Crossroads (7 page)

 For Sheila there was strangeness but no magic in a world where people you didn’t know were always forcing themselves upon you, always wanting a part of you, needing something. Sometimes she felt as though she just wanted to climb back into bed, pull the covers over her head and never lift them again.

Only now she was afraid that if she did the nightmare would return.

Why couldn’t I have good dreams for a change?

Now
there
was a unique idea.

She slammed the lid onto the big coffee urn and flicked the switch, listening to it gurgle as the element heated up. The bell over the door chimed behind her, but she didn’t turn.

"Ready in a minute, Charlie," she called, hurrying back into the kitchen.

She flipped the bacon and turned the burner down, then took all the cups out of the industrial washer and placed them on a fresh linen behind the counter, still avoiding Charlie’s eyes. When she chanced a glance at him he was reading the paper, anyway. She also noticed that the muscular and slightly familiar young man had taken the stool beside Charlie. She knew he was trouble without knowing exactly why, and she glared at him when he caught her eye. He nodded the bill of his baseball cap but didn’t hold up a hand to order or act like he was going to say anything, so for the moment she chose to ignore him, too.

When the coffee was ready she poured Charlie a cup. He looked up and nodded his thanks. Their eyes met, and he frowned.

"You look like shit," he said.           

"Thanks. I needed that."

"Bad night?"

"Couldn’t sleep. I should know better than to eat junk watching the late movie."

A couple of trucks were pulling in out front. The Club had arrived. She poured four more coffees and carried them to the table in the corner. When she returned to the counter Charlie had set his paper aside. The young man got up without a word and walked out as the old men entered, but Sheila refused to feel any guilt.

"How you doing, really?" asked Charlie.

Sheila shrugged. Charlie had known her since she was born. He didn’t have to be psychic  to know that life was bothering her more than usual.         

"Same as ever."

He nodded. "She died happy, Sheila."

"I know that," said Sheila, irritably.

"But you won’t admit it."

"I just did."

"Not to yourself, though."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just saying. Not everybody wants to be what some other folks think of as normal. She loved you more than life itself."

Sheila felt herself sagging from the heart down, but she willed strength back into her bones, and the effort angered her, driving out the guilt. "Love is a cheap way of owning people, of bending them to your way of thinking."

Charlie’s face fell. "I think that’s about the most cynical thing I’ve ever heard."

"Stick around," said Sheila, as a middle-aged couple she didn’t recognize came in and sat down in a window booth.

She managed to be at least polite while the woman took forever deciding whether she wanted coffee or tea, then she acted as though she was hurrying back to fill their order so as not to have to deal with Charlie any longer. As she passed him she noticed for the first time that he had bags under his own eyes, and his shoulders drooped more than usual as well. When she returned to refill his cup she angled her head, studying him.

"You don’t look so great yourself."

He shrugged. "I was up most of the night out on Route 15 with the state boys. Surprised you didn’t see it on the news this morning-"

"I don’t watch the news... or read the paper for that matter. There’s nothing good in it."

Charlie nodded. "That’s true enough, but you’ll hear about it pretty soon, anyway. Vern Billings shot his wife and daughter."

Sheila gasped. She didn’t know the family well, but they’d been into the diner once or twice. She tried to recall Vern. He was a brawny young carpenter who worked for a local contractor. His wife and daughter were quiet but polite types. Neither was a raving beauty, but both were clean cut, well dressed, the kind of women who seldom elicited a second glance. Suddenly Vern’s face popped into her mind, and she gasped.

"Are they-"

"All three dead. He called it in, then shot himself on the front stoop as we drove up. Just stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger."

"Oh, my God. Why?"

"Who knows? Sometimes I think the world is just going to hell. Terrorists everywhere. The president’s talking about reinstating the draft so we can go kill people somewhere else. Violent crime... crime in general is up over two hundred percent across the country. What’s going on with that? Maybe people are just out and out crazy."

