Something Bad, page 23
Without further inventory, Gabe pulled on the medicine cabinet. It didn’t budge. A few harder jerks produced the same result. He opened the door and noticed a wood screw in each side of the cabinet walls, apparently anchoring the cabinet into wall studs. His hand dove into his right front pants pocket and withdrew his Swiss Army knife. It wasn’t one of the big ones. They produced too large a lump in his pocket. It was the slim, inexpensive model with two blades, can and bottle openers that had flathead screw drivers on the ends, a Phillips screwdriver, and a hole punch. A toothpick and a flimsy pair of tweezers hid in the red plastic sides.
Gabe hated flathead screws. Knuckle busters, he called them. It was hard to keep the blade from slipping out of the screw head. And with the limited space in the medicine cabinet, he prepared for a couple of scrapes.
The first screw unwound from its anchorage without incident. Inch and a half, he thought. Overkill? With the first few turns, the second screw produced a loud, high-pitched squeak of metal against extremely dry wood. The screw’s protest was followed by a low-pitched hum from the living room.
Gabe froze and listened for further noises. There were none. He turned the screw, and another squeal triggered the living room hum again. Just get it out, he thought, and twisted until the screw was free. A push and the cabinet moved, but it was heavy. It wouldn’t come out easily. He inched the right side, then the left, with a small stepping walk out of the wall. Nearly free of the wall, he gave it a hard yank and it came free with a loud creak.
The low-pitched sound came again from the living room, but it didn’t stop like before. It continued as an intermittent whirring, impossible to ignore.
Gabe lifted the cabinet, lowered it to the floor, and leaned it against one of the metal sink legs. The whirring persisted. He felt the urge to run, but resisted. Too close, he thought, but I better find out what it is. Couldn’t be Thibideaux. He’d be in here already. Buoyed, he walked in a crouch to the edge of the living room doorway.
The chair faced in his direction, swaying back and forth as if it were trying to home in on something. The movements produced the whirring sounds.
He pulled his head back but the shift in his weight caused the floorboards to creak under his weight. A more sudden, louder whir came from the room and stopped.
His hand dug in his left pants pocket and withdrew a coin, a penny. He kissed it and rolled it on edge out of the doorway, across the hardwood floor toward the front doors. The sound of its travel started the whirring again, and Gabe leaned around the doorframe in time to see the chair follow the path of the coin across the room. His lean once again angered the floor—its complaint alerted the chair, which swiveled back to the doorway.
Gabe tumbled backward on the floor with a thud. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the bathroom. Just get it out and leave, he said to himself. His pulse pounded in his temples, but it was fast and regular.
Gabe’s size fifteen feet gave him trouble more often than benefit, and on his approach to the sink and the gaping hole in the wall above it, his right foot smacked into the medicine cabinet. It fell over his leg, shattering the mirrored glass. Half of the glass stayed in the frame but the other half tinkled onto Gabe’s shoe and then onto the floor. The edge of the cabinet dug into his shin and sent a dull ache upward in his leg. He pulled it back out of reflex and the cabinet fell flat on the floor, with more tinkling of glass.
“Damn feet,” he said in a whisper.
At the Herndon’s Edge, Thibideaux had a fork of Teddy’s special half way to his mouth. He stopped, sat straight up on his stool, and opened his eyes wide enough to make them nearly perfect circles. His gaze went beyond anything in the café. Placing his fork on his plate, he stood up and excused himself to no one in particular. A quick pivot and several halting strides, and the bathroom door slammed shut.
Gabe’s mind went into overdrive—he needed to fetch the Bible and get out fast. Glass crushed under the weight of his massive work boots, but the external noises were dulled by the sound of his own blood pulsing in his ears. His heart rate was building to a crescendo and the tremors of his nervous hands made his movements clumsy. He thrust his right hand down into the wall before his mind clicked on the number and variety of vermin that might be in there. He pushed downward.
