Blue Stew (Second Edition) (28 page)

•   •   •

Before night had fallen all the way, Walter Boyd checked himself into a Super 8 motel just one town over from where the ill-fated Boy Scout camp had been held.

He had swung through a rest stop hours before, grabbed some maps, looked over a few directories, and this place had appeared to be the nearest motel to the campgrounds. When Walter pulled in he was reassured to see a few TV and radio vans parked in the lot. Evidently the news crews covering the tragedy had reached the same conclusion as him.

After a long drive in which the image of Maddie and her big blue eyes tearing up had burned itself into his inner-eye, Walter was now where some persuasive part of him felt he
needed
to be.

The motel reminded him of his old apartment, regrettably. The room was the size of his former living room, with an ugly bed filling half of the measly space and a full-sized fridge and table filling much of the remainder. A tiny bathroom and a tiny closest jutted out just beyond the front door, further cramping the meager space. Imitation wood covered the walls copiously here like back at his old place, and cheap, oddly plastic-looking carpeting smothered the floor tastelessly here too, although this place had it in a shade of brown that would probably look no better or worse if it never got vacuumed.

Partly because of how challenging it had been to crosscheck street names on the maps strewn about the passenger seat as he drove, partly because of his incessant, nagging concerns over just how crazy Maddie and his friends must now think him to be, Walter stumbled into the motel room stressed near to his breaking point. To say he was exhausted would not even begin to describe his state of being.

After making good use of the bathroom, he flopped down onto the stiff, springy bed and remotely powered on the small television at the foot of the bed.

He flipped on and on through the various stations covering the spring camp tragedy, while the dark of night swallowed whole the world beyond his motel room. The light from the TV flashed the colors of emphatically unnerved talking heads over Walter more and more vibrantly as it remained the only source of light in the otherwise blackening motel room.

Walter had fallen into a fatigued trance. Even thinking of turning on the nearby bedside lamp required too much effort. Vaguely, he was aware of his hope that one of these comically distraught newscasters would reveal something that might inspire an idea for some kind of next step. So far, no luck. They were all regurgitating the same facts and the same shocked, disbelieving lines over and over and over.

On the bed to Walter’s left was his backpack and to his immediate right rested his bulky old cell phone. Same as he had for the entirety of the drive, he glanced at it every few minutes, but still no one texted him, and still no one called him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It made him feel strange and alone, definitely . . . but, at least no one was making it harder than it already had been to leave everyone behind.

Walter began to think, now, after having been sitting there catatonically for a few hours, that maybe
he
should call Maddie and tell her that he’d arrived safely and had checked into a motel. The choice reluctantly became clear that, yes, he definitely
should
call her. But he didn’t. A powerful mental block had grown from the flourishing plant of guilt in his consciousness, making it incredibly hard to stomach the idea of facing Maddie—or
anyone
—before this was all over and done with.

So, Walter just sat and did nothing, while the light of the TV washed over his dulled face.

The news reports looped on into the night, with not even a whisper of Timothy’s whereabouts to speak of. Walter’s phone, meanwhile, remained quieter than a mouse.

Finally it became too much, and Walter was forced to separate the burning in his abdomen from the tired mess of mental distresses clogging his brain. He was starving. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

After over four hours in which only his thumb and his eyelids had served any purpose, Walter, with a long, low groan, sat up and twisted on the bedside lamp. Somehow he hadn’t noticed that his eyes had been in great pain, staring at nothing but the harsh, shifting colors of the TV for so long, not until the softer light of the lamp relieved them instantly.

He stood up, padded at his pockets until he felt his wallet, and then he moved towards the door. He’d noticed a convenience store just down the street from the motel when he’d arrived; a two minute walk, at most. He really hoped it was open—the thought of driving around in search of an alternate late-night food source was beyond daunting.

It was chilly outside. Walter shuddered, pulling his hood over his head and plunging his hands into his large front pockets.

As he stepped onto the cold, concrete sidewalk and strolled through a pool of yellow light cast by a streetlamp overhead, Walter muttered out loud words that surprised even him, “What the hell am I doing here?”

The convenience store had been open.

When Walter checked out, the elderly clerk asked, “You with one of the news stations, too?”

He went home with everything bagels, cream cheese, grape juice, paper plates, cups, and plastic knives. He figured it’d be smart to buy food that could double as breakfast.

In the process of assembling his dinner, Walter dropped one half of a partially creamed-cheesed bagel face-down on the floor and broke three of the dozen plastic knives. While eating, he managed to splash some of his grape juice over his chin and onto his lap.

Mentally and physically, Walter did not have himself together at that point in time, to say the least.

For some time after finishing his meal, Walter stared at the crumbs on his paper plate. What
was
he doing here?

His thoughts jumped about sporadically, never sticking to one line of thinking long enough to get anywhere with it, and all the while he felt generally unsettled and disoriented. Only one thought came through in full enough of a form for him to latch onto it: the notion that he should drive to the Boy Scout campgrounds tomorrow. Sure, it would all certainly be closed-off, and there would be media swarming the area . . . but, it was
something
.

