The Living and the Dead Read online

  Struggling to his feet with a muffled grunt, Dempsey shuffled to the edge of the small porch and ran a hand along the back of his neck. Ravaged by arthritis, it was often stiff and pulsing with pain. This morning was no different. Another cough shook him, this time more violently, and he felt something give way in his lungs and launch into the back of his throat.

  Dempsey hacked it up and spat it onto a bare patch of muddy ground.

  Good Christ almighty, he thought, ain’t nothing that color supposed to come out of your lungs, is it?

  Maybe things were finally catching up with him. He could only hope.

  And then he saw them.

  Something in the mud not far from where he’d spit. Something that shouldn’t have been there, pressed into the soft earth.

  He rubbed his eyes and blinked them repeatedly until they focused a bit better, then steadying himself against the rocking chair, he slowly dropped into a crouch for a closer look. Though he couldn’t identify them, there was no mistaking what they were. There, in the mud, was a formed set of tracks that led right to his porch. Something had definitely left impressions there, footprints. Only problem was, Dempsey had never seen anything like them. Nothing had paws or feet like that. Not a man, not an animal, nothing. No thing. And not only were they large, they were deep, which meant whatever had made them was of fairly considerable weight.

  Despite the humidity, a chill coursed along his shoulder blades then trickled the length of his spine. “What in the hell am I looking at?” he asked the muddy tracks. The rain continued to fall, though not as hard as the night before. He knew it had distorted the tracks some, but not to a point where they looked like that. No chance. Same as always, he thought, the night stories had told him the truth. Crazy as it seemed, either something had come in on that storm just like he’d feared, or the storm had brought something alive, awakened something maybe. He still couldn’t be sure which. Or just maybe the storm hadn’t brought whatever it was at all. Maybe it had brought the storm.

  The only thing Dempsey could be sure of was that at some point during the night, whatever it was had walked to within a foot of his porch, then stood watching him sleep off his drunken state in that old rocking chair.

  9

  The diner was already bustling despite the early morning hour, its clientele mostly truckers and assorted laborers pounding downing mugs of steaming hot coffee and devouring huge breakfasts. Grease hung in the air along with the monotonous buzz of countless conversations, and somewhere in the background the faint sounds of an old country tune could now and then be heard. Chris knew he was less than ten miles from Tall Tree Junction, but had decided to stop for some coffee and a couple muffins outside of town. He planned to spend as little actual time in his hometown as possible. Find the old man, figure out what his main maladjustment was, assess him and the situation then get on with whatever needed to be done and get the hell out of Dodge.

  While waiting for his order, he stood with his back to the counter and did his best to ignore the mocking stares of the others. He’d never had any ill will toward the townies and locals in these parts—technically having been born and raised here he was one himself—but he’d always aspired to do better, to move away from here and seek his fortune out in the world. And that didn’t always sit well with the yahoos around here. One couldn’t better oneself without being labeled a yuppie or a fancy-ass, a sellout. Feeling as out of place in these parts as ever, Chris gazed out the large front windows of the diner to his car. The heavy rains he’d driven in all night and that had, as he’d feared they might, added more than two hours to his trip, had let up considerably and become little more than a light mist, a nuisance. He wondered if Nancy was all right, if she’d gotten through the night without being frightened. Maybe she hadn’t spent the night alone. Maybe there really was someone else. He hoped there was.

  Chris shook his head, as if to dislodge such thoughts from his mind, and noticed the silhouette in the passenger seat of his car, Anita, still sound asleep as she’d been for hours now. Unlike Nancy—and himself—she slept very soundly, peacefully even. Chris envied her.

  The night before, he’d left the house and called Anita just seconds after pulling out of the driveway. Earlier, when they’d been in his office together, Anita had offered to go with him to Maine. He asked if she was serious, and she assured him that she was.

  Fifteen minutes later he was at her apartment picking her up.

