A Penny Down the Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events (5 page)

“
A finger? Seriously?” He
paused, leaning toward her a bit as she shied away. “You think this
thing is haunted, don’t you?” Clint burst into laughter, clapping
his hands together. Both of them were irreligious,
non-superstitious people. So, for Kaylie to make any suggestion
toward the supernatural was hilarious to Clint; a mild appeal to
her superstitious upbringing.

Kaylie shook her head,
turning sharply in the spinning computer seat to focus on her own
computer. “You know what? Whatever. Buy the stupid thing. I’m just
never riding in it.” She said, dismissively and a little
upset.

Clint shook his head. “You
know, after that I don’t think I should get it. What if it
is
haunted?” Clint’s
sarcasm wasn’t accepted any more reverently than his skepticism
concerning Kaylie’s “finger” remark.

“
Again, do whatever you
want.” Kaylie said, clicking absently on a different link on the
website.

Clint nudged her again
with a smile, trying to convey that he was just playing around at
her expense. “I’ll consider it. Though, if I get it, I think when
you see how nice it is, you’re going to want to take
ride.”

Kaylie smirked and eyed
him in a way that told Clint otherwise.

It might have been
coincidence, but Clint’s car broke down on the way home from the
Library. As the towing company shipped his car off to the mechanic,
he browsed the web on his phone to find the link to the hearse.
Conveniently, a phone number was tied into the ad.

The phone rang before an
answer came, “Hello?” The man on the other side said.

“
Hey, I’m calling about
the 1976 Hearse you have for sale. I was wondering if you still
were offering it.” Clint asked, waiting for Kaylie to arrive and
pick him up from the side of the road. She was never good about
showing up promptly to anything.

“
Yeah. Seems it’s a little
hard to get rid of a hearse.” And a jolly sort of laughter came
through the phone, followed by a fit of heavy coughing.

Clint pulled the phone
away from his ear for a moment as the piercing sounds came like
machine gun fire at his ear. When it seemed the man was done, Clint
returned the earpiece to his ear. “Alright. Well,
I’m
interested.” Clint
confessed. The man’s comment about having trouble getting rid of
the vehicle brought to mind the suggestions Kaylie brought up
earlier at the Library.

“
Okay. Good! So, what were
you looking to buy it for?” The man asked, feeling out whether or
Clint was interested in the “OBO” (or best offer) part of the ad or
the original five-hundred that the ad requested.

Clint thought about it.
Carless, stranded on the side of the road waiting for friend,
frustrated about the ill-resolve of the situation, Clint decided to
make his life easier in a time when it was rather difficult. “I’ll
take it for the five-hundred.” No wheeling-and-dealing
here.

“
Ah, great!” The man said,
almost surprised. “Okay, well come by whenever you want.” And the
man gave Clint his address.

Clint told the man to
expect him within the next couple of hours. Again, he didn’t know
how long he’d be waiting for Kaylie, but he suspected he’d have her
take him straight to the car. He hung up and thought about the
hearse. “Well…” He shrugged, speaking aloud to himself. “Here goes
nothing, I guess.”

About thirty minutes
later, Kaylie arrived. She had to move a makeup bag out of the way
in order for Clint to sit down. Kaylie was accustomed to the normal
female setup of a woman that was being rushed to do anything. The
rear-view mirror was turned toward her and not mirroring much of
the rear at all. The flip-up cover of the mirror in her car’s
sunshade was up and a small light was illuminated to help her see.
Small makeup pencils and brushes were in the center console and a
flesh-colored powered decorated the interior of the small cubby. As
Clint looked over the car, like a detective trying to decipher a
crime, it was clear why she was so slow.

Clint piped up, carefully,
because she did, after all, pick him up. He put the best spin on
the statement that he could. “You know, you don’t have to put on
makeup every time you leave the house. You look just fine without
it.”

Kaylie looked his way and
lifted a brow as she often did when she was either surprised or
offended.

