“What the fuck?” His arm tingled and his vision was blurry. He got up slowly, leaning on a chair, but the legs of the chair buckled and he fell again.
“This is the type of thing that happens to people who don’t do as they’re told.”
Shit, no. He couldn’t have heard that. He shook his head. His ears were ringing, sure, but why would he think it in a young, almost breathlessly girlish voice?
His eyes were starting to clear, except in one spot directly beside the table he was reaching for. He moved his hand quickly and reached toward another chair. The spot moved next to that chair. He stayed where he was and blinked several times. His heart raced like a junkie on meth, but his mind cleared as he studied the blurry area.
“Have you learned your lesson yet? Next time might not be a warning. I’m sure Jillie isn’t worth all this.”
He looked again. Standing in front of him was a young woman wearing a ruffled, flowery dress and reeking of some cloying perfume. She had long blonde hair, a stunning figure, and would have been beautiful except for the hard, cold look that distorted her face.
He lowered his hand to the ground as if to steady himself, but picked up the screwdriver instead. He hurled it like a spear through her chest. A howl that put Rover’s dying call to shame filled the air. The figure clasped her hands to her chest and looked at the spot where the screwdriver passed through. Her face contorted in rage.
“That was a big mistake.” Her eyes were now icy daggers and her voice deep and ominous. “Now it’s personal. You’ll be hearing from me, even after Jillie kicks your ass to the curb.”
“I don’t take orders from sniveling cowards who hide behind lies and threats,” he said as the table next to him flew up in the air and crashed to the ground.
He shook his head and looked again. The apparition was gone, but the aroma of perfume remained.
He reached carefully for the second chair, stood, and threw up over the deck railing.
He hadn’t returned his neighbor’s pick-up, so he drove it. Although he had no idea if that would fool whatever he’d just seen. He got to Jillian’s an hour before the store closed. Cara was working in the front when he went in. Her arm was out of the sling, and the bruises had faded to a sickly yellow. The swelling had gone down, but her face was still misshapen.
“Adam,” she said, giving him a kiss. “I’m so glad to see you.”
That made one person.
“You look like you’re improving. How about Megan? I hope she wasn’t too frightened.”
“Not at all. She never knew anything happened.”
“I really need to see Jillian. Is she around?”
“She’s in the storeroom. Go on back.”
When he saw Jillian, working on the computer, he wrapped his arms around her and breathed in her fresh, clean scent.
“Any chance we could go upstairs to talk and let Cara close the store? I don’t want to take any chances.”
“You’re worried Cara will think I’m crazy, too?”
He stepped back and looked her in the eyes. “I’m worried, all right, but not about Cara.”
Curiosity lit her face. Jillian nodded and pushed back from her desk.
As soon as they reached her apartment, he turned to face her. “You told me you could see Heather plainly. What does she look like?”
She stared at him quizzically. “About my height, long blonde hair, movie star figure.”
“She’s not a young girl?”
“No, she didn’t like me growing when she didn’t, so she kept up with me. She stopped growing at about twenty-one. The ‘perfect age’ she claimed. Her voice matured a little. She sounds like a young Marilyn Monroe.”
Adam shook his head. “Maybe, when she started, but by the time she left she sounded more like Marilyn Manson.”
“Wow. You must have really made her mad.”
Jillian began digging in a drawer and pulled out a small photo. “Here she is in one of her pageants.”
The picture showed a young girl in a flowered, ruffled dress holding a trophy. He didn’t want to believe it, but there stood the girl he had seen, only ten years older.
Adam pulled Jillian over to the sofa and sat her down.
“I need you to tell me everything you can about Heather.”
“I take it you two have finally met,” she said. “Now what do you plan to do?”
Adam held his breath. This might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made. “We can’t allow her to keep hurting people. I plan to take her down and I need your help.”
“Where do I start?” Jillian rubbed a hand over her face. “What type of things do you want to know?”
“Everything.” He leaned forward and ticked each item off on his fingers. “What can she do, what can’t she do, what she likes or dislikes. Where does she hang out when she’s not with you? What things do you do together? Why is she the way she is? I don’t know what will help, so I need to know everything.”
She sank back on the sofa. “During our last big hurricane, I went down to the storeroom for safety. I had a sleeping bag, candles, and a small TV. When the electricity went out and the TV went off, I lit the candles. I was just sitting there, listening to the wind howl and debris hit the roof. The entire building was shaking and groaning. I wasn’t afraid, but it was eerie. Suddenly the candle blew out and it was pitch black. Then I was afraid. Heather’s voice whispered in my ear. It was the only time I’ve even known her to come into the store. ‘Now you know how I feel all the time,’ she said and poof, she was gone.”
Jillian hung her head as if ashamed to admit how frightened she’d been. “It was terrifying—the dark, the building groaning. I got flustered and couldn’t find the matches or flashlight. I called out to Heather, begging her to light the candle. The candle came back on, but Heather never said a word, just left me there alone. That’s why, no matter what she does, or how much evil she causes, I have to feel some sympathy for her.”
