Something Bad, page 10
Deena Lee noticed that Teddy seemed as startled as she was. She didn’t peg Thibideaux as a religious man. He hadn’t made an appearance in church. She knew that for sure. Sunday worship was not only for receiving the Word of the Lord, it was also important to be seen receiving the Word. All participants seemed to make mental notes of who was and wasn’t in attendance each week because if a regular missed a week, it was likely someone would drop in to see if everything was okay. If two or more weeks were missed, groups of fellow citizens would self-organize to come by to offer assistance.
Teddy stood straight. “Thank you for the good thoughts. You’re welcome to drop in to watch the dunking. It’ll start around ten, right after the regular service.” Teddy’s smile nearly reached his ears.
Thibideaux dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Thank you, Teddy. I may take you up on the offer. I really like baptisms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be going. But before I go, I have to ask for the recipe to your marinade. I don’t expect a return—it’s just a formality attesting to its great flavor. I’d like to offer a suggestion for a variation that would give it a distinct Cajun twang, though. A healthy dose of cayenne pepper would bring back memories of my home. Good day.”
Thibideaux exited through the front door into a swirling gust of dust-laden wind. When the wind died down, he was nowhere to be seen.
Deena Lee turned to Teddy and shook her head. “Dang if I would’ve thought he’d ever set foot in a church.”
Teddy smiled. “I don’t know. That’s the first time I’ve jawed with him. Seems nice enough.” He walked toward the kitchen but stopped short of the doorway and turned around. “Y’all let Deena Lee know if you need anything. She’s about to sit down for a spell.
CHAPTER
18
THE HOT, HUMID day finally surrendered to the dark and Gabe let his head fall into the pillow to form a perfect-fit crater that would cradle him into sleep. He let out a silent chuckle. Hell of a day, he thought, placing a wager he’d wake up in the same exact position.
Before he drifted off, he nudged his mind toward a familiar go-to-sleep scenario. Good night for one of Misty’s dances. As soon as he conjured Misty from the narrow gap between wakefulness and sleep, his mind disengaged. There was no dance. Only sleep.
He didn’t know how long he’d been away, but it was still night. The room seemed darker than it should have been two nights short of a full moon. Gabe shifted in the bed and stopped. The warmth of another body was close beside him under the covers. This wasn’t Misty’s way. She would do her dance, engage him on top of the covers and leave. “Sorry to hump and run,” she would say with a loud laugh.
He moved again and the body pushed into his side. He felt the warmth from his shoulder to his foot and it triggered an involuntary shudder. Not a big one, and probably noticeable only to him. He struggled to put the sensations into meaningful order. This couldn’t be Misty. This was how he imagined it would be with Miz Murtry. No burlesque. Just warmth.
He turned, and through the darkness he thought he saw her smile with half-closed eyes. She exhaled through her nose and the smell of her air was sweet, inviting. He never had that smell with Misty. He’d never had any smell with her.
He put his arm out to surround her and Miz Murtry responded by moving into a tight body hug. He felt skin-on-skin through the entire span of contact, and the hairs on his body rose to her, reached for her. Now he could feel her breathing. It was shallow and fast, with a slight tremolo on each exhalation. He pulled her closer.
A new sensation swept through his body—he wasn’t receiving her heat, he was generating his own. It radiated from his body like squiggly distortions rising from distant asphalt on a hot day. His breathing fell into her rhythm.
He pushed his knee between hers and she let it in. He was about to pull her closer when she rolled on her back, pulling him on top of her. It was more a jerk than a pull, and her soft breathing turned to rapid grunts as she positioned herself under him with sharp, jolting twitches.
He straightened his arms and pushed away from her, but she tugged at him, grunting. Something was wrong. He tried to roll off, but she slapped her arms around his back and held tight. She squirmed beneath him. Pushing harder, a grunt parted his lips. Another grunt and he broke her grip. He rolled off, to the side of the bed and then to the floor. His hands shook so badly he nearly upset the light on the nightstand trying to turn it on. The brightness narrowed his eyes. Words flew from his mouth, loud, uncontrolled, like the bark of a dog. All-or-none. For dogs, there is no such thing as a quiet bark—one with some volume held in reserve.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Wanna peeked from under the covers. She smiled.
