Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers

by Rick Hautala

  “I gave Parkman a call. You know what he said? He said I had to wait twenty-four hours before I could file a missing person’s report.” Bill smacked his hands together angrily. “Christ! I thought he was my friend. I can’t believe he’d pull that official line business with me.”

  Marty had no idea what to say, so he just sat there, staring blankly at the T.V.

  “Oh, yeah. And another thing,” Bill shook his head with disgust. “Parkman asked me to ask you if you knew where Al LaBlanc was.”

  “What?” Unable to hide his surprise, Marty turned and looked at his father. His first thought was that somehow Parkman had found out about the stolen marijuana, and the shit was about to hit the fan.

  “I—uh, I called him a couple of times today, but he wasn’t home.”

  “He hasn’t been for the last two days,” Bill said. “Both he and Jenny White have disappeared. Parkman thinks they might have run away together. You know anything about that?”

  Marty shook his head tightly. “No, I—uh, I haven’t seen Al since the day before yesterday.” As much as he tried, he was unable to push aside the mental image of exactly where he had last seen Al and what he had been doing. “I haven’t talked with him, either,” he added weakly.

  “Hmm...I dunno,” Bill said as he wandered off into the kitchen.

  Marty watched the kitchen door swing shut behind his father and then looked back at the T.V., but he couldn’t begin to register the images that flashed across the screen. It seemed like even when he wasn’t around, Kip could screw up his life, and Marty vowed that when he did show up, he was going to pay dearly for stealing his hunting knife. He better not have lost it. Until then, Marty just wanted to lie low and let his arm heal, and he tried not to wonder where Al and Jenny might have gone.

  A few seconds later, his father burst back into the living room and started pacing the floor again. He had a can of beer in one hand, but he never took a sip of it that Marty saw.

  “Come on, Marty—think...think! Where could he have gone?” Bill unconsciously squeezed the beer can, denting the can. “This isn’t like Kip.”

  “Maybe he ran away from home,” Marty said, casually tossing off the idea but actually thinking it might not be too far off. The more he thought about it, the more he realized Kip had been acting really strange lately.

  —Where was he going so early yesterday morning?

  —What was he doing all alone out at the Indian Caves?

  —Was there any connection between his disappearance and Al and Jenny being missing?

  It was all too complicated, Marty thought, and his medication was blunting his mind, so for now he just let everything drift. His only clear thought was that Kip was definitely going to pay for stealing his knife.

  Bill shook his head, his mouth a thin line. “Come on, Marty. Why would he do something like that?”

  Marty shrugged, letting his gaze drift from his father back to the T.V. If he thought about it too much, he’d start to wonder why he had never run away from home. He considered mentioning to his father how, since their mother died, he seemed to have thrown himself so much into keeping the family going that he hardly ever had time to actually do things with them like they used to. But getting into all of that right now would require too much energy. All he wanted to do was rest.

  “Goddammit! If the cops won’t do anything about it, then I sure as hell will.” He paused and looked at Marty. “I’m going for a drive to see if I can find him. You want to come along?”

  “Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m feeling kinda wiped, and my arm’s still kinda hurts. I’ll probably just hit the sack early tonight.”

  “Okay,” Bill said. “It’s just as well, I guess. You can be here to answer the phone if anyone calls. I’ll check in with you every half hour or so, okay?”

  Marty grunted his agreement as Bill fished his car keys from his pocket, jangling them in his hand as he considered where he’d start looking. Then, with a deep sigh, he put his can of beer down on the telephone table and went quietly out the door.

  As soon as the door slammed shut behind his father, Marty leaned forward and snapped off the T.V. Moving slowly, he made his way up the stairs to his bedroom and was sound asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow.

  5

  Watson hadn’t had anything to drink all evening. In fact, he hadn’t had a thing to drink since he finished that bottle of whiskey at Kip’s campsite, so by eleven-thirty that night, he was beginning to feel fidgety. He had to admit, at least to himself he didn’t just want a drink, he needed a drink.

  Kip was sitting on the couch, his legs pulled up underneath him and a frayed afghan wrapped around his shoulders to ward off the chill. His eyes kept being drawn to the shattered ruin of Watson’s T.V.

  He couldn’t say he felt really comfortable in Watson’s house. The place needed a good cleaning, for sure. For one thing, a peculiar smell permeated the house. It smelled like the week-old aroma of boiled cabbage and made his sinuses tingle. Everything he touched was coated with dust and grease as if no one really lived here.

  “You...umm, you’re positive those things are what killed my mother?” Kip asked. He knew the answer and realized he was just making conversation. His throat was dry, so he took a sip from the glass of water he was holding. He had carefully washed the glass himself before drinking from it, but there was still a milky film along the inside rim.

  Watson was staring blankly at the wall, but Kip’s words pulled him back from his grim thoughts. He nodded and ran his fingers through his oily hair, then paused to inspect his fingernails.

  “You saw them for yourself,” Watson said. “‘N I would think you could answer that for yourself because of what you saw five years ago.”

  “—Help me!”

