FEAST OF THE FEAR (2 page)

Mitch parked his battered truck out in front and got out, slamming the rusty door behind him. He stood for a long moment looking up at the building in trepidation before making his way slowly along the cracked concrete walkway to the front door. The house beckoned darkly behind soiled windows that were like mirrors that no longer cast reflections. A sick knot began forming inside Mitch’s gut. The torso scar ached along its entire length. Mitch had to fight with himself to keep from digging at it with his fingernails.

After Mitch had left home, the State had had to step in and care for his mother. She’d had minimal income, had only worked sporadically in her life, most of which had been under the table as she’d read charts and told fortunes. She’d been in a wheel chair for several years now; having lost the use of her legs in a fall down the cellar stairs a year after Mitch had bailed out. The State had tried to guilt Mitch into moving back in, which would have saved them the expense of home care, but Mitch had flatly refused. He’d told them that he was having trouble supporting even himself, which was true. Although Mitch was smart, with a high IQ and a community college education, he’d always had trouble getting along with people. He’d been told on more than one occasion that he was a social misfit. He’d been fired from three jobs in the past two years and at the present time he was unemployed. In reality, Mitch had no longer been able to stand his mother and her narcissism. She was a beautiful and mysterious woman; everybody said so, to the point where she actually believed the myth. But more than that, Mitch had become disgusted with her constant fawning over him, treating him like an unhealthy child. More than once he had wondered if the accident on the cellar stairs had been staged to play on his sympathies. It didn’t matter. After leaving her, the horrific dreams had stopped.

Until now.

Recently the state had warned him that they would soon have to remove her from her home and put her into supervised care. She’d become depressed and had stopped caring for herself. They would have to seize her property, of course, and sell it at auction in order to recover part of the cost of her care. Mitch couldn’t have cared less. The house and the property represented only bad memories for him. Good riddance to it all.

He had visited her on occasion over the past several years, but it was always an awkward and uncomfortable thing for Mitch to do. Rarely did his mother take an interest in his visits. Since his rejection of her she had shut him out. Mitch supposed he didn’t blame her. But he was okay with it. At least she wasn’t fawning over him, treating him like a neurotic.

When Mitch reached the front door he hesitated as fear seized him. The door was standing wide open. He stepped up onto the stoop and put one foot across the threshold when an enormous shadow descended over him. Mitch screamed and fell back against the door jamb.

“
Hey, Mitch, is that you? Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me.” A skinny old man with greasy gray hair and a tanned, leathery complexion stood staring at Mitch with wild green eyes. He had on grease-stained kakis tied around the waist with hemp rope and a green flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders.

“
Aw, Christ, Al,” Mitch said, recognizing the source of the shadow. “You almost gave me a goddamn heart attack. What the hell are you doing here?”

Al’s green eyes remained wide open in inquiry, bulging like a man with serious goiter problems. “Oh, I guess you haven’t heard yet, huh?”

Mitch’s heart rate accelerated. “Heard what?” Mitch’s eyes drew down on Al McKinney, one of his mother’s oldest and dearest friends. Al lived a quarter of a mile down the road from the Redlon’s, in a house that was more a sprawling shack than a real house; the place was a single story tarpaper structure surrounded by heaps of scrap and the skeletons of old automobiles. Al was in the salvage business, had been all his life, and he proudly wore the scars of his profession like shrapnel wounds. His wife Mildred was ten years in the grave. They’d raised six kids in that tarpaper palace. All of them had gone off to college and made something of their lives.

“
Someone broke in last night,” Al said. “Your mom got cut up real bad.”

Those two sentences slammed into Mitch like bullets. He thought he might drop dead right there in front of Al. He had to fight with everything inside him to quell his rising panic. “Oh, God,” Mitch said. “Is she dead?”

“
No, no! Relax, boy. They took her to the hospital.”

“
Well, how bad is it?”

“
Looks like whoever did it, didn’t intend to kill her,” Al said. “I don’t know what the hell they were thinkin’. Scrawled a bunch of skin-deep slashes all over her body. Like it was some kind of game, or warning or something.”

“
Game? Warning?” Mitch said.

“
The cops have already come and gone,” Al said, avoiding Mitch’s stare. “They tried to call you but the operator said your phone was disconnected.”

Mitch avoided Al’s gaze. “Lost my job,” he said. “Couldn’t pay the bill.”

All nodded in understanding. “I think they’re gonna want to talk to you later, Mitch. The cops I mean.”

“
What on earth for? My God, I wouldn’t hurt my own mother!”

“
I know that, Mitch, but they don’t. They took some prints and stuff from the blood in her bedroom. Said they might have a better idea later in the day as to who might’ve done this. You can relax, Mitch, I saw some of the prints and they’re smaller than yours.”

“
How much smaller?”

“
A lot,” Al said, and his buggy eyes swam in his head. Mitch thought he saw a species of fear in those eyes. His own heart hammered inside his chest.

Listen, Mitch, do you want the bitch to die?

Just remember, I warned you.

Jesus,
Mitch thought, the panic swelling in him like a tide.
It couldn’t be.
Mitch tried to move past Al, but Al stepped in his path blocking him. “Get out of the way, Al.”

“
There’s nothing for you to see in there, Mitch. The cops put a barricade up at her bedroom door. No one’s allowed in until they’re through with the investigation.”

Mitch stood staring at Al, remembering the terrible night he’d just gone through, remembering dozens of other past nights and their accompanying nightmares, not knowing how he felt, not knowing how he
should
feel.

Mitch turned and made his way back outside, Al following behind him. The two men walked in silence to Mitch’s pickup. Mitch leaned over and gagged, nearly puking. His heart raced and his head swam.