  She’d come bouncing down the steps of her building with a lightweight windbreaker jacket over her shoulder and a small nylon gym bag in hand. Though dressed in the same white camisole and open-toed pumps she’d worn to work, she’d ditched the pinstripe skirt-suit for a pair of jeans, and without the suit jacket covering most of her top, the camisole revealed a few inches of cleavage, the pushup bra beneath making her small breasts look much fuller than they actually were. As she approached his car she motioned for him to drop the window, and when he did she leaned against it like a carhop chatting up a customer, oblivious to the rain. “You’re sure about this?” she asked.

  Rain sprayed his face, dripped along the inside of the door. “Nita it’s pouring out, get in.”

  Her face assumed an unusually serious expression, “I want you to be sure, understand? This isn’t exactly a pleasure trip or a vacation, right?”

  “Do you want to come?”

  “I’m standing here getting drenched, right?”

  “Then yes,” he said. “I’m sure. Please come.”

  With a wry smile she’d vanished into the rain, only to reappear on the other side of the car as she slid into the passenger seat, her body and hair slick with rain. As she closed the door the car fell back to darkness, the dashboard glow providing the only light and casting them both in a green, alien hue. Watching her in that oddly still moment, he remembered the night months before when they’d gone out together after a long day and had a few too many drinks, only to end up back in his car parked in this very spot outside her building. She’d looked alluring that night as well, he remembered, and the sexual tension that had been building between them for more than a year, tension both had tried desperately to ignore and keep in check, was thick as London fog. She and her husband had separated a few days before, but Chris was still stunned when she’d leaned in rather suddenly and kissed him anyway. And then their hands were everywhere, her shirt was open and he was suckling her breasts. Between increasingly passionate kisses, both whispered about husbands and wives, what they shouldn’t do, couldn’t do, mustn’t do…

  Eventually they’d opened their pants and masturbated each other there in the car. A surreal and wildly erotic moment for sure, but one, she breathlessly explained seemed somehow less like cheating and not as bad as the two of them jumping into the backseat like a couple of sex-starved teenagers. He hadn’t been touched by another woman in years, and it wasn’t until she’d finished him off that the guilt returned to remind him that what was taking place was not a fantasy, but actual.

  Later, he’d stopped at a gas station on the way home so he could use the bathroom, clean up a bit and wash the scent of her from his hands. He’d stared at his reflection in the filthy mirror in that bathroom, mesmerized by the look in his own eyes and nearly overcome with panic. He’d never done anything like that before. Ever. And although he felt tremendous guilt, all he could think about was Anita and how exciting she was, how sexy and alive she was, and how she made him feel the same, something he hadn’t felt in so long he’d nearly forgotten what it was like. But still, he needed to go home to Nancy. He needed to go home to his wife. She’d be waiting up for him, no doubt, probably in bed but with the nightstand lamp on, reading one of the historical biographies she loved so much. There, and yet not there.

  Almost like the hallucination he’d seen in the treetops.

  “Seven fifty,” a female voice said from somewhere behind him.

  Memories dissolved and Chris found himself back in the diner. As he paid for the coffee and muffins his
cell phone vibrated on his belt. He glanced down at it. PRIVATE scrolled across the screen.

  Heading back to the car, he put the bag containing the muffins atop a cardboard holder that housed two large Styrofoam cups of coffee, and answered the phone with his free hand. “Yes?”

  The line crackled with static. “Doc?” a faint voice asked.

  Chris pushed the diner door open with his shoulder and stepped out into the misty rain. “Who’s calling?”

  “It’s Dave,” the caller said through more static.

  “I’m sorry, Dave who?”

  “Dave Gill.”

  Chris stopped just short of the car, his mind racing to make sense of what the man on the other end had just said. He could not have heard him correctly. “Say again, please? There’s quite a bit of distortion on the line.”

  “Doc, it’s me, Gilly. It’s Dave Gill.”

  A shiver shook him so profoundly that his entire body began to tremble. “Listen very carefully to me,” Chris said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I don’t know who you are, but I find no humor in this whatsoever, do you understand?”

