SHUDDERVILLE THREE (4 page)

Now she touched Ryan’s arm, and he tensed all over. “I figured you must love me,” she said, “because I loved you so much.”

He sighed heavily, as if she’d placed another burden on him.

They drove along in silence, and everywhere they went, the view was the same—boarded-up storefronts, chain hotels and greenbelts on the edge of non-descript towns. Ryan remained cool and distant. Deep down, she was hoping he would end up with nothing—no magic wand to wave away the curse. She wanted to be his wife forever—or at least for as long as she lived. Why not? What was wrong with that? Life didn’t come with any guarantees. Loving someone was always a risk.

Soon the traffic grew lighter. The morning rush was over. The highway cut through the surrounding woods. Eventually they pulled over to the side of the road where the Queen Anne’s lace grew in wild abundance.

“Come on,” Ryan said. “I want to show you something.”

“Not again,” she groaned.

“Relax. I’m not going to hurl myself off a mountain. Just get out. Please.”

Her lips were chapped. Her head throbbed. The day had a perverse vividness to it. She followed him through the waist-high goldenrod until they came to the edge of the woods. Partially hidden behind a patch of tangled brush was an abandoned cemetery, where the chipped headstones jutted out of the ground like a jagged row of teeth.

“It’s this way.”

She followed him along the overgrown path and experienced a prickly fear. For a moment she felt lighter than air, as if she didn’t belong there. She hated the moss-mottled stones. “Where are we going, Ryan?”

“You’ll see.”

Autumn leaves crackled underfoot, and she sensed something otherworldly in the strange shift of wind. They stopped in front of a knot of dead vines and bougainvillea growing over an old gravestone. “Here,” he said softly.

Inscribed in the granite was the name
Beatrice Langier
. Cassie grew instantly jealous and imagined a beautiful woman—more beautiful than her, definitely more refined, certainly more grounded. She pictured Ryan’s beloved aging and sagging and fading, while he stayed exactly the same—youthful, sun-kissed, brimming with energy. What a tragic love story. Cassie hated this dead woman.

“I’m sorry,” he told her now. “I didn’t mean for things to end this way.”

She stood with her long dark hair twisting in the wind. Panic expanded in her chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She broke into a stumbling run, but this time he didn’t let her get away. He caught up with her and drew her close. She would find her way out of this nightmare somehow.

*

The cold, crisp air smelled of the impending winter. They drove into upper New York State and found the next person on the list. Benjamin Pasternak lived in a modest cottage deep in the woods. It was mid-afternoon by the time they arrived. She crumbled a little at the sight of the cottage. It had diamond-paned windows and a green-shingled roof, and there were fairytale wisps of smoke threading out of the chimney. They parked in the driveway next to a shiny white pickup truck, got out and crossed the balding yard. The patches of grass were brown and spongy. Cassie waited nervously while Ryan knocked on the door.

A handsome, rugged-looking guy in his mid- to late-twenties answered. He had pale blond shoulder-length hair and alert blue eyes. He stood in the doorway holding onto the frame and said nothing. She could tell there was something odd about him.

“Hi, I’m Ryan, and this is Cassie. Tobias Mandelbaum sent me. He said you might be able to help with my ‘wish’ problem.”

The man didn’t move or release his grip from the doorway.

“You are Benjamin Pasternak, aren’t you?” Ryan tried again.

With sudden grace and surprising animation, the man moved his tapered hands through the air, and finally it registered—he was deaf. “Sorry,” he said with a thick lisp. “I can read lips but I can’t hear you.” He pointed to his ears. He signed as he spoke, out of habit.

Ryan relaxed. “Oh. Sorry. My name is Ryan Waverly. Tobias Man-del-baum sent me,” he said, enunciating clearly. “Do you know him?”

Benjamin swung the door open, and they walked into a modest living room. He gestured for them to sit anywhere. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I just made a pot.” His words came out muted and fuzzy-sounding, and Cassie imagined moths flapping lazily out of his mouth, like something out of a Disney cartoon.

“Coffee would be great,” Ryan said with a nod.

“Thanks,” Cassie echoed.

They waited for Benjamin to return from the kitchen with two cups of coffee—one for Ryan and one for Cassie. She took a sip. The coffee was strong and fragrant.

