Futile Efforts (22 page)

He looked around the dusty room hoping to find a photo of
Jorie
or Billy or the other children someplace where he could see them. But the room was empty. It always had been. "You could've come. I wanted you to come with me, but you wouldn't leave this place."

"Why should I leave?" she asked. "It's my home."

"You wouldn't even let me take the children.
Jorie
would be alive now!"

"Mayhap. And mayhap she'd be here with us if you hadn't run off in the first place."

"There's no end to it."

"Did you think there ever would be?" she asked, and she was serious. Malice swirled in her eyes like ripples in the catfish pond. The thief's shadow rose against her, buckling on his twisted legs.

Another giggling Seraph went by the window and threw a rock. Mills picked up the hatchet and followed.

by Ray
Garton

I
f you've already read Tom Piccirilli, then you know what a great writer he is. If you haven't, then "These Strange Lays" is a good place to start. It is not only a wonderful story, it is a perfect example of
why
Tom is such a great writer. Tom knows how to make characters live in breathe. In this story, he brings to life a character who's already dead and doesn't even appear in the story. Holder's late father could have been nothing more than a character's memory, but Tom wouldn't be satisfied with that. Instead, he brings to life a character who is only a part of someone's past. Holder's father is vivid and memorable, and only a number of lines refer to him. I'm not even quite sure how Tom did it, but the dead father lived in my imagination while I was reading as clearly and with as much focus as the living characters who
do
appear in the story.

Tom does not confine his writing to the horror genre -- he's too good to be held down by only one -- but we fans are infinitely lucky that he
does
write horror fiction. He's so damned good, he could write anything he wanted and it would sing in a sharp and silver voice. Read "These Strange Lays" and you'll see what I mean.

–
Ray
Garton
, author of
LIVE GIRLS
and
SEX AND VIOLENCE IN HOLLYWOOD

H
older's father had been in the ground for almost four months and he figured it was about time to see the grave, say whatever he had left to say.

Woodland Cemetery sat out on Route 9, bordered by a high school soccer field on the south and deep woods behind Fall Gardens, a psychiatric hospital, to the north.
 
Holder sped down the back roads as the afternoon sun settled in the horizon, with that vicious autumn glare cutting down like a cleaver.
 
He'd never been inside the Woodland acreage before and was surprised at how large and well-kept it was.
 
He parked in an empty lot, puzzled that the place didn't have more visitors, considering all the dead.

It was a good thing the old man was under six feet of dirt.
 
The well-trimmed lawns, carefully pruned hedges, neat rows of graves, and methodically placed trees would've driven the old man berserk.
 
He would've torn up the place in his 4x4 on general principle.

Dad had some issues but he liked to laugh, especially when cops or security guards were chasing him.
 
Holder could see it now-the truck tires spitting grass and topsoil, looping around the place in wide circles and crashing through the freshly planted shrubs, with the wild drunken guffaws booming over the fields.

A shard of sorrow worked loose in his chest and Holder chewed back a groan and let it slowly shift to a sigh.
 
It took him almost fifteen minutes of hunting along aisles before he found the right grave.
 
Somebody had left a Bible, a pint of whiskey, and a slice of cheesecake half-buried in the loose dirt.
 
It gave him pause, thinking about which of his old man's girlfriends might do something like that.

None of them had names in his mind, just vague descriptions as they flounced around his father in the bars.
 
Chubby chick with the rose tattoo on her neck whining about dental hygiene night class professor.
 
Way too young Latina mama with the horse teeth pawing bucks for baby food.
 
Black leather micro-skirted, mother-daughter tag team bottled blondes hunting eight-balls at four a.m.
 
Holder wondered which might be the Bible-toting, cheesecake type.

He had the same name as his father and seeing it carved into stone made Holder grimace.
 
On occasion you came face to face with your fate all on your own, and sometimes they sort of threw it up at you.
 
He thought about what he wanted to tell his Dad now--how much he missed the man already, and how he wanted to hear that robust laughter again--imagining him down there with a grin, his eyes only slightly-hooded, peering into the dark.

Everybody dealt with the devil in his own way--you cut and ran or maybe you had the guts and faced up.
 
You dodged the pea soup and sat in the first pew, ogling Christ on his cross and standing in line to dig up some kind of confession.
 
You beat your lust out of yourself and tried not to buy too much filth on the Internet.
 
Or, if you were like Dad, you slid a half-pint of shine Nick's way and offered a cigar.
 
Then you pinned his hot, pointy ears back to his head, took a gander around your particular corner of hell, and decided what the fuck to do first.

A sound tugged Holder's attention aside.

His father's voice was so loud in his mind that it took a moment to realize someone else was singing, high and resonant, almost like a hymn.
 
He wagged his chin hoping to dislodge his thoughts.
 
That song had an edge to it, drifting through the trees and up the cemetery's promontory.
 
He turned and scanned the area.

He half-expected to see the chubby chick with the rose tattoo on her neck to come stumbling along.
 
She had enough meat in the
keester
to suggest she enjoyed a cheesecake or two now and then.

Flitting through the thickets bordering Woodland was a girl, sort of prancing in the steady breeze, doing the kind of Irish jig you did when you were too drunk to realize you weren't doing an Irish jig at all.
 