“It must be frightening for her, especially when it first happened.” Adam took Jillian’s hand and squeezed it. “Why doesn’t she go. . . wherever those like her go?”
“She doesn’t know how, and she’s angry. She feels she was cheated out of a life, and she’s determined to hang on somehow. If she can’t talk me into letting her have my body, then she’ll just follow me around and live my life with me, constantly asking me, ‘What does it feel like? What does it taste like? What does it smell like?’”
“So she doesn’t have use of any of her senses?” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing his mind into action.
“Well, she can hear, obviously. She can’t hear anything we say if we’re inside, but if I go out and call to her, she hears me and comes anywhere but here immediately.”
“Can she hear what you’re thinking?”
“No, she doesn’t have ESP.”
“Are you sure she can’t smell anything?”
“Positive. She always asks what something smells like. She drenches herself in perfume, but I don’t think she has any idea how much she puts on.”
Adam began to pace. He always thought better when moving. “And she comes immediately, just poof?”
“It takes a couple of minutes. I think she likes to get dressed up and fix her hair, but it’s almost immediately. She can see, also. Not through walls, from outside, but once inside, she sees things without digging around. At your house, she knew what was in cabinets or drawers without opening them or going through the trash. But she has to specifically look. It doesn’t happen if she just passes through a room.”
A plan was beginning to take shape, but it remained out of reach. “So you can hide things from her if she’s not expecting them.”
“I suppose.”
“What about touch? Can she feel things?”
“I’m not sure. I know she doesn’t feel heat or cold, but she prefers tactile fabrics, like silk or cashmere. Yesterday, when I tried to hit her, she didn’t like it at all. And sh
e hates it when somebody walks through her. So she must be able to feel something.”
“You hit her? Wish I could have seen that.” Knowing how frightening Heather could be when she was angry, his heart swelled with pride to think of Jillian standing up to her.
“She wasn’t too happy when I threw a screwdriver at her this morning, either. Do you think there’s something solid about her? After all, she may have whispered hints to your mother and Billy, even to Eddie and Marshall, but she didn’t convince Rover to break his own neck because she told him he was fat and lazy.”
Jillian’s eyes lit up. “There has to be. She didn’t have any trouble pulling down your mirror, and that took a lot of strength.”
“Now we know she’s not all smoke and air. Maybe that remaining bit of flesh is what keeps her from moving on. What does she do when she’s at home?”
Jillian took a sip of the coffee she’d brought upstairs. “I don’t think she does much of anything. She spends most of the time in her room, looking at her trophies and scrapbooks. I know she tries on her old costumes. She goes into the living room and dreams of when we were a family and sat around watching TV. Mother had the garage converted into a studio so she probably goes in there and does her old routines. But some of the time, maybe a lot of the time, she just lays on her bed and sort of checks out. Not exactly sleeping, more like waiting.”
Adam was beginning to get excited. “Does she ever go into the kitchen?”
“Heavens no, she didn’t go into the kitchen when she was alive.”
“What about the other rooms?”
“Not usually. She wouldn’t have any reason to, would she? The only thing she’d want would be a mirror, and those in her room or the studio are better.”
“So the house is still furnished?”
“When Daddy died, I locked the door and left. The last time I saw it was just before the hurricane hit. I went into the storage room to get a camp stove and a lantern.”
“You haven’t upped the insurance lately, have you?”
“I don’t have any insurance on it. It ran out three months after Daddy died, and I never renewed it. I couldn’t afford the premiums at the time.”
Adam could tell she didn’t like talking about this, but he pushed her anyway. Knowledge was power, or in this case protection. “You said curiosity was Heather’s main motivation.”
“She was only thirteen when she died. She looks grown-up because she chooses to. She’s seen and learned a lot of things, but mentally she’s a child trying to pretend to be an adult. Basically she’s no different than a kid playing dress-up. Her big hang-up is adult relationships. She never got to have one and she wants to know what it’s like. So she wants to watch, or at least have me tell her about it, but she has no idea of the emotional part.”
Jillian got up and went to the window. “When I was younger, we did things together—watched TV, went to the movies, drove around—and I didn’t mind telling her about my day at school and who said what to whom or who got into trouble. She knew most of the kids at school and liked hearing about them. As I got older, my tastes changed, and I wasn’t interested in the same things she was. Maybe she was trying to understand, I don’t know, but she started following me around, spying on me. She wanted more and more personal details that I wasn’t willing to give.”
Adam went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. He couldn’t afford for her to break down now. He needed every bit of information he could get. He felt exposed, standing in front of the window, so he pulled the curtains closed. “Tell me about your house. Are there others close by?”
“We’re the last house on a cul-de-sac. It’s a two story frame house with blue trim. Although I think it needs painting by now. There’s nothing but woods behind us. The lots are huge, over an acre each. It’s not a subdivision. That’s how Mother got by with running a business from home. Our nearest neighbors are about a football field away.”
She turned to Adam. “Do you remember in the eighties there was this TV show about some little girls, Full House?”
“I remember it. I didn’t watch it.”
