by Hart, Joe
Runners of blood and tissue were leaking out from beneath the seated man’s hands. He made no sound as his fingers worked at the flesh beneath them. Lance’s stomach flopped and the dinner he had eaten earlier threatened to come rushing out. He could feel wetness creeping up his pant legs and wondered why if he had wet himself it was traveling in the opposite direction. But when he looked down expecting to see urine spreading along his pant legs, he nearly cried out in surprise.
The floor was slick with blood. It washed around him as if there was a current beneath the few inches of fluid.
Rain finally began to patter against the large windows, but when he glanced in their direction, he saw the panes bleeding. Drops of blood spattered the house as if it were at the feet of a maniac butchering the sky.
A swallowing sound snapped Lance’s attention back to the man before him. As he watched, the man’s head turned as though on ball bearings, his fingers still clamped over the lower portion of his face. Blue eyes found Lance’s own, but there was no life there. Only the frosted milk of death looked out from the orbs, and before Lance could scream, the dead man’s voice punched through the silence.
“They did this to me. The usurpers, and you too. You did this. It all evens out in the end. Water, blood, wine, time. In the right light, they all seem to shine.”
The man dropped his hands from his face.
Below his eyes the flesh became a red-and-black pit of raw meat. Furrows deep enough to hide a penny in were gouged from the skin where his fingernails had burrowed their way through. Twin holes where there should have been a nose flared at Lance with corpse breath, and startling white teeth ringed in ragged tendon and dripping tissue grinned at him.
The teeth yawned open and the man leaped from the seat.
The cell phone beside the bed lit up and beeped as it vibrated across the surface of the table like an overturned insect trying to right itself. Lance’s eyes flew open and the scream that had eluded him in the dream cascaded from his open mouth. His breath heaved his chest up and down, and his eyes searched the darkness of the room. His mind finally began to relate what had happened to his struggling senses. “It was a dream,” he told himself, nearly yelling over the images that still ran on a repeating track, replaying every horrifying second of the nightmare.
Trying to calm himself, he lay back on the sweat-soaked sheets of the bed and stared at the distant ceiling. There were no sounds in the house besides his ragged breathing, and when the phone reasserted itself beside him, he nearly screamed again.
Annoyed and cursing under his breath, he reached over and picked up the glowing square of light. A message from Andy was centered in the screen: Are you okay? Tried to call earlier and you didn’t answer. Just leaving a party. Will call again when I get home.
Lance noted the time and composed a message, assuring Andy he was fine, while also telling him if he ever called or sent a text again this late, he would put his phone somewhere that had never seen the light of day.
The brightness of the screen blinded him in the dark, and after he sent the message, he noticed a feeling that had been building since he had woke from the dream. It raised the hairs on his arms with goose bumps and made his breath slow, and then stop. He listened as the phone dimmed in his hand. A moment before the phone blinked off completely, he grasped the feeling he had been trying to identify. It was the sensation of being watched.
The light went out on the phone’s display and a face loomed a few inches from his own in the darkness.
He had a vague impression of two wide, unblinking eyes before he cried out and swung a flailing strike at the floating face. His clenched fist hit nothing but air. Lance opened his eyes and stared frantically around the room, trying to find a deeper shade of black moving within the darkness. No shapes stirred, and the landing revealed nothing but the banister and the empty air beyond.
He threw off the covers and leapt from the bed. As he shuffled toward the doorway, every muscle tensed with adrenaline, he heard a thumping on the stairway outside his room.
Fear morphed into anger so quickly that he didn’t register the transition. Instead, he found himself flying out of the door and barreling down the steps after whoever had been in his room.
The downstairs looked darker than it had the night before, and without the light of the moon, harmless everyday objects became attackers. Lance crossed the living area and went out into the entry, fearlessly flipping on lights as he went. His rage boiled and frothed within him as he stalked from room to room, now looking for someone to unleash his pent-up wrath upon.
Once again, the doors and windows were locked and not a soul could be found. Lance stood sweating and panting in the middle of the living room. His eyes scanned the walls, as if they would suddenly reveal a clue as to what was happening in the house.
The fat ring of keys lying on the shelf near the entry caught his attention. His head turned in the direction of the black door and stopped.
“If you’re hiding in there, you’d better come out now,” he yelled. “If I have to come in after you, it will not end well.” He wondered if his voice sounded steady, since he felt it waver, in spite of his seething anger. He waited, listening for movement from the room behind the door. He imagined it flying open and a downtrodden squatter exiting the hiding space like a child who’s been told the game is finally over.
The door remained closed. Nothing moved.
Lance walked to the shelf and snatched the keys from their resting place. He fumbled through them as he walked across the room, flipping the familiar ones aside, leaving three that were unknown to him.
He reached the door and jammed the first key into the keyhole. It stuck halfway in and wouldn’t budge any farther. Grunting with frustration, he retracted the key and pushed the next in line into the lock. The end was too large and wouldn’t even begin to slide into the opening. He held up the last key closer to his face and examined it in the dim light of the chandelier. It was old and ornate-looking, with a spiraled grip and teeth like an Appalachian senior citizen.