He tilted his head and watched her rushing across the graves the way you weren't supposed to do, stepping on all the heads, where the earth was always a little soft.
 
It took him back some and made him curious.
 
She glanced up the hill and saw Holder there and made a sudden looping arc towards him, capering without a care.

She waved to him and he raised his hand in return, thinking, All right we're about to get into something here.

A few things through his mind at once, including the possibility that this might be one of his father's other kids that were undoubtedly running around out in the world.
 
Tadpoles that had turned into people, looking for what?
  
Money?
 
Vengeance?
 
It made Holder a touch wary, imagining her coming up, grabbing him by the collar, slapping him around some and then throwing herself down in the dirt, wailing.
 
You had to be ready for just about anything.

When she got up to him she said, "I'm Megan."

A melancholy but compassionate face, with
crows
feet at the corners of her mouth from smiling too harshly, for too many hours at a clip.
 
He kind of liked the wrinkles there because she was young, mid-20s maybe, and it gave her a little extra touch of the exotic, as if she'd seen more than she should've and had a hard time handling it.
 
Jesus, maybe she
was
his sister.

She wore inmate togs.
 
Light gray
jammies
and her feet were bare and stained green and he got to thinking how he'd like to wash them for her, the water warm and plenty of bubbles around on her slick skin.
 
Tussled blonde bangs framed her heart-shaped face, and she clawed her hair off her forehead, pursing lavish bee-stung lips.
 
She breathed deeply, on the verge of yawning, like she'd just gotten out of bed.

Some girls had the kind of look you wanted without having to do a damn thing for it.
 
Nature set it up inside your head and you couldn't fight it no matter how you tried.
 
Holder felt his throat closing up, his breath growing rapid.

"Hello Megan," he said, and his voice was thicker than it should've been.

He took a step forward and saw that her eyes were hazel with bits of gold in them, and now she gave a grin that made him step back again.
 
He had no idea exactly how he should handle the devil.
 
Do you offer up your throat or do you back off slowly, try to get to the car without making much of a fuss?
  
She looked behind her at the hospital buildings maybe a half mile away, then checked in the other direction towards the high school.
 
And then she angled herself to stare beyond the fields at the rest of town, where flawed denizens returned home now after work to ooze into couches while the television ranted and laughed hollowly.

 
Holder decided to hold his ground.
 
He could always dash for cover later, crawl on his belly through the woods to get away if he had to.
 
Maybe he had more brothers and sisters shambling towards him at this minute, babies creeping along the tree line.
 
Megan pirouetted past and sat on the soil, digging her heels in deep, wedged against the stone.

"Lady, that's my father's grave."

"Do you think he'd mind?
 
I mean, really?"

Holder tried to imagine it.
 
A lovely young woman's ass perched over his Dad's dead face.
 
This was the sort of thing his old man would've gotten a serious kick out of, always telling Holder to get out and enjoy life, have some fun, get laid more, do something a bit crazy.

She went for the bottle of whiskey and he said, "Don't."

"He isn't going to drink it, is he?"

"It's for him anyway.
 
Leave it."

"Okay.
 
Can I play with the Bible?"

"No."

"Did you hate him?"

"No, I loved him more than anything."

It seemed to surprise her, like he had all the wrong answers.
 
"Really?
 
Why?"

"He made life interesting and he laughed a lot."

"Oh."

There it was, another tiny temptation that worked through his veins, the right
neuro
-chemicals slithering around inside his mammal brain.
 
It slipped in like a blade under the heart.
 
Holder liked the way she made the sound.
 
Damn near an '
oooh
' but not quite.
 
He didn't want to think about what kind of a home life she came from where loving your own Dad was so alien an idea.

Leaves spun past in the growing wind.
 
Her hands moved as if making charms, dirty feet leaving marks against his name on the stone.
 
You could read symbols into so much around you that if you didn't let it all go at once you'd spend the rest of your life chasing after it, studying false signs.
 
He had a tendency towards that sort of shit.

Her frown softened and eventually faded until she let loose with a soft giggle. "Spank me."

The words slid into him.
 
He realized they were both stuck in other roles right now and didn't know what to do about it.
 
He wondered which bastard he was supposed to be in her head.
 
Prom date gone awry?
 
Greasy-pawed Uncle Freddie?
 
Or could you actually find a part of yourself adrift in somebody else?

"Sure," he told her.

He was his own father, who used to enjoy situations like this, and she was the naughty child she'd once been, going all out to get under the skin, and both of them were this close to letting loose with screams for the hell of it.
  
You cut loose once in a while and bled the steam off, if you could.

Megan didn't help him and that was all right.
 
He wanted to touch her but didn't want to be touched, really, and the thought bothered him.
 
Funny the things that could trip you up.
 
He couldn't have
that
dirt on him so he pulled her up by the wrists and drew her against the stone.
 
Some of your craziness was okay depending on its position.
 
She slipped out of her pajama pants, arching herself over the gravestone.
 
Dad had to be scratching at the coffin lid by now.
 
She pulled her blouse open and Holder moved to her, her nipples in his hands as he finally leaned in to taste her tongue and kiss those pouting, pulpy lips.