by Chris Page
Jake rubbed beneath his chin, nodding along. “Torque is good,” he said, “but I’d like something a little more portable.”
David looked into his eyes as he spoke, winking his left. “Sure thing, boss. This next one here is lightweight, has a battery that’ll last you for hours, perfect for those simple around the house fixes, cupboards and the like. Won’t drill it’s way through a stud without some real pushing, though.” David’s eyes wantonly observed Jake’s forearms, exposed beneath his rolled up shirt sleeves. “Doesn’t look like you’d have a problem with that, boss.”
Jake watched the thin lips rise in David’s face, wet with spit, small teeth collected behind them. He envisioned kicking them down the back of his throat. “Perhaps not,” Jake said, crossing his arms before his chest, “but I just as soon buy the thing that’ll do the work for me. Would hate to pay good money for a thing I’ll just wind up resenting, you know?”
“Avoid that buyer’s remorse, sure thing,” David replied.
Jake seized upon the notion. “Had plenty of that in my life already.” He watched David’s face pause on an indeterminate expression, likely analyzing the comment. “I suppose, by a certain age we all do, though, don’t we?”
David’s frozen features reanimated into an agreeing nod. “That we do,” he replied.
“You mind if I ask how old you are, David?”
“Not at all,” David replied. “Just shy of my thirty eighth birthday. Coming up here in about three weeks. How about you, Jake?”
His name played on David’s moist lips with slow delivery, like the man savored the taste. “I’ve got a couple years on you, I’m forty two. And feeling it,” he said, then laughed.
David laughed along. “Well, it’s all downhill after twenty one anyhow.” Another round of cheap laughter.
“You know, you get married, and it feels like the top of the slide, then every year after is just ticking feet off on the way down. You never get a better feeling than that day.”
David nodded along, though it was clear he didn’t relate. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’re single, David?” Jake spoke lower, tilting his forehead forward.
David’s head made several nods in quick succession. “Yep, yep, yep. Never did find the right person.” His eyes seemed lustrous, or was that Jake’s perception? He was losing his bearings, unsure the mindset of his opponent.
He tapped his shoulder in a fraternal manner. “Ah, never say never, my friend.”
David looked up into Jake’s eyes for a prolonged moment where the silence threatened Jake’s resolve. “Thank you, Jake.”
Jake wasn’t sure the reason, but he sensed the timing was right to propose his next step. “David, we could stand here chatting about drills all day, I’m sure you know little facts about these things to keep up occupied. But, to be honest, all this thinking about home life’s got me itching for a drink. What do you say, I’ve got some time to kill before my wife calls looking for me, and I don’t much know the bars around this area.” It was a lie, Jake knew them all quite well. Many of them were his lunchtime watering holes where he could swallow a buzz in thirty minutes before ambling back to work. The lying came with ease, and Jake felt all the more confident in the moment. He’d learned to wear faces, and he was quickly fashioning a mask to suit his present needs. “Care to show me one?”
David’s eyes narrowed, his open mouth rose into a smile, then he replied, “Sure, yeah, of course. Let me just throw my apron in the back, we can take my truck.”
“Sounds great,” Jake spoke. He watched the man lumber off towards the employee’s quarters, his gait somewhat encumbered by a presumed bum left knee. A notion of him running, of catching spry young boys, entered into Jake’s mind. It looked patently absurd. Then again, one didn’t always have to prove quicker to ensnare something. Fear would do. Weapons. And before that, charm, to lure within a distance suitable to his mode of threat.
For a moment, as Jake stood in waiting, he considered the ease of David’s reply. It was only a few seconds’ delay. A stranger suggesting a drink from a conversation of drills. Wouldn’t that have been strange to another? To Jake, had he been wearing the apron? Though David was unlike most men. Impulse conducted him. What thoughts he had buried were uncovered, and made reality. The mention of a drink probably had him thirsty, and why should he question it? Take the offer of company from a complete stranger, Jake probably seemed friendly enough. Besides, he had a lie to uphold. Friendly, Willow Brook hardware store employee. Jake would be a character alibi. He couldn’t be a killer, he was the kind of guy you could grab a beer with. Ask Jake. Just like Jake was the caring husband, taking work home to care for his sick wife.
