tires…I’m going in, Tad.”

  “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “You seem to have sort of gotten your game on, kid.”

  “You think?”

  “I think.”

  Harry put the phone away, loosed the rope, let it dangle by the tree. He crawled over the hood and went up and onto the sloping front seat through the missing windshield, managing to cut himself on its glassy remains only once. It was his knee. The shard cut right through his pants and got him.

  As he crawled, the car remained solidly in place. There wasn’t so much as a budge, a creak. It was held fast by the vines, years of them. He took the flashlight out of his coat and played it about. He didn’t find a body or bones or much of anything in the front seat or back. The trunk, that wouldn’t be something he could open.

  He crawled over the front seat and lost his footing, fell onto the backseat with a thud, rolled on his back, put out his hand, and caught the back of the front seat to keep from rolling onto the floorboard—

  —and there was a woman lying inside of him, and a man on top of her, holding her shoulders down, the man’s face strained and twisted, his teeth and tongue showing, and Harry felt as if the very nature of fear had slipped into every cell of his body.

  She was being raped. And the man doing it was the man he had seen before. The man with the hat. This time without the hat, but the same man. Had his pants pulled down and was going at it.

  Harry could feel the woman’s horror, and it stuffed him with nausea and revulsion. He scrambled onto the front seat and landed hard, found a man’s body there, lying faceup, eyes open. A black man. A young man. Dead. Harry’s knee was poking right through him. There was a bullet hole through his forehead. Small. Neat. Behind his head the car seat was dark with pooling blood.

  The images began to fade, became outlines.

  Harry slapped the front seat with his hand—

  —he jerked his head toward the driver’s window, saw that the car was on flat ground, Humper’s Hill, surrounded by trees and moonlight, and his quick glimpse had given him a view of the tail end of a muzzle flash.

  As the image faded, Harry slapped the seat again twice, very hard.

  —sailed backward through time, and the black man was rising up and the muzzle flash was going back into the gun, and then the image hung, went forward again, instant replay off a rewind, the black man falling backward onto the seat.

  In the flash Harry caught a glimpse of the executioner’s face. It was a big man with even features. He looked familiar, but Harry couldn’t quite place him. Behind the shooter, not far away, another man-sized shape could be seen in the flash of the muzzle fire. He seemed adrift, apart from it all. Observing.

  Fading—

  Slap.

  —looking over the seat this time, trying to ignore the gun poking through the window, directly at his face. Harry turned his head, looked through the rear passenger window, could see a woman being shoved against the car, slapped. The back door opening—

  My God. I’m moving backward and forward on this, wobbling through time…. This is earlier…maybe.

  Slap.

  Slap.

  Slap.

  —woman being shoved into the car, the man coming in on top of her. And out there in the dark, the shooter, and the other man in the darkness, the shadow guy with his back turned, his shoulders heaving. He seemed to be crying, or about to throw up. And then his face turned slightly, as if he might be looking over his shoulder to see what was gaining on him. A piece of light from the moon fell on his features and lit them up.

  Kayla’s dad.

  Fading.

  Slap.

  Slap.

  Images swarmed him, overlapping and horrible, and he felt the woman’s terror, the quick spurt of fear the man felt when the gun poked through the open window—

  —and then it all faded and Harry went limp.

  There was a buzzing noise, and Harry couldn’t place it.

  It went on for a long time, and finally Harry realized it was coming from his pocket.

  He opened his eyes. He was no longer on top of Humper’s Hill. He was now back to being in the banged-up wreck of the car, angled on a brush-covered slope. He was lying up against the steering wheel, uncertain of how he’d come to be there. The sky was lightening. His head was full of confusing images.

  Since there was nothing in his visions about the car going down the side of the slope, that meant to Harry that both the man and woman were dead when the car was pushed over.

  Yeah. That was it…. Goddamn buzzing.

  The buzzing continued.

