The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  Copeland looked troubled. “I don’t know.”

  “You must have an idea though.”

  “She and her mom are bad news,” Copeland said. “People like that…there’s no tellin’ what they’ll do.”

  Joe watched a rook wing toward the rim of the forest, then light on a broad oak bough. The leaves there were just beginning to bud. “This’ll all be over soon, though, won’t it? Isn’t Angie’s trial coming up?”

  Darrell peered out over the cemetery, a speculative cast to his eyes. “Who knows? I’m not even sure she’ll make it to trial.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Copeland pushed up straight, tapped the side of the truck bed with his thick fingers. “I saw her the other day. Drove by her house over on Crosser Street? I went up the alley. You know, just to see what was going on. I saw her out there. There’s a covered porch in back. She was just sittin’ on the that porch, staring out at the alley.”

  “So?”

  Copeland shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. It’s just the look she had that bothered me. Eyes all glassy. Looked like all she had on was an old nightgown she probably got from her mom. It was only eight in the morning, couldn’t have been more than forty degrees. Yet she just sat there with only her spaghetti straps on her shoulders, her knees so far apart anyone could catch a glimpse of her privates.”

  “She wasn’t wearing any…”

  “No panties, no nothin’. Showin’ anybody who drove by her crotch. Hell, she didn’t even seem to notice me go by.”

  Joe imagined Angie Waltz sitting there in the cold, legs spread, eyes expressionless, and felt his skin break into gooseflesh, despite the fact that it was nearly sixty degrees.

  Chapter Five

  Kyle Everett, the attendant who’d helped Joe the afternoon Angie and Sharon Waltz had mauled him at the Marathon station, sat on the tall stool reading a tattered paperback novel and trying to block out the television playing in the corner of the small dining area. Presently, there were two customers seated at one of the four tables, both of them senior citizens who drank the brackish swill the Marathon station passed off as coffee every evening between six and ten and who frequently demanded Kyle turn up the television because neither one heard particularly well.

  For the thousandth time, Kyle contemplated lobbing a rock at the old mounted television’s screen so he wouldn’t have to hear Wheel of Fortune or the evening news anymore.

  “Turn it up a notch, would ya, Kyle?” Frank Gretencord called.

  Lips compressed, Kyle scooped up the remote, pushed the volume button once, and placed it back under the counter. Man, he wished the hog plant hadn’t laid him off. Compared to manning the desk at this gas station, toiling among hog carcasses didn’t seem all that bad. At least he wouldn’t have to listen to Pat Sajak every night.

  Of course, it wasn’t dark yet. The days were getting longer now, and though it was six-fifteen, twilight wouldn’t end for another twenty minutes. Kyle scanned the pumps through the picture windows and saw they were empty. Everyone in town, it seemed, was eating supper. Everyone except Frank Gretencord and Elmore Hempel, widowers both who desperately longed for companionship and could only find it at a dreary gas station that specialized in leathery fried chicken and desiccated potato wedges.

  Sighing, Kyle got up, went over to the coffee machine, and took down two Styrofoam cups. He filled them both, emptied a container of cream in one, and shook two packets of sugar into the other. He crossed to where Frank and Elmore sat commenting on Vanna White’s boobs and deposited the two cups before the men.

  Elmore glanced up at him in pleasure and surprise. “Hey, thanks, fella!”

  “No problem,” Kyle said. “I figured you two were getting a little low.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Frank said as Kyle returned to his post.

  Feeling a little better about his dead end job, Kyle assumed his perch on the stool and returned to the book he’d been reading. It was darned good so far, and diverting enough to make Kyle forget about—

  “How much do I owe you?”

  Kyle jumped and dropped his paperback.

  Angie Waltz stared at him from the other side of the counter.

  Kyle’s heart thudded. “Jeez, I didn’t even see you come in.”

