He turned away from the clock, listening to it count off the seconds, and wiped down the bar top with a damp rag.
In an hour or so, he would turn on the deep fryer to get the oil warmed up and ready for french fries. He hand-cut those himself, of course. Grew the potatoes in his own backyard, too. During the winter, he had to outsource some of the produce, but he didn’t think there was any shame in that. He couldn’t control the weather.
Sundays at Dale’s Tavern didn’t usually pick up until around one o’clock, when the late-lunchers and the early drinkers started to get a hankering for whatever fix scratched their itch, whether it be bourbon or a beer and a burger with a basket of fries. Even then, the traffic stuck mostly to regulars on the Lord’s Day.
Benny Feller was usually first through the door. That was a given on most days, not just Sundays. He was of the latter group, the early drinkers, and his itch was scratched with vodka. Usually he took it in a pint glass, mixed with a small splash of orange juice. And although he called it a screwdriver, it was pretty much all screw and no driver. He would do about three of those over the course of two or three hours, slowly sipping it as his eyes glassed over more and more. Then at around three o’clock, he would get up to finally use the bathroom and stumble sideways into the jukebox. At that time, George either had to ask him to leave or kick him out. He knew it wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, letting the guy get all soused and then turning him loose on the streets of Gilchrist. But he felt bad for him. He had been a mess ever since his daughter died. And if George didn’t serve him, Benny would just go to another bar or the liquor store. Benny was getting drunk one way or another, so why not at least let him spend some time among the closest thing to friends and family he had, even if it was only for a few hours?
11
Benny Feller awoke in the woods behind Agway Lumber out off Northgate Road, which was on the south side of Gilchrist. That wasn’t anything unusual for him. Neither was the gaping black hole in his memory. He regularly paid for his poison in large chunks of lost time. It had been that way since the drinking had gotten heavy. And the drinking had gotten heavy about a year after his wife left him, which was about ten months after Madison died.
That was six years ago.
He sat up, eyes burning, mouth dry, and glanced around. He rubbed the sleep tightness out of his face, blinking hard and stretching his mouth. His bottom lip, chapped and dry, cracked and started to bleed. He wiped the blood on the sleeve of his shirt. He was only forty-seven years old, but this morning he felt like a dying man in the final act of his life.
“Holy hell,” he said, his voice a low rasp.
He needed a moment to get his bearings. He picked up a pint of vodka that was sitting on the ground beside him, found it empty, and tossed it aside.
No luck today, he thought. The gods stopped smiling on me long ago… if they ever did smile.
He got to his feet, his joints groaning, and wiped the pine needles off his knees and butt. The crotch of his blue jeans was damp. He looked down to discover he had pissed himself. “Well, ain’t that just great,” he said, looking up at the sky. “What I ever do to you? Huh?”
He would have to go back to his trailer and change his pants before starting in on the day’s drinking. First stop, of course, was Duddy’s Liquors. He had to get something strong in him before the shakes set in and his whole body went all squirmy and nervous the way it did when he started to dry out. But more importantly, he wanted to get a drink in him to keep away the weirdness that existed in Gilchrist. The stuff nobody else could see. Booze seemed to remedy that, too. It kept what he called his “freaky antenna” turned off.
He found a bent cigarette in his pocket and lit it. The world was spinning, but everything slowed with each draw of nicotine.
How did I end up here?
It was a good question, one that he asked himself often. Sometimes he meant it quite literally, especially when he had to actually figure out where the hell he was. Most times, though, it was something he felt deep in a small pocket of sober rationale he still had tucked away in a dry part of his brain. In that place, he felt it not as an actual question but more as a longing for something different than what his life had become. Around his heart, like a piano wire slowly cinching, the feeling would come and sit, aching like dull glass in his chest, until he pushed it away with something strong.
