Still, there was no sense in acting mysterious.
Cleanup in the garage had taken him a little while longer than planned, but once he got into the old rhythm, the training wheels broke off on their own. The sturdiness and control he felt towards the end gave him much needed strength for what lie ahead.
Within minutes after bagging up the remains and bleaching the floor, he was back in his work clothes and on his way into the house. As he walked in from the cool air of the garage, the warm scented atmosphere of home filled his lungs and mind. Kicking his shoes off by the door, Wayne walked towards the light.
In the kitchen, he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. As he shut the fridge door and turned to leave the room, Ashley appeared in the empty doorway.
“Jeshit!” Ashley yelped as she nearly collided with Wayne's midsection. They both stopped just in time to keep from knocking each other down. Ashley looked up into Wayne's red-cheeked face, embarrassed. “Wayne, hey.”
Wayne cleared his throat. “Hey, Ash. How was school?”
At the mention of school her eyes quickly shot to the floor. For several tense moments, Ashley just stood there, studying the pearl white tiling. “I… they let us out early.”
The short hiccup in her speech told Wayne that she’d been up to something. He studied her the best he could without scrutinizing. In this process, he noticed the multitude of muddy prints on the kitchen floor and asked, “So… you walked home?”
“Yeah…” Ashley struggled with the choice to tell Wayne that Kieffer had been here. She also wondered if this conversation wasn’t a ruse. Wayne might have known the whole time that she and Kieffer had skipped. He could have waited somewhere until Ashley got nice and comfortable, letting her think she got away with it, and then catch her in the lie. All of this was paranoid thinking, she knew that, but lately Wayne had been acting strange. Ever since Kieffer came that day with his poster, Wayne hadn’t been quite right. Sure, on the surface he pitched his usually bad jokes and followed through his daily dad routines, but something was still off about him. He looked more a clone of his former self; a rubber Wayne bodysuit with someone else inside.
“What time did you get home?” Wayne asked, hoping it didn’t come out sounding too inquisitive. If she had indeed been here while he was in the garage, she might have heard something. And, if she did, he needed to explain it immediately before Sharon got home. Which, according to the cat clock hanging on the wall over the kitchen table, would be anywhere from five to ten minutes away. If there were questions, they needed to be asked now.
“I got home around… maybe, two or so?” Ashley said. Then, turning her gaze back to Wayne, she added, “Why, where’ve you been all this time? I gave up looking for you like an hour ago.”
Now it was Ashley who had the scrutinizing stare. Wayne felt her suspicions, and for a second, floundered at what to say. “I was—” his mind lagged as her eyes turned to liquid mercury, a trait that she inherited from Mama Bird. “I was in the garage. Cleaning up a bit.” Not wanting to dig himself a hole, he left it at that. Except the explanation only received further examination. Ashley’s hard stare deepened.
“So… you didn’t hear me when I came home?” she asked, trying to keep the tone of suspicion directed on Wayne instead of herself.
“No, must’ve been in the zone.” Wayne pushed a weak smile onto his face and held it there. Ashley’s eyes faltered and soon thawed back to room temperature.
“Oh, okay. Just wondering,” and with a little spin, she turned to leave. Just as she was about to cross the frame, she stopped and turned back to Wayne standing rigidly in the middle of the room. “Hey, I was wondering if it’d be okay if Kieffer came over tomorrow after school? Just for a couple hours to do homework.”
Wayne knew he had no choice in the matter, but for the sake of keeping up appearances, he said, “I’m sure it’s fine, but ask your mom when she gets home just to make sure, ok?” Another corny, capped-tooth smile spread across his face to smear the falseness in his words.
Ashley returned the smile and said, “Thanks, Wayne,” and left to go back to her room.
Wayne was left standing alone under the soft glow of the overhead bulb. He looked from the empty door to the muddy prints on the floor. What he saw caused him to drop on both knees and study the jumble of footprints with much intensity.
In the mud were three sets of prints. One Ashley’s, one his own.
