Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  Eventually, drinks were done and dishes were cleared, and I walked my guests down to the boat. Bill kept a firm grip on the doctor’s elbow as they went slowly across the clearing in front of the cabin. As we stood out on the dock, the northern sky was clear and full of stars, none of which were reflected in the black water. The night was warm, but I felt like I needed a jacket.

  “Getting choppy,” Bill said. “Gonna storm tonight for sure.”

  Molly put her hand on the doctor’s arm. “You’ve got the key,” she said. “You’re sure you’ll be all right by yourself tonight?”

  I hardly dared to breathe.

  “Actually,” Bill interrupted, “he’s going fishing up to the Bear Lake falls with me in the morning. You know I leave before the sun’s up. We’ll give him a bed at the marina.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Roy said. “I’m going to teach Bill how to fish. That should keep me busy for at least tomorrow.”

  “Two old fools,” Diane told Molly. “Be a miracle if they don’t both fall out of the boat.”

  We laughed and I shook hands with Roy and Bill. I kissed Diane and then Kate, who stretched up to whisper in my ear. “Take care of my niece, Michael. You both need some healing.”

  Molly and I stood and watched Bill ease the white boat back from the dock, the engine burbling softly. There was a clunk as he shifted forward and then the exhaust note rose higher and they headed for the reach. There was a gentle series of splashes on the rocks lining the shore as their wash reached us. We stood and watched the craft’s tiny red and green lights until they vanished.

  “Am I being presumptuous--staying?” she asked.

  “Maybe a little,” I answered.

  She peered at me in the dark and then caught my smile. I caught her wrist as she swung at me, and we walked, laughing, back to the cabin.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sam and Mike Latta,

  Marietta, Georgia, Tuesday, September 6, 1985:

  Sam opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. It was morning, and it felt late. He had a general sense of dread and regret and was in no hurry to identify the reason. His eyes fell on Jenny’s side table across the bed. He knew that the drawers were full of her detritus, but he had not opened them in the year and a half since her death. He was careful not to trespass on her side of the bed. Unless the sheets were being changed, her half stayed made, even when he was sleeping. Sam knew that she was dead. He didn’t harbor illusions that he was saving the scene for her, but he did it anyway.

  The fight with Mike last night came back to him, and his spirit sank. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. The nearly empty vodka bottle on his own side table accused him. He groaned and went into the bathroom. Then he dressed and went downstairs. He was relieved to hear his son in the kitchen. There were vacuum tracks in the hall carpet. The jumble of mail on the small table by the front door was neatly stacked. It appeared that Mike had set the house in order while Sam slept. It felt like the worst kind of portent. He fought the strange urge to upend the table, to scatter the contents of the coat closet, to roll the clock back, perhaps to ward off what was happening here.

  Mike stood at the sink, finishing up the dishes. Sam leaned in the doorway.

  “House looks great,” he said.

  The son didn’t look up from the soapy water.

  “About last night,” Sam said. “I’m just worried about you. I got pretty upset, and I shouldn’t have.”

  There was long silence. Mike turned the water off and began to wipe the drain board.

  Sam took a breath, and persisted. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Mike didn’t answer and, in one of those strange, rare moments that none of us recognize when they are happening, the course of both lives changed. If he had spoken, everything would have been different, but his hurt was too great, and hope went spinning off into the darkness.

  Mercifully, for the rest of his life he didn’t distinguish those few seconds for what they were. Ignorance is our doctor, our healer. If we knew what we did, our lives would be paralyzed by regret. We streak like comets, unaware of the wide tails we leave behind.

  “You still leaving?” Sam asked.

  Mike nodded. The night before, he had announced his intention to move to California. His girlfriend of three years, a sharp and pretty blonde who had always seemed to Sam to be about ten steps ahead of his son, had dumped him. She was attending a university in Paris, France. The decision was sudden and final. Sam suspected that her well-to-do parents had facilitated the change to distance her from Mike and the possibility of a young marriage.

  Just like so, she was gone. A bright, glittering future stretched in front of her, one that included other men. Mike’s grief was bottomless. He was going somewhere, anywhere that didn’t hold her ghost, the streets she had walked on, the things she had known.

  Sam had told him angrily that there were other girls. Mike was an indifferent student and Sam had begged favors from academic contacts to get his admission to Georgia Tech in the fall. If he left for California, a second chance was unlikely. Sam told him that if he got in his truck and drove to the west coast, there could be no coming back.

  He told his son that there was an entire world full of girls with cute laughs, clean hair, and shiny teeth. He told him that his youth was magnifying the importance of this girl and distorting his lust into some pretense of love. He told his son that he knew nothing, understood nothing. He was deserting his future to make a wretched gesture to this girl, who couldn’t care less.

  In truth, there would never again be a first love, this love, for Mike. There would be other loves, but this was a loss that scarred, and Sam knew it. He was a man who kept the ashes of his great love on a shelf in his bedroom closet. He understood the depth of his son’s grief. If Mike had spoken, everything would have been different, but Sam’s fear was too great, and his son went spinning off to the other side of the country.

