They Kill, page 2
Corliss watched him go. The man walked on the centerline, as if needing it to guide him.
“Keep to the side of the road,” Corliss called after him. “I didn’t return you to life so you would end up as roadkill.”
Jeffrey continued walking in the middle of the road. Corliss thought the man hadn’t heard him, or perhaps hadn’t understood. Either way, Corliss was about to run after the man, grab his arm, and pull him to the side of the road, but then Jeffrey moved there himself, saving Corliss the trouble. He watched Jeffrey a bit longer to make sure the man didn’t wander back to the middle of the road, but he kept to the side, and Corliss allowed himself a smile. All in all, things had gotten off to a good start.
He began walking, trailing after Jeffrey, partially to keep an eye on him, but mostly because it was a pleasant morning for a stroll. He started whistling an atonal tune, and soon his hair was rippling in time with the music.
Chapter Two
Sierra Sowell sat up in bed, surrounded by darkness, disoriented, heart racing, breath coming in short gasps. She didn’t know where she was, or even who she was. But the longer she sat there, twisting and untwisting the blanket clutched in her hands, the more her memories trickled back. And then, all at once, she remembered the dream, every fucking detail. She began trembling, and nausea slammed into her gut with sledgehammer force. She feared she was going to throw up, but instead of jumping out of bed and running toward the bathroom, she forced herself to remain sitting. She’d had dreams about her brother’s death before – although admittedly, none so weird – and she should be able to handle the emotional aftermath by now. She closed her eyes, although as dark as the room was, she needn’t have bothered, and concentrated on an image of a calm, still pond. She’d read on the internet grief support forums where she lurked and rarely posted that this sort of visualization technique was an effective tool to alleviate anxiety and panic. She’d never used it before, but now seemed like a damn good time to give it a try.
Her attempt lasted almost two whole minutes before she gave up, dashed to the bathroom, and puked into the toilet. She felt as if she was going to keep vomiting until she turned herself inside out, but eventually her stomach was empty. Throat fire-raw and abdominal muscles aching, she flushed the toilet, then grabbed the edge of the sink to steady herself as she got to her feet. She rinsed her mouth with tap water, then rinsed again with mouthwash. Afterward, she felt better, but weak, and she staggered back to bed and flopped onto the mattress. Vomiting really took it out of her, had done since she was a child. Her phone was on her nightstand, and she picked it up to check the time. 7:23 a.m. She always slept in a T-shirt and underwear, and she’d managed to avoid getting any puke on either of them. A minor victory, but she’d take whatever she could get this morning.
She rose from the bed, already feeling a little stronger, and walked over to the curtains and opened them. Sunlight flooded into her small bedroom, and she turned her face away from the window with a muttered “Fuck!” She’d had so much trouble sleeping after Jeffrey’s death that she’d bought heavy-duty blackout curtains to keep even the tiniest sliver of light from entering her room and keeping her up. They worked, but she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the sudden transition from deep darkness to bright eye-stinging daylight. It was like what that strange black-suited man had done in her dream, moving from early morning sunrise to a storm-battered night with a mere wave of his hand.
She didn’t need to be at work until nine, and while she normally would’ve crawled under the covers to snooze another thirty minutes, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. Might as well get her day going.
She walked out of the bedroom, down the short hall, and into her small kitchen. The light was as bright as in her bedroom – no blackout curtains here – but her eyes had more or less adjusted to it by now. She turned on the coffee maker, inserted a single-serve coffee pod into it, placed a Van Gogh’s Starry Night mug beneath the dispenser, and hit the brew button. The machine whirred and hissed to life, and she stared at the thin stream of hot black liquid that began to flow into her mug.
