by Hunter Shea
Making my way downstairs, I saw Katie at the dining room table wearing headphones connected to the iPad. The screen was cracked but it still worked fine. I couldn’t tell what she was watching, but it kept her engrossed enough not to notice me.
“Honey, should you even be up?” Candy said, rushing to me.
I smiled. “I’m okay. I told you, all I needed was a nap.”
She felt my forehead. “I think it was my love and attention that did it.”
“And Katie’s kiss,” I added.
Candy grabbed my hand and walked me to the living room. “I didn’t want Katie to see or hear this.”
Despite her vow to keep away, the news was on. There was a breaking story about a murder in Bridgton. A female reporter stood outside a ramshackle house. The sound was so low, I couldn’t hear what she was saying – not that I needed her commentary.
Candy’s grip on my hand tightened.
“They found the body of a man this afternoon. He’s the father of one of the kids at Katie’s school.”
I thought I was going to pass out. I plopped onto the couch.
“Someone butchered him,’” she said. “I thought things like that didn’t happen up here.”
I could only shake my head. Cops and firemen flitted back and forth behind the reporter.
“What about the boy?” I asked, looking at the TV but replaying what I had done in my mind.
“He ran away,” she said. “They say he watched as his father was killed. The poor kid. I don’t know how a child can ever recover from something like that. I wonder if they’ll cancel school on Monday. I’m just so sick about this, Peter.”
She snuggled close to me. I put my arm around her.
Candy didn’t question how I knew there’d been a boy in the house. She was too wrapped up in the horror of the story. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, opening my mouth before I thought.
The boy saw my face plain as day. He was probably describing me to the police right now.
As we watched, I wished for another fever to sweep me back out to the sea of nightmares. At least they weren’t real.
Chapter Eight
I faked sleep for as long as I could. Candy was a super light sleeper. I had to remain exceedingly still so as not to wake her. By four in the morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. It felt like hissing cockroaches were scuttling under my skin. I had to get up.
Candy didn’t stir as I crept out of the room. I checked in on Katie. She’d kicked her covers off and was clutching her Build-A-Bear purple pony.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I went online to see if there’d been any developments in the story. I also wanted to see if anyone had discovered Marcellus’s body yet. If not, odds were high that it had been dragged off by some of the local wildlife, left to molder in the woods. He’d be declared a missing person before a corpse.
I checked the Portland Press Herald, saw the front page crammed with stories on the weather and the strange virus that had hit several major cities. Were the people who had the virus getting strange messages and killing bad people too?
No, they were just sick, plain and simple. Sick and dying, not sick and murderous. News like this would have raised my blood pressure considerably, but I had something else on my mind.
It wasn’t until page five when I saw an article about the man I’d killed yesterday. It said there was a sketch of the murderer on page two.
Oh God, this is where my life ends.
My finger swiped to the next page. What I saw nearly made me fall off my chair.
The man in the sketch wasn’t me at all!
A burly Hispanic man wearing a baseball cap glowered at me. He had a small scar under his right eye.
How the hell had the kid come up with that? I was a skinny white guy with a well-kept beard. That man couldn’t be more opposite me.
And the more I looked at him, the more familiar he became to me.
My hand flew to my mouth.
I’d seen that man before. He worked in the produce section at the supermarket. He’d once opened a new box of Bartlett pears for me to make sure I got the freshest ones.
What the fuck was going on here?
On the one hand, I was relieved that my door wasn’t in danger of being broken down by the police. On the other, heavier hand, I was a two-time murderer and now an innocent man was getting framed for one of my crimes.
Pushing back from the table so hard I almost knocked my chair down, I stormed into the living room and found my phone. I went back to the kitchen.
“Where the hell are you now, AO?” I hissed, checking for new texts.
I not only didn’t find new texts—all of AO’s previous texts were gone. Wiped clean, as if they’d never happened. The same with my email account.
I ran to the sink to throw up.
“What if I’ve been imagining everything?” I said between hot gouts of bile.
I cleaned up fast, grabbed my coat, and left the house. The streetlights were still on and there were no signs of the sun coming up any time soon. Good. I didn’t exactly want my neighbors to see me traipsing around the streets in my pajamas with flecks of vomit on my mouth.
The Mustang was gone too. A new, white Honda was parked in the space where I’d left it. Collapsing on the sidewalk, I pressed my face into my palms.
Losing my job had caused a psychotic break. I’d been normal up to that point. Maybe the messages I’d received before I went into Marcellus’s office was just a convenient lie I’d told myself so I wouldn’t think what I was thinking now.
And despite my insanity, I’d committed two crimes and gotten away with them.
“I have to turn myself in.”
My ass was soaked from sitting in the morning dew.
First, I had to tell Candy. She had to know why I was going to the police station, why I had to distance myself from her and Katie.
If I had convinced myself that someone called AO made me kill those two men, it wasn’t safe for me to be around my own family.
