Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories Read online

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  The Trespasser

  FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Vree Erickson finished mowing the lawn an hour before the Pennsylvania weather forecasters’ predictions of heavy evening snowfall for Ridgewood began. Satisfied with her achievement, she drove the mower to her father’s shed, then dismounted and propped open its double doors, unaware of the magma that exploded one hundred miles beneath her. The explosion slammed superheated carbon toward the earth’s surface at supersonic speed, shoving tons of carbonic graphite into the deep bowels of the ridge she stood on. The limestone remnant created by an ice age more than ten thousand years ago shook, and portions of Myers Ridge splintered and opened, including the spot where Vree stood. She scrambled to climb from the ground falling with her, but the hole beneath her feet swallowed her and her father’s riding mower.

  Her landing was softer than she expected despite the rock and stone she fell on. The John Deere’s landing, however, sounded worse. From skylight filtering through the eye of the hole, she could make out the crumpled edges of the overturned mower a few feet away. She smelled gasoline fumes mixing with the cool, earthy air, and knew that rock had punctured the gas tank.

  On her backside twenty feet below her parents’ backyard, she shivered and rubbed her arms through her jacket. A miserable wet chill penetrated her clothes and stabbed her skin like a thousand icy knives. She looked around and saw a boxy chamber of stone—a cave no bigger than her bedroom. As she sat up, dim green light from a long protrusion of crystal next to her right leg caught her attention.

  The crystal rose diagonally almost fifteen inches from the floor and was nearly six inches in diameter. When she took hold of its smooth and angled sides, the crystal brightened and warmed her palms. She pulled herself closer, wrapped her arms around it, and let its heat and blazing emerald light consume her until she felt her backside stop throbbing and the chill inside her leave.

  She marveled at the crystal’s heat, tried to recall if all crystals produced heat, and then wondered how she was going to get out. No one was home to rescue her; her mother had gone shopping in town and her dad was picking out a Thanksgiving turkey at a farm on the other end of the ridge. And now, the gray sky began to unleash a chilly rain that would eventually turn to snow. The thought of dying of hypothermia left her trembling. She hugged the crystal and wished she could magically fly from the hole.

  As she pressed her forehead against the crystal and told herself she would be okay, that someone would rescue her as soon as they got home, the ground shook again.

  Tumbling sod from above fell around her as the sinkhole widened. Then the cave floor collapsed and sent her deeper into Myers Ridge. She screamed moments before she landed face down on sod and rubble; a blanket of straggling stone followed and covered her until the second quake stopped. Stunned and dazed, she rested inside her burial mound, the crystal still glowing and in her embrace. Then, coming to her senses, she rose to her hands and knees and pushed away the rocks and dirt and tried to stand, but her lower back felt sprained from the hard landing. She felt battered and bruised, and blood oozed from cuts on the backs of her hands, but none of her injuries seemed life threatening.

  Icy air crawled inside her clothes and icier rain fell on her face from where the dismal skylight revealed a larger underground chamber, perhaps forty feet from the top; she prayed there were tunnels to lead her back to the surface.

  The rain increased and the skylight almost vanished. She looked down, saw a shimmer of green light in the rubble in front of her, then rescued the crystal and cradled it in her arms until it blazed again and its heat warmed her and stopped the pain in her back. Then she used the rock’s green light as a beacon to look for a way out.

  Away from where the topside earth had fallen into the cavern, rainwater streamed across a granite floor and filled centuries-old furrows, turning them into rivulets where the floor sloped down. She followed the largest rivulet for several minutes to a narrow passage. There, the rivulet became the passageway’s floor, so she sloshed cautiously along, keeping her footing until the floor steepened and angled down almost forty-five degrees. She thought about turning around and looking for another way out, then considered she had to be close to an exit, and continued.

  As soon as she stepped on the angled floor, gravity yanked her feet from under her. Like a hapless rider on an amusement park’s waterslide, she plummeted along the slippery floor until the hill’s interior ejected her and the rainwater.

  The cliffs of Myers Ridge rushed past her and upwards as she followed the rain down. Her sudden entry into bristly treetops along the bank of Myers Creek sounded like gunshots as boughs of pine broke against her tumbling body.

