Beauty and Dread

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  She nodded, now convinced the clairvoyant business was straight-up legit. Freaky stuff, that. Sometimes she got a little déjà vu, but she suspected not one ounce of psychic ability flowed through her veins. She was all about the here and now...the corporeal world that she could touch and smell and see with her own eyes. All that dream shit was somebody else’s problem.

  Except for Isaiah. He was very much her problem and she would deal with him personally.

  She was cramming weapons and MREs into motorcycle saddlebags in the living room of their home. Ammo disappeared into the interior pockets of a new quilted parka. It was the hard-core type mountain climbers used to scale Everest. A ghost of vanity whispered that the bulkiness of it made her look fat, but she dismissed the thought as soon as it surfaced; the former chubby insecure girl rarely haunted the lithe and lethal weapon standing before Sam.

  “I’ll be super careful. He’ll never see me or what hit him.”

  Sam’s eyes flew open in alarm. “You’re not supposed to get near him. You just need visual confirmation of the army. That’s it. Then you come home.”

  She smiled at the dismay on the handsome face.

  “Think about it. If I take this guy out, the army falls apart, like flicking over that first domino in a chain. They’ll probably just go back to Texas where it’s warmer. I bet none of those people want to be marching north in the dead of winter. They have to be miserable. Once the leader is gone, the whole thing will crumble, like chopping the head off a snake. I guarantee it.”

  He frowned. “If you get close enough to kill him, you’re close enough for him to get you.”

  “That’s why I’m bringing the Creeper and his favorite toy. That weirdo can hit a fly off the ass of a donkey at a hundred yards. We won’t have to get close, we just have to get close enough.”

  “Now I’m even more worried. I don’t trust Logan. There’s something wrong about his story of the night he killed that guy that had you pinned. The timeline doesn’t add up.”

  “Come on, Sam. You love everybody. I know Logan is creepy, but he’s harmless. He hero-worships both of us, I think. That’s why he’s always staring at us.”

  She kissed the unhappy mouth; just a brushing of lips at first, then a mingling of tongues that escalated to clothes on the floor and a quick coupling on the sofa in the chilly room.

  “That didn’t make me less worried,” he said afterward, his dreamy expression belying the statement.

  “No, but it distracted you for a few minutes. I love you. I’ll be careful. I promise. I’ll see you in three days at the most.”

  The next moment she was out the door. He heard the sound of the Yamaha rev to life, then fade away.

  He sighed. “I would have to fall in love with a thrill looker.”

  ###

  “Julia, I have to go. They’re waiting for me.” Logan shifted from one foot to the other, like a four-year-old who needed to find a bathroom.

  “Did you put the extra jacket in your pack? The water resistant one?”

  “Yes. I don’t like it though. It’s loud. I don’t think I can be invisible in it.”

  She gave him a worried smile. “No, but it will keep you dry if it rains or snows. Promise me you’ll wear it if that happens, okay?”

  “Yes, I promise. I have to go now. I’ll see you in three days. That’s what Dani said. Love you, Julia!”

  The next moment he was out the bedroom, down the stairs and through the front door. At the second-story window, she followed his progress from the porch to the street, then as he hopped on the motorcycle behind Dani. The rifle strapped behind his backpack looked cumbersome and awkward, but they seemed to manage just fine. Even with another person and the added weight, Dani maneuvered her bike with more skill than Pablo managed solo.

  A minute later, the scouting party was gone.

  She sat down on the neatly-made bed of what had been her nephew’s bedroom but was now Logan’s. She smiled at the verbal slip-up. He probably said those words to his mother every time he had left their house. An affectionate habit, nothing more. She wouldn’t read too much into it, despite knowing how attached he was to her. And she had to admit she also felt an attachment to the boy-in-the-man’s-body. She surveyed the bedroom, wondering if Jeff resented giving up his room despite his assertion to the contrary. Young boys need their space and privacy to do all the gross things young boys do when they’re alone. But her nephew seemed fine about sharing his dad’s bedroom. Neither he nor Logan were home much these days anyway; their shifts on the security crew, plus the ongoing training sessions, demanded most of their time. The nights Steven spent at Marilyn’s house, Jeff got the bed all to himself, so she guessed it was working out pretty well under the circumstances.

