Gilchrist: A Novel

by Christian Galacar

  “Stop! Stop it! Why are you doing this?” Leo pleaded. “Helen! Helen, help! Call the police! Get help.”

  The thing that was Jim Krantz reached down, grabbed Leo’s left wrist, and twisted the arm behind his back before he could turn off the lathe. His wrist snapped with a crunch. Leo screamed in agony.

  He kept waiting to hear the chirp of the door that led into the house, waiting for Helen to somehow come to his rescue. But what could she really do? What could she do except watch? No. It was best she didn’t have to see this. Leo stopped screaming because he knew it was coming. He couldn’t stop it; he was too weak. He didn’t know why it was happening, only that it was.

  He closed his eyes. He could feel the soft cool tickle of air coming off the spinning piece of wood still firmly clutched in the lathe’s claws. He could smell the scent of freshly turned elm. He could smell that smoky smell, too. It was coming off the thing behind him that looked like Jim Krantz. In his final moments, Leo Saltzman knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t human. It was no longer Jim. He could sense it wanted death. It wanted suffering. It wanted pain. It wanted to…

  Leo’s bottom lip hit first, and it got sucked between the wood and the tool rest. He cried out. The hand on the back of his neck moved to the back of his head and pressed harder.

  4

  Helen Saltzman finished doing the dishes, shut off the sink, and dried her hands with the towel on the counter. She hung her apron on the hook beside the refrigerator and checked herself in the mirror. When she was finished applying a fresh coat of lipstick, her eyes darted to the clock on the wall. It was twenty past ten. They had ten minutes to make it to church. Maybe a little longer. Usually mass started about five minutes after it was scheduled, so they would make it in plenty of time. It was a five-minute drive to Our Savior Lutheran.

  With the water off, she could hear the machine still running out in the garage, which meant she was going to have to go rally the troops. The singular troop was more accurate, as they’d never had kids, and so the Saltzmans weren’t quite an army.

  She hated that Leo made her nag. He complained about it constantly, and she could tell he resented her for it. In her experience, it was a simple thing: if he did what she asked, then she wouldn’t have to pester him. It was so simple, yet so completely impossible. It was marriage. Twenty-five long years of it. But she had every intention of twenty-five more. They weren’t the perfect couple, but they worked. They loved each other. And that was fine and good. It was how it ought to be.

  Helen grabbed the car keys out of the little bowl sitting on the hallway credenza and prepared to nag one more time. She went up the hall to the door that led into the garage. She paused for a moment, her hand resting on the knob, as a chill ran up her spine and seemed to travel farther north and caress her cheek. Later, she would think that maybe this cool touch on her skin had been her husband kissing her goodbye one last time. This idea would help her through a lot of sleepless nights, but it would keep her up many more.

  She opened the door…

  5

  The Saltzmans’ neighbors, Bob and Dotty Zeller, called the police when they thought they heard screams coming from across the street. When Bob went over to see if something was the matter, he found Helen cradling her husband’s bloody body in her arms. She was sobbing, rocking him back and forth like a child, her hand trying to support a head that no longer had anything resembling a face. The walls, the ceiling, the floor—they were all covered in a fine spray of blood and hunks of flesh. One of Leo’s lips was stuck to the tip of his own shoe. It looked like a bloody slug.

  The lathe was still spinning away. Bob reached behind it and shut it off. Finally the motor stopped shrieking.

  But Helen continued.

  6

  Dave Blatten sipped his coffee—black—then set it down on the dashboard. He was in his police cruiser parked on the side of Town Farm Road out near Nipmuc Station, Gilchrist’s coal-fired power plant. Sitting at the breast of a hill, he could see the chimney stacks peeking above the sun-kissed tree crowns ahead. The stacks were billowing white smoke against the clean cerulean sky. As a child, he had always thought of them as cloud machines. He came here sometimes in the morning, when there wasn’t much going on, and thought about that exact thing, usually with a faint smile on his face. And if it wasn’t on his face, he was at least thinking about a smile.

