MAKING ENDS MEET

By Simon Wood

 

“Have them live here? No way,” Richard said shaking his head.

The request wasn’t exactly a revelation. The writing had been on the wall for at least a year. The intervals between tear-sodden appeals for cash had become shorter and shorter, and the sums had gotten larger and larger. At first, it was the odd fifty or sixty bucks now and then. But recently, it was a regular three hundred every month. Michelle’s parents promised to pay it back and Michelle covered for them. But he wasn’t a fool. Ted and Eleanor weren’t generating the kind of income to pay back their loans. They lived in a financial minefield of their own creation and this time they’d stepped on all the mines at once--taking out more than just themselves.

It was so unfair. After five years of marriage, he and Michelle had just gotten themselves straight. The mortgage payments were manageable at last. The credit cards and student loans were paid off. The new Honda had been bought with cash. They’d limped along for years with the old Corolla while they’d saved because they didn’t want another loan on their credit report. All this had been achieved through careful money management and sacrifice. He was so proud. They’d come so far. They were just starting to live the life they’d promised themselves when they got engaged.

That was what made his in-laws’ screw-ups so much more galling. Twice Richard’s age, Ted and Eleanor treated money with the mentality of teenagers. Only a couple of years from retirement, they had nothing to show for their lives. Their crummy, two-bedroom hovel was rented. The car was leased. Pensions and life insurance had been cashed in years ago. Retirement wasn’t an option for either of them. They would have to work until they died.

Damn the American dream, Richard thought. That was the cause of Ted and Eleanor’s monetary nightmares. They had to show everyone they were keeping up with the Joneses. They’d spent a lifetime trying to project the superficial image that they were at top of their game, except their lifestyle was built on credit.

He was thankful Ted and Eleanor hadn’t passed on their trait to Michelle, although there had been problems when they’d gotten married. She’d run up a string of college loans because her parents were unable to support her. Only that January had he and Michelle cleared the last of her college debts. But the nail in her credit report’s coffin was the credit card she’d underwritten for her parents when no self-respecting bank would issue them one. They’d maxed it out in months, with the promise they would pay it off. They never had.

“They are going to be evicted in two weeks. Do you want them to live on the streets?” Michelle demanded, close to tears.

“They’re adults. It’s not my problem, is it?”

“Richard!”

He snorted, getting up from the kitchen table. It wasn’t like she disagreed with him. She hated what her parents had put her through. But none of that counted when parental guilt was in full effect. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

“You really want them to live here?”

“We don’t have a choice. Why don’t you want them here?”

“Because this is our home--yours and mine--and no one else’s. They may be your parents but they’re still strangers to me. I would never feel comfortable with them here. I would feel like I would have to be on my best behavior. I would never be myself.” He sighed. “You realize that our sex life would be over.”

Michelle frowned. “Oh, Richard.”

“It would be, you know. I couldn’t make love with them in the next room.”

“Is that all you’re worried about?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s just one thing. I don’t want to be paying for a home that your parents will be getting more out of than I will.”

“Don’t you mean we? The house we’re paying for… My parents getting more out of it than we will…”

Richard snorted again. “See? They’re not even here and they’re making our life a misery.”

“So, what do you suggest?”

“Tell your dad to get off his butt and get a job.” Richard couldn’t believe how old that comment made him sound.

“He’s got a job.”

“Oh yeah, it’s a doozie.”

Michelle’s dad hadn’t worked for years since he was “laid off.” He’d actually been canned for some stunt that never made the light of day. Ever since, he’d sunk thousands into late night TV get-rich schemes that had only gone to make someone else rich. Richard shuddered to think what the latest flash in the pan was.

“I bet you’d be singing a different tune if this was your parents. They don’t have jobs."

“Don’t go there.”

“Why not?”

He sighed. “It’s not an issue, is it? My parents are retired now. They have good pensions. Money isn’t a problem for them.”

“What if their pensions dried up?”

“They wouldn’t.” Richard paused. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Okay, you’ve made it very clear that you don’t want them living with us.” Razor-edge bitterness barbed Michelle’s words. “We have other options.”

“Like what?”

“We can pay their rent?”

“What?” Richard was incredulous. “And pay their back rent, I suppose?”

“Obviously.”

“Well, you can think again.”

“Okay, we buy a second home.”

Richard was laughing. “No way.”

“It’ll be an investment.”

Some investment, he thought. His in-laws wouldn’t treat their investment with any respect. Besides being a liability with money, they lived like slobs. Every house they’d rented ended up looking like a war zone. They never once had a security deposit returned by a landlord.

“And how do you suggest we finance this twilight home for your parents?” he asked.

“We can use the equity we’ve built in this home and take out a second mortgage.”

“A second mortgage! Are you crazy? We’ve slogged our guts to get rid of that second mortgage and you want to put us back into that hole? I’m sorry, no.”

“Richard, my parents will be on streets unless we come through for them.” Michelle started sobbing.

Richard plopped down in the chair next to Michelle and slipped an arm around her shoulders. He squeezed her to him. “Let me take a look at the situation and work through the figures.”

Michelle threw her arms around him. “Thank you, Richard. I love you so much. I knew you’d make it work.”

Richard spent the rest of the evening with a legal pad and calculator working through the various Ted and Eleanor rescue packages. Letting them move in was the cheapest option. He could see it was going to cost them a few hundred a month. Underwriting their rent was pricey. He was looking at dropping at least a grand a month to keep them housed. Buying a second home was the option he liked most, because there was some return on their sacrifice. But it would stretch their finances to the limit. They could say goodbye to the Hawaiian vacation they’d promised each other. In fact, they could kiss goodbye any luxuries for the next decade. Michelle wandered into the kitchen.

“Are you coming to bed, babe? It’s after one.”

Richard checked his watch. He hadn’t realized. He was tired, but not from the lack of sleep. Michelle sat at the table next to him and picked up his notes.

“How’s it look?”

“Expensive.”

Michelle sighed and ran a hand through her tangled hair.

“Sorry.” Richard tried to smile. Michelle did likewise. “I think we could cobble something together,” he said.

“That’s great!”

“It’ll be tight, though. We’ll no longer be in the position to reward ourselves--the chance to see the world, early retirement--kids.” He let that one linger. “It’s all gone now, if we go through with this.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Okay.” She nodded. “What do we have to do?”

“Well, you know how I feel about them living here.”

“Let’s not go there.”

“We could pay their rent for them, but we’d just be pouring money down the drain. However, we can just about afford to buy a small house.”

Michelle beamed.

“It wouldn’t be anything fancy and probably wouldn’t be in the best neighborhood, but I think we could do it.”

“I knew you’d work something out.”

“I wouldn’t be too happy. Maui is out of the question.”

She flung her arms around him and crushed him in her excitement. “I don’t care.”

“Well, I hope you don’t care too much about cable TV, dinners out, going to the movies, name brand foods or any new clothes.”

“I don’t.”

“For all the fuss your parents have caused, it would be cheaper to have them killed.”

And there it was. He’d said it--admittedly as a joke. It was an option, though--an option he hadn’t consciously considered. It was a solution, an answer to his problematical in-laws. Michelle was too wrapped up in the moment and hadn’t heard his joke. She cooed sweet nothings into his ear.

By just thinking of having Ted and Eleanor killed, he was crossing a line, but as much as he hated to admit it, it was a line he crossed knowingly. His murderous thought seemed extreme. He couldn’t share it with Michelle--that was for sure. But it would solve things. If he bankrolled Ted and Eleanor, he incurred their current debt and at least ten to twenty years of their yet to be squandered debt. Even long after his in-laws were dead, they would still be gnawing at his finances. With compound interest, he wouldn’t be free of their touch for at least forty years. It was inconceivable. Murderers didn’t serve that kind of time. He struggled to see the downside, pushing morality aside. He leaned back in his chair, letting the concept soak in.

“Come on, let’s go to bed.” Michelle grabbed his hand and tugged at him. “I want to celebrate.”

“In awhile,” he said with a thin smile. “I want to double-check a couple of things.”

Michelle stood. “Okay, but don’t take too long about it.”

“Okay.”

He watched her dance back to bed, while he contemplated killing her parents.

***

A restless night’s sleep hadn’t tempered his solution--it had reinforced it. He was going to kill his in-laws. It had been three a.m. before he’d gone to bed. He’d sat in the kitchen daydreaming, plotting their demise. While in bed, he’d tossed and turned--excited by the prospect. Stronger than caffeine, his ingenious idea kept him awake. Even in his unsettled sleep, he dreamed of murdering his burdensome in-laws. Surprisingly, he’d risen the following morning in fine fettle. He felt like a million bucks.

Leaning against the sink, munching on a bowl of cereal, Richard asked as casually as he could, “When’s your mom and dad’s eviction date?”

“Don’t say eviction.”

Hell, what was he meant to call it? Their involuntary departure due to irreconcilable payment terms? Eviction wasn’t a pretty word and it wasn’t meant to be. That was the name of the game. He tried again.

“Okay, when do they have to move out?”

“By the 20^th, I think. Can I tell them the wonderful news?”

“Hold off for now. I need to get the mortgage broker to double-check my figures.”

“Okay.” Michelle smiled. She was so happy. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped. “Maybe tonight?”

“Maybe.” He smiled back.

I’ve got until the 20th, he thought on the commute to work. I’ve got two weeks to kill them.

Deciding to kill Ted and Eleanor was one thing. Doing it was another. He had to decide how, when and where. Inspiration wasn’t on the right wavelength. Nothing coming through sounded workable. He wandered through his working day as a passenger, cruising past his responsibilities. At lunch, he made the obligatory phone call to the mortgage broker and realtor, and they set them in motion. He went home that evening with his cover story, but no plan for murder. Inspiration was waiting for him in the living room.

“Richard, you don’t know how much we appreciate what you’re doing,” Ted said.

“Very generous,” Eleanor echoed.

“I couldn’t wait, honey. I had to tell them. Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” Richard said, his blood boiling. “There’s nothing to be angry about.”

“Richard, you’re my son now. What you’ve done for us elevates you way above in-law status.”

God forbid me ever being of your blood, you useless SOB. Richard shook Ted’s proffered hand, smiling as broadly as his anger and irritation allowed. “Thanks, Ted. That means so much coming from you.”

“We can go house hunting together,” Eleanor suggested. “Make it a real family affair.”

Over my dead body, Richard thought. “Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.”

“We should celebrate,” Ted announced. “Go out to dinner. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds great, dad,” Michelle said.

“Great,” Richard agreed.

