Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers (19 page)

“Regina!” Her mother’s voice chased her out of the house.

Regina kept both hands glued to the wheel at ten and two, a habit that manifested itself out of situational tension. Her mom’s old blue Buick crept slowly down the street. She paused at a neighborhood stop sign and noticed Sheriff Handow’s car parked at the side of the street farther up the next block. Regina glided through the stop sign and as she got closer, she could see that his car was parked in front of a familiar home. Mrs. Landcaster and the sheriff were in a deep conversation; his features were drawn to the back of his face in a tight expression of concern, which, for a moment,
worried Regina until she remembered that he always looked that way. As she drove by, the two raised their hands to her, and she waved back. They eyed her eerily for as long as she could see them in her rearview.

Regina cruised through the heart of town along Main Street watching all of the mothers with their babies and men bustling in and out of restaurants on their lunch hour. She knew every stop, every light, and every house because almost none of it had changed in the past and twenty-four years of sameness was burned into her head. After downtown she passed more houses, most of them, decorated for the holiday. Some sported amber-colored wreaths on their doors, while other yards were more elaborate, displaying the grinning jack-o-lanterns that kids had carved for the occasion while a few resembled full-on haunted houses with ghosts flying from the trees and fake tombstones sticking up from the ground reading, RIP. Regina smiled as two young boys and their mother warred playfully in a pile of freshly raked leaves.

The intersection at I-48 and Culliver Parkway was cold and forsaken compared to the residential neighborhoods of Black Water. On the other side of the intersection, farther down the road, there was an old white house, a darker color now from years of lack of maintenance. To her left was an open field. Immediately to her right was an old gas station that had become run down over the years, but was still open for business mostly because it was part mechanic shop.

For fifteen minutes, she sat in the car contemplating whether or not she should go sneaking around the DeFrank estate despite everyone’s warnings. Maybe she should just turn around and go home, go to the wake tomorrow, the funeral the day after, get on a plane back to Texas and make another vow to never return again. Regina adjusted the rearview mirror to ensure that there was no one behind her waiting while she contemplated the options. The mirror confirmed that she was alone. She gripped the steering wheel tighter, laid her head back, closed her eyes, and secretly wished for some kind of sign.

Cotton grew in her throat until she found it hard to breathe. Regina grunted furiously trying to clear her scratchy vocal chords; her eyes darted to the gas station. It would provide relief for her minor throat irritation, a distraction and purposely elongate her decision-making process. With closer study, Regina could see that the gas station was in better condition than she had initially concluded, although the paint was beginning to chip and the windows could have used an intense encounter with some Windex. The door handle was grimy and Regina struggled to open it with the tips of her index finger and thumb. After a struggle she got the door open wide enough for her to slide through without having to expose too much of her bare hand to the gritty surface. As she entered the candy aisle and made her way back to the buzzing coolers that held the sodas, over her shoulder, she noticed a burly man slip through the door behind her. He stood staunchly in the middle of the aisle watching her and waiting.

R
egina could feel his eyes on her back. She looked up in search of surveillance mirrors, but there were none.

“Dammit,” she whispered to herself. Regina turned her head slightly to make sure that the man was not directly upon her and he was not. She could see the figure of the corpulent man, but she dared not turn far enough to make eye contact with him. Her hand was shaking as she reached up to grab a diet soda. Regina swallowed hard, closed the cooler door, and pivoted on her foot to make her way back to the register.

Regina gasped at the sight of the man still standing at the other end of the aisle facing her, his eyes locked into hers.

“That gonna be it for ya?” the man asked. He was covered in grease and must have been the mechanic that owned the place.

“Yes,” Regina exhaled, her heart pounding rapidly. She could feel beads of sweat forming under her arms.

I’m going home
. She thought, fearfully, feeling like a kitten in a thunderstorm.

As she got closer, she could tell that he was younger than he looked. Maybe years of manual labor had taken their toll on him.

The man looked at the soda, then began to punch numbers into the cash register.