Walter got undressed and stumbled back into bed a half-hour later.

The TV remote and his cell phone were resting next to each other on the bedspread. He stared at both of them for a long minute. And then he picked up the TV remote.

Walter fell asleep with the TV on.

•   •   •

Strange voices shifted around. Music started playing—a short jingle. He had been dreaming a moment ago—he even knew it at the time—but now he wasn’t. Had their friends come, unannounced, to wake him and Maddie up? They’d done that once before when Walter had left his phone on silent: come up from Nigel’s to invite them out for early breakfast at the Silver Tap Sugar Shack.

But, no,
that
wasn’t it. There was music, and now someone was telling him about a facial cleanser . . .

Walter’s heart sank before he even opened his eyes.

He sat up, blinked around until he found the TV remote, and then hastily powered the television off.

Looking over, he saw morning sunlight creeping in through the half-open shutters covering the windows. He pushed the blankets off of his bare legs and sat at the side of his motel bed, dressed in nothing but his underwear.

Although Walter’s head had started to ache the minute he opened his eyes, his mind was undeniably rejuvenated from the dull stupor it had fallen into last night. He found he no longer suffered from acute tunnel-vision when attempting to gain a mental overview of the situation he had put himself in and the goals he had set for himself. Yes, it
was
perfectly crazy, what he had set out to do. That was unavoidable, now that he’d earned the perspective only a long night of sleep can give. But, if Timothy Glass
was
looking for him, well then,
here
he was: at the same motel as nearly every other outsider who had any stake in the disgusting thing that Timothy had orchestrated yesterday.

Walter remained unafraid of Timothy Glass. That much hadn’t changed from yesterday.

In agreement with his semi-plan from last night, he figured he might as well drive to the Boy Scout campgrounds today. First, however, he needed to get some breakfast in him, and hope that that might do something to dampen the aching in his head.

Walter had much better success spreading his cream cheese this morning. He poured himself a nice big cup of grape juice, and, before sitting down, he raised the blinds over one of the windows.

It was light outside; sometime past nine, most likely.

Walter hadn’t gotten any sense of his immediate neighborhood when he had gone out last night. It hadn’t helped that it’d been dark at the time, but the majority of the blame for this fell on his supremely jumbled mind. Like the motel itself, it wasn’t very pretty, he now discovered. But for a few colored signs, one obnoxious billboard, and some unimpressive graffiti, his view of the street could’ve resembled an old, washed-out photograph.

Wide sidewalks of cracked and dirt-caked cement lined both sides of a patchy pavement road that had seen only light traffic since he’d been there. There were no planted trees or bushes or any other locally-funded attempts to increase land value. All there was in the way of street-side accessories were parking meters and sign posts and telephone poles.

Directly across the street from Walter’s motel was the plain backside of a large cement building—for all Walter knew it housed a bright, attractive shopping plaza on the far side, but from his vantage point there was nothing appealing about it. Down the street from this large building was a pub that had metal bars over its windows and was possibly closed for good, judging from the dilapidated look of its exterior. Beyond that were a few fenced-in basketball courts, and Walter knew that the convenience store had been just beyond those, though he couldn’t see that far from his window.

Walter sat down. He refrained from looking out of the window as he ate.

Continuing to exhibit improved functionality over last night, Walter kept from dumping any of his grape juice over himself this morning as he emptied two full cups over the course of the meal.

Walter had been holding onto a hope that malnourishment—maybe coupled with the overnight droning of the TV into his helpless, sleeping ears—had been the only causes of his throbbing head. Realistically, though, he’d already guessed it to be the result of caffeine withdrawal, to which the only remedy would be a quick stop at a coffee shop on his way to the campgrounds. Walter was pleasantly surprised, then, as he sat facing an empty plate and cup, to realize that his headache had completely vanished.

In fact, his head felt—all-in-all—pretty good. The weight of his odd predicament wasn’t resting so heavily on his mind anymore, for whatever reason.

Walter stood up. He felt dizzy—maybe he should go find some coffee anyway?

His clothes were still piled on the floor next to the bed. As he made a start towards them, he jammed his little toe on one of the legs of the table.

“Ow!” he exclaimed automatically, though it didn’t hurt.

The collision between table leg and toe touched an itch that Walter hadn’t been aware of. He rested a hand on the tabletop and began rubbing his little toe against the table’s leg. He let out a sigh of pleasure; how had he not noticed how
itchy
his toe had been? He began rubbing it up and down in more exaggerated movements, harder and faster.

After a protracted time of simple, hazy satisfaction, Walter looked down, wondering if he’d gotten bitten by a mosquito or something.

Walter stopped moving his foot. His eyes grew wide. He had been rubbing his toe against the butt of a nail sticking out of a wooden patch on the table’s leg. A dark, wet stain had appeared on the brown rug below, and the nail was dripping in blood.