Visitations

by Saul, Jonas

  The psychic lowered her head. “Are you sure you want to hear what I have to say? You won’t like it.”

  Ashley looked at Jerry, her face asking him to answer. He only nodded. Using his mouth at that moment would only cause a disturbance and Ashley would blame him for fucking everything up.

  Shit, no matter how I look at it, I’m going to be blamed for this.

  “Please tell us what the problem is,” Ashley said as she looked back at the psychic.

  The woman’s head was still facing down. She mumbled something under her breath.

  Jerry had had enough. “What was that?” he snapped.

  Ashley’s hand tightened on his thigh.

  “I said, sometimes I hate my job.”

  Jerry could tell Ashley was getting scared when she spoke again.

  “Tell us, please. What’s wrong with Jerry? What’s going to happen to him?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I can’t see a future for him after Saturday night.”

  Jerry exploded from the table, bumping it as he stood up. “What the fuck is this? You wanna start talking bitch, and fast.”

  “Jerry!” Ashley screamed.

  “No, wait, I understand his anger,” the psychic said.

  “You better, because no one threatens me. What’s supposed to happen Saturday?”

  “All I see is something about a delivery truck. You driving it. Then nothing. I don’t understand it. I’m feeling blocked. Maybe your disbelief is locking me up.”

  “Oh sure, blame me after you say I’m going to die.”

  Ashley was crying softly now.

  Bet you didn’t bargain for this, did you?

  “We’re outta here. Let’s go Ashley.”

  She remained sitting. “Wait, please. Is there anything else…you can tell us? What about our son, Joshua? Is he here?”

  “I’m sorry. I think it’s better if you both leave. The energy in here has darkened and it’s now attracting negative energy.”

  “Is there anything Jerry can do?” Ashley wiped her eyes.

  Jerry hated to see her cry. He couldn’t be there anymore. He turned on his heels and stormed outside. Even before he hit the door, he had a cigarette in his mouth, and lit.

  #

  “You know as well as I do that you’ll be dead before the night is over. I can’t believe that you’d even consider doing this.”

  “Look honey, I’m left with no choice. I don’t believe in psychics. No one can tell you whether you live or die.” He pulled his jacket on and stepped back to lean on the wall. “After I do this job, we’ll be able to pay the rent, and buy groceries again.”

  Ashley stared at him and wondered if this would be the final straw. Would this push her to leave, after all they’d been through? She’d stayed with him during his stint in jail. She’d stayed when the collapse of their marriage looked imminent after the death of their only child. She’d stay with him through anything, except when he knowingly wants to test fate at the cost of his life.

  “I can’t sit idly by and watch you kill yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He raised both hands in the air. “All I have to do is drive a truck twenty kilometers, drop it off, leave the keys in the ignition and walk away. And for that, a cool ten grand. We can start living again. That old weird fucking psychic didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  “Sure she didn’t. It’s Saturday night. You’re hired to drive a delivery truck.” Ashley slapped his arm. “Come on. You’re smarter than that. Even if she’s wrong, you don’t fuck with fate.” Ashley looked away, her eyes filling up. A year ago she’d lost her son. Tonight she felt like she was losing her husband. Fierce determination to change his mind seized her. The only way to save his life was to force him to stay. “Ever since our son had his accident you’ve changed,” Ashley said as tears pushed past her eyelids.

  “Changed?”

  Using her right hand, she pulled finger after finger down as she rambled off her list of sorrow. “You lost your job. You starting dealing drugs, and the problems with your drinking have almost killed you numerous times. When the police raided the factory and arrested those people for narcotics offenses, one of them had to be you. Six months in jail, a big part of your life, gone, just gone, forever. And now you want to deliver a truck for the same guys who put you in jail.”

  Jerry shook his head back and forth. “I don’t understand you. What is illegal about driving a truck twenty kilometers? No one can arrest me for that. I’ll be completely safe. It’s late in the evening. Traffic will be light. I’ll be extra careful.”

  “It’s what’s in the truck that scares me. You know exactly the kind of stuff these people will be shipping. The thing that’s really frightening is that you could be risking your life and you don’t even believe it. I wish Joshua were here. He’d talk you out of it.”

  “None of this would be happening if Josh hadn’t died last year. I would’ve never started dealing. We both dealt with the loss of our son in different ways. My detox program helped me understand a lot about what I was doing to handle the loss of Josh. But this job tonight can set the record straight.” He snapped his fingers hard. “Just like that, ten thousand dollars.”

  “Just like that,” Ashley imitated his snap, “dead.”

  She moved closer to him. “Please don’t do it. Stay home.”