“You from Black Water?” the man asked.

“Yes.” Regina smiled nervously. “I’m Regina Dean, my parents live in Black Water. I’m just visiting a friend out here.” The light conversation should have made the awkward situation more bearable, but did not. Regina paid for her soda. “You work here?” Unable to bear even a second of silence between them she asked a question that she immediately thought ridiculous since it was apparent that he did work in the shop.

“I own this place,” he grunted.

“Oh, great,” Regina responded before she began edging her way toward the door.

“Jonathan Torch.” He introduced himself by only speaking his name. Regina smiled and nodded before turning and executing her escape, when suddenly her entire body became rigid and her abdomen felt as if it sunk to the floor. She turned back to the dirtied man.

“Torch? You had…have a daughter, Valerie?” She spoke meticulously as if she were pulling knives and not words from her throat.

“Yea, you know Valerie?” he asked.

Regina felt disoriented. “Yes, I, uh, I, my friend used to tutor her when we were kids.”

“Who is your friend …” That was the last that she heard of Mr. Torch’s sentence before she dashed out the door. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Regina walked rapidly to her car, jumped in, put on her seat belt, and started the engine in almost one move before she sped out of the drab station and unto the cold road. Regina drove without thought or direction for many minutes until her pulse was racing so fast that she had to pull over before she lost control of herself and the car. Regina pulled the Buick over to the side of the road and put it in park. She sat back in the seat, closed her eyes, and fought away the overpowering sorrow that clung to her. Regina opened her eyes and realized that she was on Culliver Parkway headed straight for DeFrank’s home. She was on the path for which she was meant.

The only thing left to do was to sink her foot into the gas pedal and let the car carry her up the road a few miles until she saw the turnoff for the house. Regina laid her head upon the steering wheel, then allowed the weight in her foot to settle into the gas pedal and the car began to edge forward before Regina even took her head off the wheel. She lifted her face and put her eyes to the road that guided her.

Richly colored trees hovered at each side of the asphalt road as the old car crept along Culliver Parkway. Regina passed a field
of cows, some of whom lifted their heads sluggishly to eye her doleful journey. The fall scenery made her nostalgic for the childhood that had been rife with school plays, slumber parties, holidays, and swimming.

How had life become so complicated?
she wondered to herself, feeling her heart skip a beat as she rounded a familiar curve. The house was closer now. Her foot was steady on the gas pedal and she let her eyes wonder to the left and right of the road, scurrying up to the ocean of a sky decorated with clouds of stretched cotton, then cascading back down along all of the eruptions of color that burst from the fall foliage. She focused on anything that would keep her mind from the DeFrank house as long as possible, which by the looks of the natural landmarks was not much further. Regina checked her rearview mirror again to make sure that there was no one behind her. She was still alone, completing her journey in secret, and she liked it that way for now. It would do no good to excite anyone the way she had that afternoon with her ideas. Once people made up their minds on a subject, there was no changing it, a character trait that she herself had mastered. The DeFranks’ dusty, ornate mailbox came into view at the side of the road, signaling to her. Long ago, the thick wooden post that held up the mailbox had been planted in a variegated excess of colorful flowers that were now just a heap of pathetic dead leaves and unnamed brown things. The car came to a cautious stop at the side of the highway. Regina craned her neck laboriously until her eyes were set on the DeFranks’ antiquated gate, just on the other side of the country road. There, less than ten feet away, was an alternate dimension of the universe, where things were backwards and upside down, where left was right and right was wrong, where heaven was hell and hell was…everywhere. Here, outside of its pull, she was safe, but once she crossed into that yard her sanity was fair game, she knew.

Windblown yellow tape was strung around the gate that enclosed the vast piece of land. Regina breathed deeply, sucking in every ounce of air possible and her chest trembled violently as she released the air back into the car.

No. No. No. Stop it, Regina
, Regina silently chanted to herself.