  She thought about her ‘boys’ and how they were growing up too fast. They had both been exposed to so much violence and bloodshed these past months; even been responsible for some of that bloodshed. How well were they handling that onus? How would it shape them? What long-term impact would it have on the men they would one day became?

  And then there was Dani. She felt the familiar knot in the pit of her stomach – the one associated with the cold-shoulder rejection she still received from the young woman who was almost certainly her daughter. It was a crazy situation. The odds should have been astronomical that they would ever have crossed paths. Yet knowing what she did about the genetic nature of the Lexi molecule made it less crazy and the odds not so remote; they both shared the rare gene that had saved their lives when billions of others perished. It had taken the end of the world to reunite her with the baby girl she gave up all those years ago, only now to be despised by her. Had it been a mistake telling her? Perhaps. But she couldn’t have lived with the ambiguity. Julia liked things as cut and dried and above board as possible. She would have fretted herself into an early grave if she hadn’t talked to Dani. It was her burden to accept that disdain and resentment, which felt like a dagger plunging into her heart.

  The melodramatic thought evoked a derisive snort. She brushed at the tears that trickled down the sides of her face. That was happening way too often these days.

  Something poking out of a dresser drawer caught her eye. Logan wasn’t clean, but he was tidy. Everything was orderly; all his belongings had their place. He made his bed every morning without being told, and the room was more immaculate now than when they had first arrived.

  That’s why she had noticed the pencil sticking out of the dresser.

  She crossed the room and slid open the bottom drawer. Inside were three neat piles of threadbare but clean (she hoped) boxer shorts. Under the third stack she could see the corner of a spiral notebook. Below it, she discovered several more. Underneath those, was a different type of tablet with the words Strathmore Drawing Pad, 400 pages printed on its cover.

  Julia gathered them all up and sat back on the bed, feeling like she had stumbled upon the secret location of an older sister’s diary. Her curiosity got the best of her, and she dismissed the niggling, voyeuristic shame. She lifted the well-worn cover. What greeted her on the first page was astonishing.

  It was a portrait of a woman, sitting in a chair watching television. The detail was exquisite. The scene looked so real she could almost hear the laugh track of the Friends sitcom on the TV screen, drawn so finely that she could identify Jennifer Anniston and the periwinkle walls of the shabby chic apartment set.

  This must be Logan’s mother. She could see a strong resemblance on the attractive but haggard face. The blond hair was pulled back in a messy up-do, revealing care-worn lines and a jawline just beginning to sag. She appeared to be in her forties. There was a gentleness about her face...a kindness that Logan had managed to capture with his colored pencils. Confirming her suspicion were the letters “Mom” printed discreetly in one corner.

  Next came another remarkable drawing, but this time it was a landscape of a semi-urban neighborhood. The houses were small and unkempt; residences that had probably been built in the six
ties. The careful articulation showed low income housing of a type occupied by single moms and broke college students. That made sense. His mother had struggled to support the two of them without any financial help from the absent father, and without benefit of higher education.

  The thought made her feel ashamed. She had put herself and her career before everything else, including her baby. For the last two decades she had lived a life of privilege. What sacrifices had this woman made to care for her special-needs child? How much more difficult had it been to raise a child such as Logan than it might have been raising a gifted one, like Dani?

  She flipped the page quickly.

  The next three drawings were also stunning. One was a beautiful wooded scene bursting with orange, gold, and red; the vibrant colors of autumn. The next two were more renditions of the dilapidated neighborhood. One was drawn in the dismal tones of winter, and another showed the pale greens of early spring.