So how had he ended up here? This morning, as something close to sobriety nipped at his heels and the morning sun blared in his face, he supposed the answer was simple: he had lost his daughter, and nothing had been the same since. Losing Madison had derailed his life in a way he had never seen coming. His wife’s, too. The end result was that their marriage simply couldn’t handle the added weight of losing a child, and everything had just fallen apart.
In the wake of the tragedy, his wife, Donna, had wanted to move on with her life, and she felt the only way to do that was to move to Florida, where she had family who could lend her the emotional support she needed. It was also a place where, every time she went outside, she didn’t have to be reminded of what had happened. A place where she didn’t have to hear her husband constantly talking like a madman about how he didn’t think it had been an accident at all.
(why can’t you just accept that our Maddie is gone, Ben? why? why? why?)
In Florida existed a life where his wife didn’t have to walk the downtown strip and think about how one Sunday morning two months after Madison’s death, drunk, grief-stricken, and in his underwear, he had wandered the streets, raving about how his little Sweetie Pie had been murdered by a masked beast he saw in his dreams. She didn’t have to see Chief Delancey and be reminded of how he had been the one to bring her husband home that day and walk him to the front door, drunk and sobbing about murderers and monsters.
That, so far as he could tell, had been the tipping point: his talk of dark things from a strange dark place. It had made him sound fit for a padded room.
He wasn’t crazy, though. Not at all. A drunk? Sure, you bet. He wouldn’t deny that. But crazy? No way. His daughter’s death had been no accident. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. It was a strange sensation, as if the universe were whispering into his ear. There was a dark channel broadcasting through Gilchrist, something he had always sensed. And after Madison’s death, an antenna had been switched on, and he could pick it up more clearly. He could tune in to the hidden frequency and sneak a peek into another plane of existence. But what he saw there was nothing good. It was hell. And in that hell, some terrible thing with elephant skin stalked the town of Gilchrist behind the thin veil of reality. He had seen its true form in his dreams. It was an ancient puppeteer—a timeless abomination corrupting the natural order of the universe, leeching off it like a parasite.
It had pulled strings, taken his daughter, and drunk in his grief and his anger to feed. The universe had whispered this to him, and the knowledge had become wisdom. If there was one thing he had learned after all that had befallen his life, it was that the universe truly did speak to those who listened.
Squinting, Benny walked out to the road, greasy hair tangled with flecks of dried leaves and pine needles, trying not to think about the freaky antenna stuff. It always made his blood run like ice water and left a pit of despair in his stomach. But he couldn’t resist.
He tossed the cigarette into the road, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver pocket watch. He popped open the face, but he wasn’t checking the time. It had stopped working in its intended way years ago. Glued to the inside of the cover was a picture of Madison. Staring up at him was her sweet smile. Her hair was in pigtails, the way she had liked to wear it. He touched the fading photograph with the rough tips of his fingers. He closed his eyes and thought of her laugh. He thought of the way she always used to smell of watermelon lollipops, the ones the doctor gave her after check-ups. He thought about her tough little attitude and the way she would scrunch her face into a point of exaggerated disdain, hands b
alled into loose fists and planted firmly on her hips, when she was frustrated or wanted to be taken seriously.
Sometimes, baby, I think you would’ve saved me from myself, he thought sadly. I sure as hell wasn’t perfect, but you gave me reason. You were my boundary, the line I wouldn’t cross. Sometimes, I wonder if I should just—
Benny heard soft giggling coming from the woods across the street. He recognized it immediately. It was Madison’s laughter, but there was a mean, antagonistic quality to it. Laughing at him, not with him. It was as if by thinking about her, he had bled the memory of his daughter out into the world. He kept his eyes shut, knowing what he would see when he opened them. It would be the gray-skinned thing from his dreams. It was pulling strings again. Taunting him.
It wants a snack, he thought, and the idea sent a shiver up his spine.
Madison’s voice called to him: “Daddy, come play with me. I want to show you where I live now.”
