by Tim Waggoner
The image brought a fresh twist of nausea, and for a moment she thought she might throw up her meager breakfast. She managed to keep it down, though. Did she have anything that she could use to keep the patio door closed? Some kind of metal or wooden rod that she could slip into the track so the door couldn’t be opened? She couldn’t think of anything.
She’d left her phone on the coffee table when she rose from the couch, and now she heard it vibrate against the table’s glass surface. The sound was off, but since the phone only vibrated once, she figured she’d just received an email or text message. She walked over to the coffee table and stared at the phone. She regarded it warily, as if it were a poisonous insect that might sting her if she came too close. What if the message she’d received was another enigmatic taunt from the Cabal?
Fuck it, she thought and picked up the phone.
She unlocked the screen and sure enough, she had one text message. She took a deep breath to steel herself before opening it. It was from her sister, and she released her breath in a sigh of relief. She read the message.
Just checking in. Haven’t heard from you in a few days. I hope things are going well with you and Justin! ☺ Love ya! – R
Reeny had been not-so-gently urging Lori to start dating again since she and Larry had ceased being lovers, and she was thrilled her sister had a new man in her life. Reeny might be the younger sister, but she acted as if she were older than Lori, was always trying to take care of her. Sometimes – okay, a lot of times – this irritated her, but today she was grateful for Reeny’s concern. She wrote a text in reply.
I really need to talk. Can you meet me for lunch today?
Short and sweet. There was no way she could explain everything over text, and if she tried, Reeny would only get upset and start worrying that her sister was going crazy.
Maybe you are going crazy, she thought.
This was not a thought she wanted to examine further, and she buried it, afraid of where it might lead. She sent the text and, phone still in hand, headed for her bedroom. No shower this morning, but she’d clean herself as best she could with a washcloth. That way she’d at least be able to hear if anyone opened the patio door from outside. As for her hair, she’d do what she could, but if it looked like crap, the world would just have to deal with it.
She hurried into her bedroom, trying not to think about the shadow creatures breaking open the door last night and rushing toward the bathroom where she was hiding.
She failed miserably.
* * *
Get Moving! (complete with exclamation mark) was located in a shopping center near downtown. It was nestled between an optometrist and a foot spa. Lori had no idea exactly what a foot spa was. She imagined a place where people’s feet were pampered in every way possible, and she had to admit that sounded good. Every time she pulled into the parking lot, she told herself that she should give it a try sometime, but so far she never had and, if she was honest with herself, she probably never would.
She parked several rows back from Get Moving!’s entrance. The up-close spaces were reserved for clients. Not only was that good business practice in general, but given the mobility issues their clients often had, it was a necessity. She checked her phone before getting out of the car, and she saw that Reeny had texted her back.
Lunch is on! The Thai place okay? Speaking of okay, I hope YOU are! Love, love, love ya! – R
Lori was so relieved to hear from Reeny that she almost cried. Now all she had to do was get through the morning until lunchtime. She didn’t think talking to Reeny was going to solve her current problems, but it would make her feel better, and it would hopefully give her a better perspective on what had happened. Unless Reeny listened to her story and told her she was nuts and needed to check into a psych ward, pronto.
Just get your ass to work, she told herself. If she could manage to keep busy, she wouldn’t have time to obsess over all the weird shit that had happened to her. That was the hope, anyway.
Reeny’s was the only text she’d gotten since leaving her apartment. Nothing from Justin letting her know how his doctor’s appointment went. She checked her voicemail app and found she had no new messages. Maybe Justin’s appointment wasn’t over yet. Or maybe he was still pissed at her after the way their phone conversation had gone last night. If she hadn’t heard from him by lunchtime, she’d text him, or maybe call him on her way back from the restaurant.
She grabbed her purse, got out of her car, locked it, and started walking toward the office. It didn’t look like much from the outside. Get Moving! was spelled out in large blue plastic letters above the entrance, which consisted of a narrow glass door and a side window with white letters painted on it enumerating Get Moving!’s services.
Physical Therapy
Free Assessments
Work Injuries
Pre- and Post-Surgical Therapy
Sports Injuries
Joint Replacement Therapy
All Major Insurance Accepted
Medicare Patients Accepted
Lori thought the letters on the window could’ve easily – and perhaps more honestly – spelled out We do anything you need. Please give us money!
She pulled the door open and stepped inside. No sound triggered to alert the staff that someone had entered – no tinkling bell or electronic tone. Such noises wouldn’t be conducive to creating a calm, relaxing atmosphere. Katie Pope sat behind a curving front counter close to the entrance. She was African-American, in her late twenties, a touch overweight with a roundish face. She was pretty and her outgoing personality and charm attracted men to her in droves. Lori loved Katie, but she sometimes found the woman exhausting.
