The house of tongues, p.11
The House of Tongues, page 11
Feeling oddly like our roles had reversed, I reached out and pulled her into a hug. Her news hadn’t shocked me at all—it was, after all, exactly what Pee Wee Gaskins had said he would do. But it did scare me that he actually went through with it.
“I didn’t do that, Mom,” I said. “I was a chicken, and I acted like a baby, and I ran away, and I didn’t yell for help, but I never said anything about Alejandro. I swear I didn’t, Mom! I swear!”
My voice had risen in pitch with every word and by the end they were exploding from my chest along with a sudden burst of sobs. Mom squeezed me as tightly as if she were wrangling a calf.
“I know, son. I know. My sweet boy, I never thought it was true, I didn’t. And you can’t feel shame for running out of that cabin, for being terrified. You hear me? Not one person on this planet would expect you to have acted any differently. Okay? Don’t you ever think such a thing again. You did not act like a baby, you were not a chicken. That’s total nonsense. Absolute bullshit.”
When it came to swearing, my mom was lacking considerably, so her liberal straying of vocabulary showed me just how much everything had affected her. It meant a lot to me that she cared so much, that she loved me so much. I had no doubt, not even the slightest bit, that if Pee Wee Gaskins had stepped into our yard right then, my mom would’ve found the strength to murder him, strangle him with her own two hands.
Mom gently gripped me on both sides of my face. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? You have no blame in this. None, zip, zero. It’s beyond absurd to even consider it. Okay? Gaskins is a monster, pure and simple, and he’s trying to get in your head. If he does, then he wins. Let’s not let him. Let’s not give that SOB one ounce of satisfaction.”
I’d calmed down as she spoke, somehow feeling better. Maybe my brain was too young to truly grasp what it meant to have a serial killer interested in you.
“You also don’t need to fret over that newspaper article. Your dad made it clear as noonday that Wendy didn’t have our permission to write one word about you. Not a single one. And if she mentions that note on Alejandro’s body we’ll lawyer up and sue every last penny from The Item’s coffers. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Come here,” she said. “I want you to see something.”
She escorted me back outside and we walked to the front yard, stopping in the shade of a gigantic pecan tree. She gestured with her chin to a spot across the road from our house, where a police car was parked on the shoulder, its far side probably hanging precariously on the edge of Mr. Johnny’s irrigation ditch.
“You know who’s in there?” Mom asked.
I shook my head.
“Mark Fuller. He’s a young deputy for Sheriff Taylor, and he’s here for one reason and one reason only. To make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Really?” I looked up at my mom with wide-eyed wonder. An actual blood-and-flesh cop, assigned to protect me? The idea sounded miraculous and magical.
“Yep. He’s the one that told your dad you’d been eavesdropping on him and poor Wendy Toliver, and he’s the one who told me you’d gone out into the fields all by yourself. You were in his sight the entire time. He’s not gonna let Pee Wee Gaskins get within a country mile of you or anyone in this family, okay? You’re safe. We’re safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”
That last sentence was a bit much, but I understood the sentiment.
“Thanks, Mom.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I could only hope that she felt my gratitude. I suspect she did, because it was so strong that my eyes were wet.
“Enough of that iced-water business,” she said. “Let’s go get us a Mountain Dew.”
We did just that, adding a couple of moon-pies for good measure.
5
The next morning, as the first traces of dawn made the shade pulled over my window glow like a yellow moon, I awoke to a consistent tapping. Like most noises, it first came to my awareness in a dream—I stood in a great banquet hall, inside a castle, worthy of King Arthur himself, and some low-level landowner was striking an iron knife against his wine glass to garner the attention of his liege—when I finally snapped awake, frightened in the ethereal light of early morning. Someone was knocking their knuckle against my window.
I scrambled out of bed and stumbled to the only source of light, slightly disoriented as I lifted the shade to peek out. There I saw Andrea, standing in my yard, peering back at me as if this were the most natural way in the world to greet a person.