He closed his hand around the watch and cleared his mind, trying to push every ounce of sadness and anger from his heart. He would give the parasite nothing to feed upon. That was what it wanted: his despair. He had been thinking big sad thoughts.
Benny opened his eyes, prepared for the worst. And it was, in fact, the worst. His daughter was standing thirty feet away on the other side of a low rock wall that ran along the edge of the woods. She was beckoning to him and smiling, wearing the same clothes she’d had on the last time he had seen her alive… the clothes she had been wearing when they had fished her body out of the Gilchrist River. Blood was dripping down the side of her head. Her overalls were wet and covered in black moss.
“Come on, Daddy. I miss you. Don’t you want to be with me?” Its voice turned mean. “I know you do.”
Benny stood there, his face a stony outcropping, seeing the horror but refusing to feel anything. It wanted his fear, his sadness, his anger… it wanted something black.
“It’s not you,” he said coarsely, his words catching in his dry throat. “My baby’s gone.”
It giggled again. “Don’t be silly, Daddy. I’m right here. I’ve always been right here… watching you.”
“No,” Benny said coldly.
The Madison Thing turned and ran behind a tree. He couldn’t see its face anymore, but he could see a bloody shoulder sticking out and a hand gripping the side of the bark. The fingers were unnaturally long, thin, and slick… almost batrachian.
It continued to giggle, the mean tone deepening further. “Come and find me, Daddy.”
Benny clutched the watch, thinking about the picture inside, trying desperately to fill his heart with love and happiness, thinking of the good times, not the bad.
“I won’t feed you,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Find someone else’s strings to pull.” He finished the thought internally: Can’t you see I won’t dance for you? Why won’t you leave me be?
“Daddy, you should’ve protected me,” it said.
He opened his eyes and glanced up as cold, rotten breath bathed his face. It was a mixture of sewage and wet ash. Terror seized him, and he stumbled backward, dropping the watch and falling hard on his butt. The heels of his palms scraped across the asphalt and started to burn and ache.
“Mother of God,” he said, his skin icing over.
Towering over him was a grotesquely deformed version of his daughter. She looked like a giant rubber doll whose limbs had been stretched out by a greedy child. She must’ve been eight feet tall. Her arms looped down to the pavement, skin pallid and crisscrossed with dark veins. She still had pigtails, but her hair was black and thick like burnt straw. And the face was no longer a likeness of his daughter. It had been replaced by the awful face of the puppeteer behind the veil. It had deep black eyes and flat lips that lined a toothless maw. The colors of its face moved, shifting and shimmering in the same way an oil slick floating on top of water does when the light hits it right.
It was sickening to look at, but even harder to look away. It leaned closer and seemed to sniff him.
It’s tasting me, Benny thought.
He wanted to get to his feet and run, but he was frozen in place, half terrorized and half hypnotized by what he was seeing.
The Madison Thing stared back at him. Then its mouth dropped open, unleashing a horrible high-pitched shriek. The figure seemed to grow another ten feet, and it descended toward him, the mouth becoming a gaping black cave that would swallow him whole. The screaming filled his head, rattling his brain. In the background, he was sure he could hear that mean-spirited giggling.
He closed his eyes, covered his head, and curled up into a ball in the middle of the road, waiting for whatever was about to happen to just be over.
“Just kill me already! Stop toying with me!” Benny yelled, pleading. He waited for pain. He waited for death.
Instead, the shrieking sound began to change shape. What had started out as an otherworldly, wraithlike howl became a familiar sound he recognized. He opened his eyes in time to see that the Madison Thing was gone and a car was headed right for him. It was skidding to a stop, smoke trailing from its squealing tires. He saw the undercarriage growing and thought he would soon be catching an up-close glimpse as he tumbled beneath and was spat out the back, bloodied, gouged, and as limp as a rag doll.
This is it, he thought as the car barreled toward him.
