Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear (2 page)

“
Think someone in my town’s
gonna steal your stuff, mister?” The sheriff’s face was stone
sober.

I thought to drop the chest
and start running down the road. Maybe it was time to escape—to
surrender myself. I didn’t need the SUV, did I? I held onto the
trunk, bent my knees and tried to rest it on something, or gain an
advantage in a situation that was becoming desperate.

“
N-No! No, I don’t think
that. I would just hate for something to be ruined, you know?” I
moved toward the cruiser and swayed back and forth blind. The
officer was kind enough to open the back door. I shoved the trunk
inside. The trunk’s brass corner dug into the sun-bleached leather
of the backseat. With a few adjustments of the chest, I covered the
scratches from view. I had enough financial
problems. 

The officer returned to the
front seat. As the officer sat, the cruiser leaned to the left as
the suspension gave toward his side. I heard the sizzle of the warm
leather seats against the officer’s sweaty back. He didn’t flinch
or readjust. I reconsidered going along with him. I watched his
wet, hairy neck through the flaking, black, chicken wire grate
separating the front seat from the backseat. I watched the infinite
reflection of the officer’s mirrored sunglasses through the
rearview mirror, reminding me of a carnival funhouse. I observed
the officer’s unusual stillness as he waited for me to sit beside
him. I didn’t have a choice. I did, however, have my
belongings.

I opened the front door and
sat down beside the sheriff. There wasn’t as much radio equipment
in the front seat as I’d expected. I’d been in a few cruisers when
I was younger, for ride-alongs and never for deviance. The interior
leather stung me with its heat, which I imagined had gathered for
years. My skin nearly fused to the leather and was saved only by
instinct. I tossed and turned in the seat until the heat dissipated
enough to allow me to relax. My relaxation, however, was relative
only to the seat. The situation was uncomfortable. I closed
the door and the officer pressed on the gas. We rode out of the
parking area in front of the store and onto the empty highway. In
the passenger side mirror, my SUV was swallowed by the brown dust
that pervaded the place like a biblical plague. The consumption
that played out above the “objects are closer than they appear”
warning made me nervous.

The drive along the highway
was mostly silent. I tried to start a conversation.

“
So, nice town, huh? Good
people.” I waited for something. Anything. I watched the sweat run
down the sheriff’s forehead. I saw the salty droplets weave in and
around his wrinkles. I saw him sneer without looking at me. His
voice churned from deep down within him, like stone on
sandpaper.

“
Humansville’s a nice
enough town. Don’t always take too kindly to outsiders.” The
sheriff said.

“
Really? I didn’t
notice.”

The sheriff looked my way,
over the frame of the mirrored aviators. He didn’t say anything and
we swept back into a painful, ear-ringing silence. Ten minutes
later, he turned onto an unpaved country road. C.R. something. It
didn’t make a difference. If something terrible happened out this
far, there was no chance for salvation. 

A mailbox was staked into
the dry dirt right at the intersection with block letters stuck to
the aluminum siding that read “Orson.” I assumed it was the last
name of Mortimer, the mechanic, and Judith, his pleasant wife that
was worth mentioning before her husband. The country road was less
forgiving than the pot-holed highway leading to it. With the bumps
in the dirt road, eating the melted candy bar became a bad
idea.

A mile or two down the
road, we pulled out in front of a plantation-style home, with a
pillared doorway and windows displayed across the second floor that
gave the blue and white-trimmed home facial-type characteristics. I
stared up at the house at it stared back at me, each of us
assessing one another. The house, like everything in Humansville,
was outdated and ill-maintained. Vines grew from the ground and
wrapped around the house, each like slithering fingers from the
earth gripping the structure, waiting for the right time to pull it
down.

The cruiser turned and
parked. The sheriff shut off the engine and asked, “Have I seen you
before, mister?”

I shook my head, caught off
guard by the question. Seen me before, he asked? In this place? I
knew that if I’d come this way once, I’d never come
again.

“
I’ve never been here
before, no.” I confessed.

