by JournalStone
He was to pick her up at 7:00 p.m. sharp, though he was early. He patiently waited in the lobby of the all-girls dorm, the severe-faced matriarch of the place never ceasing to scowl at him over her reading glasses. He smiled when he saw Lindy, told her she was lovely in her light pink dress with a matching bow in her hair. He even held the door open for her, like a gentleman should.
He had picked a place on the river for dinner. However, it was crowded, and he was foolish and the waiting list was long for a couple without a reservation. His fears evaporated as she just smiled when he told her about the wait. For the next hour they fed the ducks bread and watched the barges float coal down the sluggish, brown water of the Choctawhatchee River, laughing at each other’s awkwardness. When dinner finally came, the two of them sat outside and watched as the sun dipped into the flowing water. They were both too young to drink but he knew the waiter and for a cool twenty he brought them a bottle of sweet, bubbling Prosecco. She had only had alcohol once before—at her cousin’s wedding when she was twelve—and then only for a singular toast that she was permitted to give. Lindy didn’t tell him that now. It was funny, she had known him only for a few hours but she was terrified this new boy would find her boring or naïve. To prevent that, she would do anything.
So she smiled and sipped her wine, though she was surprised by what she found. It was not as harsh and bitter as she remembered. It did not burn her tongue or make her scrunch up her nose in disgust. Instead it simply tickled a little, while different flavors seemed to dance like fire on her tongue. As it sat in her stomach, warming her from the inside, the sensation of the subtle flames was complete. Everything was going so well.
The party was different.
The fraternity house sat on a hill overlooking the main boulevard. The pure white columns and ornate brick façade conveyed a message of wealth and power, of future influence and past glory. Not that night, though. That night the very structure seemed to be alive and it pulsated with energy and sound. The house breathed in the young and stole their youth. And when Lindy left the porch and stepped through the front door, she felt an overwhelming sense she should flee, that turning and running was the best thing, perhaps the only thing, to do. Back to the romance of the night’s beginning, away from the debauchery of its end.
She told herself that was foolish and when Lewis offered her a beer she took it. It was the first of several, though she promised herself she would stay in control, that she wouldn’t let the liquor’s influence take hold of her. She probably would have succeeded but in the end, it wasn’t the alcohol she had to fear.
Lewis would later swear he wasn’t the one who slipped the pill into Lindy’s drink. Lindy didn’t notice, not really. She simply felt herself float away but not like she was falling asleep, not that peaceful. It was a total collapse of her mind and her will. She fought against it but her struggle was futile. She disappeared and whoever replaced her, whoever peered out from her eyes and took control of her body, it was no longer Lindy.
Lewis really didn’t care who she was or who was responsible when Lindy fell into his arms and looked up at him dreamily, before pulling his head down into an open mouth kiss. He just accepted it and counted his good fortune. When he looked in her eyes, he saw only desire.
What happened next was a frenzy of activity and energy, all directed at one goal. They stumbled up the winding steps of the house, past amused coeds and their dates, up to a place where they would not be bothered. A semblance of privacy. By the time they fell into one of the senior’s rooms and collapsed into the bed, her shirt was on the floor and her bra unclasped.
Then something happened, something that changed what should have been merely one of many drunken mistakes made that night, into a far more terrible thing. In the back of Lindy’s mind, something snapped. A voice emerged from under the drug-induced shroud and it said one word: “No.” And then Lindy said it too. Mumbled at first and then said it louder and more clearly. It grew to a word and finally a scream.
Lewis didn’t hear it. He was too drunk and too high to notice. That’s what he told himself in the weeks and years that followed. The thing he would repeat in his mind on most days. But in the darker moments of the many nights to come, he would know differently. When it was over, he sat on the side of the bed and she cried.
Lewis had just pulled on his jeans when there was a knock on the door. It was a senior, someone he recognized only from the tortures of Hell week. The boy looked over his shoulder and smiled.
“You mind?”
The combination of the alcohol and the adrenaline and the look in the other boy’s eyes made Lewis sick.
“No, man. She’s my date.”
The boy cursed and pushed Lewis out of the way. He would have fought him; Lewis had made the decision. He wouldn’t have let it happen, as much for his own sake as for hers. But when he turned around the other boy was just standing there, staring out towards the small balcony jutting from the side of the house. Lindy was crouched on the railing, most of her body over it but with her face turned back towards the boys inside. The catcalls of the people below, who saw nothing more than a naked girl, trickled in on the breeze as it whipped the curtain up in the air, alternately obscuring and revealing the terrified child beyond.
“Lindy!” Lewis cried. “Lindy, come back baby,” he held out his hand to her and crept forward, though she seemed to inch closer to the edge with every step he took. Lewis was afraid, for in her eyes he saw a wildness, a lack of reason or rationality, brought on by alcohol and drugs and fear and pain. He started talking to her but even at the time he wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying. Perhaps he was merely telling her it would be OK, that he was sorry. He had crept to only ten feet away from her but every step seemed like a mile as she leaned farther and farther—impossibly far—out over the ground below.
