Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction

by James Newman Benefit Anthology

  Tanya was sleek, muscular and tanned, with brown eyes and long, straight blond hair. She also had a smile that made my knees weak. I met her when she came over to the house with her mother, dragged along to one of the many social functions that happened at our place as a result of my parents’ occupations.

  Not very surprisingly, Tanya’s parents had jobs at the university. Damned near everybody in our neighborhood made a living in connection with the university, it seemed. I was just meeting her, but our parents had known each other for years.

  Was it love at first sight? No, but I think I wanted it to be.

  Before we could get to know each other too well, Jack and his family joined the get together. It wasn't a formal college function, but several families came over to make Tanya and her parents feel welcome.

  Jack was smiling and charming and as friendly as could be, and Tanya and everyone else stood in awe of him and the changes he’d gone through. I was happy of course, but I was maybe a little jealous, too.

  Jack and Tanya hit it off quickly. There was an instant chemistry between them and even if I wanted Tanya to notice me first and foremost, I could see the attraction for what it was.

  Less than two weeks later, the two of them were an item. Maybe not formally going steady or any of that stuff, but definitely holding hands between classes and spending their free time with each other a lot more than they were with me.

  Don’t misunderstand that. I still saw them both regularly. I saw Jack on an almost daily basis and I saw Tanya at school and on the occasions when we all managed to hang out. We weren’t strangers, but I had my own interests and they had each other. Was I jealous? Yes, I won’t lie about it. But I was also happy for Jack.

  Jack got the golden-haired girl, and I started seeing Leigh Ann Wilmont, of the fiery hair and penchant for drama. I swear to you, I must have spent as much time arguing with her on the phone as we ever did being happy together. Still, she was a great kisser and I wouldn’t have traded my time with her for the world.

  Everyone seemed relatively happy, until Tanya’s dogs disappeared.

  I can remember their names well enough: Tazz, the German shepherd, and Blue, a mutt that was loud and obnoxious, but also a friendly enough pooch. They disappeared one week apart. Tazz vanished first, and then Blue.

  Tanya was devastated, of course. They had been her dogs for years, and though they’d been known to slip their collars a time or two, they’d always come back home shortly afterwards. I remember talking to her about it when Blue vanished.

  Jack was off in the woods; something that he’d started doing again as his health increased. Tanya came by looking for him and for Blue, and before I knew it, we were talking about the strange events happening in her life.

  Have you ever noticed how sometimes things happen right under your nose and you never pay any attention? Well, apparently I was guilty of that sin. Tazz had vanished and now Blue and I thought that was peculiar, but apparently I was mistaken. Several people had lost their pets in the last few weeks. I simply hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention because my family never had pets and frankly, the mysteries of the female mind and body were far more fascinating topics to me.

  Tanya was a wreck, and so I promised to go with her to see if we could find her dogs. I don’t think either of us expected to have any luck, but what else was there to do? I was not raised to leave my friends in the lurch.

  I’d love to say we had pleasant conversations and got to know each other better, but Tanya was hardly in the right frame of mind for that. She was worried about her pets and about her boyfriend. She understood his medical conditions. Despite the fact that he had made some amazing recoveries in his life there were still issues of health that held him back. He no longer walked with leg braces or crutches, but now and then he still needed a cane and occasionally he still suffered attacks of paralysis that made it hard for him to get where he needed to be. Oh, I know, in this day and age he’d have a cell phone and all would be well, but that was when we were kids and cell phones weren’t even a consideration.

  There were signs of the changing times back in the woods, Day-Glo painted markers pounded into the ground, the indications that a surveying team had come through and read the lay of the land. I barely noticed them. While Tanya looked around desperately and we both called for Tazz and Blue, I spent my time either calling for the dogs or looking at my best friend’s girl.

  Shame on me, but again, I was young. We looked through the woods for almost an hour before we found Tazz and Blue. The smell of them was the big indicator. I caught a foul odor of rotting meat and the wind shifted and looked in that direction. There, I saw the stiff, splayed legs of the first dog and immediately told Tanya to stay where she was. Naturally, she didn’t listen to me and ran instead of walked to where her dogs lay murdered.

  Yes, murdered. I don’t care if it’s man or beast, what was done to the two dogs was nothing less than sadistic in nature and vile in intent. And, frankly, had the acts been done to a human being, the story would have been carried on all of the national news channels.

  Their hearts had been cut out, and their heads severed. Tanya stepped back when she realized what she was looking at and promptly fell on her ass. I wasn't quite fast enough to catch her, I’m afraid. But I was there to hold her and comfort her and, finally, to lead her back to my place where we both waited as I called the police.

  The cops came quickly and reviewed the situation. In a lot of ways, I guess it’s fair to say that they were as meticulous as they would have been if they’d found two dead kids. I know they were just as disgusted with the violations as I was, and they had the misfortune of getting a better look.

  When they were done on the scene there was yellow crime tape up and I led Tanya back home to her folks and left her crying in their arms. I think a part of her died that day, or at least was badly wounded.