The officer stared at me
unconvinced. I felt at a disadvantage as he stared into my eyes and
watched the sweat bead at my forehead, leaving me only the image of
myself and my pitifulness in his reflective lenses. He opened the
car door, rendering a hellish screech of metal on metal from an
under-oiled hinge. The sound sent me back. I was surprised there
was anywhere left to go. The door slammed and I sat there in the
relentless heat, with the looming stench of my own body, the
officer’s cheap cologne, what could have been vomit from old
arrests, and an air freshener shaped like a tree that read, “Have a
nice day!” long overdue for a changing.

I was a mess. The
unsettling atmosphere grew worse when I noticed a teenage girl in a
blue dress swinging outside on the broad, wooden porch. The girl’s
blonde hair curled at her forehead. Her eyes were as blue as the
dress she wore. The girl stood, either out of excitement, respect,
or fear, as the sheriff approached. I opened the passenger door of
the cruiser to let in the Missouri heat and humidity, which felt
temperate and comfortable in comparison to the cruiser. I waved
like an idiot, which caught the girl’s attention, and caused her to
step to the peak of the four stairs that led to the entrance of the
old house.

“
Whatcha got, sheriff?” She
laughed while looking my way and pointing. No one taught the girl
that pointing was bad manners. I looked off as I was singled out
and blushed. I noticed a vehicle graveyard, with cars and trucks
ranging from several decades old to others more recent. The newer
cars bore a polished gleam subdued only by the tickling of high
grass around their tires and the dust from the wind. Maybe
they were vehicles Mr. Mortimer Orson was working on. None of the
hoods were opened and there were weeds nearly as high as I was
growing around each of the vehicles. Mr. Mortimer could have been a
collector. He collected cars. I imagined he collected bodies out in
the woods. People graveyards. I thought about my trunk and what the
kids said as they rode off.

“
Lacy, run inside and get
your pa. Tell him there’s a gentleman out here that’d like to have
him look over his car.” The officer instructed.

The girl nodded and rushed
into the house, shouting with a voice that died like an echo in a
canyon, “Pa! Someone’s here for—“

“
It’s an SUV. Sport Utility
Vehicle.” It didn’t occur to me that correcting him, as opposed to
the children at the old man’s shop, was a bad idea until after I
did it. The sheriff looked back my way and I felt like an ant under
a magnifying glass. The heat didn’t subside until he looked away
and lost interest.

I took time to notice the
gun in his holster. The gun was larger than those I’d seen police
officers with in the past. The barrel seemed roughly eight inches
in length. My attention was drawn away from the weapon when I heard
the creak of old hinges and worn springs from the door of the
house. A short, round man stepped out and allowed the screen door,
with its grey matting torn and pockmarked, slam behind him. He wore
an under shirt that was stained with blotches of brown and red, too
short to keep from exposing the underside of his enormous belly.
His pants, unable to properly reach his waist, fumbled around him,
held only by the pinch of his stomach against his groin. The man
used a soiled, red cloth to wipe at his hands as he approached me
and the officer. The man’s lips were buried behind a neglected
mustache, but the twitching and turning of the antenna-like wiry
hairs suggested he was preparing to speak.

“
I heard this fella needs
some help.” He laughed before breaking into a smoker’s cough. He
hacked away, which made a response impossible. The officer and I
waited for the man to collect himself. I assumed it was over when
he forced the air from his lungs into his swampy throat and
launched a mucus wad the size of an infant’s hand into an
unsuspecting blade of tall grass. He continued before we could
intervene, while his voice was still laced with the thick
obstruction in his throat. “So bad you couldn’t even bring it out?
That’s rough.” He extended a crusted, dirty hand my way. “I’m
Mortimer Orson.”

Mortimer’s hands were
bronzed, as if dipped into a molten furnace. His fingernails were
outlined with a deeper red, speckled and jagged on the tips from
biting or hard work. Every crease in his stubby hand and short
fingers was a bit darker than the rest of his skin, but none of it
was natural.

By then I knew I had
hesitated for an awkward length of time. The hesitation caused
Mortimer to look queerly toward the sheriff and bob his hand up and
down, as he struggled with the weight of his own appendage and the
embarrassment of not having it met. The sheriff watched me with
skepticism and judged me. I hated the appraisal. I was breaking a
moral convention by not shaking a man’s hand when it was offered.
In a place like this, the convention seemed to have no boundary
based on hygiene.

