by Vivian Barz
Eric so desperately wanted to tell Susan, well, everything. The whole story—not just about the messes in his kitchen, the visions of the horse, and the dead mob at Luna’s, but also about his life , his divorce from Maggie.
But.
But it was a lot to unload on a person he hardly knew. He wasn’t ready.
All in good time.
Baby steps.
“I had forgotten all about it until I saw the photo,” he lied. “But I also saw that horse. In my visions or whatever they are.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. It was the same horse, I swear. I remembered it because of its color, that bright auburn. Like rust.”
Susan glanced over at Eric long enough to ascertain that he wasn’t yanking her chain. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t think it means anything,” he said. “In all honesty, I just want to put all this behind me. Hopefully, today will be the last I see of that horse and Lenny Lincoln.” But not you, Susan. I’d happily see more of you.
Susan’s expression was difficult to read. “Fair enough.”
Eric’s cell buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from Jake.
Fancy a little B&B (brews & bowling)? It’ll be the band & some friends.
Eric glanced over at Susan. Can I bring a friend?
A lady friend?
Maybe.
Hells yeah! Bring her. Perrick Lanes. 7 p.m.
Sweet. 7 it is.
Eric suddenly felt as bashful as a virgin on his wedding night. It had been so long since he’d asked a woman out that he could hardly remember how to do it.
“Girlfriend texting to see where you’ve been all day?” Susan ribbed. “Maybe saw you riding in a cop car and thinks you’ve been arrested? You’re in big trouble, mister.”
Now, was it just him, or was there a little jealousy hidden underneath her teasing? A little inquisitiveness?
“No,” Eric chuckled. “No girlfriend.”
“Oh. Good,” she said and then blushed all the way up to her hairline. “I mean—”
“So listen, my friend Jake—he’s the violinist in Augustine Grifters—is getting together tonight with some friends. Some of the band will be there. I don’t know if you like bowling or not, but if you want to join—”
“Love to.”
“Oh.” Eric was all smiles. “Okay, that’s great.”
Baby steps , he thought.
Baby steps.
CHAPTER 29
“Striiiiiiiiike!”
Jake did a victory dance and flashed finger guns at his competitors, Eric and Susan among them, along with John, the band’s bassist. He licked his index finger, brought it to his rear, and made a sizzling sound. Jake’s team cheered, as did a small crowd of spectators loitering near the nacho bar.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Eric said, hitching his pants exaggeratedly as he moseyed to take his turn. “You just watch this magic.”
Eric was having a laugh. He was, hands down, the worst bowler under the entire roof of Perrick Lanes, maybe even in all of Perrick County. Everybody there knew it, Eric included.
Sure enough, he took down just one pin.
When Eric returned to his seat, Susan clapped his back and poured him a pint from the communal pitcher, offering a consolation. “At least you kept it out of the gutter this time.”
It was an unpretentious evening of cheap beer and smelly rental shoes, and Eric was content. He was finally starting to feel at home in Perrick.
And there was, of course, Susan. Eric was growing fonder of her with each passing minute (it was not lost on him that Maggie wouldn’t have been caught dead in a venue as lowbrow as a bowling alley), and his hope that she might also like him in return had morphed into near certainty. Sometimes, you just knew .
Jake sensed a spark between them too. When Susan excused herself to go to the restroom, Jake shared his suspicion with Eric. “You know,” he said, “she’s gaga for you.”
Eric took a sip of his beer. “Get outa here.”
“I’m serious. The rest of the band thinks so too.”
Eric leaned around Jake and saw that Madison and John were giving him the thumbs-up. “Yeah, well.”
“Well, what?”
“I don’t know . . . I don’t want to make a move until she knows my whole story.”
“That’s not what you were saying the other night after the show,” Jake pointed out.
Eric said, “But that’s before I knew her. The game’s changed now.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me.”
“It’ll happen in good time.”