Benjamin took a seat in the leather armchair and smiled at them, waiting for them to explain themselves.

“Do you know him?” Ryan asked. “Tobias Mandelbaum?”

Benjamin shook his head. He gave Cassie a clueless look.

“No?” Ryan handed him the list. “He wrote your name down. See here? You’re second on the list. There’s your address.”

Benjamin held the list delicately for a moment, before glancing at Cassie again. “C-a-s-s-i-e?” He spelled her name with his fingers.

“Yes.” Ryan nodded. “My wife.”

She blushed. He’d never called her his wife before, and it pleased her deeply. She sat smiling uneasily, while Benjamin watched her closely. She wasn’t used to being scrutinized by such intense blue eyes. His face was like still water. It was remarkable—he seemed so calm and centered, so very much himself. She wondered what it was like to be yourself deep down to your core? She couldn’t imagine it. Cassie wore a lot of masks. Didn’t everybody? She was always putting on different masks for different people.

Benjamin tore his gaze away and studied the list. After a moment, he said, “I have no idea how my name got on here. Sorry.”

Happiness and relief flooded her heart.

“Shit,” Ryan grumbled, rudely snatching the list back and tucking it into his wallet. “So you don’t know what I’m talking about? Great. Terrific.”

“I can read lips,” Benjamin said, “but only if you’re facing me. If you move your head away, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Sorry,” Ryan barked, facing Benjamin squarely. “So you don’t know what I’m talking about?” he repeated angrily.

Benjamin startled them both by abruptly shooting up from his chair. He towered over them. He spoke softly and enunciated each word, accompanied by elaborate hand gestures. “I remember a man named Tobias who used to hang out with my granddad. I think his last name was Mandelbaum, but this was a long time ago. Skinny guy with wild hair going prematurely grey. Walked with a cane.”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Ryan said. “He said one of the people on that list might be able to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“Reverse the wish.”

“What wish?”

“You don’t know about the wishes?”

The deaf man shook his head.

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter.” Ryan gave up.

Cassie was secretly thrilled. Only one more person to go, and they’d be home free. She wasn’t about to celebrate just yet, but she was beginning to suspect that Mandelbaum had nothing up his sleeve. What an awful man. He seemed to enjoy tormenting people. She could only hope that this nightmare would be over soon.

Ryan asked Benjamin one more time, “So you can’t help me? You seriously don’t know what I’m talking about?”

Benjamin shook his head and glanced at Cassie.

“Great.” Ryan got up to leave, muttering, “Well, that was a total waste of time.”

Cassie put down her coffee, held out her hand, and Benjamin shook it gently, as if she’d offered him a flower. Not just any flower, but a wild rose. “Thanks for coffee,” she said.

He nodded courteously.

They left.

That night, the moon followed them along the highway, casting ghostly shadows into the car. It was getting late, so they stopped at a chain motel. Ryan rang for the night manager, who emerged from the back room into the luminous lobby. Gaunt and silver-haired, the motel manager reminded Cassie of an aging character actor. Ryan paid in cash and the man handed them a plastic key card.

Cassie collapsed on the double bed without looking around the room. These places were all the same—closet, mini-fridge, color TV. The central heating hummed and the floral-patterned bedspread reeked of powdered detergent.

“Two down, one to go,” Ryan said with gallows humor.

“I want you to lose,” she confessed.

“The way my luck is running, you’ll have me for a very long time,” he said irritably.

She closed her eyes in order to mask the hope that filled them.

“Still, the odds aren’t bad. One out of three.”

“Shut up.”

He lay down beside her and traced letters on her back with his fingers. She couldn’t guess a single one. She didn’t stir while his fingertips circled her skin.

“Can I undress you?” he asked.

She rolled over to face him, too conflicted to answer. What if he succeeded in his quest? Then he’d be gone. And she’d be a widow. Or worse—what if Tobias kept on toying with them by giving them more and more lists? What was to stop him from doing just that? What if they spent the rest of their lives chasing lists? Tilting at windmills?

She smoothed her hand along his sandpapery cheek. She pinched his mouth between her fingers, until his eyes welled with tears. “If Tobias is right, then you’ll be gone. And what will happen to me?”

“You’ll be fine. Life goes on.”

