by Peter Giglio
When Ben didn’t answer right away, Lester got up and walked around the counter, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I just came from a funeral.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Anyone I know?”
Ben nodded. “The girl I was with the other day, Aubrey, she…”
“Oh my God,” Lester said. “I read the obituary but didn’t make the connection. I’m so sorry, Benjamin. Do you need someone to talk to?”
Ben nodded as the door jangled, and two old women ambled into the store.
Lester turned to his mother. “Ma,” he said. She looked far away, as if she couldn’t hear him. “Ma,” he repeated, this time louder, and she seemed to snap from a daydream, a smile spreading across her face. “Can you watch the store for a while?” he asked.
She managed to pull herself from the chair before shuffling to the cash register.
“C’mon,” Lester said to Ben, “let’s go upstairs. It’ll be more private there.”
Ben followed the man into a back room as cluttered with books as the rest of the store, then up a narrow staircase. At the top of the stairs, Lester unlocked the only door, and Ben followed him through it.
The walls of the apartment were covered with framed photographs of men in uniform, and above a red antique couch hung a black POW/MIA banner.
“I’ll make us some tea,” Lester mumbled, then he went into the kitchen while Ben studied the pictures on the walls. It took him a while to recognize Lester in his army uniform, because the young man in the photos held his head high and smiled brightly.
Lester returned quickly, a steaming cup in his tremulous hands. Ben took the cup and sipped from it. He cringed.
“I know,” Lester said, “it tastes awful, doesn’t it?”
“What is it?”
“Herbal tea. It works well to calm your nerves, and it looked like you could use some.” Lester gestured to the couch. “Please, have a seat.”
Ben sat down and took another sip of tea, which was starting to taste better. Lester sat across from him in a rocking chair. “I see you were admiring my old army pictures.”
“Yeah, I was. So, were you, like…were you were in Vietnam?”
Lester nodded, a sad look in his eyes.
“Lester,” Ben said, “can I ask you a question?”
“Well, that’s what you’re here for, right? You can ask me anything, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out for you. Army intelligence, that was my job. My friends used to joke around and say ‘Les is more,’ cause I always had a way of tellin’ folks more than they needed to know.” He chuckled.
“When you came to Johnny’s funeral, why did you stand so far away from everyone else?”
Lester kept his eyes down as he shrugged, but his thin smile didn’t dissolve. “He wasn’t my family and I know what folks say about me behind my back—that I’m not right in the head—so I didn’t want to have to explain myself. I needed to pay my respects though. Johnny was a Marvel man, a big Spiderman nut, like me. He was a good boy.” Lester glanced up briefly, then back down. “But that’s not all you came to ask me, is it?”
“No, but I don’t know how to ask my real question.”
“Yeah, cat’s always getting my tongue, too. No rush. Worst thing Mother will do is give out too much change. But, heck, most of my customers are so honest that I could leave the register open and they could check out themselves. Who knows, they might feel bad for me and put a little extra in the till. Maybe I should run the shop that way.”
Slowly, Ben managed to tell the story of Aubrey; when he finished, Lester stared directly into his eyes for the first time.
“What should I do, Lester?”
“You have two choices, Benjamin. You can hold on to that secret and let it crush you, which it will. Or you can tell the police and let them deal with it.”
“What would you do?”
“Look at me,” Lester whispered, “what do you think I did?”
“But what should I do?”
“I can’t tell another person what to do. That wouldn’t be right. But I can promise you one thing. You don’t want to end up like me. I was in love, too, but my girl was Lady Liberty.”
“And she hurt you?”
Lester nodded. “She hurt me baaaaaad.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Yes,” Lester said, “more than anything in the whole damned world.”
* * *
When Ben returned home, his parents were waiting for him. Although their expressions conveyed pain, they weren’t fast to speak.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “It was wrong of me to go crazy at the funeral home.”
“Yes,” his mom said. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“Where did you go?” his father asked.
“I talked to Lester, the guy who owns The Book Rack. I needed some advice, and he gave it to me.”
