She grinned back. “As long as there’s tequila, I’m ready for just about anything.” She immediately felt heat rise on her cheeks and she started to stammer. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean…you shouldn’t…oh, shit.”
Bill laughed loudly. “Don’t worry, darling. I won’t tell anybody. Your loose morals can remain a secret between the two of us.”
He was still laughing as they went out to the parking bay where he’d parked the patrol car.
7
It had turned into one of
those
nights. Fred lost count of how many beers he’d necked and Charlie was already slumped in the corner of the bar nursing a JD and adamantly refusing to admit to being falling-over drunk.
At one point the
hum
started up again.
A girl in the corner screamed, two drunk teens passed out at their table, and some of the patrons had to leave, clutching fresh nosebleeds, but Fred was unaffected, whether by nature of previous exposure or just from being too goddamned drunk to care.
Charlie wiped fresh blood from his nose and threw Fred a mock salute.
“Here’s to the end of the world,” the older man shouted, and Fred grinned back at him, knocking back a JD and banging his glass on the bar for another. Things were starting to smooth over nicely. He had a buzz on that was only going to get stronger as the night went on; he’d already spent a wad of his eating money, but he was now past caring.
He got a second wind when a blonde arrived with free beer and questions.
“You’re him, aren’t you? You’re the guy who saved the guy who fell down the hole on the guy’s lawn?”
It took Fred several seconds to come to terms with the question, during which the blonde moved in on him, hustling her way onto the adjoining bar stool and leaning in close; close enough for Fred to feel the touch of her long hair on his arm. He started to pay closer attention.
“I was right, wasn’t I? You’re him?”
“I’m him.”
“So what happened?” she said, and passed him a beer.
A blonde and a beer; I can die happy.
He took the beer, and answered as well as his befuddled mind would allow.
“Weren’t nothing really,” he started, and was immediately interrupted as she took his cigarette from him, sucked a long drag from it, and passed it back, placing it gently between his lips. It tasted sweeter somehow, and musky. Suddenly the booze didn’t seem quite so important.
“I hear you’re a hero?” she said, leaning closer still to whisper in his ear. He felt the heat of her breath on his cheek.
“Maybe I am at that,” he replied, and gave her his best smile, to which she responded in kind. She bought him another beer while he told the story. He stuck to the truth, mostly, mainly because her deep blue eyes mesmerized him. Just looking into them made thinking a bit harder for him.
At some point he found himself retelling Charlie’s story from earlier. When he got to the part about the three missing men, the blonde,
call-me-Tricia
, started to get excited.
“Oh…my…God. We should totally do a séance.”
If it meant spending more time with a body to die for, and those blue eyes, Fred was all for it. She went on for quite a while, about
the other side
and
messages from the great beyond
, but all Fred remembered was how her breasts swelled against the thin fabric of her top.
* * *
The half an hour after that proved more than a bit fuzzy as he zoned in and out of a drunken stupor. He came back to reality grudgingly, sitting in an armchair in a trailer that was far too tidy to be his. A couple he didn’t recognize sat in a sofa opposite him. The man, a portly guy in his thirties with a badly trimmed goatee, leaned over and handed Fred a beer.
“So, these three dead men, they’re still hanging around?” the man said.
“Do I know you?” Fred asked.
The man laughed.
“Tricia invited me over for the séance. Tell me it’s true…these dead men from the mine, and the hole and…”
Fred felt as if he’d been cut loose from reality. He had no memory of leaving the bar, no idea what he was doing in this stranger’s trailer. To cover his confusion he lit a cigarette, getting it going at only the second attempt. He was saved having to answer by a voice from the adjoining kitchen area.
“That’s what Fred said,” the blonde called back. She came through into the main living area. “Found it.”
It
proved to be a bashed-up Ouija board in a tattered box.
The Mysterious Mystifying Oracle
it said on the front. It looked innocuous enough, but a chill crept into Fred’s spine, and suddenly he was thinking again—of lost men, and pale things slithering in dark pits. He chugged down half the beer, spilling some on his shirt, a small price to pay for managing to dispel the dark thoughts, at least for the moment.
Tricia laid the board on the coffee table in the center of the room, then sat down at Fred’s feet. When he felt the warmth of her back on his legs, he started to think maybe he should stop drinking and pay attention again for a while.
She unfolded the board. It had obviously seen a lot of use. The lettering was scratched and faded in places, and somebody had scrawled all over it in red ink at some time in the past. But just looking at it gave Fred a funny feeling in his stomach that couldn’t be put down to the booze.
“I don’t know about this…” he started, but stopped when the blonde put a warm hand on his knee.
“Just tell them, Fred,” Tricia said. “Tell them the story. Just the way you told me. Please?”
In truth he struggled to remember if he’d put any embellishment into the tale on its earlier telling, but it didn’t seem to matter. The others lapped it up as if he were relaying the Ten Commandments.
“As Charlie tells it, they’re still down there, somewhere. The bodies were never found,” he said, pushing down another chill that threatened to have him shivering.
“We should totally try to contact them,” the blonde said.
“Maybe they can tell us what’s causing the hole in the hollow?” the man on the sofa said.
Shit, I might be drunk, but at least I’m not stupid.
