Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 (12 page)

“Come on…Come on…” he whispered. “Just pass me by…Pass me by…” He narrowed his eyes as if in prayer, but the sudden sound of the siren—a short, single whoop—told him it was all over.

“Told you. You’re fucked.”

“
Shut
the
Christ
up!”

Mark released the tension in his arms and snapped on his right turn signal before pulling onto the shoulder of the road. The cruiser glided to a stop about twenty feet behind him, the front angled so it pointed back toward the highway. For what seemed entirely too long a time, Mark sat there, tense and staring at the patrolman, who remained in his cruiser. He held a radio microphone in one hand and was talking into it. Mark could see that the patrolman was wearing mirrored shades that—like his windshield—reflected a distorted silvery arc of the surrounding woods.

Mark waited patiently, trying his best to breathe evenly and swallow the sour, dry lump in his throat. His pulse was racing but, at last, the cruiser’s door opened, and the patrolman stepped out onto the roadside. He tilted his head back and adjusted his utility belt.

In Mark’s side-view, he looked to be better than six-feet tall. The window was already rolled down, so Mark just sat there, waiting. He looked up when the patrolman got to the window and leaned down to address him.

“Mornin’,” the trooper said with a thick, Southern accent, but before Mark responded, he took a step away from the car and waved his hand in front of his face.

“Good morning,” Mark managed to say, noting the pinched tone in his voice. He glanced at the GPS unit, ready for it to say something, but it remained silent. The display showed the icon representing Mark’s car, stopped by the side of the road.

“Y’all have any idea why I pulled you over?” the officer asked.

“None whatsoever,” Mark replied, suddenly conscious of how much he sounded like a Yankee. Was that going to work against him here?

“Could I see your license and registration, please? And proof of insurance.”

Mark’s hand was trembling almost out of control as he reached for the glove compartment and snapped it open. He took out the necessary papers and then hitched his hip to one side so he could fish his wallet out of his back pocket to get his license.

“You’re fucked now,” the GPS said, its robotic voice low and grating.

“You say something?” the patrolman asked as he waited patiently.

“Nothing at all,” Mark said as he handed the papers to the officer, who scanned them with an expressionless face. Mark studied his own reflection in the policeman’s mirrored shades, noticing how small and pitiful he looked. After a long, tense moment in which Mark hardly dared to breathe, the patrolman grunted and walked away.

Mark watched as he sat back inside the cruiser and used the radio again, obviously checking to see if there were any outstanding warrants on him. He wiped the sweat from his face with the flat of his hand and tried not to breathe the fetid air in the motionless car. Now that he was stopped, he realized how bad it was and told himself he would have to do something about it soon.

After what seemed like forever, the patrolman, still unsmiling, got out of the cruiser and walked back to Mark’s car. His mirrored shades reflected the graveled roadside.

“You got a problem with your headlights,” the officer said.

“I’ve got ’em on,” Mark said, perhaps a bit defensively as he glanced at the switch to confirm they were on. “I know we’re supposed to keep ’em on for this stretch of road.”

“Your left light’s burned out,” the patrolman said, nodding to indicate the front of the car.

“Really? Son of a gun,” Mark said, trying hard not to let his relief show.

Maybe the truck driver hadn’t reported him after all. Maybe this was just a routine stop.

“You’re from Maine, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where you headed?”

“Florida,” Mark said, terribly aware of the tightness in his voice. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. “Going down to visit my…uh, my brother in—ahh, Melbourne. I—umm, you see, my wife and I split up, and I…I’m thinking of moving down south with my son to—you know, to get away from it all. Start over.”

“I’m going to have to write you a warning,” the patrolman said, indicating that he had zero interest in Mark’s personal problems. “You’ll want to have that headlight attended to as soon as you can…especially if you intend to drive at night in these parts.”

“I will. For sure. Yes, sir. First chance I get.”

“Wait here,” the trooper said.