“What’s going on?” I asked, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me—probably couldn’t even see me very well.
But she responded anyway, holding a newspaper against the glass.
Oh no, I thought. This had to have something to do with Wendy Toliver and her story on Pee Wee Gaskins. I unlatched the window and with both arms heaved it up on squeaky tracks. You may think this is something we’d done often, clandestine meetings without my parents’ knowledge, but this was a first. I kinda liked it. And despite everything, I remember having the immediate worry that I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet and all future romantic possibilities with Andrea would come to a screeching halt.
Slightly embarrassed at the effort it took for me to get that damned window open, I let out an involuntary grunt as it lurched the last few inches. Before I could say anything, Andrea climbed up and toppled through the opening. I stepped back as she arranged herself into a sitting position on the floor and once again thrust the newspaper toward me.
“Prepare yourself,” she said. “This is the worst article written in the history of articles. It’s not good.”
My heart had leapt to full-speed-ahead, and it had nothing to do with my morning exercise of lifting an 80-year old piece of warped glass and wood. The look on Andrea’s face terrified me. She was trying to keep it cool, but I could see in her eyes that whatever had been printed on those thin, smudge-ready papers was bad, indeed.
“What does it say?” I asked in a thin voice.
“I think you just need to read it.” She still held the paper in the air, gave it a little shake. “Just read it and get it over with. Then we can hug and make you feel better.”
I reluctantly took the bearer of ill news from her hands, held it stretched out in front of me. I’d subconsciously avoided looking at the front page, but now I saw that Ms. Toliver’s article on Pee Wee Gaskins was the lead story. My rapidly beating heart seemed to sink in my chest, its thumps now rattling my stomach.
With a sigh as heavy as my body, I sunk to the floor and sat facing Andrea. We exchanged a look that can only pass between best friends, one that said we’d get through this together, all the adults in the world be damned.
“Do you want me to read it to you?” she asked, as sincere a thing as she’d ever said to me.
“Nah, I got this.”
The first part of the article summed up a bunch of things I already knew, all too well. Several people, brutally murdered, their bodies discovered submerged in various locations throughout the grand, delta-like reaches of Pudding Swamp. Several others were missing, presumed dead based on the bloody crime scenes left behind. Overwhelming evidence led police to believe that Pee Wee Gaskins, a quiet, reserved, enigmatic worker at Whittacker Mortuary was the man responsible (and yes, the cliché nature of his workplace has never been lost on me, but I can only tell the story in all its ironic truthfulness). Ms. Toliver provided lots of sensational, gruesome details, using words like “severed” and “gator-fed remnants” and “rotted.” I swear to you she even threw in the word “chunky” in a way that made my skin crawl.
But then came the part that I knew was about to change my life significantly. I grew angrier with every single word that passed my vision:
One local resident has found himself inexorably and tragically connected to the crimes in question, having faced the accused killer on at least two separate occasions. Because he is a minor and parental permission had yet to be granted at press time, The Item has chosen not to include his name. For the purposes of this article, the minor will be referred to as John.
John was one of two minors first to witness Pee Wee Gaskins in the act of an alleged murder, a scene that took place in the wooded area located near the abandoned Shiloh Line of the South Carolina Railroad. Police found gristly evidence of the body of George Holloway, whose further remains were the first to be found in Pudding Swamp, as previously stated.
John allegedly had an additional encounter with Gaskins at the popular Thomas Edgar Fox Pen gathering on Friday evening past. Having retired to bed in the onsite cabin before most of the others, John later told authorities that Gaskins appeared in his room, making threats, whereupon John fled the scene and hid in the forest. His bunkmate at the time had been Alejandro Mondesi, age 15. He was soon reported missing, with grim evidence at the scene suggesting he’d met a similar demise as earlier victims of Gaskins.