She wasn’t surprised that she’d dreamed about Jeffrey’s accident. Today was the one-year anniversary of his being run off the road by that stupid bitch Courtney Marsh – who’d not only escaped injury in the accident but hadn’t gotten so much as a goddamned ticket. So what if the weather conditions had been terrible that night? Drivers were responsible for the safety of their passengers as well as other drivers on the road. End of story. Courtney had started her senior year of high school a couple weeks ago and would probably be going off to college next fall. She could build a life because she still had life. Sierra’s brother wasn’t so lucky.
But as many times as she’d dreamed about the accident, she’d never done so like last night. Usually, she watched the event unfold as if she were a spectator standing at the side of the road. She wanted to yell for Jeffrey to slow down, wanted to run into the street and wave her arms to force him to do so. But she couldn’t move or speak. Last night, however, she’d been both Jeffrey and Courtney at different points in the dream. She’d also been the man in the black suit sometimes. She couldn’t recall his name. She thought it started with a C or maybe a D. He was the weirdest thing about the dream. His strange suit and hair. The way he could manipulate time. And worst of all, how he’d brought Jeffrey back. Not to life, exactly. More like a mocking impersonation of it. Seeing Jeffrey move and speak, even if he was still mostly dead, had been such an emotional experience for her, it was no wonder she’d puked soon after waking. And the way the dream had ended, with Jeffrey and the man in the black suit walking toward town. If the dream had been real, they would be heading to Bishop Hill this very moment. What would happen if she called off work today, got in her car, and drove down County Road 25A right now? Would she find her undead brother shambling toward town followed by the man in the black suit?
No, if she went, she’d find nothing, of course. Dreams didn’t come true, and neither did nightmares. She’d give anything to see her brother again one last time, tell him all the things she hadn’t said to him while he lived. Most of all, she wanted to tell him she was sorry.
When the coffee was finished, she put cream and sugar into it, and then leaned against the counter while she sipped it. Mom and Dad had asked her to go over to their place for dinner tonight. When her mom had invited her, she’d said nothing about it being the anniversary of Jeffrey’s accident. His deathday, as Sierra thought of it. She didn’t want to go to her parents’, didn’t know if she could take being around them and the grief that followed them wherever they went, like an obnoxious animal that you couldn’t get rid of, no matter how hard you tried. She was having a hard enough time dealing with her own grief, and she feared she didn’t have the emotional resources to help her mom and dad deal with theirs. She’d told her mom she’d come, though. What else could she do? She was her parents’ only living child now, and it was up to her to help them when they needed it. And tonight they were going to need her, very much so. She would just have to suck it up and try to be the best daughter she could tonight. Afterward, she could return home and collapse into a sobbing mess if she wanted.
He thoughts turned again to the man in the black suit. She wondered if he was supposed to represent someone in the real world, maybe the director of the funeral home where they’d held Jeffrey’s viewing and funeral. The man in the black suit didn’t much look like the funeral director, though. The funeral director was shorter and heavier. Older too, with snow-white hair and a goatee.
She finished the last of her coffee, rinsed the mug in the sink, then placed it on the top rack in the dishwasher. Maybe the man in the black suit hadn’t meant anything, was only a random – if bizarre – addition to her usual nightmare. Dreams didn’t have to make sense, and most of the time they didn’t. You could drive yourself crazy looking for meaning in things that were by their very nature meaningless. She decided to take a long warm shower and do her best to forget about her dream and the strange man in black.
She remembered his name then – Corliss – and despite having told herself the dream meant nothing, she spoke the name aloud, and the sound of it in her otherwise quiet kitchen made her shiver.
* * *
After showering, Sierra let her curly brown hair air-dry while she put on minimal makeup and dressed. She was an artist – she worked with watercolors, primarily – and she was a teacher at ArtWorks Education, a funky combination of art school and gallery downtown. She also taught art classes at Riverbank Community College. She worked part-time at both places, but together the gigs allowed her to make a living, meager as it might be. As an artist, she liked to dress creatively for work. She wore colorful blouses that had interesting images or patterns on them, along with black leggings and black flats. She was feeling down today – big shock – so she deliberately chose something upbeat: a yellow blouse with a daisy pattern. When she checked herself in the bedroom’s floor-length mirror, she liked what she saw. Her eyes were a bit bloodshot from throwing up so violently, but hopefully they’d return to normal as the day wore on.