Clint saw the look and
back-treaded. “You’re beautiful either way, I mean.”

Still, Kaylie
stared.

“
Makeup is just---” Clint
started but was interrupted.

“
Am I taking you home?”
Kaylie asked, straight and to the point, preventing Clint of doing
anything to further embarrass himself.

“
Actually...” And Clint
hesitated. “I don’t think I’m going to fix my car. Probably just
going to sell it to the scrapyard.” And he waited for what he knew
was coming.

“
So... does that mean
you’re getting that hearse?” Brow again.

“
Would you mind running me
to this address?” Clint asked with a wide, helpless
smile.

Kaylie rolled her eyes and
plugged the address into her GPS.

The place was about
fifteen minutes away, in the nicer part of town. Deep within a
high-class suburb, at the end of a family-friendly cul-de-sac sat
the hearse parked alongside the curb. In this environment, the
vehicle stuck out like a sore thumb more than it would in any
other. Kaylie watched the hearse as they pulled up and into the
driveway of the large, two-story home. The hearse was clean and
waxed, glossy everywhere except for the large cover placed over the
rear of the vehicle, the place where the bodies were loaded and
carried, which was more of a dull black.

Clint watched the vehicle
the same, but not in a harrowing, horrified manner. Instead he
mentally prepared himself for the vehicle to be his. He’d be
driving it back and forth from home, to the grocery store or any
other errands he’d be involved with. He thought of the questions it
might raise or the looks that he might get. Of course, he was
unsure how women would take it. There was a good potential that the
car would have a negative effect on his sex life, but so would have
breaking down on the way home after a nice date. He considered the
possibility that it may be an odd talking point. Fortunately for
Clint, there was a more natural resolve in the purchasing of the
hearse, one that would be handled by the seller.

Kaylie parked the car and
the two of them emerged from it as an older man with a large belly
and freshly pressed plaid shirt came out of the home.

“
Hey! I’m Bill.” And he
extended his hand toward Clint, assuming it was him that he talked
to and not the woman.

Clint shook the man’s hand
with a business smile on his face. “Clint. Good to meet you. So
that’s her, huh?” And he turned back, putting a shading hand over
his eyes to look out toward the hearse as though it were a distant
and beautiful vista. Vehicles, whether they were used to purr under
women’s seats behind the power of a roaring V8 or haul dead bodies
around were all given a feminine “her” referral. Some of the ladies
were just uglier than others.

“
Yeah, that’s her.” Bill
played the same game. He walked toward the vehicle then, spouting
off attractive attributes as though he still needed to convince
Clint to buy the car. What Bill didn’t know was that Clint was
driven here because the only one he owned was getting ready to
become a block of aluminum somewhere in a dirt graveyard, one that
received a little less respect than those the hearse frequented in
its days. Clint listened and smiled while Kaylie sat back, mildly
interested, but still fairly repulsed by the idea of her best
friend driving around in the casket-mobile.

“
It sounds great. Can I
write you a check?” Clint asked. He hadn’t done a lot of deals this
way, with people he didn’t know and had met only through the
internet. By the looks of the man, Clint thought maybe it was
something new to Bill as well.

“
Sure, that’d be fine. You
know, I should tell you, too. I don’t know what you do for a
living, but my father was contracted out by the Loveland Funeral
Home down on Fifteenth Street. He made a pretty decent living.
We’ve been in the funeral business for a long time and it’s done us
well.” Bill informed.

Clint looked back at the
two-story house in the beautiful suburb and could agree that the
funeral business must have done him
very
well. “And they’re still
looking for a driver?”

Kaylie took a step toward
Clint, every bit prepared to stop him from taking Bill up on the
offer before any more information was exchanged. She remained a
quiet third-party because she didn’t want to interject any sort of
ridiculousness of her own, but she still managed to strongly
disagree with the idea. Her wide eyes watched the two men discuss
the subject.

