Dead Reflections (25 page)

“You have too much to drink, man?” I asked him. As far as I knew, he’d only had a couple of beers so far, but maybe he’d gotten into a hard shot or two while my back had been turned.

“I don’t feel so good,” Jay told me. He took a deep breath, then clutched at his stomach and heaved. “Haven’t for a few weeks now.”

“Well, why haven’t you gone to see a doctor?”

He shrugged. “Just the flu, maybe. It’ll pass.”

“Maybe not with the kind of bugs going around these days.”

A stream of puke came out of him, splashing into the toilet and over the edge of the seat. At the same time, I felt this cold breeze squirrel past the back of my neck, and with it came a smell that was different from the stink of hops and stomach acid filling the room. It made me think of wet leaves and old wood, the aroma of things gone soft with rot. It was the odor of still, quiet places: basements, closed attics…

“Hey man,” I stepped forward to help him up. That’s when I saw the blood in the toilet water; ropy strings of fresh, red blood mixed in with chunks of food and beer.

“You’re bleeding,” I said, feeling stupid stating the obvious. It came to me that the flu doesn’t cause you to hemorrhage. Time stopped, these moments that dangle in front of your face like a spider on a filament of web. I saw Jay heave again and more blood came out of him. The water in the toilet bowl turned a deep crimson.

“I’ve had some s-stomach pains for a while,” he began. He gripped both sides of the toilet seat with his hands. I saw his skin had gone pale.

“Jay, let me help you up. I’ll drive you to the doctor.” I glanced through the small window above the toilet tank. It faces the parking lot behind the bar. It’s a small window, no curtain, grimy with dust. Caught within the window frame like a nightmarish work of art was the black limousine. Its headlamps faced me. They blinked on and the light that came out of them was as red as the blood in the toilet. A trickle of exhaust formed a bluish cloud behind it.

“Jay, stand up,” I said. “Gimme your arm, man.” I recognized what the limousine wanted. I didn’t know what condition Jay might have had, but I knew it was serious. I had to get him out of there, away from the vehicle that waited for him in the back of the bar. There was that smell again, the stink of worms on a rainy day and something more rank—the door to the washroom blew wide open on a gust of it and I retched. I felt Jay go limp against me.

“Jay, no!” I screamed. I dug my fingers around his wrist, gripping him. His pulse was barely discernible, as soft as an insect under fabric. I felt my head crick up on my neck, against my will, so that I stared at the limousine. Although I still gripped Jay’s arm, I watched him walk across the parking lot towards the limo. He looked as real out there as he did in here.

“Don’t get in that car!” The limo’s rear left door opened and Jay hesitated for a moment. He looked dubious as he bent to peer into the car’s interior.

“Jay!” I screamed. Then, he seemed intrigued by something in the limo. I watched him lean toward it, until he was inside. The limo’s door shut behind him and the car pulled forward, coming at me with its fiery lamps. It swerved at the last second, barely missing the bathroom wall, then it was gone.

I struggled for breath and glanced down at the man whose wrist I still held, and whom I’d just witnessed, impossibly, getting into that rancid vehicle. His wrist was limp and I could not detect a pulse.

* * *

Autopsy results confirmed what I’d suspected: Jay’s innards had been riddled with cancer. But that’s not what bothered me the most. When I’d been asked by the others in the bar, and the police who followed up, what had happened in the bathroom, all I could bring myself to say was that I’d found him up-chucking blood into the toilet, and that he’d died while I’d tried to help him to his feet. I couldn’t admit the part about looking through that window and seeing that ghastly car waiting out there for him; waiting like a hungry dog with its eyes on a close bone.

Everywhere I went, I kept an eye out for that limousine. I didn’t see it directly again, but gossip spread that it had made a couple more visits over the week after Jay had died. It had idled in front of the retirement home over on Addison Street; an old woman had been wheeled out into an ambulance a short while later, DOA at the hospital. It had appeared again in front of the house of a suicidal teenager who’d left a note with melancholy song lyrics that recited a message about burning bridges. No one could ever make out the face of the driver. And why would they. I suspected it would be faceless.

