“That’s nice, Jimbo. Once you get that old jalopy of yours running again, anyway.” Maggie’s voice crawled with sarcasm. “Can we go?” she implored. She heard a slight scratching sound.
Outside Maggie’s door, pale fingers felt for the handle.
“Yeah. Just a sec.” Jimmy’s face vanished again, but Maggie still heard his voice. “Look, is there anything we can do to thank you?”
Maggie’s door popped open, and she nearly collapsed in the mud. She would have, if not for the strong arms that caught her. She plucked at them with her fingertips, feeling cold, wormy flesh — they way she imagined the white belly of a catfish would feel just after it was pulled from the river.
Maggie’s mouth dropped open, but no sound escaped, as a rotten hand slipped across her lips. Another set of hands moved over her body, and she squirmed against the invasion. Jimmy's face was pale in the darkness, and she only saw him in profile as the arms dragged her into the thick, swishing grass around the ditch.
“You see, buddy,” Dan said to Jimmy, once Maggie was several yards away, “we’ve been out here a long time. Too long, really. Your girl there … she’s pretty. Earl, Lonnie, me — we’ve been dead a long time, but those urges just don’t go away. It’s real lonely out here.”
Jimmy turned to the car, and caught a glimpse of Maggie’s flailing feet as Dan’s greasy companions pulled her further into the grass. His stomach dropped, his heart throbbed frantically, and something big and hard crashed against the back of his head.
Dan stood over him holding a rusty tire iron. He bent down, breathing his filth on Jimmy's prone form. “Don’t worry, buddy,” he sneered. “We’ll take real good care of her.” Then, he raised the tire iron, and cracked it repeatedly against Jimmy’s skull, until blood and brain matter leaked out.
When he finished, he dragged Jimmy’s body to the ditch and joined his friends across the road.
And so, the Old Flat Mile filled its belly on hot, young blood once again, while its children enjoyed a feast of their own.
6: The Eyes Have It
Calvin sat at his computer with his face bent toward the flat screen, watching as an arrangement of glowing dots came together in the image of a young woman. Her body jutted from a car door at a queer angle, and dark streaks marred her face. The car was inverted, flipped upside down, and resting in a patch of mud. The woman was dead, and this was merely a photograph, a digital copy of the corpse. Calvin found something intoxicating about her eyes and guided the cursor to her face, enlarging the image with a few clicks.
Those eyes were blue, electric, addictive.
The doorbell sent a quick jab into Calvin’s ear. He closed the image and hurried to the door, surprised by a visitor on a Wednesday night. Gina worked on Wednesday’s, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else who cared enough to make a personal visit to the Sentinal’s photographer at home, especially after ten. The wreck, he thought, must be the cops. He shoved his camera bag behind a chair.
Calvin opened the door, and noticed Gina’s eyes were rimmed with red. She held her hands bunched in front and shuddered slightly before opening her mouth. “I quit, Cal. The boss, Brad…he made a pass. Touched me. I pushed him and ran out.”
“C’mon.” He pulled Gina inside, glanced into the night, and shut the door with a hearty click. She crumpled against his chest, sobbing. That son-of-a-bitch, he thought, wrapping Gina’s shoulders with his arms. Calvin had never like Brad, his roving eyes and plastic smile. “It’ll be okay…”
Calvin lay awake, listening to Gina’s breath as she slept next to him. He stared at the ceiling, but thought of the blue eyes in the photo. They had penetrated his lens and pulled his camera — one of those pictures that found him. Those eyes found him; they whispered to him. He was first at the scene of the wreck; the car lay in a ditch as he made his way home from a high school basketball game. Calvin had been the first to call the police.
The dead eyes screamed from across the room. He propped his head under one arm, and turned slightly toward Gina. The thin comforter rose gently with her breath. Calvin forced his brain to conjure her face. He tried to find her cheeks, the gentle curving slope of her chin, her swollen lips, and brown eyes, but the dead girl stared back at him instead, blocking everything in her blue gaze. His head began to ache, a dull, growing pain that squeezed against his skull. The whisper rose again, something white, nearly subliminal, but a voice. He rolled over and smashed his head under a pillow, trying to chase away the whisper.
“You’ll just have to move in.”
Calvin cobbled together his world-famous omelets while Gina leaned on his kitchen counter. She wore an old t-shirt, a knock off from Animal House that simply read “COLLEGE” in block letters. After a small sigh, she said, “Cal, that’s sweet, really. But…”
“But what? I’ve got a steady job. A little too steady maybe.” He glanced past Gina to the desk and his camera bag stuffed behind the chair. “We can make this work. You could start back at school — finish your degree.” He shifted the omelet with a flick of his wrist.
Gina closed her eyes and sighed. “I’ll pay rent, okay. And clean up a bit around here…earn my keep.” She pushed a dirty bowl across the counter to the sink. “Somebody has to.”
Calvin slid her omelet onto a plate. “If you want toast, the bread’s over by the ‘fridge.” He turned back to the stove, cracking two more eggs with a swift motion. “That was me ignoring your not-so-subtle jab, by the way.”
She slid around the counter and wormed between Calvin and the stovetop. “Thank you.”
He dropped the spatula on the counter and laid hands on either side of her face, trying to burn the deep mahogany of her irises into his brain. “I love you, okay? Now move before my eggs burn.”
Before he left for work that morning, he rummaged inside the top drawer of his desk, pushing away old pens and broken pencils until he found an old pocketknife. The blue handle was scratched, and the blade quite dull, but Calvin wrapped it in his hand and pushed it into the depths of his camera bag.
As one of only two photographers on the Sentinel staff, Calvin enjoyed the freedom to roam Springdale during his on-duty hours. A quick tag over his cell phone, and he could be anywhere he was needed in a matter of minutes. The small town life suited him fine — he’d never work too hard and still carry an air of celebrity. Medium fish in a tiny pond. Not wanting any interruptions, Calvin clicked off his phone when he entered the city morgue that morning.
“Well, well, Lenny. I can always count on my favorite minimum wage earning mortician’s assistant to be sitting on his ass.” Calvin worked up his best Cheshire grin.
Thin and pale and wearing a weak goatee, Lenny dropped his feet from the desk and eyed Calvin. “Shit. You gonna get me in trouble again?”
“Me? You’re kidding, right?” Calvin pulled a twenty-dollar-bill from his pocket and folded it in the palm of his hand. “How much laundry did you have to do at your mom’s place to save up for that jersey?” Calvin slipped the bill into Lenny’s boney grip.
“Screw you. This is vintage Magic Johnson. Got it on eBay for a steal. It’s all about timing, knowing what to look for.” Lenny smiled, a weak curling of his lips just above the beard. “Looking for anybody special today?”