The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  His gorge threatening to unleash, Joe pushed to his feet, went inside, and twisted on the shower.

  He’d call Darrell Copeland after he got Angie Waltz’s cremated body out of his ears.

  The good news, Copeland told him over the phone, was that any good will or grace period Sharon might have had in the minds of the authorities would be erased by this latest assault. If Joe would be willing to preserve some of the ashes Sharon had tossed on his house—or on Joe—Copeland would see to it that they were bagged and analyzed. Of course, if Sharon refused to admit what she’d done, it would cost a great deal of money to analyze the ashes, maybe more than the county sheriff’s office would be willing to dole out.

  Joe nodded, thinking that the only solution was to somehow make Sharon go away entirely. If they couldn’t incarcerate her—and he was pretty sure a woman couldn’t be jailed for tossing ashes in a man’s face—he wished they could relocate her. She was, after all, homeless, at least to Joe’s knowledge. Probably shacking up with one of her druggie friends, some hard drinking man no doubt. Joe couldn’t imagine Sharon with a doctor or a librarian.

  When Copeland was done, Joe asked him for the bad news.

  “The bad news,” Copeland told him, “is that you need to tell Michelle.”

  Joe cringed at the thought. He drummed on the desk in his upstairs study.

  Copeland said, “You haven’t told her yet, have you?”

  “Uh-uh,” Joe said, rubbing his temples.

  “I know you better than you know yourself, Joe. It’s like we’re an old married couple.”

  “Why should I tell her?”

  “For one, she’s in the house now, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So unless you want her to think you’re on the phone with your mistress, you better let her know we talked.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t need to tell her about—”

  “The hell you don’t. Don’t you think she’s got a right to know about what went on today? It’s her house too, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t know Michelle.”

  “I know you’re avoiding the issue.”

  Joe eyed the door, wondered if Michelle might be on the other side listening.

  “Hey, Copeland?” Joe said slowly. “I really don’t like you sometimes.”

  “Real friends tell each other the truth even when it’s painful.”

  “Is that what you think? That you’re my friend?”

  “Only one you got,” Copeland said.

  “There’s Kevin and Shaun.”

  “Hell. They only like you because you pay them. They’d never take you out for drinks the way I did.”

  “I paid for my own.”

  “That’s cuz I don’t want you feeling guilty about taking advantage of my generous nature.”

  Joe stood. “Anybody ever tell you you’re full of shit, Copeland?”

  “People never appreciate honesty. Oh, and you ever see The Big Lebowski?”

  “Of course,” Joe said.

  Copeland chuckled. “You remember the scene at the end? When Jeff Bridges and John Goodman scattered their friend’s ashes?”

  Scowling, Joe hung up.

  He went downstairs. Michelle was bouncing Lily on a hip and dancing her around the room. The Emotions’ “Best of My Love” was blasting on the little Bose sound system he’d bought Michelle last Christmas. Lily was squealing with delight and making jerky dance movements with her arms. When Michelle saw him in the big mirror over the fireplace, she turned. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Can’t believe you heard me over The Emotions.”

  Michelle’s face clouded. She moved to the Bose, turned it way down. “What’s wrong, Joe?”

  Joe took in Lily’s crestfallen expression. “At least let her finish the song.”

  “After,” Michelle said. “What’s happened now?”

  Joe eyed his wife a moment. “Maybe you better have a seat.”

  It didn’t take long to tell. Joe considered leaving out the last part, the ashes in his hair that took a doubly long shower to wash completely out, but in the end he decided on full disclosure. Michelle listened to him with a growing look of dismay, and though Joe had expected this, he still didn’t relish the inevitable aftermath. The reassurance. The arguing. The lingering atmosphere of worry in his once peaceful home.

  “So is Darrell going to arrest her?”

  Joe reached for Lily, who was eating a blue crayon. “He’ll do what he can. I’m heading outside now to collect some of the stuff Sharon scattered around the foundation.”

  Michelle stared at him. “Angie’s ashes?”

  “That was a Pulitzer Prize winner.”

  “Please don’t joke about this.”

  Joe took the crayon from Lily’s mouth, told her to spit out the rest. After she’d decorated his hand with slobber and crayon fragments, Joe set to tickling her.

  “Joe?” Michelle said.

  Joe gave Lily a kiss on the forehead, sobered. “I know it’s not ideal, honey, but it’s the only way to prove what happened.”

  Michelle shivered. “How will you collect it?”

  “I don’t know. A spoon and a plastic baggy, I guess.”

  “You’re not using my silverware for that.”

  “Then I’ll use a paper plate or something. It’s not like I’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  “And don’t track her remains into the house.”

  “I’ll wash off my shoes when I’m done. Hell, I’ll power wash the whole foundation. I don’t want that crap there any more than you do.”

  Michelle grimaced. “Maybe we shouldn’t call it crap.”

  Joe gave her a dour look on the way out. “I’m too pissed off to be politically correct.”