  Angie said nothing, only stared at him in that same incurious way. Now that his heartbeat had begun to approximate a normal rhythm, Kyle noticed how dark the hollows of her eyes were, almost like she’d gotten the worst of a fistfight. Her clothes were awfully shabby too, just a dingy gray robe, untied and flapping open, and a nightgown that once might have been white. Kyle realized with some misgiving that the gown was made of some flimsy material, so that the dark circles of Angie’s nipples were plainly visible beneath. Of their own accord his eyes traveled lower, and what he saw there made him feel a little queasy. Why Kyle should be repelled by the sight of an attractive young woman’s shaved sex, he had no idea.

  Maybe it’s because there’s something so obviously wrong with this girl, he thought. And maybe because at this moment she’s not attractive at all, despite her skimpy outfit.

  “Can I pay or not?” Angie said. Her voice held little rancor though. It was leaden, toneless.

  Kyle nodded and stood up hastily. Leaning over, he peered out the window but didn’t spot her maroon Dodge Caravan. “I’m not sure I—”

  “I walked,” she said. She lifted a two-gallon gas can. “Pump five.”

  “Ah,” Kyle said and rang her up.

  While she waited to pay, Kyle glanced askance to see if Frank or Elmore had noticed the girl. They’d both been present last week when Angie Waltz had abused first her son, then Joe Crawford, to say nothing of the damage Sharon Waltz had inflicted on Kyle. Frank Gretencord had been one of the sworn witnesses to the Waltzes’ brutality.

  But to his chagrin, neither man had marked Angie’s coming.

  Too transfixed by Vanna White, he thought.

  Thankfully, the stupid cash register finally rang up. “That’s seven dollars and forty-nine cents,” he said.

  Angie Waltz dropped a crumpled bill on the counter and walked silently toward the door. No, Kyle thought, the worm of uneasiness in his belly beginning to grow. Not walked toward the door. Shambled toward the door. Her gait reminded him of that television show, the one with the zombies. He never watched it, in fact he hated TV. But he’d seen a zombie walk—that hitching, shoulder-twitching stride that seemed somehow, well, dead. Angie pushed open the door and made a right turn, still shambling in that zombiefied manner.

  Kyle watched until Angie disappeared, his fingers tapping the counter.

  He didn’t like it.

  “Hey, Frank?” he called.

  A long pause. The codger hadn’t heard him.

  “Frank? Elmore?”

  “Just a minute, Kyle,” Frank called. “We’re tryin’ to solve the puzzle. It’s something about a wrench.”

  “Second word’s only five letters,” Elmore reminded him

  “Nude bitch!” Frank yelled.

  “They wouldn’t say nude on Wheel of Fortune, dumbass.”

  Kyle tapped his fingers, thinking. He glanced down, studied the crumpled bill. Flattening it out, he saw it was a fifty.

  In the background, he heard a contestant say, “I’d like to solve, Pat.”

  “Rude bitch!” Frank called.

  “Dude ranch,” the contestant said. The audience applauded.

  “Told you they wouldn’t say nude on national TV,” Elmore said.

  Kyle moved around the edge of the counter with the greasy bill in his hand. “Watch the register for me, would you, fellas?”

  Neither man looked up. Frank said to Elmore, “They had Nude Beach up there one time.”

  “You’re senile,” Elmore said as the front door wheezed sh
ut behind Kyle.

  Kyle hustled around the front of the station. Crosser Street was only a couple blocks away, but shambling along as she was and weighted down by a two-gallon gas can, he figured he could overtake Angie before she reached her back porch.

  Truth be told—and Kyle was loath to admit this, even to himself—he’d more than once driven that alley behind Angie Waltz’s house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her in her bedroom upstairs. Shadeland was a small town, and a young man’s options were limited. If Angie weren’t several years younger than he was and not always involved with some local druggie, Kyle would’ve gone ahead and asked her out on a legitimate date. Not that making slow cruises up and down her alley and peeping in her windows was legitimate, of course, but it was better than jerking off to Internet porn.