They went for a steak dinner. Ted suggested Outback. Richard said Sizzler, because it was nearer--and cheaper. He knew he would be picking up the tab--and he did. Their last meal together might be on him, but it didn’t have to be an expensive one.

He was glad to get home after seeing off his in-laws. The meal together had been good, though. It made his decision so much easier. Seated face to face with them, he felt no compunction to hand them a stay of execution, but they’d been a distraction. He couldn’t think seriously about killing them when they were jabbering away in front of him. Their inane chatter prevented him from concentrating. Michelle slipped her arms around his waist.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“You know.” Her face filled with sadness. “I’m sorry we argued last night.”

He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “It’s all right. We’ve got a solution now. Last night is forgotten.”

“C’mon, soldier. We’ve got some unfinished business in the bedroom. Let’s go.”

***

For Michelle’s benefit, Richard pretended to go to work. He went through the usual morning routine of his shower, shave and light breakfast. The moment he hit the road he called the office requesting a floating holiday. He had to think and he couldn’t do that with Michelle around or the interruptions at work. He stopped in at the first Denny’s he came across. Much to the hostess’ annoyance, he insisted on a booth rather than eating at the counter. He didn’t want the conversation. He ordered and gazed out the window at the freeway traffic whipping by below him.

Two restless nights and he still wanted to kill Ted and Eleanor. He was sold on the concept, but not on his morality. He told himself that he wasn’t evil. It was self-defense. Justifiable homicide. His livelihood was under threat and he couldn’t let that happen. He had to do something about it. Any notion that he was just another criminal dissolved with his first cup of Denny’s coffee.

He needed a killer, a hit man, but where was he going to find one? He didn’t have a clue. Even if he did find one, how the hell would he know if he’d found a good one? It wasn’t like he could pick up a copy of this month’s issue of Best Buy--the Hired Killer addition. No, he couldn’t count on an assassin. It was a stupid idea. He wasn’t a mobster, for God’s sake.

He examined his hands, turning them over and inspecting the calluses on his palms. He was good with his hands. He always had been. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t turn his talents to for professional results. He would treat Ted and Eleanor’s death like any other DIY project. He would kill them himself.

He warmed to the idea instantly. What would be a suitable death for Ted and Eleanor? He had to come up with something that would be befitting of their lifestyle. Lifestyle, what a joke. Style was one thing absent from their lives. His waitress brought his breakfast.

He trawled through his cheesy and greasy choice. Ted & Eleanor’s neighborhood wasn’t the best. It was way better than it had been the year before they moved in, but it was still tarnished by its reputation. Drug dealers and felons were still a common sight. A home invasion wasn’t out of character. He considered the scenario for a moment and dismissed it just as quickly. Home invasions were noisy and messy and required planning and more than one person. It wasn’t going to work.

“Simple solutions are usually the best remedy.”

“Huh?”

Richard’s waitress smiled and refilled his coffee cup. “You seem to be trying to solve a weighty problem. People always complicate things. Most of time, the simplest solutions are the best ones.”

Richard managed a smile. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” she said and moved on to the next table.

He finished up his meal and paid the check, leaving an over-generous tip. His coffeepot philosopher had been right. Simple was best. Getting back into his car, a plan was piecing itself together.

Richard parked on Hillcrest Drive. The road was deserted. Not many used the service road to the water plant. He stared down the hill at the run down development and particularly, at Ted and Eleanor’s rental home backing onto the hillside.

From his lofty vantage point, there seemed to be no activity. Eleanor would be at work, but Ted would be there, pottering around, trying to make one of his damn fool schemes succeed. Even in Richard’s short marriage to their daughter, there’d been too many. There was the property speculation deal--buy cheap properties with no money down and give them a quick makeover for a quick profit. The upshot had been a string of expensive home inspections that proved that cheap houses are cheap for a reason. Not being daft enough to buy a termite-infested shack, Ted had moved on to want ads, selling junk that no one wanted. Their garage was still chock full of trash. Buying cars from auctions to sell had been next. The city had confiscated six jalopies after multiple complaints from the neighbors. His current fad was telemarketing. Richard had no idea how that one worked…neither did Ted, in all honesty.

What stuck in Richard’s throat was Ted’s ridiculous belief that he was as successful as Bill Gates. Other people’s successes were his successes. He put himself on the same level, never once acknowledging that he lived in near poverty, and he still had the audacity to consider himself better than Richard.

Just sitting there, Richard’s blood pressure skyrocketed. Ted made him sick. He felt sorry for Eleanor for having to be married to that, especially since he was going to kill her too. But she was just as guilty. She condoned every one of Ted’s harebrained schemes. She never said, “Ted, you’re a grown man. Act like it.” If she had, maybe her name wouldn’t be on the death warrant.

He’d gone there to study their movements, understand their habits, in the hope of seeing a chink in their defenses. But he knew them already. There was nothing to learn.

Instead, Ted and Eleanor were feeding his hatred for them. He despised their squandered lives and the way they were attempting to squander his and Michelle’s. He hated having to be the grown up on this one.

A speeding truck from the water plant roused Richard from his angry thoughts. The dashboard clock said it was after three. He’d been parked there for five hours. It was time to do what had to be done. He gunned the engine.

***

A week had passed since he spent the day watching Ted and Eleanor’s home, but tonight was the night he was going to do it. It was all planned, and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. The house buying pretense wasn’t going to last much longer. The mortgage broker had a bank ready and waiting and house viewings with the realtor were a nightly affair. He’d turned down two excellent investment properties already. If he didn’t act now, he’d end up in the financial hole he was trying to avoid.

Tonight was a night off from house hunting and that was his alibi. Richard was a minority in that he loved soccer. There was a night game in San Jose and he would be going alone. The drive to San Jose would take him past Ted and Eleanor’s. He would kill them, go on to the game and return home to the shocking news. He would miss the first half, but that wouldn’t matter. The game was being broadcast on the radio. He took his ticket from his breast pocket and popped his “get out of jail free” card in the glove box. He turned up the radio, listened to the game and peeled off the freeway off-ramp to Ted and Eleanor’s.

Richard concealed his Honda in the park’s overflow parking lot and joined the trail. It was dusk and essentially the park was closed, but it was unsupervised. Ted and Eleanor walked the trail every night to reflect on another great day in paradise. This was their main form of entertainment because it was free and their supposed love of nature could camouflage that. Richard hid himself in an avenue of trees a quarter mile from the parking lot. He slipped into coveralls, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and pocketed a knife.

Waiting was hell. He kept swallowing, working his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and wiping his gloved hands on his coveralls. Paranoia seeped in. Maybe he’d screwed up and given himself away. With every passing second, he expected his in-laws to round the bend and the police to swoop in. He knew it was stupid. He was letting idiotic guilt take over, but he couldn’t stop it.

But fear, paranoia and guilt evaporated in a second when Richard heard Ted and Eleanor approaching. Ted’s inane banter cut through the night and Richard’s hand tightened around the knife. He couldn’t make out what was being said. It was all noise. But it didn’t matter. He would pounce the moment they were level with his position.

They were laughing when Richard leapt out of the trees. Laughing at their good fortune at his expense, no doubt. Well, the laughing was over.

They gasped when he growled something and they spotted the knife glinting in the moonlight. How he wished their faces hadn’t been lost in the dark.

“You’ve been taking advantage of me for too long.” Richard didn’t wait for a plea for clemency. He plunged the knife into Ted’s bloated belly, swollen from sponging off others. Blood spilled over Richard’s gloved hand and he pressed the blade deeper.

Ted crumpled, sliding off the blade. Eleanor screamed. In reflex, Richard lashed out with the knife, catching Eleanor’s throat. She went down without another sound.

Richard rummaged through Ted’s pockets for his wallet. Their deaths couldn’t look motiveless. They had too look like a violent robbery carried out by a desperate junkie. Senseless tragedies like this happened every day. He jerked out Ted’s wallet from the back pocket of his pants. Ted groaned and Eleanor gurgled.

Richard raced back to his Honda with the wallet and Eleanor’s rings. He dumped them with the knife into a Ziploc he’d brought with him and stuffed his coveralls and rubber gloves into a trash bag. Peeling out of the parking lot, he headed for San Jose.

At a gas station outside San Jose, Richard filled up and dumped the trash bag in a nearby dumpster. Five miles from the gas station, he tossed the knife out the window and down a freeway embankment. Parking outside Spartan Stadium, he still had the wallet to get rid off. The rings and the wallet’s contents he would keep for now and dispose of down a storm drain on the way home. He opened up Ted’s wallet and tugged out his cash, credit cards and driver’s license.

On the drive to the game, he’d been on a high, delirious to be rid of his burden, but not anymore. The driver’s license pictured a man who wasn’t his father-in-law. Just to reinforce the calamity, the credit cards didn’t have Ted’s name on them, but instead, the name Thomas Fairfax. The rings he held in his palm weren’t Eleanor’s. He’d killed the wrong people.

“Oh God,” he murmured.

Richard stumbled into the stadium on uncertain legs, water gurgled in his ears and he couldn’t breathe. He dropped Fairfax’s empty wallet into a nearby trashcan. He handed his ticket to the yellow-jacketed ticket taker. He climbed the steep steps to his seat, not taking the free program offered.

Goals flew into the back of the net one after another. The San Jose Earthquakes were having a landmark game, but Richard couldn’t raise a smile. The murders of two strangers weighed heavily on him, but that wasn’t what was worrying him. Ted and Eleanor were still alive. That meant he had it all to do again.

The fifth goal went in and the crowd leapt to their feet. A man noticed Richard was the only one who wasn’t cheering. “LA can’t win them all, buddy.”

Richard said nothing and the man dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

The game ended and Richard trudged back to his Honda. He’d left the car on a residential street and trash and recycle cans for the following morning’s pick up blocked it in. He dumped the Fairfax’s belongings in a can.

Driving home, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t use the same MO to kill Ted and Eleanor now. It was so perfect, but his bungled murders would lead to better security at the park. He couldn’t afford to be hasty, but time was against him. Ted and Eleanor would be evicted in less than a week.

How could he have been so wrong? It had sounded like them. It had looked like them. How did he kill the wrong people?

Richard’s question went unanswered. The eighteen-wheeler changed the subject. The semi’s blowout rendered the rig helpless and the trailer section plowed into the Honda’s passenger side. From the frenetic action inside the cab, the truck driver was doing a valiant job, but he lost the good fight. The eighteen-wheeler smeared Richard’s car across the freeway and drove it into the median.

***

Richard awakened in a hospital bed. Molasses-thick memories trickled back into his consciousness. Progress was slow. He tried to move but he only managed to move his head.

