Something Bad (32 page)

Gabe slumped against the wall of the phone booth. He had the information he needed. “I’m kind of curious about what the pipsqueak wants to talk about. Why don’t you tell him you’ll chat a spell when you get a chance? But don’t ignore the regulars. Get to him when you can, but only after some of the others take off. You don’t want to offend all your favorites. I’m sure Teddy would agree.”

“Guess you’re right. He’ll just have to wait his turn.” She paused. “I got to get back to work. But I’ve got to call Wanna first to make sure everything’s all right. See you at supper.”

“Don’t call. I told you Wanna and Cory Dean were down for a nap. When you called just before I left, he was almost down, but you woke him up. You don’t have to call so often. Wanna has it under control.”

“You don’t understand. You’re not a momma.”

Gabe turned his pickup onto the gravel road that circumvented the woods behind the rectory, pulled over, and parked in a small thicket so the truck was partially obscured by the brush. The site was a quarter mile from the rectory, on a straight line, but the line ran through the dense stand of woods. The underbrush didn’t present a significant challenge to him. These woods had served as his childhood playground.

He stayed a direct course through the woods and approached the back bedroom window of the rectory. He pushed. The window sash moved upward. The emptiness of the bedroom surprised him.

Jumping into the opening, he rolled to the floor. Bright streams of daylight entered uncovered windows, pointing the way through the house. The long hall led from the bedroom to the front of the house, and on the left, halfway down the hall, was the bathroom. A double doorway opened to the right from the hall just four or five feet beyond the bathroom. The front room, he thought. He took the extra steps and peeked around the doorframe—a large fireplace was on the opposite wall, beyond Thibideaux’s oversized chair. Other than that, the room was empty.

Gabe turned to go back to the bathroom and the hardwood floor gave a muffled creak. He froze. A sound came from the living room. A whir. Probably just an echo of the squeak, he thought.

On the wall of the bathroom, opposite the door, a toilet sat, obviously non-functional. The seat and lid were in the up position, but their angle relative to the bowl suggested that one of the two mounting bolts was missing and the other was very loose. To the right, a bathtub was stained the color of rust up to two inches short its top edge. To the left, a similarly stained sink was supported by two bolts that entered the wall and two thin, metal legs that extended from the front corners to the floor. There, he thought. Above the sink was a mirrored medicine cabinet, recessed so the mirror was nearly flush with the wall.

Without further inventory, Gabe pulled on the medicine cabinet. It didn’t budge. A few harder jerks produced the same result. He opened the door and noticed a wood screw in each side of the cabinet walls, apparently anchoring the cabinet into wall studs. His hand dove into his right front pants pocket and withdrew his Swiss Army knife. It wasn’t one of the big ones. They produced too large a lump in his pocket. It was the slim, inexpensive model with two blades, can and bottle openers that had flathead screw drivers on the ends, a Phillips screwdriver, and a hole punch. A toothpick and a flimsy pair of tweezers hid in the red plastic sides.

Gabe hated flathead screws. Knuckle busters, he called them. It was hard to keep the blade from slipping out of the screw head. And with the limited space in the medicine cabinet, he prepared for a couple of scrapes.

The first screw unwound from its anchorage without incident. Inch and a half, he thought. Overkill? With the first few turns, the second screw produced a loud, high-pitched squeak of metal against extremely dry wood. The screw’s protest was followed by a low-pitched hum from the living room.

Gabe froze and listened for further noises. There were none. He turned the screw, and another squeal triggered the living room hum again. Just get it out, he thought, and twisted until the screw was free. A push and the cabinet moved, but it was heavy. It wouldn’t come out easily. He inched the right side, then the left, with a small stepping walk out of the wall. Nearly free of the wall, he gave it a hard yank and it came free with a loud creak.

The low-pitched sound came again from the living room, but it didn’t stop like before. It continued as an intermittent whirring, impossible to ignore.

Gabe lifted the cabinet, lowered it to the floor, and leaned it against one of the metal sink legs. The whirring persisted. He felt the urge to run, but resisted. Too close, he thought, but I better find out what it is. Couldn’t be Thibideaux. He’d be in here already. Buoyed, he walked in a crouch to the edge of the living room doorway.

The chair faced in his direction, swaying back and forth as if it were trying to home in on something. The movements produced the whirring sounds.

He pulled his head back but the shift in his weight caused the floorboards to creak under his weight. A more sudden, louder whir came from the room and stopped.

His hand dug in his left pants pocket and withdrew a coin, a penny. He kissed it and rolled it on edge out of the doorway, across the hardwood floor toward the front doors. The sound of its travel started the whirring again, and Gabe leaned around the doorframe in time to see the chair follow the path of the coin across the room. His lean once again angered the floor—its complaint alerted the chair, which swiveled back to the doorway.

Gabe tumbled backward on the floor with a thud. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the bathroom. Just get it out and leave, he said to himself. His pulse pounded in his temples, but it was fast and regular.