  Collecting the ashes didn’t take long. There was some dirt and some leaf particles mixed into the baggie, but Joe figured the folks at the lab could use a strainer or something to separate the good material from the bad. The power washing took a little longer. There’d been a good deal of rain lately, and the ground was already soggy. As a result, when Joe aimed the spray gun too low, a lot of mud and dead leaves spattered the brick and the white siding near the ground. And when Joe stood too close to the siding, he actually peeled off flecks of paint, revealing a dingier ivory beneath. When he finally got the house looking halfway decent and had at least mixed the ashes with the rest of the mud and mulch, he took care to rinse off his work boots.

  After grabbing a quick bite, Joe headed off to a smaller project at a house downtown, taking care not to pass by the scorched remains of the Waltz house. He and his crew worked on the basement they were finishing while an electrician Joe often subcontracted put in new wiring. The day moved briskly, and though Joe wanted to be home with Michelle and Lily, he knew he’d missed too much work lately and wanted to make sure his crew knew he was still focused. It was therefore after eight o’clock when Joe arrived home.

  Michelle was waiting for him in the kitchen.

  “Sorry, honey,” he said.

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “For what? Working your ass off to support your family?”

  Joe noticed the wine glass in Michelle’s hand. “I take it Lily’s gone to bed?”

  “I put her down twenty minutes ago. You can bathe her tomorrow.”

  “Shoot. It was my night, wasn’t it?” Joe dropped his keys on the counter, went over to get himself a glass.

  “I already poured yours,” Michelle said, nodding toward a tall glass of Merlot. “And don’t worry about missing bath night. She’ll need one again tomorrow. Especially if she keeps rubbing her spit all over her face.”

  Joe eased down across from her, sampled the wine. “Mm. You buy this?”

  She shook her head. “The Martins. They said it was to thank you for being their new contra
ctor.”

  The wine glass halfway to his mouth, Joe paused, stared at her. “You serious?”

  Michelle smiled. “Mitch said he wants to do a major renovation. He was talking about the master suite, something about a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Converting the third story into a bonus room for their future children.”

  “The Martins were here?”

  “They stopped by this afternoon. I like the woman a lot.”

  Joe sat back, processing all of it. “Wow.”

  “Congratulations, honey.”

  Joe sat forward, took her hand. “This is amazing.”

  “It is,” she said. “Would you like to fuck?”

  Joe choked on his wine, reached out and grabbed a handful of napkins. When he’d mopped off his face and the table, he looked at her. “You’re a real tomcat, you know it?”

  She nodded. “Go kiss Lily good night. I’ll be in the bedroom.”

  Joe opened the door to the nursery as gently as he could, but it still creaked slightly. He told himself for the hundredth time he’d oil it soon, but it was one of those things he never remembered afterward. In a house this old, there were always those kinds of issues. Things you resolved to fix but ended up learning to live with.

  Lily didn’t awaken. Michelle had cowled the top of the crib with a pair of blankets—what Lily called her tent—and left a foot or so of open space for Lily to poke her head out if she wanted to. Because the blankets were so small, the slatted walls of the crib were left mostly uncovered, so there was plenty of air for Lily to breathe. Michelle said it made their daughter feel secure. Joe still worried about suffocation, but he knew he was just being fretful.

  He knelt beside the crib and attempted to touch Lily’s face through one of the gaps, but his arm was too thick. That was good, he supposed. If the rails were too wide-set, Lily might get her head caught between them, and that really could be trouble. Joe stood, leaned into the gap between the two blankets and had just spotted his daughter’s sweet, slumbering face, when it hit him.

  The smell.

  The acrid odor of smoke, heavy and sharp, made his nostrils tingle, his eyes water.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  He wanted it to be imagination, wanted to believe it was just a remnant of his experience earlier. But he’d washed his face vigorously enough to turn it bright pink, and his boots were downstairs. He knew he wasn’t smelling himself.

  Was it possible Lily had gotten into the ashes earlier on?

  He supposed it was. He hadn’t told Michelle what had happened immediately, which meant there’d been a twenty-minute window in which Lily could’ve discovered the ashes and—

  No, that made no sense. Michelle kept a close watch on their daughter, and anyway, once she heard about the incident with Sharon and the ashes, she would’ve recalled any exposure Lily might’ve had.

  Not necessarily, he thought, his heart pounding harder. Lily didn’t get a bath tonight. Michelle watched Lily, sure, but it wasn’t like she never let the kid touch the ground. What if, while Joe was on the phone with Copeland, Michelle had gone outside to water the window boxes?

  Joe’s breathing thinned, his pulse throbbing in his neck. He reached down, opened the blankets that formed Lily’s tent, but it was too dark to see anything other than his daughter’s slumbering form.

  This is insane, he thought.

  But…hadn’t the scent of smoke, of a dead campfire grown stronger when he’d parted the blankets that roofed Lily’s crib?

  He didn’t have a flashlight on him or his cell phone, but beside his daughter lay her Glo Worm, one of her favorite bedtime toys. Joe reached down, grasped it, and pushed on its belly. The interior of the crib promptly lit up, and though the melody it played made him worry his daughter would awaken, he could at least see that there were no ashes on Lily’s face. He examined her hair, her hands…no, it was apparent she was clean. Or at least cleaner than she would be had she smeared Angela’s remains all over herself.