Al leaned against a rusty fender watching him in silence. The old man produced a hand-rolled cigarette, lit it and took a huge drag. Thick columns of gray smoke wafted from his thin nose and deflated mouth.

Mitch straightened up, scrutinizing Al through wet eyes. “What were you doing in the house, Al?”

Al managed to look both embarrassed and hurt. “Just gathering up a few of her things, Mitch, you know, in case she might need them at the hospital. I came by this morning and . . . found her like that . . .” Al looked away, his eyes cloudy with emotion.

Mitch nodded, still watching Al thoughtfully. “You loved her, didn’t you, Al?”

Al gave a nervous cough. His brown, leathery complexion turned suddenly pale.

“
I know, Al.” Mitch said. “No need to be embarrassed about it.”

Al dropped his cigarette and crushed it angrily beneath a worn leather shoe. “What
do
you know, Mitch?” Al’s voice had turned hard and he leaned in toward Mitch looking curiously like a vulture sizing up meat. His strange green eyes bulged madly from their sockets. “How much do you really know, boy?” Al’s voice rose. “Tell me what you
think
you know and maybe I’ll tell you some things you don’t!”

“
Hold on,” Mitch said, backing away, holding his hands up defensively. “I only meant that I’ve suspected for a long time, since I was a kid, that you and Ma . . . well.”

“
Yeah, I loved her. Still do. So what? I helped her through some hard times. When she got pregnant and had nobody to turn to I was the one she called. No one else gave a damn. Everyone was
afraid
of her. Can you believe that? A beautiful woman like her. The women all hated her, yeah, including my wife, because she was so
beautiful,
and the men all wanted her. She wouldn’t spit in any of their faces, so they made up stories about her. Said she was a whore, and a witch, because she used to read peoples fortunes and some of her predictions didn’t turn out so good.”

“
You mean she was wrong?”

“
No! Jesus, no! She was
right!
Don’t you see? She could see right through these pathetic fools in this pathetic town and they couldn’t stand it. And she saw other things, too . . . the murders and all, you remember the murders, don’t you, Mitch, when you were a kid? All the talk around that she was the one causing ’em, and some even wanted to burn her at the stake. But she wasn’t to blame. Christ, she only saw things, she didn’t do ’em. So help me, if anyone had ever laid a hand on Elizabeth Redlon I would have killed the bastards! Help me God, I would have. Even though I grew up here and knew these people, I would have killed anyone that touched her.” Al stopped. His face was vivid with rage and he was puffing asthmatically through noisy airways.

“
Why didn’t you take her in after your wife died, Al?”

Al flapped a contemptuous hand. “I would have in a minute, Mitch, but she didn’t love
me
. Christ, I’m a junk man, and she was a goddess. After she fell down the cellar stairs and lost the use of her legs, I came by every day, though, just like this morning, and did things for her, stuff she couldn’t do for herself. And I did love her, and I know she knew it, even though neither of us ever spoke of it. For me it was just enough to be around her. But you can’t understand that, can you, Mitch. When you got old enough you bailed out leaving her to fend for herself.” Al was staring accusingly at Mitch.

“
God damn it, Al, my childhood was one long fucking nightmare. I
had
to leave. You know that.” Mitch turned, facing the ramshackle house that had once been his home. “What happened to me in that house, Al? If anybody knows, you do. I could never get Ma to talk to me rationally about it. About the nightmares and the things I saw. The murders you were just talking about. I saw them all, Al. And they
were
real. How is that possible, Al? How is it possible that a little kid saw such terrible things in his nightmares?” Mitch suddenly yanked the hem of his shirt out of his trousers, lifting it, showing Al the ugly scar that ran the entire length of his right torso. “This has something to do with it, Al. What
is
it? Do you
know?
If you do, for God sakes tell me. It’s been there for as long as I can remember and nobody has ever explained to me where it came from!”

Al’s entire body seemed to deflate inward all at once. His face went ashen. He turned and began walking away from Mitch, shaking his head. Mitch went after him, grabbing his arm and pulling him around. “You do know, don’t you?”

“
Your mom was no ordinary woman, Mitch. She was exotic and beautiful, and she had this kind of magnetism. When she first came to Eden, everybody felt it, and most were drawn to her and this place. Some became her friends, and some used her. They came every day in the beginning; two and three at a time, like followers of some . . . cult, to get their fortunes read and hear about their futures. But when they started to realize it wasn’t a game, that your mom
could
actually read the future, and some of the things she read came true and weren’t very pleasant, that’s when they turned against her. You see, people don’t really want to know the truth about themselves. They only want to hear the good stuff, never the
truth.”

“
Al, I know all that. For Christ’s sake I had to live with her. What I don’t know is what it all has to do with this.” Mitch pointed again at his right side. “And what about the murders? “Who did them? You know, don’t you?”

Al stood like a statue staring at Mitch without answering.

“
And who’s my father, Al? Is it you?”

Al gave his head a rueful shake. “I wish I was, Mitch. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that. But I’m not, and I’m afraid only your mom can answer your questions.”

“
But you know, don’t you?”

“
Years ago I made Liz a promise, Mitch and I intend to keep it. I’m afraid you’ll have to get your answers from her.”

Mitch, unable to control his emotions, lunged at Al, grabbing him by his shirt lapels and pushing him against the cab of the pickup. Al was thin and frail and the air rushed from his lungs in a retching gasp. The green eyes swam in his head. “I want the truth, you old bastard!” Mitch screamed directly into Al’s face, pulling him forward and then forcing him back hard into the pickup’s cab. “God damn it, man,
tell me!

Too late, Mitch realized that Al was in distress. He let go of him and backed away. Al’s face had turned purple, like a livid bruise, and he was gasping for air. His right hand rose and gripped his left shoulder, massaging it. His bulging eyes swam with panic as his legs buckled and he slid to his knees.