Visitations (7 page)

Could this be a simple drop-off, or could someone hate him enough to want to kill him? Too late now for second-guessing; he was committed. He had to do it.

After starting the truck, he put it in gear and started toward the security gate. The only movement was the heavy gate rolling back as he neared it.

Twenty kilometers to go and ten thousand dollars to spend
, he thought.

He was on his way. Checking the mirrors frequently, he saw no one following him. At each red light he stopped. In everything he did, he was meticulous. Over halfway to his destination, and no one was following him. He was sure of it.

The only thing that made him jump was the disturbing sound of his cell phone playing “Stan” from Eminem as it began to ring.

He fumbled in his breast pocket, losing concentration on the road for a second. The call display told him it wasn’t his wife. It said
private caller.

“Hello?”

“Pull over immediately. Stop the truck!”

The psychic.

“What?” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it, as if it held an answer as to who was calling. Then he shouted out of fear, “What the fuck is going on? What do you know?”

“You are out of time for niceties. In less than two minutes you will be dead unless you pull over and stop the truck. Do it now.”

Jerry looked ahead and could see a red stoplight about a hundred meters away. Nerves hit him, his stomach dropped, hands shook. He decided to err on the side of caution and put on his turn signal, moving to the curb.

“Okay, I’ve pulled over. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why. If what you have to say doesn’t fit well with me, then I’m going to continue driving.”

Sitting in the cab of the truck, his heart beating in his throat, he listened as the woman talked again.

“I was told that you needed my help. I was told to interfere for a greater justice.”

“What the hell does that mean? Did my wife call you? Is she behind this? That would make sense. How else would you get my cell number? Oh, wait, don’t answer that. You’re psychic, right. Got it.”

“Joshua told me.”

Those words cut him down.
Joshua? What was she talking about
?

A stray bullet hit Joshua over a year ago in a park. The police never caught the asshole that did it. Jerry dropped his head and concentrated on breathing.

“This is a sick joke,” he managed to mumble.

“No joke. He said it wasn’t your fault. You were both in the park the day he was shot. Even though it was your idea to play catch, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. He made a point of telling me that you always said, ‘
oh my gosh, look it’s Josh
’. Apparently that was something his mother disliked, but you loved saying it when it was just the two of you.”

Jerry didn’t know that words could have such an effect on him. He tried to speak, despite the lump filling his throat, but couldn’t.

“I can see and hear things from the Other Side that don’t make sense, but that came through anyway. In this case, Joshua came through very strong. As we talk right now, he’s still trying to tell me something.”

There were a few moments when Jerry couldn’t hear anything. He scanned the mirrors and the empty road ahead but everything remained calm.

“He said you are slumped over the wheel of the truck, idling about one hundred meters from a red light that’s still red.”

Jerry looked up and could see that it was in fact still red.

“It’s true.”

“The light isn’t defective. The people that hired you have fixed it to stay that way. A block down on the right side of the red light you will find a car filled with four men, each with silenced weapons. I’m being told that you are marked for execution. After your jail time, they found out that it was your son they’d killed that day at the park. They think you’re working for them so that you can expose them. They want to kill you. I’m sorry. I can only tell you what I’m being told. When you came to my home, I saw you dead on Saturday. Your son is telling me how. He said I had to tell you for a greater justice.”

Jerry tossed the phone onto the seat beside him and put the truck in gear. Athletes call it being in the zone. Jerry felt a calmness he hadn’t felt in over a year.

A greater justice
.

Of course. His son knew him. The people who hurt his baby boy were never found. Tonight they were sitting in a car, a block down on the right.

He drove the truck up to the red light. At the corner he turned toward the vehicle parked on the side of the road.

Even before the car’s doors had fully opened, the large truck was making contact with the grill, mounting the windshield and crushing all four men below the truck’s chassis.

Upon impact, Jerry’s head hit the truck’s windshield in an odd way, snapping his tense neck, and killing him almost instantly.

The Imprudent Son Returns

Perry Strall sat up slowly and eased his feet off the edge of the bed. He rubbed his neck and turned to stare at the empty spot where his wife should be.

The sight of the untouched side of the bed threatened to bring him to tears. Forty-five years of marriage. Arguments here and there. But never violence. Never violence. Until last night…

He wondered if Marge’s injuries were serious enough to keep her at the hospital for an extended period of time.

He whispered a silent prayer and closed his eyes. After a moment to reflect, he mouthed a soft apology to the empty room.

Once his eyes were open, he stepped from the bedroom, surprised to feel his arthritic joints weren’t performing their usual needlework on his nerves. He paused at the top of the stairs to swing his leg back and forth while holding the banister. His bum knee hadn’t felt this strong in many years.

With each step he descended, Perry felt like a new man. He made it to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

They’d had arguments, even downright nasty fights over the years, but not the kind of violence they experienced last night. Perry had never hit Marge before. It was an accident. He had no idea what came over him last night.

Maybe I’m like my wayward son?

Perry dismissed the thought. There was no way he was like his son. Elton was a killer. A murderer. Perry was the opposite. He could never hurt anyone.

Except my own wife.