  The morning passed, and father and son found themselves on the front veranda. They shook hands awkwardly.

  “Well, good luck,” Sam said. “Call me.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Mike said. “I will.”

  Sam desperately wanted to ask Mike where he was planning to go and how to reach him. He was deeply afraid of giving the journey credibility if he did. Better to dismiss it, and perhaps Mike would abandon the idea. He watched the old blue truck turn the corner at the end of the street, and his heart broke. All of the next years would have been different if he had said, “I love you,” but he knew that his son didn’t want to hear it.

  In his truck, Mike thought bitterly that Sam hadn’t even wanted to know where he was going. He looked at his childhood home in his rear view mirror before he turned the corner. He felt the loss of his mother and his father both, and his heart broke. All of the next years would have been different if he had said, “I love you,” but he knew that his father didn’t want to hear it.

  ***

  Present Day:

  The moon had crossed to the other side of the cabin, and we lay in the dimness, drowsing.

  “Do you ever want kids again?” Molly asked.

  I was startled awake. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Just answer me.”

  “I’m a little old, Molly. That time’s come and gone for me.”

  “For me, too, maybe. Doesn’t mean I can’t ask the question.” She sat up in bed. “I’ll just tell you...” she started.

  She was silent again. I saw her jaw working against what she needed to say, and I felt dread wash through me like a strange drug. My face felt cold. I knew that she was ending us.

  At last, she spoke. “You told me that you’d never risk another child, not after losing your daughter. Well, you have another one on the way. I’m not going to try to force you, or even ask you to be a part of it.” She turned and looked at me, into me. “I decided today to tell you it was someone else’s. I knew that would break your heart, but I thought maybe would be kinder to you in the long run. You deserve mo
re credit than that, I guess.”

  The world around the cabin seemed to slow down and stop. I realized that my own eternity hung in question. Everything about me, no matter how this worked out, was changed in this scene.

  “How do you feel about it?” I asked.

  “I’ve waited my whole life for this,” she said simply. “Better late than never.”

  “Part of me died with my daughter. That’s never going to heal, not in this world. I said I’d never dream of having another child--but right now I’m wondering what Abby would say if she knew.”

  “I imagine she does know.”

  Molly was crying. So was I.

  “My answer is absolutely yes,” I said. “I feel like I’m alive again.”

  “Do you really think we’re too old for this?” she asked, her mouth moving against my neck.

  “We’re probably just about old enough, I’d say.”

  We held each other for what seemed like hours. Outside the screen door, the lake went about its night-time business and we heard none of it. We might have even dozed. After a long time, I spoke.

  “What about us?” I asked.

  “What about us? We’ll figure it out, won’t we?”

  “We will. Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “Don’t call the baby ‘it.’ We have weeks before we know. It’s still too early. I think ‘Sam’ works as a name either way, don’t you?”

  “It works fine,” I said. “My dad would be pleased.”

  “Have you been thinking more about your father?” she asked.

  “Some, yes. I guess I feel closer to him than I did when he was alive.”

  “What’s going through your mind?

  “I suppose I admire him,” I said. “I admire him for what he did as a kid, and I admire him for somehow living with it afterward. He should have been in therapy after he killed those guys. He was ten years old, and instead of getting help, he had to keep a secret. He was damaged. Damaged for good.”

  “He went on to get married, though,” she said. “He had a career. We both saw your mother in the church, Mike. She came to see you, and to let you know that they were together again.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “Not sure. Woman’s intuition, I think.”

  She patted my shoulder and arranged my arm for a pillow.

  Her breathing steadied and she got heavier on my shoulder, and I knew she was asleep. I felt myself drifting, and I realized that I felt secure for the first time in a long while. The big dog padded in from the main room, his nails clicking softly on the wood floor. His white shape drifted into and then out of my field of vision as he went to Molly’s side of the bed. He sighed loudly as he settled to the floor beside her, and then he was quiet.

  There was movement high up in the darkest corner of the room. My eyes slowly adjusted, and I realized that it was a small figure, a child. Eli was back. He sat in the rafters, swinging his feet back and forth, into and out of the moon’s shine. My hand rested on the pillow in front of my face. Barely moving my arm, I gave him a small wave. His shape shifted in the darkness and he waved back. I fell asleep.

  I woke up the next morning to an empty bed. The air from the open window was cool and fresh, and the early sun through the leaves stained everything green. The day was as weightless as I was. I could see the dock from the window. Molly’s boat was gone.

  There was a note for me on the bedroom door. She had left early for Huntsville. She taught a summer class a couple of mornings a week and promised to find me later. Out of the shower, I found Blue asleep and sprawled across the kitchen floor.

  “Let’s go get coffee,” I said.

  He picked up his head and looked at me doubtfully.

  “Might be a donut for you.”

  He scrambled to his feet.

  “Stupid’s all an act, isn’t it?”

  I herded him to the boat. The trip down the lake was fresh and cool. There was no boat traffic at the marina. I knew that Bill and the doctor had probably left to fish in Bill’s boat hours before. We walked to the dirt parking area where I kept my truck. Opening the passenger door, I helped Blue up into the old yellow Jeep then went around and pushed him out of the driver’s seat.