  She turned to the next page. It was another portrait, but it had been rendered in charcoal. The stark black-and-white color scheme might be the reason the heavy-lidded eyes staring up at her from the thick vellum felt vaguely malevolent. Maybe she was overreacting, but it seemed to exude an ominous vibe. Or maybe her first impression was correct and the man was what had popped into her mind: a predator. It was silly to attribute such characteristics to a drawing, but she couldn’t shake it. She studied the slick-backed dark hair that was shot with streaks of gray, and the baleful smile that played about the corners of the thin lips.

  That is one scary son of a bitch.

  She shifted focus away from the face and to the background. A windowless cinderblock wall filled most of the page. A basement perhaps? She looked closer still at the intricate details. Hanging on the wall to the left was a pegboard with hooks, upon which were hung an assortment of tools. Strange tools that didn’t look like they were meant for anything as innocuous as gardening or carpentry.

  And knives. Knives of all shapes and sizes.

  On the right side, positioned halfway out of the picture, sat a wooden chair. Leather manacles dangled from the armrest and a spindle leg.

  Tiny letters had been scrawled at the bottom: “Mister C.” Below that was the shape of a valentine heart.

  A wave of nausea washed over her. The sinister eyes seemed to bore into her. She remembered Logan mentioning a Mr. Cheney, the neighbor who had helped Logan’s mother start her car by popping-the-clutch and who seemed to have taken an interest in the young boy.

  She also recalled a conversation with Thoozy on the drive to Kansas. It was a discussion about the pathology of a sociopath: If his childhood development had been influenced in a negative way, or if he’d experienced unhealthy urges that weren’t dealt with professionally and in a timely manner, the result could be bad...

  With a trembling hand, she turned the page.

  The next moment she ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time to vomit every spoonful of the powdered scrambled eggs she had eaten for breakfast.

  ###

  “I can’t just give you something like that without knowing what it’s for.”

  Julia sat on a doily-covered sofa in Cate’s living room. Julia didn’t like the woman, but because her brother did and because she was such a valuable asset to their community, she kept her opinion to herself. Still, there was something off-putting about her.

  And she hated that she needed to ask for her help now.

  “I know you’re knowledgeable about homeopathic medicine. I’ve seen you administer witch hazel and slippery elm and Echinacea...and belladonna as a sedative for the Hays girls who were so traumatized.”

  “That’s not an explanation.”

  Julia blew out a measured breath. She needed Cate’s help and she needed it now.

  “I can’t say what I need it for. Can’t you just trust that I wouldn’t ask if the situation weren’t dire?”

  “You’re Steven’s sister. I barely know him, and I know you even less. What part of that should inspire my trust?”

  “What if I told you that lives are at risk?”

  “I’d tell you that lives are at risk every minute. And that by giving you an herbal compound which, if taken in the wrong dosage, could be fatal, even more lives are at risk.”

  Julia studied the round face and the intelligent glint in the small, close-set eyes. She decided to take a leap of faith. For the next five minutes, she spoke in a low, urgent voice. When she was finished, Cate’s familiar amused grin had vanished, replaced by a thin-lipped line that gave away nothing of what was going on in the head of the strange woman.

  “You don’t want belladonna. You want castor bean seeds. Ever heard of ricin? That’s where it comes from.”

  “Do you have them?”

  “Of course. What witch would be caught without a supply of caster bean seeds?” There was a smirk on the round face, but one that was tinged with sadness.

  “It won’t be painful, right?”

  Cate didn’t meet her eyes when she replied. “No. He’ll just go to sleep.”

  Chapter 32

  Steven had picked the worst possible morning to sleep in at Marilyn’s. He read through Julia’s note for the third time, sitting down suddenly in one of his kitchen chairs.

