by Ethan Cross
He pressed on down the deserted highway. The night consumed everything around him, and the lonely stretch of road seemed to continue on forever, trailing off into oblivion. He felt like the lone survivor of the apocalypse, navigating his way to a destination that no longer existed in a futile attempt to find a lost loved one who had died in the cleansing fires that had marked the end of all things.
By the light of the moon, it seemed as if he had stepped into a different dimension. The very terrain seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and in his eyes, it appeared to hold dark and menacing intent. The darkness seemed to swirl and undulate like a ravenous animal waiting to devour his soul. The darkness was everywhere, surrounding him, creeping inside his heart, beckoning him to abandon hope and sleep forever.
He didn’t know where he was going, or what he would do when he got there. All he knew was that he needed to get as far away from Asherton as possible.
His first thought was to walk to the next town, hiding every time a car approached. He felt that not being able to see who was approaching in the oncoming vehicles would put him in a vulnerable position and make hitchhiking a dangerous proposition. Hiding wasn’t a viable option, however, since the sporadic patches of vegetation checkered along the roadside didn’t provide enough cover.
He didn’t relish the prospect of hitchhiking, but other than grand theft auto, it was his quickest option. Plus, he hadn’t taken the first road that he came to. In fact, he hadn’t taken the second. He had decided on the third road, in hopes of throwing off his pursuers. As such, he concluded that he would be better off to take his chances with whatever vehicle came along.
He pressed on, trying to plan out his next move. It was his nature to deal with a situation using instinctual reactions rather than planned movements. This time, however, was a different situation. He needed a well-laid plan if he was going to get out of this alive.
Cold, gray clouds loomed overhead like the petty demigods of some ancient civilization, looking down on the toils and triumphs of mortal men. He could almost feel their gaze upon him, allies of the darkness attempting to wear down his resolve. The dark clouds drifted and flowed in the sea of space. From time to time, they eclipsed the moon and extinguished the last surviving light.
Then, a light born not of nature lit the landscape and stung his eyes as they hurried to adjust. A vehicle approached, a car from the look of it.
He had hoped that the first vehicle he saw would be a semi-truck. He knew the Sheriff wouldn’t be coming after him in a semi, and he guessed that his chances of being picked up by a burly truck driver far outweighed the prospects of being aided by a single mom in a station wagon.
The car stopped about twenty to twenty-five feet from where he stood. He felt his heart sink and his adrenaline level rise as he noticed the red and blue lights mounted on the cop car’s roof.
15
Alice Richards placed the last of the plates in the dish drainer. Her feet throbbed and ached, and a possible muscle tear in her lower back forced pain up and down her spine if she turned the wrong way. She had put in another double shift at work. Her glamorous job consisted of folding a box, filling it with nail plates, and sending it down the line to the next cog in the industrial machine, who would label and ship it. After sixteen hours straight, she felt as if she had run two triathlons and given birth all in the same day. Mind, body, and soul ached, and she longed for sleep like a junky yearning for his next fix. Despite her exhaustion, she had decided to do the dishes before going to bed.
Sometimes, she wanted to run away from her troubles and never look back. She imagined that her whole life was a dream and that one day she would awaken from her world of unpaid bills and second mortgages. She hoped to find that all her problems originated from a realm of pure imagination that held no more truth in the world of concrete reality than flying elephants or talking mice.
She had two beautiful children, Lucas and Casey, and a not-so-beautiful husband, Dwight. She and Dwight were high school sweethearts and had gotten married following their senior year. She had just turned eighteen, old enough that her parents couldn’t do anything to stop them. Her parents hated Dwight, and looking back, she felt that they were probably right about him. He was lazy and not all that bright or well-mannered, but he was the cutest boy she had ever seen.
It didn’t take long for her girlish dreams to fade away. Although she loved her children always and her husband some of the time, she couldn’t help but wonder what might have been if she would have taken some different turns on the road of life.
Out of necessity, she worked as many hours as possible, a situation that often left her in a zombie-like state. Over the past year, their financial situation hadn’t allowed her much time with the children, and she felt guilty that she didn’t get to see them at all on many nights.
She had just finished putting away the last of the dishes when she heard a noise from the kids’ room. It was way past their bedtime, and they would be in big trouble if she walked in and caught them awake and playing.
A couple of nights before, she and Dwight had fallen asleep in the living room watching a movie. She had awakened at five in the morning and found Casey, still wide-awake, having a tea party with her dollies. She scolded the girl and sent her to bed, but she couldn’t be too mad at her. The whole scene had been so cute.
She peered into the living room and saw Dwight passed out in his recliner. He sat limp and quiet in the chair, which was unusual for Dwight, since he snored like a hibernating grizzly. She didn’t give much thought to the abnormality and decided not to wake him.
