Animosity (9 page)

Her parents were supposed to be out of town for the next few days. She promised me in the days leading up to that fateful night that she would do things to me I had never before experienced. Something about a house full of candles, whipped cream and bubble baths and satin sheets and maybe even two sugar-cubes of liquid LSD if everything worked out as planned…

When all was said and done, she did get one thing right.

It turned out to be a night I would
never
forget.

***

For hours we explored each other’s bodies on her massive, canopied bed, like the last two lovers on a dying Earth with only that final evening left to spend together. I remember her CD changer was stocked with nothing but my favorite blues albums programmed for random play, as Bridget took me to heights of pleasure to which no other woman had ever taken me, before or since.

She had just climbed on top of me, and we were minutes away from climaxing together for the third time that night, when her father busted in on us.

No doubt, my mortified expression—my jaw dropping, my eyes growing wide as dinner plates as I gawked up from beneath my lover at the enormous figure suddenly filling the doorway—must have been one of the most comical sights in all recorded history.
If
it had happened to some other unfortunate bastard. Not me.

“What the
fuck
is going on here?” Bridget’s father bellowed, and his deep voice seemed to shake not only our candle-lit sanctum but the Prescotts’ entire two-story house as well.

“Oh,” was all I could say at first. “Oh… uhhh…”

Bridget wept as she rolled off of me, covered herself. “Daddy. I’m so embarrassed.”

“You’re a dead man,” Mr. Prescott promised me, as he stormed into the room.

And I believed him.

***

Before the night was over, Eldon Prescott put me in the hospital. But he didn’t do it alone. He used a baseball bat, and enlisted two of Bridget’s older brothers to help him with the job.

When they were finished, they were courteous enough to call an ambulance for me. The two younger Prescott gentlemen hauled my broken body out onto the cold, dewy lawn for early-morning curbside service.

All told, I suffered a concussion, a broken nose, a fractured wrist, and two broken ribs. Not to mention innumerable bruises and lacerations.

Further adding insult to injury—in the truest sense of that cliché—I limped through the doors of Jackson County Memorial four days later to be confronted by a stern-faced police officer who glared at me as if I were the most disgusting piece of shit he had ever seen. When my father hurried off to the parking lot under the guise of pulling his station wagon around to the front of the hospital (later I realized Dad knew what was about to happen, and wished to spare me the humiliation of it happening in front of him), the cop ushered me into the back of his own vehicle instead, informing me that I was under arrest for statutory rape.

After everything that had happened, he was the first person to tell me
why.
He enlightened me to the fact that the girl of my dreams, Bridget Prescott, had only recently turned sixteen. I was four years her senior, and thus I had committed a felony sex crime in the state of Tennessee.

In the eyes of the law, I was no better than a child molester. A pedophile. No gray area existed where the legal system was concerned.

I saw Bridget one last time after that. Two weeks after my arrest, she stopped by my house. My mother reluctantly allowed her to enter our home only because she pleaded with Mom to let her apologize. She stayed for about ten minutes. The whole time she cried and cried, and she kept looking over her shoulder as if in fear that her father might show up any second to give me another taste of redneck justice. She explained through her tears that she had only lied to me about her age because I seemed like such an “honest, sincere” man, so much more mature than all the “silly little boys” who normally hit on her every day; I didn’t bother reminding her that this was probably because I
was
a man, and they
were
only boys. She did it because she believed in love at first sight, she said, and she was so sure she felt it when I had spoken to her over her battered copy of
’Salem’s Lot
on the college campus that day. As for the reason she had been there to begin with, she explained that she had been waiting for her cousin to get out of class. She was a student at the high school just down the block, and her cousin had been her ride home after she missed the bus.

“I’m so sorry, Andy,” she sobbed. “This is all my fault. All I ask is… please don’t hate me.”

I didn’t let her know whether I hated her or not. God knows I wanted to. I wanted to loathe the ground she walked on.

But that’s what made it all the more difficult. I
didn’t
hate her. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, as she turned to leave at last.

“So am I,” I replied. It was the first time I had spoken since she stepped into my room. “I’m sorry I trusted you. I’m sorry your father and your two macho asshole brothers beat the living shit out of me.”

“Andy—”

“And I’m sorry I have to appear in court over something I never knew I was doing wrong. I’m sorry that, because you lied to me, Bridget, I have to stand in front of a judge and know everyone in that room is looking at me like I’m some kind of pervert. I’m sorry this is gonna be on my permanent record. You’re sorry? Yeah, well… I’m sorry too.”

***

The court date was two months later.

I pled guilty.

When it was all over, I was fined one thousand dollars, sentenced to a year’s probation, and I was ordered to stay away from Bridget Prescott.

It could have been much worse, the judge told me. But since I cooperated every step of the way, admitting what I had done, and considering my record had been spotless up till that point, he was as lenient upon me as the law allowed. Plus, I think the D.A. actually felt a tad
sorry
for me, after word got around that I had already received my comeuppance from the men in Bridget’s family.

***

I had served my probation, paid my fine. My wounds healed, eventually, along with my ego.

I never saw Bridget Prescott again.

A year or so after our ill-fated evening together, someone told me she ran off to Florida with a guy in his early thirties, but I never knew if that was true or not.