  The mere mention of five years ago made Kip’s stomach feel tense. A chill danced like cold fingers along the back of his neck, and in his mind, the darkness began to swirl. Thin, brown arms and yellowed claws and glowing eyes began to take form in his mind, peering at him. As his panic rose like a flood, he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists to keep from crying out when he remembered what his mother had screamed that day.

  “—They’re hurting me!”

  A stinging filled his eyes. He knew the feeling, and if he had been younger—or maybe even now if he had been alone—he would have cried; but somehow he was reassured just knowing that Watson knew about them, too. That meant he wasn’t crazy, and what he thought he had imagined seeing and hearing that day had been true. That blunted the edge of his panic, so it never got strong enough to blossom into the terror.

  Watson suddenly stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of the couch, repeatedly smacking his fist into his open palm. He squinted so his eyes were narrow slits. His breathing came in short, shallow gasps, and Kip was suddenly afraid that he might after all be in some kind of danger from this old man.

  “So—umm—how come you never got married?” Kip asked, saying the first thing to spring into mind. All he wanted to do was get the man’s attention off whatever was bothering him.

  Watson suddenly stopped in his tracks, turned, and glared at Kip, who shrank back into the couch.

  “What makes you think I was never married?” Watson snapped. His eyes flicked in the direction of the kitchen, and Kip craned his neck to try to see what he was looking at. As far as he could tell, there was nothing unusual about the kitchen. Maybe Watson was expecting the untcigahunk to attack the house, but Kip figured he would have warned him if he thought they were in any danger. At least, he’d have a gun handy if he was expecting trouble.

  Kip shrugged as he shifted around. “I dunno. I mean, I never heard that you were married or anything. Were you?”

  Watson strode over to a chair and sat down heavily, letting his feet kick up onto the footstool. He should have been relaxed, but Kip could tell the man’s body was practically humming with repressed energy.

  “I was,” Watson said, his voice bar
ely audible. “A long time ago.” Again, his eyes took on that hazy, distant look, but only for a moment; then his face hardened as he looked at Kip.

  “My wife’s name was Joanne...Joanne Sanderson,” Watson said. “But we was divorced, goin’ on more ‘n twenty years now.”

  He was about to leap to his feet and begin pacing again—or else do something worse. Kip had no idea what was making Watson so edgy. He decided to keep pressing, thinking small talk might loosen him up.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “What the fuck’s it to yah?” As soon as the words were out, Watson’s expression dropped, and Kip knew he instantly regretted his outburst.

  “I was just...you know...curious.” Kip took another sip of water, trying hard to look relaxed, but all the while he was struggling to figure out why Watson was so edgy.

  Maybe he did expect the untcigahunk to come tonight.

  Maybe he should just get the hell out of this house.

  He wondered what his father and brother were doing now. Surely they’d be in a panic by this time. It might be best if he just went home and forgot all about running away.

  “Well,” Watson said, “we ain’t really divorced, but she left me after our daughter died.”

  “You had a daughter?” Kip was taken completely by surprise. That fact alone went against everything the kids at school said about the old man.

  Watson nodded slowly. That weird, glazed light still filled his eyes, and in the dim living room light, he wasn’t sure, but tears might have been forming in Watson’s eyes.

  “Lisa—my daughter—was born back in 1954. She was the sweetest thing you’d ever want to see, but I—” His voice choked off, and he cast another, almost longing look at the kitchen before continuing. “I wasn’t the best father around, I guess.”

  Kip grunted, thinking how his own father didn’t seem to have much...or any time for him lately.

  “‘S the goddamned booze ‘at did it.” Watson slammed his fist onto the arm of the chair, raising a puff of dust. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers and held up his hand, studying the wrinkles in his palm.

  “The goddamned booze. See, I was...I’d been drinking a lot...just ‘bout every night. ‘N one night I was pretty bad off, so this cop—Chief Pulanski. He’s been dead ten years or more. But he calls my house and gets Lisa on the phone and tells her she’s gotta get her mom to come and pick me up or else I’m gonna get thrown into jail. But my wife wasn’t home, so Lisa, thinkin’ she had to do whatever to keep me outta jail, gets into the car—an old Mustang, and comes to pick me up.”

  His throat closed off with a strangled sound, and he paused for a moment as he ran his tongue over his lips. Suddenly, he darted forward and snatched the glass of water from Kip’s hand and drank it down greedily, smacking his lips as he handed it back to Kip, empty.

  “Shit! She was only thirteen at the time. Not much older ‘n you, I guess. She was doin’ all right drivin’. When she was little, I’d set her up in my lap and let her steer, but she’d never driven on her own or anything. Anyway, she was comin’ down River Road, ‘n just after she crossed the bridge, she took the turn kinda fast and she drove into the back end of a loggin’ truck. The tree trunks smashed through the window ‘n killed her instantly.”

  “Aww, jeeze,” Kip whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “The only good thing about it, I spoze, was knowing she didn’t suffer.”

  Kip could see that it took a lot for Watson to tell him this. He wondered if he was the first person he’d talked to about it. It pained him to see Watson so choked up, and he wanted to say or do something to comfort him, to let him know that it was okay, but he just sat there, his mouth hanging open and gasping like a beached fish.

