The house of tongues, p.28
The House of Tongues, page 28
And that was the maddening part for me. I knew we were in trouble, too, but had no clue as to what that meant. I wanted to scream in the agony of my ignorance.
My van.
The thought struck me so specifically, like someone had lit up fireworks in my brain to spell it out in sparkling, bursting flames. My van. Right outside that front door. I could grab Dad’s shotgun, keep my precious babies in a tight huddle, make a scrum of sorts, all of us on top of each other for protection, out the door, down the steps, to the van. If anyone jumped out at us, I’d blow them to bits with the shotgun. Get in the car, lock the doors, give Andrea the shotgun, rev the engine, and drive like shit out of a goose, flying hot and heavy until we were away, far away, to safety. This is what we had to do.
Time to act.
“Kids, everybody, get up.” I lifted my arms away from Andrea and my mom, feeling badly that we’d just settled down. “Come on. Get up. I’m gonna get dressed really fast.”
It sounded absurd, but I planned to throw some jeans on, slip into shoes. Quickly. I couldn’t imagine driving off in my jammie shorts. No one complained as they shifted and moved into position to push themselves up from the floor, the strange night entrancing them to silence, to turn off their minds and do what they’re told.
“Just stay right here,” I said. “Huddle up.”
Everyone had stood by now, and they joined each other in a group hug. Andrea eyed me, her expression full of questions, but I could tell she worried that any discussion would only frighten the kids. She trusted me, and it meant the world.
My bag was at the end of the couch, mostly in shadow. I’d tossed my jeans on top of it earlier and now grabbed them, hopping on each leg in turn as I pulled them up. I zipped and buttoned, then felt the reassuring bulge of the keys in my front pocket.
“You guys okay?” I whispered, rummaging for socks. In my entire life, I’d never heard the house so completely silent. “We’re gonna jump in the van and drive out of here, okay?”
I found socks. Put them on. Put my shoes on. Tied them. All the while, my mom tried to convince me that we couldn’t leave without Dad and Wesley. Andrea did her best to shush her without the kids seeing. I eyed her as well, trying to telepathically tell her to shut the hell up. She finally got the message and closed her mouth. I felt so awful for her but I just didn’t know what else to do.
I picked up my phone, shone the light toward the carpet. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
We wasted another couple of minutes, walking around in a group, allowing each of them to at least put on pants and shoes—I knew they’d feel more comfortable like that, and I was desperate for anything that might help alleviate the fish-out-of-water awkwardness of the night.
No more than five minutes after we’d stood up from our cuddle-station by the couch, we all stood together by the front door. I had my dad’s shotgun gripped in both hands, trying to ignore the looks of terror each one of my kids kept throwing at it. Tears poured from my mom’s eyes, but she did her best to keep in the accompanying sobs. Andrea had a hand on my elbow, her fingers squeezing to show her support. My gaze swept across my children. Hazel. Mason. Logan, wrapped in his grandma’s arms.
Bravery beamed from their scared faces, and the trust they put into me—complete, total, unquestioning—was enough to shatter my heart.
“I promise we’re going to be okay,” I said. “I love you guys.”
“Love you, Daddy,” Hazel said back. Logan leaned his head on my mom’s shoulder; Mason did his best to smile.
“Okay, then.” I held the shotgun with one arm, a finger resting on the trigger, the barrel pointed toward the floor, and opened the front door with my other, just enough to peek outside.
A man stood on our porch.
He had a bag draped over his head.
Chapter Eighteen
June 1989
Pee Wee Gaskins knelt right before me, his bag ripped off, looking at me with his devil-kissed eyes.
“Time to go for a ride, David.” Abandoning his gravel-voice, he said it in a quiet, eerie tone that was far scarier.
After he’d shown me the head of the police officer through the busted door of the motel bathroom, then his own head appeared in the hole to announce that he was going to do something worse to me, I had no concept of options. None. I sat there, on the floor, arms wrapped around my knees, and I trembled. The terror had consumed me to a degree that I almost didn’t feel it, numb, the same way that scalding water in a hot tub feels lukewarm after 10 minutes, barely noticeable. I shook, and awaited my fate.
