Dead Willow (22 page)

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Hello, Jamey,” came a voice he knew all too well.

All of the horrible possibilities that he had ticked off in his head for the last week popped like a soap bubble on a little kid’s nose. She was alive, and she was here, and he could work out the rest.

The rest turned out to be Jess in a costume from the 1800’s, deep blue puffy skirt and long sleeved, ruffled blouse that buttoned up the neck. The look was capped by a blue bonnet that tied under her chin.

Jameson was catching flies with his mouth again. Jess broke the silence before he could bust out laughing.

“I know how ridiculous I must look to you,” she said, as if understatement was admirable.

“I really don’t think you do,” he corrected her. His impulse to laugh was already being supplanted by a darker impulse. Was she serious about this?

“What is this, Jess? Is this what you’ve been doing for the last two weeks?” he asked, the anger coming out in his face. “Playing dress-up?”

She sighed, as if tolerating his questions was tiresome.

“This is how I live my life now. I am not playing. It is the truth of things. I cannot explain it any better than that.”

Jameson moved on her.  “How about this,
Jessilyn
? Hey, guys! I made you stay up nights worrying about me for nothing! I’ve been down here pretending it’s
Little House on the Fucking Prairie
while you two sat home wringing your hands!” He pointed an accusing finger in her face. “And I let Jameson drive six and a half hours
in a blinding rain
just so I could show off my new outfit! Am I missing anything?”

She just stood there, her hands clasped together, motionless. She was like a little porcelain figurine. The more infuriated he got, the more inert she became.

He used to be able to rattle her cage just by calling her Jessilyn. When had she gotten so fucking serene?

“Your car was found abandoned, did you know that?” he prodded, trying to get a rise out of her.

A beat … then, “It was stolen.”

He had never known Jess to lie to him. “Funny, I don’t remember the BMV mentioning that the car had been reported stolen. Now, I’m out a hundred and fifty bucks to get that car out of impound!”

“I am truly sorry about that. I will, of course, reimburse you for the expenses.” She was dead serious.

“Reimburse me? You’re broke, remember?”

She took a smooth step forward, like a fluid machine on an assembly line.

“Why are you so angry, Jamey?”

He stared at her like she was from Mars. “Why am I so angry? Why are you
not
?” He waved a hand around the empty lobby. “You hate this shit! You’d sooner chew off your own arm than go back in time!”

He walked to her and put a hand gently on both of hers, and he felt her flinch. Just a little, but for a moment she let her control slip, and her reflex was to pull away. He stared into her eyes, hoping to see some part of the Jess he knew.

What he saw in those eyes scared the shit out of him!

“Is this some kind of … cult, Jess?” he asked her, grabbing for the only explanation that made sense. “Did you get involved in something here?”

“This is not a cult, Jamey. This is my family.”

“And what about
our
family? The one that adopted you when you had no one else in the world? What about
them
?”

For a moment, he thought her hard veneer was starting to crack. He could have sworn he caught a tear at the corner of her eye.

It might just have been a trick of the light.

“What about Brody? What do I tell him about his Aunt Jessie?”

“Tell him his Aunt Jessie is fine and … misses him. And, please tell Marci that I will always be grateful.”

“That you will always be …”

That last word stuck in his throat. They had never wanted Jess to be grateful, and she
knew
that! How could this
thing
be Jess? What had they done to her? It was like she was some kind of …
pod person
!

“I belong here now, Jamey.” said the thing, and it made his skin crawl.

“Please don’t call me that.”

She nodded her head demurely. “Of course.”

Jess was never demure.

Eunice Pembry appeared behind her in a pillar of fire and brimstone. He was disappointed that she wasn’t wearing her horns.

“Jessilyn, dear … it is time to go.” She also had her hands clasped in front of her. Must be a
family
thing, he thought.

Wait … was that a flash of fear he saw ripple across Jess’ face? It happened so quickly, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

Jess gave an almost imperceptible bow at the waist.

“Goodbye,” was all she said, then she turned and walked passed Eunice, slipping through the doorway, and she was gone.

There was no actual door there, but he could feel it slam shut.

Eunice had a withering smile on her face that made his balls shrink up. She turned to follow Jess into the mouth of Hell, then stopped, and looked back over her shoulder.

“Please come by anytime, Mr. Landry. We love having visitors.”

Jameson found himself alone in the barren landscape of the hotel lobby. The battle was over; her armor had deflected all of his arrows. He turned and wandered aimlessly off, like a man who knew that he needed to go somewhere, but couldn’t remember his destination. His shoes squished on the carpet. It had all happened so fast, he hadn’t even had time to dry out.

As he exited the lobby, he saw that the deluge had diminished to a light drizzle. He headed to his car, and the other business he had to deal with in this town. Then, he remembered Eunice’s last words to him.

“
Please come by anytime. We love having visitors
.”

Jameson could feel a steely determination building in his chest.

“You can fucking count on it!”

The patch on his overalls read ‘Gus’, and he looked like he had earned every grease stain on them.

He walked out of the service bay, a greasy rag in his hands, wiping away the oil and grit. Jameson doubted that the rag was giving much help.

He was overly tan, the pock marks in his face evidence of a long ago battle with acne that he had lost. He wore a
Valvoline
cap and heavy work boots, and Jameson kept expecting him to spit tobacco juice on the gravel parking lot.

