Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (7 page)

“Pull over, Karrie,” he said. “Pull over or
I’m gonna blow your brains out.”

“Who…” She trembled and no longer looked at
the road. She had turned in her seat, looking over her shoulder at
him. “Who are you?

“Turn around and pull over,” the man
hissed.

She turned around and stared instead in the
rearview mirror, trying to see the man’s face behind her. The SUV
was on the wrong side of the two-lane highway.

“Pull over!” The man shoved the barrel of the
pistol against the base of her skull. She cut the wheel sharply to
the right and drove the Sorento hard onto the berm. He ordered her
to park at the roadside and to leave the engine running. When she
did, he grabbed her purse and bags from the passenger seat and
ordered her to the vacant seat.

“Buckle up good and tight,” he grumbled at
her when she crossed over to the passenger seat. Then, keeping the
gun aimed at her head with his right hand and holding her purse and
bags with his left, he climbed to the driver’s seat. It was a
difficult maneuver because of his size.

Karrie remained buckled to her seat,
trembling.

“Thanks for not trying to get away,” the man
said and settled behind the steering wheel. “Nothing I hate more
than shooting someone before I’ve had the chance to know them
better.”

As he adjusted the seat to his liking, Karrie
rattled out several questions in a raspy voice: “Why are you doing
this? What do you want? How do you know my name?” She began to
bawl.

He took her cell phone from her purse and
tossed it out the window. It clattered on pavement and landed in a
large puddle. He kissed the wet air before he rolled up the
window.

“I have money,” Karrie said. “Please … just
take my money and leave me alone.”

The man threw the purse and bag at her. They
landed in her lap.

“Get comfy,” he said and pulled the SUV back
onto the road. They hadn’t gone far when Karrie began to
hiccup.

“Please … pull over,” she said. “I’m … going
to throw up.”

“Forget about it. If you’re gonna hurl,
Karrie, you’ll have to hurl in your lap. I ain’t stopping.”

She pressed the button to roll down her
window.

“Roll that window back up or I’m gonna shoot
you where you sit. Now! And turn off that damn music! Stuff makes a
person insane.” The pistol cracked to life, thunderous and
disquieting as he fired a .40 caliber slug that tore through the
Sorento’s roof.

Karrie leaped to obey his orders. While she
did so, he attacked the automatic door lock on the door panel and
locked the two of them inside. Then he smiled big yellow dentures
that appeared sinister and green from the dashboard’s electronic
lights. “I bet those hiccups are gone now.”

Her question came on a whisper, “Where are
you taking me?”

“You just get comfy and enjoy the ride,
honey,” he said. He picked his fat nose and drove past Alice Lake,
heading deep into the woods south of Ridgewood. The rain stopped
and that made him grin again. After the rape, he planned to drive
all night and be in Virginia by morning, long before those
roly-poly Ridgewood donut eaters or the PA patrol boys started
their searches for Karrie’s missing body and vehicle. By then, she
would be long dead like the others, her body deep in some mountain
woods in northern Maryland.

That was the plan and it made him giddy. He
almost giggled until shimmering green light appeared ahead and a
human figure inside the light stood in the middle of the road.

The man pulled Karrie’s SUV to the left lane,
punched the gas pedal, and plowed into the light as the figure
stepped in front of him. Karrie screamed as green light exploded
around them.

The engine stalled. The man threw the
gearshift into neutral and tried to restart the engine, but it
squawked in protest. He coasted the SUV to the side of the road and
pressed the pistol against Karrie’s skull as the figure approached
the passenger door.

“I’ll blow her brains out,” he shouted when
Karrie’s locked door opened.

“You’ll do no such thing,” the figure
said.

The pistol jammed and Karrie struggled from
her seatbelt. She fell freely into Vree’s waiting arms. When she
recognized her daughter, she cried out. “Vree. What are you doing
here. That light—”

“There’s a house a quarter-mile up the road,”
Vree said. “Call the police.” She touched her mother’s forehead and
Karrie’s expression calmed. “You won’t remember seeing me.”

Karrie looked hypnotized as she left the SUV
and walked casually along the berm of the road, oblivious to the
rain drenching her.

