“We . . .” She hesitated. She figured they’d probably had dinner, watched a movie on DVD, maybe made love before turning in for the night . . . but she had no specific memory of doing any of these things with Walter tonight. In fact, the memories she did have were hazy, generic ones . . . almost as if they weren’t real memories at all, but someone else’s, memories that had been told to her but which she’d never actually lived.
It’s the after-effects of whatever drug he used to knock you out, she told herself. That’s all.
“You can’t, can you?”
She wanted to smack the smug smile off his face, and she might have too, if her hands hadn’t been taped together. “Let me make this clear: I don’t believe you, and while I probably should humor you, right now I’m too pissed off to do it. But, assuming that what you’re saying is true, why don’t you tell me how this little psychodrama of yours is supposed to play out?”
“It’s all very symbolic. We’re going to drive to Stephens Watch, the place where –”
“You asked me to marry you.”
“Where I asked Karen to marry me. And then I’m going to do exactly as Dr. Naislund suggested. I’m going to release my anger, every goddamned bit of it, once and for fucking all.”
In her mind, she saw Stephens Watch – the most scenic spot in Krahling Hills. The area had been shaped thousands of years ago when the great glaciers moved southward, molding the land during their tortuously slow passage across what was now Ohio. Most people thought of the Midwest as nothing but dull, flat plains, but here in southwest Ohio the countryside consisted of deep, lush valleys and beautiful tree-covered hills that, if not quite mountains, were nevertheless breathtaking in their own right. Stephens Watch was located at the top of the largest hill in the area, the highest point of elevation in southwest Ohio. People came from all over Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and even further to park at the observation point, get out of their vehicles, walk over to the safety railing, and gaze upon mile after mile of verdant forestland spread out before them, feeling as if they were gods looking down from the heavens. It was a prime spot for taking photos and video, and she remembered doing that very thing, snapping pictures with her digital camera, when Walter tapped her on the shoulder. She’d turned around, irritated because Walter had caused her to muff her latest shot, but she forgave him instantly when she saw the diamond ring he held out to her. It wasn’t a huge diamond by any means, but it glittered in the sunlight like a stone five times the size, and she instantly fell in love with it and, without waiting for Walter to formally ask her to marry him, she’d said, With all of my heart, and then leaned forward to kiss him.
But according to Walter, it was someone else’s memory, not hers. She wasn’t real.
She was about to ask him how she could have any memories at all if she wasn’t real, how she could possibly feel or think. But before she could speak, a terrible thought occurred to her. She remembered what Walter had said.
I’m going to do exactly as Dr. Naislund suggested. I’m going to release my anger, every goddamned bit of it, once and for fucking all . . . It’s all very symbolic.
At Stephens Watch.
She remembered what he’d said about the duct tape around her wrists and ankles.
It’s just that I didn’t know how you were going to react, and I thought restraining you would make things easier. For both of us.
“You’re planning to kill me, aren’t you? You’re going to park at Stephens Watch and then throw me over the safety railing.” She surprised herself by how calm she sounded. There was a damn good reason the state had installed the railing there. Though most of the hills in the area possessed gradual slopes, at Stephens Watch it was a sheer drop straight down to a rocky outcropping below – nearly two hundred feet, according to a helpful information sign the Ohio Park Service had erected at the site.
Walter didn’t answer right away, and when he spoke, his tone was apologetic. “It’s nothing personal, Joy. I just need to get on with my life, you know? My unresolved feelings about my past relationships are holding me back . . . dragging me down. I can’t get anyone to go out on a date with me, and I may lose my job because I’m a fucking drunk. My life is in the toilet, and the only way I can crawl out of it is to . . .” He trailed off.
“Kill me,” she finished for him, her voice soft, tone hollow.
“Look, I’ve already told you, it’s just symbolic. I’m role-playing in my imagination, acting out both parts – yours and mine. You’re not really here, not really real, so there’s nothing to worry about. Everything will be okay once it’s over. You’ll see.” A sideways glance, a snorting laugh. “Well, maybe you won’t, but you get the idea.”
