Something Bad (15 page)

Passing the front of the main counter, he paused. The disposable camera display caught his eye, and for an instant his mind embraced the need for documentation of his sortie. A caution flashed like the strobe of one of the cameras. He remembered his days in the National Guard when he learned to fire one of those shoulder-launched surface-to-air, heat-seeking Red Eye missiles at imaginary jets on a strafing run. The Field Operation Manual stated that firing the device required a 100-meter diameter clear space, making the operator as expendable as the disposable launch tube.

Mac took the back way to the rectory, staying away from open spaces. He was halfway across the first of two back yards when his racing pulse and his emotional high returned him to the seventies, and his brief experimentation in mind alteration. Three times. The first two hadn’t done much except give him a powerful sore throat, but the third was an experience he would never forget. Everything slowed way down, like a 45 played at 33 1/3. But despite the greater clarity, everything was slightly bent at the edges. He remembered how energized he had felt. Like he held advantage over everyone and everything. But afterward, it had scared him. It was too easy. Easy always had a price and he didn’t want to find out what it was.

Now, he had the same feeling—energized, with a sense of clarity. Everything slowed way down. So, when he pressed through a hedgerow separating the two yards, he was keenly aware of the thump coming from the doghouse at the corner of the lot. He took a slow-motion step toward the back of the yard as a Doberman-mix peeked from the darkness and showed two rows of teeth separated by a guttural growl.

Mac’s legs felt heavy—gravity was an enemy now. It took three full steps before he shifted into a sprint. Three steps he couldn’t afford. The dog didn’t move in slow motion. Mac heard its growl build to yipping barks and he felt its foot pats on the ground, coming closer. And something else caught his attention—the tinkling sound of a chain being dragged in the dirt.

At full speed now, the tree line approached, but the growling barks squeezed him. His mind flashed: if a train leaves Chicago going forty five miles an hour, and another leaves an hour later going sixty … This was going to be close. … the second train would catch the first at the tree line … Mac dove head-first for the bushes. The dog leapt after him. He felt its hot breath on the back of his neck just before he hit the ground. The force curled him into a ball and spun him around, facing the dog. Everything went back to slow motion. He folded his hands over his head and neck and the airborne dog froze in mid-air. Its growl turned to a loud yip, but it sounded like a slow-speed playback. The chain yanked the dog in a 180-degree head-first spin to the ground where it stayed, motionless.

Mac didn’t wait for the dog’s confusion to clear. He returned to normal speed and low-crawled through the undergrowth as the lights at the back of the house pushed the blackness of the night all the way back to the tree line.

He didn’t know how far he had crawled. It was far enough so the house lights didn’t penetrate the brush. Collapsing face-first into the ground, he needed to give his heart rate time to return to human levels. When he leaned up and removed his skullcap, the perspiration of exertion and fright dripped from its edge onto his forehead and ran into his eyes as a stinging punishment for his lack of planning.

He blinked the brine from his eyes and looked around. To his right, the brush thinned to a clearing so he crawled to the edge of his cover. The rectory was silhouetted by the sole streetlight of town. He looked for the usual glow of the fireplace coming from the living room of the rectory, but it wasn’t there. That’s a first, he thought. He inched his way across the dirt and occasional ragged patches of grass. At least they felt ragged. Halfway to the back of the building, a sharp, high-pitched whine invaded the quiet night. He lowered himself flat on the ground and froze. It took a moment, but the sound registered. It was the singing hinges of the front doors of the rectory. He raised his head enough to see the rectory porch.

Mac tried to control his breathing but it echoed in his ears. Midway through a protracted inhalation, a figure emerged from the rectory porch. The small stature and the shuffling, irregular walk confirmed it was Thibideaux.

Mac watched the little man shuffle down the steps and turn right, toward the two houses Mac had just circled. Thibideaux ambled past the house where a dog had a newly acquired case of whiplash, and on into the night. Mac stayed in place until Thibideaux disappeared into the distance. When he stood up, something wasn’t right. His knees felt strange. He looked down and pulled on the legs of his pants. The dive into the brush and the knee-crawl to the rectory produced two large rips in the knees of his dress slacks. He bent over and pulled closer to the rips. Fortunately, his skin hadn’t suffered the same fate.

