Animosity (19 page)

With that, I threw myself into my work anew, started digging like a madman. My shovel chuffed into the earth again and again and again. Harder, louder, faster. I wanted this over. Done with. Now
.

As strenuously as I worked, however, I felt as if I moved in slow motion beneath my neighbor’s unending scrutiny.

“ ‘
What is a man
,’ ” Ben said softly, a few minutes later, “ ‘
but a miserable little pile of secrets
.’ ”

Once again I stopped digging, turned to my neighbor with eyes full of hate.

“
What?
”

“Andre Malraux,” he enlightened me.

This time I dropped my shovel. It made a soft pooting sound on the mound of dirt beside Norman’s grave. When I took several steps toward Ben, his face grew pale. He wobbled atop his stepladder, as if preparing to make a run for home.

“Ben,” I said. “How long have you known me now? Five, six years?”

“That sounds about right.”

“I'm not a killer.”

“Never said you were.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what else to say. I just stood there staring at him.

“Man can hide a lot of secrets in five or six years, though,” Ben said. “You can’t blame folks for being suspicious. These are suspicious times, Andy. If you could step outside yourself, you’d see how it looks. What you did when you were young, and those books you write…”

He trailed off, as if he didn’t quite know how to finish his point. And then, the look Ben gave me during the next moment filled me with a sense of déjà vu the likes of which I had never felt before. It was so strong it gave me goosebumps…

When I was a child, I idolized my maternal grandfather. He was my role model, my hero. He was also
extremely
religious. Shortly after the publication of my first novel, I gave my grandfather a copy of that book. It had been such an honor to hand it to him, as he had always assured me that I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be as long as I worked hard at it. My greatest dream back then was to make my grandfather proud. At first, it appeared I had succeeded. He beamed from ear to ear as he asked me to sign it for him, said he couldn’t wait to read it. He told all his friends about it, and the fellow members of his Seventh Day Adventist church. But one week later, he handed the book back to me. He claimed he had tried to read it, but after discovering that my novel was filled with “such flagrant ungodliness” he could never accept my gift in good conscience. I’ll never forget the look on my grandfather’s face as he told me this. It was an expression of sheer disappointment, as if he had lost so much respect for me. Respect I could never earn back.

It was that same look of not-so-subtle condescension and disappointment that darkened Ben Souther’s face now as he peered over my privacy fence, watching me bury my best friend. An expression of
loss,
almost. Hurt. As if
he
were the one who had suffered so much these past few days. As if I had brought all of this upon myself, and in the process Ben had lost a damned good friend who turned out to be anything but good and very damned indeed.

I stared at the pink evening sky.

I felt tired. So tired.

I reached for my shovel again.

“I’m a writer, Ben,” I said. “That’s all. I am just a writer.”

I realized I had started crying. Tears of both grief and anger burned in my eyes. They trickled down my face and dripped into the mud at my feet.

Ben said, “But you write about death. The occult. In your stories people are always hurting other people. Usually the innocent.”

“Have you ever read any of my books?” I asked him. “Or are you just talking out of your ass?”

“
Touché
.”

“Besides, that’s what they do, isn’t it? Every day. People hurt other people.”

“Mm,” Ben said. “Unfortunately, you are right…”

He paused, as if for effect.

“But then: ‘
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere
.’ ”

I glared at him.

For once, he did not identify the source of his quotation.

Fueled by wrath, I threw myself into my work more vigorously than ever. My shovel stabbed into the earth like a knife gouging into the flesh of my enemies. I stood upon its blade, forcing it deeper, deeper. Digging faster and faster. My breaths burst out of me in harsh, labored grunts, and I began slinging the dirt from Norman’s grave haphazardly over my shoulder. I was no longer aiming for the mound a few feet away.

“I guess you’ve never heard about what happened to the Beechams,” Ben said. “Hard to believe, but you must be one of the only folks around here who
doesn’t
know…”

I did not respond. I just kept digging. As if my life depended on it.

“If nothing else, maybe it’ll help put things into perspective for you. Maybe then you’ll understand that there’s more to this tragedy than you think. Folks aren’t just picking on you, Andy. They’re not just looking for a scapegoat. They’re searching for justice.”

Still, I continued digging.

“Thirty years ago, Floyd and his wife had a daughter. Their only child. Her name was Carolyn. This was when they lived up in Philly, long before I ever knew them. Carolyn was six, I believe, the last time they saw her. She was abducted at the mall while the Beechams were Christmas shopping.”

I paused. Tried not to let Ben know that he had struck a nerve. Wondered if, in his own way, he
was
trying to tell me who had poisoned my dog.

I quickly went back to digging.

“They never found her, Andy. It was as if their little girl just vanished without a trace. All these years, the Beechams have never known what happened to their daughter. Floyd told me it damn near drove Frannie crazy.”

Finally, I stopped. I stared at him.

He stared back.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. And I meant it.

Ben said, “None of us can imagine what those poor people went through. You can’t unless you’ve been there. Unless you’ve walked in their shoes.”

“I’m sure Rebecca Lanning’s murder brought back a lot of terrible memories for the Beechams,” I said. “And you’re right. That does explain a lot. But let me tell
you
something, Ben…”

“Yeah?”

“I just want you to know, and you should spread the word to your buddies… if I catch any of them on my property again, I don’t care who it is… I swear to God I’ll kill them.”

Ben gasped. “What a horrible thing to say.”

“I mean it.”

“Bad times in our neighborhood, son. I don’t know if I’d go around saying stuff like that. Might not help your situation much, you get my drift.”

Behind him, the crackle and buzz of an electric bug zapper on Ben’s rear patio punctuated his warning as its lethal blue glow claimed a victim.