  Sunday mornings were usually slow. A lot of folks were attending the eight o’clock mass or getting ready to go to the ten thirty mass. Those who weren’t religious were probably still at home eating breakfast. Or perhaps they were doing the yard work they had put off on Saturday. The Sunday-morning shift, from six o’clock to three o’clock in the afternoon, was Dave’s favorite shift. Sometimes he could even get a nap in, especially if the Patriots were playing a one o’clock game and everyone was home, glued to their televisions. He hated to have to miss it, but he could usually catch it on the radio, and that was just fine. Besides, Sundays meant overtime, and the extra pay certainly didn’t hurt, not with the way his wife spent.

  Dave took a Marlboro out of the pack on the seat beside him, slid it behind his ear, and pushed in the car’s cigarette lighter. He looked down at his wedding ring and wriggled it with his thumb. It was starting to get tight. If anything ever happened between him and Sarah—not that it ever would, because he firmly believed the part of their wedding vows that had gone something like: until death do us part—he would likely have to cut the damn thing off. He had put on a little weight in the last few years, and it was starting to round out his small five-foot-eight stature. Paunchy was what his mother used to say about his father. Dave Blatten was getting paunchy. Like father, like son. He was even starting to show signs of the trait that afflicted all Blatten men by the age of thirty: a receding hairline.

  Between his legs was a paper bag with an assortment of fresh donuts. It was such a cliché, but damn it if they weren’t the best complement to a cup of black coffee. While he was waiting for the lighter to pop, he reached in and pulled out a piece of a glazed cruller he had picked up from Marty’s Donutland earlier that morning. He dipped it in his coffee and promptly shoved it in his mouth. A few drops of coffee dripped off the hunk of donut and fell on the thigh of his pants.

  “Goddammit!” he said through a mouthful of sugar-glazed pastry. Sarah had just cleaned the damned things. He scraped at the two dime-sized stains with his thumbnail and gave up when he saw it was doing nothing to help. He picked up his coffee again. It was hot.

  She’ll just have to wash them again, he thought between sips. That was her job, wasn’t it? To take care of her husband? To obey? Lord knew she didn’t contribute much else around the house. The sex had been stale between them for the last year or so, too. He didn’t like that.

  He was contemplating what this might mean, when out of nowhere, a dog started to bark right beside his open window. Rooof! Garooof! Roof-roof! Grrrr-Garooof!

  “What the fuck,” Dave said, startled. The little jump scare caused him to spill half the scalding hot coffee down the front of his shirt. “Awww shit! What the… Mother of Christ!”

  With two fingers, he held the wet part of his shirt away from his skin to keep it from burning him further. He looked to his left, beside himself with rage. The dog was standing in the middle of the road. A dim whine replaced the bark as it turned its head at an angle—the universal sign of canine curiosity. Usually it was because a nose had smelled food of some sort. In this case, donuts.

  “You lousy little mutt. What’re you doing all the way out here? You get loose?” Dave said, the anger in his voice a controlled simmer.

  He stepped out of the car and tried to wipe away some of the coffee with a handkerchief he kept tucked above the sun visor. Once more, it was useless. Sarah would have her work cut out for her when he got home. He was damn sure of it. He balled up the handkerchief and tossed it back inside his cruiser.

  “Just my goddamn luck.” Behind him, the dog whimpered, and his attention
shifted. He looked at it, eyes narrowing. “And who the hell are you?” he said, a baleful grin spreading across his face.

  The dog was a black Labrador retriever. No collar. If it belonged to someone, they probably didn’t know it was missing. If they had cared about it in the first place, then it would’ve been wearing a collar and tags. He supposed it could’ve gotten its own collar off somehow, maybe gotten it caught on a tree and managed to shake and yank free. But that seemed doubtful.