  I know she was grateful for my help, but we didn’t speak of it again and while she was polite to me, we never became close friends. That was all right, I had discovered the glory of Leigh Ann and even if we spent a lot of time arguing, she was worth all of the grief. Isn’t that almost always the way? Well, it has been in my experience at any rate. But what the hell do I know? My only marriage ended badly.

  It turns out that Jack was fine, by the way. He had simply not mentioned that he had another doctor’s appointment at the university that day. The progress report was good and close enough to amazing that at least one doctor claimed his recovery was nearly miraculous.

  I saw Jack and Tanya fighting about his disappearance a few days later. They were out at the edge of the woods and I was in my back yard, kicked up against the wall and daydreaming about Leigh Ann’s breasts when they walked past in heated debate. I don’t think they saw me. If they had, they would have stayed quieter.

  “I don’t want to come out here!” Tanya’s voice was heated and almost pleading.

  Jack placated her as best he could. His voice soft and careful, like a man carrying something heavy that he knew was fragile. “I want to show you something.”

  “Well, just tell me about it, Jack. You know how I feel about this place.” I might have taken offense but I knew she meant the woods themselves and the bad things that had happened to her family’s dogs.

  “I made something special, just for you, Tanya.” I looked up and saw them as they passed, Tanya’s face aimed toward the ground and Jack’s unsettlingly handsome features looking at the side of her head as he implored her. Maybe it was the way the light hit him as the sun moved closer to setting, but for one moment he almost seemed to have a halo around him. It was almost as unsettling as his obvious vitality.

  He had never looked healthier. All of the signs of weakness that had been there before seemed to have vanished. His muscles were obvious, though not anything along the lines of a body builder’s. His skin had better tone than I could recall, and his steps were as smooth and graceful as could be.

  I need to clarify this for
you. Jack had been doing better. I would have probably used the word miraculous myself if it had ever come to me, because, really, after you’ve seen a walking stick figure get worse and worse over the months, you come to expect that things will never change. But even when he got better, even when the medical improvements became obvious, he never looked truly vital before that moment. He just looked amazing in comparison to how he had looked before. But just then, as they walked past where I sat, Jack looked not only healthy, but also somehow more alive than anything around him. The only comparison I can legitimately give you is when Dorothy opens the door to her house in the Land of Oz. The house was the world around him and Jack was the land beyond the threshold: more colorful, more dazzlingly there than even the girl next to him and for me, that was saying a lot.

  At that moment I wasn’t merely shocked by the changes in Jack, I was afraid of them. I was frightened that he might somehow become even more overwhelmingly colorful and bright and the rest of the world might somehow leech away. I don’t know if I can explain it better than that, except to say if the people around us were stars, Jack was close to becoming a supernova.

  I heard the resignation in Tanya’s voice. “Okay, Jack. But it better be worth it.”

  “It is. I swear it.”

  Tanya didn’t come home that day and I didn’t see either of them on their return trip from the woods.

  I think when I heard about Tanya’s disappearance was the exact same moment I became afraid of my best friend.

  Whatever the case, I didn’t meet up with him that weekend like we normally did, and he didn’t come looking for me. He was moving on to bigger and better things. Oh, we still saw each other in the hallways at school and ran across each other on the streets, because, really, there are only so many places a kid can go before getting a car or taking the bus. But we nodded and smiled and seldom had anything to say to each other.

  And in the interim, everyone went looking for Tanya in the woods and posted missing signs all over the area. I remember seeing her picture on the evening news and my parents going over to see her parents almost nightly in an effort to console them. And I stayed quiet about seeing her go into the woods with Jack, because, really, what were the chances that Jack could ever hurt the girl he was going steady with?

  In my defense, I was young and foolish. It never crossed my mind until later that sometimes people are incapable of love or that they can commit atrocities.

  I didn’t have to attend the daily vigils, really, because I’d have just been in the way of the grown up business of misery and mourning. So I did the only thing I could think of to do. I went looking for Tanya.

  Maybe on some subconscious level I knew about Jack. I don’t like to think so though. I prefer the idea that I was truly, blindly, innocent. But I do remember thinking about the previous winter, when we were out in the snow-drenched woods and he took his walking stick to break the ice and dropped a few coins into his wishing well. And I remember thinking about his expression and the conviction of his words.

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  “I’m not wearing diapers anymore, am I?” He answered.

  Remembering that sent a shiver through my body that had nothing to do with the late springtime temperatures. I think in the long run that’s why I went out to the woods that night and started looking around.

  I didn’t start where Jack had his wishing well, I stared near my house and meandered, looking at the ground and seeking clues that might lead me to the pretty girl who lived down the road from me and only had eyes for my best childhood friend. I know I daydreamed a bit about her smile, her eyes, and her golden hair. I know I fantasized about how it would have felt to kiss her lips and touch her skin. I walked and searched and lost myself in a hundred different daydreams about finding her alive and being her hero, all thoughts of Leigh Anne pushed aside by my romantic notions of another girl who I’d never gotten to know. I don’t think I felt as guilty about that as I probably should have. Look back on my previous defense if you must.