The clock on the stove said it was 11:00am. Perry hadn’t realized how long he had sat at the table. Time was racing by and he was still clothed in his pajamas, having not eaten yet, nor used the bathroom. He stood from the table and considered calling the hospital. He’d do that, then get dressed and head down there.

He reached for the kitchen phone that sat on the wall, chest high, and heard a strange buzzing sound.

What the hell is that?

He went to touch the phone again and the buzzing sound returned.

The clock on the stove caught his eye. It read noon.

That’s impossible.
How could an hour have sailed by while my only action was to stand from the chair and try to touch the phone?

Something strange was happening, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. At any given moment, he felt both watched, and the watcher. His normal aches and pains had disappeared, and time itself wasn’t cooperating.

At the age of seventy-seven, he wasn’t too aware to the ways of the mind, but he could feel that some kind of trick was being played on him. Never one to be a victim (except with Marge), he lifted his leg high and strode from the kitchen, intent on reaching his bedroom closet, getting dressed, and then heading to the hospital.

When he entered the hallway, he heard crying coming from above. He ran up, two stairs at a time and then listened to reassess where the crying was coming from.

His bedroom. It was the sound of his wife weeping, coupled with the rustle of a dresser drawer closing.

When did she get home?

He hadn’t heard a thing until just now. Oddly bemused at the eccentricity of this day, but happy she was home and not in the hospital, he found himself perplexed even more. He walked through the door and entered their bedroom.

Marge didn’t turn to acknowledge him. She continued putting away her clothes, and then sat on the edge of the bed to slip her legs into a pair of pants.

He waited for her to notice him. Once she was dressed and the rest of her clothes placed away properly, Marge stood and turned, looking directly at Perry.

He smiled back, hoping she’d accept his apology.

Her arms came up and wrapped themselves around her shoulders as she hugged herself. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, and her body language conveyed weakness.

It was at that moment that Perry realized the damage he had caused with his explosion last night. But he’d
had
to tell her; their lives were in danger. He hadn’t seen his son in fifteen years. Previously, he had decided that Marge didn’t need to know about a man she would never meet, let alone have a relationship with. After Elton went to jail for life with no chance of parole, for killing his mother and his two sisters, Perry had packed Marge up and fled to Canada. Marge had never heard of Elton, or Elton’s mother, because it was a mistake Perry didn’t want to relive. Ever.

After ten years of marriage, Perry had wondered if he’d made the right choice with his life. He was in his early forties and going through an internal crisis. He attended a conference in Las Vegas and slept with a stripper. It was the stupidest thing he had ever done. That stripper got pregnant. It just so happened that this particular peeler was religious enough to be pro-life. She had a baby boy named Elton and hunted Perry down. Although they’d only talked twice, she swore she would make sure their son would know who his father was and what he did.

Over the years Perry never cheated again. He’d decided, since it was a one-night stand which he never intended to repeat, he simply wouldn’t speak of it. He sent as much money as he could hide from Marge. He felt it was his duty, and every time he sent the money he would apologize silently to Marge again and again, even though she never learnt the truth.

Until last night.

Elton’s stripper mother, raised him in a trailer outside Vegas near a commune in Nevada. Elton killed her and his sisters at the age of twenty and went to prison. For reasons unknown to Perry, Elton was out of jail now and in Canada. How he got across the border with ex-con on his resume, Perry couldn’t figure out, but he was here nonetheless and he was coming after his father.

He knew because he’d seen Elton following him. Three different times, he’d seen Elton standing across the street, watching the house.

That night - last night - he’d told Marge, and they’d fought.

As with anything in life, there were consequences from the actions that you take. Now he was about to receive his, through the pain in her eyes.

He gestured towards her. “Marge, I’m sorry—”

“Perry, oh Perry,” she said, stumbling forward a little, her voice cracking.

He watched her go past him and into the hallway. Perry took a deep breath and then followed. He would have to work hard to make his peace with her.

He would have to let her deal with this any way she saw fit, because the truth was she didn’t actually deserve to be walloped in the cheek by the end of a broom.

But then he needed to convince her to pack up and move to a hotel. Elton knew where they lived. He’d be back, and the next time he would kill them.

Perry followed her to the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he heard a faint clacking sound, sharpening with each step. He looked down at black dress shoes on his feet. He touched the suit jacket and shirt that rested on his shoulders.

He was losing his mind. There was no way he could have gotten dressed without knowing about it, especially not in clothes that he didn’t even own. He could dismiss the extremely fast clock in the kitchen as dementia, or the wonderful health he was experiencing. He could possibly get checked for a brain tumor, or something else of mild importance. But suddenly being dressed for the Royal Ball in clothes he’d never seen before was something else entirely.

He scoured the downstairs and found Marge in the reading room. She had a newspaper raised in front of her face. He took it as a cue to keep his distance. The chair in the corner was his usual one. It sat beside the phone table. While he waited for Marge to come around, maybe he would phone the police to let them know that he’d seen Elton watching the house. Marge would hear his voice, and she’d be able to hear what he was saying to the police about how dangerous Elton was. Maybe she would put their safety over her anger, and talk to him. It would also make her acknowledge his presence, and remind her that the man she married forty-five years ago was still in the room. The man who’d made one mistake and was willing to pay any price for it. His wife wasn’t a currency that he was willing to spend though. He could never lose her.