The Rascal (5 page)

“That’s Rebecca,” came a voice from the path behind Chloe. “That’s my daughter.” It was a voice without emotion. Flat and trained.

Chloe stepped back from the stone at once, out of shock more than any sign of respect. “I’m sorry. I was coming up here to say hello. There was no answer at the door so I thought maybe…”

“I hardly ever come to the garden.” The actress’s eyes avoided the grave. They were focused on the visitor. “You must be very bored to come up here, all the way up here, against the wind.”

“I’ve found that Jeff has filled his days with so much work that there’s really nothing left for me to do at the cottage. He does the housework, everything. He must not trust me.” It was meant in jest. Yet Chloe saw the slightest shade of sympathy for her on Lana’s face.

“They find things to occupy their minds, don’t they? Men, I mean. Things that are more easily controlled than a woman. More easily built… or destroyed.” Lana had not moved. She belonged to this garden of death. She was its negligent caretaker.

“Jeff is a wonderful husband,” Chloe asserted too quickly.

“I’m sure.” But Chloe knew those eyes. They growled
Liar
.

Chloe pulled her jacket tight around her and began to move to the gates of the garden. Past them were long crooked stone stairs down a slope. “Well, I should be getting back to him. He’ll be in need of something to eat, I suspect. I can at least do that.”

Lana’s shoulders fell just a little. “I would invite you in, but… not today. I’m not feeling at all myself today.”

Chloe was suddenly very eager to be back at the cottage. The actress reminded her of that old photograph come to life, the one that had been swept over the cliff. Motionless, only without the frivolity. Chloe gave a gracious nod and a weak smile and then turned down the slope. Lana was back in the house before Chloe’s feet had crossed the garden’s threshold.

***

Jeff felt his stomach flip, and the acid climbed up his throat, the thrill only an adventurer would know. Staring down the mouth of the well—its darkness strangely all too familiar—frightened and intrigued him at the same time. The creek stones changed from gray to black the farther down they went until Jeff wasn’t sure if the well had a bottom at all, only more swallowing darkness. He didn’t know how long he had been crouched on his knees looking into the hungry thing. By the sky, though, he knew it had been a while.

“How long has it been since you’ve had any water?” he said aloud. His voice whispered off the stones, bouncing down and away from him.

Uncovering the well was difficult. Jeff considered himself a strong man. He was the Golden Boy in his high school athletics department and would have done well in college if he had gone. But once the large stone had been pushed aside, the plank covering the mouth was of a particularly heavy wood, as if the stone had leaked its strength and petrified the slab. He struggled and grunted and yelled as he pushed the thing off. And then there was the odor that came from the rotten depths of the well. Jeff had to turn away momentarily so it could clear off.

Once the stone had been cleared, as he crouched there staring into the dark, he thought for certain Chloe would come rushing to the barn, summoned there by either his yelling or the wafting stench. He looked up and around for her, but she was not there. For a moment, he thought there was a figure, a small, thin form inside the barn, just beyond the door. But it was not Chloe’s shape. Jeff wiped the sweat from his eyes and the figure was gone. His attention returned to the darkness below him.

A voice echoed in his head:
What if she was here? What if Chloe was right beside you this minute? You could push her into the well. Would you have the courage to do that? You have the rage for it. Would you be able to channel all that rage you feel toward her into action? Could you forget about her? Just cover the well again and forget about that lying bitch? Or would you throw yourself in after her?

Jeff’s fingers nearly dug into the stone as he peered over the well mouth. His grip on the edge of the well was tight to the point that it caused him pain. His knuckles were white, and he was shaking. The rage had never been as strong as this. His breathing had never been more labored.

Either way, it doesn’t matter, does it? You’d be rid of her. Done with this act that was supposed to be a marriage. You could have been a good father to this stranger’s baby. You could have had a family of your own after all.

You would have been a great father.

You wouldn’t have needed
her
to be a great father. She could have died in labor and you could have raised the child on your own.

Jeff emerged from his ramblings like one waking from a dream. The thoughts clouded off and vanished. He stopped shaking and his breathing returned to normal. He remained at the edge of the well a bit longer, peering into familiar darkness. He wanted to see into it. To uncover more.

“I wonder,” he said, his voice quaking a tiny bit. “I wonder what you’ve swallowed over the years. I wonder what’s in your belly.”

The wind knocked brittle branches against the old barn.

“These old wells always contain little treasures, don’t they?” he asked as if someone was there with him, listening.

Jeff covered the well again, sliding the wood plank back in its original position but leaving the stone where he had pushed it. He didn’t look to see if Chloe had returned from visiting the movie star yet. Instead, he jumped in the Jeep and raced down the hill toward town, making a mind’s list of the things he would need or could use for his new project. There had to be a hardware store in the tiny community. And he was certain he had seen a few things at Odette and Alma’s store that he could put to use. His heart raced with excitement, as if he were trying to outrun someone. Someone who would stop him and say “No. You can’t do that” like he was a child. Like he was a sick child with no free will of his own.

Once down Bad Luck Hill and onto the creek bed, he began to feel calmer. The Jeep was another matter. It stalled on the rocks in the middle of the stream. Jeff did not immediately attempt to fix the problem. He stared for a moment to his left, as far down the creek bed as he could see, before it mildly turned at a bend. A blast of wind rocked the Jeep. The wind around this place had curious strength and personality. It was almost abusive in sound and touch. It cursed and smacked. Jeff turned the key and the Jeep started at once.

Jeff was right about the store he and Chloe had visited on their first trip into Wicker. He found plenty he could use there, as if they were stocking the place just for him. After patrolling the aisles, throwing anything that might be useful for his descent down the well into a wobbly shopping cart, Jeff approached the register. Odette sat there expectantly. She was dressed nicely, but in a casual manner, and smiled pleasantly. It was an expression she probably always wore, given the main revenue for any place of business in Wicker was most likely tourism. That same pleasant smile was hammered onto every child’s face in Wicker on their first day of kindergarten.
“Must be nice to tourists.”