Gabe’s size fifteen feet gave him trouble more often than benefit, and on his approach to the sink and the gaping hole in the wall above it, his right foot smacked into the medicine cabinet. It fell over his leg, shattering the mirrored glass. Half of the glass stayed in the frame but the other half tinkled onto Gabe’s shoe and then onto the floor. The edge of the cabinet dug into his shin and sent a dull ache upward in his leg. He pulled it back out of reflex and the cabinet fell flat on the floor, with more tinkling of glass.

“Damn feet,” he said in a whisper.

At the Herndon’s Edge, Thibideaux had a fork of Teddy’s special half way to his mouth. He stopped, sat straight up on his stool, and opened his eyes wide enough to make them nearly perfect circles. His gaze went beyond anything in the café. Placing his fork on his plate, he stood up and excused himself to no one in particular. A quick pivot and several halting strides, and the bathroom door slammed shut.

Gabe’s mind went into overdrive—he needed to fetch the Bible and get out fast. Glass crushed under the weight of his massive work boots, but the external noises were dulled by the sound of his own blood pulsing in his ears. His heart rate was building to a crescendo and the tremors of his nervous hands made his movements clumsy. He thrust his right hand down into the wall before his mind clicked on the number and variety of vermin that might be in there. He pushed downward.

There was nothing. But the sink was in the way. He moved to the left of the sink, so close to the wall his chest was against it. He had to turn his head away from the hole. Straining to force his arm downward, all he felt was a cobweb. He hand swung back and forth and hit studs in both directions, but there wasn’t any contact with anything resembling a book.

His right arm was beginning to tingle from the pressure on his armpit, but he bent his knees and crouched down to press harder. The tip of his middle finger brushed against something and it seemed to move with the touch. He shifted his weight and extended his hand farther into the abyss, and his armpit responded with a sharp pain. Better to be numb, he thought. The object moved again. He tried to grasp it between his index and middle fingers, but it was too heavy. It required the force of an opposable thumb. He pushed his arm down harder on the wall opening and the pain retreated. Got to grab fast, he thought, before I lose all feeling.

Gabe felt his thumb touch the object and he clamped hard onto it. With the strength developed from his livelihood, he stabilized it—it responded to his lift. He brought it up slowly. His grip was forceful but tenuous. Better not bang the thing against a stud. His hand appeared in the opening and then … a book.

He transferred the book to his left hand and shook his right arm to regain circulation. He blew the dust of twenty-five years from the book’s cover and a surge of excitement blocked the pain in his right armpit. “Holy Bible” appeared in gold print.

He placed the Bible on the edge of the sink and picked up the cabinet, barely pushing it into the hole in the wall. His hands returned to the Bible.

“It’s good to see you again, Gabe. What are you doing in here?”

In his startle, Gabe bumped the sink hard and the medicine cabinet released from the wall and crashed into the sink basin, shattering the remainder of the glass. The cabinet knocked the Bible from the sink onto the floor, its pages splayed against the floorboards. The crash produced a second startle and Gabe lost his balance and fell backwards, bumping his back on the side of the bathtub. Pain shot upward to his neck like he’d just been electrocuted. He swung around on all fours and groped for the book. He hoped Thibideaux didn’t see it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Thibideaux raise his right arm, and the medicine cabinet slid off the sink and crashed down on the back of Gabe’s neck and head. Pain fought darkness and he struggled to resist the spreading unconsciousness. On the verge of blacking out, he maintained his fix on the Bible and willed himself to stay alert. He scrambled to gain custody of the book as warm streams of blood dripped from the sides of his neck.

Everything turned to slow motion. Even though he was stunned and groggy, one thought broke through the haze. Get the Bible. He grabbed the bound object and slid it into the waistband of his pants. At least he thought that was what he had done, until he bumped the book, which was still on the floor. Had his retreating consciousness played a cruel trick on him? Was he having trouble telling what was real and what was imagined?

The touch of the Bible answered, and he grabbed it, clutching it to his chest with his right hand. He balanced in a three-point stance on the floor.

“What do you have there?” Thibideaux said.

Gabe didn’t answer. He turned his head and looked up at Thibideaux, pulling the Bible tighter to his chest. Thibideaux looked large from this angle, and the swirling images in the periphery of Gabe’s visual field created a hallucinatory aura around him. Real or artificial?

Thibideaux extended both of his hands toward Gabe, then pulled the left one back toward his body.

Gabe felt a strong tug on the book and tried to resist. The pull was too powerful and yanked the Bible from his grip. He watched it fly into Thibideaux’s extended right hand.

Thibideaux rotated the book around, looking at both sides of the outer cover.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Gabe watched Thibideaux open the book near the center, and saw what looked like burned pages. The pages Thibideaux flipped appeared to be burned nearly to the spine, with a progressive burn on the pages closer to the two covers. The book appeared to be partially hollowed out by fire. Real?