* * * * *
Katie slept past six a.m. for the first time I could ever remember. That meant Candy was also asleep. I paced around downstairs, watching the local news, feeling parts of my soul dissipate with every report of the murder.
Finally, just after eight, I heard my daughter’s light footsteps tip-tap into my bedroom, followed by the sound of Candy laughing.
They’d come down in a couple of minutes. I’d have to fake being normal for Katie and find a way to get Candy alone. My heart’s rhythm went so out of whack, I found it hard to breathe, my lungs hitching like a world-class stutterer.
“Daddy!” Katie yelped when she saw me, her pony in tow. I knelt down so I could catch her as she threw herself at me.
“Good morning, lazy bones,” I said. “You slept late today.”
“I did?”
I kissed her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “You sure did. You must have been having some real nice dreams.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I can’t remember.”
“You want some cereal?”
She nodded.
“Okay, take a seat in the kitchen and I’ll get it for you.”
I thought my knees were going to give out on me a couple of times as we walked hand in hand. I found her favorite cereal, nearly dropping the bowl as I took it from the cabinet.
“Morning, honey,” Candy said, dressed in her mommy robe and fuzzy slippers.
Plopping Katie’s cereal in front of her, I said to Candy, “I need to talk to you in the living room.”
She looked concerned. I didn’t have a good poker face.
“Sure. Katie, baby, we’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Candy slipped her hands in mine. “What’s up,
Peter? You look like you’re having a panic attack.”
“I have something to tell you and I need you to stay calm,” I said. I swallowed hard, fighting back another bout of nausea.
She said, “I know this is hard for you and even when I tell you we’re going to be all right, it doesn’t feel like it at the moment. I’m glad you’re talking to me. Tell me whatever you’re feeling so we can work through it together.”
I looked into her hazel eyes and saw so much love there. Would that love remain when I confessed? I didn’t want to lose her. It would be easier if I just shut up.
No! When I’d taken those lives, I’d already lost her by destroying myself.
“Candy, look, I…I…”
The tempest of pain came roaring back, shattering my skull like it has been carpet bombed. I strangled out some kind of cry and felt my bowels let loose, shitting myself with such force, I thought I’d ruptured something. I felt Candy’s hand on me but couldn’t hear her.
Before I blacked out, I saw the fire again, a hundred-foot high wall of flame, consuming everything in its path. Candy and Katie reached out for me within the flames, pleading for help, their flesh turning black, cracking and popping until they collapsed out of sight.
Madness
Chapter Nine
This time, I woke up in a curtained-off section of Bridgton Hospital’s emergency room. There was an IV in my arm and a cannula under my nose. Candy jumped from the chair beside my bed and brushed the hair from my forehead.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I was so worried.”
My head was groggy. There must have been some kind of sedative in the IV.
“What happened?” I said.
“You had a seizure. I called the ambulance. You were still seizing when they got you here. When it stopped, you passed out.”
I tried to lift my head from the pillow. That wasn’t happening.
“What time is it?” I asked.
She checked her watch. “Almost ten.”
“At least I wasn’t out long,” I said, attempting to muster a smile.
“It’s ten at night,” she said.
“I’ve been unconscious for over twelve hours?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Katie?”
“She’s with Huey and Anne next door. I just checked on her half an hour ago. She’s asleep on their couch.”
“Did…did she see what happened?”
Candy’s eyes shimmered. “She did. She was scared, but I was able to calm her down. When I told her you were all right, she said she was going to make you some get well soon cards.”
I felt like I was made of oatmeal. I didn’t think I had the strength to lift a soda can.
“Did the doctors say what happened?”
“They think you have a viral infection,” Candy said. “You were burning up when you got here, just like yesterday.”
“Did they take a CAT scan or anything?”
I thought, maybe I had a brain infection or a tumor. That would explain the whole AO delusion and my violent behavior. There was a glimmer of hope that even when I told the cops what I did, I could still be free if I was a victim of a debilitating illness. I could have my life back, if the illness didn’t kill me. It was disheartening to realize that this was my best case scenario.
“I don’t know. They’ve been taking you in and out for all kinds of tests. I’m going to get a nurse and let her know you’re up.”
Candy pulled the curtain aside. I could see a corner of the nurse’s station. The loudspeaker beeped, and a female voice called out for a Dr. Fass.
My wife disappeared from view. I felt as if I were melting into the hospital bed. I had only been awake for a few minutes and already I wanted to go back to sleep.
My eyes were just starting to close when I heard a door slam open, followed by hurried footsteps and a lot of urgent chatter.
“We have a code blue!” a man shouted.
I heard a stretcher being wheeled next to me, but I couldn’t see what was going on because of the curtain. Controlled bedlam was the best way to describe it. Doctors and nurses rushed into the space, making the curtain billow in and out. The person next to me was in a bad way. Recalling my days of watching ER on TV, I was pretty sure code blue meant the person next to me had stopped breathing.