He pushed himself up just as the chrome grill of the car came to a stop six inches from the tip of his nose. He spotted a splattered fly stuck to the Cadillac’s bumper.
The driver opened the door and hurried out, hustling around to the front of the car. It was Early Crawford, the long-standing mayor of Gilchrist, and his gourd-shaped face was a deep shade of angry red. He was in his Sunday church clothes—a gray plaid blazer and a pair of slacks. When he saw that it was Benny Feller, the anger seemed to fall away to something like sympathy.
“Ben? What’n the Sam Hill are you doing sitting in the middle of the road? I almost ran you flat as a hotcake,” Early said.
Benny gazed around, eyes wide, as he gathered his faculties and looked for traces of the horror he had just witnessed. “I… uh…” He scratched his head, scanned the ground, and found his pocket watch. “I s’pose I fell, that’s all. I dropped my watch.” He grabbed it and tucked it away in his pocket. He started to get to his feet but winced.
“I see,” Early said doubtfully. “Here, don’t hurt yourself.” The mayor offered his hand, and Benny took it reluctantly.
Early Crawford was in his late sixties, but he still had a grip like a bench vise and a stocky, athletic build that was perfect for this kind of heavy lifting. Even at his age, he still managed to make it out to Boston every year to run the marathon. Benny felt Early’s strength as the man hauled him to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said, not meeting the mayor’s eyes. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You look like you’re in rough shape. Everything all right?”
“I’m okay,” Benny said.
“What’re you doing all the way out here?” Early leaned against the hood of his car. He saw a fleck of road debris on the paint and rubbed it off with his thumb.
“Just taking a walk. Clearing my head, I guess.”
“A walk, huh? Downtown’s a good five miles up the road. That’s a heck of a walk.”
“I know,” Benny said. “I have a lot on my mind. Anyway, I should be going. Take care, Earl.”
He turned to leave, but Mayor Crawford’s hand shot out like a snake and caught Benny’s arm.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on a moment. Why don’t I give you a ride back to town? You don’t want to walk all that way, do you?”
Benny glanced down at the hand, then up at Early. The look on the old man’s face was of sincere concern.
“No, that’s—”
“It’s only a lift, Ben. You don’t need to read into it any more than that… neither of us does,” Mayor Crawford said, letting go of Benny’s arm. “Now don’t be stubborn. Get in. I’m gonna be late
for church if I stick around here any longer.”
Benny looked around the area again, searching the dark hollows of the woods, looking for a masked face grinning out at him. He didn’t see one, but thought he might if he looked with his heart, not with his eyes.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll take a ride.”
They got into Early’s car. Jazz played on the radio.
“Where you headed?” he asked as they headed up the road. “You feel like joining me for Sunday service? That’s good for clearing the mind, too. I think so, anyway.”
“Not today,” Benny said.
“Okay. Not today,” Mayor Crawford repeated. “There’s always tomorrow, though. Don’t forget that.”
They drove the rest of the way without speaking. There was no tension between the men, only John Coltrane on another strange Sunday morning in Gilchrist.
12
Corbin pushed his scrambled eggs around the plate, occasionally taking small bites. He had managed to get a few hours of sleep, but it wasn’t enough. He felt foggy. His stomach raw. Eyes burning. He had work to do, though. Things he needed to sort out.
He would have to take a sniff of Benzedrine. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to function today. He touched his breast pocket and felt the inhaler.
You don’t need it, you want it.
Meryl was at the stove making a second pot of coffee, and Corbin studied the curves of her outline. She was a beautiful woman, short with a firm behind and breasts that had remained perky beyond breastfeeding. Her face was effortless. She was the kind of woman whose attractiveness was found in the ease with which eyes could linger on her without meaning to.
“Where’s Grace?” he asked, setting down his fork. He took a bite of toast and washed it down with the rest of his first cup of coffee. “I feel like I haven’t seen her for days. Think she remembers me?”
Gilchrist: A Novel Page 18