On her way out, she grabbed the canvas bag with Egyptian hieroglyphics on it that served her as both purse and teacher’s carryall, slung the strap over her shoulder, opened the door, and stepped out into the hall. She closed the door as quietly as she could, and she was locking it – holding her keys so they wouldn’t jingle – when she heard the door across the hall from her apartment open.
Goddamn it, she thought. But when she turned around, she managed to put a reasonable facsimile of a smile on her face.
“Hi, Grace. How are you this morning?”
Grace looked at her with bleary eyes that struggled to focus. If Grace had been anyone else, Sierra would’ve thought she hadn’t woken up all the way yet. But the stink of cheap alcohol wafting off the woman told a different story.
“I can’t find my purse,” Grace said, her voice rough as old leather.
Grace Coates was somewhere in her sixties, hair dyed an unconvincing blond, face lined from years of sun exposure. She was a tall woman – taller than Sierra by at least a foot – and so thin she looked like a skeleton whose bones had been painted flesh color. She wore her makeup heavy and inexpertly applied, and Sierra had never seen her without it. She might’ve thought it tattooed on if she hadn’t seen the woman’s eye shadow and lipstick smeared so often. Grace wore a fuzzy pink robe marred with stains, and the belt around her waist was loose, leaving the robe open to the point where most of her right breast was exposed.
Before Sierra could say anything, Grace scowled, stepped forward, and leaned her face in close to Sierra’s.
“You took it, didn’t you?”
Grace’s breath smelled like vinegar and vomit. Sierra hadn’t had anything to eat or drink that morning except for her coffee, but her stomach was still tender after throwing up earlier, and she had to fight to keep from puking again.
“I didn’t take your purse. I couldn’t have. I don’t have a key to your apartment.”
She did her best to keep the irritation she felt from her voice. She tried to be as silent as possible whenever she came and went from her apartment, and this was why.
Grace had already been living there when Sierra moved in a few years ago. She’d found Grace to be a pleasant neighbor, and after a while they began spending time together, chatting over coffee in each other’s apartments, sometimes having dinner or watching a movie. Grace worked as a loan officer in a bank, and she had been married to an orthodontist – who, unfortunately for her, had made her sign a pre-nup. She had two children, both of whom were older than Sierra. Grace had so much more life experience than Sierra, and she came to view the woman as something of a mentor as well as a friend.
And then Grace started asking her for money. Not a lot at first. A five here, a ten there. Just to help tide her over until she got paid. She’d hired a lawyer to help her get a better settlement from her ex, she said, and he’d proven more costly than she’d expected. The story sounded a bit off to Sierra. If Grace had the money to hire an expensive lawyer, why did she need more from her ex-husband? But she decided to put her doubts aside and trust her friend. Then Grace began drinking. Sierra was used to seeing the woman have a glass of wine once in a while, and she’d usually have one with her. But now it seemed Grace always had a drink in hand, and not wine but liquor, straight up. She favored bourbon but sometimes she’d drink vodka instead.
Grace began telling Sierra all her woes, and she had a lot of them. Her husband had cheated on her with the officer manager where he worked. She’d forgiven him and wanted to work things out, but he’d refused and left her. Her children took their father’s side in the divorce – Because he told them lies about me, she’d said – and now her son and daughter didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Sometimes they’d call her on holidays or on her birthday, if she was lucky. She had trouble finding men to date, and when she did finally start going out with someone, it ended quickly – never her fault, of course. Her boss at work was always on her about her job performance, and Grace feared she would be fired any day. She was having trouble making payments on her pre-owned Lexus, and she was afraid the bank – the same one she worked for, awkwardly enough – was going to repossess it. If she lost her job, she wouldn’t be able to make her rent, and then she’d be homeless because neither of her children would take her in and she had no friends she could live with. No friends except Sierra, and could she be a dear and loan her some more money, just until her situation became more settled, and then she’d pay it right back, she promised.