  “I can’t. Once you give your word to these guys you have to keep it. There’s no going back now.”

  “Then let’s make a break for it. We’ve got nothing left to keep us here but bad memories and sadness.”

  Jerry shook his head in an exaggerated version of no. “If they wanted to, they would find us. I have to do this last job, and I will.”

  He turned to snatch up his car keys and cell phone. Ashley stopped him with her sharp words.

  “Don’t expect me to be here when you return.” She had nothing left in her arsenal. This was the final blow.

  She turned away to hide her tears. When the door slammed shut behind him, she walked to the front window and watched him moving toward his car, knowing she’d never see him alive again.

  #

  Jerry kept his speed down on the way to the factory. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over for speeding and then have to deal with the police.

  The factory looked darker than usual. Some of the lights were out. As he pulled up to the security gate, the door started on its rollers to admit him. No one was there to look at his badge.

  He drove through and made his way to the back of the building where they said the truck would be sitting. After parking, Jerry walked around and tried the truck’s driver’s-side door. It was unlocked.

  He looked left and right, but saw no one. Something stuck in his gut: what if the psychic was right? What if he was supposed to die tonight?

  Could this be a simple drop-off, or could someone hate him enough to want to kill him? Too late now for second-guessing; he was committed. He had to do it.

  After starting the truck, he put it in gear and started toward the security gate. The only movement was the heavy gate rolling back as he neared it.

  Twenty kilometers to go and ten thousand dollars to spend, he thought.

  He was on his way. Checking the mirrors frequently, he saw no one following him. At each red light he stopped. In everything he did, he was meticulous. Over halfway to his destination, and no one was following him. He was sure of it.

  The only thing that made him jump was the disturbing sound of his cell phone playing “Stan” from Eminem as it began to ring.

  He fumbled in his breast pocket, losing concentration on the road for a second. The call display told him it wasn’t his wife. It said private caller.

  “Hello?”

  “Pull over immediately. Stop the truck!”

  The psychic.

  “What?” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it, a
s if it held an answer as to who was calling. Then he shouted out of fear, “What the fuck is going on? What do you know?”

  “You are out of time for niceties. In less than two minutes you will be dead unless you pull over and stop the truck. Do it now.”

  Jerry looked ahead and could see a red stoplight about a hundred meters away. Nerves hit him, his stomach dropped, hands shook. He decided to err on the side of caution and put on his turn signal, moving to the curb.

  “Okay, I’ve pulled over. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why. If what you have to say doesn’t fit well with me, then I’m going to continue driving.”

  Sitting in the cab of the truck, his heart beating in his throat, he listened as the woman talked again.

  “I was told that you needed my help. I was told to interfere for a greater justice.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Did my wife call you? Is she behind this? That would make sense. How else would you get my cell number? Oh, wait, don’t answer that. You’re psychic, right. Got it.”

  “Joshua told me.”

  Those words cut him down. Joshua? What was she talking about?

  A stray bullet hit Joshua over a year ago in a park. The police never caught the asshole that did it. Jerry dropped his head and concentrated on breathing.

  “This is a sick joke,” he managed to mumble.

  “No joke. He said it wasn’t your fault. You were both in the park the day he was shot. Even though it was your idea to play catch, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. He made a point of telling me that you always said, ‘oh my gosh, look it’s Josh’. Apparently that was something his mother disliked, but you loved saying it when it was just the two of you.”

  Jerry didn’t know that words could have such an effect on him. He tried to speak, despite the lump filling his throat, but couldn’t.

  “I can see and hear things from the Other Side that don’t make sense, but that came through anyway. In this case, Joshua came through very strong. As we talk right now, he’s still trying to tell me something.”

  There were a few moments when Jerry couldn’t hear anything. He scanned the mirrors and the empty road ahead but everything remained calm.

  “He said you are slumped over the wheel of the truck, idling about one hundred meters from a red light that’s still red.”

  Jerry looked up and could see that it was in fact still red.

  “It’s true.”

  “The light isn’t defective. The people that hired you have fixed it to stay that way. A block down on the right side of the red light you will find a car filled with four men, each with silenced weapons. I’m being told that you are marked for execution. After your jail time, they found out that it was your son they’d killed that day at the park. They think you’re working for them so that you can expose them. They want to kill you. I’m sorry. I can only tell you what I’m being told. When you came to my home, I saw you dead on Saturday. Your son is telling me how. He said I had to tell you for a greater justice.”

  Jerry tossed the phone onto the seat beside him and put the truck in gear. Athletes call it being in the zone. Jerry felt a calmness he hadn’t felt in over a year.