Pee Wee had reached through the hole and unlocked the door, then opened it. He stepped inside, stared down at me through the thin veil of his plastic bag, breathing in and out. After an excruciating wait, where eventually I stopped looking up at him and focused on the floor, he’d grabbed the side of the bag on his head and ripped it off. My eyes shot back to him.
And then he’d knelt down and told me we were going for a ride.
“Where to?” I somehow managed to ask.
He didn’t answer for a second. His hair was greasy and matted from the bag, thin on top. He had pockmarks on his cheeks, made worse by sporadic stubble that looked more like fungus. Noxious breath leaked from his crooked nose and his crooked mouth, which was slightly open, revealing yellowed teeth with bits of white in every gap. The man was as short as I remembered him, but for the first time I noticed how tightly ripped with muscle were his arms, neck, and shoulders.
Sawing off heads is good exercise, I thought.
“You’ll find out,” he finally said. “It’s time my family gets a little payback for what your family has done to us.”
“What do you—”
His hand whipped out and cracked me across the cheek. I cried out, held my hand up to my face. Four-fingered shocks of pain pulsed beneath my soft skin.
“Don’t speak again, boy. You hear me? Don’t speak again unless I ask you to.”
I didn’t so much as nod, not knowing what might set him off. Although I’d hated him plenty well before that moment, the sting of his slap turned it into something visceral, monstrous, world-shaking. I hated him so much—many sleepless nights lay in my future, when I’d stay awake for hours, imagining my hands at his throat, squeezing until his face turned purple and the life went out of his eyes.
Pee Wee grabbed me by the shirt and made me stand up as he did.
“Follow me,” he said. “I hear one peep out of you, I’ll cut your mama’s throat. You try to run, I’ll cut your mama’s throat. You try to hurt me, I’ll beat your mama then cut her throat. You got it?”
I nodded this time, not daring to leave his question unanswered. What had happened to my mom and dad? I knew they weren’t next door, sleeping the night away with all this commotion going on. I felt a flutter of panic that took my breath.
“Come on, then.”
He walked out of the bathroom. I followed. He went to the door of the motel, stepped outside—he didn’t hesitate, didn’t take a moment to peek around the corner to make sure no SWAT member had a rifle aimed at his head. He just strolled out of there like he owned the place, and something told me that he did. Or his relations did, anyway, and the way he talked, that distinction didn’t matter much. I followed.
We made our way across the parking lot, all the way to the other side, where two cars were running, someone at the driver’s seat in each one—all I saw were heads and shoulders of shadow. Pee Wee stopped at the rear of the first one, a white Mercury Tracer—the thing hadn’t been washed since my twelfth birthday by the looks of it—with a hatchback. The large window was caked in dust, but several people had left clever phrases carved into the residue.
PLEASE WASH ME
MY DRIVER’S A DICK
CLEMSON SUCKS
Just below the window, a couple of bumper stickers represented the high IQ of the vehicle’s owner.
CALL 555-5555 IF YOU WANNA F*** YOURSELF
I HATE LIBS
The scrawled messages and sticker phrases made me sick inside, a glimpse into darknesses from which I’d been relatively sheltered. Even more strongly than I’d felt it in the motel, I just wanted to be home, safe and sound, the terrible, hateful world a million miles away.
Pee Wee leaned over and pushed a button to make the hatchback pop open; hydraulics hissed as he swung the large door toward the sky. My gaze had fallen to the ground, where I watched two tears drop out of my eyes and fall, seemingly in slow motion, finally splatting on the asphalt at my feet. But after the hatch opened, in the corner of my vision I saw arms and legs inside the trunk and I quickly looked up.
Bodies.
I took a step backward, embarrassed at the Texas-sized gasp I inhaled. My hands flew up to my mouth like an old lady sighting lovebirds behind the bushes.