In the late afternoon of the next day, that assumption was proven correct when trawlers in the swamp discovered the body of Mondesi, his head having been brutally severed from his torso. The Item can now reveal that a handwritten note was also found with the deceased, attached to his clothes with a safety pin, the paper contained within a plastic bag to protect it from the elements. Though police refused to divulge the exact contents of the message, citing the ongoing investigation, unnamed sources have revealed, exclusively to this paper, certain details of what it presented.
The message was signed by Pee Wee Gaskins, and several people who know him have allegedly confirmed that the handwriting on the note matches his perfectly. Gaskins claims in the message that when he approached John in the cabin at the Fox Pen, John broke down in hysterics and pleaded for his life. Gaskins then told the boy that he had come to kill and he wasn’t going anywhere until his bloodlust was satisfied, whereupon John allegedly begged Gaskins to murder Alejandro Mondesi instead. Gaskins ended the note saying that such cowardice should be considered more shameful than what he himself is doing, and suggested that the Mondesi family should seek their own vengeance upon John for what he had forced Gaskins to do.
The Item will continue to seek information from the authorities as well as from the parents of the minor involved. A representative speaking on behalf of the Mondesi family said that a full statement would be coming soon.
I tossed the paper to the side, heard its pages flair and flutter as it settled to the ground. Then I gave a long, hard look at Andrea, showing with my eyes what I couldn’t find the words to say. It hurt. The article hurt. Caused physical pain in my chest. All the fear and worries and trauma seemed swept aside, replaced by a deep ache that pulsed.
“How could she write that crap?” Andrea asked. “Like calling you John is going to make one lick of difference. Every person in this town with one ounce of brain inside their heads is going to know it’s you. What bullshit!”
She yelled that last word so loud that I immediately heard steps outside my bedroom. There was a knock and then the door opened. My mom poked her head in.
“Oh,” she said, seeing Andrea sitting with me on the floor at 6:30 in the morning. Then her eyes flicked up to the open window. “I didn’t know you had company, sweetie. Did Andrea come for breakfast?”
There were so many unspoken questions in her greeting that I had to admire my mom’s skills. And I figured at this point honesty was the only policy.
“She came to show me that.” I pointed at the discarded newspaper.
My mom’s demeanor shrank, and I knew immediately that she had already seen the article. This made me feel at least twice as much pain, thinking what this would do to her. But it was, in a way, a relief that I didn’t have to tell her everything.
She came over to me and knelt on the floor, our eyes now level. Hers showed an aching as deep as mine. Probably deeper.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Sometimes a parent doesn’t know how to protect her own children.” At this she burst into tears and so did I, the world of my troubles eclipsing all else, its shadow dark and vast. On some peripheral level I might’ve understood that crying in front of Andrea should’ve been embarrassing, but she did what I still consider one of the coolest things I’ve ever had a friend do. She crawled over and joined my mom and me in a big group hug full of snivels and tears.
“I didn’t do that,” I said when I gained enough composure. My chin was pressed up against Andrea’s shoulder. “I never said one thing to him about killing Alejandro.”
Both of them pulled away from me and looked as if I’d just told them I had lost an eyeball.
“Of course you didn’t,” my mom said. “Oh, son, I told you yesterday we never thought for the slightest second that you did such a thing.”
“Yeah,” Andrea added. “Give me a break. No one’s going to fall for that stupid note.”
I nodded, wiping tears from my cheek, wondering if I should tell them about how I ran, about how I never called for help. But I couldn’t do it. “What happens now? What do we do? Has Dad read this yet?”
My mom visibly slouched. “No, he hasn’t. He went out to fix a leak in the west irrigation pump. Don’t you worry, I’ll be with him when he reads it and help soothe his… wrath. It won’t help things if he goes and murders this Wendy Toliver hussy.”
My mouth opened slightly; I couldn’t believe my mom had just called another woman a hussy.
“As for what we’re going to do,” she continued, “we’re going to keep you safe and wait for them to capture Pee Wee Gaskins, which they will do. Soon. I know it.”
“Maybe I should go to school,” I said. “I can’t stand the thought of sitting around here all day thinking about that article and imagining what peopleare saying about it. I’d rather face it head on.”