There was nothing. But the sink was in the way. He moved to the left of the sink, so close to the wall his chest was against it. He had to turn his head away from the hole. Straining to force his arm downward, all he felt was a cobweb. He hand swung back and forth and hit studs in both directions, but there wasn’t any contact with anything resembling a book.
His right arm was beginning to tingle from the pressure on his armpit, but he bent his knees and crouched down to press harder. The tip of his middle finger brushed against something and it seemed to move with the touch. He shifted his weight and extended his hand farther into the abyss, and his armpit responded with a sharp pain. Better to be numb, he thought. The object moved again. He tried to grasp it between his index and middle fingers, but it was too heavy. It required the force of an opposable thumb. He pushed his arm down harder on the wall opening and the pain retreated. Got to grab fast, he thought, before I lose all feeling.
Gabe felt his thumb touch the object and he clamped hard onto it. With the strength developed from his livelihood, he stabilized it—it responded to his lift. He brought it up slowly. His grip was forceful but tenuous. Better not bang the thing against a stud. His hand appeared in the opening and then … a book.
He transferred the book to his left hand and shook his right arm to regain circulation. He blew the dust of twenty-five years from the book’s cover and a surge of excitement blocked the pain in his right armpit. “Holy Bible” appeared in gold print.
He placed the Bible on the edge of the sink and picked up the cabinet, barely pushing it into the hole in the wall. His hands returned to the Bible.
“It’s good to see you again, Gabe. What are you doing in here?”
In his startle, Gabe bumped the sink hard and the medicine cabinet released from the wall and crashed into the sink basin, shattering the remainder of the glass. The cabinet knocked the Bible from the sink onto the floor, its pages splayed against the floorboards. The crash produced a second startle and Gabe lost his balance and fell backwards, bumping his back on the side of the bathtub. Pain shot upward to his neck like he’d just been electrocuted. He swung around on all fours and groped for the book. He hoped Thibideaux didn’t see it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Thibideaux raise his right arm, and the medicine cabinet slid off the sink and crashed down on the back of Gabe’s neck and head. Pain fought darkness and he struggled to resist the spreading unconsciousness. On the verge of blacking out, he maintained his fix on the Bible and willed himself to stay alert. He scrambled to gain custody of the book as warm streams of blood dripped from the sides of his neck.
Everything turned to slow motion. Even though he was stunned and groggy, one thought broke through the haze. Get the Bible. He grabbed the bound object and slid it into the waistband of his pants. At least he thought that was what he had done, until he bumped the book, which was still on the floor. Had his retreating consciousness played a cruel trick on him? Was he having trouble telling what was real and what was imagined?
The touch of the Bible answered, and he grabbed it, clutching it to his chest with his right hand. He balanced in a three-point stance on the floor.
“What do you have there?” Thibideaux said.
Gabe didn’t answer. He turned his head and looked up at Thibideaux, pulling the Bible tighter to his chest. Thibideaux looked large from this angle, and the swirling images in the periphery of Gabe’s visual field created a hallucinatory aura around him. Real or artificial?
Thibideaux extended both of his hands toward Gabe, then pulled the left one back toward his body.
Gabe felt a strong tug on the book and tried to resist. The pull was too powerful and yanked the Bible from his grip. He watched it fly into Thibideaux’s extended right hand.
Thibideaux rotated the book around, looking at both sides of the outer cover.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Gabe watched Thibideaux open the book near the center, and saw what looked like burned pages. The pages Thibideaux flipped appeared to be burned nearly to the spine, with a progressive burn on the pages closer to the two covers. The book appeared to be partially hollowed out by fire. Real?
“I’ll be damned,” Thibideaux said. “I know this book.” He snapped his head upward and shouted in the high-pitched, twangy voice of Northeasterner. “Where did you get this? What are you doing here?”
Gabe’s mind was still slowed by the recent blow to his head and neck. His voice was low. “I was getting the book for someone.”
“Who wants this book? Where is this man?”