This is it, he thought, and felt his heart accelerate as he brought the key down and began to fit it below the iron doorknob. The key slid in seamlessly and stopped halfway, just as it should. He breathed in and out once, preparing himself for a fight, but his curiosity must have overridden his fear and anger, because as he twisted the key he only felt the snagging pull of anticipation.
The key refused to move.
He twisted harder, trying to keep a hold on the small grip within his sweat-slicked hand. Just like the handle above it, there was no give to the old-fashioned key, no matter how hard he turned it.
His irritation came rushing back, and without thinking, he stepped back and kicked out at the door, releasing his fury in one movement. He heard the flat smack of his foot meeting the cool surface of the door, but instead of the satisfying sensation of wood buckling and flying away from him, he felt himself hurtling backward.
He landed on his ass in the middle of the room, his kick having propelled him farther than he expected. He scrambled to his feet and stared at the door. It mocked him, the dark grain pattern curling into grins of smugness, the knots becoming eerily mirthful eyes.
Lance turned and looked at the horizon through the bay windows—the sky was graying in the east. The rational portion of his mind told him to call the authorities, let them in on the fact that one of their local fools was committing a felony. He could almost hear them now, asking if he could ID someone or if he could describe them. He could see himself struggling to make the invasion sound credible and the disbelief on their faces. Instead, he made his way up the stairs, pausing only to throw a look at the door as he passed. After he had dressed, he went back through the house turning off lights.
As he locked the door behind him and strode to the dark smudge of the Land Rover in the drive, he repeatedly flipped the keys over in his hand. The name of the man he was going to see reverberated in his head while he started the SUV and tore away from
the watching house.
John Hanrahan’s home wasn’t hard to find. Lance recalled Carrie saying something about the caretaker living just a mile south on the right-hand side when he had gone to her office for the closing.
His headlights shone across a hand-painted silver mailbox, the dark letters of J. Hanrahan just visible beneath a layer of dirt and sun damage. The drive ran straight away from the highway and, after a quarter mile, opened up into a small clearing. A tidy-looking one-story house stood at the back of the yard. Its clapboard siding appeared to be dingy white, and in some places the paint had yielded to the elements by tearing loose and curling like dry blisters. A small one-stall garage sat at an angle off to the right. The windows of the house were dark, save one in what Lance assumed was the kitchen near the front door. He couldn’t see any figures moving in the dim light, but he felt sure that someone watched him arrive.
He stopped the Land Rover a few yards from the door of the garage and swung his feet out onto the gravel, which crunched beneath his shoes. His mind scanned the different accusations that he could use to shock the old man into confessing his part in the intrusions, but then a thought he hadn’t considered reared its head and he nearly turned and went back to his car. What if John was married or had children still living at home with him? What would they say when they opened the door to his bedraggled appearance, his hair standing up from sleep, and words of anger spewing out of his mouth?
He decided that he really didn’t care. John was the only other person besides himself who had keys to the house. He was the only one who seemed to have a problem with him buying the property in the first place. Before he could rethink it further or quell the animosity within, he found himself standing on the narrow porch, his fist rapping against the storm glass.
There was almost no hesitation before the inner door opened and the caretaker’s tired face peered out at him with concern. John opened the screen, removing the barrier between them.
“What’s the meaning of this?” John’s voice sounded as though he had gargled with some of the gravel from his driveway, and again the faint smell of spirits hung about the man.
“Show me your keys,” Lance said, his voice a blade in the early morning air. The caretaker wrinkled his nose and stepped farther out of the house, causing Lance to take a short step back.
“Why?”
“You know why. There was someone in the house again this morning, and this time he was in my room while I was sleeping. I’m trying to be rational about this, but if you don’t show me your keys right now, I’m calling the cops.”
John stared at him for a few moments, his eyes nearly hidden behind the thick growth of white eyebrows pulled downward in a scowl. Without looking away, the older man reached into his pants pocket and drew out a bundle of keys on a single key ring. He tossed the lump of jingling metal into the air and Lance caught it. He searched through the ring, pausing to examine each key that perfectly matched the set he had left hanging from his ignition. After a few more seconds of inspecting the keys, he looked up and searched John’s face for any hint that the other man was nervous or anxious for him to be gone. He found none.
“You didn’t copy these? Hand them out to anyone?” Lance asked, still studying John’s face. The caretaker simply held out his hand. Lance let the keys drop into the old man’s outstretched palm. After a moment John looked Lance in the eyes.
“I’ve worked for the various owners of that house for over fifty years. These keys were entrusted to me and they haven’t left my sight. Now, you’ve accused me twice of something I am not guilty of. I won’t take it a third time.”
John turned and yanked the storm door open and pulled himself into the house. Lance felt his anger drain away, as if a plug had been pulled inside of him. He reached out a hand and began to speak, but the inner door slammed shut before he could. He let his arm drop to his side in defeat. The light went out inside the house, leaving him standing in the brightening gray of the morning.
“Sorry,” Lance said to the closed door. He turned and walked down the stairs, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the window. He might have seen John standing there in the incomplete darkness of the house, or it might only have been a shadow. He couldn’t tell.
