The Reality Conspiracy (16 page)

He lay back on his pillow and thought about his dead wife. Angie, and of the children they never got around to having. She had left him alone—and the pain had been tremendous—but he had never been lonely, not real gut-squeezing, empty-hearted, bullet-to-the-head lonely, until his friend Stuart Dubois had—

Had what?

With the thought of Stuart. Alton's tension returned. He knew he'd better get up, start doing something, anything, so he wouldn't have to think. This was almost a conditioned reaction: every time Stu came to mind, Alton experienced panic. Why? Stu had been his good friend—his best friend, actually—after Angie had died. Alton didn't want to stop thinking of him altogether.

He got out of bed and pulled on his slipper socks. Then, naked, he padded downstairs to the bathroom. An agonizing pressure strained his bladder, reminding him of the two six-packs he'd polished off last night before he dared to attempt sleep.

After relieving himself, Alton stood in front of the sink and slapped cold well water against his face. He lifted his gaze, expecting to see how horrible he looked, forgetting that he had painted over the bathroom mirror because he simply couldn't stand the sight of himself, of what he had become.

Or was becoming.

"This has got to stop," he said aloud. "I just can't go on this way. I can't do this no more."

Alton had never been one to tell folks his troubles. Even after Angie had died he had never spoken to Stuart and Daisy about how badly he felt. But with them he didn't have to; the old couple just seemed to know, without words. They seemed to know that Al's kind of trouble needed lots more than words to set right.

God how he missed Stuart, in some ways more than he missed his wife. Sure, he knew how that sounded: odd. Maybe faggy. But Alton knew what he meant, and that too was something he'd never be able to explain to another human being. To Alton it was simple: somehow Stu had helped keep him from missing Angie too much.

Now, right this minute, there was nothing on God's green earth that could get in the way of his missing Stu.

The shower water dribbled onto his head and shoulders. The water pressure was shot to hell and the pump needed replacing, but these were fleeting concerns, inconveniences quickly forgotten when the reminders were gone.

Maybe he should pull himself up by his bootstraps and go on a marathon cleaning and fixing binge. If he spruced things up a bit he could probably sell the house and acreage for a tidy sum. These days property values were sky high. City folks would gladly pay a thousand dollars an acre for the 128 acres of land Al's daddy had paid less than a hundred dollars for! Christ, Al might as well take advantage of it like so many of his friends and neighbors had done.

He could keep a little bit for himself—two, three acres, maybe—and build a one-man cabin with a garden way up on Perkins Bluff. From there he could look down and watch the hungry metropolis of Burlington as it moved eastward, gobbling up woods and farmland and grand old homes, shitting out highways and condos and tacky convenience stores.
It's an ugly thing
, he thought.
But it's progress
.

Still naked, Al walked across the living room. The coffee table was piled with mail that he'd never bothered to sort, all held in place by unwashed supper dishes and empty, foul-smelling glasses with milk-scummy interiors. A big black fly buzzed around the rotting leftovers. Dozens more like it buzzed at the eastern window, repeatedly smashing their little black bodies against the unyielding barrier of glass. And they were screaming; he could actually hear them scream.

Al opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. The eastern horizon was a wavy red ribbon that joined a range of silhouetted mountains to the black sky. The dawn is a beautiful thing, he thought, and the night air is fresh and chill.

He turned and faced the squalor of his living room, the cluttered furniture, the rotting food, the buzzing army of flies.

"Shit," he said. "Oh, fuckin' shit."

Then he started to cry.

Alburg, Vermont

"H
ey, I'm talkin' to you!"

Lucy stirred, her senses returning one at a time. She felt heavy jolting bumps.'

"So what ya doin', clammin' up on me?"

Then she heard the low throaty growl of an engine, the hum of tires on pavement.

She was in somebody's car. No, not a car, a van. She could smell grease and stale cigarette smoke, and a musty, sickening odor, like a pile of damp blankets. She wrinkled her nose. Cautiously, she opened her eyes.

"Cat got yer tongue?"

Squinting, she studied the man behind the wheel and realized he was a stranger.

She looked around. It was dark outside, but the van's bright headlights showed they were traveling on the interstate. North or south? She couldn't tell.

Where we going? she wanted to ask, but she could not. Somebody else was in control, and she didn't know who it was. Normally, she could tell who was in the spotlight, but this time she had no sense of it.

Lucy blinked at the stranger, willed real hard to speak, Who are you? she wanted to ask, but her tongue was held in check by someone else's will.

At least she could see, so she examined the driver more closely. He didn't look like a nice man. He wore a dungaree jacket with both sleeves cut off. A tattoo on his right forearm said, "Born Crazy." Lucy saw it clearly as the man lifted the beer can to his mouth.

He turned his head, looked directly at her. His left eye was missing. Where it should have been, a little hollow was covered with wrinkled, pasty-looking skin. She wanted to look away, but her head wouldn't move.

The man spoke. "So you don't want to talk no more, zat it?" His fat wet tongue poked through the space where two bottom teeth should have been. Whoever had been in the spotlight must have had a conversation going.

Lucy forced her mouth to work. "N-no." she said. Good. Now she could speak.

"So how come you're so quiet all of a sudden?" She could smell his breath way across the front seat.

"I . . . I don't know. I'm tired. I musta dropped off to sleep."

"To sleep!" He blew air through his lips and they vibrated nastily. "You tellin' me you dropped off in the middle of a sentence?"

"I do that sometimes—"

"Ya do, do ya? That's pretty fucked up."

"I . . . I—"

"Okay, miss prissy pants, we was talkin' about how we're gonna get you acrost the border into Canada."

"Canada! I don't wanna go to Canada!"

Quick as lightning his right hand jumped from the beer can between his legs. It slapped loudly against her cheek. And she felt it! It hurt, and she started to cry.