The other, unknown.
It was possible that Ashley had gotten one pair of shoes muddy and changed out into another, left, then came back inside for some reason. The girl had to have at least six pairs of sneakers that she rotated almost daily. Only problem was, the prints were different sizes. These were obviously the tracks of another. But who?
The answer sprang up instantly. It wasn’t only the most logical but also the most inconvenient. Racing out into the backyard, Wayne walked the muddy track of lawn that ran the span of the house. Sure enough, he found that second set of footprints. Wayne followed them up to the garage window. He stood for a moment in the exact spot where the phantom shoeprints were and stared into the garage. The one-armed, blue-chipped vice smiled back at him through the dirty glass.
That little shitbird… he was here.
Panicked, Wayne scrambled back into the house, almost busting his ass when his feet hit the tiling. In his rush to conclusions he had forgotten to put on shoes, getting his socks caked in mush. As Wayne was whipping off his ruined dress socks and tossing them in the trash, he heard a car pull into the driveway out.
Sharon was home.
Wayne took several deep breaths trying to blur the confused rage that gnawed at him like nesting rats behind drywall. He breathed, counted back from twenty. Slightly calmer, he walked to the front door to give his usual welcome home hugs and kisses. One nagging thought tugged at his spinal cord like a bunk parachute in mid-dive:
Did he see anything? And if he did… how much?
Wayne didn’t think so. But then again, he did. Something inside him saw things that Wayne physically couldn't. It had heard—or rather, detected—an invading presence during the pre-harvest rituals and took note. This voice, along with the voices of countless souls, lipped the answers in condensed waves through the folds of Wayne’s brain.
The boy knows, the voice(s) hummed. He is known.
His skin broke out in goosebumps as the words skittered across the room. He wasn’t even out of the gate yet and already he’d gotten unwanted attention.
But how?? I was so careful; how did this happen??
The only simple explanation was that Kieffer stumbled onto it. As paranoid as Wayne was, he refused to believe that a pimple-popping pecker sniffer like Kieffer would be the one to figure out who he really was. Is.
Okay, Kieffer did see his hobby room, and he probably saw Wayne in the garage earlier, but what did that prove? Butt-fuckin’ nothin’, that’s what. Wayne was a licensed taxidermist, and even though killing housecats wasn’t legal, it wasn’t means for an FBI investigation. Wayne still had to do what was being asked of Them. He had no other choice. One nosey kid wasn’t going to stop Their plans. He knew that. Besides, he had protection from a higher plane; alien angels guiding him through rogue portals in space and time.
As he watched Sharon through the living room windows walk carefully up the drive in her new blood red stiletto shoes, it came to him.
They provided Wayne with a perfect solution.
And as Sharon walked in through the front door, she was greeted with open arms. Huge smile on her face, she dropped her bags and they embraced.
That knowing smile also peered over her shoulder. It was the smile of a man who can’t see.
The phony smile of the Thing under the suit.
Chapter 6
April 11, 2006
3:16 p.m.
Hampden, Maine
“If I see one more Black-Eyed Peas video, I’m gonna dropkick this TV in half,” Ashley said. Both she and Kieffer were sittin
g on the edge of her bed. Arms loosely clasped around each other, they watched music videos between short stints of “studying.” Heavy petting and grabbing aside, things were still slightly tense from the day before. He could feel it in her words, see it in her stride.
A woman never forgets. Sorry, bud.
Kieffer had been up most of the night planning every detail. The roundtable was in full session. Had been that night and all the next morning. The definitive plan was this: break into Wayne’s hobby room and gather evidence. What that evidence might look like, he didn’t know. Best case scenario, Kieffer would find a loose piece in one of the plaques, pocket it. Bring it to a lab to be tested for any biological clues. Anything.
Ashley had easily gotten both Wayne and Sharon’s blessings to have Kieffer over, but on one condition:
No closed doors.