  When the fall ended, she lay on her back on a mattress of pine needles, catching her breath. When she tried to sit up, her lower back screamed with pain again, so she used pine branches overhead to help pull her to a seated position.

  Lightning flashed and the sky opened. Through the downpour, she saw the green crystal glowing brightly on the ground ten yards away. She shielded her eyes and looked away when the crystal became too bright. Its heat came to her like wildfire then, entered her clothes and dried her, mended her bones and took away the pain, and filled her mind with new purpose. She stood—a slim figure suddenly strong inside a burning array of emerald light—and locked her mind on a familiar’s thoughts miles away.

  AT A NEAR near-empty Walmart parking lot in Ridgewood, a heavy man leered across the passenger seat of a white Impala and out a partially open window. A middle-aged woman bundled in black imitation fur slid from a silver SUV’s driver’s seat and dropped onto the black pavement. She wore her auburn hair in a pixie style and was dressed in blue jeans and black pumps. She opened a yellow umbrella, looked up at the dark, galling sky, and held up a hand as though trying to catch raindrops. Then she reached far inside the van for a black purse before she hurried across the sparsely lighted lot and entered the store.

  The man heard no blip from the automatic door lock on her keychain or the horn honk and lights flash to tell him she had locked the doors. He waited a moment, then wiped away fingerprints with a rag from under the seat before he squeezed his large body from behind the steering wheel and wiped away prints from the door. Then, as he crossed behind the Sorento, he looked at the vehicle in contempt.

  “Honor this,” he said as he raised a middle finger at the MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT bumper sticker.

  He opened the side door and climbed in on all fours.

  The roomy rear interior contained two rows of seats. A magazine titled Elle Decor, some paperback books, and a box of glitter crayons littered the first seat. A day planner had fallen behind the passenger seat. He opened the notebook.

  “Karrie Erickson,” he said, reading the name of the book’s owner. “A school teacher.” He smiled, looking pleased. “I got something for ya, teacher, but it ain’t no apple.”

  He flipped away the planner, closed the door, and hunkered on the floor of the back row seat. He snatched a crumpled bag from McDonalds beneath the seat in front of him and ate some old fries.

  Drippings of sweat pooled across his forehead and mixed with the rain there. He undid the top three buttons of his flannel jacket before he wiped his fat face with his sleeves. He was a short, floppy man with graying hair that seemed to explode from his head. He had a mocking thick-lipped face that appeared angry from behind pudgy grease-stained fingers always lurking there. And his bulbous brown eyes—not so much looking as unable to relax—were forever in motion.

  After many minutes, Karrie Erickson returned to her vehicle, got in, tossed two plastic bags on the passenger seat and started the ignition. A pleasant tone from the dashboard reminded her to buckle up. She jabbed at the radio and a lamenting song about lost love encircled her and the mostly concealed intruder behind her.

  Large wipers slapped across a panoramic windshield in tune to the music as she put the Sorento in gear and drove away from the stolen Impala that had lost its shine somewhere in Oh
io and was now showing rust around the wheel wells. Even the chrome that its dead owner had once been proud of had turned dull.

  Karrie drove to the nearly deserted main street and headed south away from downtown Ridgewood, back toward Alice Lake and the road to Myers Ridge. Along the way, she increased the volume of a favorite song.

  After they had gone about a half mile, the man crawled to behind Karrie’s seat, took a black Smith & Wesson M&P from the belt holster of his sagging blue jeans, and pressed the pistol against the back of her neck. She jumped and the man grinned at the sudden intake of air as she gasped.

  “Pull over, Karrie,” he said. “Pull over or I’m gonna blow your brains out.”

  “Who…” She trembled and no longer looked at the road. She had turned in her seat, looking over her shoulder at him. “Who are you?

  “Turn around and pull over,” the man hissed.

  She turned around and stared instead in the rearview mirror, trying to see the man’s face behind her. The SUV was on the wrong side of the two-lane highway.

  “Pull over!” The man shoved the barrel of the pistol against the base of her skull. She cut the wheel sharply to the right and drove the Sorento hard onto the berm. He ordered her to park at the roadside and to leave the engine running. When she did, he grabbed her purse and bags from the passenger seat and ordered her to the vacant seat.