Suddenly with the intensity of a thunderbolt, he remembered and began to cry. The accident had left him a quadriplegic, but he wasn’t crying because he was incapacitated for life. He was remembering what Michelle had said to him the day after the accident.

“We’ve all decided,” she said. Standing on either side of her, Ted and Eleanor nodded and smiled. “There’s no point in buying a second home, Mom and Dad can live with us. They will look after you while I’m at work. Just think, honey, we can all be one big happy family. It’s the safest solution too. Did you know there were two murders near their home last night?”

###

 

 

SEWING CIRCLE

 

“The only Jew in town,” Morris said as Laney pulled into the church parking lot.

He pointed to the stained-glass window cut into the middle of the belfry. It looked expensive, more than a little country church could afford. Jesus smiled down from the window, arms spread in welcome and acceptance.

“The story’s about the sewing circle, not the church,” Laney said.

“Jesus as a ragpicker. Was that in the Bible?”

“You’re too cynical.”

“No, I’m just a frustrated idealist.”

Morris rubbed his stomach. He’d gone soft from years at a desk, his only exercise the occasional outdoor feature story, usually involving a free meal. He’d given up the crime beat, preferring to do the “little old lady in the holler” stuff, the cute little profile features that offended no one. Still, the fucking quilt beat was the bottom rung on the ladder he’d started climbing back down a decade ago.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Laney said. She was the staff photographer, and true to her trade, she managed to keep a perspective on things. Cautious yet upbeat, biding time, knowing her escape hatch was waiting down the road. For Morris, there was no escape hatch. The booby hatch, maybe.

“‘Fun’ is the Little League All-Stars, a Lion’s Club banquet where they give out a check the size of Texas, a quadriplegic doing a power wheelchair charity run from the mountains to the coast. But this”—he flipped his notebook toward the little Primitive Baptist church, its walls as white as pride in the morning sun—”Even my Grandma would yawn over a sewing circle story.”

“You can juice it up,” Laney said as she parked. She always drove because she had two kids and needed the mileage reimbursement. All Morris had was a cat who liked to shit in the bathtub.

“That’s what I do,” he said. “A snappy lead and some filler, then cash my checks.”

Though the checks were nothing to write home about. He’d written home about the first one, way back when he was fresh out of journalism school. Mom had responded that it was very nice and all but when was he getting a real job? Dad had no doubt muttered into his gin and turned up the sound to “Gunsmoke.” They didn’t understand that reporting was just a stepping stone to his real career, that of bestselling novelist and screenwriter for the stars.

They headed into the church alcove, Laney fidgeting with her lenses. Morris had called ahead to set up the appointment. He’d talked briefly to Faith Gordon, who apparently organized the group though she wasn’t a seamstress herself. The sewing circle met every Thursday morning, rain, shine, flood, or funeral. Threads of Hope, the group called itself. Apparently it was a chapter of a national organization, and Morris figured he’d browse the Web later to snip a few easy column inches of back story.

The alcove held a couple of collection boxes for rags. Scrawled in black marker on cardboard were the words: “Give your stuff.” Morris wondered if that same message was etched into the bottoms of the collection plates that were passed around on Sundays. Give your stuff to God, for hope, for salvation, for the needles of the little old ladies in the meeting room.

“Hello here,” came a voice from the darkened hallway. A wizened man emerged into the alcove, hunched over a push broom, his jaw crooked. He leaned against the broom handle and twisted his mouth as if chewing rocks.

“We’re from the Journal-Times,” Morris said. “We came about the sewing circle.”

One of the man’s eyes narrowed as he looked over Laney’s figure. He chewed faster. “‘M’on back,” he said, waving the broom handle to the rear of the church. He let the two of them go first, no doubt to sweep up their tracks as he watched Laney’s ever-popular rear.

The voices spilled from the small room, three or four conversations going at once. Morris let Laney make the entrance. She had a way of setting people at ease, while Morris usually set them on edge. His style was fine on the local government beat, when you wanted to keep the politicians a little paranoid, but it didn’t play well among the common folk in the Appalachian mountain community of Cross Valley.

“Hi, we’re with the paper,” Laney said. “We talked to Faith Gordon about the circle, and she invited us to come out and do a story.”

Five women were gathered around a table, in the midst of various stitches, with yarn, cloth scraps, spools of different-colored threads, and darning needles spread out in front of them.

“You ain’t gonna take my picture, are you?” one of them asked, clearly begging to be in the paper. That would probably make her day, Morris thought. The only other way she’d ever make the paper was when her obituary ran. She was probably sixty, but had the look of one who would live to be a hundred. One who knew all about life’s troubles, because she’d heard about them from neighbors.

“Only if you want,” Laney said. “But a picture makes the story better.”

“We just thought the community would be interested in the fine work you ladies are doing,” Morris said. That wasn’t so bad, even if the false cheer burned his throat like acid reflux.

“If Faith said it was okay, that’s good enough for us,” said a second woman. She was in her seventies, wrinkled around the eyes, the veins on her hands thick and purple, though her fingers were as strong as a crow’s claws. “I’m Alma.”

“Hi, Alma,” Morris said. He went from one to another, collecting their names for the record, making sure the spelling was correct. You could miss a county budget by a zero, apply the wrong charge in a police brief, and even fail to call the mayor on Arbor Day, and all these mistakes were wiped out with a Page 2 correction. But woe unto the reporter who misspelled a name in a fuzzy family feature.

Alma Potter. Reba Absher. Lillian Moretz. Daisy Eggers. The “other Alma,” Alma Moretz, no immediate relation to Lillian, though they may have been cousins five or six times removed.

“Just keep on working while I take some shots,” Laney said. She contorted with catlike grace, stooping to table level, composing award-quality photographs. The janitor stood at the door, appreciating her professional ardor. He was chewing so fast that his teeth were probably throwing off sparks behind his eager lips.

“So, how did you ladies meet?” Morris smiled, just to see what it felt like.

“Me and Reba was friends, and we’d get together for a little knitting on Saturdays while our husbands went fishing together,” Alma Potter said. “They would go after rock bass, but they always came home with an empty cooler.”

“God rest your Pete’s soul,” Reba said.

“Bless you,” Alma said to her.

Morris glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty column inches to go, plus he had to knock out a sidebar on a weekend bluegrass festival. All with the Kelvinator looking over his shoulder. Kelvin Feeney, Journal-Times editor and all-around boy wonder, a guy on the come who didn’t care whose backs bricked the path to that corner office at the corporation’s flagship paper.

“So, Alma, when did you start sewing?” Morris thought of making a pun on “so” and “sew” and decided to pass.

“Oh, maybe at the age of five,” she said. Her eyes stayed focused on the tips of her fingers as she ran the needle through a scrap of yellow cotton. Laney was working the scene, twisting the lens to its longest point, zooming in to get the wrinkled glory of the old woman’s face.

“Did you learn from your mother?” Morris asked, scribbling in his notebook. Maybe he could use some of this in the Great American Novel he’d been working on since his freshman year, which had been tainted by a professor who thought Faulkner was the Second Coming and Flannery O’Connor was the Virgin Mary.

“She learnt it from me,” Daisy Eggers said, her eyes like wet bugs behind the curve of her glasses. Daisy might have been anywhere between eighty and ninety, her upper lip collapsed as if her dentures were too small. When she spoke, the grayish tip of her tongue protruded, constantly trying to keep her upper false teeth in place.

“Good, we’ll get back to that.” Morris made a note as Laney’s shutter clicked. “Tell me about Threads of Hope.”

“You really need to talk to Faith about that,” the other Alma said. “She’s the one started it. We were all sewing anyway, and figured why not get together on it?”

Reba, who appeared a little less inclined to defer to their absent leader, said, “Threads of Hope gives blankets to sick kids in hospitals. Like the Ronald McDonald House and the Shriner’s Hospital. It’s all about the kids. But you’d best talk to Faith about that part of it.”

Okay, Morris thought. It’s not Pulitzer material but at least it has sick kids. Now if I could just work a cute babe and a puppy into the story, I’d hit the Holy Trinity.

“Is it local kids, or someone with a specific type of illness?” Laney asked the obvious question. She was actually better at that than Morris.

“Oh, just ones sick any old way. Faith, she’s a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and she comes in about once a month and collects them, takes them off. We’ll get a dozen done on a good morning.” Reba held up the quilt she was working on and pointed to a scrap of denim. “That come from Doc Watson. You know, the famous flatpicker.”

Morris had written about Doc a dozen times. Doc was also up in his golden years, with six Grammys on his trophy shelf. The musician had tried several times to retire, but every time he did, someone would launch a festival in his honor and he’d feel obliged to perform there.

Lillian spoke for the first time since giving her name. “These scraps have stories in them. They’re like pieces of people’s lives. And we figure the kids get some of the life out of those pieces.”

“And a little hope,” the other Alma said.

“Threads of Hope,” Daisy said, knitting a fishnet-style afghan. Her knitting needles clicked like chopsticks, pushing and hooking yarn. The janitor came into the room, and though it was cramped, he managed to sweep the tiny scraps off the floor without once brushing against Laney. Morris wrote it all down, and they were back in the office by lunch time. The ladies had been all smiles by the time they left, speculating on how many copies of Friday’s edition they were going to buy and which relatives they would call.

 

The phone call came shortly after eleven in the morning. The edition couldn’t have been on the street for more than an hour, and those who received the paper via home delivery probably wouldn’t see theirs until late afternoon. Morris dreaded the post-edition phone calls. The tri-weekly had a low circulation, but the reading audience was exacting.

“Journal-Times news desk,” Morris answered, in his most aloof voice.

“Are you Morris Stanfield?”

“Yes, ma’am.” It was always bad when they guessed your name.

“We have a serious problem.”

“Ma’am?” Morris’ finger edged toward the phone, planning a quick transfer to the Kelvinator. Serious problems were beyond the capabilities of an ink whore.

“Did you write the Threads of Hope article?”

Sometimes they called to say thanks. Sometimes, but not often. “About the sewing circle.”

“Where did you get your information?”

“From the ladies.”

“The ladies.” She sounded like a high school English teacher who was upset that a student had opted for the Cliff Notes during the Hawthorne semester. Her voice sounded familiar.

“It was a feature about a group of friends who get together and sew. A people feature.”

“You were supposed to call me.”

“Are you Faith Gordon?” He had meant to call her, really, but between the domestic dispute that led to a police standoff and the damned bluegrass festival sidebar, Morris had been forced to slam his story out an hour before deadline. The Threads of Hope web site had provided some history on the organization, about how the effort had been started by a seamstress in Kentucky whose son had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A story of courage and perseverance, a true sob story, fraught with unsung heroes and all that happy bullshit.

