Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

The light fixture had come loose from the ceiling, so there was raw wire hanging down about a foot before the fixture. All the bulbs were knocked out of the fixture itself, and Joey was hanging from that. His feet should have touched the ground, but they were cranked up behind him and tied. His knees were less than an inch from the floor, and his head and shoulders were covered in ceiling plaster. The room smelled of shit. Joey, in death, had let it go.

Harry moved toward him slowly, his knees feeling as if they were going to give way. He touched Joey, hoping. But the moment he touched him he knew he was dead. The wire fastened to the fixture and to Joey’s neck caused the body to turn. The light fixture squeaked, and there was a flash—

—and out of the flash came a black dot, and the black dot expanded and there were shapes in the black dot, and soon the dot was gone and what he saw standing in his dark apartment was the chief and the other man, and now he knew who the other man was, because he could see the scar. The sergeant. It had been him before, but the scar had not been there then. That’s why the man had been familiar in the visions out there on Humper’s Hill. But Harry couldn’t place him. Not without the scar. That event was yet to happen. The sergeant was the guy who had shot the black kid in the front seat, had probably taken his turn with the woman.

They were watching Joey hang. Joey was still alive. Struggling. Thrashing. The fixture was still fastened to the ceiling, but it was beginning to sag. Joey vibrated for a moment as if trying to crawl out of his skin, and his fear jumped around the room like a kangaroo. And in that flash Harry felt every nasty thing that had ever happened to Joey. That had never happened before, but this time it was everywhere. Every time Joey had taken a slap, been called a name, it rushed over him in a flood of voices and images that knocked him to his knees.

The images dissolved into a black swirl, then they were gone, leaving Harry looking at the results. One very dead Joey, his tongue poking out of his mouth, his head twisted a little too far. The smell of shit was so strong it seemed to be in the walls.

Harry struggled to his feet, his face popped with sweat, his heart pounding against his chest, and looked about the room. The couch had been moved. Harry took a deep breath, kicked it so that it slid, and at the same time he spun the wire that held Joey.

Squeaks and slides became loud, and out of them fear shot in patterns of light and images formed.

—Joey wrestling against the couch, two men grappling with him. One of them, the scarred man, had his legs. They rolled him on his side. The sergeant tied Joey’s legs behind him with wire, fastening his hands to his feet.

With Joey on his knees, the chief came up behind him, slipped another wire, a kind of cable, over Joey’s head, pulled it taut, and choked him with it. As the chief reared back, his knee in Joey’s spine, he looked up, paused, slowly lifted his head, took in the light fixture. And smiled.

His face transformed from grandfatherly to something quite different. His eyes rolled into his head like a shark about to bite. His lips went thin and the veins stood out on his neck like cables. He looked like a man about to have an ejaculation.

He removed the wire, and Joey coughed. The chief grabbed a chair, went to the center of the room. From under his coat he pulled a pistol, climbed on the chair, whacked the lights out of the overhead. They dragged Joey over. The chief climbed onto the chair, hooked the wire on the fixture, then they lifted Joey up and looped the cable around his neck, let go of him. Joey twirled and twisted, couldn’t even kick his legs, not pulled up behind him like that. His feet, in the center of his back, flexed like little flippers, then the image began to fade and Joey’s pain faded with it—

And now Harry realized he was sitting on the floor, right next to Joey, looking up at the body, still spinning slightly from where he had touched him.

Life had finally worked out just as shitty for Joey as he always expected.

Harry got his feet under him. His whole body was racked with Joey’s fear, the anger, hatred, the repulsiveness of the chief and the sergeant—the goddamn police themselves.

Jesus. The perfect cover for a killer.

“What am I going to do?”

Harry was sitting on the bottom of the outside stairs, talking on his cell phone with Tad, who was still sleepy.

“Shit, Harry. You got to tell the police.”

“The police killed him. Are you fucking crazy?”

“I know. But you can’t just walk off. It could look worse, you did that.”

“No shit.”

“Take it easy, Harry.”

“Easy? Joey is swinging from my goddamn light, and I’m supposed to take it easy? I feel naked sitting out here. They could come back. They were probably waiting for me. The sergeant, he interviewed me. He knew I was telling the truth, Tad. He knew it because he and the chief killed Vincent. The sergeant has a scar now. That’s why when I saw him in the vision he looked familiar. He didn’t have the scar then. But now he’s got it. Him and the chief, they got to thinking, thought they might ought to get rid of a loose end. My sound business may be hard to prove. They could make me look like a nut. But dead—that works real good.

“I think they killed Joey ’cause they were waiting for me. They couldn’t let him go; he’d seen their faces. So they killed him. Maybe they killed him as a warning to me. Shit…No. I’ll tell you why they did it. Because they don’t have any problem doing it. It’s not like it’s the first time. They like it, Tad. And now it looks like I did it.”

“All right. Here’s what we do. We call a cop. But we call Kayla. Can you get in touch with her?”

“She’s at work. I don’t know how to do that without giving something away. I make a call, that isn’t going to look so good for her.”

“The cell phone is registered to me, if anyone checks later. Never mind, kid. Hang on. I’m coming. We’ll take care of it. Hard as it is, I suggest you go back in the apartment, close the door, and wait for me. Do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“Probably best. You’d shoot your dick off. Go in and lock the door.”

“I locked it when I left. It was unlocked when I got here. They can pick a lock, Tad. Besides, I don’t think the lock works anymore.”

“Go behind the apartment and wait. I’ll come right over.”

“Then what?”

“We’re gonna get rid of the body.”

“Oh, shit. I’m gonna be in deeper yet.”

“Kid, you’re already in deep. Only thing now is to get down so deep we come out on the other side.”

“This puts you in too, you know?”

“What the fuck are friends for? Someday I might want you to loan me some money.”

53

There were icicles under his nose. His eyes, though open, were frosted over. Where there had been snot on his upper lip was now a sheen like glazed sugar. His hands and legs were still tied up with wire, and his mouth was wide-open, and his tongue, black as coal tar, jutted out like some kind of critter poking its head from a den.

At least this way he didn’t stink.

Trembling, Harry closed the freezer lid.

“Oh, shit,” Kayla said.

“We get caught with him in the freezer,” Harry said, “it won’t look so good, will it?”

“Shit,” Kayla said. “That was Joey.”

“Yep.”

“Shit. You know, except for the tongue, the icicles, and such, he looks just the same.”

“And there’s the being-dead part.”

“I know you were still friends. This has got to be rough. Shit. I’m so sorry.”