When David returned, he wore light wash jeans upheld by a worn black leather belt. Tucked into the jeans were the ends of a button up shirt, straining against his gut. He seemed uncomfortable. Jake wondered why someone would wear clothes they weren’t comfortable in. He followed David out to the parking lot and hopped into the passenger seat of a small pick up truck. The outside appeared as new, contrasted with the interior. The seats were stained, various wrappers littered the floor. David quickly cleared the passenger seat to permit Jake’s entrance. Still, a nearly empty two liter of cola sloshed around by his feet as the truck pulled out into the street.
David seemed cheerful while he drove the distance between the hardware store and their destination, a divey, dim lit bar a few blocks west of the hardware store. Jake focused his thoughts while David’s voice droned on about its decor, its specials, and the bartender, some pleasant young fellow who always threw a free shot David’s way. Jake took the moment to gather himself. He would be charismatic and inviting. He would show no judgment. He would show interest. In his eyes, his revenge would appear a likeness to his prey, believing it to be the same perversion. They were two of a kind.
The truck pulled up alongside the entrance, parking on the street. Jake first peered through the window towards the door. It stood nondescript, black, windowless, against a red brick building. Nothing else was around, they were just outside downtown. It didn’t take much to exit downtown in Willow Brook, just a few minutes drive.
“Here we are,” David announced as he shut off the engine.
“The Black Crow,” Jake read aloud. The letters, some lit, most not, arched over the doorway. Jake had been here, he was certain. He just didn’t remember it, a surprise. He’d just hoped he hadn’t made enemies of the staff.
David opened the door for him and Jake smiled as he passed through the threshold. Per David’s description, the bar was indeed dark. There were no overhead lights, leaving only the candlelit tables and booths, along with a pair of upward casting wall lights to illuminate the space. At first all of it was black. Then, after a few blinks and peering, the bar came into view. Along one side rested the bar, and the gentleman David had spoken of. The tender was younger, likely late twenties, fit, and handsome, despite his sunken eyes and missing front tooth. It seemed not to bother him, however, while he grinned and engaged the patrons in vibrant conversation. The regulars, Jake assumed, gathered at the bar. An elderly man in a trucker hat and long, dirty beard, a large woman with bright red lipstick and a mullet, a middle-aged man with thick five o’clock shadow and greasy hair, all sat in a row. Outside here, Jake couldn’t imagine them collected for any purpose. Inside, they were family. He’d grown somewhat familiar with the dynamics of local barflies, how they flocked to otherwise empty watering holes like bugs buzzing around shit. He never made conversation with them, despite their advances. He remained stony faced, hunched over his neat scotch.
“Booth?” David inquired.
“Certainly!” Jake responded. He maneuvered to the nearest, engulfed in shadow save the flickering orange that danced across the plush, red leather cushions, torn prominently at uneven intervals. He settled into one side and looked back at David, leaned over the table.
“What’ll ya have?”
“I’ll take a beer,”
said Jake. Then added, “and a shot.”
David’s eyebrows lifted. “Beer and a shot, eh?”
Jake shrugged. “Seemed like the kind of place.”
David chuckled. “When in Rome.” He scurried off to the bar. He returned shortly thereafter, having greeted the bartender and the patrons, and cautiously gathered the two cans and two shot glasses in his chubby hands. He laid them out on the table and slid in across Jake.
Taking one shot in hand and lifting it over the tiny flame between them, Jake prompted David to cheers. “To midweek serenity,” Jake offered.
David exhaled throatily, a nearly lustful response that made Jake’s stomach turn. He threw down the shot and felt the burn settle his distaste. He savored the flavor while watching David quickly chase the shot with his beer, face clenched around the liquor’s taste.
“Woo,” David uttered, then laughed at himself. He swiped the dribble from his lip on the back of his sleeve. “No chaser for you, huh?”