"Or maybe we need to start prosecuting people and really sentencing them instead of slapping their wrists."                                                                                                    

"We’re running out of prisons to put them in, Sheila."

"There’s other options."

"I think Vern Billings took one of them."

She sighed. Three dead. Two innocent. The innocents were always the ones to pay for someone else’s madness.

"They don’t live far from Mom’s place-"

Charlie nodded. "Just up the road a spell toward town."                   

Maybe insanity grew right up out of the ground. Maybe Vern got a load of it like poison gas seeping between the cracks of the local granite. Her mother had never exhibited any violent tendencies. Just the opposite. Marguerite was the most peaceful person Sheila had ever known. She’d have been less likely to kill a fly than the most devout Buddhist priest, but there were all kinds of craziness. Sheila knew that for a fact. She’d been living away from her mother for six years, and she still hadn’t been able to rid herself of the residue.

When the phone rang she snatched it off the hook and pressed it to her ear.

"Bright Diner... Hello?"

The line sounded staticky, as though it were a long distance call. A
very
long distance call. She pressed the receiver to her ear, covering her other ear with the palm of her hand.

"Hello?" she said, louder.

Beneath the static she thought she could almost make out someone talking-or maybe whispering-on the other end, but the voice seemed to drift away-if it was a voice-leaving Sheila with the eerie feeling that she really
needed
to hear what the person had to say. Only she really didn’t want to, because she sensed a deep seated evil on the line, something dark and deadly. The phone began to feel slithery in her hand, as though it were not plastic but some sort of slimy reptilian flesh.

"H...hello?" she stammered.

She saw Charlie regarding her strangely, and she slammed the phone back onto the hook.

"Wrong number," she said, scurrying back into the kitchen.

When she returned to the counter Charlie was staring into his empty cup, and she refilled it for him, the weirdness of the call still crawling under her skin. She noticed the young man, pacing out by Charlie’s car. He had removed the ball cap, and she frowned as he tried to wipe his hair down over the back of his head. Even at that distance she could see that a large portion of skin and skull moved with it.

Vern Billings.

"So, you have bad dreams, Sheila?" asked Charlie.

She started, wondering if he’d been reading her mind. "Sometimes. Doesn’t everybody?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"You been having them?"

"All the time. It’s probably job related."

"I can believe that," she said, wondering what she could attribute hers to, but she knew.

It wasn’t bad enough she had a
waking
problem that Charlie could never even have imagined. Now she was getting little or no sleep because the dead were invading her dreams. Outside, Vern Billings shoved the flap of bone and skin back under his ball cap, gave her one last plaintive look, then turned and wandered up the road toward the mountains.

"At least they’re just dreams," she muttered.

"Yeah," said Charlie, staring into his coffee again.

Chapter 9

As Kira and Jen trudged up the sloping tracks an old man sat smoking his pipe on the verge of the woods a quarter mile ahead. Kira could barely place one foot in front of the other, but Jen’s hand in her own buoyed her through her pain, hunger, thirst, and near total exhaustion. The two of them stopped and stared when they reached the old man, Kira trying to make up her foggy mind.

She had no idea where they were headed from where they were, out here in the middle of nowhere, but she couldn’t hike another mile without rest, water, or food. If he didn’t have any he would share, perhaps he could tell them where to get some. She stumbled down the embankment without looking back to see if Jen was behind her. The old man gripped his pipe in one hand and shook his head.

"You are about the saddest looking, godawful excuse I’ve seen in all my born days."

His voice had the tobacco scratch to it, just like Joe the Barker’s. For an instant Kira felt a sob of renewed grief tighten her throat, but she forced it down, nodding in agreement.

"You lost?"

"Kind of," she said, her vocal chords rasping like his.

He rose to his feet like an old cat uncurling, gripping the small pine beside him for support.

"Well," he said, "come on, and I’ll see if I can rustle up some grub. This ain’t the Waldorf, though."