Mac did a mental calculation of Thibideaux’s distance and his maximum speed, and then sprinted for the back of the rectory. Better to snoop from the inside than to try to see from black-to-black through the windows. He was comforted by a dense fog that circled the back of the rectory and enveloped the building and surrounding yard.

Mac hurried to the nearest window and pushed upward. He expected resistance, but it offered none. It slammed open. He paused. No sound from inside. He jumped up but misjudged the height—his center of gravity pulled him past the ledge and he tumbled, head first, into the room. The initial sting singed his forearms, and then his right side as he rolled onto the floor. He waited for a lingering pain to flare somewhere on his body, but only the residual rasp from his initial contact remained. He stayed still. It would take a little while for his eyes to adjust to the abyssal darkness in the rectory.

He reached for his flashlight, but paused. Only if necessary, he thought. Once on, it would have to be left on or his night vision would be reset. The move became moot as the dimensions of the room started to take shape. He released the flashlight and pushed himself upright.

The large bedroom was at the rear of the house. The hall to the left led to the front of the house, past the living room—the main objective of the search. Mac knew the layout well. Two years ago he tried to liberate the toilet from the bathroom halfway down the hall. His plan to sell the used fixture was foiled when the nut on one of the two floor bolts refused to release its rusty grip, even when the largest pipe wrench was enlisted. Hack sawing through the bolt or bringing in a blowtorch was out. In the Tri-counties, it wasn’t a crime to claim an unused object as long as two conditions were met. First, there had to be no doubt the object was never going to be of use to the owner. Second, the object had to be removed in such a way that no permanent resident was forced to look, or listen, the other way. It was necessary to avoid the gossip mill.

Mac slipped into the bathroom, partly to see if anyone had managed to free the commode, and partly to see if it was functional, since it was the only refuse receptacle in the building. It was there, in the same non-functional, partly dissembled condition he had left it. He slapped his forehead with his right palm. There, next to the rusted nut, was the crescent wrench he’d been trying to find for ages. He pocketed the wrench and reflected on his good fortune, then on his carelessness.

A sudden chill hit his back and Mac spun on his heels to see nothing. The cold penetrated his clothing like it wasn’t there, and an icy cloud puffed from his mouth with each exhalation. He crossed his arms across his chest and slipped out of the bathroom. The next room on the right was the living room, but he stopped short of the opening. A low whirring sound came from the room.

He leaned around the doorway and moved first one eye into the opening, then the other. The hardwood floor complained with a loud creak. The whirring noise increased in tone. He pulled his head back. The whirring stopped.

Mac leaned his head into the doorway again and peered in. He quickly withdrew his head. Only a chair. A big chair. He leaned around again, this time long enough to scan the nearest half of the room. Still only the chair. Another step and the floor groaned again, but this time, there was no whirring sound.

The living room was silent. He leaned his head farther into the room and scanned the other half. As far as he could see in the dark, it was empty. The large chair was the only piece of furniture, and it was placed in the geometric middle of the rectangular room, centered in front of the fireplace. It had a conical pedestal base and a high back of enormous proportions. It faced directly toward him.

He inched closer. His breath came fast, forcing an almost continuous stream of mist. It seemed to get colder the closer he came to the chair. His hand extended, index finger twitching, and touched it. It wasn’t cold like he expected, but it wasn’t warm either. He put out his palm and the chair turned with his touch. A harder push and it swung halfway around. It moved freely, like there was little friction between base and seat. Harder, and it turned a complete circle. He pushed harder yet, and he had to reach out and stop it when it came back to his position.

The chair was carved in some ornate way, but in the dim light, he couldn’t make out the pattern. To get a better look, he walked around in front of the fireplace and swung the chair around to face him. In a single smooth movement, his hands grasped the arms of the chair and he catapulted himself upward, turning 180 degrees to land with his backside on the seat. Good thing I wore my Chucks, he thought. The chair didn’t rotate with the leap—it continued to face the fireplace.

Mac wiggled himself back into the seat and rested his back and head against the hardwood seat back.