  He knew his sister better than anyone on the planet. She was an emotional basket case at the moment. She could hold things together under extremely stressful situations...as long as her heart wasn’t involved. He remembered her behavior at their mother’s funeral, then two years later at their father’s: debilitated by grief and sadness, barely able to drag herself to the services. Now here she was, venturing out of the relative safety of their town to go after Logan to stop him from hurting Dani. How she intended to do that was unclear since her note didn’t offer any details, but the drawing pads left on the kitchen table explained everything else. Steven felt a fleeting vindication when he scanned the first of the drawings – he always knew the young man was trouble – then the petty satisfaction was chased away by dawning horror.

  Scene after scene depicted in exquisite detail with colored pencils: torture, mutilations, dissections, and what appeared to be a flayed cat next to a dead girl with reddish-orange hair. He could tell she was dead because there was a circular hole in the center of her forehead.

  He also knew that Logan was very good with his guns.

  As grisly as the majority of the pictures were, two stood out. Julia had removed them from one of the college-ruled spiral notebooks – poor substitutes for the older vellum pad – which contained numerous scenes from Liberty and were therefore the most recent of Logan’s artwork. She had torn them from the topmost notebook, left open with tattered paper remnants clinging to its corkscrew spine.

  The first was an image rendered in charcoal of someone being stabbed. There was no color in the night scene; but every line, every wrinkle on Thoozy’s face was perfectly captured. The mystery of the old man’s disappearance had just been solved. The second picture was even more disturbing. It showed a carefully articulated drawing of Dani in her black leather jacket and the familiar GIRL POWER t-shirt. A miasma of color encircled her; a swirling fog of purple and green shading. Around her throat was a pair of hands. Around the wrist of one of the choking hands was a braided bracelet Logan always wore. An impossibly long tongue extended out of one side of Dani’s mouth. Her eyes bulged, cartoonish in their distress.

  This wasn’t a depiction of a past event, as many of the other drawings likely were. It was a projection, a tableau of intent; a Dickensian ghost of a killing yet to come.

  Dani had ridden out of town on a dangerous mission, saddled – literally – with the deranged young man who planned to murder her.

  And Julia had followed in a stolen vehicle to save her.

  The morning, begun in a delicious afterglow, had just turned into an epic clusterfuck.

  ###

  There was something bothering Logan. He had been so excited to go on the adventure with Dani and Pablo
that he was a little frazzled just before they left. That was a word his mother used all the time. And she usually said it after she had been at work all day and had come home to something bad that he had done.

  He loved the way the cold air exploded against his face when he peered around Dani’s helmet. When he turned his head to see if Pablo was still behind them, he always was. Logan thought it would have been better if Pablo hadn’t come with them. This would be a great time to do what he had been thinking about, but he would need to be careful with a third person around. Maybe he should kill Pablo too. Then there wouldn’t be anyone left to tell on him, and everybody in town would still like him. Thoozy was wrong. The perfect place to be was in the middle of the pretty meadow and the cold river. It was kind of like being invisible. He could still have fun and do all the things Mister Cheney had shown him, just as long as nobody found out. The Bad Thoughts weren’t very loud anymore, but he realized that was because he had been listening to them again and not trying to ignore them. They didn’t have to yell if he was already paying attention.

  Even though he had started to like Dani a little ever since she had started acting like she liked him too, he knew she had to die. He couldn’t stand that she had the same colors as his Julia. More importantly, he hated that Julia was beginning to think of her as a daughter, which kind of made Dani his sister. He had never had a sister his whole life, and he didn’t want one now. Julia only had so-many-hours-in-a-day, and he wanted them all for himself. His mother had always said he wasn’t good at sharing, which was a bad thing. Maybe that was true. But like Thoozy’s...what was the word again?...parable?...there was a third option: he could be selfish and not share stuff and nobody needed to know. He could keep it hidden just like the drawings under his underwear.

  They were going fast and expected to make-good-time because the roads were mostly clear. According to Dani, the fucking wheat farmers knew how to maintain their highways. It seemed like they had been on the motorcycle for about two hours when she signaled to Pablo to stop. Logan was glad because he needed to pee. He had forgotten to do that before they left. Thinking about Julia sitting there on his bed made him realize what had been bothering him.