“Your parents aren’t good enough?” his mother said. “We feed you and put a roof over your head, and we’re not good enough to give you advice? You had to run to that shell-shocked excuse of a man!”
“Stop it, Mom.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snarled. “Don’t you dare tell me what—”
“Stop it, Claudia,” his father said.
She glared at her husband. “Are you going to let him talk to me that way, Curt, after what he said in front of God and everyone else?”
“He said he was sorry. Cool down.”
“And you believe him?” she yelled. She gestured to Ben and blurted a contemptuous laugh. “He says he’s sorry and that makes it all right?” She turned to Ben, anger radiating from her eyes. “There’s not a moment’s peace with you, is there?”
“Enough,” his father shouted.
Tired but determined, Ben started for his room.
“Don’t you walk away from us,” his mother barked.
“Let him go,” said his dad.
Once in his room—the warlike sounds of his arguing parent echoing through the house—he grabbed his latest film from the desk. He slid open a drawer, fished out Evil Spirits III, then snapped off its red lid. The volume of his parents’ verbal combat escalated as he cut a small rectangle from a page in his notebook, upon which he wrote FOR JOHNNY. Using a small strip of scotch tape, he pasted the new label over the old one, then snapped the old lid on the new film.
From under his bed, he snatched Aubrey’s diary and stuffed it in the back of his slacks. With the Super 8 film in his pocket, he rushed into the dining room, where his mother cried as his father consoled her. Their fight, the first Ben had ever witnessed, was clearly over.
His father looked up, and Ben could see he was crying, too. He’d never see his father cry, and the sight was inexplicably staggering.
“I have to go out for a little while,” Ben said, his voice only a notch above a whisper. “I won’t take long, and I won’t get hurt.”
“Can’t it wait?” his father asked. “Can’t you see what we’re all going through right now, Ben?”
“Yes, I see. But what do you see when you look at me?”
“My son,” his dad said. “I see my son.”
“And do you trust me?”
His father didn’t answer.
“You don’t, do you?” Ben said.
“It’s hard,” his dad said.
“Then you know how I feel.” Ben slid the door open.
“What’s so damned important it can’t wait?” his mother asked.
“Closure,” Ben snapped. “It’s time someone did the right thing.” Then he slammed the door and ran to the garage.
* * *
Ben placed the Super 8 canister at the foot of Johnny’s gravestone.
“No one will believe what’s in this, Johnny,” he said, “and I sure as hell don’t want to watch it anymore myself. But I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s my best film yet.
“I miss you every day. I want you to know that you were
n’t my special project. Being nice to you was never a chore. It was easy. And I love you, brother.”
With that, Ben rode to the other end of the cemetery, where the newest grave didn’t have a headstone yet. Roy Rose stood at the edge of the fresh mound of dirt, looking down and smoking a cigarette. As Ben pedaled toward him, Roy looked up.
“What are you doing out here?” Roy asked.
“Had to pay my respects the right way,” Ben said.
Roy went back to looking at the fresh mound of dirt, as if expecting his daughter to rise from the ground at any moment.
“You caused quite a ruckus this morning,” Roy said.
“Did I?” Ben said.
“Yeah, you did.” Roy’s voice was soft and even.
“Sorry ’bout that.”
“To tell the truth, I wanted to start shouting a few times this morning myself.”
Ben rested his bike in the grass and stood next to Roy. A few seconds later, Roy wrapped his arm around Ben’s shoulder and pulled him close.
“I loved her,” Ben said. Tears flooded his cheeks. He wasn’t broken anymore.
“I know you did, son. I loved her, too. She was my blind spot.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, “I know what you mean.”
Ben stayed with Roy for a few minutes.
They said their good-byes.
Then Ben mounted his bike and pedaled toward the police station.
* * *
Later that night, as Ben eased himself through the window, his bedroom door swung open and his mother turned the light on.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’ll come right back, but there’s one more thing I have to do.”
As she sat down on the edge of his bed, his mother shook her head. “You know the police took Roy away, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So what else do you have to do?”