  “You know what is funny, though? You teach other people how to have a successful marriage or relationship, but you don’t even have one yourself. You show other people to see the truth when your whole life has been a lie. Funny but really kind of sad too, don’t you think?”

  “Who are you?” Chris demanded. “What do you want?”

  The static grew worse, was followed by a series of loud clicks and then the line fell silent. Chris looked at the screen. call lost. He scrolled for details or a number, but found no information on the incoming call. He returned the phone to his belt just as Anita lowered her window and smiled out at him with sleepy eyes.

  “Hey.”

  “Morning,” he mumbled, handing the coffees and muffins to her through the open window.

  “Who was that on the phone? You look upset.”

  He slid behind the wheel and fumbled through his ring of keys for the car key. His hands were still shaking. “Some joker playing a sick prank apparently.”

  “Why, what’d he say?”

  “He said he was Dave Gill.”

  Anita frowned. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “I’ve told you about him. He was a former patient of mine, I saw him several years ago, before you came to work for me. He was caught in a very troubled marriage with a woman who was quite ill. He’d come to me for a few months for marriage counseling in the hopes of saving the relationship and helping his wife. But she refused to come to the sessions. I grew rather fond of him, he was a nice man and I felt badly for him.” Chris finally found the right key and slid it into the ignition. “A few days after my last session with him, his wife shot him in the head while he slept. Killed him instantly, they said.”

  “Oh God, OK, now I remember. Why would someone pretend to be him?”

  “I have no idea,” he sighed.

  “Talk about a sick joke. Jesus H.” She reached over, touched his arm.

  He forced a smile and threw it her way. “His wife’s institutionalized but still alive, far as I know. Maybe she or some disgruntled family member put whoever it was up to it, who knows?”

  “Seems a strange thing to do after all these years, no?”

  Chris nodded, ran a hand over his face and down along his chin. With a shrug, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed for Tall Tree Junction. Once they were on the road he told her there were fresh blueberry muffins in the bag.

  What he didn’t mention and tried not to think about himself, was how the man on the phone had, in fact, sounded exactly like Dave Gill.

  10

  Suspended in the limbo between total sleep and full consciousness, Lana gradually emerged from what had apparently been a deep sleep. Since she’d always been a light sleeper, it struck her as odd that she’d had to force herself awake, pushing through the darkness as if fighting her way free of a giant, gelatinous cocoon. And in that instant when she crossed from dreams to reality, the sudden terror of unfamiliarity exploded through her.

  Her body snapped rigid, her arms and legs locked as if to break a fall, but even before she could fully comprehend things, the terror quickly degenerated into a sort of bland confusion. She felt her muscles relax, dropped her arms back to her side and lay sprawled out in bed, her mind slowly clearing as it fed her memories of where she was and how she’d come to be there.

  After a few moments Lana threw back the covers and swung her feet to the floor. She rubbed her eyes, yawned then headed out to the kitchen. It wasn’t until she’d gotten there that she realized there wasn’t any coffee. Even if there had been, she had nothing to make it in anyway.

  “Brilliant,” she said groggily.

  Opening the Venetian blinds, she took in the view, hoping for the light of a bright new day. But it was still raining, spraying over the ocean, filtering through the trees and spattering the cottage. Still, Lana felt more comfortable than she had the prior evening.

  Though the rain and storm clouds had diminished significantly since the night before, it still wasn’t nearly as bright out as it normally was this time of morning. She looked to the sky. Not a ray of sunshine in sight.

  An odd rattling sound interrupted her thoughts. Distant at first, it was a clinking noise just barely audible through the rain, but with each passing second it grew louder and more defined, accompanied by a rumble that vibrated the entire cottage.

  Before Lana could define it, her questions were answered.