Vree hurried to Karrie’s seat. She was
untouched by the rain, and a halo of green light shimmered around
her as she turned to face the trembling man. A more trembling hand
pointed the Smith & Wesson at her.

“Are you going on another joyride to
Virginia?” Vree asked. “Or are you going to Florida like last year?
Biscayne Bay wasn’t it?”

“How … how?” The man shielded his eyes from
Vree’s brightness with his left hand. Then, trying to sound tough,
he said, “Who are you? You’re just a girl. What d’you want from
me?”

“Where’d you get the gun?” Vree asked. “And
don’t lie to me.”

“It’s mine.”

“That’s a police officer’s weapon. It was
stolen five years ago from the Ridgewood Police Department.”

The man choked out a denial.

“It belongs to a missing police officer named
Rita Malloy,” Vree said. “Remember her?”

The man shook his head. He pressed his back
against the door. His left hand searched for the door handle behind
him.

Vree scowled at him. “Were you gonna shoot me
with Rita’s gun?”

The man shook his head again and managed to
utter a whispery
uh-uh
.

“You were gonna shoot Karrie. After you raped
her.”

“I-I … no.”

“Are you sure?”

The man stretched his right arm at Vree,
aimed the pistol at her glowing face, and squeezed the trigger.
Again, the pistol jammed.

He slumped in his seat.

Vree reached out and effortlessly took the
gun from him.

“Isn’t that why you kidnapped Karrie
tonight?” she asked. “Weren’t you planning to rape and kill her
like the other women?”

The man’s voice sounded weak as he denied
it.

“But you were. I know you were. Let me show
you how you were gonna do it.”

The windshield lit up like a TV screen and
showed fractured moonlight streaming past bare tree branches inside
a clearing surrounded by dark woods. There, Karrie’s Sorento was
parked in the clearing and facing them. The driver’s door opened
and the man stumbled out. He hurried to the passenger door and
pulled a semi-conscious Karrie out.

As they watched, Vree said, “You know those
pictures of sad clowns and homeless puppies and starving children?
That’s how Karrie looks there. It’s in her eyes, just like the
others. Just like Rita’s when she begged you for her life.”

“No,” the man next to her said. “Stop this. I
don’t wanna see no more.”

“Are you gonna vomit? If so, hurl in your
lap. I ain’t stopping.”

When the man in the windshield finished
raping Karrie, he collapsed on her and rested for a minute, then
rolled away from her body that now looked lifeless next to his. His
great stomach heaved as he caught his breath. Then he sat up,
wheezed, pushed himself to his knees, wheezed some more, and stood
and staggered toward the van while zipping his pants.

“Watch this,” Vree said as Karrie’s left arm
moved. The woman’s fingers wrapped around a dark object. Then she
rolled on her left side and fired the fallen Smith & Wesson
until the man dropped to his knees, wheezed deep and hard, and fell
backwards and stopped breathing. The windshield went dark.

“She would have killed you in those woods.
But I’m not gonna let that happen,” Vree said.

The man turned and cast a bewildered gaze at
her. “You’re not?”

“No.” Vree opened the door. “Someone wants to
see you.”

She stepped out and another glow entered and
took her seat. This glow was ghostly white, and the figure was a
young woman wearing a black sweatshirt with Ridgewood Police
lettered across the front. Sadness edged the woman’s pale blue eyes
framed by ragged and dirty hair that had once been short and
strawberry blonde.

“I’m Rita Malloy,” the ghost’s papery voice
hissed, although her pallid face remained calm while she addressed
the man. “You kidnapped me one night in my driveway five years ago
when I was leaving to go to work. I never made it to the station
because you raped me at knifepoint and then stabbed me in the
stomach when you were through. But I was slow to die, so you shot
me with my weapon and left my corpse for the wild dogs and coyotes.
My remains have never been found.”

The man looked at Rita’s pistol pointed at
him. He pulled at his door handle and pushed his left shoulder
against the door. It didn’t open. He closed his eyes.

“You took my money,” Rita said, “went to
Atlantic City and won nine hundred and seventy-five dollars with
it. Then you bought some hookers and killed them too.”