“This is Faith. The ladies said you would call.”

“I’m sorry. Deadline caught me. What’s the problem?” Morris tried to replay the article in his mind. Often, by the time he finished writing one, it was seared into his memory until the next pint of whiskey or the next skull-numbing city council meeting, whichever came first. Writing was all about remembering, while the rest of Morris’s life was all about forgetting.

“The headline,” Faith Gordon said. “It says ‘Local Women Stitch Blankets For The Needy.’ These blankets are for any sick child, not just those of economic difference.”

“I don’t write the headlines,” Morris said.

“But it has your name right under it.”

“Yes, ma’am, but the editor wrote that headline. Perhaps you can speak to him.”

“It says ‘Local Women Stitch Blankets For The Needy’ by Morris Stanfield. You’ve done serious damage to the organization, not to mention insulting the women in the sewing circle. You should be ashamed.”

“How did I damage the organization? I don’t think many people in our readership have even heard of Threads of Hope.”

“Exactly. Your callous disregard for the facts has tainted Threads of Hope for the whole community. And the ladies . . . poor Alma Potter was in tears.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Morris said. He couldn’t remember if Alma Potter was the “other Alma” or not.

“No wonder people no longer trust the media. If this is any example of how you take the good intentions of an innocent group and twist it into a sensational story—”

“Whoa,” Morris said. “If I made a factual error, I’d be glad to run a correction. But I took my information directly from the sewing circle’s own words, with some Internet research on the parent organization.”

“You didn’t talk to me,” Faith said.

Morris at last saw the real problem. Faith Gordon’s name hadn’t appeared until the third or fourth paragraph. She obviously felt she was the real story, the tireless organizer who was practically an entire spool of hope, one who lifted the entire project on her shoulders and inspired everyone who could navigate the eye of a needle to great acts of charity.

“I’ll transfer you to my editor,” Morris said, and punched the buttons before she could respond. By leaning back in his chair, he could see out his cubicle to the glassed-in office of the Kelvinator. Feeney was checking on stock prices, probably in the middle of an editorial column on the dubious merits of funding public libraries. Morris waited until the editor picked up the phone, then turned his attention to his own computer. He opened his e-mail and found six messages about the Threads of Hope story. Three were from Faith, reiterating her displeasure. Two were from Reba, who was concerned about a misquotation, and the last was from Lillian, who said she thought the article was good until Faith had told her what was wrong. Now, Lillian wrote, she was ashamed to have her name associated with either the Threads of Hope or the Journal-Times, and she was canceling her subscription “right this second.”

Morris was in the midst of deleting the messages when the Kelvinator appeared in the mouth of the cubicle.

“Morris,” the editor said. He was ten years younger than Morris, with a personal digital assistant in his shirt pocket. His eyes moved like greased ball bearings.

“Bad headline, huh?”

“No, it was problems in your copy.”

“What problems?”

“Faith Gordon has a list. You can talk to her about them when you see her.”

“See her?”

“Write a follow-up. That’s the only way to fix the mess you’ve made.”

“There’s no fucking mess. I didn’t say anything about the blankets being for needy children.”

“You must have, or I wouldn’t have put it in the headline. Anyway, the easiest way to handle this is to interview Faith. And use a tape recorder this time, so you won’t misquote her.”

“But it was just a chummy little feature—”

“It’s gotten bigger than that. I had a call from the Threads of Hope’s national office. Apparently Faith Gordon has been blowing smoke up their asses, too.”

“So let them sue for libel.”

The Kelvinator tossed a sticky note onto Morris’ cluttered desk. “Two o’clock today at the church. Polish it up for Monday’s paper.”

“Can Laney come with me?”

“We already have enough photos. She has to cover a flower show at the mall.”

Morris crumpled the note as the Kelvinator returned to his office. He wished there were enough threads to make a noose. A noose of hopelessness, by which to hang himself before he had to write another quilt story.

 

The church sat in a valley and a fog hung over it, rising from the river that ran beside the road. The church parking lot was empty. That seemed odd, even for a Friday afternoon. He thought he was supposed to meet the entire sewing circle. Maybe he had a solo showdown with the legendary Faith Gordon. He shuddered, opened the dashboard, and retrieved the pint of Henry McKenna and a vial of Xanax. Substances that provided his own threads of hope, or at least stuffed cotton wadding between him and his anxiety and despair.

He stuck one of the tranquilizers on his tongue and toasted the stained-glass Jesus. “Here’s to you, Big Guy.”

Belly warmed, Morris entered the quiet church. He had been raised Baptist but had recovered quickly, and his only religious experience since then had been a foray into the Unitarian church in a half-assed attempt to meet women. Still, the polished oak of the foyer, the sermon hall with its carefully arranged pews, and the crushed velvet drapes invoked feelings of solemnity, as if he were actually in the presence of something mystical and important. He stepped carefully, afraid to break the hush.

“Mr. Stanfield.”

He turned, recognizing the shrill, strident voice of Faith Gordon. He had expected a beefy, shoulder-heavy woman with a broad face and hands that could strangle an ox. Instead, she was diminutive, even pretty in a severe way. Her cheeks were lined from years of not smiling. She was about Morris’ age but had none of his gray.

Morris attempted a boyish grin, knowing this was a time to turn on the charm, even if he came off like Clint Eastwood miscast in a comedy. “Miss Gordon. I’m sorry my story disappointed you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s the ladies in the circle. They were so excited about being in the paper until I told them about your errors.”

“We can make it right.”

“You can never make it right. The damage is already done. Feelings have been hurt. And what about the children who received blankets from Threads of Hope? How will they feel when told they are ‘needy’?”

Morris dropped his grin. He wanted to scream at her, tell her that a fucking space-filler in the back pages of a dinky local rag didn’t cause empires to rise or fall, and, truth be told, didn’t sell a single goddamned car for the dealer whose ad ran right beside it. A newspaper was fucking fishwrap, a dinosaur walking in the shadow of the Internet that was too dumb to know it was going extinct. The only people who’d read the piece of brainless crap had been the members of the sewing circle.

“I didn’t write that ‘needy’ part,” Morris said. “My editor put that in. He thought it was more of an eye-grabber.”

“The article has your name on it,” Faith said. “You’ve damaged all the children who have been blessed by Threads of Hope. God can’t forgive those who don’t accept their sins.”

“God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“If you can’t apologize to the Lord, you can at least apologize to the circle.” She stood to the side and motioned down the hallway, indicating that Morris should go first.

He resigned himself to go on and get his “mission of contrition” over with, then hurry back to the office and type it up with Henry McKenna as his co-author. He was halfway to the meeting room when he felt a prick in the back of his neck. At first he thought he’d been bitten by a spider, and he reached to wipe the creature away. The janitor came out of the meeting room, eyes bright, jaws making gravel.

“Let’s get him upstairs,” Faith said.

At first, Morris thought Faith wanted him to help subdue the janitor, who looked as if he’d escaped from a facility for the criminally insane. But the janitor didn’t flee. Instead, he dropped his push broom and approached Morris. After a couple of steps, there were two of him, and Morris’s head felt as if it were stuffed with wet pillows, the silent walls drumming in wooden echoes. He spun awkwardly, and Faith held up an empty hypodermic needle, the tip gleaming with one drop of clear liquid.

 

A kaleidoscope played behind his eyelids as he rose from the depths of a stupor. He’d experimented with a number of chemicals in his college days, but he could never recall suffering such a sledgehammer to the brain. The kaleidoscope slowly came into focus and he realized his eyes were open. He tried to move his head.

The kaleidoscope that had heralded his return to consciousness turned out to be a stained-glass window. Jesus stood there, arms spread, catching the dying sunlight. Morris recognized it as the same window that adorned the steeple of the church. The room appeared to be an attic of some kind, and a bell rope ran the length of one wall and disappeared through a small opening in the ceiling.

He must have fainted. Heat, stress, and a good dose of whiskey on an empty stomach. Not to mention the trank. And maybe a touch of the flu had crept up on him.

Snick.

Snick, snick.

As groggy as he was, it took him a moment to place the sound. Scissors.

The members of the sewing circle were gathered around him, stitching, darning, cutting scraps of cloth. He looked from face to face, trying to focus. Both Almas were there, though Morris had forgotten the names of the others. No, Reba, that was it. The chatty one. And Lillian. And one, wasn’t she named after a flower? Rose? Violet? No, Daisy, that was it. Daisy.

He tried to smile but couldn’t. His lips were too numb.

“Looks like Mr. Big-Time Writer is awake,” Reba said, without a trace of her earlier humor.

“A shame he can’t be troubled to get a little thing right,” the other Alma said. “Now, what would happen if we left a few loose threads in one of our blankets just because we didn’t care enough to do it right?”

“Why, that would be like having no hope,” Daisy said. “Worse, it would be like giving up hope on the children.”

“Oh, but we know how needy they are,” the first Alma said. “Because we read about it in the paper.”

Morris tried again to lift his head. The women weren’t looking at him. They concentrated on their work, snipping, stitching, working threads and needles and yarn. Morris’ stomach roiled, and he was afraid he was going to vomit in the presence of these women before he could lift himself and make it to a bathroom. Flu, for sure.

“Don’t try to talk none,” Reba said. “You done enough harm with your words already.”

Lillian giggled like a schoolgirl. “You tied that knot off right, didn’t you, Reba? I know how much pride you take in your work.”

“Wouldn’t want to go disappointing nobody. Unlike some people.”

A door opened somewhere beyond Morris’ range of vision. The women stopped working and looked in that direction, their faces rapt.

“How’s our latest charity project coming along?” Faith asked.

“Right fair,” the other Alma said. “Not such good material to work with, but I think we can shape it up some.”

“Well, after all, they say we help the needy,” Faith said. “In fact, I think I read so in the Journal-Times.”

Morris couldn’t help himself. Sick or not, he was going to tell them all to fuck off. So what if he lost his job? He could paint houses, drop fry baskets, go on welfare. At least he’d no longer have to pretend to give a damn about little old ladies making sacrifices solely because of their own selfish need to feel useful.

He tried to speak, but his lips didn’t move. Not much, anyway.

“Mr. Stanfield, Reba has been sewing for fifty-nine years, as you know, since you reported it in your article. That was one fact you reported correctly. So you can rest assured her stitches are much stronger than the flesh of your lips.”

Stitches? Lips?

He screamed, but the sound stuck at the top of his vibrating vocal cords. Faith came into view. She leaned over him, appraising the handiwork. “A silent tongue speaks no evil,” she said.

“And doesn’t put down the good work of others,” Reba said, looking to Faith for approval.