Almost thirty minutes passed as she sat quietly in the car, her eyes focused intently on the road straight ahead, her mind focused on breathing in and out.

It was like getting into a pool—it’s difficult at first touch, as you dip your toe into the icy lapping waters, then retrieve it quickly, but you just have to keep going, cringing with the submersion of every new body part until the end when you are up to your shoulders, feeling the chills race up and down your body and you finally take a deep breath and go under. Go under. Once you re-emerge, you’re fine
.

You’re fine, Regina, just get in
, she thought to herself.

For the last time she looked into her rearview, she looked at the road straight ahead, then whipped the steering wheel, crossed the oncoming lane and pulled up next to the DeFranks’ mailbox. Regina smashed the brakes abruptly and leapt out of the car barely having time to put the car in park. She approached the gate in a panicked and fast-paced stagger, ripped down the yellow tape and fumbled with the enormous latch until it came undone with the rattling squeaks of time and rust. Grunting, she pushed the heavy gates open and stood at the entrance.

The gates of hell are open
, she thought.

Regina drove her mother’s car just inside of the gate and was forced to exit the safety of the vehicle once again to close the gate behind her just in case anyone was to drive by the dilapidated property. Nosy was a required character trait if you wanted to live in Black Water and if someone drove by and saw the gate of the now infamous DeFrank property open Sheriff Handow would be up here before she could sneeze. Lately, it had been so windy that people would feel comfortable assuming that Mother Nature had knocked the tape to the ground, but Mother Nature had certainly not pushed the massive gates open. After closing the steel gates, she rested her head on them in hopes of mentally distancing herself from the idea that she was now imprisoned here, like Lola. After a brief meditation, Regina hopped back into the car, locked the doors, and turned the heat up a notch. She ran her hands over her arms in an attempt to warm her shivering body.

“There is nothing to be afraid of Regina…there is nothing to be afraid of.” Regina recited to herself as she swallowed the lump in her throat, hoping that would wash away the spiders that were now making complex webs throughout her abdomen.

“Crap, crap, crap, crap!” She pounded the steering wheel with frustration as she cursed herself. Her chanting failed to calm her and the pressure in her lower stomach was partly because she had made herself so nervous that she now had to pee. She could see chunks of the house not far down the narrow road through the breaks in the towering trees that grew out of the lot. It was as if she were creeping up on an old friend, about to pop out at any moment, SURPRISE!

It was now or never, she had no intention of taking her pants off anywhere near that weird house; besides, there was probably no plumbing.

Regina began searching, she pulled down the visor above her head and then the one above the passenger seat, she reached over and opened the glove compartment box and slammed it shut. Her last resort was the center console.

“Jackpot,” she sang.

Regina reached in and pulled out a handful of fast food napkins. A few feet up the drive, she spotted the perfect tree, not close enough to Culliver for anyone to see if they drove by, but still not close enough to the house for it to see her.

After the overwhelming rush of relief that washed over her just as she finished, she returned to the car and found a plastic bag in the backseat where she disposed of the napkins. She could have haphazardly cast the unclean things into the overgrown, polluted lawn, but she feared the consequences of angering the house. It was odd, but the house felt alive to her. Regina turned the key in the ignition rattling her mother’s old car to life once again for the last leg of this foreboding journey. The car bounced up the long drive until it entered the small clearing in front of the house that opened up to the light of the sky and she was so close that nothing stood between her and the intimidating structure.

Chunks of her chocolate hair blew across her face and into her eyes as if trying to shield her vision from this forsaken place as she stood between her car and the home, but still she inspected the strange manor and its many windows peered back down at her. Regina had not thrown the napkins in its yard, but the house was still angry with her; she could feel it. Inanimate objects could not have emotions, she assured herself, but she could not shake the feeling that the house was waiting anxiously for her stride through its double doors so that it could snap shut its jaws, never allowing Regina to emerge again. The house’s devilish grin created by the crooked set of long porch steps would be heightened as the place would be cunningly amused with itself.