Eric understood that many men his age came with some form of baggage—children, debt, broken hearts—and that most women Susan’s age had probably encountered lovers who were imperfect in some way. But crazy was not situational, a complication that would go away in time. Children grew up and moved out of the house. Debts were paid off. Hearts healed. But schizophrenia was forever.
Some of the women Eric had dated prior to Maggie hadn’t cared too much about his illness. Then there had been those who’d pretended not to care, though it eventually became clear that they did. Even some of the best of them had cared. Eric didn’t take offense; it was a lot to take on. Ask a woman what kind of man she’s looking for, and ten times out of ten she won’t say tall, dark, and crazy . Eric knew he was damaged goods, but he felt he also had other redeeming qualities to offer. And if Susan could see past his schizophrenia, they’d have serious potential.
“What’s the issue?” asked Jake.
“No issue. I just want her to get to know me better before I make a move.”
Jake gave Eric a measured look. “You know, my dwarfism will never go away either. It’s not like I don’t know where you’re coming from.”
“Short isn’t crazy.”
Jake made a sputtering sound.
“And she knows about my illness.”
“She does? Well then, what’s the damn problem? She obviously doesn’t give two shits.”
Eric flapped a hand. “There’s more to it than that. This divorce I’m going through now . . .”
Between his swigs of beer, Jake said, “Know what I think your real issue is? You’re afraid of rejection.”
“Maybe. But I’m still going to take things slow.”
“You mean do nothing? You’re being chickenshit,” Jake said and then noticed that Susan was coming back from the bathroom. In a casual voice, he added, “I don’t know—I usually go with Peavey amps for that size space.”
“They’re good ones,” Eric said smoothly and then replenished Susan’s beer as she sat down. She scooched closer to him on the bench and offered him a smile of thanks. For the umpteenth time that night, he told himself, Do not screw this up .
After Jake’s team destroyed theirs at the bowling alley, Eric and Susan went home. Eric’s belief that Susan fancied him was solidified at her front door by a golden question: “Would you like to come inside?”
Boy, would he ever.
Even so, Eric floundered. “Maybe some other time, if that’s okay?”
She looked devastated. “Oh, okay, sure.”
“It’s just that I’ve got to get up early and take care of some things for work.”
She said little else before he got back in his car and drove home, leaving his very confused and disappointed date on her doorstep.
He was still berating himself as he pulled into his garage. Why did you do that? Why?
“You are chickenshit,” he said to himself in the rearview mirror.
Though buzzing from the evening, Eric was surprisingly beat. As he lazed in bed, skimming a collection of short stories by Stephen King that he’d picked up at the college’s library, he started to worry that he’d screwed things up with Susan by not accepting her offer. Although he didn’t believe there was such a thing as thinking too much—if you asked Eric, most people didn’t think enough —he was aware that he could sometimes be a trifle obsessive when it came to matters
of the heart.
Jake was right when he’d accused him of stalling. Eric could recall more than a few times in his life when he’d missed his window with a woman simply because he’d sidetracked himself by fixating on the pros and cons of the situation, the statistical probability of a romantic outcome. But the circumstance with Susan was different, and . . .
“And no more obsessing.” Eric put the book away and turned out the light.
Sleep made it clear that it was not going to come easy. Eric stared into the darkness, restless, his residual beer buzz now completely diminished, a slight headache left behind in its place.
He rolled onto his side and checked the time on the alarm clock. 12:03.
He closed his eyes and counted sheep.
He checked the time. 12:38.
Eric reached to turn on the lamp but decided to give sleep one more chance. He yawned, stretched, scratched his belly.
He checked the time again. 1:22.
1:23.
Sighing, he gave up. He rolled over, turning away from the alarm’s violating green digits. He opened his eyes.
Two glowing eyes stared back at him.
Lenny Lincoln’s rotting head was resting at the edge of the pillow, gray flesh illuminated from within by a hellish death fire. His mouth dropped open, putrid breath watering Eric’s eyes, and a beetle scuttled out from under his tongue.