“I can’t tell you, Mom. I’m asking you to trust me.”
“Are they going to take me away next?”
“I don’t know. Did you do anything wrong?”
“I’ve done a lot of things wrong, Ben. But we all screw up sometimes.”
“I think you’ll be all right, Mom.”
“Well, I’m going to wait here until you come back,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Ben?”
“Yes, Mom.”
She got up from the bed and kneeled in front of the open window. “Are you sure you did the right thing about Roy? I wish you’d talked to us first so we could have helped you through that terrible situation.”
“Sometimes a man has to figure things out for himself.”
After a period of silence, she said, “What if I don’t want you to grow up?”
“Tough.”
“Roy was family, you know. He really was.”
“So we’re related to a convict. He’s still family. He always will be.”
She smiled. “I trust you, Ben. Hurry back.”
With that, he took off running for the park.
* * *
At the birch tree, just as before, Ben found Ryan Barnes.
“I want you to know one thing first,” Ben said. “I didn’t do this for you.”
“I…I thought you’d…forgotten about me,” Ryan wheezed.
“I didn’t even know if you were still here. I haven’t had any dreams or visions for the last few days.”
“I’m very…weak. I haven’t had…the energy. So very tired…but I can’t sleep.”
“You’ll be able to sleep soon,” Ben said. Then he told Ryan what had happened to him, and what had happened to Roy and Aubrey as a result.
“You mean…you got revenge for me?”
“No,” Ben said. “I didn’t do any of this for you.”
“Then why did…did you turn…the old man in?”
“Because it was the right thing to do?”
“I don’t…understand.”
“I’m not surprised.”
At that moment, Ryan vanished, and Ben thought he noticed a jump cut, as if God had stopped the camera of time and asked Ryan to step out of the frame.
Ben stared up through the tree branches, into the star-sprinkled sky, and a cool breeze tickled his face. In the distance, an owl hooted. Farther away, a police siren wailed and a dog barked.
Walking home, Ben felt tired and hungry.
And alive.
* * *
As promised, his mother was waiting when he climbed through the window. She sat on the floor. Three boxes made a semicircle around her. He’d taken out the Atari system and a few games, but he’d yet to pick through the contents of his best friend’s belongings.
“I thought you might be ready?” she said.
He sat across from her and pried open one of the packages. Atop a stack of folded T-shirts was a framed photograph. In the image: he and his best friend, smiling, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders; behind them stood a large movie poster for Return of the Jedi.
He held up the photograph so his mother could see it. “Opening day,” he said.
“Oh, you two were so excited about that movie. It was all you could talk about for months.”
Ben got up and opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a hammer and a small nail. Then he crawled across his bed and considered the unadorned wall he’d reserved for projecting movies.
“Don’t, Ben,” his mother said. “You’ll wake your father.”
“Go ahead, son,” his father said, standing in the doorway. “It’s not like I can sleep right now anyway.”
Ben tapped the nail into the sheetrock. Then, careful not to scratch the wall, he hung the frame.
He slid off the bed and took a step back, studying his work. “How does it look?” he asked.
But his parents didn’t answer with words. His mother got up and stood beside him, and his father stood on his other side. Staring at the photograph, they wrapped arms around their only child, the most important aspect of their fragile lives.
And they stayed that way for a long time.
About the Author
A Pushcart Prize nominee and an active member of the Horror Writers Association, Peter Giglio is the author of five novels and four novellas, and he edits a successful line of books for Evil Jester Press. His works of short fiction can be found in a number of notable volumes, including two comprehensive genre anthologies edited by New York Times bestselling author John Skipp. With Scott Bradley, Peter wrote the author-approved screen adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Night They Missed the Horror Show.” And an established screenwriting team in Los Angeles holds the film option on Giglio’s novella Sunfall Manor. He resides in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he stays out of trouble.
Website: www.petergiglio.com.
Blog: http://petergiglioauthor.blogspot.com
About the Publisher
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
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