  The lakefront road was empty. I didn’t see another car until I left the marina road to join the early highway traffic for the two miles into Ansett. In a couple of hours, the cars would be bumper to bumper as summer residents flooded in for liquor, groceries, and socializing, but this early, the downtown streets carried only a trickle of early shoppers. I had no trouble finding a parking spot near the coffee shop.

  I wanted to say hello to Kate. I’d missed her, and with the imminent baby, she was now my family as well as Molly’s. She was also the most psychically in-tune person that I’d ever met, and I needed advice.

  There was a scattering of early locals at the tables inside. The air was fragrant with baked goods and coffee beans.

  Kate spotted me, wiped her hands, and came around the counter. She kissed my cheek. “Congratulations,” she said.

  I may have looked surprised, because she smiled. “I know you have the news. Your face gives you away. Looks good on you.” She went behind the counter. Kate never said too much. “Sit down,” she called “Pie?”

  “As long as it’s not Saskatoon berry,” I said.

  She burst out laughing. She joined me shortly with a slice of cherry for me and coffee for both of us. “Dinner was good last night,” she said. “I enjoyed the whole evening. You and Molly are natural together. You’ll make good parents, I think.”

  “Thanks. I hope so. There’s something else I didn’t mention, Kate. I wanted your take on it.”

  I told her about the call I had received while I waited for my plane in Atlanta, and again standing on my dock. It was the same caller from the very beginning. I know what you did. I described the silent malice I had felt on the other end of the line.

  “Sounds crazy,” I said, “but I’m almost wondering if there’s something supernatural at work. Seems like all of the major players are dead now.”

  She shook her head. “Not typical. I’d be surprised. Manipulation of electronics is interesting, but more suited to movies than real life, in my experience. It does sound like spirits aren’t at rest, though, especially the old woman who hung herself. You said earlier that she spoke to you even though she appeared to be dead?”

  “Wanda was dead, Kate. It was her dead body. There’s no possibility she was still alive. I could even smell that she’d messed herself when it happened. Then she opened her eyes and talked to me, and it turned into someone else. She was trying to get down, get the noose off. It was hard to watch that and not run over to help. I have a feeling it would have been a horror if I had.”

  “You said her mother committed suicide in the same spot?’ she asked.

  “Yes, same spot, probably even the same roof beam. It was in the 1940s, after she lost her husband. I’m thinking it was her I saw right before I ran out, because it definitely wasn’t Wanda anymore.”

  “If there was already negative energy in that store...it’s the same store where your dad...”

  “Yes, it’s where my dad shot and killed the two men.”

  “Another violent death is like putting fresh batteries in a flashlight. The mother’s suicide poisoned the place. Powerful energy.”

  “Can something like that hurt you? Was I in danger?”

  “It’s funny how that question always seems to relate to the physical, as if only our bodies can really be hurt.” She thought for a moment, looking into my eyes. “Physically, no, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s a fright show. It’s make-believe, in a way. It can’t really touch you, can’t hurt you or kill you, although I’m sure there are those who dispute that. Mentally is different. It’s an enormous amount of negativity, a barrage of harmful energy. How did you feel afterward?”

  “Beat up,” I said. “Invaded, assaulted. Sick.”

  She nodded. “That
being said, it would make sense for you to actively avoid energy like that for a while. Stay away from the ghosties and the places where they like to go. Make sense?”

  “I will if I can.”

  “Kind of hard, living where you do, but try. More coffee?”

  She got up and was busy behind the counter for a few minutes. When she returned with fresh cups, I had thought of something else.

  “Kinda funny that three people died violently there, and there doesn’t seem to be a trace of the father or the uncle.”

  Kate sat very still and rubbed her thumb back and forth on the handle of her cup. She took a sip and looked up at me. “We don’t really know why some folks hang around,” she said, “and others don’t. Some souls are gone on their way before the bodies start to cool down, and others stay here for generations. I can only tell you that the hauntings that I’ve experienced are pretty consistent. There’s always a reason. It isn’t random. Hauntings are just delays. A human haunt always moves on eventually. There’s a castle in the UK that was reliably haunted for two hundred years, with regular visitations by the same person. They did tours. The sightings stopped forty years ago, completely. Everyone moves on eventually.

  “I don’t think time is the same over there,” she went on, “or matters as much. I lived in a house in Toronto years ago that seemed to be haunted by the spirit of a little girl. Molly saw her, as a matter of fact, several times when she was young. So did I. We heard her from time to time in different parts of the house, always calling for her mother. I looked into it and found an eight year-old girl had died of influenza in...1928, or something like that...in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They found her dead in bed one morning.”

  “Awful,” I said.

  “Over time, she stopped showing up. It made me sad to think of her wandering that house for half a century. She was completely innocent, and clearly lost. Eventually I realized that all those years might have been a couple of minutes for her. I like to think her mother came ’round finally to pick her up. Anyway, look at your ghosts as if they were alive, and it might help you figure out the whys. There’s always a reason.”