Jake smiled. “I like the taste.”
“Even the cheap stuff?”
“Maybe more so,” Jake half-joked. His scotch habit criss-crossed town, from the large spirits warehouse to the dingy corner store. He didn’t have many demands, only that the bottle hold the liquor for a short while before he did. “What’s your usual?”
“Oh,” David said, rubbing the perspiration off the side of the can, “just a light beer, usually.”
“Well, perhaps we’ll expand your horizons today.”
Jake viewed a moment’s hesitation upon David’s face. But then, as he continued to watch, the expression melted into an embrace of adventure. Before he drank for sustenance, Jake had the gregarious talent of pulling others into drink. The skill was making a marked return.
“Alright, Jake,” said David.
Jake leaned over the table closer to David in a conspiratorial manner. “Let’s do another, huh? Something a little more...manly? Huh, tool man?”
David’s eyes fell to the table, but his smile crept up along his cheeks. He laughed and nodded. “Alright, sure, let’s do it.”
Jake rushed up to the bar and ordered a pair of blended scotch shots, bottom shelf, and returned before enough time lapsed to allow the three flies to intervene. He placed one in David’s hand and sat back into place, lifting his own towards his prey. Neither glass touched the table before they were emptied. Jake sighed, slipping into his hot tub feeling again. David coughed uncontrollably for thirty seconds before taking up his beer to stifle it.
“Wow,” he muttered.
“Puts hair on the chest,” Jake commented.
David peered up and through the dark to focus on Jake’s face. “I guess so, doesn’t it?”
Jake settled into his booth and finally took a sip from his beer. It would fill the time between shots, shoring up his buzz. “So,” he said, placing his free arm across the back of the booth, “tell me something, David.”
“Anything,” David replied, somewhat dazed. It gave Jake a moment’s pause, but he decided he liked the response and proceeded.
“What do you think of Willow Brook? I mean, do you like this town?”
David cocked his head back in an overly emphatic gesture, revealing the onset of his inebriation. “Sure!” he said. “Born and raised. Well—” he burped into his fist, “—just outside town for the first few years. But I like it here. Why, you don’t?”
Jake clicked his tongue and peered around the bar. “I don’t know. It’s a little too quaint, I think, sometimes. Too safe.”
“Well,” David spoke, lifting his hand into the air, “not entirely, is it?”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“The kidnappings, you know,” David replied. “All those...boys.”
Jake nodded along as though the crime story had slipped his mind in recent months. He rubbed beneath his chin. “Right, yeah, the kidnappings. Haven’t had one in a while, though, right?”
“Not for seven months,” David replied. He knew the correct time frame, offhand. “Not since that one boy, what was his name?” He thought a moment, then snapped his fingers, as if recalling pop trivia. “Benny! Holloway, Benny Holloway. Not since Benny Holloway was found to have escaped.”
Jake took a long drag from his beer. He squinted at David then, half-expecting to get made. To know his son’s name off hand, then not recognize the father? He and Carrie both stayed away from the media, but their images found their way to the local papers on a couple occasions. Yet their eyes met, and in David’s no recognition appeared. A game? An insult? The little smile between David’s cheeks offered no clues, exposed no fangs. Jake leaned back in confidence. “That’s right,” he said, lowering the can. “What do you suppose that’s about? Man like that, kidnapping young boys, gutting them in the forest, doesn’t just stop, right? You don’t get to killing kids, do a few, then,” Jake slid his hands across one another before the table, as if wiping them clean, “that’s it. I can’t believe that.”
Jake watched David’s eyes fall to the tiny flame dancing between them. “I don’t know,” he spoke, as though entranced. “Maybe he was caught for something else. Or moved on. You never know with these types. The mad ones.”
“No,” Jake replied. “I suppose not.” Then he readjusted himself, leaning his upper body closer, placing his beer to the side. His motion broke David’s concentration on the flame, redirected to Jake. “But suppose he didn’t. Suppose he’s still here. Suppose no one’s caught him, and he never left. Seven months, quiet, going about his day like the rest of us. Except, except he’s got this dark secret he keeps all to himself. Suppose that, David. What do you suppose he’d feel?”