He was almost to her when his world ended in a crescendo of tragedy. Another second and he would have been there. All it would have taken was a few more steps. But it was a few steps too far. The police investigators could never be sure exactly what had happened. Whether she slipped. Or whether she jumped. In that last moment Lewis lunged forward and grabbed. For one singular instant he held something and in that isolated moment Lindy’s fall was halted. But it was only for a second. Then she gave way and Lewis was left with only a clump of her brown hair and a bloody bit of scalp in his hands.
The trial was a sensational affair. The district attorney wanted blood, while the judge smelled fame and Lewis faced a life sentence for second degree murder and rape. Truth was, the actual evidence against him was thin at best. Nobody could prove he drugged Lindy’s drink and a dozen different witnesses testified she was throwing herself at him during the party. There was no one to testify about the rape, no one alive at least. The path to his freedom was clear and Lewis took it. He watched as his attorney painted a picture for the seven women and five men who sat in judgment of him, a picture of a lost girl. He listened as Lindy was described as little more than a sorority harlot, an immoral seductress who dressed provocatively and got exactly what she was asking for. Hell, she probably took the drugs herself, just another delinquent chasing a high and losing her life. Why compound the tragedy by stripping Lewis’s future away from him as well? The lawyer talked and the jury nodded. Even the judge seemed convinced. It had almost worked. But there was one witness they hadn’t counted on. One witness who would not be denied.
By the time Lindy’s father had left the witness stand, Lewis thought he was going to jail for sure. The old preacher poured his passion, his fire and his love for his little girl into the testimony. The fact he never took his eyes off the boy he swore had killed his daughter was simply unbearable. Lewis could not match that gaze, even though he knew to look away from it was to admit guilt. Lindy’s father damned Lewis and when he had finished, the easy path to freedom no longer seemed so assured.
But the prejudices Lewis had counted on were too much to overcome. Most of the jury was swayed by the old
man's vehemence, but there were three who weren't. Three who were not convinced or perhaps even blamed Lindy’s father for what had happened, for the disappointment his daughter had surely become. The jury hung and the television cameras and newspapers moved on. The D.A. didn’t have the heart to retry Lewis and Lewis didn’t have the stomach to fight any more. He never wanted to feel those eyes upon him again. Lewis agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. He served less than a year.
Lewis did his time. He had a bit of an epiphany between the cold gray walls of the penitentiary and he swore he would atone for what he had done. He promised Lindy, as he hid his tears from the men who surrounded him—he would live his life in her honor. And in the years that followed, he liked to think he had kept his word. After nine months, he was a free man. Then he disappeared. Or maybe it was more accurate to say Lewis was born that day, in front of an Alabama prison. He changed his name and his parents paid to enroll him at a small college in the mountains, where no one had ever heard of Adam Langston. It was there he met Sophia and it was there he made a promise, to himself and to his new wife, he would leave the past behind. But every night when he turned out the lights, he still saw the image of Lindy on the concrete below, her neck broken and her open eyes empty of life.
* * *
“Please,” Lewis said, “please.”
“Ohhhh, so now you’re begging me? No more talk of right and wrong, huh? No more talk of God and my damnation. Now you want mercy? The truth is—you've had mercy. You’ve had a reprieve. All these years, you've been living on borrowed time.
“I waited for you, you know. I had it all planned out. The day you walked out of that prison I was going to be there. The day you tasted freedom, I was going to take it away from you. I bought a gun and I waited. Do you know why you lived? A stupid thing really. A simple twist of fate. They publicized your release date wrong and you got out a week early. By the time I realized it, you were gone. You covered your tracks well and it took a long time to find you. But I didn’t give up. And now here we are. Together.”
“Mr. Jackson, please…”
“That’s what I like to hear, son. Now you know who I am. And I know exactly who you are. You’re the man who killed my daughter.”
“Mr. Jackson I promise you I did not kill your daughter. I did not kill your daughter. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident! I wish I could take it back every day. I wish I could stop it. I wish I could trade places with her. I’d do it gladly if I could.”
“Well that’s just the problem isn’t it? You can’t trade places with her and you can’t go back. You might as well join her. Cause I tell you what, you did kill her. You killed her as much as if you had pushed her out of that window.”
Neither man spoke then. Thomas Jackson, standing over a mound of dirt, staring down at it with a walkie-talkie in his hand. And Lewis Freeman, in a coffin beneath him. Lewis Freeman—who had been Adam Langston many years before. Both men thought back on that night, the night that had come to define their lives. The night that now threatened to end the life of one and the night that had, for all practical purposes, killed the other. When Lewis spoke again, Thomas could hear him sobbing and the sound of it made him smile.
“Please, Mr. Jackson, this is not justice. Killing me is not justice for your daughter.”
Thomas stopped smiling. It was time to end this.
“Justice?” he said through clenched teeth. “You speak of justice? Funny Adam, I guess we can agree on something can’t we? On this one thing. Killing you is not justice. Do you know your scripture Mr. Langston? Have you read your Bible?” Lewis didn’t answer and Thomas didn’t wait. “No, I don’t guess you would have. Well there’s one verse I’m sure even you are familiar with. ‘You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’ You’ve heard that one, haven’t you Adam? Haven’t you? An eye for an eye? You didn’t just kill my daughter that night all those years ago. You killed me too, just as sure as if you shot me in the heart. No…justice for you requires something more.”