The road began to level off, and she knew they were drawing near Stephens Watch.
There was no question in her mind that Walter was insane. That he’d never shown the slightest sign of madness during their entire marriage didn’t matter. Maybe he had a brain tumor or something, or maybe he’d just snapped for no reason at all. That happened sometimes, didn’t it? How many times did you read it in the newspaper? He was such a nice man. Quiet, polite . . . You’d never in a million years guess he’d do anything like that. However it had happened, whatever the cause, Walter had gone ‘round the proverbial bend, and she was going to be forced to take a fatal swan dive off Stephens Watch as part of her husband’s twisted “therapy” – unless she did something and did it fast.
But what? Lunge across the seat and slam into his shoulder, hopefully causing him to lose control of the car? What good would that do? If they wrecked, she’d be just as likely to get hurt as Walter. And with her hands bound as they were, she wouldn’t be able to work the release on the seat belt fast enough to surprise him anyway. He’d know what she was trying to do, and he’d be ready.
Walter eased off the accelerator, and the car slowed. The headlights passed over a metal sign, raised letters spelling out STEPHENS WATCH; behind it, curving along the edge of the hill, the thin green metal bars of the safety railing.
The car had slowed enough that she might be able to jump for it. But even if she could undo her seatbelt, and unlock and open the door, and not break too many bones when she hit the asphalt, her legs would still be bound with duct tape. What could she do? Make a hop for it?
Walter pulled the Chevy into the empty gravel parking lot, rocks crunching and pinging beneath the tires. Brakes squealed as he brought the car to a stop, put it in park, and shut off the engine. The beater’s ancient motor knocked and sputtered a couple times, the car rocking slightly from side to side before finally falling silent.
Walter sat staring straight ahead for several moments, expression unreadable. He’d left the headlights on, the wash of light making the safety rail’s green paint look sour yellow. But though the light continued past the railing, it did nothing to illuminate the darkness beyond.
“Walter, honey, you have to listen to me.” She fought to keep the desperation she felt out of her voice. She wanted him to think she was speaking out of love and concern, not simply out of fear for her own life. “Whatever’s wrong, we can deal with it together. I’ll do anything to help you, sweetheart. I-I love you.” Her voice broke on the word love, and she prayed he hadn’t noticed.
He turned to her then, his expression cold and dispassionate. “Love? What do you know about love? What do any of you know about it?” He turned away from her, unlocked the car door, and shoved it open. He got out and walked around the back of the Chevy, shoes crunching gravel, tread fast and determined. Then he was outside the passenger window, grabbing the door handle, yanking the door open, and reaching inside for her.
“C’mon, Joy. Our little play has just about reached its climax.” He pressed the button to release her seatbelt, then grabbed hold of her bare upper arm. His fingers sank into the soft flesh of her slender arm, and she drew in a hissing breath as he tightened his grip. She imagined she could feel the tips of his fingernails scraping against her bone.
He pulle
d her out of the car, and she gasped as the cold night air sank icy teeth into her skin, slicing through the sheer fabric of her dress as if it wasn’t there. She winced as her bare feet pressed down on sharp gravel. Bound as her ankles were, she couldn’t shift her weight to find a more comfortable stance, but sore feet were the least of her problems right now.
Walter half-carried, half-dragged her across the gravel toward the safety rail, muttering beneath his breath the entire way. “Fucking bitches, goddamned cunts, oozy-coozies . . .”
When they reached the railing, he stopped, grabbed her shoulders, and turned her around to face him. They stood in the wash of the Chevy’s headlights – a spotlight for the final act in Walter’s theatre of insanity – and though she expected his eyes to be dancing with madness, she was startled by how calm they were. No, more than that: how serene.
“I’d like to say that this is going to hurt me more than it does you, but you know what? This isn’t going to hurt me at all. In fact, if this works like Dr. Naislund says it will, I should be feeling pretty fucking good in the next few moments.” His grip on her shoulders tightened, his muscles tensed, and she knew he was preparing to shove her over the railing to tumble down, down onto the jagged rocks far below.