Sierra wasn’t an idiot. She knew she was being taken advantage of, but she wanted to be a good friend to Grace, wanted to find a way to help her with her problems. She spent hours talking to the woman – in person, on the phone, via text – but in the end she always gave Grace money, if she had it to spare. One of the reasons Sierra was reluctant to confront Grace directly about her drinking and spending was that the woman had been there for her when Jeffrey died. She’d remained by her side throughout those first awful days, supporting her through it all. Sierra didn’t know how she would’ve made it if Grace hadn’t been there to help her. And a few months later, she’d been there to help her through her breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Stuart. She knew she was enabling Grace, but how could she turn her back on this woman after she’d stood by her during the worst times of her life?
Then a couple weeks ago, Grace’s daughter, Chloe, had called Sierra. Chloe introduced herself and said she’d gotten Sierra’s number from her mother. Given the portrait Grace had painted of her children, Sierra expected Chloe to be a heartless bitch. But she found that not to be the case at all. First off, Chloe said Grace had told her about Sierra a while ago, during one of their weekly phone calls. Chloe wanted her to know how much she and her brother, Trent, appreciated her being such a good friend to their mother.
“You’re aware she’s an alcoholic, right?”
Sierra had been a bit surprised by the woman’s directness, but she said yes.
“This might sound weird, but could you tell me what she’s said about my brother and me, and about our father?”
It was weird, but Sierra went along with it, partly because Chloe was so different than she’d expected, but mostly because of her own doubts about Grace’s honesty. When she was finished, Chloe sighed.
“I was afraid of that. She was the one who was unfaithful, and she left Dad for her lover, who eventually dumped her. It’s true that Trent doesn’t call her as often as I do, but it’s more often than she says. He couldn’t take her asking for money anymore. He found it so hard to tell her no every time, even if that’s what our therapist said to do.”
Chloe went on to tell Sierra about her and her brother’s attempts over the years to try and get Grace into counseling, but their efforts failed. Grace would pretend to go along with whatever they wanted, even go to a few appointments with a therapist before quitting, but while she could manage to hide her drinking when she worked at it, she never stopped.
“Trent and I went to a therapist of our own to get some ideas how to help Mom, but she told us that the best way to help was to stop helping her. More specifically, we had to stop giving her money. So long as we were helping her to maintain her life as it was, she had no motivation to change. So as hard as it was, we cut her off. No more money, no matter what she said she needed it for, no matter how much she begged.”
Chloe had gone on to say that while Sierra could, of course, do whatever she wanted, she hoped for her mother’s sake as well as Sierra’s that she’d stop giving Grace money.
So even though it was hard, the next time Grace asked Sierra for money – so she could get some maintenance work done on her car, she claimed – Sierra said she was sorry, but she couldn’t help her out financially. Not anymore.
Grace said she understood, but she asked for money again a few days later, and when Sierra turned her down once more, she asked again the following week. That time when Sierra declined to give her money, Grace got nasty. She said Sierra was an ungrateful little hippie bitch, no better than her two worthless children.
Since then, Grace took every opportunity to try and pick a fight with Sierra, and each time she had a different pretext. She complained that Sierra played her TV too loud at night, that her cooking stunk up the hallway, that she parked too close to her Lexus…. But lately her complaints had become strange. Earlier in the week, she’d confronted Sierra in the hall and told her not to leave her microwave running all day while she was gone because its radiation gave her a headache. Later that same day, she’d said that every time Grace flushed her toilet, the water in her apartment stopped working for an hour. And now Grace was claiming that she’d sneaked into her apartment and stolen her purse. Sierra had started to fear that Grace’s alcoholism had affected her mind, and now she was certain of it.
