Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

The rain and wind were heavy when I stepped outside, and the rush of water and the cold ozone tang of the air were a shock and a massive relief. I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky and let the rain wash down my face and through my hair. I needed to burn my clothes and take a long hot shower, but this was a start.

I stood there for a minute or two, and then I pointed my flashlight down and began to work my way along the side of the barn toward the house and the road. I wondered what the power failure had done to cell phone service, and if I’d find a signal down by the road. I thought about the cops who would come in answer to my call- assuming I could make one- and what they’d think about being dragged out on a night like this, and about finding me here, and about what I’d found. And I thought of Jane, and how she was doing in the storm. I stumbled on a stone but kept my feet. I rounded the corner to the front of the barn and smacked my knee on the bumper of the car parked there.

I backed away and ran my flashlight over the car. It was a Chrysler- a K-car- twenty years old at least, and it was brown and heavy with rust. I looked around and reached into my waist pack for the pry bar, but I was too slow and too late and I didn’t see it coming.

Something like a two-by-four came down between my shoulder blades, and my flashlight went spinning into the rain and dark. He grabbed me by the neck and by the belt and I went spinning too, face first onto the hood of the Chrysler, with a sound that dwarfed the thunder. I slid to the ground and he grabbed my left arm and something popped in my shoulder and I was flying again, into the side of the barn. I didn’t register the impact or the pain until I was slumped in the mud, and by then they were abstractions.

I didn’t black out, not completely, but I couldn’t move much- or not dependably, anyway- and my thoughts were slow and haphazard. I felt him grab me by the belt and drag me. I felt the stones and shrubs I was dragged across, and there was a jagged pain in my shoulder with every jolt. I felt the wind gusting and the rain sweeping over me in sheets, and I felt it stop as I was dragged across a threshold. I smelled the thick, cloying scent of death again, and a rank familiar odor much closer by. Then he swung me, and I skidded and tumbled on the packed earth floor and came hard to rest against something made of wood. And then I blacked out.

There was light when I came to. It was from an electric lantern that was sitting on the roof of the Beemer, and it cast a milky circle around the car and a heavy shadow beyond it. I was crumpled in that shadow, in one of the open-ended stalls that lined one side of the barn. There was blood in my mouth, and maybe dirt, and the side of my face was swollen and numb. There was a faint ringing in my ears and my left shoulder was dislocated. My left arm hung useless beside me like an empty sleeve, and just inhaling caused it to throb and burn. I lay without moving and breathed slowly, and watched Paul Cortese pace back and forth beside the Beemer, into and out of the light.

He was bigger than I remembered- at least six-foot-five- and broader, and he was more disheveled and crazed. His work boots were soaked and splattered with mud, and so were his khaki pants and threadbare brown sweater. His thin tangled hair was plastered to his head, and there was a week’s worth of dirty beard on his wide face. There was tape on his glasses and mud on the lenses and I could see nothing of his eyes. He made jerky splay-fingered gestures with his thick blunt hands, and I saw that they were covered with dirt and cuts. His small mouth was moving and I could just hear him over the storm.

“You see? You see what happened? He left another. I see it, and I know you see it too. You see it all. He leaves them, and now I have to put them away.” His voice was quick and droning, and the rises and falls and pauses in it had to do with breathing and not with meaning. It was oddly liturgical somehow.

“You know he did it, you know it. He left another- like the last one, but outside, at our car. He left him at our car. He looked at our car.” Cortese went still and stiff, and after a moment he twisted his face and shook his head, as if in painful denial of something. “I doI do have to put them away now. I put them away before- I got it all out. So I have to clean now. He leaves it for me, so I take care of it.” Cortese resumed his pacing and wild gesticulating.

I came cautiously to a sitting position and leaned against the back of the stall, and I bit back a gasp of pain when I put weight on my left arm. I reached for my waist pack, but it was gone. I felt around for it but found only dirt. Cortese slammed his fist on the Beemer’s roof and the light jumped and so did I.

“We cleaned it all last time- all of it- the whole house. And now he left another. I have to take care of it now.” He assumed a wide ragged orbit around the car, and after a few circuits he walked stiffly toward the far end of the barn. He returned with a long roll of plastic sheeting balanced on his shoulder and a six-pack of gray duct tape in his hand. Shit.

He leaned the plastic sheeting against the car and put the duct tape on the hood and disappeared into the shadows again. I got my feet under me and stood slowly in the darkness. My heart was pounding and my arm was throbbing. I heard Cortese rummaging somewhere off to my left, but with the bubbling sound of rain, and the wind in the rafters, it was hard to localize. The lightning flashes only served to blind me. Cortese exclaimed something and it sounded far away. He was big and crazy and he had two good arms. I wasn’t sure I’d get a better chance.

I kept low and kept quiet and headed toward the car, skirting the circle of light. I crouched by the front bumper and listened for a moment and heard only wind. I went around the car and headed toward the Dutch door- or where I thought the door was. The barn was black just a few feet from the car and I moved slowly and with my hand outstretched. My knuckles brushed wood and my fingers found the doorframe. I ran my hand along it, feeling for the latch, and heard a shuffling behind me and an angry mutter and an iron clamp closed around my neck.

A spike of pain shot down my shoulder and into my arm and I kicked out and back and connected with something. There was a grunt of surprise but no loosening of his grip. I twisted and brought my right forearm around and banged it against his. It was like hitting a fence post, but his hand slipped off me. And then something came out of the dark and slammed into the side of my head. My knees sagged and he caught me by the belt and threw me into the side of the Beemer. The breath flew out of me in a stinging gasp, and I lost my footing and went down.

Paul Cortese stepped into the circle of light. He was bent over slightly and rubbing the side of his knee and whimpering softly. Tears rolled down his big face and left pale tracks on his skin. I came up fast from a crouch and drove my right fist into his midsection, just below the sternum. He yelped and coughed and staggered back half a step and I stepped forward and threw my elbow into his windpipe. Or that was the plan.

Cortese brought his thick hands up and caught my arm and grunted and pushed. I skidded into the car and hit it with my shoulder and yelled. Cortese looked down and rubbed his gut and made a mewling sound that chilled my blood. Tears spilled from his cheeks. He looked up, and his face was clenched and dark with rage. His eyes were black and full of madness. I turned and slid over the Beemer’s hood, and as I did I stretched out my good arm and knocked the lantern off the roof of the car. The barn went black.

I rolled and scrambled in the dark and stopped when my back hit a wall. My heart was hammering and my breathing was ragged and the rushing in my ears blotted out the rain and the wind and whatever sounds Cortese might be making. I inhaled deeply to slow things down, and I stared into the blackness and strained to hear.