  Dave dropped to one knee. The dog whined, barked, took a cautious step forward, then back again. “Come on, fella. I won’t hurt ya. You hungry?” He reached in the cruiser and pulled a chunk of his glazed cruller out of the bag, then tossed it in the road a few feet from Black Dog.

  Black Dog went to the food and scarfed it down greedily. Closer now, Dave could see that the animal was covered in mud, its coat far from groomed. There were a few burrs stuck to its tail. The vigorous wagging was no match for the tiny barbs. They would stick to him until someone was kind enough to remove them.

  “Good boy, Black Dog. That’s a good boy,” Dave said, talking in silly dog-speak. “You want some more?” He grabbed another hunk of donut and dropped it right in front of him.

  Black Dog hesitated a moment, its wide tongue hanging out as it panted. Then it came across the northbound lane and started eating the pastry no more than a foot from Dave. He was still down on one knee. He reached out and started petting Black Dog’s head, then around its neck and behind its ears.

  There was a springy pop inside the car as the cigarette lighter finished juicing itself up and ejected. He reached in with his right hand as his left continued to scratch Black Dog. And as the wayward mutt was finishing up the donut crumbs on the asphalt, Dave lifted the dog’s head in his hand and pressed the glowing hot cigarette lighter into the tip of its nose.

  It yelped, yowled, and whimpered, whipping its head from side to side as if trying to shake some invisible thing off. Its claws tick-tacked like hard pieces of plastic against the blacktop as it scurried away. Dave stood, pulled the Marlboro from his ear, and lit it with the still-hot lighter. He was quite pleased with himself. The dog was already running off back into the woods, occasionally stopping to rub its nose in the dirt.

  Dave laughed, then yelled after it: “Burns, doesn’t it? You don’t like it very much, do you?” He looked down at his shirt once more. “Stupid dumb dog.” Once more, he yelled after it: “I’ll send you the cleaning bill!”

  The dispatch radio in his cruiser burped static. “You there, Dave?” It was Evan Connor on dispatch.

  Dave watched the dog for another second or two before losing interest. He leaned back in his cruiser and grabbed the radio. “Yeah, this is Blatten. Go ahead.”

  “We just got a call. Something’s going on over at Leo Saltzman’s. You might want to go check it out.”

  “Saltzman? What happened?”

  “Not sure. Dotty Zeller called a moment ago to report she and her husband heard screaming coming from across the street.”

  Dave hesitated. He was resting his arm on the roof of his cruiser, looking around at everything and nothing all at once. “I’m all the way out near Nipmuc. Isn’t there anyone else who can take this one? The Saltzmans live on the other side of town.”

  “Nipmuc? What’re you doing out there?”

  “I was doing a drive-through of the area and spotted a stray. I was trying to help the damn thing, but it ran off on me.”

  “Want me to call animal control and send Walter Deacon your way?”

  “No, it’s fine,” Dave said. “Hey, what about Porter? Ain’t he on shift? Why doesn’t he take the call? I’m sure wherever he is, it’s closer than I am now.”

  “He’s off this morning. It’s just you at the moment. Sorry, Dave.”

  “Fuck,” he hissed, his finger off the talk button. Then, into the radio, he said, “All right. I’m on it.”

  He tossed the radio back in the car, following in after it. He started the engine, cut the wheel hard, and did a U-turn in the middle of the road, tires skidding on the dirt shoulder, then squealing briefly on the pavement. Leo Saltzman better be dead or dying, he thought. This was supposed to be his quiet Sunday-morning shift. First the dog, and now this. Could his day get any worse? What in the hell had he ever done to deserve this?

  7

  Billy finally gave up trying to get a hard-on and collapsed on top of Sarah Blatten with a frustrated sigh. While his face was in the pillow, Sarah patted his back gently as if to tell him it was all right, that it happened to all men from time to time. Nothing to worry about.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” he groaned into the pillow.

  “That a yes?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you worried about Dave coming home? He’s supposed to be on ’til this afternoon, and he never comes home early.”