“That’s right,” Faith said. “I’m sorry we’re having to take time from our true work. Several children won’t get blankets this week because of Mr. Stanfield. But this task is perhaps just as important in the Lord’s eyes. This is a true charity case.”

Morris summoned all his effort and craned his neck. His clothes were sewn to what looked like the fabric pad of a mattress. He squirmed but could only move his arms and legs a few inches. He flexed his fingers, trying to make a fist.

“Alma, how was that tatting on his hands?” Faith asked.

Alma Potter beamed with satisfaction at being recognized by the circle’s leader. “I done proud, Faith. Them fingers won’t be typing no more lies for a while.”

Morris felt his eyes bulging from their sockets. The first tingle of pain danced across his lips.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stanfield,” Faith said. “I don’t have any more morphine. The hospital’s supply is closely monitored. I could only risk stealing a few doses. But my sin is one the Lord is willing to forgive because it serves a greater good.”

The women were busy around him, their needles descending and lifting, the threads stretching and looping. The other Alma was busy down by his feet, her gnarled hands tugging at his toes. Lillian brought a scrap of cloth to his face, but Faith held up a hand.

For the first time, Faith smiled. “Not yet, Lillian. We can close his eyes later. For now, let him look upon good works. Let him know us by our deeds, not by his words.”

Lillian looked disappointed. Faith put a gentle hand on the old woman’s shoulder.

“A good blanket takes care and patience,” Faith said. “Hope takes patience. All we can do is our part, and let the Lord take care of the rest.”

“Just like with the sick children,” Lillian said.

“Yes. They’re sick, but never needy. As long as one person has hope enough for them all, they are never in need.”

Morris tried to communicate with his eyes, to lie and tell Faith that he now understood, that sick children were never needy no matter what the Kelvinator said, but his eyes were too cold and lost to the world of light and understanding. He was a cynic and had nothing inside but desperation. He gazed at the stained-glass Jesus, but no hope could be found in that amber face as the sunlight died outside.

The gauze of morphine slipped a little, and now he could feel the sharp stings as the needles entered his arms, legs, and torso. Reba was stitching up his inseam, her face a quivering mask of concentration as she worked toward his groin. Daisy’s tongue pressed against her uppers as she pushed and tugged in tiny little motions. Silver needles flashed in the glow of the lone gas lamp by which the sewing circle now toiled. From outside, the plate-glass image must have flickered in all the colors of salvation.

But from the inside, the image had gone dark with the night. Summoning his remaining strength, Morris ripped the flesh of his lips free of their stitches and screamed toward the high white cross above.

 

“Look, his eyelids twitched,” came a voice.

“There, there,” Lillian said, as if on the other side of a thick curtain. “You just rest easy now.”

“Where—” Morris was in the sewing room downstairs, flat on his back on the table, surrounded by piles of rags. They must have carried him here after they—

He brought a wobbly hand to his mouth and felt his lips. They were chapped but otherwise whole.

“I think he’s thirsty,” said Faith, who knelt over him, patting his forehead with a soft swatch of linen. She turned to the janitor, who stood in the doorway. “Bruce, would you get him a cup of water, please?”

As the janitor shuffled off, Faith again settled her kind, healing eyes on him. “You fainted. A big, strong fellow like you.”

“Must be—” The words were thick on his tongue. He flexed his fingers, remembering the sharp tingle of needles sliding through his skin, the taut tug of thread in his flesh. A dream. Nothing but a crazy, drug-stoked nightmare. “Must be the heat,” he managed.

“It’s okay,” Faith said. Gone was her severe and chiding tone. She now spoke in her gentle nurse’s voice. “We’ll take care of you. You just have a chill. Rest easy and wait for the ambulance.”

“Ambulance? No, I’m fine, really, I just need—” He tried to sit up, but his head felt like a wet sack of towels.

“Your pulse is weak,” Faith said. “I’m concerned you might go into shock.”

“That means we need to cover him up,” the other Alma said.

Faith smiled, the expression of all saints and martyrs. “I guess we should use the special blanket,” she said.

“Blanket?” Morris blinked lint from his eyes.

“We made it just for you. We were going to give it to you in appreciation for writing the story and let you enjoy it in the comfort of your own bed. But perhaps this is more fitting.”

“Fitting,” Daisy said with a hen’s cackle. “That’s as funny as Santa in a manger scene.”

Lillian approached the table, a blanket folded across her chest. Unlike the other quilts, this one was white, though the pieces were ragged, the stitches loose, the cloth stained and spotted. “We done our best work on this one,” she said. “We know a sick soul when we see one.”

“Threads of Hope sometimes come unraveled,” Faith said. Her sweet tone, and her soft touch as she felt his wrist for a pulse, was far more unnerving than her previous bullying.

“That’s right,” Reba said. “Sometimes hope is not enough.”

“And kids die and go on to heaven,” Lillian said. “The Lord accepts them whole and pure, but their pain and suffering has to go somewhere. Nothing’s worse than laying there knowing you’re going to die any day, when by rights you ought to have your whole life in front of you.”

Lillian helped Reba unfold the patchwork blanket. Morris saw the white scraps of sheet were actually varying shades of gray, cut at crazy angles and knotted together as if built in the dark by mad, clumsy hands.

“There’s another side to our work,” Faith said. “One we don’t publicize. If it had a name, it might be called ‘Threads of Despair.’”

“I like ‘Threads of the Dead,’” Reba said, in her high, lilting voice. Her remark drew a couple of snickers from the old women gathered around the table. Morris didn’t like the way Reba’s eyes glittered.

“I’ll write the story however you want it, and let you proof it before I turn it in to the editor,” he said, his throat parched.

“Cover him up,” Faith commanded. “I’d hate to see him go into shock.”

Morris once again tried to lift himself, but he was too woozy. Maybe he really did need an ambulance. And a thorough check-up. He was having a nervous breakdown. And these fine women, whom he’d insulted and belittled, were compassionate enough to help him in his time of need. Faith was right, he was the needy one, not those sick children.

As they stretched the mottled blanket over him, preparing to settle it across his body, Morris saw the words “Mercy Hospital Morgue” stamped in black on one corner.

Sheets from the hospital?

The cloth settled over him with a whisper, wrinkled hands smoothing and spreading it on each side. His limbs were weak, his mouth slack, as if the blanket had sapped the last of his strength. Though his skin was clammy, sweat oozed from his pores like newly hatched maggots crawling from the soft meat of a corpse. He was being wrapped in fabric even colder than his soul.

Threads from the dead, from those who had lost hope.

Sheets that would give back all that had gone into them.

A handmade blanket stitched not in the attic of the heart but in the dark basement of the disappointed.

“The ambulance will be here in twenty minutes,” Faith said. “Until then, cherish the despair you deserve.”

She tugged the blanket up to his chin, and then, with a final, benevolent look into his frightened eyes, she drew it over his face.

 

 

Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die

 

So you changed your name.

Not too smart. A name’s a personal thing, and you had to go messing with what your Momma gave you. What kind of thing is that? How do you expect anybody to respect you, after you go and do something like that?

Joey Scattione, he’s big time, don’t got nothing against you, not nothing personal. If it was up to him, just a slap on the cheek, you cry and say you’re sorry, we all go down to Luigi’s and eat pasta together, like in some Mafia movie. Whaddahell.

But this is business. And business means keeping your word. And standing up, playing it straight. But you hadda talk to Feds and the Feds can’t touch Joey, we all know that, Joey’s golden, but they get a little something on you, you lose your spine, your tongue starts running before your head turns the key, and all of a sudden we got a bad situation.

No, a person who would change his name would probably tell any kind of lie to save his own skin. It’s all about constitution. Some got it, some ain’t. Don’t feel bad about it. Better guys than you wilted when the heat came down. Changed your name and tried to skip town, all part of your constitution.

All perfectly understandable. But that don’t mean it’s forgivable.

We’ve known each other what—seven years? Why you got to go and not be Vincent any more? I liked Vincent, for the most part.

Aw, c’mon. Don’t start with this “Mikey, Mikey” stuff. Don’t make it worse by begging. You wilted once, but you got one last chance to go down standing. Don’t look at me that way, I got no choice, nothing personal, but you gotta die.

See, it’s all about choices. You change your name, try to become somebody different, but under the skin you’re still the same.

I mean, the feds and girls and guns, that’s all business stuff. Taking you out, that’s business. Listening to you beg, that’s business, too, sort of sad but, hey, you can’t change what’s under the skin.

It bugs me, you changing your name like that. Shows a lack of constitution.

Me, I stick with “Mikey.” There’s a billion Mikeys in Brooklyn, and I’m one of them. No better, no worse. That’s just part of my constitution.

The least you can do is take your name back. I’ll make it clean, one through the heart, the head, whatever you want. But you ought to do things right and go out under the name you was born with. What about it?

I mean, you don’t want to meet old St. Pete and tell him your name and he runs his finger down the list and no Vincent there, all them good deeds for nothing, just ‘cause you ain’t really Vincent no more. So he shakes his head and you got to slink away from the Pearly Gates and all because you got no spine.

So that’s the only thing personal about what I gotta do. This name business. It’s a lie, and I hate lies.

Whaddaya say?

Vincent. Don’t go with the crying. It ain’t in character. Not like you at all.

Sorry, Vincent.

Open your eyes.

See, I lied.

This is personal.

And my name’s not really Mikey.

It’s Vincent now. Yeah, your name. I may as well take it, since you won’t be needin’ it no more, and Joey got a thing for me, too.

You kind of look a little like me, too, and by the time your bones float up in the harbor, you’ll be wax and cottage cheese. With my I.D. in your wallet.

So you don’t like Vincent, you can be Mikey, and Mikey’s dead, and I skip out as Vincent, and Joey’s none the wiser.

Everybody lives happy ever after.

Oh.

Except you.

Like I said, it’s nothing personal.

Tell St. Pete Vincent says hello.

 

 

WATERMELON

 

Ricky bought the watermelon on a warm Saturday afternoon in September.

The early crop had arrived at the local grocer’s in late June, fresh from California, but the available specimens were hard and heartless. Ricky had decided to wait for a Deep South watermelon, and those traditionally arrived many weeks after the annual Fourth of July slaughter. Besides, that was early summer. He had yet to read about the murder and his home life with Maybelle was in a state of uneasy truce.

But now it was the last day of summer, a definite end of something and the beginning of something else. The watermelon was beautiful. It was perfectly symmetrical, robust, its green stripes running in tigerlike rhythms along the curving sides. A little bit of vine curled from one end like the cute tail of a pig. He tapped it and elicited a meaty, liquid thump.

