ISBN 1-59201-012-1
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
http://www.booksunbound.com
Publication April, 2003
Cover Art by D. Lee
Mean Spirit
J. Clayton Rogers
Copyright 2002.
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Those were not my daughter's
footsteps upstairs.
Ever since her mother's death,
she had been the only lightweight in the house. My own ponderous footfalls
could be seismic if I did not take care. Though I had never made pro, my old
ambition hunkered in my linesman bones, while age and an appetite for junk food
lockstepped at my beltline.
I raised the slice of cold
pizza, but before my hand reached my mouth there fell another step directly
overhead. The congealed cheese and pepperoni turned pasty and sour-looking
with the thought that Diane might be violating our solemn agreement.
Nothing in writing, hardly
spoken. But my daughter knew I had qualms about boys after midnight. I could
barely tolerate them in the house at dinnertime. They were in the cracks, like
vermin. I would find them in the basement, the den, even in the attic. ("It's
perfectly innocent, Dad. He's never heard of a steamer trunk. I wanted to
show...")
My subjective patriarchal
opinion, that my daughter had grown into a great beauty, was objectified by
scores of beaus and wannabes. Her sensuality was textured, a rich density of
layers. Men had only to glance at her to be stunned. When she grinned a
certain way she betrayed a quizzical wantonness, as though she couldn't credit
the hormonal storm in her wake. She had only to give that grin a little twist
to don her mother's refined intelligence. But though she made occasional
attempts to fill her mother's shoes, she never managed to control my more
vulgar impulses. Especially my yen for cold pizza in the wee hours.
Footfall.
A boy? A man. Two years out
of high school, she had left the boys behind long ago. Catching hints of my
daughter's progress was my avocation. They came like scalded moths off a
flame, hot fiery wings in the form of outbursts on the phone, or a name etched
in verbal acid. "No, I'm not seeing Bill anymore." Or, "Mike? Oh,
him
. Credit me with half a brain, Dad."
But the flood of men had
slackened dramatically four months ago when she began dating seriously a doctor
she had met on one of her temp jobs.
"What kind of doctor?" I'd
asked when she offered this smidgen of information.
"What does it matter?"
"Well, this is a big leap from
the jock and jerk set, don't you think? He must be ten years older than you,
at least. Hell... my age..."
"Dad, why do you have to....
He's a sexologist." She choked with laughter at my look of alarm. "Dad,
you're a used car salesman."
"Hey, most of what I sell is--"
"Straight out of the factory, I
know. But as you're so fond of saying, most of the money's in the clunkers on
the back lot."
"So?"
"So how can you swallow a
whopper from your own daughter?"
"He's not a sexologist?"
"OK, he's a neurologist.
Happy?"
"Married?"
"Dad! He's--"
Footfall.
Was there a doctor in the house?
I carefully rested the slice
back on its cardboard platter. I wasn't so shaken as to drop it on the floor.
Why waste good pizza just because the house was settling, or because a raccoon
was on the roof, or because Diane was treading more heavily than usual on her
way to the bathroom, or....
I slowly closed the
refrigerator door, its magnetic clasp cinching silently.
If I had any sense I would try
to creep back to my bedroom without being seen or heard. Diane was an adult,
after all. More, she was a tenant. She insisted on paying rent and on
splitting the utilities. On those terms, she had certain rights. It was time
to let go the hammerhold of that perfectly natural/unnatural papa jealousy,
with its too-obvious, sinister undertones. Besides, there were parents who put
up with much worse than their daughters' boyfriends finding their way under the
virginal sheets. Much worse.
But why
now
? Only a day after Jerry Mason--
Thud
.
That sounded like it came from
the top of the stairs. If so, it was too late to sneak back to my bedroom. I
could play mouse in the kitchen. But whoever it was would know I was up and
about. Dousing the light would be pointless. From the top step he would see
it go off. Besides, that would plunge him in total darkness. A misstep, a
long tumble down the stairs, and hello lawsuit. Or worse.
No, it was best to confront
coital reality. Go out through the living room, stumble across him as he
neared the front door, appear surprised....
A real face-to-facer. Man to
man. Begin a conversation. Casually. Sit him down for a beer. Maybe even
find out something about him. Like what his wife's name was.