Across from reception was the waiting area, which consisted of a couch, chair, side table with lamp, and a round table upon which were magazines of various kinds for people to read. Lori was relieved to see the waiting area was unoccupied. She’d been afraid she’d see Debra Foster sitting on the couch, glaring at her because she’d gotten here before her. The woman was notoriously early and had no patience with anyone who wasn’t. To her, ‘Early is on time and on time is late’ wasn’t just a saying but her life’s guiding principle.
“Morning,” Katie said without looking up from her computer.
Lori was shocked. Every morning, Katie greeted her with a big, happy smile and a cheerful, Hey, beautiful! Ready to kick some ass today? and Lori would reply, Always, or, You know it. She’d never seen Katie like this before.
Katie and she weren’t close friends, but Lori cared for her, and she was certain that something had to be wrong – very wrong – for her to be acting like this.
She stepped up to the counter. “Is everything all right?”
Katie looked up from her computer.
“I had the worst thing happen to me on the way to work this morning.” Her lips pursed together. Katie made this face whenever she was unhappy – which was rare – but even then, she looked like she was affecting a sexy childish pout. But Lori knew the expression was genuine.
“What happened?” Lori asked.
“I was driving down Bartlett Avenue when this huge black car pulled up behind me.”
Lori felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach when she heard the words huge black car.
“The driver came right up on my rear and stayed there for maybe a mile or more. At first, he made me nervous. I was afraid he might hit me. But then I got mad. I figured the jackass had no right to tailgate me like that. It didn’t matter how late he was for work, you know?”
Lori nodded. She didn’t want to hear any more of Katie’s story, but at the same time, she had to hear.
“I got so mad that I decided to make him back off. I tapped my brakes, just enough to make the lights come on for a second. It was just a warning, right? Well, this guy got really pissed off when I did that. He stepped on the gas and hit my back
bumper hard enough that my head snapped forward and back, and I had to fight to keep the rear end of my car from swerving.”
“Jesus,” Lori said softly.
She was afraid to ask Katie the question that was foremost in her mind, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Did you see him? What did he look like?”
Katie’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know. All I remember is he was wearing sunglasses.”
Sunglasses… Lori thought. To hide the smooth patches of skin where his eyes should be?
She shuddered.
“He backed off then and started to pull around me. I didn’t look over at him. I figured I’d only see him yelling at me, probably giving me the finger, you know? When he got far enough ahead, I figured he was going to swerve in front of me and then hit his own brakes, give me a taste of my own medicine, right? But he didn’t. Do you know what he did?”
Lori didn’t, of course, and part of her wanted to keep it that way. But she said nothing, only waited for Katie to continue.
But before she could go on, the front door opened and Debra Foster walked in. She bared her teeth when she saw Lori – her version of a smile.
“So you beat me here for once. Good for you.”
Lori’s own smile was strained. “Good morning, Debra. Ready to get to work?”
“Yep. Not that I think it will do any good. But you already know that.”
Lori did.
Debra was in her early fifties, a stout, gray-haired, broad-shouldered woman who lived alone on a small farm outside town. She’d injured her left shoulder while cleaning out the stalls of her two horses, and she’d been coming to see Lori twice a week for the last three weeks, as prescribed by her physician. Debra believed that physical therapy was barely one step above voodoo.
I’m only here because my doctor said I have to do a month’s worth of this crap before he’d write me a prescription for some heavy-duty pain pills. I don’t expect anything I do here to make a goddamn difference, but if it gets me my meds, then I’ll gut it out.
Lori had tried to tell her that with an attitude like that her condition was unlikely to improve – especially if she didn’t follow up her sessions by doing the exercises at home. But Debra didn’t pay attention to her warning, and Lori had given up trying to convince her. She’d decided to do what she could for the woman, and if Debra ended up with a chronic injury and an addiction to pain pills, it would be her own damn fault.
Lori turned to Katie, but the woman was once more engrossed in whatever was on her computer, a sullen expression on her face. Lori would have to hear the rest of her story later. She turned once more to Debra.
“Follow me on back to the exercise room,” Lori said, doing her best to fake a friendly, enthusiastic tone.
“Might as well get this over with,” Debra said.
Lori felt exactly the same way.
Chapter Five
For the remainder of the morning, Lori worked with one client after another with barely enough time to go to the bathroom or get a soda from the break room. She normally liked being busy – it made the day go faster – and she especially appreciated it today. She couldn’t keep the shadow things, the Nightway, and the Cabal entirely out of her thoughts, but neither did she obsess over them.
When her last client, an elderly woman who’d just undergone her second hip replacement surgery, had left, she checked the time on her phone and saw it was eleven fifty-six. Almost lunchtime. She grabbed her purse and started to leave the exercise room – where some of the other PTs were still finishing up with clients – but before she’d gotten more than a few steps down the short narrow hallway that led to the front of the facility, she heard Melinda Dixon call her name.
“Lori!”
She stopped walking and closed her eyes.