“I’ll stick by his side,” Andrea said quickly.
My mom put on her “let me think about that” face.
“No. At least not for a couple of days. But Andrea can stay for breakfast.”
I made to protest but didn’t make it very far.
“No, this is not up for negotiation.”
I sighed. “Okay, maybe in a couple of days. Like you said.”
Mom asked Andrea to help her in the kitchen, leaving me to get dressed. I still hadn’t even brushed my teeth, and couldn’t help but wonder what unpleasant odors had floated around our group hug as I spoke. That inexplicably brought a smile to my face as I turned on the shower and waited for the water to get hot. I was sad about not going to school, but more than that, I hated that I’d be home when my dad came home and saw the paper.
He was gonna piss fire when he read it.
Chapter Nine
July 2017
1
After Wesley’s dramatic rescue from Dicky Gaskin’s shambled wreck of a home, my boy didn’t say much when grilled by the authorities—one of whom was an FBI agent of all things, since this had been a kidnapping in every sense of the word. Either not much had happened or Wesley was too traumatized to talk about it. I hoped and prayed to every god I’d ever heard of that it was the former, not the latter. Even in a quiet moment back at home, just me and Wesley together, out in the shed on the pretense of his helping fix a leak in the roof, he’d stuck with his story. I’d held him by both shoulders and looked into his eyes with all the love and concentration I could muster, and asked him, directly, to tell me if Gaskins had hurt him in any way. I swore to not tell a soul unless he wanted me to.
“No, Dad. He didn’t physically harm me.”
“Okay. Okay. Good.”
“Dad, what’s in that safe?”
Under the workbench, an old metal safe sat like a forgotten tombstone. It had been there for many years, and all my own dad would ever say about it is that we’d be given the combination for its lock when he died. Not before. We were under no circumstances to ever open it before he died. I used to wonder all the time, but the mystery had worn off.
“I don’t know, actually. Some secret of your grandpa’s. Let’s hope it’s big stacks of hundred dollar bills.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.”
I realized I’d just fallen for the old what’s over there trick to stop talking about his ordeal. And that was okay. We threw an old football for a while then came back to the house.
He said nothing had happened. What could I do but believe him? They’d given him a full inspection at the hospital before he’d been released to come home, and everything had checked out. I remember the nurse had used that word, inspection, like we’d taken him in for an oil change. What the hell was wrong with “check-up” or “physical?”
All had settled for the moment. My family was safe. Together. Inside the house as I went for a walk to clear my head and think through these many things. The air was warm but had an electric tension to it, the golden light of twilight tinted by distant cloud-cover encroaching from the southeast. Remnants of a hurricane, of all things. It had been two days since Wesley’s rescue, and he seemed his old self, alternating between the usual phases—grumpy, happy, silly, contemplative, annoying, hilarious, grumpy again—sometimes he went through the whole gamut before one inning of the Braves game passed on the TV. But there was nothing unusual about this. That was our Wesley, 95% perfect, and a trip to the bathroom and back usually helped you avoid the other five.
At the moment, they were all watching that idiotic talent show that came on at least 17 times a week and seemed to have a hard-on for ventriloquists. If it weren’t for the Gaskins family, there would’ve been only two things in my life that I thought of as creepy: ventriloquists and clowns. I could do just fine without either of those monstrosities popping up on my TV screen. Thank you, no.
I walked along the edge of the woods on the backside of the property, the place wherein I’d awakened so surprisingly the night Wesley vanished. It seemed like a million years ago, as if there’d never been a time in my life where my son hadn’t been abducted by a maniac. It was even harder to believe I’d lived so many years before those damn kids even existed. Seriously. My mind couldn’t grasp it. How had I ever blinked awake in the morning and not longed for some kid to bounce on my bed before I could even get up to take a piss? How had I not missed them every minute of every day, even though they hadn’t been born yet? Surely I wasn’t the only nutcase dad in the world who thought such ridiculous things.