Mark realized he’d been talking too fast, and he couldn’t catch his breath as he watched the patrolman walk back to his cruiser still holding his license and registration. After getting back into the cruiser, he set about writing something on a clipboard.

“You haven’t fooled him, you know,” the GPS said, its voice so soft and low and grating.

Still staring into the rearview, Mark hissed it to silence, but it didn’t do any good.

“You don’t think he’s on to you? For fuck’s sake! He knows all about you. He knows what you did. He’s fucking with you.”

Mark wanted to deny this, but his tongue was frozen to the roof of his mouth as he waited for the patrolman to return with his license and registration and the written warning. He tried not to think that, just like the truck driver, this cop was screwing with him. Both of them were busting his balls because they enjoyed watching him squirm.

“You’ll never get away with it,” the GPS said. “He knows. Everyone knows. Every car that’s passed you by since you left Maine…every driver and every passenger knows
exactly
what you did.”

“Will you
shut
the fuck
up?”
Mark said, his voice strangled as he stared into the rearview mirror, trying to look perfectly normal.

After what seemed like an hour but was really less than five minutes, the cruiser door opened again, and the patrolman sauntered back to Mark’s car. He didn’t smile when he handed the papers and the warning to Mark through the open window.

“I noticed you got a problem with your rear tire, too,” the policeman said.

“A problem?” Mark’s voice was an octave higher than normal.

“Looks like you’ve lost a lot of air. It’s almost flat. Do you have a spare?”

Mark swallowed hard and nodded but was unable to speak.

“You might want to change it now. I’ll stay behind you with my lights on so you’ll be safe.”

“I think I can make it—”

“I can’t let you drive off with your tire in that condition, sir.”

The officer leaned closer to the window, his shades reflecting the inside of Mark’s car like a kaleidoscope. Mark’s heart was pounding high and fast in his throat when he looked at the GPS unit. His ears started buzzing as he waited for it to say something that the patrolman would hear.

“If you don’t do that right now, sir, I’ll have to call a wrecker to come and remove your car from the highway.”

Seeing no way out of this, Mark reached under the dashboard and popped the latch to release the trunk. The sudden snapping sound was like a kick to the gut, and Mark’s left hand was greasy with sweat that slipped on the handle when he opened the driver’s door.

“You’re fucked for sure now,” the GPS said, but its metallic voice was so low Mark could barely hear it. He knew the patrolman hadn’t.

His legs felt like they were stuffed with straw as he walked to the back of the car. A sudden concussion slammed the air when an eighteen-wheeler—
the
eighteen-wheeler—sped by followed by a long, trailing blast of its air horn.

Mark smiled wanly, convinced now that the GPS had been right.

This cop
did
know!

So did the truck driver!

Everyone
knew!

“All I have is one of them donut spare tires,” Mark said, glancing at the expressionless face of the patrolman. The curvature of his mirror shades reflected the roadside and Mark and his car. “It ain’t much.”

“It’ll get you to the next town. The exit’s less than six miles from here. You can buy a new tire there.”

Mark nodded but still was unable to move to the car trunk. He couldn’t open it, not with this cop standing here; but he also couldn’t avoid it or talk his way out of it. A sudden high-pitched buzzing filled his head like he’d stepped on a beehive. It took him a paralyzed moment to realize that it was the GPS unit, talking in the car. He couldn’t make out anything it was saying, but the patrolman cocked his head to one side and listened. His expression remained perfectly fixed as the voice of the GPS filled Mark’s head.

“Whatever you do, don’t look in the trunk!” the GPS unit said.

Mark glanced at the patrolman and saw that he was staring at him, now with a cold, downright mean expression.

“Go on,” the cop said, his voice as toneless and merciless as the GPS’s. “Open the trunk.”

