by Jeff Vrolyks
* * *
Timothy stepped in the garage and had a look-see at the new-used Corolla. Wasn’t too shabby. Probably got great mileage. The Buick was nicer, he thought. Eddie sure was a nice guy, offering to put new locks on the doors. He hoped Eddie would keep this job for years to come. He wanted to think of him as his best friend. Friends forever. He decided he’d help him out with the locks, too. Truth was, he wanted to spend as much time around Eddie as he could. He hoped some of Eddie’s coolness would rub off on him. And Eddie sure was happy with him at how he acted at Millie’s, coming to his defense and all. That was the highlight of his week, maybe year. It feels great to come to the defense of a dear friend. Timothy never knew that feeling before today.
He stepped out of the garage and looked back at his Camry. The jade figurine was on his trunk. Eddie’s peculiar little statuette. He wondered what Eddie was doing with it out here. He took it off the trunk and examined it closely. It instilled in him a foreboding dread, some dark vibe that was surely all in his head. That silent eternal scream, enormous mouth and long pointed teeth. Evil looking.
Hey Timothy, a voice jeered from somewhere near.
He spun around, almost tripped. “Wh-who said that?”
A boyish giggle. He couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. Whatcha got in your hand? The voice taunted. Like the giggle, its origin wasn’t anywhere specific. In fact, it seemed to be coming from his head. He looked down at the idol in his hand. Was it from this thing?
He resolved to go up to the barn loft and put the statuette up there, be done with it.
Do you know where people who do things they shouldn’t be doing belong, Timothy? Look to your right.
Timothy glanced north and gasped, stood there thunderstruck. A black man was hanging from a nearby tree branch. It wasn’t an olive tree, but a… was that an avocado tree?
“Th-this c-can’t be real.” There were no avocado trees on the farm, which braced his assertion of this not being real. A daydream. An impossibly vivid, lucid daydream.
The dead man swayed from the rope, turned a little with each swing, bringing his lifeless face into view. Timothy couldn’t look away. The corpse’s eyes were filmy and bulging, his mouth open and tongue lolling out. When the corners of his mouth began curling up to a grin, Timothy screamed and took off in a sprint toward the barn. West of the previous corpse was another hanged man, only this one was too small to be a man. A black boy. He shielded his eyes from the olive grove (which was now an avocado grove) as he ran.
The barn eclipsed the bright sun; rays of sunlight beamed around it in long striated shafts, dust motes floated in them. This was something Timothy had observed and enjoyed before, but at this moment the light was different, had altered. There was a greenish hue to the light shafts, and a kind of haze, the way a distant blacktop under an August sun will be hazy from heat.
There was that damned giggle again. And yes, it was inside his head. Eddie would have said it came from behind his eyes. Timothy dashed to the barn, didn’t slow as he entered and made his way to the ladder. In the loft he took a few long strides to the dresser and placed it where it belonged, wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and hastily departed, putting any amount of distance between he and the damned idol.
Timothy’s subconscious began working on him, wrenching him, shining light on truths that were better left in the dark, those regarding the idol and Eddie’s connection to it. The idol was bad, for lack of a better word. Timothy felt it to the core of his being when he had touched it. More than bad, it was evil. It wasn’t just seeing the hanged blacks, or the greenish light, the giggle and the voice—those were dreadful, yes—but what bothered him the most was the peculiar sensation it evoked, one of foreboding, impending danger. A bad idol. Why would Eddie possess such a thing if he was good? And Eddie was good, Timothy wouldn’t allow himself to flirt with an opposing idea. If it wasn’t for the idea that the idol belonged to his best friend, he would have destroyed it instead of returning it to its rightful place.
Maybe Eddie isn’t the good guy you think he is, Timothy’s subconscious opined. “Yes he is,” Timothy argued aloud as he strode to the house. It’s not just the idol, either. Why do you think Mae and Trent have a bone to pick with him, and the girl who called Mae to warn her about Eddie? Who’s wrong here, Eddie or everyone but Eddie? “Everyone but Eddie,” Timothy said firmly. “I know Eddie, know his heart. He isn’t bad.” We’ll see, won’t we? “Yes we will. I’m right about him.” You need to destroy that idol, and you need to remove Eddie from your life. He’s bad. “Stop it!”
Timothy went inside the house and locked the door behind him, went into his room and turned the TV on. He needed a distraction badly, and watching TV wouldn’t cut it. He switched on his Playstation 2 and played Madden Football. Still, he couldn’t get his mind off Eddie and that damned idol.