  Through the sliders overlooking the backyard, a large pickup truck rolled to a stop just beyond the back steps. Battered and worn, the body decorated with large rust spots and faded black paint, it sat silent but for the low rumble of the engine. The tailgate was thick and appeared quite heavy, secured in place with enormous chains, and the open bed was covered by a large brown canvas tarp tied with old lengths of rope to a series of hooks mounted along the edge. Although she couldn’t make out what lay beneath it, there was a lot of it, as the tarp was uneven and tented in various spots. The windshield and windows were filthy to the point of being impossible to see through. Lana waited, watching from the kitchenette.

  An inexplicable chill shook her.

  The driver’s side door opened and a form stepped out into the rain. As it rounded the back of the bed, she saw it was an old man. He fumbled with the chains, released the tailgate with a loud clanging slam and flipped back a small portion of the tarp. Dressed in heavily soiled work pants, a shirt and an equally grimy baseball cap, he continued rummaging in the bed of the truck, seemingly impervious to the rain and Lana’s presence. His dark eyes were deep-seated and bloodshot, his nose bulbous and littered with broken capillaries, and his face etched with crevices of age burrowed across flushed, leathery, liver-spotted skin.

  After staring into the back of the truck for what seemed an inordinate amount of time, the man turned and walked toward the base of the steps with a slow but deliberate gait. Callused hands reached for a pair of plastic trashcans by the side of the steps. Turning, he moved back toward his truck, the cans dragging along the ground behind him. He flipped the lids, emptied one and then the other into the back of the truck then stopped as if confused and peered into them. Both were empty.

  Lana felt herself relax a bit. She stepped closer to the table. This must be Mr. Dempsey, she thought. He obviously received payment for the cottage and came to empty the trash for his newest tenant. But how could he have not realized the cans were empty the moment he lifted them? And if this place had sat empty for months as the taxi driver told her, why would he think there’d be anything in them? Evidently he wasn’t just an old man, she thought, but a rather confused one as well.

  Something stirred deep inside her, but she couldn’t quite identify what.

  With nearly comatose calm, the man replaced the lids and returned the trash cans to their original spots, then slammed shut the tailgate, secured it, and pulled the section of tarp he’d dis
turbed back into place. As he rounded the gate he stopped suddenly and looked back over his shoulder.

  Directly into Lana’s eyes.

  Reflexively, a spasm-like smile danced across her face. His eyes seemed to burn straight through her, but they weren’t the least bit threatening. Instead, they were filled with sorrow the man seemed barely able to contain. As her smile retreated, Lana offered a timid wave. The man, his bloodshot eyes fixed in a bland stare, raised a hand and gave a wave back. After a moment, he turned and headed for his truck.

  As the truck slowly backed out, the heavy chains rattling once again, Lana moved to the den windows and watched as the old man disappeared down the tree-lined road.

  * * *

  After a quick shower she pulled her dark blonde hair back into a ponytail then dressed in one of the few outfits she’d brought with her, a pair of khaki shorts, sneakers and a sleeveless white cotton top. She didn’t have a raincoat but she had brought a denim jacket, so she threw that on, too.

  Before leaving the cottage she put all but one hundred dollars from the stash in her purse into her shoulder bag then hid it on a shelf in the bedroom closet. Surprisingly, she found an umbrella resting in the corner. “What are the odds of that?” she chuckled. She wiped it clean of a thick layer of dust then grabbed her purse and set out for town.

  As she locked the cottage door, opened her umbrella and started across the walk, she saw a young couple strolling along a narrow path cut through the woods. The man seemed to notice her immediately, and with a wave, smiled broadly. The woman, who held a clear plastic umbrella to shield them both, remained more reserved.

  “Morning!” the man said while still a distance away. Hand in hand, the couple crossed from the path to the road leading to Lana’s cottage. Thin and wiry, the man looked to be in his early twenties. Dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals, with a few tattoos adorning his forearms, he reminded Lana of a musician or an artist of some kind, or perhaps someone who wanted desperately to be seen as such. His brown hair was thick but mussed, and hung across his forehead sloppily, but when he smiled it was contagious. “Just move in?”