  A greater justice.

  Of course. His son knew him. The people who hurt his baby boy were never found. Tonight they were sitting in a car, a block down on the right.

  He drove the truck up to the red light. At the corner he turned toward the vehicle parked on the side of the road.

  Even before the car’s doors had fully opened, the large truck was making contact with the grill, mounting the windshield and crushing all four men below the truck’s chassis.

  Upon impact, Jerry’s head hit the truck’s windshield in an odd way, snapping his tense neck, and killing him almost instantly.

  The Imprudent Son Returns

  Perry Strall sat up slowly and eased his feet off the edge of the bed. He rubbed his neck and turned to stare at the empty spot where his wife should be.

  The sight of the untouched side of the bed threatened to bring him to tears. Forty-five years of marriage. Arguments here and there. But never violence. Never violence. Until last night…

  He wondered if Marge’s injuries were serious enough to keep her at the hospital for an extended period of time.

  He whispered a silent prayer and closed his eyes. After a moment to reflect, he mouthed a soft apology to the empty room.

  Once his eyes were open, he stepped from the bedroom, surprised to feel his arthritic joints weren’t performing their usual needlework on his nerves. He paused at the top of the stairs to swing his leg back and forth while holding the banister. His bum knee hadn’t felt this strong in many years.

  With each step he descended, Perry felt like a new man. He made it to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  They’d had arguments, even downright nasty fights over the years, but not the kind of violence they experienced last night. Perry had never hit Marge before. It was an accident. He had no idea what came over him last night.

  Maybe I’m like my wayward son?

  Perry dismissed the thought. There was no way he was like his son. Elton was a killer. A murderer. Perry was the opposite. He could never hurt anyone.

  Except my own wife.

  The clock on the stove said it was 11:00am. Perry hadn’t realized how long he had sat at the table. Time was racing by and he was still clothed in his pajamas, having not eaten yet, nor used the bathroom. He stood from the table and considered calling the hospital. He’d do that, then get dressed and head down there.

  He reached for the kitchen phone that sat on the wall, chest high, and heard a strange buzzing sound.

  What the hell is that?

  He went to touch the phone again and the buzzing sound returned.

  The clock on the stove caught his eye. It read noon.

  That’s impossible. How could an hour have sailed by while my only action was to stand from the chair and try to touch the phone?

  Something strange was happening, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. At any given moment, he felt both watched, and the watcher. His normal aches and pains had disappeared, and time itself wasn’t cooperating.

  At the age of seventy-seven, he wasn’t too aware to the ways of the mind, but he could feel that some kind of trick was being played on him. Never one to be a victim (except with Marge), he lifted his leg high and strode from the kitchen, intent on reaching his bedroom closet, getting dressed, and then heading to the hospital.

  When he entered the hallway, he heard crying coming from above. He ran up, two stairs at a time and then listened to reassess where the crying was coming from.

  His bedroom. It was the sound of his wife weeping, coupled with the rustle of a dresser drawer closing.

  When did she get home?

  He hadn’t heard a thing until just now. Oddly bemused at the eccentricity of this day, but happy she was home and not in the hospital, he found himself perplexed even more. He walked through the door and entered their bedroom.

  Marge didn’t turn to acknowledge him. She continued putting away her clothes, and then sat on the edge of the bed to slip her legs into a pair of pants.

  He waited for her to notice him. Once she was dressed and the rest of her clothes placed away properly, Marge stood and turned, looking directly at Perry.

  He smiled back, hoping she’d accept his apology.

  Her arms came up and wrapped themselves around her shoulders as she hugged herself. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, and her body language conveyed weakness.

  It was at that moment that Perry realized the damage he had caused with his explosion last night. But he’d had to tell her; their lives were in danger. He hadn’t seen his son in fifteen years. Previously, he had decided that Marge didn’t need to know about a man she would never meet, let alone have a relationship with. After Elton went to jail for life with no chance of parole, for killing his mother and his two sisters, Perry had packed Marge up and fled to Canada. M
arge had never heard of Elton, or Elton’s mother, because it was a mistake Perry didn’t want to relive. Ever.

  After ten years of marriage, Perry had wondered if he’d made the right choice with his life. He was in his early forties and going through an internal crisis. He attended a conference in Las Vegas and slept with a stripper. It was the stupidest thing he had ever done. That stripper got pregnant. It just so happened that this particular peeler was religious enough to be pro-life. She had a baby boy named Elton and hunted Perry down. Although they’d only talked twice, she swore she would make sure their son would know who his father was and what he did.