Thomas paused for a second and let his words wash over Lewis. He felt it, in his bones, when it all came together for him.
“You found the walkie talkie,” Thomas said. “Did you find anything else?”
Lewis hadn’t waited on Thomas to speak. He had already started feeling around the coffin again, franticly searching for something. What, he couldn’t say. He only hoped he didn’t find anything. Then he felt it. Soft but coarse all at once. Solid and separate, thick and thin all the same. His hand started to shake as he breathed in peppermint and vanilla when he brought the thick lock of hair to his face, the one he knew was strawberry blond, even in the darkness smothering him. Lewis lost it then, started screaming and beating against the pine walls enclosing him. He would do so until the air ran out and the final darkness took him.
He didn’t hear the last thing Thomas said, before he dropped the walkie talkie and left Lewis to his fate. But he didn’t need to hear it, for he already knew.
“No Lewis. Two lives were lost that night. Two lives. An eye for an eye Lewis. That is justice.”
The End
House of Roses
(Horror)
By
Jasmine Cabanaw
The crimson sun was sitting low by the time Kevin Archer and Justine Francis pulled into the driveway of their new home. The hemlock trees lining the driveway looked jagged and scraggly against the flaming hues of the evening sky. The house loomed at the end of the drive like the silhouette of some sleeping giant, with its roof sagging in the middle and its rickety stairs leading up the porch like rows of teeth into a gaping mouth. Like lids closed tightly over glassy eyes, the windows were boarded shut against the outside world.
Kevin and Justine were weary from the long drive from South Carolina to Gravenstein, New Hampshire. They had started out at eleven o’clock the night before and had driven straight through, anxious to begin their new life in this tiny town nestled against New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest. A month before, the town and the house had seemed dreamy and alluring, like something out of a romantic fairytale. However, stepping out of the car and surveying the overgrown property in the chill of the autumn air, Justine was no longer feeling so enchanted.
Kevin, on the other hand, was practically bouncing up and down with excitement. “Justine!” he cried, as he picked her up and twirled her around in a dizzying embrace. “This place is so incredible! The air is so crisp! And look at these gorgeous trees!” he sighed. “We’re going to love it here.”
Justine stood back for a moment and watched her boyfriend start to unload the car. He looked a bit like a scarecrow right then, in his ripped jeans and plaid shirt and with wisps of curly hair sticking out from under his cap. He was tall and gangly, like a scarecrow. It was amusing how he already seemed to fit in with the place.
Justine grabbed a few boxes and followed him up the porch stairs. He fumbled with the lock for a moment but then the heavy, oak door opened with a groan to reveal a large parlor room. A round table brooded in the center, a wrought iron chandelier hanging above it. A staircase rose up against the west wall to the second level, a living room was through a door to the east and the kitchen and dining room were in the back, at the end of a short hallway. Three bedrooms and a bathroom occupied the second floor, with a large attic above. The house wasn’t enormous but it was certainly much larger than the two-bedroom apartment they had left in South Carolina.
The other bonus was that the house came fully furnished. While it did seem a little odd the previous owners had left their furniture and appliances, Kevin and Justine hadn’t pushed the realtor for details. They hadn’t wanted to jinx their good luck. With the money they saved from not having to hire movers, plus the money they made from selling all their furniture, they had been able to stash away some cash for an engagement ring. Kevin had yet to buy the ring, as Justine wanted to w
ait until she found the perfect one, but it was reassuring to know they would have the money available. The tide finally seemed to be turning for them. Kevin had gotten a job at the local high school, they had found this house and she was almost in the right frame of mind to start writing again.
Kevin was like a whirlwind, grabbing luggage from the car, running it inside and racing back out again. Justine had put her first load of boxes on top of the parlor table and sat down on the porch, watching the spectacle that was her boyfriend. She still felt tired from everything that had happened. In fact, she was suddenly feeling like she could barely keep her eyes open.
Noticing her slumped against the porch fence, Kevin took a break from running boxes and sat down beside her. “Hey,” he said, lightly brushing a hand through her short, blonde hair. “Why don’t you get to bed and I’ll finish unloading the car?” his brown eyes searched her blue ones with concern. “Darling, you look exhausted.”
She sighed. “Yes but I can’t possibly let you finish unpacking the car by yourself.”
He smiled. She was so stubborn sometimes. “Yes, you can. Besides, I have all this energy right now and if I don’t do something with it, I’ll be bouncing off the walls. Go upstairs and climb into bed and I’ll meet you in a little bit.”
Justine reluctantly agreed. “Thank you,” she gave him a kiss. “I owe you one.”
She trudged up the stairs and into the master bedroom, flicking on the light to find a large poster bed in the middle of the room, with end tables on either side. A dresser with a large mirror stood against the wall, across from the foot of the bed. Justine shuddered. She hated sleeping across from a mirror but was too tired to be bothered with rearranging any furniture.