***

Now, almost twenty years later, I had all but forgotten about the mistake I had made when I was a young man. I could not recall the last time I had thought about Bridget Prescott.

But the media forced me to remember. They suddenly began to dredge it all up again, after I discovered Rebecca Lanning’s body.

They almost seemed to enjoy it… to
thrive
upon it…

I could not run from my past even if I tried, I soon discovered.

The good people of Poinsettia Lane would not let me.

From Saturday’s edition of the
Harris City Tribune,
Page 1:

POLICE SEARCH FOR KILLER “AROUND THE CLOCK”

Harris City Police continue to search for the murderer of nine-year-old Rebecca Faye Lanning, whose body was found on Poinsettia Lane two days ago.

According to police spokesperson Jo Lynn Hodges, State Medical Examiner Liam Futch is expected to conduct a post-mortem examination this weekend. Meanwhile, further circumstances surrounding the child’s death cannot be made public at this time, said Hodges.

Rebecca Lanning’s nude body was discovered by local writer Andrew Holland Thursday morning.

Holland, a resident of Harrison County, is the popular horror novelist who penned such provocative titles as Blood Dance, Brain Fever, Cannibal High, and Mortuary Smile. His most recent novel, Slow Burn—a gory tale about a serial killer priest who burns pregnant women alive because he believes they are possessed by demons—debuted last year at #7 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Police records in his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee show that Andrew Holland was arrested for statutory rape in —, at the age of twenty. After pleading guilty to the charges against him, he was sentenced to one year’s probation.

The writer could not be reached for comment.

Sunday evening, after I had knocked out three or four thousand (
very
unpolished) words on
A Feast of Souls,
I went to lock up for the night. Normally I didn’t hit the sack until several hours later, but I figured a good night’s sleep would help recharge my batteries after everything that had happened, and with a little luck a marathon writing session might ensue in the days to come.

I hoped so, anyway. Time was running out.

As I moved through the foyer, approaching my screen door, I smelled the distant aroma of someone grilling hot dogs down the street. My mouth watered.
Maybe I should do that for Sam when she comes over next Wednesday,
I thought,
fix burgers and dogs in the backyard.
Yeah. It would be fun. She always did love a good cookout. Norman would undoubtedly enjoy it, too…

I had almost closed the front door, with my hand on the deadbolt, when something outside caught my eye.

Frowning, I eased open the door again, and peered out into the gathering dusk.

To my right, cattycorner across the street from me at 214 Poinsettia Lane, sat Floyd and Francine Beecham’s three-story Cape Cod. The house was dark, but beyond their teal Lincoln Town Car and the enormous Winnebago in their driveway I spotted the Beechams sitting on their front porch, chatting with another couple in the blue-gray twilight.

Muffled laughter. The faint
hiss-pop
of someone opening a can of soda or beer. A cough.

The way voices carry long distances in that calm period just before nightfall, it only took me a few seconds to recognize the other couple on the Beechams’ porch as the Pastoreks, from three houses down.

A metallic click. Ned Pastorek smoked a pipe now and then, and in the growing darkness I watched him light it. The thick black shadows on the porch briefly recoiled from the flickering orange glow of his Zippo. A minute or two later the sweet smell of tobacco wafted its way across the street to fill my nostrils.

A chill shot up my spine.

In that momentary flash of firelight, I could tell…

They were all looking my way.

They were talking about
me.

I cursed myself for being paranoid. Or, at best, for being
silly.
Surely the two couples were just watching the last rays of the day’s setting sun disappearing on the horizon, through the gap between my property and the Sommersvilles’ next door. A temporary lull in their chitchat had occurred at the precise moment they gazed in my general direction. But it was nothing more sinister than that. Why would it be? This wasn’t a scene from one of my novels. These were people I saw every day. They weren’t body snatchers, aliens from outer space who had recently begun to show their true colors. No scheming quartet of serial killers lurked on the other side of the street. Ridiculous. My horror writer’s imagination had gotten the best of me. I might not have been particularly close to the Beechams or the Pastoreks, but to date I had not met anyone on Poinsettia Lane whom I could claim to truly dislike. And I certainly had no reason to
fear
them.

The longer I stood there, however… the more I heard… I wondered if all of that was about to change.

It had not been my imagination.

My neighbors were talking about
me.

Floyd Beecham scowled and shook his head as he glared my way, his bony tax-collector hands balled into tight white fists. I heard him say something about “raped a little girl” and “Ben Souther told me, and he’s got no reason to lie.”

From behind a cloud of thick blue smoke Ned Pastorek nodded emphatically, said, “One hell of a
coincidence
, if you get my drift.”

“When you rot your brain with that kinda crap, what do you expect?” said Francine Beecham. She was leaned back in her chair, the silver cane from her recent hip surgery lain crosswise on her considerable lap.

My ears burned like they used to when I was a kid and I’d been caught doing something naughty. I swallowed nervously and thinned the gap in my doorway, straining to hear more of the conversation across the street.

The wind chimes on my front porch tingled and pinged in the evening breeze, as if threatening to betray me.

“I mean, I’m all for freedom of speech,” said Ned Pastorek. “But there’s gotta be a limit, ya know?”