The end of her noose twitches back and forth, like a cat flicking its tail. She uses the rope like an extra appendage, and reaches to caress my face. The fibers are cold against my cheek, the texture scratchy and uncomfortable. I merely stare into her empty eye sockets.
“You used to be a pretty thing before the devil got ahold of you.”
The noose slaps me hard across the face, the tip of it stinging my left eye. I feel a welt rising already, but I laugh with black humor.
“Do you honestly think you can hurt me?”
The noose snaps like a whip around my waist, tightening like a snake. She lifts me up above her head, tilting me at an angle.
“I have nothing. I have no one. There is nothing to take from me but my life, and even that would be too merciful for you. This is why I’m unafraid, don’t you see? I have suffered the whole of my life because of you, and I’ve greedily welcomed death that would not come. You’re nothing but a mere puppy to me, don’t you understand?”
She scowls and slams me against the ground. Every bone in my body screams. I grit my teeth, but refuse to moan. I refuse to give her the satisfaction.
Headlights pierce the darkness of the bridge and the roar of the engine is like music.
Perfect. Perfect timing. Come meet Angelina, Ed; I’ve got her good and pissed for you.
I slide myself onto my knees before struggling back onto my feet. I brush my hands on my pants for good measure, hoping Ed will assume that I was merely examining my truck.
“What seems to be the problem?” Ed slides from the cab. When he slams the door, I catch a glimpse of Angelina’s shoulder behind him.
“Let’s pop th—”
The noose cracks like a whip once again, only this time, around Ed’s neck. His eyes bulge from shock and confusion. Angelina’s lips pull back with glee as she lifts him from the ground. She turns him to face her, all the while tightening her grip. He spits and sputters, and tries to form words, but all he can do is gape like a fish and claw uselessly at his neck. She tilts her head provocatively.
Do you think I’m pretty?
There she is, in my head. And judging from Ed’s terrified expression, she’s in his head too. I’ve always been thankful that she’s usually a woman of few words, because once she’s inside you, you feel infested; you’re the corpse and she’s the worm.
If you had seen me while I was alive, you would have raped me. I have no doubt about that. Oh yes…you would have thought I was very pretty.
She pulls him forward and tilts her head.
Ah, yes, I can see what you’ve done. I can smell the evil in you. You like pretty girls, don’t you, Ed? You especially like them when they try to get away from you.
He wriggles and bucks and makes futile swings in her direction. She clucks her tongue and winds the rope around his body like a mummy. There’s no resisting her now. She presses her lips against his and kisses him. The same way she kissed me all those many years ago, the same way I imagine she kissed Copper. She sucks it out with those pillowy lips. She sucks the very life out of you.
I watch as Ed’s skin starts to wrinkle, I watch while his eyes roll back into his head.
“You shouldn’t have touched the boy, Ed,” I say, but I doubt he can even hear me.
He kicks and moans, for what good it does him. It doesn’t last long. His body shrinks rapidly, shriveling like a prune. His bones become brittle and crack painfully. His skin turns translucent beneath Angelina’s touch, making crinkling sounds like parchment paper. The man used to be three hundred pounds, but is now nothing more than a husk. I could throw him over my shoulder like a mannequin.
Mmm…your evil is delicious, she coos.
I shudder. I thought the man was already dead, but she’s still talking to him, which means he’s still alive.
Even though this is what I had planned, and even though he more than deserved it, I turn away. I can’t watch the devil suck the marrow from a man’s soul. I climb into the cab of my truck and leave. Just before I make the turn at the end of the bridge, I glimpse into my rear view mirror. She tosses the body into the river, no doubt having had her fill. She makes eye contact with me through the mirror.
Thank you, Charles. You give the best presents.
25
Charles Oates
Ed Meeker became a missing person that wasn’t actually missed. Local cops poked around and asked questions, but didn’t delve too deeply, in my opinion. He didn’t stay missing for long though, he washed up after three days. Some poor kid with a fishing pole caught what he thought was a hell of a catch. What he really caught was a few therapy sessions. Corpses are ugly, traumatizing things, especially those who died from supernatural causes.
I eat most of my meals at the Floured Fork because it’s too hard to cook for one. It’s depressing to cook for one, not that I was ever a pro at it to begin with. I’ve sat in this corner booth so much that the cushion remembers the curve of my rump. It’s my favorite corner at the far end of the restaurant, far from the bathrooms and the entrance. It shares a wall with the kitchen, and I like the heat that passes through the swinging doors each time a waitress makes an exit. You can hear the sizzle of the grill, the clash of pans, and the occasional swear word from the dishwasher. People avoid this booth for these very reasons, but I find the racket comforting.
Gretchen has scarcely refilled my coffee cup when a shadow passes over me.
“Mind if I sit?”
I look up to find Detective Robbins. I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Always was a good boy. He grew up in the house beside of mine, until he turned sixteen. His mother was a pretty thing; good natured, hard worker. A single mom that worked two jobs. She did a phenomenal job on her own, but when the lawnmower needed fixing, or the roof leaked, I made sure to help her out. I don’t mind helping those that help themselves. I even taught Robbins how to throw a curve ball on evenings when she couldn’t get him off the school bus. I don’t know if he ever regarded me as the father he never had, but I surely know how fond I was of him.