“Neither did I. I was into sports and trying to please my dad. Heather wanted to watch it, but I knew Daddy wanted to watch a ball game, so I refused to put it on. The nearest family was the McElroys, and they had two little girls about the age Heather was when she died. I would smile at Daddy and say, ‘This is so nice. I’ll bet the McElroys are watching something silly like Full House.’ That was my signal to Heather that she should go to the neighbor’s to watch her show.”
Jillian actually laughed. “That poor family, I know she creeped them out. Their dog would whimper and pee on the rug every time that show came on. They finally moved away, even though they loved having so much room. A family without kids lives there now, and they both work. They keep an eye on things for me and let me know if vagrants try to break in. They’re not home now. They’ve gone to Mexico for two weeks.”
“You don’t always do what she wants. What about other people? If I’d been sitting at the desk instead of Marshall, could she have talked me into keeping the gun?” He gritted his teeth. No way a voice in his ear could make him turn his back on everything he believed in.
“I think you have to be leaning that way. It’s more like a nudge to do something you wanted to do anyway but knew you shouldn’t.”
Decision made, Adam turned and stretched. Time to put his plan in action. “Do you have any decongestant?”
“Sure, it’s in the bathroom. I didn’t know you weren’t feeling well.”
Jillian ducked into the bathroom, and Adam retrieved the two beer bottles and carried them to the kitchen. As he put them in the trash, he checked under the sink and grabbed a bottle of drain cleaner.
“Where’s that camp stove you said you had?”
“It’s in that storage shed where we put the stuff from Marshall’s house, which, by the way, I’d still like to get off my property.”
“Don’t worry. I have a plan. Unfortunately, it involves you having to talk to Heather again. But, with any luck, it’s the last time you’ll ever have to speak to her.”
“Whatever you have in mind, be careful. She’s dangerous when angry. She doesn’t have any impulse control. I don’t think you can scare her off.”
“I agree. Frightening her won’t do the job.”
Adam waited until he was well away from Jillian’s before he stopped at a CVS and bought a large box of Sudafed. Half a block farther was a Walgreen’s. Why did they build them so close together? He went inside and bought another box. He didn’t like the fact the decongestants were locked up and he had to ask someone to get them out, but Wal-Mart was even worse. There he had to take a card to the cashier and she sent someone for the box, meaning more than one person saw him.
On the seat of his neighbor’s pick-up were two ball caps, one with an Astros logo, and the other a John Deere. He stopped at every drugstore until he was several blocks from his house, switching caps, and brands of decongestants at each store.
A criminal’s favorite trick, putting on a ball cap and calling it a disguise. Was that what he was about to become, a criminal?
Down the road, he found a Pep Boys, and bought two containers of anti-freeze. At Home Depot, he bought two jugs of drain cleaner, but was afraid to buy more at one place, so he drove on to an Ace Hardware and bought two more. He paid cash at each place, and had gone through Marshall’s $200 and everything he had in his pocket by the time he got home.
The car was near empty by this time so he filled up at his usual station. He didn’t mind using his credit card there, since it was a normal occurrence. He was hesitant to go to an ATM, so he fished out his emergency $500 from the back of his gun safe.
In his garage, he went first to the shelves on the side where he stored old, unused items. Next to an ancient, hand-cranked ice cream freezer, he found a petrified bag of rock salt. Its condition didn’t matter, just the name on the bag. He also picked up a can of paint thi
nner and some old Mason jars. In the workshop section, he had two gallon containers of anti-freeze. He took the full one and left the one that had been opened. Brake cleaner, engine starting fluid, gun scrubber, and gasoline additive also went into the box he was filling.
He remembered the bottle of drain cleaner in the guest bath, and took that, some alcohol, and coffee filters also, along with a box of wooden matches and a couple of empty two-liter pop bottles. The box of coffee filters was new, so he pulled out three and set them by the coffee pot. Then he called Ruben. Bad enough that he’d chosen this path. Now he was pulling his friend into it also.
“Hey, old buddy, any chance I could come by early in the morning and borrow the key to your cabin?”
“You’re welcome to it, but unless you’re planning to take the boat out, I can’t imagine what you’d want it for. It’s not the nicest place to take a lady friend.”
Ruben paused. “You’re not seeing a married woman are you?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t handle single ones, what would I do with the complications of a married one? No, I just want to borrow the two-burner propane cooker we made.” If only it was as simple as woman trouble.
“Are you planning a party and didn’t invite me?”
“No.”
“Is the stove in your kitchen broken?”
“Um, yeah. It’s on the fritz.” Crap. Ruben was a human lie detector.
“You’re fucking with me, compadre, and I don’t like it. Whatever you’re up to, I’m coming with you. I hope you’re not planning to dump those guns in the lake near my cabin. Someone would sure as shit see you do it, even if you waited till after dark. Sooner or later a storm would move things around or a drought would uncover something. If only one of those guns turns up in that lake, it’ll send someone knocking on my door. They need to be destroyed completely.”
Maybe, but how exactly was he going to manage that?
The Secrets on Forest Bend Page 23
