Frank Klus - Azaleas Don't Bloom Here

“When can I go home?”

“When you are cured, Eugene,” Sistrunk said, although his voice betrayed a frustration with the questions.

Hour after hour, the questions spurted out, and hour after hour, the old man typed away. Punctuated by brief breaks when he’d be given water and a brief meal, the questions were relentless, detailed, and forced Eugene to search his memory for the answers. Sistrunk never permitted vague answers, forcing Eugene to dig for the facts, or make them up, if necessary. When he’d start to nod off, Alisha would give him another shot of ephedrine.

Without realizing it, Eugene found himself in the closet again. He was dazed, confused, and in great pain. Rage gathered within him as he reached down within himself, and he let out a scream that could wake the dead.

“Chad, Wrenn here.”

“What do you got for me?” Armstrong asked.

Ray brought Chad Armstrong and his sharpshooters in to rescue Eugene from that terrible place. He sent one of his men to Hell House to try and determine if Eugene was there and stake out the place. Armstrong was an ex-Blue, tall and muscular, with blonde short-cropped hair and blue eyes. He was also smart and a first-rate military planner. Ray depended on him and his men to get Eugene out of Hell House.

“I’m here at the House. Plenty of security—hidden; camouflaged.”

“Be careful.”

“Think I’ll go for a lit—”

There was a noise. Armstrong could hear a muffled noise at a distance. “Wrenn! Are you there?”

There was no answer.

“Wrenn, goddamn it, don’t fuck with me.”

“Who the fuck are you?” a mysterious voice on the phone said. Armstrong hung up. He thought a moment, and then called another team member.

“Foote, I lost Wrenn. I think he’s been captured. Get down to Hell House and see if you can find him. Take Paulie with you. Let me know what’s going on.”

Foote went down to Hell House and found Wrenn’s car, but not Wrenn. There was the look of a struggle. Blood was in the car, and drops trailed out of it. It was still fresh.

“I can’t believe he could be ambushed,” Paulie said. “He’s usually doing the ambushing.”

Foote was busy staring at the House. He seemed to be in a trance. “Foote, what about Wrenn?”

Foote didn’t answer. Terry Foote was a tall stoic soldier who didn’t go in for trivialities. He doggedly stuck to the matter at hand as he looked left of the house, right of the house; at one window, and then at another.

“This place is crawling with security,” Foote finally responded.

“I don’t see anything.”

Foote turned around and stared across the street. He looked like he was taking a panoramic picture of the neighborhood. He just moved with super slow motion from left to right, and then right to left.

Paulie looked at the same thing Foote was looking at, and furrowed his brow. “I don’t see anything.”

Foote paid no attention to Paulie at first, as he completed his search. Finally, he turned to him. “There are at least a dozen security people watching us.”

Then he turned toward the truck nearby. “Come on out of there, Wrenn.”

Wrenn came crawling out from under the chassis with a big grin on his face. An impish character that too often masqueraded his inner toughness, Paulie just stared at him, and then at Foote. “I was wondering how long it’d take you to notice me.”

“And what about all these security people?” Paulie asked.

“It’s a wonder you always hit your target when you can’t even see anything,” Foote said. Paulie made a face.

Wrenn laughed. “See that tree to the left of the house?”

Paulie searched for a minute. “I see two trees.”

“The one closest to the house,” Wrenn said.

“Okay, so?”

“Jeez, Paulie,” Foote said. “Look about two-thirds of the way up on the right side of the tree.”

“I think I see something moving, but I’m not sure.”

“There’s a guy in that tree. He’s camouflaged, but you can see a slight change of color where he is,” Wrenn said.

“Look at the roof,” Foote said. “Do you see a couple of grey rectangular objects—one each on the left and right sides?”

Paulie stared at it. “Sure. You aren’t going to tell me those are men?”

Wrenn just gave Paulie a funny look. Wrenn was smaller than Foote, with a wiry frame and an infectious smile. “You see, we’re trained to find the bad guy’s hiding places. That’s the secret. You anticipate where the hiding places are, and you look for the men—”

“And what to see,” Foote said. “Look at the windows of the house. They’re good for daytime spying. The daylight reflects off the window so you can’t see inside, but look closely at the windows. If someone is there you can spot a slight shadow moving.”

“And don’t look directly at it,” Wrenn said. “You see more with your peripheral vision.”

“I see more? How?”

“It’s not clarity that’s always important—it’s motion,” Foote said. “You can see motion more clearly out of the corner of your eye than when you’re looking straight at something. If you look straight at the window, you can’t see anything. Look to the left or the right of it, and, if someone is there, you can detect their motion.”

“That’s how we saw the camouflaged men,” Wrenn said. “A slight motion—a move of the hand, the head, anything, and that’s when you know they’re there.”

“Okay, I guess I understand, but what I don’t get is how did you know Wrenn was under that truck?”

“I just followed the blood trail. What I don’t know are the details. Right, Jack?”

Wrenn was hysterical with laughter. He was the jokester of the group. “You should have seen me in action. It was a thing of beauty. I tell yah, boys. It was—”

“Cut the shit, Wrenn. How did you get ambushed anyway?”

“I was on the phone. I can’t concentrate when I’m on the phone. I had the driver side window down so I could see better. That’s where the guy ambushed me. He hid in my blind spot, and then came through the open window with a rope. He had it around my neck before I could react. I realized I was losing consciousness, so I went limp.”

“Wrenn can look like a dead man better than any dead man I’ve seen,” Foote said.

“Believe it, boy—dead eye and all, with just the right grunting. It fooled ole soldier boy. He yanked me out of the car and got his dig in with Chad. Then I slit his throat. Look at this car! Do you know how hard it is to clean that blood? It’s going to take hours.”

“Where is the body?” Paulie asked.

“With me, under the truck.”

“One thing I still don’t understand, you guys, is… well, aren’t we in danger standing out here talking?”

“Look,” Foote said, “this is a public street. They can’t just shoot us, and they don’t know who we are. The guards are trained to watch, and to make sure no one gets too nosy.”

“But Wrenn got ambushed.”

“I was alone, and got distracted,” Wrenn said.

“Nevertheless, Paulie has a point. We should get out of here before someone starts questioning us,” Foote said.

Armstrong, Ray, Cassandra, Sean, Jimmy the Fox, Foote, and Wrenn were in a rented room near Hell House, studying a map of the house and neighborhood. It gave them a good idea where all the security was, but they didn’t know anything about what was going on inside Hell House; nor could they even be sure this was where they were keeping Eugene.

“We need to get inside the house,” Chad said.