Wheeze-wheeze . . . wheeze-wheeze . . .
Eric launched from the bed. He ran unthinkingly, running for running’s sake. He skidded through the first doorway he came across, the bathroom’s, socks sliding him across the tiles like a Waimea surfer. He bruised a knuckle fumbling for the knob and slammed the door closed behind him.
“Fuck !” he cried, gaping wildly about the room. For reasons unknown even to him, he jumped into the bathtub and jerked the curtain closed. In a crouch now, he pulled his knees up to his chest and waited.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Lenny thumping walls, sliding furniture about the bedroom. His bed? His dresser?
Eric clamped his hands down over his ears. Why won’t he go away? he thought miserably. “Lenny Lincoln! I did what you wanted!” he shrieked, his voice reverberating dully around the artificial curves of the tub. “You little shit, I did what you wanted! What do you want from me? WHAT?”
The house fell silent, barring the terrified thump-thump-thump of Eric’s blood pounding in his ears. He remained still, a rabbit evading a coyote’s attack, listening.
Nothing.
He waited a solid five minutes, just to be sure, and then began sliding the curtain back, unaware that he was holding his breath. He stopped about midway, noting a flicker at the wide gap that ran along the bottom of the door.
Lenny on the other side.
A childish voice teasing him now: Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Eric froze, his grip crushing vinyl, arm tensing and pulling. His gaze was so focused on the doorknob, which he could have sworn had begun to turn, that he did not notice the little hand that came sliding up from the floor.
It wasn’t long before he saw.
One, two, three, four grubby dead fingers tapping at the gap, mostly bone.
Piercing children’s screams filled the room—no, not the room. His head. They came from inside his brain, pushing outward against his skull.
(Help us!)
He groped his face, mouth twisted in agony, squeezing his eyes shut so that they wouldn’t rupture. He could picture them expanding within the sockets, quivering like balloons bursting with helium.
Silence.
Hastening to get to his feet, Eric put all his weight on the shower curtain as he pulled himself up halfway. He heard a soft metallic plink, and then the curtain came crashing down on top of him, tension rod and all. The rod smacked him hard across the cheek, a tender welt sprouting. He fell back into the tub, arms flailing and tailbone smarting, his temple thumping the sharp edge of the soap dish. Cursing, he batted the curtain aside, fixing his eyes on the door.
Lenny was gone. Eric could feel it as much as he could see it, though he lacked the courage to verify. “Nope. Not gonna happen,” he muttered with a solid shake of the head.
Eric eased back into the tub. “Well, I’ve slept in worse places.” He reached for a towel and fashioned a nice little pillow for himself. He tucked the shower curtain across his body, trying to imagine that it was a blanket, but it was cold, and he was wearing nothing more than his boxers.
He was still shivering when he awakened in the morning. His neck cried out for mercy as he sat up, his left arm gone numb.
He had to pee. He shuffled to the toilet, pulled his boxer shorts down, and—
“What the hell?”
He brought his hands close to his face so that he could examine his throbbing fingertips. Underneath his nails were jagged slivers of dark brown. Like he’d spent all night scratching at wood, clawing away until splinters split his skin. Dried blood was crusted down to his knuckles.
Boxers around his thighs, Eric frantically searched around the bathroom for anything that might match the wood. The toilet plunger’s handle was clear plastic. The soap dish was blue-and-white plastic (though cheaply swirled to look like marble). He groped for his hairbrush inside the medicine cabinet, prescription bottles tumbling into the sink. Plastic.
Tub: plastic.
Toilet seat: plastic.
Wastebasket: plastic.
He was surrounded by fucking plastic!
Ignoring his aching bladder, he pulled up his boxers and trotted to the bedroom. His breath escaped him with a soft whoosh as he entered. The banging the night before—Lenny Lincoln had gone apeshit . Sheets ripped from the bed. Bedside lamp smashed all to hell. Clothes torn from hangers, spilling out from the closet in a massive tangle. Umbrella sitting open on the bare mattress.
