A Penny Down the Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events (32 page)

By then I knew I had hesitated for an
awkward length of time. The hesitation caused Mortimer to look
queerly toward the sheriff and bob his hand up and down, as he
struggled with the weight of his own appendage and the
embarrassment of not having it met. The sheriff watched me with
skepticism and judged me. I hated the appraisal. I was breaking a
moral convention by not shaking a man’s hand when it was offered.
In a place like this, the convention seemed to have no boundary
based on hygiene.

Mortimer said, “Oh, com’on. Ain’t seen
a little blood before? I was skinning a deer in the back. It won’t
hurt you. All dried up anyway.”

Skinning a deer, I thought. My
imagination was flooded with images of a diabolical Mortimer
chopping up the drivers of the vehicles littering his front lawn. I
considered the possibility of being next.

I shook Mortimer’s hand despite my
instinct to avoid it. My mind, pummeled with scenes of screaming
cityfolk and dismembered body parts, couldn’t develop a clever lie
in time to get out of the handshake. As my hand shook his, I felt
the bloody crust on his palm balling up and flaking away between
our palms, sending a plague snow down to the ground between us. I
liked things clean.

"I’m Porter Jennings. Porter is fine.”
The handshake went on too long. I tried to pull back, but Mortimer
held firm to my hand. The conversation continued with my hand in
his. I felt the heat rising between our palms and the mutual blood
on our hands returning to life.

“
Good to meet you,
Port!”

Porter
, I thought.

“
So, where’s your car at
now?”

Sport Utility
Vehicle
, I thought.

I felt Mortimer clutch my hand
tighter. I felt like his hand was around my neck.

“
Back at the gas station in
town.” I said.

“
Alright. Let me get my
tools and I’ll head out that way. Com’on inside the house, Port. We
ain’t the type here to keep people standing outside.”

You probably keep them
hanging from hooks inside
, I
thought.

“
My wife Judith makes some
of the best damn sweet tea you ever drank! A southern specialty.
She’s cooking up soup now, too.” Mortimer rambled. “By the looks of
you, Port, you ain’t from the country. A city boy, through and
through. Can tell by your hairdo. You won’t see a hairdo like that
around here, no.”

I couldn’t contemplate what Mortimer
could have meant by my “city boy hairdo.” My hair was long,
well-kept, and not a mullet—it was therefore “not
country.” Mortimer released my hand to retreat toward the
house. I could breathe again. I didn’t want to look at my hand or
what Mortimer had exposed it to. I made a note to get a shot once
back in civilization. 

I followed Mortimer and left the
sheriff standing in the Orson’s overgrown front lawn. Mortimer
shouted suddenly, which caused my heart to feel like it was rubbed
against a cheese grater.

“
Judith! Judith, pour some
of that sweet tea, will you?” He looked back at me with a hand on
the open screen door. “You want ice?” He didn’t wait for my answer.
“And pour it over some ice! The good ice!” Mortimer went inside. I
wondered about the kind of people that had good ice and bad ice.
The tight springs of the screen door, likely the only thing new on
the house, pulled the door shut with a clap—a meager applause for a
pitiful show.

I stepped onto the first step leading
to the patio with all the indignation of a guiltless man heading to
the electric chair. I turned back to the sheriff in a hopeful plea
that he’d stay. Despite the sheriff’s presence being uncomfortable,
he was a sentinel, in theory designed to abide by the law. Without
him, I was on my own and things could turn out any number of
ways. I thought about meat hooks and shallow forest graves. I
thought about my trunk.