Bodies. At least four of them, tangled up like tag-team wrestlers, dressed in blood and matted hair and torn clothing. Two were police officers, two weren’t. Before the horrible thought could even enter my mind, I could tell that none of them were my parents or Andrea or anyone else I knew.
“Oopsie daisy,” Pee Wee said. “Wrong car.”
He reached up and gripped the edge of the hatchback door, then slammed it shut. The thunk jolted me like a gunshot. Shaken, I followed Pee Wee as he stepped over to the rear of the other idling car, this one a little cleaner but a lot older. The thing was like a boat on tires, a silvery Cadillac from the 70s that had a trunk bigger than my closet at home. He took a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the keyhole, turned till it clicked. As the lid popped and opened up by its own momentum, I braced myself to see more dead people.
The trunk was empty.
“Get your skinny ass in there,” Pee Wee said, gesturing with annoyance at the vast cavern before us. “I won’t ask twice.”
Too smart to hesitate or ask dumb questions, I did as I was commanded, clambering over the bumper and lip of the trunk into the voluminous space. I had the most irrational thought that at least it was carpeted instead of exposed metal, might even make for a comfortable car ride.
I turned over and looked back at Pee Wee but he didn’t return my glance. He just slammed the lid closed, another jolting thunk that made my heart skip a beat, and I was in utter, complete darkness.
The tears came hard and fast, so much so that it hurt. I sobbed, curled up into a ball, fighting the urge to kick and scream and beat my fists against the metal above my head. I cried for several minutes, wondering what horrible fate awaited me, waiting for the car to drive off. But nothing happened; we didn’t move. The vibration of the running engine stayed smooth and steady, something I felt all the way to my bones. I had no concept of time, but it seemed as if at least a half hour passed before I heard the jangle of a key being inserted into the trunk’s keyhole again.
It popped open, lifted toward the sky.
Andrea was standing there, her face hidden in shadow.
“Get your ass in there,” I heard Pee Wee say. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
Just like I had done, she climbed aboard without complaint or hesitation. Pee Wee slammed the lid shut, and she and I immediately wrapped ourselves around each other for comfort, sobbing without words. A nearby door opened and closed.
This time, the car drove off.
Chapter Nineteen
July 2017
The man stood on the porch, wearing a grocery bag wrapped around his head—just like the old days, with a slit in the mouth—his eyes hidden behind thin plastic. I’d made a shuddering, almost chortling sound when I saw him, something that even in that moment of terror embarrassed me. Hazel and Mason and Grandma screamed, in unison, as if they’d practiced by a piano earlier. Logan didn’t see it because his face was buried in my mom’s neck.
Andrea reacted in no way I saw or heard, but she quickly ushered everyone back into the living room, pulling and pushing when needed, until they were huddled by the couch. I hadn’t moved a muscle, paralyzed by the fear of my childhood. Staring at the intruder as he stared back at me, the bag inflating, deflating, inflating, deflating, his nose prominent when the plastic compressed against his face.
I held no pretensions of bravery, but I had a gun and this man didn’t.
Pulling it up to aim the barrel at our visitor, I leaned the shaft against my body as I reached out and opened the screen door with my free hand, then kicked it open. I stepped through, now holding the shotgun with both hands, bringing it up higher so the thing pointed right at the man’s face.
“Who are you? Dicky? Huh? What’s going on? Where’s my son?” Every word louder than the one before it. I got no answer but one—the man tilted his head to the side, something I’d seen 30 years earlier from Baghead, standing in the Honeyhole over a headless body.
I couldn’t stop the tremble in my arms; the gun shook so much I finally brought it back against my chest to steady the thing. But it still pointed at the intruder’s hidden eyes.
“Who are you?” I screamed. “I will blow your brains out!”
Without saying a word, the man bowed his head, then slowly turned in a circle until his back was to me. I shoved the barrel forward and smacked him between the shoulder blades, causing him to stumble a step or two, but he didn’t react. After a pause, he walked forward, slowly and deliberately, showing no rush or fear of my gun. He went down the steps, started walking across the yard. I followed him, bracing the wide butt of the weapon against my upper shoulder, looking down its shaft toward the departing menace, not that I needed to aim much with a buckshot-spraying cannon like the one in my arms. I willed myself to shoot.