  He hurried past the unisex restroom—the Marathon station still kept its key attached to a Billy club, perhaps as a nod to a bygone era—and held his breath until he was well past the huge green dumpster. Ahead, he spied Angie, the rounded gas can bumping her leg with each awkward stride. If he hadn’t seen her up close, he would’ve guessed she was high on some drug. But Kyle couldn’t think of a drug that made a person look like an extra in a zombie film. Crystal meth did weird things to a body—some of Kyle’s old high school buddies had turned into gaunt scarecrows after only a few months of taking the shit—but other than the purplish eye sockets and that dead look, Angie Waltz looked every bit as tan and nubile as she always had.

  Maybe, he thought, jogging to catch up with her now, he could be the one to reform her. Sort of nurse her back to health. He knew she probably hated him—she had to know he was one of the ones who’d signed a statement about her abuse—and of course there was the matter of Kyle telling her and her mom to get the hell off the property after the incident…

  Kyle slowed to a walk, realizing that his chances of dating Angie were somewhere between zero and the possibility of Frank and Elmore doubling up on Vanna White. And anyway, Angie was nearing her house now, the shuffling gait slowly but steadily delivering her to her covered back porch.

  But still…something compelled him on, made him close the gap between them once again so that as she moved haltingly up the broken back sidewalk, he found himself less than thirty feet from her. She neared the wooden back porch, began the climb up the four rickety steps.

  He spoke without thinking. “You left me a fifty!”

  She stopped on the back porch, the overhang shadowing her slightly. The evening had darkened a little, but it was still plenty light enough to see how motionless her body was, how fixed her shoulders remained. As if she wasn’t even breathing.

  He tried again. “I owe you a little over forty bucks. You mind if I come back in a minute with your change?”

  Her back still to him, Angie didn’t move at all. It occurred to him she might be having some kind of medical episode. Weren’t there conditions that made you zone out for short periods of time? Fugue states, he thought they were called. He remembered learning about them in Mr. Crabbe’s sophomore health class. He thought they were associated with—

  Angie Waltz turned to face him. In the sundown light, her blue eyes looked like polished onyx.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to smile, “is there anything I can—”

  She reached down, unscrewed the gas cap.

  Kyle swallowed. “I forgot to ask you. What did you get the gas for? You gonna mow the lawn tonight?”

  Her eyes never leaving his, Angie lifted the can above her head.

  The worm in Kyle’s belly writhed.

  Angie tilted the gas can, allowed the liquid to glug over her head, drenching her hair, her face, her half-open mouth. Her clothes turned dark with the stuff, her sheer nightgown plastered to the front of her body like a transparent bathing suit. A small breeze skittered across the backyard, carrying with it the pungent odor of gasoline.

  There was no moisture in Kyle’s mouth. His voice a croak, he said, “Angie, you need some help.”

  Angie reached into the pocket of the sodden robe.

  She came out with something rectangular and silver.

  Kyle sucked in horrified breath, took a couple unthinking steps forward. “Hey, Angie. Hey, you don’t wanna—”

  But she had flicked the lighter, was lifting it toward her face. For an endless moment, the warm orange glow from the lighter illuminated the pretty heart-shaped chin, the sensuous lines of her jaws and full lips. Above that, the onyx eyes only stared, their expression never changing. Only the glistening beads on her skin and the stench of gasoline indicated that anything out of the ordinary was happening.

  Angie kept the flame a few inches from her face long enough for Kyle to hope she might just be playing a trick on him, frightening him because he talked to the police last week.

  Then the flame licked her skin, and her face became a brilliant orange mask.

  Kyle staggered backward and fell, his eyes fixed wide in horror.

  Angie Waltz became a gleaming torch, the flames spreading around her in no time at all.

  Part Two

  Ashes

  Chapter Six

  Joe extended the train track with another wooden section, then began the curve that would eventually link up with the rest of the line. His daughter had her chain of seventeen trains and freight cars poised at the top of the big hill, clearly ready to let the whole thing rumble down the tracks.