&nb
sp; Harry positioned himself so that he was stretched out on the seat, his head against the open driver’s-side window, his side against the steering wheel.

  The buzzing was his phone.

  Harry removed it from his pocket and answered.

  “Hey, goddamn it, I was about to come down for you,” Tad said.

  “Sorry. I sort of fainted.”

  “You okay, kid?”

  “Not really.”

  “You saw something?”

  “I saw a lot.”

  Slowly the Mercedes moved forward, and Harry went up the hill, the rope tied around him, using his legs to bounce along as he was pulled up. He tried to use the phone, but that wasn’t working out so good. He could hardly hang onto it, let alone talk into it. He finally put it in his coat pocket and hoped for the best.

  At the top, daylight was spilling through the trees, and the Mercedes stopped. With shaking hands, Harry removed the rope.

  Tad got out of the car and walked back.

  “You found Vincent?”

  “Found something else.”

  “And?”

  “I think I have more questions than answers.”

  50

  Harry spent the rest of the morning at Tad’s place, sleeping fitfully.

  All he could think about was how Kayla would feel when he told her what he had seen. Her father standing on the sidelines.

  Should he tell her? Did it matter anymore? It had happened so long ago.

  The car. It had to be the one he had heard about, the one he thought was most likely a legend. The car with the lovers in it. Or that was the story. The bodies had long ago been removed, or they had been removed after lying undiscovered for years. Their killers were never caught.

  And the old car just left there, too much trouble to free. That’s the way it would have been done in the past, a little town like this. Forensics would have been thought to be some kind of disease. And the story of the murders would go around, and in time, unless you were really willing to research, it would be thought to be no more than a legend.

  It all twisted inside of Harry’s head until he could take no more. He had tried hiding in sleep for a while, but the horror of it would uncoil again and noodle about at the edges of his dreams, and he would awaken.

  He not only remembered what he had seen, he felt it all. It was as if he was the one who had been raped. And he had felt the man’s fear just as the gun went off, a sudden sickness and a sad realization that there was no more to his life.

  Harry sat up in bed, wadded a pillow behind his head, and watched the sunlight trace along the edges of the window, then flood it.

  He got up to make coffee, but Tad was already there. Coffee made. Cooking eggs.

  They drank coffee and ate toast and eggs, and when they were finished Tad said, “You’re sure what you saw?”

  Harry nodded.

  “It was all kind of confusing. The whole event was jumbled.”

  “Gonna tell Kayla?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Come on. Would you?”

  “No.”

  “Even if it meant you were going to hurt someone you cared about?”

  “That question has a lot of roads that can be taken. But if you’re asking me specifically if I were you, and knew what you know, and I had a girlfriend like Kayla—”

  “Just friends.”

  “Okay. A friend like Kayla. And she trusted you. And she wanted to know what happened to her father…. Yeah. I’d tell her.”

  “She’ll hate me.”

  “She might. If she does, you won’t have that between the two of you, at least.”

  “We won’t have anything between us.”

  “Could be.”

  “But you’d do it anyway?”

  “I would, Harry. But I’m not you. You got to make your own decisions.”

  “Shit,” Harry said. “I hate that part. I really do.”

  51

  She could still hit very hard.

  Hard enough he was almost knocked off his feet. He fell backward against Harry the bear, making his wooden namesake wobble, but he managed to keep his feet by grabbing at the wall.

  “Kayla—” he said.

  She hit him again with the flat of her hand, grabbed his arm, twisted it so that it went behind his back, and he let her. Well, actually he liked to think he let her. Still, he didn’t fight it. No struggle whatsoever. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she pistol-whipped him.

  Harry said, “Kayla, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re a liar. You’re a goddamn liar.”

  “I could be wrong.”

  “You are wrong. You and your sounds. What shit, Harry. What shit.”

  “I know.”

  She let go of him with a shove, fell on the couch, and rolled the side of her face against the back of it. She heaved and then burst out crying.