Stay calm, she told herself and turned around as Melinda caught up to her. Melinda was a woman in her late fifties, tall and thin. Her hair had gone prematurely gray years ago, but she never colored it, and she wore it in a long braid down her back. Like Lori, she wore a short-sleeved smock and blue pants, but instead of sneakers – which the other PTs wore because they were on their feet all day – Melinda always wore black flats. Lori had no idea how Melinda’s feet weren’t killing her all the time. Maybe she regularly visited the foot spa next door.
“Yes?” Lori said, her tone wary.
She’d never gotten along great with Melinda. Get Moving! was Melinda’s practice, and all the other PTs who worked there, Lori included, were her employees. The woman was a good PT, and she ran the practice well. She had a doctorate in physical therapy, while the other PTs – including Lori – only had master’s degrees. Melinda had never come out and said she thought she was better qualified than her employees, but she didn’t have to. The way she treated them made her feelings very clear.
“How did your session with Ms. Foster go today?”
The PTs wrote client reports that they submitted electronically to Melinda. Everything Lori had to say about Debra was in today’s report on their session. She knew that Melinda read each and every report at the end of the day. If she spotted any typos or grammatical errors in a report, she returned it to the writer for revision. Lori wanted to tell Melinda that she had an extremely important appointment to get to, and she should go read her report about today’s session with Debra if she was so damn interested in knowing what they’d done. But she knew that Melinda wouldn’t react well to being snapped at. Who would? Besides, she was the boss, and she did have that bright shiny doctorate of hers….
“I’d say Debra took a couple steps backward today. She’s still not doing the exercises I gave her to do at home, and her shoulder is really stiffening up. Her range of motion was more limited today than it was last week, and she was in considerably more pain.”
Melinda nodded. “I watched the two of you working for a bit, and that’s what it looked like to me.”
Melinda was one of those people who it was impossible to read from facial expression or vocal tone. She could be ecstatic or royally pissed, but outside she came across as an emotionless robot disguised by a covering of human flesh.
“Did Debra complain to you about me?” Lori asked. Such behavior would be completely in character for her.
Melinda looked surprised. “Not at all. I noticed you were very low energy all morning, and at times it seemed as if you were merely going through the motions. I was wondering if there’s something bothering you.”
Lori’s eyes caught a flash of movement, and her gaze was drawn to Melinda’s shoulder. She’d thought she’d seen…. But she couldn’t have. For an instant it had appeared that Melinda’s braid had flicked to the side, as if she’d jerked her head to make it move. But Melinda’s head had remained steady the entire time. Was she seeing things? If this had happened yesterday, she’d have said yes. But after everything that had happened since FoodSaver? She wasn’t so sure.
“I appreciate your concern, Melinda, I really do. But I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Good job, she thought. That sounded really convincing.
Melinda’s eyes narrowed, and Lori had the sense the woman was scrutinizing her, trying to peer into her brain to determine if she was lying. Melinda must’ve been satisfied with what she saw, for her eyes relaxed and she gave a thin-lipped smile.
“I’m glad to hear it. If you were unhappy, as your boss, I’d be required to do something about it.”
Now it was Lori’s turn to frown. “Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Tear off one of your tits with my teeth, or press a hot steam iron against your cunt and hold it there until the flesh has melted into a solid, charred mass. Something along those lines. I’m glad neither of those things will be necessary, though.” She smiled. “Have a good lunch.”
Without another word, Melinda walked past her and entered the billing office to speak to Dennis,
the practice’s business manager, her braid swaying as she walked.
Lori stared after Melinda. What the actual fuck?
She walked to the reception area, unable to believe what had just happened. She and Melinda might not exactly have been best friends, but the woman had never come close to speaking to her like that. What the hell had – and then it came to her. They had gotten to Melinda somehow. The Cabal. They’d done something to her, something that had made her say those vile, disgusting things.
All she wanted to do now was get the hell out of there and talk to Reeny. Her little sister was clear-headed and pragmatic. Being a wife and mother teaches you to cut through a lot of bullshit, Reeny had once told her. She hoped Reeny would be able to lend her some of that clarity. She sure as shit could use it right now.
She was so intent on leaving that she barely noticed Katie still working at the reception counter, typing away at her computer. She would’ve walked right past her and dashed out into the parking lot if the woman hadn’t suddenly spoken.
“Do you want to hear the rest of my story or not?”
She sounded irritated, almost angry, and it was so unlike the Katie Lori knew that, despite her near frantic desire to be out of this place, she stopped. Katie took this as a sign to continue speaking, picking up the thread of her story exactly where she’d left off several hours ago.
“Like I said, I thought the guy in the sunglasses was going to pass me, pull in front of me, and hit his brakes. But when his car was even with mine, he rolled down the passenger-side window and threw something out. It hit the hood of my car with a loud thump, and I was so startled I slammed on my own brakes and swerved to a stop along the side of the road. I was damn lucky nobody rear-ended me, though I got a lot of dirty looks, raised middle fingers, and angry honks. The sonofabitch in the black car just kept on going. Fucker didn’t even slow down.”