What this was supposed to deter exactly, Ashley didn’t know. Every parent everywhere stands by this rule, as if a cold draft will keep two horny kids from humping each other. They were currently the only ones in the house, but for exactly how long was anyone’s guest. Still, the door to her bedroom stayed open. And from where he sat at the edge of her bed, Kieffer could see Wayne’s study standing shut at the end of the hall. Its brass knob gleamed back at him, winking, as he stole quick glances over Ashley’s shoulder during hugs.
Then, something inside him gave the first push.
Go. The time is now.
It was coincidently at the third viewing of Nickelback’s video “Photograph” that Phase 1 was initiated.
“Can I use your bathroom?” Kieffer asked casually, his arms finding their way back to his sides. Ashley shifted her warmness as Kieffer scooted off the bed and onto his feet.
“Shitter’s down the hall,” Ashley grunted, “but be careful. Plunger’s been out of commission since Taco Tuesday.” She smiled playfully up at him, teasing him with her wit.
“I’ll be sure to leave the door open so you can watch,” Kieffer heard himself say. The words came from his body but not from his head. And, in a way, he was grateful. There was too much in and on his mind right now. He did manage to cap his joke with a faint returned smile, as good of one as he could muster, and walked through the quicksand of the room into the dim hallway.
His slow descent down the hall dotted with greying eyes was treacherous. Left foot, right. Breathe. Left foot, right. Breathe. Each wobbly step, knees swollen and heavy, required more and more effort. Kieffer was finding it increasingly difficult to keep hold of himself.
Then—like an infrared explosion—he could feel seismic alien waves warping his vision. Tiny bullseye ripples bloomed out over the walls, the ceiling—thousands of dead eyes; wiping away the scummy top layer of consciousness. Knowing that he was caught in a full-blown reality hack with no way out, Kieffer took several deep breaths—as deep as his lungs would allow—and pushed forward.
He couldn’t stop. Not now.
Small links in the chain of his resolve started to crack when he noticed the line where the floor met the wall folding in on itself like runny pancake batter. Flipped too early on a hot skillet.
The walls too started the slow drip.
Curdled globs of wall, floor, and doors stretched and thinned with each new step; exposing depthless voids beyond the frail wire-framed box of his vision. Old photos and wallpaper ran to the floor, forming psychedelic puddles that swelled and stirred under the unseen pull. Mind unraveling at the seams, Kieffer’s calf muscles—two slabs of hot stone—pulsed under his skin. The soupy shag carpeting sucked hungrily at his feet; solid flooring liquifying into invisible saltwater taffy. Kieffer managed to pivot his body just enough to look back towards Ashley’s room.
There was nothing. No door, no hallway. Just empty space. Nowhere.
He had no choice but to keep moving.
Reality itself was shedding its skin. All things relative to what made up the physical landscape sizzled and popped. Borders and angles sluggishly pooled in jumbled stained lines at the invisible drain. The mixed colors and scattered shapes of what made up the surrounding room funneled down and down, like fat flakes of colorful dandruff. Once solid matter dribbled through the surfaceless glass-bottom boat that now held Kieffer in place amongst the growing void. Wasted shapes dissipated back into the sleepless null of blank space. Kieffer began to panic, still pulling his driftwood legs along in the wet sand, as everything but the hobby room door succumbed to the melt.
There it stood, surface so white against the black nothingness that it hurt his eyes. The door: a solid checkered square tumbling into the ever-fading background. A single white dove flying under the starless night sky. Not as a symbol of hope, but one of peace.
Peace of mind / Peace of self.
Even through the endless static blizzard trying to whitewash his mind, Kieffer knew he could outlast the effect. Eventually it would go away. He would get his answers.
More determined than ever, he signaled his planks to move.
Years/seconds later, he reached the door’s lonely asteroid. As his trembling fingers stretched out for the knob, the sudden cold kiss of brass freed the phantom pull on his body. In an instant, the hallway and its many laminate eyes were back where they belonged. The sensation of being forever lost no longer strangled him.