Mortimer said, “Oh, com’on.
Ain’t seen a little blood before? I was skinning a deer in the
back. It won’t hurt you. All dried up anyway.”

Skinning a deer, I thought.
My imagination was flooded with images of a diabolical Mortimer
chopping up the drivers of the vehicles littering his front lawn. I
considered the possibility of being next.

I shook Mortimer’s hand
despite my instinct to avoid it. My mind, pummeled with scenes of
screaming cityfolk and dismembered body parts, couldn’t develop a
clever lie in time to get out of the handshake. As my hand shook
his, I felt the bloody crust on his palm balling up and flaking
away between our palms, sending a plague snow down to the ground
between us. I liked things clean.

"I’m Porter Jennings.
Porter is fine.” The handshake went on too long. I tried to pull
back, but Mortimer held firm to my hand. The conversation continued
with my hand in his. I felt the heat rising between our palms and
the mutual blood on our hands returning to life.

“
Good to meet you,
Port!”

Porter
, I thought.

“
So, where’s your car at
now?”

Sport Utility
Vehicle
, I thought.

I felt Mortimer clutch my
hand tighter. I felt like his hand was around my neck.

“
Back at the gas station in
town.” I said.

“
Alright. Let me get my
tools and I’ll head out that way. Com’on inside the house, Port. We
ain’t the type here to keep people standing outside.”

You probably keep them
hanging from hooks inside
, I
thought.

“
My wife Judith makes some
of the best damn sweet tea you ever drank! A southern specialty.
She’s cooking up soup now, too.” Mortimer rambled. “By the looks of
you, Port, you ain’t from the country. A city boy, through and
through. Can tell by your hairdo. You won’t see a hairdo like that
around here, no.”

I couldn’t contemplate what
Mortimer could have meant by my “city boy hairdo.” My hair was
long, well-kept, and not a mullet—it was therefore “not
country.” Mortimer released my hand to retreat toward the
house. I could breathe again. I didn’t want to look at my hand or
what Mortimer had exposed it to. I made a note to get a shot once
back in civilization. 

I followed Mortimer and
left the sheriff standing in the Orson’s overgrown front lawn.
Mortimer shouted suddenly, which caused my heart to feel like it
was rubbed against a cheese grater.

“
Judith! Judith, pour some
of that sweet tea, will you?” He looked back at me with a hand on
the open screen door. “You want ice?” He didn’t wait for my answer.
“And pour it over some ice! The good ice!” Mortimer went inside. I
wondered about the kind of people that had good ice and bad ice.
The tight springs of the screen door, likely the only thing new on
the house, pulled the door shut with a clap—a meager applause for a
pitiful show.

I stepped onto the first
step leading to the patio with all the indignation of a guiltless
man heading to the electric chair. I turned back to the sheriff in
a hopeful plea that he’d stay. Despite the sheriff’s presence being
uncomfortable, he was a sentinel, in theory designed to abide by
the law. Without him, I was on my own and things could turn out any
number of ways. I thought about meat hooks and shallow forest
graves. I thought about my trunk.

The sheriff opened his
cruiser’s car door and closed it once his massive frame adjusted
into it. The engine started with a grumble. As I prepared to enter
the house behind Mortimer and subject myself to any other horrors
associated with the Orson residence, I realized I’d forgotten my
trunk in the cruiser. I leapt from the step and rushed toward the
cruiser while waving my hands like some novice animal trainer. I
saw the officer adjust at his right, which looked an awful lot like
he was reaching for his weapon. My franticness subdued with the
alarm of potentially being shot and I shook my hands in front of my
face as a cautionary measure. I imagined how I looked,
sweating, confused, hand bloodied, and entirely out of place with
my “city boy hairdo.” While at the side of the cruiser, I pointed
to the trunk in the backseat. The sheriff nodded once and turned
away. I opened the back door and struggled to get my arms around
the bulky wooden trunk again.