Fred started to move, intending to get up and leave, but Tricia pressed her back more firmly against his legs and squirmed. Fred sat back in the chair and chugged some beer.
Let them have some fun. Nothing will come of it, and maybe I can get her alone for a time later.
“You’ve done this before then?” Fred asked. Tricia turned to look at him and he felt her breasts jiggle against his knee, distracting him so much he nearly dropped his beer.
“Not since I was a kid,” she said. “But it works more often than not.”
“What do you mean,
works
?”
“We can talk to the spirits. Get messages from those who have passed on.”
“Bullshit.”
She smiled to let him see that she wasn’t offended.
“No, really. It answers questions. There’s a theory that it all comes from our own subconscious and we move the glass by micromovements in our fingers controlled by our unconscious minds but…”
She stopped. Fred had zoned out again, losing interest halfway through her sentence, and she’d obviously noticed. Once again, it didn’t seem to affect her good humor. She smiled at him again, then turned back towards the table.
“Let’s do it.”
Fred felt an almost palpable sense of loss as her weight lifted from his legs. She only went as far as the coffee table, setting an upturned glass in the middle of the board. She patted the floor beside her. “Come on down here,” she said. “We all need to be touching the glass or it won’t work.”
Fred got off the armchair, and his legs wobbled alarmingly under him. He tried to kneel, overbalanced, and almost head-butted the coffee table before managing to right himself. Tricia laughed and steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. She took the beer from him and put it to one side.
“I’ve got a bottle of rye in the cupboard,” she said. “We can start to party soon. But first, I
really
want to do this. Please?”
I never could resist a blue-eyed woman.
He nodded, carefully, unsure of how steady he was. Her answering smile improved matters considerably. He made sure he wasn’t about to fall over and settled in at Tricia’s side. The other two moved to take up position around the coffee table.
“What now?” Fred asked. He was starting to regret ever leaving The Roadside, but he just had to look to his left and see Tricia to remind him why he’d allowed himself to be brought here. Even if he couldn’t remember doing it, his instincts would always follow a blonde, no matter how drunk he was.
“Now we stay quiet,” she replied. “Just put a finger on the glass, and let me ask all the questions.”
Fred did as he was told. In truth, he had no idea what was going on, and just hoped to see it through as fast as possible so he could find out what Tricia’s idea of a
party
might be. The other two present, whose names Fred still didn’t know, seemed as serious as Tricia about this séance, so Fred let them have their head. He kept a finger on the glass in the center of the board, but with the other hand he continued to smoke a cigarette and swig from the beer bottle.
The glass under his finger on the board felt cold to the touch, as if it had just been taken out of a fridge.
“Is anybody there?” Tricia said, in a tone so solemn and fake that Fred let out a snort of laughter.
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
That got him a look that told him to behave, and a smile that reminded him of the possibility of a
party.
Suitably chastised, he kept quiet as she went back to concentrating on the glass. Her tongue poked wetly from her lips, and Fred decided, yet again, that he might stay a bit longer.
“Is anybody there?” she asked.
Fred resisted an almost overwhelming urge to speak up again.
The room fell quiet.
“Is it getting colder?” the man opposite him whispered. “I’m sure it’s getting colder.”
All Fred felt was a cramp, slowly spreading in his left leg; that, and an insistent urge to pee.
“Is anybody there?” Tricia asked again.
The glass moved, slowly at first, with a jerk, then more smoothly, centering itself over the faded
YES
on the board. To Fred it felt like the glass was hovering under his finger, moving like a flat-bottomed stone on smooth ice.
“You moved it,” the man across the table said. Tricia was looking wide-eyed at the glass. She shook her head.
“Not me.”
Fred was too shocked to answer, and the girl on his other side merely sat gaping, open-mouthed in wonder. Before anyone could speak, the glass moved again. It felt like it floated under his finger, scarcely touching the board at all. It circled the inner part of the board counterclockwise, as if waiting.
“Ask it something,” the man whispered.
Please don’t.
“Who are you?” Tricia said, softly.
The glass moved over the board. Tricia spoke the letters where it paused.
“F…R…E…D…I…S…D…E…A…D.”
“What the hell does that mean?” the man opposite said. Fred scarcely heard him. He’d already read the message, and his mind was filled again with pictures of a pale slithering thing in deep darkness. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and a sudden nausea gripped his guts. He stood, too fast, scattering the Ouija board, the glass and two beers across the trailer floor as he made for the washroom.
* * *
He only just made it. He emptied his stomach in one heave, tasting beer coming back up. Another spasm hit, then another. Every time he thought he was done, he saw the glass move in his mind’s eye, spelling out the letters.
F…R…E…D…I…S…D…E…A…D
What the fuck is going on here?
He had no answers. He stayed in the washroom for a while until his guts eased and he felt he could move without chucking up.
Screw this. I’m going home.
But by the time he returned to the main living area, the other three had the board set up, and the glass was once again moving smoothly across the board.
“You okay?” Tricia asked. She looked up and smiled. That was enough to get him to sit beside her again.
But there ain’t no way I’m touching that glass.
Tricia handed him a notebook with messages written in a scrawled hand.
“I think it’s them,” she whispered. “I think it’s your men from down the mine.”
She went back to the board with the others as Fred read the call-and-response in the scribbled notes, the knot in the pit of his stomach getting tighter with every line.