But I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t shoot a man in the back.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey! Where’s my son?” He kept walking, didn’t turn around, in no hurry. I almost blasted the gun toward the sky but I didn’t want to terrify my children any more than they already were. With no porch light, and no streetlights within miles of our home, the creeper soon disappeared into the darkness. I saw no trace of him.
My breath came in short, painful bursts. I turned around, went back inside, saw Andrea and the others on the couch, so tightly packed together they looked like a giant with multiple arms and legs.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s make a break for the van. Hurry.”
Andrea scrambled up, holding Hazel in her arms, shooing Mason along before her. My mom was right by her side, clutching little Logan; his whimpers were a dagger to my heart. I held tightly to the shotgun, swearing to myself I wouldn’t hesitate next time—if someone, anyone, got in our way again I’d blow a hole into their chest.
We went out the door, a little group of terrified souls, me in front, everyone else right behind. I held the gun out before me, scanning the porch, the steps, the yard. Andrea had my phone, pointing the flashlight in front of us, although its glow quickly dissipated in the wide open yard and air of the night. Sweeping the barrel of my weapon left and right, left and right, we stepped to the edge of the porch, went down the steps. Besides the crickets and cicadas singing their musical haunt of the dark, the only sounds I heard came from my children, sniffles and moans and whimpers.
The van was only 20 feet away, pulled up on the gravel drive that semi-circled through the front yard. We walked toward it as I desperately wished for eyes in the back of my head so I could see everything around us.
“Take the keys out of my pocket,” I whispered to Andrea.
She shifted Hazel to one arm—no small feat, I tell you; that girl was growing an inch a day—and slipped a hand into my right pocket. The keys jangled as she pulled them out, then a chirp boomed in the night as she unlocked the doors. The lights flashed, too, almost blinding; I had to squint and look down for a second.
When I returned my attention to the van, something moved on the other side of it, popping up over the edge, like a jack-in-the-box. I yelped, saw the shiny, crinkled plastic of another Baghead, the man throwing his arms into the air and yelling, “Boo!”
My kids screamed, every single one of them. Andrea yelled my name; Mom shrieked, a sound that was as inhuman a thing as I’d ever heard. My last reservation, my last tether to rational, humane action snapped. Letting out a yell of frustration, I gripped the gun as fiercely as I could and ran around the side of the car, just as the second intruder started sprinting away, making a beeline for the cornfield on the north side of the house. I raised the barrel, aimed it forward.
“Where’s my son!” I roared.
No response. Only running, away, his back to me, almost gone.
I fired.
The boom and flash of it rocked the night, as if thunder and lightning had struck all at once, splintering the air around us.
It also tore dozens of bloody holes into the man who’d been fleeing. He stumbled forward and fell flat on his face with an oomph and a splat. Then the world went back to darkness, crickets, cicadas. The cries and soft moans of my family. All of it barely heard over my own breaths, like the panting of a winded dog, as I stood there, staring at what I’d just done. Though I couldn’t see much, the guy wasn’t moving or making a sound. Nothing.
For the second time in my life, I’d killed another human being.
Chapter Twenty
June 1989
The ride was a bumpy one.
I’d never had any reason in my life to be in the trunk of a car, much less with the lid closed, vehicle moving at high speeds, my body jolted by every rock and pothole we ran over. At least I had Andrea there, her arms wrapped around mine, my arms wrapped around hers. I wished I could see her face, but having her to latch onto was enough to keep me sane. We slid along the worn-out carpet of the trunk with every swerve and sudden turn, hitting our heads, banging our knees, rolling, banging our heads again. With every jostle and bump, we held onto each other tighter, until I thought I might squeeze her to death, saving our captors the trouble.
When we hit a stretch of straight road, our bodies stable, I felt Andrea’s hot breath in my ear as she whispered to me.