“I mean it. What the hell are you doing?” He reached for his robe and swung it around his shoulders as he walked to the foot of the bed. “You trying to ruin everything?”
Wanna slid from under the covers and threw her nightgown over her head. She stepped toward the door but Gabe grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face him. The glow of the moon spilled through the east window and illuminated her grin.
“We have to talk about this.”
CHAPTER
19
THIBIDEAUX’S EYES OPENED wide. He leaned forward in his chair and mouthed a curse. Each word was exaggerated into a snarl, and with each one his lips parted as much as his paralyzed facial muscles would allow. The miniscule gaps revealed glimpses of silver that reflected the dancing flames of the fireplace, like bursts of razor-thin laser lights flying in radiating directions.
His chair began a slow counterclockwise rotation, through a full circle, and then picked up momentum through the next arc. It stopped before completing the cycle, facing northwest, toward Porter County.
Thibideaux raised his right hand in the air with his forefinger pointed skyward, and began rotating it in elliptical counterclockwise loops. The rotations tightened into small circles as his hand turned faster and faster, until it was a blur. He brought it down, stiff, with a slow shoulder rotation until it was parallel to the ground, pointing a vector in line with the chair. At the end of its swing, he flicked his wrist and released a small vortex of circulating air that exited the rectory through an open window and headed out into the night.
The clouds built up quickly over Porter County in a freak storm that was so localized it was hard to detect on the local weather radar. The twister touched ground for only a couple of minutes and then retracted into the clouds. While on the ground, the swirling tempest scored a direct hit on a single farmhouse, leveling it in a shower of wood fragments and broken lives.
Gabe led the slow trickle of emergency volunteers into the wreckage. He worked through most of the night and found the bodies of three of the six members of the family. This time, there were no muffled cries from the debris. No shouts of joy from the rescuers. He departed when he counted six lumped sheets on the grass under a large oak tree. A tire swing hung motionless over the bodies, tied to a stout limb. It still dripped tears from the brief downpour.
Back at home, Gabe slumped into his recliner and immediately fell into sleep. But it wasn’t a restful sleep.
It was perforated by a recurring nightmare that would bring him to the edge of wakefulness, drenched in sweat, and then return him to its depths to repeat the cycle. His world was a never-ending pile of devastated buildings, and while he could hear faint cries for help, he couldn’t find a single source of the cries. He sifted through the wreckage, overwhelmed by its volume. He felt minute by comparison, and the pile was growing with each reiteration. Or he was shrinking. All he could do was keep digging. He was developing doubts about his ability to maintain control of his world.
CHAPTER
20
JOHN JOHNSON TAPPED his foot on the floor and kneaded his forehead with his left hand, passing it down over his eyes and then back up his forehead. He pressed the phone against his right ear. “Come on, goddamn it. Come on you dumb sh … Billy! You awake? We need to meet at the general store right away.”
John paused and tapped his foot on the floor again, this time harder, rhythmically slapping the linoleum. “Tough shit, Billy. We need to meet. In half an hour. Come in your jammies if you have to. Thibideaux’s done it again.”
John paced in front of the bench on the general store porch and watched Billy time his passage to the bench, like he was timing a proper entry into the arc of a spinning jump rope. John didn’t alter his gait or his expression. Billy was late. And this was as important as life and death.
Billy barely settled on the bench beside Mac when John spun around and verbally lunged at them. “Did you hear what happened out in Porter County last night?” He had his tattered map out of his pocket and smoothed open before the sentence was finished. He slapped it down on the bench between the two men and took a step back. “Look where the farm is.” He barely took a breath. “Right in the best path of the new highway.” He straightened his back and looked at Billy, then Mac.