Mark swallowed once—hard—and then his fingers hooked under the metal edge of the trunk latch and pulled up. The trunk rose slowly on rusted hinges, and there on the floor of the trunk, lying in tight fetal positions, was the body of his son, Jeff. The stench of rotting flesh after four days arose like a noxious cloud. Jeff’s abdomen was swollen with gas, looking like he had a huge beach ball tucked under his shirt. The skin around his mouth had turned purple, and his pale lips were pulled back, exposing his teeth in a wide, gruesome grin. His eyes were closed as though he slept, but there was no peace in the expression on his face.

Mark had to turn away, but he could still see his dead son reflected in the patrolman’s mirrored shades. The patrolman turned away, too, and let out a long, agonized moan from somewhere deep inside him. Then he leaned over, his hands braced on both knees, and vomited onto the side of the road.

“He’s my son…” Mark said, his voice strangled with emotion. “They’ll find her back at the house, but I…I couldn’t leave him back there with her…not with that bitch!”

*****

Under his own name,
Rick Hautala
has written more than thirty novels, including the million-copy bestseller
Nightstone
, as well as
Winter Wake
,
The Mountain King
, and
Little Brothers
. He has published two short story collections:
Bedbugs
and
Occasional Demons
. A new collection,
The Back of Beyond
, is due soon. He has had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines. Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers
The White Room
,
Looking Glass
,
Follow,
and
Unbroken
. His forthcoming books include the “Little Brothers” novella
Indian Summer,
three novels:
Star Road
,
Waiting,
and
Chills
, and a collection of novellas titled
Yesternight
.

Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick is a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. His three children are all grown up. He lives in southern Maine with author Holly Newstein.

For more information, check out his website www.rickhautala.com.

LOOK BEHIND YOU

Eric Shapiro

1.

“Dad,” I ask him, as he’s about to die, “what happened to Mom? You have to tell me.”

2.

“Son,” he says, ’cause he’s from a generation where fathers say that, “you know I like to keep certain things private.”

3.

But I asked him anyway, for three simple reasons:

The first was that time we were walking in Connecticut. 1987. It was him and me and my Uncle Joey. Just shopping, nothing dramatic. But Uncle Joey made it dramatic. He turned to my dad and said, “Did you hear that Beth died?”

Strange, that question. Since Beth was my mother. Uncle Joey: her brother. Why would Joey know and not my dad? More to the point:
What
did both of them know that I did not?

I didn’t ask any such questions, though. My dad, he’s got a wall around him. You don’t just bring things up; everything is delicate.

The second reason was because that service was a scam. One of those ones that you find on the web. They say they’ll look into your family heritage. I emailed and explained that my mom had vanished when I was a boy, and that I didn’t really remember her, and that my dad had kept her fate a secret.

I would have thrown in the Uncle Joey story, but that would have been like giving hints to a psychic.

According to their info, she died in a mental hospital. The Allison Facility in Southern Maryland. Only that was just bullshit. Know why? ’Cause five years later, at a New Year’s Eve party, I met a girl who used the very same service. Her aunt had gone missing. Her supposed fate? You guessed it: The Allison Facility. The capper was when the girl reached into her purse and showed me the document.

Same as mine,
exactly
. The crinkles and blotches. Identical.

My mother still lost.

Reason three: the emphysema. It’s got my dad’s lungs all crunched and crusted. He’s readying himself to go, and I’m intent upon getting the story before he does.

4.

The word
intrepid
is in my mind. That’s what they call reporters who go bravely after facts, no? Only I’m an accountant, and not brave so much as goddamn curious.

“My son,” he says, for he wants to be affectionate, “you are better off not knowing.”

“I don't agree,” I say. “This is part of my history. I feel that I deserve to know.”

In his eyes, I see a genuine pain. That’s when I know that (more reporter talk?) I have him. The pain’s there ’cause he’s conflicted, and would like to spill what’s what. It’s now on me to tip him toward what’s right.

“Dad,” I go, “you shouldn’t carry this. Whatever it is; it shouldn’t die with you.”