A memory flashed through her mind. Karen . . . no, she – Joy – kissing him right here, on this very spot, seconds after he’d asked her to marry him. She remembered the words she (Karen-Joy) had spoken just before the kiss, and she said them now.
“With all of my heart.”
A look of confusion passed across his face, and before he could react, she leaned forward, opened her mouth, pressed her lips against his, gently sucked his lower lip between her teeth and bit down as hard as she could.
Walter shrieked and pulled back at the same time he shoved her away. Unable to maintain her balance with her ankles duct-taped together, she fell backward onto her rear, a sizeable chunk of Walter’s lip clenched between bloody teeth. She saw Walter stumble backward – blood streaming over his chin, pattering onto his jacket – then he turned as if to run, and lunged forward . . . straight into the waist-high safety rail. Disoriented and in pain, he’d turned the wrong way.
It happened fast. He smacked into the railing, pitched forward and over, and then was lost to darkness. Walter released an inarticulate cry that might have been at attempt to say “Joy” but which could just as easily have been a try at “fuck you, bitch.” That sound was followed by several solid-meaty thuds as he bounced on the way down – evidently the drop wasn’t quite as steep as the park services sign made it out to be – and then all she could hear was her own ragged breathing.
She turned her head to spit out the bloody piece of lip, and then flopped onto her side, rolled over onto her elbows and knees, and managed to maneuver herself into a standing position. Shivering, and not only from the old, she shuffled cautiously up to the railing and peered over.
The blue-white glow of the almost-full moon illuminated the bottom of Stephens Watch sufficiently for her to make out Walter’s body. He was lying face down, head at an unnatural angle, arms and legs twisted out of shape like the soft boneless limbs of a rag doll. He wasn’t alone, though. The bodies of a dozen women lay scattered around him, all in various states of decomposition, all slender, all wearing green dresses and nothing else, all possessing long black hair.
You have Laurie’s eyes, Susan’s figure, Karen’s long black hair . . . and you’re wearing my favorite outfit of Karen’s. She wore that dress when we went to Mexico on our honeymoon. She had no bra or underwear on, either. Said it made her feel sexy to go commando.
Laurie, Susan, Karen . . . Karen Joy.
She knew she wasn’t looking at a dozen different women, women Walter had selected to kill because they fit a certain image out of his fantasies. She was looking at the same woman a dozen times over. Looking at herself.
Evidently Walter’s special therapy hadn’t worked the first time, or even the twelfth.
“At least you were persistent,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”
As the women at the bottom of Stephens Watch began to fade into the moonlight, as Joy looked down and realized she could see the Chevy’s headlights shining through her chest and stomach, she had the satisfaction of knowing that, if this play was finally over, at least one of her had been able to rewrite the ending.
Impressions in Oak
by Ronald Kelly
Originally appeared in MIDNIGHT GRINDING & OTHER TWILIGHT TERRORS, published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2008
Ronald Kelly was born and raised in the hills and hollows of Middle Tennessee. He became interested in horror as a child, watching the local "Creature Feature" on Saturday nights and "The Big Show"---a Nashville-based TV show that presented every old monster movie ever made ---in the afternoons after school. In high school, his interest turned to horror literature and he read such writers as Poe, Lovecraft, Matheson, and King. He originally had dreams of becoming a comic book artist and created many of his own super heroes. But during his junior year, the writing bug bit him and he focused his attention on penning short stories and full-length novels. To date, he has had ten novels and eight short fiction collections published. In 1992, his audio-book, DARK DIXIE, was included on the nominating ballot for a Grammy Award.
He currently lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife, Joyce, his two daughters, Reilly and Makenna, and his son, Ryan (Bubba)
“Bullshit!” said Todd Hampton with a wave of dismissal.
“It’s true,” declared Darrell Yates. “I saw it with my own eyes!”