Gabe tried to think fast. He needed a good lie. One that was believable. Not good at this, he thought. Just say something.
“I don’t know who wants it. I just agreed to get it for some man from Rother. Met him at Herndon’s Edge. I don’t know who he is or who the book belongs to. He just said he wanted it for a friend. I don’t know who that friend is.” He looked at the floor so he wouldn’t be rattled by the surreal image of his tormentor.
“What’s your interest?” Thibideaux said. “Why’d you accept this job?”
“Fifty dollars.” Gabe studied the floor. “The man gave me fifty dollars and told me to bring him the book.”
Thibideaux stepped closer so his right shin was against Gabe’s left shoulder. “Was the man a priest?” He seemed to spit out the last word like it tasted bad.
Gabe’s mind started to clear so the next lie came easier. “No. He was chawing a big lump of tobacco and he cussed.”
Thibideaux nudged Gabe with his shin. “Why does this person want the book?”
Gabe added playing dumb to his lying. “I asked, but he just said, ‘None of your business.’“
Gabe heard Thibideaux flip through the Bible again, and then step backwards into the hall. He heard a muffled flip, the sound of a book flying through the air, and then contact with the fireplace grate.
From the hall, he heard Thibideaux’s voice, back to that of a southerner.
“Your friend will have to do without this book.”
Gabe heard a “Ha” sound and then igniting flames. The smell of burning paper filled the rectory. He slumped on his hand and knees. His increased clarity of thought was accompanied by a parallel increase in his pain, mental as well as physical. With the Bible gone, his thoughts turned to survival. Just get out of the rectory alive. Can’t stand yet—dizzy on all fours. He crawled toward the doorway.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Thibideaux make a sweeping motion of his right hand. A large segment of plaster fell from the ceiling and struck Gabe on the head. He collapsed face first on the floor and pieces of broken mirror dug into the skin of his right cheek and forehead.
Once again, he willed the spreading darkness of unconsciousness to back away to the periphery of his mind. The acute pain he felt seconds before was dulled, but throbbed with his pulse. Double time, but regular. Why regular, he thought. This was worse than leaving the Tri-counties. He looked up at Thibideaux and a warm trickle of blood ran into his eyes, clouding his vision.
Thibideaux seemed to hesitate. He must still need me, Gabe thought. It cleared some of the haze from his head. He thought he heard a command: “Stand up,” but his attempt to regain his equilibrium was compromised by the blood that clouded his vision. His world spun. He felt like he was going to throw up.
“Stand up!”
The second command registered, and through reflex, he started to his feet. Pushing his upper body off the floor, a wave of dizziness nearly turned the room dark. He grasped his knees with his hands and hunched until the darkness retreated. He pushed again with his hands and staggered backward a half step until he stabilized in an upright position.
Thibideaux’s hands slid apart, as if he were calling a baseball player “safe.” The floorboards under Gabe’s left foot gave way and his left leg fell through the floor. It met no resistance in the crawl space until it contacted dirt, two feet below the floor. The impact put an oblique shear on his left knee, which buckled with a loud pop. Gabe whelped and collapsed sideways on the floor, writhing in pain.
Thibideaux hurled his right arm upward and the sink came loose from the wall and smashed into Gabe’s ribs. Pain shot through his torso and seemed to magnify with each breath. He compensated with shallow breaths, but the lack of oxygen brought back the light-headedness. A familiar command startled him. But it was less urgent than before.
“Stand up.”
He’s not going to kill me, Gabe thought. At least not here.
He pushed himself onto all fours, really threes, and started to crawl into the hall. Each movement amplified the pain in his ribs, and as he dragged his left leg, its pain fought for attention. He found a new focus, an incentive. Cory Dean. He wanted to see Cory Dean.
Thibideaux’s New Orleans accent thickened. “It doesn’t matter what you do. You won’t interfere with my work here.” A chuckle, then his voice turned serious. “But take this to heart. You’ve had two chances now. You won’t get a third. Go. Now. And never come near me or the rectory again. Go.”