"Now yer tumin' into a little cock-tease on me. Hey, that's nothin' to fuck around with, kid. I make jokes about lots of things, but money and pussy I take real serious."

Lucy pressed herself tightly against the passenger door. She looked down, trying to see the handle, thinking maybe she could open the door and jump out.

"I want to get out." She wasn't trying to whisper, but that's the way it came out. Her voice cracked, "Will you let me out, please?"

"Will I let you out, please?" He spoke in high-pitched tones, mocking her, just like some bratty kid at school. But that was all wrong. He was a grown man, maybe older than her father: he wasn't supposed to mock her.

He opened his one eye real wide. "Okay," he said with a sigh. "Guess I might's well let you out. If you're goin' all mental on me, I sure ain't gonna risk takin' you acrost the border." He was trying to be matter-of-fact. "Yup, if you say so, I'll just pull right on over first chance I get and I'll let you hop right on out." He took a pull from the beer can, then went on in his airy singsong voice. "Can't really figure it though. I mean right up to now you struck me as a pretty together little chick. I figgered you was grown up, older than your years. Head on straight as an arrow. But if you want to be a little crybaby, I'll just pull right on over and say bye-bye."

The sign said: LAST EXIT BEFORE U.S.-CANADIAN BORDER. The man spun the steering wheel, and they were going off the exit ramp. The van's headlights lit stubby aluminum posts and guardrails.

All of a sudden Lucy knew where they were. Daddy had brought her and Randy here fishing not too awful long ago. It was the dark swampy flatlands north of Highgate Springs, near the eastern shore of Lake Champlain.

"Any place special Your Highness wants to get out? Does right here suit you?"

There was nothing but darkness outside the van. No traffic, no lights in from distant houses. Lucy looked out and felt afraid. "Yes," she said, trying to hold her voice steady, "yes. Right here. Let me out here."

But he didn't slow down.

"Don't ya think it's awful dark out there? I mean, who knows what's out there. Could be bears. Bears are real mean this time of year. Could be wolf, or coyote. They get ravenous-hungry this time a night."

Lucy said nothing. She stared at the window, thinking about red-eyed animals with sharp, bloody teeth.

The man turned off the paved highway onto a narrow dirt road with grass growing down the middle.

He flicked off the headlights, but continued to drive in the darkness. Lucy saw fireflies blinking amid tall silhouetted stalks of swamp grass.

The man said, "This looks like a good place to let you out, doncha think?"

The van stopped right in the middle of the road.

She grabbed the door handle and pulled it. It moved too freely, like it wasn't connected to anything.

"Oh, forgot to tell you, Sweetie Bumps, that door don't work."

She looked at him briefly, then down at her knees. She knew her hair had fallen on both sides of her head like a curtain. She could see him, he couldn't see her.

"Course, I gotta be honest with ya, I hate to see you go. And that's flat truth. You're one awful pretty little thing. Anybody ever tell you that? You're prettier than some of them grown-up girls I know. Prettier'n most." Lucy's hand tightened on the door handle. She wondered if she could pull it off, use it as a weapon.

Then she felt something shift inside her head, like bone grinding against bone. She winced.

"You really think I'm pretty?" It was her voice, but she hadn't said anything.

"Why would I lie to you?" He gave her a cautious smile. "'Fore you go, you wanna hand me another of them beers from in back?"

"Okay. If I can have one too. I need something . . . wet." She felt the tip of her tongue as it moistened her upper lip.

"Well a'course you can, Sunnyshine. You can have anything you want."

Lucy's body turned in the seat, reaching far behind her toward the aluminum milk crate where the beer was stashed. She had to put her knee on the seat and stretch way over to get hold of the can.

His hand grasped the back of her thigh, squeezing it, pushing his coarse fingers up toward her bottom. Lucy wanted to scream, to claw at him, to smash the Budweiser can right in his face.

Instead, she giggled.

"That's better now, yesssss," he said. Lucy knew he was trying to sound friendly, but he sounded disgusting.

She tried as hard as she could to get back control of her limbs. She had to run, had to get out of that awful, smelly van. She willed her legs to propel her into the back of the van. From there she could jump to safety through the back doors.

NO, said a voice from inside her head, DON'T. YOU CAN'T HANDLE THIS, STUPID. LET ME TAKE CARE OF IT.

Always before, when Lucy found herself in even a mildly threatening situation, someone else would take the spotlight and Lucy would nap until the episode was over. She had never been permitted to observe the really frightening stuff. Something bad was going to happen now. She didn't want to stay awake. She didn't want to watch it.

The man had his arms around her. He smelled like sweat and grease and dirty clothes. His big left hand pulled at the back of her blouse, tugging it from the waist of her skirt.

"You're such a nice little girl, such a pretty little girl." His impatient whisper came in stinky little puffs. Rapid breathing hissed in his nose. She felt slimy lips on her face, felt his sandpapery hand pulling down her bra, fingering her nipple.

"Ohhh," he wheezed, his voice went all soft and high, "are you my pretty little girl? My pretty, pretty little girl . . ."

His frantic mouth found hers. Lucy's mind recoiled in soundless disgust as her own tongue slid into the space between his teeth. He kissed her—too hard!—his hot spit dribbled down her chin. Then he took her hand, forced it against the damp hardness between his legs.

"Ooooh." he moaned. "Ooooh, God. Oh, my sweet, sweet God."

With the mention of that name something else shifted inside Lucy's head. Her terror vanished. She was no longer an unwilling passenger inside his van and within her own body. No, now she was at ease. It was as if she could direct this scary situation, control its outcome.

A fury possessed her limbs. She found herself kneeling on the seat, pressing her chest against him, coiling both arms around his neck. He moaned, hummed, rubbed his pelvis up and down against her leg.