I shook my head, gnashed my teeth so hard I heard them squeaking in my skull, and returned to my digging once again. Because I knew if I gazed upon Ben Souther for another second I would no longer be able to restrain myself from leaping over the fence and strangling him with my bare hands.

About the time I finished, when I tossed my shovel aside and reached for the tarp to commence with the most difficult part of my task, the older man cleared his throat.

“I have always liked you, Andy,” he said softly. “So I just want to warn you…”

I bent over Norman’s corpse, did not look at Ben as I growled, “Warn me about what?”

“Maybe you should just leave. That might be best. Before things get even worse.”

A chill shot up my spine. My best friend’s vinyl burial shroud slid from my grasp with a rubbery squeak.

“Are you
threatening
me? How dare you—”

“No. No. Not at all. I’m just giving you a friendly bit of advice, man to man…”

In the twilight, my neighbor’s dark glasses resembled two wide black holes in his face. Like twin gunshot wounds to his skull.

“Cut your losses, Andy. Pack up your things and go.”

At last, he turned and descended his stepladder. However, his parting words seemed to linger on the evening air like a foul stench long after Ben disappeared from sight.

“Get out while you still can. Before you end up dead, just like your mutt.”

That night, I dreamed I was digging another grave.

But this time I buried my daughter.

The site of her interment was the Clinton property, down the street. All around me, wide yellow CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS streamers snapped and popped in a chilly breeze while I worked. The night was starless, moonless. Blacker than the Devil’s soul.

I didn’t wake up screaming until shortly after the pink Bugs Bunny beach towel covering my little girl’s corpse slid away, and she sat up with a sound like autumn leaves crackling underfoot.

She was naked.

She turned to me, opened her eyes.

She had no pupils. Just two blank, unholy orbs that burned a bright, bright green. The same color as the poison that killed my golden retriever.

“Why did you let Norman die?” said the nightmare Samantha-thing, beckoning to me with mottled gray arms too long and skinny to be her own. “Daddy, what did you dooooo?”

In the distance, a dog barked. It was an angry, accusing sound… yet eerily distorted, like a scratchy old record playing in reverse.

Three days later—mere seconds after I had finished gobbling down a tuna salad sandwich and a glass of flat Dr Pepper for dinner—my cell phone rang.

I considered letting it go straight to voice-mail, but I knew I would never forgive myself if I found out later that Sam had tried to call me.

I wasn’t thinking straight. My mind barely registered the words “UNKNOWN NUMBER” on the little screen. As I carried my dirty dishes to the kitchen sink, I punched a button and grumbled into the phone, “Hello.”

“Andrew Holland.” A man’s voice. Low, muffled. As if he were covering the receiver with something so I could not identify him.

It worked. I detected a slight Southern accent, but nothing more.

“Speaking,” I said. “Who is this?”

“You’re fucked, Holland. It won’t be long at all now…”

“Excuse me? Who—”

“Might wanna turn on the TV. Your book-writin’ ass is finished.”

My breath caught in my throat. “What? I don’t understa—”

“Go ahead and play dumb, horror man.”

“How the hell did you get this number?”

“Hope you enjoyed your sick little game while it lasted. ’Cause we’ve got a
real
scary story to tell
you.
”

“Look,” I shouted into the phone. “I don’t know who the hell you are, or what the hell is going on, but I’ve had all I’m gonna take of this shit! I want it to stop right
now!
”

His voice dropped to a lecherous whisper, so low it was nearly inaudible. “Halloween’s comin’ early this year, Short Eyes. Wait and see.”

He hung up before I could say anything else.

With a wild-animal roar, I threw the cell across the room, where it shattered against the refrigerator in an explosion of shiny black plastic.

***

Against my better judgment, I turned on the television as soon as I entered the living room. I had to know what the voice on the phone had been talking about…

I didn’t watch for long. I couldn’t. After just three or four minutes I turned the TV off again in disgust, and the remote control suffered the same fate as my cell phone.

On the television, a middle-aged man in a beige suit stood on a street corner in front of a white-brick building that I thought looked vaguely familiar. From off-camera, swirling red and blue police beacons flashed like psychedelic strobe lights across his surroundings; reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses, obscuring his eyes every half-second or so. In the background, a siren whooped. A stern-voiced woman yelled, “Get back! I mean it! I’m not gonna tell you again!”

The microphone in the reporter’s hand was labeled WKLS. Beneath him, a bold white caption at the bottom of the screen read: LIVE!

“Investigators have cordoned off the scene for the time being, so we can’t get any closer,” the man on the television was saying. “For those who are just tuning in, another child’s body was found this evening in a dumpster behind Sunrise Plaza, on Orosel Boulevard. Though police have not released the decedent’s name, one source who asked to remain anonymous stated that the child was a female between the age of five and seven years old. Foul play is suspected, but authorities declined to comment on the cause of the victim’s death or on any possible connection to the recent Rebecca Lanning murder.

“Residents of Harrison County will recognize Sunrise Plaza as the home of, among other businesses, the Haunted Planet Book Shoppe. The Haunted Planet, which you see behind me, sits less than two hundred feet from where this latest victim’s body was found. The Haunted Planet is a bookstore specializing in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. During the last five years, the store has hosted several successful book-signing events for local writer Andrew Holland, author of the best-selling horror novels
Wolf Moon, Slow Burn,
and
House on Harding Street.
In a bizarre coincidence, it was Holland who, just three weeks ago, discovered the body of nine-year-old Rebecca Lanning on a construction site not far from his home. No arrests have been made in that investigation, but Andrew Holland’s neighbors are demanding his silence be broken…