It was heavy, maybe ten pounds, and Ricky brought it from the bin as carefully as if it were an infant. His wife had given him a neatly penned list of thirteen items, most of them for her personal use. But his arms were full, and he didn’t care to trudge through the health-and-beauty section, and he had no appetite for Hostess cupcakes and frozen waffles. Sheryl Crowe was singing a bright ditty of sun and optimism over the loudspeakers, music designed to lobotomize potential consumers. Ricky made a straight path to the checkout counter and placed the watermelon gently on the conveyor belt.

Now that his hands were free, he could pick up one of the regional dailies. The front page confined the woman’s picture to a small square on the left. Her killer, the man who had sworn to love and honor until death did them part, merited a feature photograph three columns wide, obviously the star of the show and the most interesting part of the story.

“That’s sickening, isn’t it?” came a voice behind him.

Ricky laid the newspaper on the belt so the cashier could ring it up. He turned to the person who had spoken, a short man with sad eyes and a sparse mustache, a man who had never considered violence of any kind toward his own wife.

“They say he was perfectly normal,” Ricky said. He wasn’t the kind for small talk with strangers, but the topic interested him. “The kind of man who coached Little League and attended church regularly. The kind the neighbors said they never would have suspected.”

“A creep is what he is. I hope they fry him and send him to hell to fry some more.”

“North Carolina uses lethal injection.”

“Fry him anyway.”

“I wonder what she was like.” Since the murder last week, Ricky had been studying the woman’s photograph, trying to divine the character traits that had driven a man to murder. Had she been unfailingly kind and considerate, and had thus driven her husband into a blinding red madness?

“A saint,” the short man said. “She volunteered at the animal shelter.”

“That’s what I heard,” Ricky said. The cashier told him the total and he thumbed a credit card from his wallet. People always took kindness toward animals as a sign of divine benevolence. Let children starve in Africa but don’t kick a dog in the ribs. For all this man knew, she volunteered because she liked to help with the euthanizing.

“At least they caught the bastard,” the man said.

“He turned himself in.” Obviously the man had been settling for the six-o’clock-news sound bites instead of digging into the real story. Murder was rare here, and a sordid case drew a lot of attention. But most of the people Ricky talked with about the murder had only a passing knowledge of the facts and seemed quite content in their ignorance and casual condemnation.

Ricky took the watermelon to the car, rolled it into the passenger seat, and sat behind the wheel reading the paper. The first days of coverage had focused on quotes from neighbors and relatives and terse statements by the detectives, but now the shock had worn off. In true small-town fashion, the police had not allowed any crime scene photos, and the early art had consisted of somber police officers standing around strips of yellow tape. A mug shot of the husband had been taken from public record files, showing mussed hair, stubble, and the eyes of a trapped animal. The District Attorney had no doubt kept him up all night for a long round of questioning, to ensure that the arrest photo would show the perpetrator in the worst possible light. No matter how carefully the jurors were selected, that first impression often lingered in the minds of those who would pass judgment.

A week later, the coverage had made the easy shift into back story, digging into the couple’s history, finding cracks in the marriage. The only way to keep the story on the front page was for reporters to turn up personal tidbits, make suggestions about affairs and insurance, and build a psychological profile for a man who was so perfectly average that only hindsight revealed the slightest flaw.

Ricky drove home with the images playing in his mind, a reel of fantasy film he’d painted from the police reports. The husband comes home, finds dinner on the table as always, green peas and potatoes, thinly sliced roast beef with gravy, a cheesecake that the wife must have spent hours making. They eat, watch an episode of “Law & Order,” then she takes a shower and goes to bed. Somewhere between the hours on either side of midnight, the husband makes his nightly trek to share the warmth and comfort of the marital bed. Only, this time, he carries with him a seven-inch companion of sharp, stainless steel.

Seventeen times, according to the medical examiner. One of the rookie reporters had tried to develop a numerology angle and assign a mystical significance to the number of stab wounds, but police suspected the man had simply lost count during the frenzy of blood lust. The first blow must have done the trick, and if the man had only meant to solve a problem, that surely would have sufficed. But he was in search of something, an experience that could only be found amid the silver thrusts, the squeaking of bedsprings, the soft moans, and the wet dripping of a final passion.

By the time Ricky pulled into his driveway, he was moist with sweat. He found himself comparing his and Maybelle’s house with that of the murderer’s, as shown in the Day Two coverage. The murderer’s house was in the next county, but it would have been right at home in Ricky’s neighborhood. Two stories, white Colonial style, a stable line of shrubbery surrounding the porch. Shutters framing windows framing curtains that hid the lives inside. Both houses were ordinary, upper middle class, with no discernible differences except that one had harbored an extraordinary secret that festered and then exploded.

Ricky fanned his face dry with the newspaper, then slipped it under the seat. He wrestled the watermelon out and carried it up the front steps. He could have driven into the garage, but his car had leaked a few drops of oil and Maybelle had complained. He nearly dropped the watermelon as he reached to open the door. He pictured it lying burst open on the porch, its shattered skin and pink meat glistening in the afternoon sun.

But he managed to prop it against his knee and turn the handle, then push his way inside.

Her voice came from the living room. “Ricky?”

“Who else?” he said in a whisper. As if a random attacker would walk through the door, as if her ordered life was capable of attracting an invader. As if she deserved any type of victimhood.

“What’s that, honey?”

He raised his voice. “Yes, dear. It’s me.”

“Did you get everything? You know how forgetful you are.”

Which is why she gave him the lists. But even with a list, he had a habit of always forgetting at least one item. She said it was a deliberate act of passive aggression, that nobody could be that forgetful. But he was convinced it was an unconscious lapse, because he did it even when he wrote out the list himself.

“I had to—” He didn’t know what to tell her. A lie came to mind, some elaborate story of helping someone change a flat tire beside the road, and how the person had given him a watermelon in gratitude, and Ricky wanted to put the watermelon in the refrigerator before shopping. But Maybelle would see through the story. He wondered if the murdering husband had told such white lies.

“I had to come back and take my medicine,” he said, heading down the hall to the kitchen. “You know how I get.”

Maybelle must have been sitting in her chair, the one that dominated the living room and was within reach of the bookcase, the telephone, and the remote control. Her perfect world. White walls. Knickknacks neatly dusted, potted plants that never dared shed so much as a leaf. Photographs of her relatives lining the walls, but not a single member of Ricky’s family.

“You and your medicine,” she said. “You were gone an hour.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard her. He put the watermelon on the counter and opened the refrigerator. He thought of hiding it in one of the large bottom bins but he wasn’t sure it would fit. Besides, this was his refrigerator, too. He’d paid for it, even though Maybelle’s snack foods took up the top two shelves. In a moment of rebellion, he shoved some of his odd condiments aside, the horseradish, brown mustard, and marinade sauces that occupied the bottom shelf. He slid the watermelon into place, though its girth caused the wire rack above it to tilt slightly and tumble a few Tupperware containers. He slammed the refrigerator closed with an air of satisfaction.

He turned and there was Maybelle, filling the entryway that divided the kitchen and dining room. Her arms were folded across her chest, wearing the serene smile of one who held an even temper in the face of endless trials. Ricky found himself wondering if the murdered wife had possessed such stolid and insufferable equanimity.

“What was that?” Maybelle asked.

Ricky backed against the refrigerator. There was really no reason to lie, and, besides, it’s not like she wouldn’t notice the first time she went rummaging for a yogurt. But, for one hot and blind moment, he resented her ownership of the refrigerator. Why couldn’t he have a watermelon if he wanted?

“A watermelon,” he said.

“A watermelon? Why didn’t you get one back in the middle of summer, like everybody else?”

He couldn’t explain. If she had been in the grocery store with him, she’d have been impressed by the watermelon’s vibrancy and vitality. Even though the melon was no longer connected to its roots, it was earthy and ripe, a perfectly natural symbol for the last day of summer. But he was afraid if he opened the door, it would just be an ovate mass of dying fruit.

“I liked this one,” he said.

“Where are my things?”

“I—” He looked at the floor, at the beige ceramic tiles whose seams of grout were spotless.

“You forgot. On purpose. Just like always.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and suddenly his throat was dry and tight, and he thought of the husband and how he must have slid open the cutlery drawer and selected something that could speak for him when words were worthless.

“Of course, you’re sorry. You’ve always been sorry. But that never changes anything, does it?”

“My medicine—”

“Have a seat in the living room, and I’ll bring it to you.”

He went and sat on the sofa, afraid to muss the throw pillows. The early local news came on the television. A fire on the other side of the county had left a family homeless. Then came the obligatory follow-up on the murder.

“Investigators say they may have uncovered a motive in last week’s brutal slaying—”

Click. He looked away from the screen and Maybelle stood there, the remote raised. “Evil, evil, evil,” she said. “That nasty man. I just don’t know what goes through people’s minds, do you?”

Ricky wondered. Maybe the husband had a wife who controlled the television, the radio, the refrigerator, the garage, and wrote large charity checks to the animal shelter. Maybelle gave him his pills and a glass of water. He swallowed, grateful.

“I read that he was an accountant,” Ricky said. “Just like me.”

“Takes all kinds. The poor woman, you’ve got to feel sorry for her. Closes her eyes to go to sleep and the next thing you know, the man she trusted and loved with all her heart—”

“—is standing over her, the lights are off but the knife flashes just the same, he’s holding the handle so tight that his hand is aching, except he can’t feel it, it’s like he’s got electricity running through his body, he’s on fire and he’s never felt so powerful, and—”

Maybelle’s laughter interrupted him. “It’s not a movie, Ricky. A wife-killing slasher isn’t any more special than a thief who shoots a stranger for ten bucks. When it comes down to it, they’re all low-down dirty dogs who ought to be locked up before they hurt somebody else.”

“Everybody feels sorry for her,” Ricky said. “But what about the husband? Don’t you think he probably feels sick inside? She’s gone, but he’s left to live with the knowledge of what he’s done.”

“Not for long. I hear the D.A. is going after the death penalty. She’s up for re-election next year and has been real strong on domestic violence.”

“He’ll probably plead temporary insanity.”

“Big surprise,” Maybelle said. “Only a crazy man would kill his wife.”

“I don’t know. With a good lawyer—”

“They’re always making excuses. He’ll say his wife made him wear a dress when no one was looking. That he had to lick her high heels. That she was carrying on with the pet store supplier. It’s always the woman’s fault. It makes me sick.”

Ricky looked at the carpet. The stains must have been tremendous, geysers of blood spraying in different directions, painting the walls, seeping into the sheets and shag, soiling the delicate undergarments that the wife no doubt wore to entice her husband into chronic frustration.