  Harry stood where he was, his face red on both sides, his arm aching from being twisted. He looked at Kayla’s back rising up and down, listened to her bawl. She was still wearing her uniform, fresh off the night shift, her gun was on her hip.

  It didn’t seem right, seeing a policewoman cry like that.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Just shut up, Harry.” When Kayla spoke her voice was muffled, pushed into the couch.

  “Sure.”

  “Completely shut up.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean not another word.”

  Harry caught himself in midapology, realized he was about to speak. He stood silent by Harry the bear. Without thinking about it, he patted the wooden critter on the head. After a moment he put his hands in his pockets.

  Well, he thought, this has gone well.

  He headed out the door.

  “Harry,” Kayla said.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you dare leave.”

  “Are you going to hit me any more?”

  “No.” Kayla rolled over and slowly sat forward on the couch. She said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t believe it. I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know what it means, Kayla. No idea.”

  “Come sit beside me.”

  “You sure you aren’t going to bitch-slap me again?”

  “Positive.”

  “No arm-twisting either?”

  “No arm-twisting.”

  “Could you put the pistol away?”

  “Harry, come here.”

  He sat down beside her. She touched his face where she had struck him. “Can’t believe I did that.”

  “It’s still pretty fresh in my memory.”

  “Thanks for not hitting back.”

  “I didn’t want to open that can of worms.”

  She kissed him on his reddened cheek. “I am sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry I said what I said. But maybe it’s not like it seems. Like it looked.”

  “I’m just reporting here. Just tell ’em like I see ’em. I may simply be crazy, you know.”

  “You’re not. I’m the one who got you into this.”

  “I’m into it every day of my life.”

  “Did you report it to the department?”

  “What’s to report? I found an old car and had some dreams. I didn’t find Vincent’s remains. That’s what I went out there for. But I think he’s on that hill somewhere, covered in vines. What’s left of him anyway. A few bones here and there.”

  She turned his face toward hers, kissed him on the lips.

  “Harry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just want you to know, and believe me when I say this: I’m not trying to get your gum, so don’t fight me.”

  “I’m not chewing gum.”

  “Just an example of how you’re acting. To kiss, you have to open your mouth a little.”

  “I know that.”r />
  “It’s really okay to kiss back.”

  “I’m a little leery.”

  “I can understand. But it’s okay.”

  He kissed back. It certainly was okay. He took her in his arms. They kissed deeply.

  “I’ve thought about you ever since the day you moved away,” Harry said.

  “Except when you were with Talia?”

  “I thought about you then too.”

  “Bet there were a number of moments you weren’t thinking of me.”

  “Got a point. But I didn’t know you were available.”

  “Good answer…I’ve thought about you too, Harry. Really. I had all this planned better. But tonight…I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” he said, and kissed her.

  They came up for air late midday and ate sandwiches in the nude. It was a short-lived break, and then they were at it again in Kayla’s darkened bedroom, hammering away, making the bedsprings squeak like a wounded mouse.

  Once, they looked up to see Winston with his head bent down, staring through the window, trying to figure things out. Kayla got up and closed the curtain, came back to bed.

  After a while they lay in the dark, Kayla in Harry’s arms. She said, “I’m getting sore.”

  “Me too.”

  “Want to quit?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Shall we proceed then?”

  “Once more, into the breach.”

  She laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Oh, there’s lots of ways to put it.”

  The rest of the day went by and the dark room turned darker yet. They dozed off and on, and when they awoke they made love. Harry had never felt like this before. Kayla, though busy about it all, wasn’t as savage as Talia. Talia had been good, no doubt, but it was all pretty much like a game plan brought to fruition, the storming of the beach on D-day, a job well-done. With Kayla it came about naturally. They seemed to know exactly what the other wanted, and neither seemed to be trying to prove anything.

  After a time Kayla said. “That one was the best.”

  “Frankly, I don’t know I remember it all that well. I feel sort of as if I’m slipping into a coma.”