“Sure, have a seat,” I say.
He slides across from me and waves to Gretchen. She brings him a coffee.
“How are you doing, Charles?” he asks.
“Just fine, how are you and the missus?”
“Quite well.”
He stares at me, tracing the rim of his coffee cup with his thumb.
I look him in the eye. “Something on your mind, son?”
“What do you think of them finding Ed Meeker?”
I shrug and take a sip of my coffee.
“You should have seen the body, Charles. It was horribly wrinkled.”
He waits for me to make eye contact before he continues.
“He was wrinkled just like you. The wrinkles were so identical, that I’d swear the two of you were twins. It’s true that bodies and water don’t mesh well, that’s a fact. But what I really expected to find was a bloated body, not a body that looked like it’d been shriveled in the sun. Three days in the water, Charles, and he was like a stick of jerky. How does that happen? It was a hideous sight, Charles, he looked like he died while he was screaming. There’s no way there’ll be an open casket. That’s why it’s odd, Charles, that’s why when we arrived, there was a ten-year-old boy vomiting on the edge of the river bank. A normal body wouldn’t have rattled him so. I think you know what happened to him, Charles, or at least you have a theory. You haunt that bridge just as much as the ghost you claim swings from the rafters.”
Robbins leans away from me as Gretchen tops him off. She’s on auto-pilot. She wouldn’t pay attention to a customer’s conversation even if we were planning an assassination. She makes off for the far end of the room with a plate of eggs. He leans back in closer to me.
“You were the last person to talk to him, your home phone called his, we have a record of that.”
“I had car trouble, he helped me out and I went on my way. I didn’t see anything.”
He nod
s his head as if he already knew.
“I think you did see something, Charles,” he whispers. “but I know that whatever it is you’ve got in that head won’t fly on a legal document. So, I’m not going to ask you what you saw.”
I want to smirk and glare at the same time, but I keep my poker face.
“Now, I’ve never seen this so called ghost that you’ve been morbidly obsessed with for the whole of my existence. I don’t believe in it, either. I’m a man of facts. I don’t solve cases with mumbo-jumbo. I think you know exactly what happened. I think you lured him to the bridge in the hopes that your pet ghost would scare him to death. I’m not sure what you did, but I know you did it. I can’t say that I blame you. There’s a long line of people that would have loved to kill him. Do you know what the coroner said he died from? Old age. Forty-five years old and died of old age. What do you think of that, Charles? Now that doesn’t look good on paper either. So I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to pull some strings, have it written up as a heart attack. Everybody knows that Ed was a dick. He kept me busy with all the riffraff. Quite frankly, I’m glad he’s gone, but I’ll never tell anyone but you. My report will list it as a suicide. His dirty deeds finally caught up with him, so he jumped. Maybe once he hit the water, he changed his mind and tried to swim to shore. He was a smoker and a drinker, and ate his fair share of Big Macs, so his heart gave out. That’s what happened, right, Charles?”
“You’re the detective.”
“You’re right,” he says sliding from the booth and slapping a five on the table. “You’re exactly right.”
26
Abigail
My nights and days are always the same. I wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other if it wasn’t for the moon shining through the barred windows. I’ve always wondered why they call these places “nursing homes.” You are not being “nursed” back to health, nor is it a “home.” It should be called a “waiting place,” because everyone here is merely waiting to die.
I hear the rope tightening, straining against its fibers.
I close my eyes in familiar dread. Not again.
I know what hangs over my head without even opening my eyes, yet I open them anyway. In the space where the church bell ought to be, a black-gowned figure hangs from the rafters. She sways ever so slightly, gravity tugging at her toes, a shadow amongst shadows save for the white of her hood and collar. Her lips are a strangled shade of purple, her eyes glassy marbles of death. Her neck is never visibly seen, but there’s bruising beneath her modesty.
I reach above my head and grasp the nun by her shoe.
“Sister, you have by far paid your penance, why won’t you just go meet your Maker?”
She swivels her head as much as she can, gazing down at me from across her torso.
She won’t let me.
Her mouth doesn’t move, but I can hear her clear as day. She’s inside my head.
I have never felt threatened by her. I’m oppressed by her sadness, more than anything. She mostly moans at night and nothing else, and I must cover my ears or go mad. The nurses blame me for the moaning. They offer me pills for a pain I don’t have. When I tell them the groans are from beyond the grave, they give me yet another pill for craziness. I wish they had a pill for guilt or sorrow. I’d swallow every one of those.
The nun gets a faraway look, as far as her bulging eyes will allow. She stares blankly at the wall ahead of her, or better yet, she’s staring through it. She’s locking eyes with her tormentor.
Like a grenade rolling towards a soldier, I know what’s coming next. I scramble from the bed, but get tangled up in the sheets. I land painfully on my knees, earning a splinter in my shin. It’s quicker to scoot on my bottom than it is to get up, so I toddle like a child to the door. I press my body against the wall and scream, even though it’s pointless to do so. The nurses will never come. This happens far too frequently.