  Breathing a little easier, Joe placed the Glo Worm next to Lily and returned her tent to the way it had been. He had no idea where the smell was coming from, but at least he was sure it wasn’t from Lily. Joe made to leave the nursery.

  Soft laughter emanated from the crib.

  He froze, the sound like a lullaby played off key.

  One of Lily’s dolls. It had to be. It was a rare thing now to find a toy that didn’t talk or squawk or play the William Tell Overture. Joe bent over, peered into the darkness to spot the offending doll.

  All of Lily’s normal toys were here—her Thomas the Tank Engine, her seahorse, her maniacally meowing cat, her Dora doll. And of course the Glo Worm. None of them had made the sound.

  So the laughter had been his imagination, he thought.

  Except it hadn’t. Unless he was cracking up—which wouldn’t be all that surprising given the insanity of the past few weeks—he’d heard laughter. Low, female laughter. There had been something unsettling about it. Something…well, beguiling. Like the sultry voice had known something very private about Joe and was poised to use the information against him. It was an absurd thought, one he should have dismissed out of hand, but it festered, replaying in his memory like the idiot refrain of a mindless pop song.

  Joe had taken a step away from the crib when his shoe bumped against something, and he bent over to retrieve whatever it was so Michelle or Lily wouldn’t trip on it tomorrow morning.

  At first he thought it was a naked Barbie doll. The smoothness of the appendages and the stringbean frame certainly suggested it. But stepping into the semidarkness of the hallway, he saw it was Lily’s favorite doll, Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Joe secretly approved of this particular princess because she had a brain and spent more time improving her mind than brushing her hair. But Lily had apparently stripped Belle of her accustomed yellow gown for some purpose only logical to her two-year-old’s mind.

  He carried the doll downstairs and was about to ask Michelle about it, but when he opened the door and saw his wife lying on her stomach, her body gloriously, deliriously nude, he forgot all about Disney movies and Glo Worms and creepy laughter that made his flesh crawl.

  All he could think about was Michelle. And soon they were lost in a warm world of flesh and light and the afterglow of their lovemaking.

  Chapter Ten

  Joe was sitting at the dining room table sketching out the master bath configuration for the Baxter house when Michelle walked in. “Any word from the Martins yet?” she asked.

  “Uh-uh,” he said. He jotted down the dimensions of the shower stall, realized they were wrong, then scribbled them out.

  “How long will it be until they sign?”

  His tongue poking from the side of his mouth, Joe recorded the proper measurements. It would be wide for a shower, but some people liked that.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible they’re still talking to other contractors, getting other bids.”

  “But they said they’d go with you though.” Michelle leaned against the antique buffet, and though he didn’t look up, he knew she was frowning. “And you’re going to match any bid, right?”

  Joe kept his tone noncommittal. “If I can.”

  “What do you mean ‘If you can’? Joe, you don’t have any other jobs lined up.”

  “I know that.”

  “Sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  He sighed, dropped the pencil on his notepad. “Sounds like you want to talk about something.”

  “It would be nice if you showed some urgency.”

  Now he did turn in his chair. “You think I’m lazy, Michelle? Because if you do, that stings worse than just about anything you could say to me.”

  “You know I don’t think that.”

  “Then I’d appreciate a clarification.”

  “You don’t have to be ma
d.”

  “Well, I am. You would be too, you were sittin’ here.”

  Michelle seemed to deflate. She moved over to the window, pretended to stare at the backyard. “I just wish you’d be willing to compromise a little.”

  “There’re a million ways to take that.”

  “You always have to be such a horse’s ass?”

  “You’re the one criticizing. At the very least, I think I deserve the courtesy of a clear message rather than this passive-aggressive bullshit.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Lily’s not wakin’ up. Kid’s like you. She’d sleep through a tsunami.”

  “So you’re just going to let the Wilson Brothers step in and take this bid?”

  “Been looking at your crystal ball again?”

  Michelle rounded on him. “I don’t need a crystal ball to see a pattern. People ask for your bid, you give it to them, then someone else comes up with a lowball figure, and you lose the client.”

  “And then the lowball figure balloons to double what it was supposed to be, and the client gets screwed.”

  “And the builder’s family has enough money.”

  Joe drew back. “You really think we’re hurting, Michelle? Living in a nice house. In this neighborhood. Both our vehicles paid for?”

  “Not now, we’re not hurting, but what about next year and the year after that? College is expensive.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “So tell the Martins what they want to hear.”

  “And when the price tag doesn’t match my bid?”

  Michelle crossed her arms, shrugged. “You’ll already have the signed contract.”

  Joe grunted. “The joke’s on them, huh?”

  “Better them than us.”

  “Why don’t you think about what you just said, honey. Let it sink in a little bit.”

  Michelle gave a shuddering sigh. “Let’s just forget it, all right? This PMS and everything, I’m really emotional right now.”

  Joe grunted. “Sometimes I wish I was a woman. Any time I acted like an asshole, I could just blame it on hormones. Or cramps.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Joe went toward the kitchen. “I think I’ll go for a drive instead.”