“Heparin, now!” a doctor ordered.
Machines were plugged in, beeping to chaotic life.
“Who is he?” I heard a nurse ask someone just outside where I lay.
“The guy who they say murdered that man behind his house,” a male voice said.
My own heart seized.
The man continued, “He was attacked by a relative of the man outside the gas station. Stabbed him with a butcher knife. He coded the moment we got him in the truck.”
Where was Candy? I needed her with me, to hold my hand, to tether me to the dwindling parts of my life that were sane.
A woman shouted, “Where’s my Eddie?”
“Miss, I need you to stay right there. The doctors are working on your husband right now.”
“I want to see him!”
“Clear!” someone blurted next to me. There was a high-pitched whine. I didn’t need to see to know what was happening.
“Oh my God, is he in there?”
“Please, come with me. We have to let the doctors do their job.”
“Eddie!”
A fresh wave of voices swept into the emergency room. What the hell was going on? Candy rushed back to my side.
“What’s happening?” I said.
“I don’t know. It’s crazy. They brought a man in with a knife sticking out of his stomach. That’s his wife outside. I snuck past the nurses when a bunch of guys came in. They look mad as hell.”
“Where the hell is security?” a woman cried out.
This was Bridgton. I doubted very much they had much call for more than one security guard. Only hospitals in big cities would have the personnel to quell this madness.
“You!” the dying man’s wife shrieked.
“I came to see if Eddie was all right,” a man said.
“So you can gloat to your brother that he killed my husband?”
Candy grabbed my hand. I wished to hell I could see through the curtain, but on the other hand, I hoped it was enough to shield us from the escalating insanity.
“You goddamn son of a bitch! You took my husband from me! Aaaiiieeeee!”
Something crashed to the floor and a rugby scrum erupted outside the curtains. A man yelped in pain. The woman screamed that someone had stabbed her.
I lifted myself off the pillows, gripping Candy’s hand. If the fight spilled into here, there was nothing I could do to defend her.
Everyone was shouting, bodies smashing into walls. A man with long hair and glasses collapsed. From under the curtain, I saw blood oozing from his ear. Candy scrabbled back as far as she could go without releasing her hold on me. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head. A white hospital shoe stepped on his face as a nurse ran away.
Suddenly, a gun went off, bringing a merciful silence to the riot.
Chapter Ten
When the dust finally settled, the case of mistaken identity was responsible for three deaths, including the man who’d been brought in with the knife in his stomach, (the doctors were too busy saving themselves to save him) and four wounded. By the time Candy and I were allowed to leave our little curtained-off corner, a porter was mopping blood off the white tiled floor. There were more police than medical staff in the emergency room. I saw several state troopers and even cops from nearby towns. All of their faces were drawn and pale, unaccustomed to scenes of such brutality, in a place of healing, no less.
I was released from the hospital the next afternoon, only after the police had shut down the hospital and questioned all who wer
e in the emergency room when the fracas broke out. I wondered where the truly sick and wounded were taken during those hours. For all I knew, the nearest hospital was fifty miles away—or in the next town over.
Candy and I were questioned for a bit. The doctors wanted to make sure I was all right to go home.
I knew I didn’t have a viral infection, just like I knew I was responsible for the collapsing dominoes of death that followed my actions. Tension was high in the town when we stopped at the variety store to pick up some cans of Katie’s favorite iced tea. Folks were talking. Half were afraid, and the other half were quietly calling for even more justice. It didn’t take a genius to fathom that their idea of justice skirted the traditional involvement of police and the court system.
Is this all it took to strip the civility from a quiet, little town? My head spun the whole car ride home, but I didn’t let on to my wife.
Candy set me up in bed before getting Katie from our neighbors. Deep lines of worry etched across her forehead and the corners of her eyes.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get the sound of everyone screaming out of my head,” she said.
“Why don’t you lie next to me for a bit before getting Katie? You look like you’re going to collapse.”
“No, I’ll feel better with her home. Maybe we’ll all lie down and fall asleep to some boring daytime TV.”
I rolled onto my side when she left, staring out the window.
What had I done? If I confessed now, I’d probably get the death penalty.
But then, maybe that’s exactly what I deserved.
The sound of my phone vibrating on my night table froze my blood. I was too terrified to pick it up. I pulled the covers over my head, muffling its cries to be held. A tiny pinpoint of heat emanated from between my eyes.
“Oh no,” I muttered, tensing further with dread.
The phone kept vibrating. I pictured it dancing off the table and shattering on the floor.
The heat seeped into my closed eyes. It got to the point where I thought for sure they were going to melt, just like the pale slugs in my parent’s yard used to sizzle away when we poured salt on them. Lashing out, I grabbed the phone while pushing the sheets away from my face.