“How can you be so cruel?”

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Cassie. You’ll live a long and happy life. You’ll surprise yourself by falling in love again. You’ll remember me fondly.”

She was destroyed. Truly devastated.

“The sad fact is,” he said softly, “the last person on the list won’t be able to help me, either. And Tobias will laugh in my face.”

“God, I hope so.” She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

“And we’ll move to the suburbs and raise rug-rats and become walking, talking clichés.”

“Seriously?” She smiled. “Because I’d love to be a cliché with you.”

Ryan gave her a cynical grin. “Why not?” He climbed gingerly on top of her and lay very still, rubbing his penis against her, slipping it down between her legs but not inside of her. Not yet. She fell into a trance. He was like a drug she couldn’t survive without.

*

The next day they got lost. They’d been driving around forever when they stopped at a Sunoco station and Ryan went inside to ask for directions. The bright sunshine was making Cassie drowsy. The gas station attendant came over and filled their tank. He washed the windshield and cleaned the wipers with a dirty rag, then let them slap back against the glass. He leered at her toothlessly.

“Yeah, whatever, Mr. Bumfuck,” she muttered grumpily.

Ryan paid for the gas, got back inside the Range Rover and said, “I think I know where we’re headed.”

She studied the map and said, “Glad somebody does.” The truth was, she’d been deliberately trying to get them lost. She wanted him to give up.

They pulled back onto the highway, heading north. Bushes grew by the roadside, fat with berries, the kind you weren’t supposed to eat—winter berries. It was an unusually warm November day. They’d rolled their windows down, and her hair blew carelessly in the breeze. The view outside the Range Rover was monotonous—billboards, roadside pit stops, gas stations.

Cassie had a sudden brainstorm. “Hey, what if I become immortal, too?”

He glanced at her. “How do you plan on pulling that off?”

“Easy.” She shrugged. “I’ll make another wish.”

“You only get one. Remember?”

“Then I’ll convince somebody to make a wish for me.”

“Right.” Ryan snorted derisively. “You can see how well that turned out for Sophie.”

It only stung for a moment—but he was right. It hadn’t turned out very well for her friend. “I’m serious,” Cassie insisted. “I can get someone to do it for me. I have a few candidates in mind.”

“Oh, come on. You think I haven’t tried every trick in the book? It doesn’t work that way. Did you wish for Jayla McKnight back? Huh? Did you?”

She felt her facial muscles twitching.

“She was your best friend. But hey, don’t sweat it. We all do it. We all betray our best friends. It’s human nature. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole fucking point. We get greedy. We follow our self-interests. It’s baked in. You’re not going to find that magical ‘somebody’ who will selflessly make a wish for you. That person doesn’t exist. I’ve tried. Trust me. Nobody’s going to help us out of this thing. You can count on it.”

“We’ll pay them lots of money. You’ve got plenty of money.”

“That’s the first thing I thought of,” he said, losing his temper and pounding his fist against the wheel for emphasis. “Don’t you think I’ve tried everything at least a dozen times over?”

“Try again,” she pleaded. “Okay? For me.”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. They always betray you.
Always.
It doesn’t matter how much you pay them—do you want to know why, Cassie? Because they can always wish for billions more. Remember—you betrayed your best friend. You broke your promise.”

She felt the dig in the soft center of her being, the place where she’d always assumed she was a good person. She felt defeated by everything. They took the exit off the highway, and in the woodsy distance she spotted a towering Ferris wheel, like a child’s erector set.

“What’s a Ferris wheel doing all the way out here?” she asked.

“No idea.”

They drove around for a while and kept coming back to the highway.

“Okay,” Ryan sighed. “We’re officially lost.”

They aimed for the Ferris wheel and found a vacant field where a traveling carnival had set up shop, huge trucks idling in the parking lot. Ryan swung his Range Rover between two vehicles baking in the hot sun. They got out and walked over to the ticket booth.

They could hear laughter coming from the amusement park beyond the chicken-wire fence. Little kids with feverish faces were running around in a delirium of joy, clutching paper cones of cotton candy. Inside the rickety ticket booth, a glassy-eyed woman sat on a folding chair. She’d lost her girlish figure long ago, and her flabby arms were covered with interesting tattoos.