“What can I do
ya fer, feller?” came the classic opening move.

“Do you have a 2005
Chevy Cavalier
?” Jameson parried. “It was impounded a few days ago.”

“Who wants to know?” he grumbled with a cocked eyebrow.

“The owner.”

The man scratched the back of his neck and then started toward the lot behind the garage.

“This way,” he croaked over his shoulder.

The man fished a ring of keys from his pocket and opened the padlock to the fence around the impound lot. They went through the gate and down the rows of
junkers that littered the gravel space. Most of them looked like they had been driven cross country in a dust storm. Some had windows, some did not, and many had been picked clean of any usable parts.

The last time he had seen Jess’ car, it could have come from here.

The scraggly man turned down the next row, and there, surrounded on all sides by other scrapped cars, was Jess’
Chevy
. It looked all warm and cozy sitting there amongst its brothers and sisters.

“That what
yer lookin’ fer?” he rasped.

Jameson nodded. “Why is it packed in here like a sardine?”

“Keeps ‘em from walkin’ off,” replied the man with a grin, like he was the first one to think of it.

Jameson looked over the car as if it was an heirloom. He supposed that’s what it was now, something to remind him of a better time.

The interior was crammed with fast food containers and candy wrappers and the duffel bag where she kept her clothes. The seats had busted their seams here and there, and a crack ran along the top of the dashboard. A ring of beads that Jess had sworn she did
not
get from Mardi Gras hung from the rear view mirror. A beaded seat cushion was draped across the driver’s seat.

There were big, empty boxes filling the seats in the back. Jess had confided in him once that they were just there to discourage hitchhikers. Jameson had said that Brody’s car seat served the same purpose.

“I’ll git the paperwork,” said the man, and he walked back down the row toward the office. He was confident the car wasn’t going anywhere.

Jameson ran a hand along the roof of the car, seeing the rust that was creeping in, and the dullness to the finish. This car had been left out in the elements too long, without a wax or even a car wash. He often wondered if Jess would have treated the car as badly if she had paid for it out of her own pocket. Seems the name
Cavalier
fit her like a glove.

Jameson was remembering better times when the man returned with a clipboard and a pen. He handed them to Jameson and pointed to the ‘X’.

“Ain’t no keys to it, so if yer takin’ it, you best have brought some with ya.”

He handed the man his clipboard and pen, the paper signed, when the man’s words echoed in his head.

The hidey-hole.

If it was there, the key would be in it. He knelt down beside the rear of the car on the driver’s side and reached up inside the bumper. He ran his hand along the plastic shelf until he felt the zippered bag that was cradled in the crook underneath. He peeled it from the
Velcro
strip that adhered it, and wrestled it out of its hole.

Jameson stared at the pouch for a moment, remembering all the times he had used it to retrieve her car from whatever ‘all-nighter’ that had left it stranded.

He would never do that again.

He yanked the zipper open and pulled out a set of keys to her car and her apartment. He had used it to let himself in and out of her apartment while she slept off the night’s festivities. He would be sure she had a warm breakfast and some coffee when she awoke.

He would never do that again.

There was a finality to everything he was doing today that he just couldn’t wrap his brain around. Best to get this over with and head home. Marci would have questions, and he wouldn’t have any answers.

He wasn’t looking forward to that.

As he started to close the zipper, he noticed something else in the pouch. He reached in and his fingers realized what it was before he had even pulled it free.

A flash drive.

Jess kept everything on a flash drive in case her computer ever crashed. He might not have access to her computer, but if she was working on a story when all this madness went down, then it would be on here.

It was a place to start.

Jameson curled his fingers around the drive and shoved it securely into his pocket. Then, he looked at the keys in his other hand.

“So whatcha plan on doin’, feller?” prodded the grizzly fart. Seems that Jameson losing his dear friend was cutting into the guy’s day.

Jameson looked around the lot at all the rust-buckets and he knew that they all had stories that no one would ever hear. No one would ever hear Jess’ story either, unless he told it. Didn’t need a car to do that. He peeled the car keys off the ring and slipped the ring into his other pocket.

“Scrap it,” he muttered, and he tossed the man the key.

The guy squinted at the shiny object in his hand. “
Yer gonna have to sign it over, ya know.”

“Not a problem,” said Jameson.

Ten minutes later he was back on the road, headed for home and ready to scrape the town of Willow Tree off his boot. To that end, he secured a map of southern Ohio from Gus, and plotted a course that would take him around Willow Tree and back onto State Road 35. It would cost him an extra forty-five minutes. Cheap at twice the price.

As he watched the fence posts dwindle in his rear view mirror he thought of Marci and all the ‘why?s’ that would be waiting for him when he got home. He could hear her voice in his head.

“You go right back to that town and you snatch her up by the hair and you drag her back home!”

But, she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen the empty death in that Jess’ eyes as it spit out all the right answers. It was like someone who could quote you chapter and verse, but had never seen the inside of a church. Jameson wasn’t going back until he knew what the fuck was going on!

He looked out over the endless fields of Ohio as the sun sizzled to a red dot on the horizon. It was like the flatlands of Kansas. There wasn’t even a pig or cow, just soy beans and corn as far as the eye could see. He checked his phone for cell service, but the bars seemed to be somewhere else. A little shiver ran through him. Wouldn’t do to get stuck out here all by yourself, he thought. You might not be found until the spring thaw.