His legs hung short of the floor by a few inches. He sat motionless and sniffed. An odor rose to him. It smelled like sulfur, but sweet. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The smell intensified and Mac’s mind clicked. It smelled like the transformer of the electric train he got for Christmas when he was ten. The familiarity of the smell relaxed him, and he slumped into the seat.

Then, he felt the heat. It came from the seat, seat back and arms of the chair. In a matter of seconds, the entire chair seemed to achieve the temperature of his adrenaline-perfused body and hold there.

A crackle sounded below his right arm, then one below his left. He raised his arms and saw the flashes. Electrical arcs jumped between the slats of the chair arms briefly illuminating the sides of the chair. The smell of ozone replaced the transformer odor as Mac pulled his arms together, away from the armrests. He tried to move to the edge of the chair, to dismount, but his body didn’t obey his brain’s commands. He was frozen in place as miniature lightning bolts surrounded him in the chair.

A low frequency vibration rocked the chair base, then the seat, and then the upper chair. The vibrations spread to the floor, causing a rhythmic groaning that spread along the floor to the junctions of the floor and walls. A non-functional chandelier swayed overhead.

Mac moved his right side, then his left, and this time his body responded. He inched his butt toward the edge of the seat in a right-then-left bun-walk—the only way he could move without touching the electrified arms of the chair.

Before he could get to the edge of the seat and slide down, the chair back heaved forward, launching Mac through the air. He landed near the fireplace hearth with a loud thud, accompanied by a whine as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay motionless, trying to regain some semblance of a breathing rhythm.

Gasping, Mac looked up at the chair. It was still. No electrical arcs, no vibrations, no smells, and it was cold in the room again. He pulled himself up, favoring his sore right ribcage, and sprinted toward the doorway and the hall. Misjudging the width of the hallway, he smacked his head into the door jam of the bathroom. The angle of the impact stopped the upper part of his body, but allowed the lower part to rotate off the ground until his left hip, leg and both feet slammed into the wall down-hall from the initial contact point. He lay crumpled on the floor facing back toward the living room, dazed.

This time, Mac didn’t wait for his breathing to recover. He clamored to hands and knees, then to hands and feet, and monkey walked to the back bedroom and out the open window. The disorienting film of fog triggered a pause while his mind tried to gain hold of landmarks and guideposts. A shadow—his shadow—broke through the confusion. It wasn’t much of one, but it was there, showing the direction of the one streetlight in town.

Mac sprinted along the rectory, past the church, and on a diagonal across the vacant lot toward the nearest sanctuary—his General Store. His feet barely touched the ground until they found the porch and the front door. Fumbling in his pocket for the key, he turned the pocket lining inside out. The key clinked on the wooden planks of the porch.

Once inside, he collapsed on the floor, straining with each breath. Then the pain came. With each inhalation, his right side burned. He tried to take short, shallow breaths, but it didn’t help. He shifted his position but the pain didn’t relent.

Warm sweat dripped from his skullcap onto the floor, so he removed the hat and threw it across the room. He lowered his head. The sweat that fell from his brow stained the floor red. He bolted upright, ignoring the pain in his side. A terrifying thought stopped his breathing—he had left a trail of blood for Thibideaux to follow.

Mac stood and nearly collapsed while he adjusted to the temporary dizziness. He reached in his other pocket and withdrew the flashlight. Flicking it, he opened the door. The thick fog reflected the flashlight beam directly back in his eyes. Squatting down, he duck-walked along the porch to look for a blood path, but he couldn’t find a single crimson spot. Back inside, he headed for the first-aid kit under the main counter of the store.

Normally, he would have walked the aisle slowly, admiring his organizational genius in the merchandise displays. The newer, desired items were placed low, in front, and the older merchandise of lesser demand in back, up high. Everything was in rank order. New to old. Front to back. Low to high. The oldest items were out of reach. Mac liked to fetch the ladder to get them down. It highlighted his joy at moving a long ago acquired item so he could celebrate clearing it from his inventory list and recouping his ancient investment. The oldest piece in the store was a wooden-handled de-thatching rake, which was bracketed way up near the rafters.