  “Just a second, honey,” Joe said. “Daddy needs to finish this curve.”

  Lily let go of the lead engine.

  The drag from the other sixteen train cars sent the whole thing reversing down the other side of the hill. The train derailed immediately.

  Lily wailed.

  Joe crawled over, began righting the toppled cars. “I told you, honey, if you make the train shorter, it’ll be less likely to wreck.”

  Lily shouted, “I don’t want them to wreck!” Only the way she said it, wreck sounded like weck.

  From the doorway, Michelle said, “She’s tired.”

  “Her nap’s not for another three hours.”

  “Maybe she needs a snack.”

  Joe continued straightening the trains. “She ate a banana a few minutes ago. She just doesn’t like it when her train goes off the tracks.”

  Joe knew it was coming, but the question still tore into him when Michelle asked it.

  “Are you going today?”

  “Didn’t we have this discussion last night?”

  Lily grabbed the lead train—a long blue one named Gordon—and started pulling it toward the hill even though Joe hadn’t gotten all of the trains fixed yet.

  “Don’t you feel like you should?” Michelle asked.

  “You know how I feel.”

  There were only two freight cars still overturned, but they were enough to upset the ones in front of them, causing a chain reaction that sent the whole line toppling off the hill.

  Lily screamed, hurled Gordon across the room.

  “Honey,” Joe said, keeping the edge off his voice, “you need to pick that up.”

  Michelle said, “I can’t imagine how Sharon must feel.”

  Lily kicked a pair of trains—Percy and a coal car—and they went tumbling under the couch.

  “Honey, we don’t throw and kick our trains,” Joe said, knowing it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Arguing with Lily when she threw a tantrum was like reasoning with a malfunctioning car alarm. “Now, let’s pick up Gordon and Percy.”

  “No!” Lily shouted. Her face had gone a livid red, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Maybe I’ll go,” Michelle said, as if to herself.

  “Come on, honey,” Joe said. He got to his knees, grasped his daughter around the waist and attempted to pick her up.

  “No!” Lily shrieked. “Leggo, Daddy! Leggo!”

  His two-year-old reached back and grab
bed at the only thing at her disposal, the hill Joe had assembled for her. She knocked one side of it over, latched onto the heavy center section.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Joe said. “We’ll pick up your trains, and then we’ll—”

  Lily raised the heavy center section with both hands and bonked Joe on the top of the head.

  Joe sucked in air and clasped a hand to his skull. God, it felt like she’d smacked him with a brick. He clenched his jaws, waited for the shrieking pain to subside.

  “Are you sure you won’t go with me?” Michelle asked.

  He checked his hand and saw a little blood on his fingers.

  Michelle looked too, seemed to return from whatever far off mental place she’d been. “What happened?”

  “You didn’t see Lily brain me with Sodor Mountain?”

  “Uh-uh. Joe, you might need stitches.”

  Joe got up, rubbed his bloody fingers on the leg of his jeans. “I don’t need stitches, and you don’t need to go to Angie Waltz’s funeral.”

  Michelle followed him up the carpeted basement steps. “But Sharon…she lost her daughter, her house. She probably won’t get custody of her grandson. Don’t you think one of us should go?”

  “Why, so we can end up on the six o’clock news?”

  “You don’t really think she’ll cause a scene, do you?”

  Joe grunted humorless laughter. “Were you at the gas station?”

  “But that’s my point,” she said as he moved to the kitchen. “We were involved in what happened. It just seems right that we should pay our respects.”

  “I don’t have any respects.” He snatched up his keys.

  “You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Michelle, I’ll be damned if I’m going to her funeral,” he said.

  Michelle just looked at him.

  Joe arrived at the funeral a half hour before it was scheduled to begin. He could see the royal blue tent set up near the western edge of the cemetery, which was a goodly distance from where he was heading. The graveyard was hilly, which was a good thing. Joe curved away from the tent, did his best not to glance at the small columbarium, the place where…