  Finally he got off the couch and walked over to put his arm around the old man’s shoulders. As he patted him, he could feel the old man’s body shaking, not from repressed energy, but from the sobs that wracked him.

  “If I hadn’t been drinkin’ none of this would’ve happened,” Watson said, choking. He was careful not to make eye contact with Kip, but Kip saw the tears glistening on his cheek. His own eyes began to sting.

  “Even after all these years, I blame myself for what happened. If it hadn’t’ve been for me, she still be alive. It should have been me that died, not her.”

  “That’s what I used to think sometimes...about my mom,” Kip said as he hugged Watson close. For the second time that day, he wasn’t at all mindful of the dank, sweaty smell of the man. All he wanted was for the pathetic old man to feel better.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Kip said softly, his voice twisting as tight as a wire. “Exactly how you feel.”

  6

  A few minutes after three o’clock that morning, two things happened in two separate houses in Thornton, Maine.

  In the Howard home, Bill Howard woke up where he had dozed off in the hard-backed chair by the telephone table in the living room. His neck felt as though Hulk Hogan had given it a vicious twist, and the small of his back seemed to be on fire. When he stood up and stretched, blood rushed from his head to his legs, and dozens of pinpoints of light squiggled across his vision.

  He leaned against the table until his head cleared, all the while staring at the telephone...the goddamned telephone that hadn’t rung all night to let him know Kip had been found and that he was all right.

  The goddamned telephone!

  Bill picked up the receiver, his fingers poised to dial the police station, and if he didn’t get any satisfaction there, he’d call Parkman at home. But before he started dialing, he slammed the phone back into its cradle, making it ring once.

  It won’t do any goddamned good, he told himself, and he knew he wasn’t doing himself any good, either. At last, admitting there was nothing else he could do until daylight, he trudged up the stairs and flopped down on his bed without undressing or washing up. But as tired as he was, sleep wouldn’t come. His mind was racing, and when he finally drifted off, the sleep he got was as thin as a skimming of pond ice in November.

  At the same time in Watson’s house, Watson was sitting in his chair, his eyes drooping but still focused on Kip, who was wrapped up in the old afghan and sound asleep on the couch. The regular stirring of Kip’s breathing lulled Watson into a pleasant mental state, but still he was burning for a drink of whiskey.

  “No, goddammit,” he hissed. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, and told himself that this was it—no more booze. After all these years...after killing his daughter, he was through with drinking. He had to be through with it.

  But there was a bottle out in the kitchen cabinet, and it was calling him now even stronger than it had been calling him earlier that evening. All too easily, he could imagine how it would taste, how the amber liquid would slosh in the bottle; how its aroma would sting his nostrils and bring tears to his eyes; how its fire would scorch his throat and stomach and—maybe, if he was lucky—cool the flames in his brain.

  One little drink. How could that hurt? He eased himself to his feet quietly and started moving toward the kitchen. Just one little drink to take the edge off a day that had brought him a lot more stress than he needed or was used to. If he was going to quit drinking, it could be tomorrow. All he wanted now was just one little drink...just one tiny, little farewell sip.

  Bending down, he opened the bottom cupboard door and reached inside. His fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, feeling the cool, slick surface. His hand was shaking as he gripped the cap and gave it a firm twist, tearing off the sealing paper. Once the cap was off, the smell of whiskey wafted to his nose like a slowly uncoiling snake, teasing...tempting him.

  A muffled whimper from the living room made him

  jump, and whiskey slopped out of the bottle and onto his hand. For an instant, he had forgotten about Kip, sleeping there, and his mind filled with an image of Lisa, his daughter, sleeping on the couch.

  He paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth
, his eyes wide open and fixed on the doorway leading into the living room as if it was an open grave, freshly dug. He tensed, waiting to see his daughter come out into the kitchen, her face decomposing, dropping off flaps of rotting flesh...her hands, mere bony claws raised in front of her to embrace him.

  “Papa...I’m home,” the fleshless mouth would say.

  The hand holding the bottle began to tremble, spilling whiskey onto his arm and the floor. The aroma that moments ago had been so alluring, so tantalizing, now filled his nose with the stench of a body, rotting in an ancient grave.

  “Papa...I’m home... See what you did to me.”

  “No!...No!” Watson said, his voice rising in a wavering, frantic howl. “No!... No!... NO!”

  Clamping his teeth together, he cocked his arm back and, with a grunt that started deep down in his groin, he threw the bottle as hard as he could. Whiskey fanned out of the bottle as it flew, spinning end over end until it smashed against the wall. The sound of breaking glass seemed louder than a shotgun as glass and whiskey exploded everywhere.

  “Goddamnit! No!” Watson wailed as grief and anger welled up like black sludge in his mind. He closed his eyes and jammed both fists into his eye sockets, pressing hard until spinning colored lights exploded across his retina.

  He barely knew where he was or what he was doing as he staggered back into the living room. When he saw Kip, sitting up on the couch and staring at him, wide-eyed with fear, his mind cleared enough so he remembered—just a little—who he was and what was happening. Pitching forward, he fell face first into the easy chair with his arms and legs sprawled on either side like he was trying to embrace it.