She continued down the hallway to check on the children. The carpet in the hall was bright green shag, spotted with elongated pools of white. The children often imagined the white spots were alligator heads, and they were adventurers who had to traverse a swamp in order to find a lost treasure of immeasurable bounty. She loved the games her children played and sometimes felt glad that she couldn’t afford fancy toys for them. Unlike most of America’s youth, her children used their imaginations, instead of having the games and stories laid out before them on computers and PlayStations.
She arrived at the entryway to the children’s room and peeked inside, half expecting to see Lucas with the bed sheets tied around his neck in a makeshift cape and Casey serving tea to stuffed animals. Instead, she saw two beautiful children nestled snugly into their beds. She watched them in awe for a moment, amazed at the two wonderful children that she and her husband had created. She considered that, even though she would never have money, at least she would always have her kids.
The wind whispered in its cryptic and indecipherable language outside the children’s window. The trees swayed back and forth in the darkness as the breeze caressed them like invisible waves crashing against a shoreline.
She had turned to go and wake Dwight for bed when a tiny, frightened voice called out from the darkened room behind her.
“Mommy,” the voice said, “there’s a bad man in my closet.”
16
Marcus stared at the cop car in disbelief. They had found him. Wrong place, wrong time. Story of my life.
He tried to determine whether he had any moves left, or if he was best to concede defeat. Concede defeat? The words sounded sacrilegious to him, as if stubbornness was an existential philosophy.
He saw a figure open the door and exit the vehicle, but he couldn’t see more than the person’s outline with the cruiser’s headlights shining in his face.
“Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them. Lie down on the ground with your hands behind your back. Palms facing up.”
He complied and lay down on the highway’s cool asphalt. An officer stepped out from behind the light, a member of the Texas Highway Patrol.
He smiled. Whoever said, “Where’s a cop when you need one?”
Short blonde hair topped the officer’s five-foot-nine frame. There was nothing exceptional about him. He wasn’t big, but he wasn’t small. He wasn’t a
ttractive, but he wasn’t grotesque. He wasn’t thin, but he wasn’t overweight either. He was ordinary in every way that Marcus could see.
“Don’t move,” the officer said, as he approached with his weapon drawn and his muscles tensed like a coiled cobra.
The cop wasn’t taking any chances, and Marcus began to wonder why finding a man, who might only be a hitchhiker or drifter, would make a state police officer so apprehensive. The officer cuffed his hands behind his back and ushered him to the rear seat of the police cruiser. He considered asking what he was charged with and wondered why the officer had been so quick to assume that he posed an imminent danger. But he really didn’t have any other options, and he knew that finding an ally in this officer would be a step toward a resolution.
He had decided when the officer first told him to kiss the asphalt that he would wait until the man had him secure before unleashing the details of his story. That way, the patrolman would feel safe and possibly be more receptive. He knew how jumpy a cop, especially a rookie, could get when he or she felt threatened. He didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot with his potential savior.
He didn’t resist at all as the officer placed him in the back seat of the cruiser. The cop didn’t even bother to place a seatbelt around him, as if he was going to bite the man in the jugular when he leaned over to latch the belt.
With that thought, he realized why the officer had treated him like a fugitive. Because the man thought he was a fugitive. After all, there was a serial killer presumed to be in the area.
The officer got into the front seat, put the car in gear, and drove. He didn’t say a word.
A hollow feeling expanded in Marcus’s stomach. “Listen, my name is Marcus Will—”
“I know what your name is.”
Silence.
“Where are you taking me?”
Silence.
Marcus took a deep breath. “Am I being charged with something here?”
“I was told not to talk to you.”
“By who?”
“You’re wanted, and I’ve been told not to talk to you.”
He ran all the possibilities through his mind. The officer hadn’t even advised him of his Miranda rights. Is this guy working for the Sheriff? He didn’t think so. The orders would most likely be to shoot on sight if that were the case.
“Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you think I am or what you think I’ve done, but my name is Marcus Williams. I’m not Francis Ackerman. You can use your computer there to pull up his picture and—”
“Like I told you before,” the officer said, tapping the computer terminal mounted on his console. “I know who you are. Marcus Williams. Suspect in the homicide of Maureen Hill. And I’ve been given strict instructions not to talk to you and to deliver you straight to the Dimmit County Sheriff’s office. So sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Suspect in the homicide of Maureen Hill?
The words shocked him at first, but after a moment, he realized that he should have thought of this possibility. It made sense. The Sheriff needed to discredit him and make sure that he couldn’t find anyone sympathetic to his cause. The cop in the front seat didn’t work for the Sheriff, but he might as well have been on the payroll. After all, the man was chauffeuring him to his death.
The Sheriff would take custody of him, and then it would be easy. Hire a prisoner to take me out, or just kill me during a faked escape attempt.
“I’m not a killer.”
“That’s exactly what a killer would say.”
“Just listen for a minute. The reason that the Sheriff doesn’t want you to talk to me is because he’s the killer. He’s trying to kill me because I found out about him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I stumbled onto Maureen Hill’s body because I’m her new neighbor. I went to introduce myself. But something didn’t add up at the crime scene, so I called the Sheriff back there. I discovered that the thing that didn’t fit was that the Sheriff had already captured the real killer … Ackerman. You heard of him, right?”