The man covered his ears. “No, no, no,” he
said.

“You’ll never hurt anyone again.” Rita shoved
her pistol’s barrel against his temple. The gun did not jam.

A HALF-HOUR later, Pennsylvania State Police officers
found the man’s body in the driver’s seat of Karrie Erickson’s SUV.
Rita Malloy’s government-issued pistol was in his right hand, his
index finger on the trigger. On the dashboard, they found a crudely
sketched map in glitter crayon on a McDonalds’ greasy paper napkin
spattered with blood and showing them the locations of Rita’s body
and the other women he had killed.

At the bottom of the map, they read these
words:
For my crimes, I don’t deserve to live
.

A police officer drove Karrie home while a
crime scene unit came to investigate the SUV. No one saw Vree
hiding and watching from the woods. Moments later, she vanished,
carried through space by the green light.

At the banks of Myers Creek, the green light
around Vree faded. She stumbled away from where the crystal lay and
stared at it for several minutes. She almost reasoned that she had
imagined saving her mother from the hands of a rapist and killer.
But that would be denying the truth … albeit, the weird truth.
Weird things had happened to her before, and she was certain they
would continue.

#

Oddities

Dead
Rabbits Don’t Run

I SMELL IT again. Past hemlock and below hill the
aroma is coming from man’s wooden lodge, drifting to me on smoke
from most powerful and burning my nose with the fragrance of the
blood of my sins. Although my eyes are closed, I know that if they
were open I would still see the tormenting image of man eating his
bloodless rabbit meal: chewing, always chewing; licking fingers
clean; sucking bare every tawny bone; he will leave no bloodless
meat behind. Before he sleeps tonight, he will bury bones into
ground behind his lodge near where I committed my first crime. If I
could move, I would run to there now and commit one last sin by
digging up bones and feasting on marrow for the remainder of my
short, pathetic life.

It was there that I lost my dignity by giving
in to temptation. After seeing man bury rabbit bones in ground
behind his lodge, I waited until just before the new day to dig
them up. I wisely returned all ground before feasting under
hemlock. I have returned often since then, alone, always alone, and
becoming less and less of a hunter.

When man left his lodge for two summers, his
woman replaced him. She did not bury rabbit bones. Instead, she
threw bones with bloodless meat into high grass where it was
quickly consumed by my large and stealthy body. Although the
bloodless meat was dry and chewy, it had a rich flavor that was
addictive. I became a scavenger and stopped hunting my meals.

If my sons should find me here, dead and
broken, will they uncover the follies of a foolish old laggard who
spent his final days chasing dead rabbits? Or will the hemlock hide
my body as I rot away, and will my death erase all evidence of my
foolish ways?

Did I cry just now or was it the hungry wail
of my empty stomach?

There is a tear in my eye. No. It is snow
melting and running like tears. Snow assaults my eyes like large
white gnats trying to blind me of the images from the past that
haunt my tortured mind and torment my conceited soul. Is this my
salvation? Regret is my pardon! Is there no limit to my
delusion?

Rabbits are near. The elder towers above me
and looks with his laughing eyes upon my broken body. He mocks my
anguish. He knows I am dying and he sneers at my torment with his
taunting round face. White and smiling, always smiling, the great
white rabbit runs across the sky, mocking my ruin. He has traveled
quickly to pull the blanket of night over me. He is right to laugh
at me, to taunt me of my predicament. I would chase him away if I
could move. His children made me strong and my strength made me a
leader. Now I am helpless, waiting to return to ground. I wonder if
my bones will make a good meal. Or maybe man will use them instead.
I’m sure my teeth would make a beautiful necklace.

Cold bites deep into my wounds. I have not
lived the length of time it has taken me to survive this day. Did I
cry just now, or was it the sound of my empty stomach?

I smell deer … and rabbit nearby. Man cooks
the meat of their families tonight. I smell it in the smoke coming
from the cabins. They will bury some of the bones in their yards,
just as they do every day. That is why I stopped being a hunter.
When the rabbits became too fast for me, man made it easy for me to
become lazy. I robbed from their graveyards and dined on the old,
cold bones of the dead.