  “Buckle up good and tight,” he grumbled at her when she crossed over to the passenger seat. Then, keeping the gun aimed at her head with his right hand and holding her purse and bags with his left, he climbed to the driver’s seat. It was a difficult maneuver because of his size.

  Karrie remained buckled to her seat, trembling.

  “Thanks for not trying to get away,” the man said and settled behind the steering wheel. “Nothing I hate more than shooting someone before I’ve had the chance to know them better.”

  As he adjusted the seat to his liking, Karrie rattled out several questions in a raspy voice: “Why are you doing this? What do you want? How do you know my name?” She began to bawl.

  He took her cell phone from her purse and tossed it out the window. It clattered on pavement and landed in a large puddle. He kissed the wet air before he rolled up the window.

  “I have money,” Karrie said. “Please … just take my money and leave me alone.”

  The man threw the purse and bag at her. They landed in her lap.

  “Get comfy,” he said and pulled the SUV back onto the road. They hadn’t gone far when Karrie began to hiccup.

  “Please … pull over,” she said. “I’m … going to throw up.”

  “Forget about it. If you’re gonna hurl, Karrie, you’ll have to hurl in your lap. I ain’t stopping.”

  She pressed the button to roll down her window.

  “Roll that window back up or I’m gonna shoot you where you sit. Now! And turn off that damn music! Stuff makes a person insane.” The pistol cracked to life, thunderous and disquieting as he fired a .40 caliber slug that tore through the Sorento’s roof.

  Karrie leaped to obey his orders. While she did so, he attacked the automatic door lock on the door panel and locked the two of them inside. Then he smiled big yellow dentures that appeared sinister and green from the dashboard’s electronic lights. “I bet those hiccups are gone now.”

  Her question came on a whisper, “Where are you taking me?”

  “You just get comfy and enjoy the ride, honey,” he said. He picked his fat nose and drove past Alice Lake, heading deep into the woods south of Ridgewood. The rain stopped and that made him grin again. After the rape, he planned to drive all night and be in Virginia by morning, long before those roly-poly Ridgewood donut eaters or the PA patrol boys started their searches for Karrie’s missing body and vehicle. By then, she would be long dead like the others, her body deep in some mountain woods in northern Maryland.

  That was the plan and it made him giddy. He almost giggled until shimmering green light appeared ahead and a human figure inside the light stood in the middle of the road.

  The man pulled Karrie’s SUV to the left lane, punched the gas pedal, and plowed into the light as the figure stepped in front of him. Karrie screamed as green light exploded around them.

  The engine stalled. The man threw the gearshift into neutral and tried to restart the engine, but it squawked in protest. He coasted the SUV to the side of the road and pressed the pistol against Karrie’s skull as the figure approached the passenger door.

  “I’ll blow her brains out,” he shouted when Karrie’s locked door opened.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” the figure said.

  The pistol jammed and Karrie struggled from her seatbelt. She fell freely into Vree’s waiting arms. When she recognized her daughter, she cried out. “Vree. What are you doing here? That light—”

  “There’s a house a quarter-mile up the road,” Vree said. “Call the police.” She touched her mother’s forehead and Karrie’s expression calmed. “You won’t remember seeing me.”

  Karrie looked hypnotized as she left the SUV and walked casually along the berm of the road, oblivious to the rain drenching her.

  Vree hurried to Karrie’s seat. She was untouched by the rain, and a halo of green light shimmered around her as she turned to face the trembling man. A more trembling hand pointed the Smith & Wesson at her.

  “Are you going on another joyride to Virginia?” Vree asked. “Or are you going to Florida like last year? Biscayne Bay wasn’t it?”

  “How … how?” The man shielded his eyes from Vree’s brightness with his left hand. Then, trying to sound tough, he said, “Who are you? You’re just a girl. What d’you want from me?”

  “Where’d you get the gun?” Vree asked. “And don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “That’s a police officer’s weapon. It was stolen five years ago from the Ridgewood Police Department.”

  The man choked out a denial.

  “It belongs to a missing police officer named Rita Malloy,” Vree said. “Remember her?”

  The man shook his head. He pressed his back against the door. His left hand searched for the door handle behind him.