The sheriff opened his cruiser’s car
door and closed it once his massive frame adjusted into it. The
engine started with a grumble. As I prepared to enter the house
behind Mortimer and subject myself to any other horrors associated
with the Orson residence, I realized I’d forgotten my trunk in the
cruiser. I leapt from the step and rushed toward the cruiser while
waving my hands like some novice animal trainer. I saw the officer
adjust at his right, which looked an awful lot like he was reaching
for his weapon. My franticness subdued with the alarm of
potentially being shot and I shook my hands in front of my face as
a cautionary measure. I imagined how I looked, sweating,
confused, hand bloodied, and entirely out of place with my “city
boy hairdo.” While at the side of the cruiser, I pointed to the
trunk in the backseat. The sheriff nodded once and turned away. I
opened the back door and struggled to get my arms around the bulky
wooden trunk again.

“
Almost forgot my trunk.” I
gave the officer a crooked smile as I pulled the trunk from the
backseat, exposing the scratched leather. The trunk crashed down on
the ground and rolled over, flattening a forest of tall grass. The
trunk remained closed. I placed the toe of my shoe against the
trunk and felt better.

All the while the officer observed my
desperate behavior. His nose twitched and he sniffed out my fear
and hopelessness. Those wide, reflective lenses, something I’d now
imagined as alien eyes, peering into my darkest recesses to uncover
weakness, stared and stared. With a sharp cock of his neck to the
left and a subsequent pop, the officer looked away.

“
Close
the door.” He said while staring out of the cruiser’s clouded
windshield. I was certain I could hear the bob and sway of the
little tree air freshener as the wind blew into the cruiser through
the open back door.
Have a nice
day!

I obliged and closed the door. The
tires of the cruiser dug into the earth and spit dirt to its rear.
Soon after, the car drove back down the long dirt road leading to
the Orson’s. I watched the officer in the rearview, watched those
alien eyes, and knew they were watching me back, waiting for me to
make a last-minute wrong move so he could stick that eight-inch
barrel in my face and blow my city boy brains out the back of my
head.

“
Thanks, asshole.” I
whispered. I saw brake lights and regretted whispering. The cruiser
never stopped, however.

I stared at my toppled, leather-bound
trunk for some time, and tried to devise a means of getting it off
of the ground and into the house. I rolled the broad trunk over and
upright. My fingers slipped into the leather belts that encompassed
the container. I hoisted the trunk up against my chest.

“
Don’t lift with your
back.” I told myself with a tightened throat. I’d heard it more
than once. I fumbled through the high grass like a cartoon
character, while trying to get to the house. When I reached the
stairs, I pushed my toe out in front of me, feeling for the
vertical rise of each step, trying, to no avail, to look around the
bulky object in my arms. One step. Two steps. Three steps. I hadn’t
killed myself yet. Four steps. A foul smell crept from the house as
I neared.

I kicked the bottom of the screen door
in a desperate knock and it was opened by a small child, no older
than four years. The little boy wore a striped shirt and shorts. He
was barefoot on the wooden floor and the ends of his toes were
coalminer black. He had a blonde bowl cut that hung to his wide
blue eyes. There was a brown mess of food around his lips. The boy
didn’t say anything, but I smiled at him and whispered, “Thanks,
bud.”

I stepped past him and placed the
trunk next to one of the two florally upholstered couches in the
living room. There was a broad fireplace in the living area with
porcelain clowns on the mantle. On shelves near one of the walls,
paintings of sad-faced clowns were crowded together. On the coffee
table were salt and pepper shakers topped with clown heads, with
their painted porcelain red hair. In the corner of the room, near a
large window was a rocking chair with a terry clown, with long
knitted gloved fingers and uncomfortably happy eyes.

“
What in the fu—“ I paused
as the young boy tugged on the leg of my black slacks.

“
Whatcha got in da box?” He
asked.

I paused, caught off-guard. “It’s a
surprise, little man. Don’t you worry one bit about it, alright?” I
ruffled his hair and tried my best to imitate the dreadful smile of
the rocking chair clown.

I heard a loud and obnoxious woman’s
voice surging into the room from behind me. She wafted the
miserable scent from the kitchen in with her.