  “I know,” Billy said, his voice muffled. “I’m not worried about him.”

  She giggled. “Can you imagine his face if he walked through that door right now? Oh, I bet he’d be so mad.” She giggled a little more.

  Billy lifted his head, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Mad? Naw. Why would he be mad?”

  “Do you think he’d shoot you?”

  “Not if I shot him first.”

  “You’d do that?” Her eyes brightened. If this was a joke to her, it didn’t show.

  “Try and stop me.” He wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking, either.

  A part of him wondered if that was the reason he always insisted they met at her place and not his: the thrill of the confrontation and the explosive potential of where that might lead. He didn’t really think any shots would be fired—Dave was a hot-tempered bully, not a murderer—but he did anticipate a series of events that might end in divorce. And that, he suspected, was the only way he would ever end up with Sarah. He knew it was selfish, but he also knew that she would never leave her husband on her own. So maybe in this case, selfish was okay. He just wanted to protect her.

  Dave had hit her before. Billy had seen the bruises on her neck and arms and the dim shiner under her eye from where an open-hand slap had landed. She had denied it at first, of course, but eventually she had told him all about how Dave had been mad that she hadn’t filled up the gas tank in his truck after she had borrowed it to go visit her mother up in Portland. It’d taken every ounce of Billy’s self-control not to intervene, but Sarah had insisted he not. So he hadn’t.

  Sarah kissed his neck, slowly tracing her fingers up and down his spine. “You’re my hero, William Porter.”

  “Is that what I am?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t feel much like one right now,” he said, and started to roll off her.

  “Not so fast. Where’s my hero going?” She grabbed him below the waist and gave a few gentle tugs, trying to get things going. “I want to do this for you. I’ll go slow.” She dropped her voice to a more seductive tone. “Slow is good… don’t you agree?”

  He sighed again.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think I can do this today. It’s not you.” He rolled off her and lay on his back, draping a forearm across his eyes in shame. “I’m tired is all.”

  But it wasn’t really shame he felt at the moment. Not exactly. He couldn’t get what had happened in Buck Ryerson’s funeral home earlier that morning out of his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even thought about his uncle. The whole thing had left him buzzing with an unpleasant feeling of disquiet.

  (want some hard candy, kid?)

  Had it all been in his head? Of course it had. He didn’t even want to consider what the alternative might mean. He had probably just been overtired. Hell, he was still tired. He had hardly slept in the last twenty-four hours, that’s all. What had happened in the morgue had just been some kind of nightmare.

  Sarah sat up and pulled the sheets over her breasts. She lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and
blew two streams of smoke from her nose. “I know. I don’t take it personally. You’re usually straight out before I’ve even touched you. I’m not worried. Well, maybe I am about what’s going on up there.” She pointed to his head. “Something’s been on your mind since you showed up.”

  He peeked at her from beneath his forearm. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “Women’s intuition.” She smiled.

  Billy dropped his arm and looked at her. God, she was beautiful. Dave didn’t deserve her.

  “Anything you feel like sharing?” she asked.

  “Really, it’s nothing. Just work stuff. There was a car accident last night,” he said, sitting up against the headboard. “You know Danny Metzger? He’s a bit younger ’an you and I.”

  “I do, sure,” she said. “His father and my father worked together at the slaughterhouse for a time. I think they still have the occasional beer down at Dale’s. Was he hurt?”

  “You could say that,” Billy said. “He’s dead. It was a mess. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Something haunted touched his voice. “Never want to again, neither. I…” He stopped himself, deciding there was no need to tell her about how he had gotten sick when he had first seen the body. It made him look weak, which he wasn’t. He just hadn’t been ready for it.

  Sarah’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open as slow as a rotted door on rusted hinges. She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray beside the bed. “Dead? What happened?”

  “I just told you… a car accident. He flipped his car on Waldingfield Road last night.”

  “Was anyone else…?”