Mac’s hands began to twitch, and when he raised his eyes to John, the twitches intensified. Billy just stared at the map.
John shouted to get Billy’s attention. “Now we got a problem we can take to the sheriff. He’ll listen to us this time.”
Mac shook his head. “I don’t know, John. It was a twister that took that family. How’s Thibideaux supposed to make a twister touch down?”
John swung his head from Billy to Mac and his eyes narrowed to slits. His hands balled into fists causing his forearms to expand. He took a deep breath and relaxed his hands. Back on the topic, Mac’s challenge didn’t cause a ripple in John’s glassy smooth lake of intent.
“I don’t know how he does it, but I know in my bones it’s him.” John looked back at Billy. “Should we wait until he does in the other families to get easy pickings to the whole highway path, or do we do something now to show everyone what he’s up to?” My son’s got one of them farms in the path, and Gabe’s got one. Hell, we know everyone in these parts. Do we just let Thibideaux get them all?”
Mac’s facial muscles twitched in four-four time. “I still think the sheriff will throw us out again. We need some proof.”
John pointed at the map and bellowed. “How much proof do you need? Maybe we should just knock on Thibideaux’s door and ask him if he’s killing all the people.”
Mac bolted upright on the bench and waved a shaky hand at John. “Shitfire, John. You always get us in trouble with the sheriff. I say we try to get some good evidence. Something the sheriff can’t deny. What do you think, Billy? You awake or what?” Mac slumped back on the bench and lowered his eyes. His face contracted in a staccato rhythm and his hands picked up the backbeat.
John snarled but held his tongue. A mutiny of a spastic and an idiot, he thought.
Billy finally looked up. “Why can’t we do both? See what we can find out today and tonight and go to the sheriff tomorrow?” He closed his eyes tight, recoiled on the bench, and waited.
John softened his glare. “Good idea, Billy.”
Billy’s eyes went wide and his mouth gaped. “It is?”
John tapped his right index finger against his lips.
“I got a problem with it, though.” He paused, tapped his lips again. “I promised the missus a night out for all the time I been spending at the Herndon’s Edge. She’s been working her fingers to the bone trying to get some business back. Good thing I got the pension or we’d be selling pencils by now.”
Mac sat upright again. His hands circled into blurs. “I got some time tonight. I can sneak around after dark to see what’s going on in the rectory. Billy, you want to snoop around a bit today to see what you can find?”
Billy frowned an apology. “I got to get a combine running and I got parts coming in for a couple of mowers.”
Mac slapped his hands down and gripped his knees. His hands remained still. “That’s all right. Let me check it out tonight and we’ll meet back here, same time tomorrow morning, to see if we should go to the sheriff.”
“No.” John balled his fists and stomped his right foot. He glared at Mac.
Billy and Mac snapped their heads upward.
“Me and the missus will be having a batch of beer tonight and maybe something else, if you know what I mean, so I doubt I’ll be able to make it at six thirty.” John said. He was the one to call the meetings. “How about seven thirty?”
CHAPTER
21
THE EVENING SHAPED up as a perfect one for clandestine activities. The moon was full, but a dense veil of high clouds subdued its light. Shadows from the one distant streetlight were non-existent if one approached the rectory from the back.
Mac scanned the clothing section of the general store. He had closed early this evening—he hoped he hadn’t missed any customers, more for their inconvenience than for his lost profit. He dressed in all black. His mismatched outfit included a long-sleeved sweatshirt with a partially peeling emblem for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He always dreamed of riding a Harley but he never worked up the nerve. Janice wouldn’t have it anyway, he rationalized.
He tugged on his black dress slacks and cinched the belt a little tighter. His gaze fell to his feet. The pants hung a little short, showing black dress socks entering black canvas, high-top Chuck Taylor model Converse sneakers. Mac hadn’t slipped them on since the last time he tried to play recreational basketball over twenty years ago. That was before his muscles started working on their own.