Angry, I sat in Kenny’s this afternoon, a glass of ale in my hand, my thoughts scattered. The bar was filled. Kenny, Dewey, and a co-worker of mine, Tommy Miller sat around the wood stove. Kenny had stoked it with good rock maple. Despite the full heat that thing gave out, I felt chilled. Everyone was talking about that damned limo.

“We have to find that thing and run them out of town,” Kenny said, irate. Despite the ‘No Smoking’ ban, he lit a cigarette and took a long, shaky drag before expelling the smoke toward the ceiling.

“Who do you think they are?” Dewey challenged them. “Pickering likely had debts. You want to mess with people like that?”

Kenny guffawed. “Well, are we all just going to sit here feeling scared like a bunch of schoolgirls?”

I couldn’t bring myself to admit what I saw in the bar’s bathroom last week—how that car waited for Jay out in the parking lot and how I watched his double-step into it just before his pulse left his body. I didn’t think anyone would believe me, but worse, they might challenge me as to why I hadn’t run out to that limo when it had happened. I knew why: because I was scared. Scared of what I’d find if I looked inside that thing, and more frightened of being swept up into it. I knew what the limousine was. It had arrived to collect and it was leaving its calling card in different places around the town, just like it and others like it did in every town and city around the world, every second of every day.

“I don’t know if you can run this thing out of anywhere,” I said, morose. “You can’t halt the inevitable.”

Kenny eyed me. “I have me an F150 with a mounted shovel hitch, deer lights, and a shotgun between the seats. That sneaky mother wants to try anything else, he’s gonna face my music.”

“And what, exactly, do you propose to do when you find it and whoever’s driving it?” Tommy asked. He looked about as calm as the rest of us. We all just sat there, some of us tapping our fingers on the tabletop, others smoking quietly, and still others just watching everyone else. We’d all become edgy. Outside, a tailpipe popped, making us all jump.

“Threaten them with death or some serious pain,” Kenny said, serious.

I almost laughed. Almost.

“You have any better plans, sunshine?” Kenny squared his gaze at me.

I sat for a moment, thinking. I felt a trickle of condensation slide down my glass and ease its way into the edge of my sleeve, turning my wrist cold. Its headlamps as red as Jay’s blood in the toilet bowl.

“I wouldn’t go looking for trouble, if I were you.”

“Chickenshit,” Kenny said.

“Maybe,” said I. We stared hard at each other. Finally, he looked away.

* * *

The limousine showed up again that evening, this time in front of Kenny’s house. I know because I got the call from him shortly after 7 pm. I’d just finished eating supper and had settled down to watch a television show when my wife, Cara, motioned for me to take the phone.

“It’s Kenny Goodman,” she said. “He sounds upset.”

I sat forward and my stomach curled around itself in a little knot. I took the phone.

“What’s up, man?”

“It’s here.”

“What’s…” I began, then stopped, understanding.

“In front of my house—just sitting there,” Kenny’s voice broke off. He lived alone, divorced for years, his only son grown and gone.

“Is anyone else with you?” I asked.

“No.”

I heard him swallow, this dry click that echoed into the telephone receiver, and I knew he was scared.

“Call the police, Kenny. It’ll take me twenty minutes to get there.”

Silence.

“Its windows are tinted and all I can see in them is the reflection from the streetlamp,” he continued. “I want to kill the bastard driving it.”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t think that was possible; that it would work the other way around.

“Do you have anything wrong with you, Kenny?” I asked him. “Any illness or something?” He didn’t answer me for a long moment.

“No. Why?”

“Just wondering,” I mumbled. I felt scared for him. My hands shook.

“I’m on my way. Don’t go out there.”

I went to put the receiver down when I heard him say the words, “Its door’s opening.”

“What?” I barked into the phone, but the line went dead. When I called him back, the line just rang. I grabbed my truck keys, and on second thought, went for the hunting rifle I kept locked in a cupboard upstairs.

“What are you doing?” Cara followed me from room to room. “What’s going on with Kenny?”

“I don’t know,” I grabbed a box of shells and stuffed them into my jacket pocket. “But I want you to promise me something—if you’re about the town and see a black limousine anywhere…you get away from it as quickly as possible. You understand?”

“I’ve heard other people talking about it,” she said, her eyes wide with fright. “What is that car?”