I took a few steps across the
floor. Why was I tiptoeing in my own house? Why was my fist balled? This was
no way to greet a guest. And Diane was neither saint nor nun. It had been
years since her purse fell open and I'd seen the dainty little pill container
shaped like a chlamys. She had looked up and I could see it had not been an
accident. She was sending me a message.
The
message. You know that little dad 'n daughter talk you were planning? Forget
it.
She was seventeen. Jane had
been dead over half a year. I didn't have a clue. I stared. Diane had made a
callous attempt to pat my grief away.
So I couldn't shove this guy's
head down the toilet for nailing my little girl. The real culprit was Diane.
She knew I didn't want this kind of thing going on while I was in the house.
We had an agreement. Unspoken, perhaps. But a custom held so long it
practically stood the test of law.
Well, I could clock the guy and
claim I thought he was a burglar...
Jesus....
Anne Mason coming home, finding
Jerry in his workshop, half of him still propped on the bandsaw....
The thought rammed me head-on.
Jerry had been a little guy, but tough. No one on the lot had been surprised
to learn he had been a bouncer in his younger days. Horsing around on a slow
day, he'd nearly managed to wrestle one of my feet off the ground. Me. And
yet someone had picked him up like a strip of tofu and--
Maybe this guy wasn't a beau at
all. And he was upstairs. Diane...
Ready to wallop, I stormed into
the living room.
There was one last thump at the
top of the stairs, and then--
The kitchen light went out. I
banged my toe on the couch.
I held my shout of pain. More
than one? Was there someone else?
Behind
me?
I listened for movement. I
jumped at a sudden spate of cracks and thumps. The refrigerator's ice maker.
Shut the hell up....
There were two entrances to the
kitchen. But I couldn't picture it. How could he have sneaked behind me like
that?
No sounds, either from the
kitchen or the stairs. I knew those steps. If the guy upstairs had any meat
on him, once he started down there was sure to be some creaking.
"Ohhh..."
The last time my hair stood on
end was when I had faced Black Jack Funk across a scrimmage line and realized
my dream of a career in the NFL was about to come to an abrupt and crushing
end. But that "Oh" was like a sheet of ice nipping my nerve-tops. I stopped
breathing. Where had it come from? All I knew was that it had been the voice
of a man. But...not quite....
I eased away from the couch. I
was wary of the living room chandelier. I'd raised it nearly to the ceiling,
but even with the lights on I still occasionally managed to bump my head on it
and jangle the crystal teardrops.
It was while thinking of the
chandelier that I--
heard
it. The crystals were emitting an eerie hum just above my head to the left.
The sounds, the light going out...a mini-quake? I'd never been in one, but it
was the only explanation that made sense.
Except for that "Oh."
A jarring thud on the stairs
sent the teardrop crystals into a tizzy. Then another thud. It sounded like
something huge falling down the stairs. I ran forward. If the guy upstairs
had slipped the time to finish him off was when he reached bottom. Quickly,
before whoever was in the kitchen added his weight.
But the thumping abruptly broke
into a thousand smaller sounds, as though a giant bulb had broken and tiny
glass shards were flying everywhere, then settling in a jagged powder on the
floor.
That was what it sounded like.
A streetlight down the block
backlit the flower-and-vine patterns of the picture window's curtain. Neither
Diane nor I had the desire or will to change the decor my wife had chosen
fifteen years ago.
Enough light filtered through
so that, slowly, I began to discern dim forms. The swivel arm of the
free-standing lamp. The low silhouette of the club chair.
Something hissed. By a stretch
of the imagination, it could have been interpreted as the sound made by a man
in pain sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. The hiss wasn't steady. It
seemed broken into logical segments. Subject, verb, predicate...something that
could be parsed.
"You want to repeat that,
buddy?"
In more ways than one it was a
stupid thing to say. The dark hid me as much as the intruders. I was giving
away my position. It was a careless moment born of my habit of intimidating
would-be bullies with sheer size. Rotund I might be. But so is George Foreman.
More to the point, why was I
asking someone to repeat a
hiss
?
It began again. The hiss.
Slower now. Leaning forward, I would have sworn I heard "Let your conscience
be your guide" embedded in the long slur.