Looking over his shoulder, Kieffer saw Ashley’s room returned to its place at the end of the hall. She sat on her bed as before, feet pulled under herself, somehow more beautiful than ever. Making sure she wasn’t watching, Kieffer embraced the door. With both hands, he slowly turned the knob.
Unlocked.
Strange… wouldn’t have guessed Wayne to be so–
With no time to speculate on his luck, he had to act in the moment. This was his one and only chance to get real evidence. Truth. Slipping past the frame into the acidic blackness, Kieffer quietly shut the door behind him before flicking on the lights.
Heavenly luminescence cut the room; miniature murder scenes materialized on all four walls.
Kieffer again found himself staring in awe at the sheer magnitude. Just as he had upon his first visit to Wayne’s Room of Death.
All those kids… always kids…
Snapping himself back into focus, he slowly walked to the table at the far end of the room. Underneath were two small metal filing cabinets. Both standing at each end. He knelt to the one on the right first and started opening drawers. Most were neatly filed, each containing a single element for Wayne’s hobby.
The first drawer held various heavy-gauged needles and twine.
The second: dozens of boxes of pipe cleaners, tubes of industrial super glue.
The third and last on that side had a stack of cloth patterns and colored spools of thread, presumably for tailoring the miniature clothes.
As Kieffer closed the drawer, a twinge of panic tapped him on the shoulder. Still crouching, he whipped his head to the door. His eyes bulged as he scanned the rooms beyond with blood-swollen ears. He could faintly hear the TV in Ashley’s room. The soft squeaking of her mattress told him she was still on her bed. Still on pins, Kieffer hunkered down a little while longer, his sore knees creaking in defiance against his weight. Once he was sure it was okay, he stood.
After letting the blood run through his legs a little, he crossed the table and knelt to the other cabinet. Starting from the top, he gently slid open the drawer. Sitting alone, barely visible at the bottom of the dark cabinet, was a single faded-red notebook.
Its placement struck him as peculiar. It was the only thing in the entire drawer, cover faceup, as if someone left it for others to find. Careful—as if sticking his hands into an open bear trap instead of a filing cabinet—Kieffer delicately pulled out the notebook and opened it.
Finally, he had it.
Hands numb, the mouth of pages opened wide; a hundred tongues and stale breath. Each sheet was covered in faded scribbles of black and red ink. Nearly every ghostly blue line full of random names, dates, and doodles.
These were the names
of the damned.
Little stick figures, oval skulls no bigger than matchheads, ran across the frayed margins of every page of the red book. In each doodle, one stick figure chased another slightly smaller figure. The actions ran from left to right like the Sunday comics. On some pages the bigger stickman had a gun or knife, and on a couple, a little red gas can. Each story ran the span of one page and almost all ended the same way.
The big stick man chases the little stick man. The little stick man tries to jump the book’s crease, but falls on the other side. The big stick man’s legs are much longer. He clears the crease easily, practically landing on top of the little stick man. Yet, he lets the little stick man pogo to his feet, waits a couple inches, then lunges the rest of the page.
All the endings are the same, but different.
The big stick man either pulls, pries, or blows the little stick man apart; sets him on fire, chops off his head, breaks off all his limbs, removes his scribbly insides, or peels his inked flesh. Like a bad Peanuts strip, the bigger stick figure always caught the little one in the end. Only instead of the football gag, it was a perpetual blood orgy that snaked its way through the margins of a hand-written collection of child obituaries. The artist of the comics even added little symbols, ones familiar to any detective working the Doll Man case—all branded either under or around the final scene. Names and dates were written then re-written in multiple hands through a single physical projection. A secular vessel.
Wayne.
Faded blotches of deep maroon stained several pages. And in one drawing, a clear thumbprint. Pressed in blood.
This is how he remembers. He stopped killing, but he never wanted to forget.
Kieffer flipped to the very last page of the book. Only two blank sheets remained.
Ionic Resurgence Page 5