At the crux of it all was the steamer trunk he’d worked so hard to restore, upturned in such a way that it seemed to convey a threat.
Or a message. But what the message was, Eric couldn’t decipher.
He smacked his forehead as it hit him.
The steamer trunk, with its rich, dark wood .
Eric crossed the room in a hurry. He righted the trunk, opened it, and found just what he was looking for. He brought his hands to the underside of the lid. The wood matched the splinters underneath his nails perfectly.
“Whaaaaaat?” There was something else.
He took a step back from the trunk and tilted his head so that he was looking at the lid sideways. His claw marks formed two jagged numbers: 22 , 23 .
What was it with those goddamn numbers?
As if to answer, Lenny Lincoln appeared at his side. “Milton,” he whispered and then kicked Eric in the shin.
With a sharp yowl, Eric stumbled back, losing his footing as the soft underside of his arch crunched down on the busted alarm clock. He fell hard on his rear. Lenny made a move as if to lunge at him, and Eric crab scuttled back until he smacked up against the wall.
Lenny’s dead face was passive, if not a little mocking. After what felt like an eternity, he turned his back on Eric, dismissing him, and climbed into the trunk. The lid slammed down with a bang.
Eric sat back against the wall, his fright now replaced with startling indignation. He’d had just about enough of this bullshit! He was exhausted after spending the night cowering in the tub, freezing his ass off in his underwear, a shower curtain for a blanket. His home had been destroyed, along with what few personal possessions he had left. His sanity questioned. He’d been violated—humiliated —all because of this little child. This brat , who’d terrorized him relentlessly, who’d brought forth hallucinations . . .
(Are you sure it’s hallucinations?)
I’m sure , Eric thought, shaking his head.
(But you felt the kick just now, right? And that death smell! And how do you explain all those times you’ve been right about the Death Farm case? The photo of the horse at Milton’s?)
Eric frowned. Okay, if it wasn’t h
allucinations, then . . .
(Ghosts?)
Eric snorted. Ghosts.
(Well, why not?)
Because it was crazy. And he was crazy, so that made him an expert.
Eric thought for a minute, his gaze tracing the lines of the trunk, his mind grasping for an answer that was slightly out of his reach.
He sat up, frowning.
Was that it—the trunk? Had it all been over this stinking twenty-dollar trunk he hadn’t even needed in the first place?
He went over the dates. Nothing peculiar had happened in Perrick until after he’d brought the damn thing home and started messing with it. The night terrors. The vandalism. The TV turning on by itself. The . . .
Okay, the possible appearance of ghosts.
Eric got to his feet. “I’ll be damned. It’s the trunk.”
He walked to the bathroom to empty his aching bladder. After, he’d shower and load up his car.
There was someone he needed to see after work.
CHAPTER 30
Milton did not come to the door right away. Eric had been standing on the porch so long that he was considering giving up, but it had taken him a great deal of effort to first heft the trunk into the Jeep at home and then remove it at Milton’s.
Moreover, he didn’t want to touch the goddamn creepy thing ever again, if he could avoid it.
When Milton finally peeked his head out, he did not look pleased to discover his surprise visitor. He stepped onto the porch and shut the door behind him. He was wearing workman’s overalls, curls of wood shavings speckled around his shoulders like pine dandruff, and thick tan leather gloves. “You again,” he said.
Milton’s frosty greeting was precisely what Eric had expected—he hated it when people dropped by his home unannounced—yet he was nonetheless embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lincoln. I’ve caught you at a bad time. I would have called, but I didn’t have your—”
“It’s unlisted.” Milton clapped his gloves together, releasing a small cloud of sawdust. He pulled them off and stuffed them in his back pocket. “Was just out back doing some woodworking.”
Eric waited for Milton to say more. He didn’t.