“Ricky?”

Her voice brought him back from the last reel of his fantasy film and into the living room.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said, lying only a little.

“Ready to go back to the grocery store?”

“Yes.”

“And not forget anything this time?”

He nodded.

After shopping, getting all the items on the list, he sat in the grocery store parking lot and re-read all the newspapers hidden beneath the seat. He looked at the mug shot and visualized his own face against the grayish background with the black lines. He pored over the details he already knew by heart, then imagined the parts not fleshed out in the news accounts: the trip up the stairs in the silent house, a man with a mission, no thought of the act itself or the aftermath. One step, one stroke at a time. The man had chosen a knife from the kitchen drawer instead of buying one especially for the job. It had clearly been a crime of passion, and passion had been missing from Ricky’s life for many years.

He looked at the paper that held the wife’s picture. He tried to juxtapose the picture with Maybelle’s. He failed. He realized he couldn’t summon his own wife’s face.

He drove home and was in the kitchen putting the things away when Maybelle entered the room.

“You’ve stacked my cottage cheese three high,” she said. “You know I only like it with two. I can’t check the date otherwise.”

“There’s no room,” he said.

“Take out that stupid watermelon.”

“But I like them when they’re cold.”

“Put it in the bathtub or something.”

He squeezed the can of mushroom soup he was holding, wishing he were strong enough to make the metal seams rip and the cream spurt across the room.

“I put dinner on the table,” she said. “Roast beef and potatoes.”

“Green peas?”

“No, broccoli.”

“I wanted green peas.”

“How was I to know? You’ll eat what I served or you can cook your own food.”

“I guess you didn’t make a cheesecake.”

“There’s ice cream in the freezer.” She laughed. “Or you can eat your watermelon.”

He went to the dinner table. Maybelle had already eaten, put away her place mat, and polished her end of the table. Ricky sat and worked the potatoes, then held the steak knife and studied its serrated edge. He sawed it across the beef and watched the gray grains writhe beneath the metal.

Maybelle entered the dining room. “How’s your food?”

“Yummy.”

“Am I not a good wife?”

He made an appreciative mumble around a mouthful of food.

“I’m going upstairs,” she said. “I’m going to have a nice, long bath and then put on something silly and slinky.”

Ricky nodded.

“I’ll be in bed, waiting. And, who knows, you might get lucky.” She smiled. She’d already brushed her teeth. Her face was perfectly symmetrical, pleasing, her eyes soft and gentle. He felt a stirring inside him. How could he ever forget her face? Ricky compared her to the murdered wife and wondered which of them was prettiest. Which of them would the press anoint as having suffered a greater tragedy?

“I’ll be up in a bit,” he said. “I want to do a little reading.”

“Just don’t wait too long. I’m sleepy.”

“Yes, dear.”

When he was alone, he spat the half-chewed mouthful of food onto his plate. He carried the plate to the kitchen and scraped the remains into the garbage disposal. He wondered if the husband had thought of trying to hide the body, or if he had been as surprised by his actions as she must have been.

The watermelon was on the counter. Maybelle had taken it from the refrigerator.

He went to the utensil drawer and slid it open. He and Maybelle had no children, and safety wasn’t a concern. The knives lay in a bright row, arranged according to length. How had the husband made his decision? Size? Sharpness? Or the balance of the handle?

If he had initially intended to make only one thrust, he probably would have gone for depth. If he had aspired to make art, then a number of factors came into play. Ricky’s head hurt, his throat a wooden knot. He grabbed the knife that most resembled the murder weapon shown in the press photographs.

Ricky turned the lights low, then carried the knife to the counter. He pressed the blade to the watermelon and found that the blade trembled in his hand. The watermelon grew soft and blurred in his vision, and he realized he was weeping. How could anyone ever destroy a thing of such beauty?

He forced himself to press the knife against the cool green rind. The flesh parted but Ricky eased up as a single drop of clear dew swelled from the wound. The husband hadn’t hesitated, he’d raised the knife and plunged, but once hadn’t been enough, neither had twice, three times, but over and over, a rhythm, passion, passion, passion.

He dropped the knife and the tip broke as it clattered across the tiles. The watermelon sat whole and smooth on the counter. Tears tickled his cheeks. Maybelle was upstairs in the dark bed, his pillows were stacked so he wouldn’t snore, the familiar cupped and rounded area of the mattress was waiting for him.

The husband had been a crazy fool, that was all. He’d cut his wife to bits, no rhyme or reason. She hadn’t asked for any of it. She was a victim of another person’s unvoiced and unfulfilled desires, just like Maybelle.

Ricky spun and thrust his fist down into the melon, squeezed the red wetness of its heart. He ripped the rind open and the air grew sweet. He pulled at the pink insides, clawed as if digging for some deeply buried secret. He was sobbing, and the pulp spattered onto his face as he plunged his hands into the melon again and again.

A voice pulled him from the red sea of rage in which he was drowning.

Maybelle. Calling from upstairs.

“Ricky?”

He held his breath, his pulse throbbing so hard he could feel it in his neck. He looked down at the counter, at the mess in the kitchen, at the pink juice trickling to the floor.

“Ricky?” she called again. He looked toward the hall, but she was still upstairs. So she hadn’t heard.

He looked at his sticky hands.

“Are you coming to bed?”

He looked at the knife on the floor. His stomach was as tight as a melon. He gulped for some air, tasted the mist of sugar. “Yes, dear.”

She said no more, and must have returned to bed in her silly and slinky things. The room would be dark and she would be waiting.

Ricky collected the larger scraps of the watermelon and fed them into the garbage disposal. He swept the floor and scooped up the remaining shreds, then wiped the counter. He wrung out a dish cloth and got on his hands and knees, scrubbing the tiles and then the grout.

The husband had harbored no secrets. A pathetic man who made another person pay for his shortcomings. He was a sick, stupid animal. Ricky would think no more of him, and tomorrow he would throw the newspapers away.

He washed his hands in the sink, put the knife away, and gave the kitchen a cursory examination. No sign of the watermelon remained, and his eyes were dry, and his hands no longer trembled.

Tomorrow, summer would be over. It was the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Maybelle was waiting, and he might get lucky. Ricky went to the stairs and took them one step at a time, up into darkness.

###

 

 

 

The Truth Behind The Lies

People who only know my paranormal stories may not know that I have written in almost every genre, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, literary realism, and even romance, though my romance doesn’t always end happily ever after. I just love to read everything and expand my borders. Patricia Highsmith, Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, Hardee Boys, Charlotte McLeod, Elmore Leonard, William Goldman, and James Lee Burke are in my library, and all your influences turn up in your work until you get “experienced.” Which means you get lazy and fall into a shallow groove and keep doing the same thing over and over again.

The Digital Era heralds Act II of my career, and my crime novels like The Skull Ring and Disintegration show a different side of me, plus I wrote a couple of screenplays that slide easily into the mystery box. With this new freedom comes an easy break from the commercial considerations that demand you build a simple, identifiable brand. Now I’m the Scott Nicholson brand, and I respect you enough to credit you with taste, looks, intelligence, and good breeding. In other words, you’re willing to broaden you horizons and not get locked into reading the same story over and over with different titles and author names.

But maybe I’m trying to slip a fast one by you, run a con and take your money because you like mysteries and I’m a horror writer at heart. So here’s a little examination of the facts.

 

Dog Person– This was inspired by a true story. My friend Al Carson was talking about his dog’s expensive medical problems and how he decided to have Sally “put to sleep” instead of spending thousands of dollars. We discussed a fictional version of the tale and, in his version, there were two shots–first was the mercy killing of the dog, then the suicidal shot. I went with the version here, where the guy loves his dog so much that he just can’t face life without her. And, of course, the treacherous wife gets the fruit of her hateful labors. Originally published in Cemetery Dance Magazine #56 in 2006 and selected by esteemed editor Ellen Datlow for inclusion in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.

 

Dead Air—I wrote this while attending Appalachian State University in 1996. I worked at the college radio station in virtually every capacity at one time or another: jock, general manager, promotions director, sportscaster and news announcer. The cool think was to have a little made-up “handle,” and I toyed with Ricky Nix for a while but in the end stuck with what I had. Maybe there’s a little lesson about media sensationalism in here. After 16 years of journalism, I can’t say I’ve always been proud of my other profession. Originally appeared in Blue Murder Magazine #3 in 1997, which was a progressive little PDF publication way ahead of its time.

 

How to Build Your Own Coffin—I conducted one of those “vanity searches,” where you Google your name on the Internet under the guise of testing the effectiveness of promotional efforts while you’re really just seeing if anyone out there is talking about you. And I came to another Scott Nicholson’s Web page called “How to Build Your Own Coffin.” Seriously. Step by step instructions, with great attention to craft. How could I pass that one up? Originally appeared in the respected U.K. publication Crimewave #8 in 2005.

 

The Name Game—I was toying with the idea of fake identities and how lucky it would be if your fake identity turned up dead and it wasn’t you. Especially if someone wanted you dead. Of course, there’s also the problem of trying to rebuild a life from scratch. And it can get confusing after a while when you burn through a few false identities. Appeared in The Death Panel anthology in 2009.

 

Good Fences—Like most good stories, this one grew from a real incident. A geezery neighbor up the road would come down and straighten our corner fence post whenever it leaned just a little, and I got so perturbed by the presumptuous habit that I started deliberately knocking the pole out of true, just to see how long it would take him to come creaking down with his hammer and nails. Something like that, you just have to use your imagination to take it to the next level. Published in the Cemetery Dance anthology Shivers V in 2008.

 

The Agreement—(From J.A. Konrath): I wrote this in college, and never tried to publish it because I considered it too violent. But after selling several stories to Ellery Queen, I still couldn’t crack its sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock. After a handful of rejections, I sent them this, and they bought it. I liked the last line so much I’ve reused it a few times in other stories.

 

Kill Your Darlings—The title is from something Faulkner supposedly said, though I’ve seen it attributed to a couple of other writers. The idea is a writer must cut every precious phrase, no matter how elegant and beautiful, if that phrase does not further the story. I’ll admit, the writer-as-protagonist bit is a darling in itself. So shoot me. First published in Blue Murder Magazine #5 in 1997.

 

Making Ends Meet—Simon Wood is author of four novels, including Asking for Trouble and The Fall Guy. He’s also written more than 170 short stories. He’s an Anthony Award winner, pilot, adventurer, and licensed private investigator. A true talent, his stories explore the dark human heart and the fallibility in all of us. Visit him at www.simonwood.net.