  I came across the wishing well almost by accident, as I moved around the crime scene tape from only a few days earlier, in the spot where Tanya and I found Tazz and Blue. I set my foot on the ground only a few inches from the perfectly clear pool of water and looked down at my reflection as I scouted for any sign that Tanya had come through that way. And there, on the ground just at the water’s edge, I saw five golden hairs caught by a gentle breeze. I squatted lower and looked at them, afraid to touch them, I suppose, in case they might be considered evidence.

  I remembered Jack’s claims about his wishing well and found myself wondering if it was possible for anything so simple to heal a lifetime of injuries. Drawn by that particular mystery I looked closely at the water. I would have been hard pressed to discern its depths, but I remembered the old saying that still waters run deep.

  I looked closely, thinking if nothing else I would see the coins he had dropped in there last winter, but I saw no sign of them. There was no bottom to the small pool, merely darkness that swallowed whatever secrets the waters might hold.

  And looking at the small pool of clear water, I was suddenly afraid.

  You can call it a teenager’s imagination if you must, but I thought back again to the look on Jack’s face when he answered my simple question of whether or not his wishes were coming true, and I felt my skin crawl.

  Because wishing wells aren’t like a genie’s lamp or wishing on a falling star. Wishing wells demand a price for whatever you might ask of them. To be sure, that cost is normally a penny or a nickel or if you’re going for broke a quarter, but I got to wondering what happened if the wishes you wanted cost too much?

  For a kid like me, who wanted only to find a girlfriend or pass a test that had him nervous, sure, a penny might be enough, but for someone like Jack, who had nothing to lose and everything to gain? A stupid notion I suppose, or maybe a sudden moment of adult intuition. I looked at the wishing well and almost got sick.

  What would I be willing to sacrifice if I were in his shoes? What would I gladly pay if the wishes were coming true? Six months ago my good friend and personal social anchor had been closer to death than anyone wanted to admit. Half a year later, he was beyond healthy and seemed to be moving toward almost impossible. I know others didn’t see it that way, but I did. I was wise enough even then to keep my mouth shut about that sort of notion, but it was hard to ignore when I was being honest with myself, and I am the one person I never let myself lie to.

  Jack wasn't getting better; he was already there. He wasn't having a miraculous recovery; he’d exceeded every rational possibility. I had accepted the changes because I could see them, the same as everyone else around me, but I hadn’t questioned his amazing recovery. Even when he told me what he believed was the source of his newfound health, I never really gave it much thought. I decided that faith, for him, was a wonderful thing, and I left it alone.

  Faith. Interesting stuff, isn’t it? People have gone to war, forged peace, committed violent acts of murder and made sacrifices in the name of faith. All to please the god of their choice and to ask a favor or two in return. Bountiful crops? Yes, but you have to give something in return, something precious, something special. Yes, you can have forgiveness, but only if you sacrifice God’s son in exchange. Everywhere in the world, damned near every religion that called for a god, demanded sacrifices. How different, really, was the idea of a wishing well?

  Yes, faith had been very good to Jack. The thought should have warmed me. Maybe it even did.

  Until I looked at the damned puddle of water and remembered how much he had changed. Until I thought about the animals that had vanished, about Tanya’s disappearance, and the fact that Jack wasn’t quite avoiding me, but getting damned close.

  Nonsense! It had to be. There was no way that a wishing well could change the world or the life of one frail and breaking boy. I knew that because I was raised to believe in the rational and explainable. If a theory existed, it had
to be tested and only then could it hope to make sense.

  I dug into my pockets, but had no change on me. I had nothing of value on my person, but I did have my pocketknife. A small affair with a two-inch blade. Hardly a deadly weapon. It did the job though. I dragged the blade across my ring finger until I felt the skin part and saw the blood flow.

  No change today, I thought, but I can still make a payment.

  I held my finger over my cupped palm and worried the small, wounded finger until I had a few tablespoons of my life in my hand. I opened my hand and let my blood flow into the cold waters. A moment later, I let my grandfather’s pocketknife fall from my other hand and watched that too sink into the still depths.

  And I wished for Tanya.

  Unsettled by my own actions, I shook my head and stepped away from the waters, my blood and my knife sank slowly into the perfectly clear waters and were lost to the shadows far below.

  Fifteen is too young to think about gods and sacrifices. After a moment I decided that I had been out in the woods too long and daydreamed far too much. That or the heat had gotten to me and I’d given myself a heady case of sunstroke.

  Dizzied and disappointed, I headed for home. I made it there by sheer luck, I think, because I barely looked at the woods around me.

  The next morning the news was everywhere. Tanya had been found on the far side of the campus. Two joggers discovered her naked, battered body, only a few feet off of a trail that was used every single day. The police tried to keep the nature of her mutilation to themselves, but really, that’s almost impossible in most small towns.

  Tanya had not been raped, nor had she ever had sexual intercourse that the medical examiner could ascertain. I suppose that was a small relief, but not enough to lessen the blow for her parents.

  Someone had cut her heart out, you see, and taken it with them. The same as someone had done to her dogs.