Todd took a long draw of draft beer from his mug, then wiped the foam of the head from his beard. “Aw, why don’t you just give it a rest, Darrell? You know that crap about the face on the tree is just an old wives’ tale and that’s all.”
The lanky truck driver glared at his buddy, who sat at the far end of the tavern’s long bar. “I’m just telling you what I saw, Todd. It was her, big as day, staring at me from the trunk of that big black oak on the Old Logging Road. The girl went to high school with me. I’d recognize her anywhere.”
Todd laughed out loud. “And I reckon you could tell the color of her hair, too, ain’t that right?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah,” said Darrell. He poured two fingers of Jim Beam into a shot glass and downed it as if it were buttermilk. “Auburn red it was, just like I remember back in school.”
“Like I said before,” scoffed Todd with shake of his head. “Pure, Grade-A bullshit!”
Darrell’s lean face turned as solemn as stone. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Hell, no!” said Todd. “But liquor can cloud a man’s mind sometimes. You know that as well as I do. When you’ve enough whiskey in your system, you could end up seeing pert near anything.”
“I was stone-cold sober!” claimed Darrell. “I saw it, I tell you! I swear I did.”
“Saw what, Darrell?” asked a voice from the far side of the barroom. “What did you see?”
Todd and Darrell turned toward the front door and instantly grew silent. Danny Ray Fulton had entered the Bloody Bucket during their bantering debate and they hadn’t even noticed. Darrell stiffened up and stared at the bottom of his empty shot glass, afraid to look up. Todd, on the other hand, glanced over at the tall, broad-shouldered man. Danny Ray was one of the many unchanging aspects of Bedloe County. The big man with the oily shock of black hair and the brooding eyes looked the same as he had for the past fifteen years. His daily schedule was as predictable as his physical appearance. He worked all day laying asphalt for the state, then spent what little free time he had at the county’s only beer joint, drowning his troubles in hard liquor and mournful country tunes on the jukebox. Everyone at the Bucket understood why Danny Ray drank so much.
They would, too, if they were married to a bed-hopping whore like Lizzie Fulton, and had to put up with a squawling brood of five snot-nosed kids, half of them not even the product of his own loins.
All eyes in the bar – except for Darrell’s – were on Danny Ray as he slammed the door behind him and crossed the room to the bar. His muddy brown eyes, which held that customary expression torn somewhere between angry contempt and hang-dog misery, centered on the lanky truck driver as he chose a stool and sat down.
“I asked you a question, Yates,” he said flatly. “Exactly what did you see out on the Old Logging Road?”
“Nothing,” mumbled Darrell. “I didn’t see nothing.”
Danny Ray knew the man was lying and also knew the reason why. “You’ve been talking that crap again, haven’t you? That bullshit about Betsy Lou.”
He glanced over at Todd Hampton for confirmation, but Todd was keeping out of it. His eyes were centered on his work-callused hands and the day’s worth of dirt that had accumulated beneath the fingernails.
“What about it, Vince?” Danny Ray asked the Bucket’s owner and bartender. The middle-aged man with the bald head and the collection of faded tattoos on his brawny arms stood behind the bar, thumbing through an issue of Hustler.
Vince Schofield, who had never liked Darrell or his habit of idle boasting, grinned with tobacco-stained teeth and nodded his head.
Danny Ray’s rage cranked up a couple of notches. “What did I tell you about spreading those damn rumors, Darrell? That tree up yonder is just a tree and nothing else.”
The liquor in Darrell’s stomach momentarily quelled his fear of the brawny road worker and he glared boldly into Danny Ray’s eyes. “How the hell would you know? You ain’t been up there lately, have you? The last time you were up there on the Old Logging Road was the night it happened… the night you killed Betsy Lou Brown.”
Danny Ray lost his temper then. His big, work-hardened fist lashed out, catching Darrell across the bridge of his nose. With a yelp, Darrell fell back off his barstool, blood running feely from his nostrils. He hit the floor hard on his ass with enough force to make his teeth rattle.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 3