"Yeah, buddy. Well, as soon as
I get this light on, I'll guide my fist right down your throat. And that goes
for your sneaky little backup, too."
Visual deprivation gave sight
to my fingertips. Not very good sight, but as I held out my hand I sensed I
was within inches of the light switch.
Snap
!
Blue light arced, giving me a
brief glimpse of the switch as the short caught my fingertip. With an
involuntary yelp I jumped back, nearly tripping over a padded footrest.
"Dammit!"
The night vision I'd won during
my brief foray in the dark was ruined. Even the streetlight didn't help. The
only thing I saw was the blue-bolt afterimage staining my retina.
How could that have happened? I
wondered as I flexed my benumbed index finger. I'd seen the switch plate when
the tiny bolt flared. There was no hint of burn, no telltale odor of crossed
wires.
The chandelier's crystal
teardrops shed sound, as if caught in a breeze. At the periphery of my flash
half-blindness I discerned the shifting of the curtains' floral pattern. But
it wasn't a draft. It was a cold front right there in my living room. I
shivered as it embraced me. There was an almost gelatinous thickness to it.
My nose felt icy. My nasal passages stuffed up, as though I was catching a
summer cold. The miniature front was so physical I was pushed back, not
stopping until I reached the far wall and felt the fireplace mantelpiece press
into my shoulder blades. I was too bewildered to be afraid. My rational
instinct, such as it was, said the power surge had caused a glitch in the AC.
Nothing too out of the ordinary.
The same couldn't be said for
the faint, amorphous pulse that began floating across the room toward me.
Pulse. Not light, not a superimposed darkness, not solid--but
there
. A pulse. I balled my fist. The pulse halted and hovered in the center of
the living room. Well, that was something. Maybe it was only a man, after all,
looking screwy because my eyesight was scrambled. And yet it definitely
appeared that there was no link between the pulse and the floor, nothing that
could be interpreted as a pair of legs.
The hair rising on the back of
my neck punctuated the evidence before me. Was it really possible? I took the
bull by the horns.
"Jane?"
The spark's afterglow was
fading. It didn't help much. The pulse remained a non-form. Could it be her?
If so, why the malevolent behavior? Our life together had begun great and had
ended as well as it could in the agony of metastasis.
Another possibility constricted
my throat.
"Jerry...?" I said in a
quivering voice.
The morning of the day he had
been murdered I had chewed him out royally for guiding his third customer in a
row to the back lot. I'd known he was low on cash, but to talk customers into
buying used instead of new put a big crimp in the dealership's quota. I'd sent
him home early--just in time to meet the killer or killers in his house. If
anyone had reason to hold a grudge, it was the ghost of Jerry Mason.
"Jerry?" I repeated.
Something pressed the center of
my forehead. I reached up, but there was nothing to grab. I tried to step
forward. The icy metallic finger held me in place.
Now I was scared. For me to be
unable to force an opponent back on his heels, at the very least, was cause for
alarm. Black Jack might have been able to end a promising career, but he'd
paid a serious bruising for the effort.
Then the hissing, again. Only
now, encoded between two sibilant tags, a single word was uttered by my
invisible foe:
"Pow..."
The lights came on. I was
alone in the room.
I chanced a step forward. The
opposing force was gone. The temperature had returned to normal.
Diane!
I raced upstairs as fast as my
quaking legs and bulky body would allow. Even in my heyday I wasn't built for
speed. And for no reason I could see, pain shot up my right leg. But I tore
through her bedroom door in my best time ever.
All her life Diane had been a
heavy sleeper. When an appliance delivery man's hand truck had slipped and our
new refrigerator had gone crashing to the floor, the whole house had shaken.
Diane had come home late from her junior prom and stayed in bed until noon.
When she finally came down and saw the damage done to the kitchen's linoleum
floor, she asked what had happened.
"You didn't
hear
?" Jane asked in her amazement at her daughter. Everything Jane did during
those days was wonderful, no matter how insignificant. That's how you feel
when cancer is in remission. Or think it is. The refrigerator was one of
those purchases you make to confirm your optimism.
"Hear what?" Diane had queried
calmly, wiping sleep out of her eyes.