Thibideaux walked into the living room and the chair whirred a welcome.
Gabe crawled to the rear bedroom window and fell out headfirst. He broke his fall with his hands and right shoulder, which set off an electric shock of pain in his chest. He managed to roll onto his right side and come to a stop without further damage to his left knee, and without hesitation, he crawled across the rectory yard and into the woods where he collapsed on his back, still breathing fast, shallow breaths.
Halfway through the woods, the pain in his body and his modified breathing took a toll on his consciousness. He felt lightheaded, disoriented and nauseous.
Visual hallucinations, swirling and flashing lights, added to his fatigue. He wanted to go to sleep.
His subconscious took command—he low-crawled over to the overhang of a vertical rock outcropping, pushed the vegetation aside, and rolled into a shallow concavity he and his friends had called their cave years ago. They had retreated to this hideout whenever they were under siege by imaginary hordes during their games of youth.
He pulled the vegetation back over the opening and rolled flat on his back. The daylight faded, but it wasn’t the same as the spreading darkness he felt following the blows to his head. This was a more peaceful fade to black. This was sleep.
Gabe shivered and a contractile jerk punctured his sleep with a stab of pain that radiated throughout his body. Daylight had declined and the air carried a chill. Close to suppertime, he thought. Got to get home or Deena Lee and Wanna will be in a panic. Through the pain, he managed to crawl the rest of the way through the woods, to his truck.
He let out a loud scream when he pushed on the clutch, but the gearshift slid into second. He tried to let the clutch out slowly, but couldn’t. It popped, so he hit the gas to compensate and the truck sputtered and lurched, but kept running. Second gear would have to do.
He ran through two stop signs on the way home and pulled the truck up to the steps of the farmhouse as the sun gave a last call at the horizon. He threw open the door of the truck, slid down on his right leg, and hopped up the two steps onto the porch.
Wanna and Deena Lee met him at the front door. Wanna was first to speak.
“Gabe, where you been? We’ve been worried sick.” In unison, Wanna and Deena Lee let out a loud gasp.
Their exclamations weren’t in sync, and they didn’t use the exact same words, but the summed expressions came to Gabe as, “My God. What happened to you? Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. I just want to lie down,” he said as he hopped through the door.
The women each grabbed an arm and helped Gabe over to the living room couch where he collapsed with a loud groan. He pulled his good leg up and motioned toward the left. “Can you help me get my leg up? The knee’s hurting me bad, so take it slow.”
Deena Lee nudged Wanna out of the way and lifted Gabe’s leg. She paused each time he grimaced, and placed a throw pillow under the injured knee so it was propped at a slight angle.
Wanna was at the phone. “I’m going to call Doc. Should I call the sheriff, too?”
“No! Put the phone down,” Gabe said. “I just want to sleep for a while. Doc’ll have me going all over the place soon enough. Just let me get some sleep. And don’t bother with the sheriff. There’s nothing he can do. Put the phone down. Please.”
She walked over to the couch and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll do as you want, but first you tell us what happened.”
Gabe needed another good lie. He hadn’t lied this much in his entire life, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He would settle with the One Who Matters later. There was a job to do. Even with a battered intellect, his mind was quick.
“I guess I made the acquaintance of four young fellers from Rother. They were upset about the football game. I rubbed it in a bit and they jumped me. Can’t identify them, though. They were all wearing hats with the brims curved, so I couldn’t see their faces. One had a beard. That’s all. I can’t even remember what kind of car they drove. It all happened so fast.”
“You can’t remember anything else?” Deena Lee said. “What were they wearing? What color were their hats? Anything?”
Gabe closed his eyes like he was trying to picture the attack. It also gave him time to think. “No. First thing they done was club me in the head. With something hard. From then, I was only partially there. No sense calling the sheriff. Nothing he could do.”
Wanna went back for the phone. “I’ve got to call Doc. You look hurt bad.”
