Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

Harry sat.

Talia leaned to him, and they kissed. Her lips tasted like what she had been drinking, but it wasn’t bad. Her perfume reminded him of orange blossoms. She ran her hand under his coat and pushed at the inside of it. He removed it, laid it at the foot of the bed. He slipped the straps of her dress down. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She didn’t need one. In a few years, probably, way she was built, the size of her breasts, she would, but right now—perfect. As he kissed her again, he took hold of her left breast and gently squeezed it, let his thumb and finger play over her nipple, felt it go stiff.

A breeze came. The door was caught by it. It slammed and the light cord shook—

—and the world went to pieces and so did the kiss. Colors leaped into Harry’s head, and the colors screamed.

39

Puzzle pieces, like a Picasso painting, flew through Harry’s cranium, wrestled together briefly, then there was light and the light went back and forth and the shadows did the same.

It was the light on the cord, and the room was fresher-looking. There was a large man coming down the stairs, and Harry knew then that the slamming door had shaken the bulb on the wire. The room leaped from bright to shadow and back again as the bulb went this way and that. The man on the stairs was carrying something bundled in what looked like a blanket. The blanket moved.

Harry was looking up the stairs, and in another way he was overhead and looking down, but he couldn’t see the man’s face because he wore a hat and it was low on his forehead and the collar of his long coat was turned up and the bundle he carried, which he carried as if heavy, was partially in front of his face. As he worked his way downstairs, turned at the bottom, one end of the bundle struck the bulb sharply, and it swung harder and hit the wall and exploded against the wire mesh of the fixture and the shelter went dark.

A pause and silence.

A snapping sound.

A burst of flame.

A match had been struck.

In the glow Harry could see the bundle on the floor. The man bent over it and the flame licked his face, but even in the match light it was still too dark to make out his features.

The match went out.

Another was lit.

The man went across the room to a shelf. He walked as if his foot hurt. He took down a candle and lit it. The candle wavered and the light in the room wavered. The big man opened the bundle. A young man was inside. Not a kid, but a little guy. Even in the dim light Harry could tell the man was redheaded and freckle-faced.

The young man had a rag in his mouth—no, a sock—and his hands and legs were tied with what looked like wire. His head had a large red raspberry on it. Harry knew then that the big man had slammed the redhead’s head against the door outside, and the whole thing had been recorded. He watched as the frightened young man, out of the wrapping, tried to scootch away on his butt. He didn’t get far. He came up against the wall.

The big man stood, his shadow falling over the young man like a tar-covered slat. He bent, dragged the kid to the center of the room by his feet, spun him on his butt, wrapped his left arm around the kid’s neck, hooked his hand into the bend of his right elbow, slid his right hand behind his victim’s head and began to choke—

“That hurts…too tight, Harry.”

—and the room was full of colors, the sound of the young man struggling, trying to free his neck arteries from being crushed. All of this, the nerves screaming, the muscles snapping, these sounds were as loud in Harry’s ears as firecrackers popping. Then the young man made a spitting sound, and his feet, tied together, rose up and hit down, and did it again, and went still. The big man continued to squeeze, and he bent forward, putting his weight on the back of the young man’s neck—

“For God’s sake, quit it.”

—and there was a snapping sound so loud it made Harry feel as if his eyes would bulge out. The big man let out a breath that reminded him of a tired man lying down to rest, then all was—

—bright light and Talia screaming, “You’re scaring me. Stop it! Stop it!”

Harry snapped back. His fingers ached and his mind felt drunk.

“You’re hurting me.”

Harry had hold of Talia’s arms, and he was squeezing hard, so hard his fingers hurt, and he was hanging on as if for dear life. Her dress was down and her breasts swayed in the light as she struggled.

He let her go.

“Sorry…Sorry. My God, Talia. My God…There was a murder.”

“What?” Talia said, standing, slipping her arms through the dress straps, looking at Harry as if he had fallen out of the sky dressed in a gold lamé jumpsuit.

“Right here,” he said. “In this room. There was a murder.”

“A murder? What are you talking about…? You hurt my arms, you son of a bitch.”

“And I think your father did it.”

40

Outside the air was easier to breathe and the sky was full of all those shiny yard lights. The backyard was stuffed with people, because Talia, mad as if she had been dipped in acid, had burst out of the shelter screaming, running toward the house, leaving Harry, coatless and confused.

She brought the crowd back with her. She was no longer drunk. She had snapped out of it.

So now he stood there, out of the woods, away from the shelter at the edge of the yard, watching as they swelled around him like a great flood of well-dressed water.

“What are you doing to my daughter?” Talia’s dad said. “She said you hurt her.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Harry said. “It was an accident. I swear. I had…I had a vision.”

“Do what?” her father said.

“A vision.”

“He’s crazy, Daddy,” Talia said. “I didn’t know he was crazy.”

“It’s okay, Talia.” It was the boy who had been in the crowd at school, at the burger joint, the one he had seen Talia look at while dancing. Kyle. All sorts of ideas and questions, and even some sad answers, came to Harry as he watched the boy slide up and put his arm around Talia’s waist.

“She wanted to show me the storm shelter,” Harry said.

“I did,” Talia said. “And then he was all over me. Look at my arms and wrists…. Well, you can’t see them in this light, but they’re bruised. Bad.”

“I ought to beat you down, boy,” her father said.

“It was an accident, I swear.”

Talia’s mother arrived. She wobbled out of the crowd and looked at Harry and smiled. “You’re cute, you know it?”

“Oh, shut up,” Mr. McGuire said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, punched buttons. Then to Harry: “I’m calling the police.”

“The police?” Harry said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“He said you killed someone, Daddy,” Talia said, clinging tightly to the boy.

“What?” Mr. McGuire said, then, into the phone: “Oh, police. Yes. Yes.”

He gave his name and address, clicked off the phone, dropped it into his front pants pocket.

“Killed someone?” Mr. McGuire said. “Me?”

“He said he thought you killed someone,” Talia said. “You, Daddy.”

“In the vision,” Harry said, “he looked like you.”

“Killed who?” Mr. McGuire said. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, a redheaded man, had freckles.”

“No shit. A redheaded man with freckles. Did he have on a funny hat? Maybe some goddamn galoshes?”

“No,” Harry said. “The man, the one big as you, he had on the hat. But it wasn’t funny.”

As they talked the crowd had begun to mumble, and now they came closer and closer to Harry, and he felt as if he were going to faint, as if he were tucked too tightly in cotton and all the air was being sucked out of the universe by God’s own vacuum.