“Stay in the house and keep the doors locked. You hear?”

“I hear,” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

Death is what’s wrong
, I thought,
and it seems hungry for the flavor of Tayside lately.
If we’d never noticed the limousine before it was because it hadn’t come around for anyone we knew intimately before this.

* * *

I reached Kenny’s street. The whole time I drove, I kept asking myself what the heck I thought I was doing. What did I propose to do once I got there? Shove a shotgun into the face of Fate and cock it? Blow the headless head off of something I couldn’t see? For that matter, what might I see if I got a look inside that car?

Kenny lived on an unpaved road. It contained two street lamps that burned like watery yellow eyes against the night. His house was the last one on the road before it ended in an abrupt shock of field grass, woods, and cow fencing.

I didn’t see the limousine anywhere. My gaze shifted over to Kenny’s place. Only his front parlor was lit. The rest of the house was dark. His truck sat silent in the driveway. It struck me that maybe I should have called one or two of the boys to come out here with me; create a little posse of sorts to deal with this. I would have loved some company. I became aware of how still and cold the night was. Mist turned to ice pellets, ticking off the windshield and melting from the truck’s heater. I had to get it done. I had to find him. Kenny was a good friend and part of the community’s business backbone.

“Damn,” I muttered. I killed the truck’s engine and gripped the loaded rifle. I mounted his porch and rapped hard on the door.

“Kenny? It’s me.” No answer. I tried the door knob and the door opened. I stuck my head inside and yelled his name again. Still nothing. I crept into the landing and peered around the living room. A lamp provided soft illumination. A newspaper lay open on the coffee table. The house settled around me; a clock somewhere in the background ticked off seconds. The furnace popped on with a soft hum. I could sense him nearby, somewhere, in or around the house.

“Kenny! Answer me if you hear me.”

A footstep made a floorboard squeak in a room off to my left. I felt my hair prickle along my scalp. I cocked the rifle and, swallowing hard, moved towards the room in question. In a darkened house, my eyes needed time to adjust. I approached what I knew was his kitchen. It was in the back of the house, the windows along one wall facing the yard and fields behind him. I came around the corner, both hands on the rifle and raising it into firing position when I saw his outline in the window. Kenny stood on the other side of the glass…stood on the back porch, his face looking in at me through the window. His form was dark with shadow, but his eyes were wide and scared. Then he was bathed in dark red light, like a spotlight coming on behind him, and I knew. Kenny began to turn around.

“Don’t go near it!” I screamed. I ran towards the kitchen door, my hands frozen to the rifle, watching him walk away from me—and tripped over something on the floor. I went reeling, dropping the weapon, which clattered away from me and slid along the smooth kitchen floor. I landed hard against a wall and took a moment to right my balance and stare at what I’d just tripped over.

Kenny’s body lay on the floor, his head and torso under the shadow of the kitchen table, his legs extended out.

“Oh, my God no…” I mumbled. I slapped along walls, searching for a light switch; found one, and the room flooded with natural light. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose, and a large, purple welt adorned the left side of his head just above his temple. Clearly, he’d fallen in the dark, fallen trying to run from something.

I spun about and saw the blood-red headlamps pull back from the yard and spin around the corner of the house towards the street again. I felt, more than saw the shape of the limousine sweep past the house, but as it did I saw Kenny’s face framed in the ruby square of its open rear window. We looked at each other: me, one of his best buddies, standing in his kitchen with his body behind me, and whatever remained of the man I’d known and drank with for years now sitting inside the car. He looked resigned. I saw others sitting in the car with him. Someone pulled him back from the window and the opaque glass slid shut, shutting the view of his face.

“Why?” I screamed at him. I flew out onto the porch and gripped the rail in time to hear the limousine’s tires crunch over gravel and then the sound stopped entirely. I caught a whiff of a foul odor that made me gag; it smelled of death. I rushed back through the house and into the street again, in time to see the car lifting off the road and soaring into the air where it became highlighted for a few seconds in a flurry of ice crystals, its fiery headlamps creating a ribbon of crimson ahead of it, and then the crystals thickened into snow and the shape disappeared. The street fell silent again; just me, my idling truck, and Kenny’s empty house behind me…