In the same spot as every other night before, Angelina emerges from behind the wall. The rope writhes and wrings around her throat, as much a living part of her as Medusa’s snakes.
We were playmates, the three of us, but that was eons ago, back when we each possessed some innocence. I never thought this is where I’d be, how all of our lives would end.
“Leave her alone, you devil!” I scream, but the dead pays as much heed as the living.
Angelina grabs Sister Mary Elizabeth by her soft soled heels and wrenches her from the rafters. There’s an audible crack as she hits the floor; the sound of bones breaking. You wouldn’t think that the dead could feel pain, but the look on her face suggests otherwise. It’s an affliction on an energetic level. The intention is more painful than the deed. Sister Mary’s arm is bent unnaturally between elbow and wrist. In the same space of time it took to break her arm, the bones fuse back into place just as quickly. Spirits no longer feel physical pain or experience life-like urges. Angelina’s wrath on Mary Elizabeth’s spiritual body is merely symbolic. It’s the hate that causes the pain.
Angelina then proceeds to jerk the nun around by her noose, dragging her across the floor like a horrid child with a puppy. I bury my face in my hands.
No!
I hear the scream with my mind instead of with my ears. Angelina is inside me. My head snaps back violently of its own volition; my skull bouncing off the wall. I have no control of the situation; I have no control over my body.
You always were the coward, weren’t you? You’re going to watch this. You owe me that much.
Mary Elizabeth’s punishment is to endure Angelina. My punishment is to watch. I know in my depths that I have earned this. So has Mary Elizabeth. But for how long? How long must I endure this? When is my debt repaid? Death itself will not bring relief, Mary Elizabeth is proof of that.
27
Annie
My phone rings at eight o’clock. I fumble for it with my eyes closed, following the vibration with my fingers. I make contact with the smooth plastic and look at the screen with one eye.
It’s Dad.
I groan and cover my head with the pillow. I’m not dealing with his shit first thing in the morning—lord knows I have enough of my own. The ringing stops and goes to voicemail. I expect a ding-ding, signaling I have a message. But there’s no ding, the phone just starts ringing again. Most would think this sort of persistence is an indicator that something’s wrong. Not in my case. If my father’s being annoying, it’s because he wants something. He’s not the type to call and tell you that the dog is sick or that grandma is dying. He calls to brag about promotions, he calls if he’s in a jam, he calls three days after your birthday because that’s when he miraculously remembers that he has a daughter.
I press the green button to answer the phone.
“Yeah?” I say flatly.
“Good morning, sunshine! I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You did.”
“Ah, well, it’s eight o’clock, you should be up and at ‘em, anyway.”
I grunt in annoyance.
“What do you want, Dad?”
“I have excellent news! Last night I asked Veronica to marry me!”
My eyes snap open. I’m wide awake now.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“I kid you not! Isn’t this wonderful!?”
“Fucking marvelous.”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. Maybe my snarkiness finally made it through his thick skull.
“That’s a poor attitude when I’m calling you to be the maid of honor.” He lets the sentence hang there, as if being maid of honor would fix everything, as if I should be ashamed for not being overjoyed.
It doesn’t feel like an honor. It feels like a slap in the face. I don’t want to attend the wedding at all, much less be front and center.
Then I think of my mother. My poor mother.
“I’m not doing it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not going to be Veronica’s maid of h
onor, or your maid of honor, or whatever kind of spin you’re trying to put on this fantasy you’re living. I’m not doing it to my mom, she’s been through enough hell because of you.”
“Here we go, I’m always the bad guy.”
“It’s because you are, Dad! You’re the one who cheated, you’re the one who broke this family. I don’t care if you’re marrying the Queen of England, I’m not going to be in your wedding. Look, I’m happy that you’re happy, I get that. Everybody deserves happiness. But there’s some things going on here that I have to deal with, and I don’t need this on top of everything else right now.”
“What’s wrong, Annie? What’s going on that I don’t know about?”
I laugh dryly. “Oh, there’s quite a bit that you don’t know, Dad. You would know if you ever thought to ask, but you’re so self-absorbed that you’ll never think to.”
“Well, I’m asking now,” he says stiffly.
“I have a boyfriend, and he’s sick, and I’m worried about him. I live in a strange house in a strange town, and even if I did fit in, I’m not so sure it would even be a good thing.”
“You know you’re welcome to finish out the summer with us.”
I snort. “No, thanks.”
He sighs, exasperated. “What do you need me to do, Annie?”
“I don’t need you to do anything, Dad. It’d just be nice if you gave a damn.”
I hang up on him.
I roll over in bed and stare at the ceiling. I seriously hate my life right now. If it weren’t for Copper, life wouldn’t even be worth living. I have to do something to help him. He’s the last person that deserves to suffer. Miss Jenkins wants to help me, but her abilities only reach so far. She tells me I’m psychic, and maybe she’s right. I don’t want to do this, but somebody has to do something. She’s targeting me for whatever reason, and she’s not going to stop until I figure out what she wants. I plod down the steps for a bowl of cereal. I’ve barely rounded the corner when the tv clicks on.
Vein River Page 13