“
Oh! Hello!” The woman’s
voice rang out in painful dissonance. Her voice reminded me of an
old recording. Suddenly I was enveloped in a hug. The woman’s large
body and bosom pressed against my thin chest. Somewhere in the
abyss of tacky pink floral fabric, I was restrained and in shock. I
felt a small wooden spoon tapping my back as she held me like a
husband returning from war. When she pulled from the embrace, she
kept hold of my upper arms with her thick fingers.

Judith, I assumed, had thin lips with
thick red lipstick. Her hair was fire truck red and wound in
spirals on her head. She wore a yellow flower apron over her
bulbous pink flower dress. The woman was a walking field of
floral species fighting for dominance over her turf. The cacophony
of color was distracting, even in a room full of clowns.

“
Well, aren’t you jus’
precious? I’m Judith Mortimer, but you jus’ call me Judy.” She made
her way back toward the kitchen. “I got you some sweet tea jus’
over here in the other room, now. You com’on over and get—“ Before
she could finish, she tripped over my wooden trunk and
stumbled.

Judith observed the trunk
perplexedly, “My, my, what’ve we got here? This yours,
handsome? You should take this on upstairs while I make you
something to eat. Don’t want anyone tripping on this here and
breaking their neck. Us here, we’re having the finest soup. The
finest! Momma’s recipe, in fact.” Judith waved the wooden spoon
around as she stepped back into the kitchen. Her rambling faded
into incoherent warbles in the other room.

A terrible stench filled the house
from what I imagined was a witch’s cauldron in the kitchen. I
started thinking of ways to get out of eating. The smell was
distinctly animal and unclean. I wanted to see into the pot, to see
if eyeballs or goat testicles floated and bobbed in the fluid. I
peered into the kitchen, only to see Judith bobbing to and fro—a
windy field of flowers that all smelled like cow shit.

I heard an engine start outside. I
scrambled toward the window, still under the innocent observation
of the young boy.

“
Don’t you have cartoons or
something to watch?” I asked the boy as I pulled the floral
curtains to the side to look for the source of the engine growl.
Flowers. Clowns. Flowers. Clowns.

Mortimer was outside of a
running, dented old truck. He tossed a small toolbox into the bed
of the pickup and wobbled back toward the driver’s seat. I noticed
he had to jump to get into the front seat of the vehicle.
What a pitiful man
, I
thought.

Judith was singing in the
kitchen.

“
Are you washed in the blood? Are you washed in the blood of
the lamb?
” She sang. A tapping lanyard of
an unbalanced ceiling fan in the living room played a beat behind
the tune. “
Are your garments spotless, are
they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the
lamb?
”

I examined my hands. I
observed the smeared red mess on them.
Afraid of a little blood
, he said. I
looked at my clean white shirt. I grit my teeth and closed the
curtain as Mortimer started down the road. I lifted my trunk from
the ground and stumbled around the small child, the coffee table,
and the couches until I stood at the bottom of the stairs. I
shifted my body and pressed the trunk between me and the wall for
support while I surveyed the stairs. Behind me, in step like a
soldier in training, the little boy followed, observing the stairs
as well.

“
Any ideas?” I
asked.

The boy turned from the stairs to look
at me, his whole head turning with each glance. The little boy’s
lips smacked and his tongue wagged around his mouth to wipe away
the food on his face.

“
Didn’t think
so.”

I pulled the trunk from the wall and
stepped up the first step. I went on to the next, one foot in front
of another.

“
So this is how I die.” I
muttered, half-muted as the box pressed against my
cheek.

The boy took each step
behind me. I was aware that if I fell the boy wouldn’t have a
chance. It wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends.
Thanks for fixing my car. I killed your
kid
.

There were more clowns upstairs on
shelves and walls.

“
It’s a fucking circus in
here.” I was sweating again. I remembered the boy was behind me
then. I looked back his way.

He covered his mouth.

“
That’s right. You didn’t
hear anything.” I reminded him.