Yet the noise of this night had
far outstripped the clumsy deliveryman. I couldn't help but be startled to
find Diane still fast asleep. She was lying on top of her covers. She would
be furious that I had entered uninvited. But whatever had been in the house
had been up here. Not even Diane could prevent me from making sure she was all
right.
I approached her bed. She was
curled on her side, facing me. The pose was a little too provocative for
comfort, yet I couldn't look away. Was she breathing?
"Diane?"
Her arm was draped across a
pillow, as though she was hugging someone. Who did her surrogate bedfellow
represent? I too hugged pillows in bed. But I dreamt of Jane less frequently,
now.
"Diane?"
I sat on the edge of the
mattress and took hold of her hand. Small, but warm. Looking closely at her
face, I saw several strands of hair quiver near her mouth. Utter oblivion, but
alive. I glanced around. There seemed no sign that anyone else had been in
here, but I entered the room rarely and couldn't say for sure if anything was
out of place.
Still fast asleep, she made a
half turn toward her stomach. Her long, narrow fingers slipped between mine.
I chose to interpret it as an unconscious act of affection. I didn't want to
let go, but I found her near-nudity disconcerting. I compromised by averting
my eyes.
I caught my reflection in her
dresser mirror. Even from ten feet away the round, barrel-sized impression on
my forehead was unmistakable. "Jesus..."
Diane squeezed my hand. It was
a remarkable grip, considering she was sleeping and her hand was not quite half
the size of my own. Her palm against my palm, her fingers could barely make it
through mine to interlace. Yet before I knew it I was hooked in a painful
clasp.
I wasn't one to crush anyone's
hand in a firm-but-friendly handshake. The advantage of being big is that I
can intimidate just by standing on my two legs. On the other hand, being more
than less on the chubby side, I could be seen as harmlessly big and jolly--the
Santa complex. It was the combination that made me an effective salesman.
Potential customers would look at me and think this guy seems cheerful, nice,
perhaps even semi-honest. Of course, if I don't buy a car from him, he seems
perfectly capable of turning me into a Budget Gourmet.
I hardly ever took the effort
to overawe. But if some character tried to test my mettle with a macho
squeeze, he always walked away grinning to hide his grimace. Diane might work
out occasionally, but I'd never known her to possess anything like brute
strength.
"Diane..."
I stood and tried to pull away.
"Diane!"
It felt as though my palm was
about to be pushed through the back of my hand. I pulled so hard I was certain
Diane would be yanked out of bed. Yet it was as if she was cemented in place.
The bed shook as I struggled to release myself, but Diane was as indifferent as
a girl sunning herself on a yacht. I leaned close to her face and screamed, "
Diane!
"
Her eyes fluttered. She let go
as I gave one final, mighty yank. I fell my entire length on the floor.
"Dad?" She sat up, blinking
sleep out of her eyes. Seeing me dazed on the floor she got up to help. But
when I lifted my head she grew shy in her thin shift and sat on the edge of the
bed, drawing a sheet over her breasts. "Are you all right? Can you get up?
What are you doing in here? Did you knock?"
"I..."
She flung the bedsheet aside
and crouched next to me.
"Dad! Your head! Did you bang
it on the door?"
Author's Biography
Born and raised in Virginia, J. Clayton Rogers lives in Richmond, where he
indulges in his favorite pastimes: reading, writing and hiking; along with his
library card and his 10,000 books, his favorite possession is his free pass to
all of the state parks in Virginia, a benefit available to employees of the
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. His inglorious past has
included jobs ranging from kitchen help (at Disney World) to golf tour lackey
to convenience store clerk to insurance claims adjuster to homeowners
property/casualty analyst. Mr. Rogers has made the rather bogus assertion that
writing would be a snap if it weren't for all the cats leaping onto his notepad
and keyboard.
Along with his wife, Christiane, he cares for 22 stray felines that have found
their way to his door. Mr. Rogers cannot lay claim to being a great linguist.
In eleven years of marriage to his French wife, he has not gone much beyond
"Bonjour" and "Je voudrais le cendrier, s'il vous plait." Productive if not
prolific, he is the author of 15 novels. He is currently working on
Passenger
, the tale of a boy haunted by a mysterious entity from the future.
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