“Fixing up the old place?” she asked.

“Yes. Just doing a little work. Keeping busy.” He placed a coil of rope on the counter.

“Your wife was in here the other day. Such a dear, pretty thing. She met my sister, Alma. You just missed her.”

“Who?”

“My sister, Alma. You just missed her.”

“I’m sure we’ll meet eventually. I imagine in towns like this, there are eyes everywhere. I imagine I won’t be able to go anywhere without it being reported to someone. Your sister Alma will know exactly where I am all the time if she ever wants to meet me. I imagine I’m being watched very closely.”

“Quite an imagination. But you’re not wrong.” She rung the items up nonchalantly. “I say, you’re not wrong.”

“Suspicious townsfolk here?”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him as if he had missed her point completely. “Sure.”

Jeff found the sudden quaking in his knees to be most annoying. The symptoms of the disease his father had passed down to him could be confused with fear. Still, this woman did make him nervous. Beneath her pleasantness lay… what?

“Do you like the little place?” She had swiped Jeff’s credit card and held it out to him between two thin, pruned fingers.

“Should I not?”

She shook her head. Some of her smile dropped off. “I suppose as long as you know what you’re doing, as long as you know your future or the history of where you’re at, things will be just fine. But I should tell you—”

From somewhere behind Odette, in a back room, there was a loud banging. It shook the wall. Odette looked over her shoulder. Her eyes jittered. “That’s Alma,” she said. “I should go see what she wants.”

Jeff headed out to the Jeep with his implements of distraction. Odette had put him off. She reminded him of Chloe. That look in Chloe’s eyes whenever she had one of her ‘feelings’ was reminiscent of the look he had just seen from Odette. Jeff couldn’t get Chloe to take a step if she had a ‘feeling.’ Psychic bullshit was what he called these excuses. She used to have them a lot, but not so much anymore. At least, none that he knew of. But then, lately he avoided her glances. Maybe she had them more than he knew.

He looked into the bag as he lifted it onto the backseat of the Jeep. The cable wires were on top of the rope, and there were all the Internet trappings as well. He’d get the computer hooked up to the Internet so that Chloe would leave him in peace. He would need lots of time to himself if he was going to literally and figuratively get to the bottom of that well. Chloe had a lot of Internet friends, both psychic and otherwise. Let her alone with them. She could have an online affair for all he cared.

***

Chloe did not stay on the gravel road as she walked home from the big house. She made a detour through the woods. At least there, shielded by the trees, Lana could not watch her through the telescope on the widow’s walk. The afternoon sky was still a bright gray, and the wind bellowed through the forest, sometimes threatening to bring down a tree. She had no desire to head directly back to the cottage.

“What have I gotten myself into?” she said aloud.

Once again, everything she said was met with silence. It surrounded her, muffled her ears like the wind or like water to a drowning person.

She walked for a while, uncertain if she was going in circles or if she had even turned once. Her attention was elsewhere, on Jeff and the cottage and her mother and father. On problems she could not fix because they were formless. But at least an hour had passed. At least. She shook her head at her own stupidity.

“Pay attention!” Those were the first words she told anyone who went on her tours. “Pay attention to your surroundings at all times. Watch for signs in case you get lost. There are always signs.”

Now she stood in the middle of a strange wood and had no idea in which direction to go to find the cottage. She turned, listening for the sea. The trees cracked and popped around her. She knew the right thing to do would be to stay put and let Jeff find her. But when would that be? And if he had to come looking for her, she knew he would be irritable about it. She took off in the direction of the sound of the sea.

As she walked farther, she heard notes. Music through the trees, very quick and sharp. She could not pass it off as a trick of the ears, because she recognized it. It was the fiddle she had heard, usually on the edges of sleep. She kept walking. Her heart jumped every time a note was played. They were sporadic and uneven and not truly a melody, as if she was hearing random notes through the static of a radio. She focused on what was in front of her and walked faster, trying to keep her head down so she wouldn’t
see
.

The tip of her shoe hit something hard that was hidden by inches of leaves, and she nearly lost her balance. She danced forward before she steadied herself and then turned to investigate what she had tripped over. She then stepped on another such thing directly in front of her. They were stones, a small garden of them. Wiping away the leaves and debris that had covered and caked one of the small creek stones, she made out barely legible, but deeply carved writing:

PLUCKY

It was a pet cemetery. Chloe smiled. “Very sweet,” she whispered.

Then she heard the notes again. The fiddling. But it was louder now. Closer. And she could hear the song, a frenzied piece that gave her goose bumps. And it was right in front of her.

“Don’t see!” she whispered to herself. “Don’t see it!”

She stood and backed away. There was the image of a man playing a fiddle as passionately, as furiously and dangerously as Chloe had ever seen anything done. He cut into the strings with his bow. His frothing mouth was a twisted distortion; his hair, a greasy mess; his clothes, torn and ragged. He stopped suddenly and looked at her with eyes ringed and unwrung. The whites had eaten all the color from them. With his bow, he motioned for the stone she had first tripped over. She could do nothing but run.

The branches seemed to attack her as she raced through the woods, trying to find an out. Any out.

What have you gotten yourself into? What the hell was that? What have you gotten yourself into? Oh God, help me!

The fiddling followed her, but only briefly. It faded as the woods cleared and Chloe saw the little red barn ahead of her. She slammed into the back side of the structure and kept her hands to it until she was around front and, to her relief, could see the cottage. Jeff had just pulled up in the Jeep and was getting an assortment of bagged items out of the backseat.