 

Sewing Circle– Inspired by a true incident in which I wrote what we in the journalism trade call a “fluff piece” about a local quilting group. The leader of the group, who wasn’t present and was barely mentioned in the article, harassed me endlessly about a minor error, to the point that I decided she was vengeful that I hadn’t made her the centerpiece of the article. Since the group met at a church, it was easy to spin the idea to its most absurd and extreme conclusion. Originally published in the 2008 collection Scattered Ashes.

 

Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die—I’ve tried a few “flip sides,” where I’ve spun stories off of event sin another story, and here Mikey has been given the job of tracking down Robert Wells, from “The Name Game,” only Mikey knows him by his real name of Vincent. There’s probably a sequel in here somewhere. This is its first appearance.

 

Watermelon– I’m almost embarrassed to admit this is autobiographical, but if you’ve read the book, then you’ve caught me with my pants down, anyway. One night, while drunk, I yanked a watermelon from the fridge and beat the holy hell out of it, ramming my fist inside and yanking out the pink pulp. I wasn’t even that angry. But I imagined that was the sort of diffuse outlet that prevented some greater atrocity somewhere else. And as with the protagonist here, you suspect worse things down the road, life goes on, and hell lasts forever. Appeared in Cemetery Dance #51 in 2005.

 

 

About the author:

 

I have written 12 novels, including The Red Church, Speed Dating with the Dead, Disintegration, and The Skull Ring.

Other electronic works include Burial to Follow and the story collections Ashes, The First, Murdermouth, Gateway Drug, and Flowers. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I write for a newspaper, play guitar, raise an organic garden, and work as a freelance fiction editor.

Come to the Haunted Computer, become a Spooky Microchip, and help me build my next book. You’ll also find writing tips, free fiction, and survival tips.

Talk to me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com, “hauntedcomputer” on Twitter, or hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try. If you hated it, why not try another one anyway? What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and what does kill you is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.

 

 

You should read these other thrillers because you deserve a strange, daring adventure:

 

 

THE RED CHURCH

Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

Stoker Award finalist and alternate selection of the Mystery Guild

 

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, "Free me." People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall's return.

The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

 

Learn more about The Red Church and the real Appalachian church that inspired the novel www.hauntedcomputer.com/redchurch.htm

 

 

DRUMMER BOY

Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

 

On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as “The Jangling Hole,” and the wind carries a whispered name.

An old man who grew up at the foot of the mountain believes something inside the Hole has been disturbed by a developer’s bulldozers. Sheriff Frank Littlefield, haunted by his own past failures, must stand against a public enemy that has no fear of bullets, bars, or mortal justice. A local reporter believes the supernatural mysteries are more than just mountain folk tales.

On the eve of a Civil War reenactment, the town of Titusville prepares to host a staged battle. The weekend warriors aren’t aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from over.

And one misfit kid is all that stands between the town and the cold mouth of hell…

 

Learn more about Drummer Boy and the Appalachian legend that inspired the novel: www.hauntedcomputer.com/drummerboy.htm

 

 

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

 

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.

With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now Julia has a head full of memories, but she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's body and soul . . . .

 

Learn more about The Skull Ring and False Recovered Memory Syndrome: www.hauntedcomputer.com/skullring.htm

 

 

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

 

A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Southern Appalachian mountains . . . a man’s promise to his late wife that he’d summon her spirit . . . a daughter whose imagination goes to dark places . . . and demonic evil lurking in the remote hotel’s basement, just waiting to be awoken.

When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged. And when people start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels, can’t be trusted, and demons don’t like to play alone . . .

 

Learn more about Speed Dating with the Dead and the 2008 paranormal conference and inn that inspired the novel: www.hauntedcomputer.com/speeddating.htm

 

 

AS I DIE LYING

By Scott Nicholson

 

Richard Coldiron’s first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren’t so friendly.

There’s Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard’s disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse. They reside in the various rooms of his skull, a place known as the Bone House, and take turns rearranging the furniture. As Richard works on his autobiography, his minor characters struggle with their various redemptive arcs.

Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he’s about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard’s nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

Now Richard doesn’t know which voice to trust. The book’s been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

 

 

Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron’s head: http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/dielying.htm

 

 

BURIAL TO FOLLOW

By Scott Nicholson

 

When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it's up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles . . . or else.

Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology "Brimstone Turnpike.”

 

Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer: www.hauntedcomputer.com/burialtofollow.htm

 

 

FLOWERS

By Scott Nicholson

 

Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy for young adult readers, such as “When You Wear These Shoes” and “In The Heart of November.” Includes a bonus essay and afterword, as well as a bonus story from the author’s teen-age files.

 

Learn more about the young-adult collection Flowers and the award-winning “The Vampire Shortstop”: www.hauntedcomputer.com/flowers.htm

 

 

ASHES

By Scott Nicholson

 

A collection of supernatural and stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.

 

Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes: www.hauntedcomputer.com/ashes.htm

 

 

THE FIRST

By Scott Nicholson

 

A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction flavor these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.

 

Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First: www.hauntedcomputer.com/the first.htm

 

 

MURDERMOUTH: ZOMBIE BITS

By Scott Nicholson

 

A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-‘em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart . . .Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry’s “Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard.”

 

Learn more about Murdermouth: Zombie Bits and see zombie art: www.hauntedcomputer.com/murdermouth.htm

 

 

AS I DIE LYING

By Scott Nicholson

 

Richard Coldiron’s first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren’t so friendly.

There’s Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard’s disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse. They reside in the various rooms of his skull, a place known as the Bone House, and take turns rearranging the furniture. As Richard works on his autobiography, his minor characters struggle with their various redemptive arcs.

Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he’s about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard’s nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

Now Richard doesn’t know which voice to trust. The book’s been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

 

Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron’s head: www.hauntedcomputer.com/dielying.htm

 

 

DISINTEGRATION

By Scott Nicholson

 

Careful what you wish for.

When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.

Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. Jacob’s wife Renee is struggling with her own guilt, because the couple had lost an infant daughter several years before.

As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion. They share the poisonous love of a woman who would gladly ruin them both: Carlita, a provocative and manipulative Hispanic whose immigrant family helped build the Wells fortune.

Joshua wants other things, too, but Jacob’s desires are divided between the forbidden love he can’t possess, the respectability he can never have, and the revenge he is dying to taste. And Renee has dark motives of her own.

If only Jacob can figure out which one to blame. But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood.

And the childhood games have become deadly serious.

 

Learn more about the psychological thriller Disintegration: www.hauntedcomputer.com/disintegration.htm

 

 

FOREVER NEVER ENDS

By Scott Nicholson

 

It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.

The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.

A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author’s preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.

 

Learn more about the science fiction thriller Forever Never Ends: www.hauntedcomputer.com/foreverneverends.htm

 

 

TROUBLED

By Scott Nicholson

 

When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it’s a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren’t easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people’s minds.

Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain’s electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Kracowski is working for a secret society called the Trust, but also has his own agenda in exploring the nature of the soul. His experiments have an unexpected side effect, though. The electromagnetic fields used in his experiments are summoning the ghosts of the patients who died at Wendover back when it was a psychiatric ward.

Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counselors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he’s afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can’t safely hide inside his own head anymore.

Meanwhile, the Trust is installing sophisticated equipment in the home’s basement, aggressively probing the threshold between life and death. And they’ve brought in another scientist who doesn’t share Dr. Kracowski’s reluctance to push the limits.

This scientist is a pioneer in ESP induction, and he performed most of his work on a very special subject: his son, Freeman Mills. The author’s preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.

 

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Forever Never Ends: www.hauntedcomputer.com/troubled.htm

 

 

CREATIVE SPIRIT

By Scott Nicholson

 

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist’s retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains. Drawn both by the ghost stories surrounding the manor and her own sense of destiny, Anna signs up for the retreat.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban’s form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.

Sylva Hartley is an old mountain witchwoman who is connected to Ephram Korban both before and after his death. Her knowledge of Appalachian folk spells and potions has bound her to the manor in a deeper and darker way. Sylva harbors a family secret that refuses to stay slumbering in its grave.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. The house’s brooding atmosphere affects the creative visions of the visiting artists. A mysterious woman in white calls to Anna from the forest, while Mason is driven by the whispers of an unseen critic. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

It’s a power that Korban craves for himself, because he walks a shadowy land where passions burn cold and even the ghosts are haunted. The author’s preferred edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback release The Manor.

 

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Creative Spirit: www.hauntedcomputer.com/creativespirit.htm

 

 

SOLOM

By Scott Nicholson

 

Katy Logan wasn’t quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.

Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon’s family for 150 years.

But the move has been anything but stress-free, because the man she married seems more interested in the region’s rural Baptist sects than in his new wife. The Smith family secrets run deep: Gordon teases Katy and Jett with a story about a wicked scarecrow that comes in from the fields at night to slake an unnatural thirst. Gordon’s great-grandfather was a horseback preacher who mysteriously disappeared while on a mission one wintry night, and some say a rival preacher did him in.

Gordon’s first wife Rebecca died under equally mysterious circumstances, and Katy’s starting to believe Rebecca’s spirit is still in the house. The scent of lilacs drifts across the kitchen, doors slam shut with no one else home, and the kitchen curtains flutter even when the windows are closed. Katy becomes obsessed with Rebecca’s recipes and clothes, and she finds herself driven to find out more about Rebecca to emulate her and therefore please Gordon. To make matters worse, Gordon’s herd of goats watches Katy every time she leaves the house, fixing their rectangular pupils on her as if waiting for some silent command.

Jett is worried about Mom, but she has worries of her own. A Goth girl in a rural elementary school, she gets teased for being different. She misses her dad, and feels guilty because her drug abuse forced Mom to enter a hasty marriage with Gordon. The pressure leads her back to drugs despite her promise to Mom. Now she fears the drugs are blowing her mind. She’s starting to hallucinate, and the goats, scarecrows, and a strange man in a black hat are all part of her madness.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. They whisper the legends around the pot-bellied stove at the general store, they pray for protection from him in their little white churches, they think about him as they gather hay, harvest corn, and work their gardens. The brave ones talk about him, believing him dead and buried, but nobody dares to utter his name.

The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it’s time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?

 

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Solom: www.hauntedcomputer.com/solom.htm

 

 

Contact me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com because I’d love to know what you think—even if you want to cut my fingers off and feed them to a demon. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.

Thanks to the Microchips: Neal Hock, Gail Lang, Pamela Haworth, and Andy Weeks.

This is a work of fiction. All people, incidents, and places are solely the products of the author’s imagination. The writer begins the journey, but you complete it. . . .

 

Scott

hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com

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