Bill nodded. “Sure are.
It’s not a bad gig. You should consider it.” And Bill turned,
stepping back toward the house. “Let me get the keys and my
glasses. I’ll be right back.”

After Bill was gone, Clint
displayed that devious smile toward Kaylie once again.
“So?”

“
So?” Kaylie responded
sharply. She started off loud, but neared Clint and spoke in a
whisper, though her words had a sharp tone about them. “Clint, it’s
one thing to buy a hearse as your normal operating vehicle, but
it’s another thing to take a job as a driver and tote real-life
dead bodies in the back of it!” It was that sort of
whisper-scream.

Clint, as always, focused
on the important matter at hand: Kaylie’s word choices. “Real-life
dead bodies? Kaylie, they’re just dead people. Cold stiffs. They’re
not going to pop out of the coffin and strangle me from the back
seat. They’re just going to lay there… you know, dead!” And Clint
glanced at the rear of the hearse. “I think we’ve all been watching
too many horror movies these days.” Zombies were particularly
popular.

Kaylie took a deep breath,
unhappy that Clint was treating her concerns as something
frivolous. At the same time, a part of her realized that it was
just a vehicle, that the things he mentioned wouldn’t happen and
that Clint
needed
a job. After a moment of collecting herself, she nodded,
confessing, but only slightly. “Maybe it’ll be alright. But I’m
still not going to ride in it.” She reminded.

Clint laughed and nodded,
accepting that. When Bill returned, Clint wrote him out a check and
took the keys and the title to the old thing. He gave a salute to
Kaylie as he walked around to the driver’s side of the vehicle and
she watched him get into it as one would watch the departing of a
ship from shore. Once inside, Clint looked over the
amenities.

Clint flipped the little
tab for the old power windows to ensure they opened and closed
normally, a different setup from the concave toggle buttons seen on
modern vehicles. The car smelled intensely like leather, which
covered all the seating. Slowly Clint looked over his shoulder to
the back of the vehicle, examining where they bodies were kept for
transportation. There was a set of rollers for getting a casket
into the hearse and something Bill called Bier pin plates to secure
it, though Bill spoke of that part of the car passingly. There was
black drapery that ran along the windows of the vehicle for privacy
reasons, which Clint found a bit odd with the sort of connotation
that came with a hearse.

He gripped the steering
wheel for a moment and felt it out. It was strange, but it was his.
Finally, he pushed the key into the ignition and turned it and was
surprised that it was a little rough to start. Clint looked out the
passenger side window to Kaylie who shook her head.

A moment later Bill
started making a motion with his foot, yelling, “It’s a carburetor!
Push on the gas! You need to push on the gas!”

Clint nodded and pumped
the gas pedal as he turned the ignition and the car came to life in
a roar of power that shook every bone in Clint’s body.

“
Wow.” Clint said,
impressed. A monster V8 sat in this car, too, even though it wasn’t
one of those beautiful muscle cars. It was a huge difference from
his old V4. Clint gave the man a thumbs up, turned the wheel with
the assistance of some well-working power steering and drove on out
of the cul-de-sac toward his place in his new ride.

Clint turned on the old
dial radio, equipped with what might have been a state-of-the-art
tape player at the time the car was made, but now was something of
a relic. Clint didn’t even know where he could get tapes if he
wanted them. The rock station was the one he favored and left it at
as he pulled up to a stoplight. Beside him were a couple of women
in a compact. He smiled and nodded his head their way, as if to
say, “You’re impressed, aren’t you?” While he didn’t get a
“satisfied” look from the two, there was some quick comments
between the two and laughter, followed by an urgency for the two
women to stare at the signal light preventing them from fleeing as
quickly as they could. Clint shrugged, relaxed back into the seat
and waited for the light to turn green. Eventually it did and he
made his way home.

Clint spent the night at
home watching television absently, thinking more and more about the
offer of driving for the Loveland Funeral Home. He wondered if he
needed some sort of special permit in order to do something like
that. Eventually he fell asleep on his couch.