  Vree scowled at him. “Were you gonna shoot me with Rita’s gun?”

  The man shook his head again and managed to utter a whispery uh-uh.

  “You were gonna shoot Karrie. After you raped her.”

  “I-I … no.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The man stretched his right arm at Vree, aimed the pistol at her glowing face, and squeezed the trigger. Again, the pistol jammed.

  He slumped in his seat.

  Vree reached out and effortlessly took the gun from him.

  “Isn’t that why you kidnapped Karrie tonight?” she asked. “Weren’t you planning to rape and kill her like the other women?”

  The man’s voice sounded weak as he denied it.

  “But you were. I know you were. Let me show you how you were gonna do it.”

  The windshield lit up like a TV screen and showed fractured moonlight streaming past bare tree branches inside a clearing surrounded by dark woods. There, Karrie’s Sorento was parked in the clearing and facing them. The driver’s door opened and the man stumbled out. He hurried to the passenger door and pulled a semi-conscious Karrie out.

  As they watched, Vree said, “You know those pictures of sad clowns and homeless puppies and starving children? That’s how Karrie looks there. It’s in her eyes, just like the others. Just like Rita’s when she begged you for her life.”

  “No,” the man next to her said. “Stop this. I don’t wanna see no more.”

  “Are you gonna vomit? If so, hurl in your lap. I ain’t stopping.”

  When the man in the windshield finished raping Karrie, he collapsed on her and rested for a minute, then rolled away from her body that now looked lifeless next to his. His great stomach heaved as he caught his breath. Then he sat up, wheezed, pushed himself to his knees, wheezed some more, and stood and
staggered toward the van while zipping his pants.

  “Watch this,” Vree said as Karrie’s left arm moved. The woman’s fingers wrapped around a dark object. Then she rolled on her left side and fired the fallen Smith & Wesson until the man dropped to his knees, wheezed deep and hard, and fell backwards and stopped breathing. The windshield went dark.

  “She would have killed you in those woods. But I’m not gonna let that happen,” Vree said.

  The man turned and cast a bewildered gaze at her. “You’re not?”

  “No.” Vree opened the door. “Someone wants to see you.”

  She stepped out and another glow entered and took her seat. This glow was ghostly white, and the figure was a young woman wearing a black sweatshirt with Ridgewood Police lettered across the front. Sadness edged the woman’s pale blue eyes framed by ragged and dirty hair that had once been short and strawberry blonde.

  “I’m Rita Malloy,” the ghost’s papery voice hissed, although her pallid face remained calm while she addressed the man. “You kidnapped me one night in my driveway five years ago when I was leaving to go to work. I never made it to the station because you raped me at knifepoint and then stabbed me in the stomach when you were through. But I was slow to die, so you shot me with my weapon and left my corpse for the wild dogs and coyotes. My remains have never been found.”

  The man looked at Rita’s pistol pointed at him. He pulled at his door handle and pushed his left shoulder against the door. It didn’t open. He closed his eyes.

  “You took my money,” Rita said, “went to Atlantic City and won nine hundred and seventy-five dollars with it. Then you bought some hookers and killed them too.”

  The man covered his ears. “No, no, no,” he said.

  “You’ll never hurt anyone again.” Rita shoved her pistol’s barrel against his temple. The gun did not jam.

  A HALF-HOUR later, Pennsylvania State Police officers found the man’s body in the driver’s seat of Karrie Erickson’s SUV. Rita Malloy’s government-issued pistol was in his right hand, his index finger on the trigger. On the dashboard, they found a crudely sketched map in glitter crayon on a McDonalds’ greasy paper napkin spattered with blood and showing them the locations of Rita’s body and the other women he had killed.

  At the bottom of the map, they read these words: For my crimes, I don’t deserve to live.

  A police officer drove Karrie home while a crime scene unit came to investigate the SUV. No one saw Vree hiding and watching from the woods. Moments later, she vanished, carried through space by the green light.

  At the banks of Myers Creek, the green light around Vree faded. She stumbled away from where the crystal lay and stared at it for several minutes. She almost reasoned that she had imagined saving her mother from the hands of a rapist and killer. But that would be denying the truth … albeit, the weird truth. Weird things had happened to her before, and she was certain they would continue.