“Whose is it?”
“I don’t know. Just…a woman. A pretty lady, I’m guessing. She…she was in a fridge.”
The barmaid’s gaze is penetrating. Vess feels himself growing warm from the inside out, the color rising to his cheeks.
“A fridge?”
“Yes, like a white coffin or… They put her in it as if it was a boat.”
Gracie frowns. “What?”
Vess squints, fearing his thoughts are squirming free of him and desperately tries to catch them. He runs the tips of his index fingers over his eyebrows and takes a breath. “Stuck in the mud,” he says slowly. “That’s where she was. I thought it was the box but it was only a fridge. Poor lady.” He clucks his tongue. “She wants me to find the Sheriff. I tried Doctor—”
“Understood,” Gracie says, her expression softening just a little. “You found a body.”
Vess nods eagerly. “Her finger brought me here.”
“Not here,” whispers the finger. “
“I
Gracie nods. “The bones? Go ahead.”
He does, stroking each segment by way of an apology before depositing them into his pocket.
“The Sheriff ain’t here,” Gracie informs him, and heads back to the bar. “But chances are he will be before long.”
Vess smiles. “I’ll come back. I’ll bring the finger.”
“You could wait.”
“Yes.”
“Want a drink while you do?”
Vess immediately begins to question what he thinks she said, for he has never been welcome here, or any other bar for that matter, with the exception of the kinds of places where no one with any sense would go, places where people still get killed over cheating at cards and old men in expensive suits sit in shadowy corners discussing the undoing of their enemies. Vess has never been welcome anywhere, which is why he exists to be elsewhere. With that in mind, he decides jumping at what he is not convinced was an invitation is not the wisest recourse, so he doesn’t, simply stays where he is and grins uncertainly.
“Well?”
“Think I heard wrong. Sorry. My hearing of things is like my speech. Trying to explain is—”
“Come join me for a drink while you wait.”
The smile almost splits his face, and certainly adds deep wrinkles where there were none before. He almost floats across the floor to the bar, so elated does he feel by this offering of kindness from so magnificent a lady. A drink in a place he should not be, in the company of a woman he should not know, stews his mind further, until it sends tremors of confused pleasure though his limbs.
“Sit.” She indicates a stool, and he takes it quickly.
Gracie produces two shot glasses from beneath the bar, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Thought the place burned,” Vess says. “There was a lot of light up here. Must have been imagining things. I do that sometimes, especially when my mind gets tired.”
“You weren’t imaginin’ things.” She fills the glasses to the top, slides one before him. “It burned all right.”
“Oh. Wasn’t too bad then.” He sips the drink, savoring it and the moment. Accustomed as he is to cheap wine, the bourbon tastes like tears from Heaven. His mouth buzzes, tongue pleasantly scalded by the liquor. He coughs. “Bit of black and burnt, but still all right.”
“I was bored,” Gracie says, crossing her elbows and leaning on them, her face close to his, chin hovering above their drinks. “So I started to rebuild it. I’d rather be stuck in a room, no matter how miserable it might be, than a hole full of charred wood.”
He raises his glass in agreement and takes another sip.
“Not that I intend to be here for much longer.” She raises her own glass, starts to drink. Vess watches her, follows the single drop of bourbon that escapes her lips, winding its way down over her chin and throat until it disappears into the opening of her blouse. A new kind of heat flourishes within him and he grins.
“I’m movin’ on,” she announces, with obvious excitement. “After all these years in this goddamn town, I’m gettin’ out, leavin’ all these wretched people with their wretched lives behind.”
Vess’s grin falters. He wonders if she includes him in her estimation of the townsfolk, but then reminds himself that he is an outsider, a mere visitor, and a woman as pretty and smart as the barmaid would surely know this.
“Can I see the bones?” she asks then, slamming her glass down on the counter hard enough to make Vess jump.
“Oh yes. She might even talk to you,” Vess enthuses, and scoops the bones from his pocket, scattering them on the bar like a voodoo woman about to tell a fortune.
Gracie studies the bones for what seems to Vess to be a considerable amount of time, her expression unreadable until she smiles and looks up at him. The feel of her studying him is not an unpleasant one, and he is abruptly cast into those green eyes as helplessly as a man bound to an anchor tossed into the sea.
His drink no longer seems important.
He is a traveler, and in her eyes, he is seeing a place he has his whole life been forbidden from visiting. He will not, cannot blink.
“That’s hers all right,” Gracie says, and though she moves back a step, she does not look away, and for that Vess is grateful. “Not that I can really tell from the bones.” She chuckles and the sound is magical, like pipe music to wounded ears. “I know because I put her there.” His smile grows. He is not really paying attention to the words, only the lush red lips that form them and the piercing eyes that hold him in place.
“
Somehow, it starts to rain inside the bar. The shadows thicken and reach for him, attempting to steal away this delightful interlude. He resists, struggling to hold on.
“Can’t always ssssay it right,” he admits. “Werrdener…”
The barmaid’s scent intoxicates him. He does not want this to end, and is saddened a great deal to realize, as crimson tears flow copiously down his face, his skull deflating under the weight of the long metal pipe Gracie is bringing down upon his head like a woodsman cleaving a rotten stump, that it already has.
Chapter Fourteen
Static shrieks from the radio.
Hands follow.
“What the fuck?” The knife is gone from my throat, tearing off a strip of my flesh as Brody propels himself away from the pale tendrils of mist that are snaking their way free of the CD slot in the car stereo. “What the
I’m no less scared. While Brody’s going to get hung up on the whole unnatural or supernatural angle here (maybe it reminds him of something from a horror flick he caught at the Drive-In with his high school sweetheart), this is a repeat of a moment I have been trying to avoid since the night Jessica died.
Brody claws at the door. “Unlock it for God’s sake!”
It isn’t locked. At least it wasn’t, but maybe she locked it.
The hands spread out, push further into the car, the tips brushing against my chin, making me flinch, bringing me dangerously close to soiling myself. It’s cold in here now. I can see my breath. I can see Brody’s