The officer didn’t offer a reply, but he couldn’t decide whether the lack of a sarcastic response meant that he was convincing him or just that the man didn’t have anything else to say.
“The Sheriff’s got some plan for Ackerman that doesn’t involve a trial and prison. It involves murder. I stumbled onto the whole mess, so now he wants me dead too. If you deliver me to his office, then you’re an accessory to murder.”
“Why would the Sheriff do something like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for some feeling of power? Maybe he got burned by the system one too many times? Shoelaces tied too tight? One too many swirlies in High School? It doesn’t take much nowadays. I don’t know why he’s doing it, but I know that a police officer is supposed to enforce and uphold the law. Not make up the law as he goes along. Not bend the law when it suits him to do so. And the Sheriff’s broken the law; he’s taken it upon himself to be judge, jury, and executioner. The question really isn’t whether Ackerman deserves to live or die because the bottom line is that it’s not the Sheriff’s job to decide. He’s playing God.”
The officer nodded in agreement, and then he glanced back at Marcus and said, “You’re right. A policeman’s not supposed to play God. But a wise man once told me that a cop is like a shepherd, and sometimes in order to protect the flock, you have to keep the wolves away.”
17
Mommy, there’s a bad man in my closet.
The quiet and meek-sounding voice was uncharacteristic for the boy who had called to her. He sounded terrified.
Lucas was a typical six-and-a-half-year-old-boy. He possessed an excellent quality for mischief and had two favorite pastimes: playing with his action figures and teasing his little sister. Although his parents didn’t really have enough money to buy them for him, Lucas had an army of action figures drawn from the ranks of Star Wars and G.I. Joe. He was rambunctious, full of energy, and always getting into trouble. He was everything you expected a boy of his age to be, but seldom had his mother ever heard him sound timid. Although she dismissed his claims as being the product of an overactive imagination, there was something in the tone of his voice that disturbed her.
“Honey, there’s no one in your closet. You’re safe here. Daddy and I are here to protect you. Now go back to bed. You’re going to wake your sister.”
“Mommy, there really is someone in my closet,” he said. “I saw him standing in my doorway, and then I hid under the covers. But I heard him open my closet doors, and when I looked again, he was gone. So he must be hiding in my closet, waiting for me to go to sleep. I was too scared to scream even.” The boy spoke at a machine gun’s pace. Real or imagined, he had been rattled by something.
“Okay,” she said, playing along, “we’ll check the closet.”
She tried to be confident and not let her own imagination run away with her. She considered waking Dwight so that he could check the closet and the rest of the room using the .38 Special revolver that he kept hidden and loaded in their bedroom.
No, you’re being silly. You’re an adult, and you can’t let yourself get scared over nothing.
She walked to the closet doors but hesitated for a second. Her heart raced, and her palms were sweaty. Don’t be ridiculous. She was the parent here. She was supposed to be the protector, the one who watched over the children. How could she fortify them against the likes of trolls that live under bridges, monsters that live under beds, or the dreaded bogeyman if she couldn’t even take care of one little closet monster?
No guts, no glory. She grabbed the closet door’s handle and threw it open.
At the same time, Lucas threw the covers over his head.
She half expected a wild-eyed madman to come bursting out of the closet, but its only inhabitants were clothes. Everything was as it should be, and nothing seemed to be out of place. She went on with the show and poked around on all of the clothes, in order to show Lucas that everything was okay.
She felt relieved but angered at how childish she had been. Next thing you know, I’ll be sleeping with the lights on. She had never been given a reason to fear the darkness.
“See, I told you there was nothing to worry about.”
The boy didn’t seem convinced. “There really was a man, Mommy. Could you check under my bed?”
She walked to her son’s bedside and leaned down, causing a pain to rip through her back. It started at the base of the spinal cord and worked its way up between her shoulder blades. She flinched but pressed on. The idea of a good night’s sleep drove her forward. She pulled back the bed skirt with a jerk. Once again, Lucas threw the covers over his head.
She had always wondered what protection a child thought a cover would provide. She never remembered doing it herself, but it seemed that a lot of kids felt that a cover over the head was a monster-proof shield.
“Nothing under the bed, either. Nothing to worry about.”
“What about under Casey’s bed?”
Her patience wore thin, but seeing an end in sight, she checked under Casey’s bed as well. “No monsters. No bad men.”
“But, Mommy, he’s here somewhere I know it. He—”
She cut him off with a raised hand.
She sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “Listen to me. You’re safe here. There are no bad men in this house. Daddy and I are here to protect you, and we would never let anything happen to you. You probably just had a bad dream or thought that you saw something that really wasn’t there. It happens all the time, even to grown-ups, but the key is to not let your imagination get the better of you.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing to worry about.” She wondered if something had jumpstarted her son’s imagination tonight. “What did you and Daddy watch on TV while I was at work?”
“Nothing,” he said a bit too quickly.