David searched Jake’s face a moment before the answer tumbled from his wet lips. “Power,” he said, then, “I suppose,” more quietly.
Jake grinned and nodded. “Power, exactly.” Jake took another swig, keeping his upper body arched over the table. David’s head remained low, nearer to Jake for their intimate conversation. “Don’t you suppose that’s enough reason to enjoy a pause?”
Jake stared up into David’s eyes, watching the fire whip side to side in his pupils, dilated. “I guess so,” he said.
“Now,” Jake continued, “I’m not pretending to know the inner workings of a mind like that, belonging to a pervert like that, kills kids. But I can imagine the power of his secret. You know? Everyone walks around like they don’t have thoughts, but that’s a load of horseshit. We all have thoughts. We don’t all think of killing kids, but we have thoughts, right? Things others, if they knew, would call us perverts for.” Jake watched David’s eyes narrow. It could either be mounting fury or enlightenment, Jake surmised. He gambled, and fed it. “Truth be told, if all our thoughts were laid bare, if everyone knew what went on in everyone else’s mind, we’d all be a bunch of perverts. I hate that hypocrisy, David, I hate people pretending like every tragic tale of some pervert’s pent up fetish bursting out is somehow unthinkable, like no one comprehends the nature of it. You don’t have to feel the same yourself, certainly shouldn’t act on it, but you have yours, you know what I mean, David?”
Jake watched the man’s face, within inches, inspecting his reaction. His expression remained still, his eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed, his lips parted, until at last, David’s head made a short, slow motion up and down. “Sure,” he uttered quietly between them.
“You got secrets, David?”
“Like you said, Jake,” David spoke, “we all have thoughts.”
Jake grinned. “I like you, David.”
“I like you, too, Jake.” David slurped from his beer, a desperate inhalation of alcohol. Jake assumed it gathered courage for his next statement. David lowered the can with a metallic, echoed clink against the table. “Hey, how about you come over sometime? Drink at my place.”
Jake leaned back, finishing his own beer. He laid the can beside David’s. “How about now?”
9
_________
Carrie rested behind the wheel
at the trailhead, attempting to calm her nerves. Rattled by the day’s antagonizing encounter, and coupled with her excitement over the old maps, her body reeled from the stress of being pulled two directions. She felt her phone buzz in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out to view a text from Jake.
“Out with manager - angling for promotion,” it read.
Her eyes raced across the words, recognized them, but failed to put them together. Instead, she stuffed her phone back into her pocket and returned to the task of settling her nerves. She felt her phone go off again, this time a series of short, interruptive vibrations against her abdomen. She groaned, removing the phone once more to view the name of the caller. Jackie.
“Hey!”
The familiar youthful, exuberant voice filtered through the crack in her window to drag Carrie’s attention away from her phone. Shelly stood beside her car in typical jogging tights and sports bra, seemingly unaffected by the day’s chill. The phone went back into Carrie’s pocket, muffled, then silent, as she popped open the door and stepped out. “Hi Shelly!” Carrie greeted the young jogger. Shelly wrapped her thin arms around Carrie for a brief and unexpected embrace, but Carrie returned it nonetheless.
“How are you today?” Shelly inquired. A wide grin adorned her face. Her perfect, white teeth nearly glimmered in Carrie’s eyes. It caused her momentary pause.
“I—I’m good, I’m good,” she answered. “How are you?”
Shelly took a deep breath and released. Carrie envisioned Shelly doing the same in the new yoga studio around the corner from her job. Her former job. “I’m well,” she answered. “A little concerned about the mist, though.”
Carrie turned to the forest path, the entrance leading into the trees, its turns obscured by a thickening fog. It filtered in from outside the woods, where it lingered above the county road, limiting visibility to something like a quarter mile. “Yeah,” Carrie spoke, observing it. She took a deep breath, and felt its spindles reaching into her lungs. Like a spectre, it hovered around her. “It is rather pretty, though, don’t you think?”