Kira had no idea what that was, but the possibility of getting a drink of water and something in her stomach, sounded like heaven. The old man gestured back into the woods, making a funny face at Jen as she slipped past. A few yards inside the cover of trees Kira spotted a bedroll beside a small, dying campfire, and she dropped wearily onto it too tired to wait to see if she was invited. She greedily eyed the plastic canteen laying beside the fire, and the old man handed it to her. When Jen sat down next to her the old man squinted in her direction.

"Where you coming from?" he asked, turning back to Kira as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

She shrugged, resting the canteen on the ground. "Florida."

"Pretty fair piece to get to North Carolina. How’d you come this far?"

"Hopped a freight."

The old man let out a laugh that sounded like pots and pans clattering.

"Well, if that don’t beat the band," he said, setting his pipe beside the sleeping bag as he eased himself creakily down onto it beside Kira. "So young people still ride the rails. Good for you. How’s bacon and toast sound. I ain’t got no eggs."

"That would be wonderful. Thank you."

"Name’s Clancy," said the old man, shoving a battered cast-iron pan on the coals and digging a greasy yellow package out of an equally greasy looking pack. "Yours?"

"I’m Kira, and this is my friend, Jen," she said, on a hunch.

The old man followed Kira’s hand, and once again he squinted. He leaned so close into Jen’s face Kira thought he might kiss her.

"I’ll be teedinkle damned," he muttered, shaking his head and reaching to touch Jen gently on the cheek. "You really are there, aren’t you? I thought I was having one of my spells again."

"Some people can see her," said Kira. "Some can’t."

"I can believe that. Out in the sun it looked to me like she might be just a heat wave, but in here, in the shadows I can see her better. What is she?"

"My daddy called her a pooka."

"A poo what?"

"A pooka. They don’t hurt people."

The old man jerked his fingers away. "Well, why would they?"

Kira shrugged. "No reason."

The old man straightened, both hands on the small of his back, staring down his pointy nose. "Where’d you get her?"

"I didn’t
get
her from anywhere. She just showed up one night and told me that she was going to be my friend. That’s what pookas do. They’re there when you need them."

"Well, none ever showed up when
I
needed em, I can tell you that. Can she talk?"

"When she wants to, but not very often."

Clancy snorted. "Well, that’s a blessing in a woman... no offense. What else can she do?"

"She protects me, and sometimes she helps me. Like jumping the train. I couldn’t catch up-"

"You two hopped a
moving
freight? Damn, girl, my estimation of you just keeps rising. I figured you hid in an unlocked boxcar."

Kira shook her head. "Jen lifted me onto the train, and we were gone."

"Lucky you two weren’t
gone
under the wheels. That’s a damned dangerous stunt."

"We didn’t have any choice. We were gonna get stuck with a foster family. Or I was."

"You’re better off out of there, then," said the old man, bitterly. "Had a brother once, a long, long time ago. Parents deserted us, and we got sent to separate
homes
. I never saw him again, and the family that took me in worked me like a red headed stepchild. Not an ounce a love between em."

Kira didn’t think Clancy would really care that the Barstows had seemed nice enough. He acted like he was on their side, and at the moment they really needed a conspirator more than adult supervision.

"Guess I’d better put on more bacon," said Clancy, turning back to the fire but glancing over his shoulder. "I mean... she does eat... right?"

"Like a pig."

The old man laughed again. "Pooka that eats like a pig. This I gotta see."

As Kira suspected, Jen proved her right, finishing all the bacon the old man had, and half a loaf of bread he toasted in the pan, before belching loudly in satisfaction and patting her bulging belly. The hot food sat heavily in Kira’s tummy, too. Her legs felt numb, and her vision swam. Suddenly Jen farted and then laughed. She was always impressed with her bodily noises, sometimes to the chagrin of the people around her. Kira glanced at Clancy, but he just grinned and shook his head.

"You look done in, kid," he said, cleaning the pan with a rag before shoving it back into his pack. "You can stretch out on my bag for a while. I just got up not long ago. I don’t follow no time clock."