The door to the gun shop opened smoothly and without a sound. As he shut it behind him, Lance looked around the tidy space and reasoned that if the proprietor took as good of care of his wares as he did his shop, he was in the right place.
The shop was long and narrow, stretching away from the front door like a large shoebox. The center of the store was dedicated to a dual-sided stand that held firearms of every kind, their lidless eyes staring at the ceiling. An L-shaped glass display case ran the length of the store, and Lance could see the heavy outlines of handguns upon the shelves within. The walls behind the case were also adorned with wooden racks, but held fewer weapons than the ones in the middle of the space. A doorless opening yawned at the very rear of the store, and as Lance watched, a man roughly the size of a full-grown grizzly bear emerged from the dark rectangle and stood to his full height.
“Hello there!” the man called in a booming voice that sounded to Lance like a bass drum. “What can I do for ya?”
Lance approached the rear counter and, although he wasn’t a short man whatsoever, looked up at least five inches to the hulking figure behind the glass case. The man’s face was wide and round and covered in a brambly beard. His hair was unkempt and stuck out at all angles beneath a baseball cap that was nearly falling off the back of his large head.
“Well, I’m looking for something for home defense, and I’m not really sure—”
“Oh, no problem, my friend. I think we can find something for you in the midst of all this junk!” The boulder of a man came trundling around the end of the glass case with surprising ease and stuck out a hand capable of making a beer can disappear within its folds. Lance reached out his own hand and was amazed at how dwarfed it felt within the grip of the giant before him. “The name’s Roger, my friends call me Stub. Although, Stub didn’t seem to ring very well when I was naming my business, thus Endor’s Guns was born.”
“Nice to meet you, Roger,” Lance said, pulling his hand to his side.
“Oh, call me Stub. If you don’t buy anything, you can call me Roger.” The same dynamite laughter erupted from the man’s mouth, and it was so genuine Lance couldn’t help but join in. “So tell me, is there a particular reason you’re looking for a home-defense weapon?”
Lance debated on whether to tell the man about the intrusions, considering that he didn’t know him from Adam. He might even know who was entering the house in the dead of night. Lance decided that purchasing a firearm, especially if it was from the man who knew the person responsible, might be enough of a warning to scare them off.
“I’ve had some intrusions at my home lately,” Lance said, letting the words hang in the air and studying Stub’s expression. What he could see of the man’s face looked thoughtful.
“Someone breaking in and stealing things while you’re gone?” Stub inquired.
“No, at night while I’m there.”
The big man’s eyebrows went up in surprise and his lips extruded as he looked at Lance. “It’s really none of my business, but are they threatening ya? Because if they are, you may want to walk across the street to the police station before you buy a gun.”
“No, not threatening me, just …” Lance struggled to explain the occurrences without sounding certifiably crazy. Now that he had to put what he had been experiencing over the past two nights into words, he realized just how insane it did sound. “I’m not sure what they want, but there’s been someone in my house the last two nights and I don’t get the feeling that they’re really friendly.”
Stub nodded and shoved his lower lip up in a “good enough” expression as he turned and walked to the glass case, motioning for Lance to follow. “Well, truly what I’d recommend for home defense nowadays is an AR-15. Light, strong, easy to mane
uver, lots of firepower, and more accessorial than a Barbie. You have any experience with firearms?”
Lance felt his growing sense of being out of his element inflate at the question but felt no need to lie about being inexperienced. “Never fired a shot,” he said.
Stub nodded, his eyes twinkling above the tangle of beard. “Honest man. Not too many guys would admit to never having handled a gun before. I suppose they don’t want to seem weak. Weakness is trying to be something you’re not, if you ask me.”
Stub turned and began walking down the middle row of guns, their barrels shining darkly in the overhead fluorescents. He stopped at the end of the stand and tilted his head to one side, as if he were considering something much more important than finding the correct weapon for a newbie. Lance’s eyes wandered from the silent man to the encased handguns a few feet to his right. He liked the curves and shining metal of a few of the pieces, and reasoned that a handgun might be ideal for his purpose when Stub spoke from the other end of the shop.
“I’m guessing you don’t have a permit to purchase a handgun?” Lance looked up and noticed the other man hadn’t even looked in his direction, seemingly reading his mind.
“No, I don’t. I’m assuming you need one to buy a handgun?” Stub merely smiled and nodded.
The big man shifted in his enormous boots and then walked around to the far side of the rack, bending to retrieve a black shotgun from the sea of weapons. He hefted it, then nodded. “This’ll do what you need. Mossberg 590A1, twelve-gauge pump. Holds six shots and it’s easy to aim and shoot. Now, I’m not saying you won’t need to practice up a bit—not ever having fired a gun before—but this should work just fine for home defense.”
Stub racked open the slide of the black gun, revealing its emptiness, and handed the gun to Lance. Lance took the weapon from the large man and instantly liked how it felt. The stock fit well to his shoulder and both hand- and fore-grip seemed to be made for him. He turned the gun over a few times, and then, looking at the storeowner, he grinned.