He couldn’t find a black hat so he broke the motif and slid on a cranium-hugging navy blue stocking hat. Now he needed gloves. Everyone wore gloves when they did this, he thought. Don’t want to leave fingerprints.
All he could find was a pair of dark gray rayon-and-wool glove inserts. They would do. He pocketed a small, black Magna-light flashlight—the size that takes two double-A batteries. It was easy to conceal and carry, hands free, without banging around.
Passing the front of the main counter, he paused. The disposable camera display caught his eye, and for an instant his mind embraced the need for documentation of his sortie. A caution flashed like the strobe of one of the cameras. He remembered his days in the National Guard when he learned to fire one of those shoulder-launched surface-to-air, heat-seeking Red Eye missiles at imaginary jets on a strafing run. The Field Operation Manual stated that firing the device required a 100-meter diameter clear space, making the operator as expendable as the disposable launch tube.
Mac took the back way to the rectory, staying away from open spaces. He was halfway across the first of two back yards when his racing pulse and his emotional high returned him to the seventies, and his brief experimentation in mind alteration. Three times. The first two hadn’t done much except give him a powerful sore throat, but the third was an experience he would never forget. Everything slowed way down, like a 45 played at 33 1/3. But despite the greater clarity, everything was slightly bent at the edges. He remembered how energized he had felt. Like he held advantage over everyone and everything. But afterward, it had scared him. It was too easy. Easy always had a price and he didn’t want to find out what it was.
Now, he had the same feeling—energized, with a sense of clarity. Everything slowed way down. So, when he pressed through a hedgerow separating the two yards, he was keenly aware of the thump coming from the doghouse at the corner of the lot. He took a slow-motion step toward the back of the yard as a Doberman-mix peeked from the darkness and showed two rows of teeth separated by a guttural growl.
Mac’s legs felt heavy—gravity was an enemy now. It took three full steps before he shifted into a sprint. Three steps he couldn’t afford. The dog didn’t move in slow motion. Mac heard its growl build to yipping barks and he felt its foot pats on the ground, coming closer. And something else caught his attention—the tinkling sound of a chain being dragged in the dirt.
At full speed now, the tree line approached, but the growling barks squeezed him. His mind flashed: if a train leaves Chicago going forty five miles an hour, and another leaves an hour later going sixty … This was going to be close. … the second train would catch the first at the tree line … Mac dove head-first for the bushes. The dog leapt after him. He felt its hot breath on the back of his neck just before he hit the ground. The force curled him into a ball and spun him around, facing the dog. Everything went back to slow motion. He folded his hands over his head and neck and the airborne dog froze in mid-air. Its growl turned to a loud yip, but it sounded like a slow-speed playback. The chain yanked the dog in a 180-degree head-first spin to the ground where it stayed, motionless.
Mac didn’t wait for the dog’s confusion to clear. He returned to normal speed and low-crawled through the undergrowth as the lights at the back of the house pushed the blackness of the night all the way back to the tree line.
He didn’t know how far he had crawled. It was far enough so the house lights didn’t penetrate the brush. Collapsing face-first into the ground, he needed to give his heart rate time to return to human levels. When he leaned up and removed his skullcap, the perspiration of exertion and fright dripped from its edge onto his forehead and ran into his eyes as a stinging punishment for his lack of planning.
He blinked the brine from his eyes and looked around. To his right, the brush thinned to a clearing so he crawled to the edge of his cover. The rectory was silhouetted by the sole streetlight of town. He looked for the usual glow of the fireplace coming from the living room of the rectory, but it wasn’t there. That’s a first, he thought. He inched his way across the dirt and occasional ragged patches of grass. At least they felt ragged. Halfway to the back of the building, a sharp, high-pitched whine invaded the quiet night. He lowered himself flat on the ground and froze. It took a moment, but the sound registered. It was the singing hinges of the front doors of the rectory. He raised his head enough to see the rectory porch.
