Mask of Flies (32 page)

Beavertail turned on
the water and pulled the machete out of his pants and plunged it into
Abe’s heart, shocking Russell into immobility. He disassociated
from Abe, but that overwhelming force slammed Russell back inside.
Beaver tail then cut Abe’s neck for good measure.

Choking on blood, the
room faded, and Russell saw Rick’s face smiling in the doorway.

“Kaja, have all the
morning rounds been completed?” Steve Wallace asked. The bags under
his eyes evolved into his most prominent feature. At least there was
the overtime.

“A few more room and
we finish.”

“I’ll be in my
office. Swing by when you’re through.” Steve shuffled down
towards the foyer, in the awkward stumble of a half asleep man. He
had worked through the nightshift and got the call to be back in at
noon, to cover for Tony.

At Oak Leaf, Saturday
was the busiest day of the week; residents’ families would visit in
droves. This day was no different, but instead of the visitors
staying in house, most opted to sign their elders out of the
facility. As Steve passed a crowd in the hallway, the happy faces he
was accustom to seeing were replaced by downcast grimaces, and their
trailing whispers a reminder, the hanging albatross of the missing.

In the foyer Steve
stopped in front of the door to his office, but turned and walked
across the hall, into Jim’s study—Steve thought of it as a study
because it was much too large to be classified as an office: a
dwelling for mere mortals—besides the director wouldn’t be in
until nightshift. He sat in the big chair and kicked his feet up on
the desk, and then opened the logbook, recounting the chaos: the
missing patients and caregiver, the detective’s visit, and Tony’s
supposed breakdown.

There were two wraps on
the office door. It was Kaja.

“Decide to relocate?”
she asked.

“This office is too
big to sit empty.” He slid his boots off Jim’s desk. “Wanted to
talk on the latest scuttlebutt ‘round here.”

“All right?”

Steve pointed for Kaja
to sit. “What happened with Tony, you think he’s off his rocker?”

“Yes,
he crazy.” The nurse took a seat, crossed her arms and
shook her head. “He heard voice, Rick Soblinski, in Ms. Kingbird’s
room. I come talk to him and he get angry, yelling like madman.”

“He spent the night
Thursday; I chatted with him when he was on the way to the kitchen. A
few minutes later he came steppin’ hot through the foyer with no
color in his face. He passed me without saying a word and went
straight to his office and shut the door—”

The phone on the desk
rang. The caller ID read: Home
.
It was Jim calling. Steve put his quiet finger up to his lips and
picked up the receiver.

“Oak Leaf Retirement
Community, Steve speaking.”

“Enjoying my office?”
Jim’s voice sounded rough, his tone somewhat annoyed.”

“I-I was just getting
turnover from Kaja and thought we could use the extra space.”

“Does turnover
involve gymnastics?”

“No sir . . . ”

“Listen,” Jim said.
“The contractors working on the third floor offices have a bug up
their ass. I had wanted to halt construction until the police got
back to us. But these knuckle draggers insist on finishing the job
and getting paid as soon as possible—insensitive pricks. They have
to resume today and will be over around one, working into the night.”

“I will keep an eye
out for them.”

“Oh, and Steve.”

“Yeah?”

“Stay the fuck out of
my office.”

* * *

“B8,” Marco said
into the microphone.

“Bingo.” Maggie
Withers waved her hands around like it was the happiest day of her
life.

Marco didn’t care to
tell her that two out of the five numbers, marked on her winning
card, were never called. Her prize: a gift basket containing puzzle
books, talcum powder, and some Hershey’s Kisses.

With most of the active
residents leaving to spend the afternoon with family members, the
harsh sound of construction from the upstairs rattled through the
empty hallways of the second floor, culminating to a roar, it seemed,
where Marco stood. He fingered the pack of Marlboros in his pocket;
he had picked up a pack on the way to work, recommitting to the habit
after ten years of clean lungs.

He gathered up the
remaining bingo cards and turned over the entertainment to the
weekend movie, which was a double feature:
Analyze
This
and
Analyze
That.
The Recreation Department did a round robin approach
to how movies were picked. It was Mr. Richards’ turn, and he always
picked Deniro movies, claiming that Deniro, in the flesh, bought him
a beer some dive bar in New York City in 76, after
Taxi
Driver
came out. Marco always pretended to hear the story
for the first time. The orderlies were in charge of movie-time, so
Marco grabbed his coat and exited through the double doors.

Outside, sitting in the
gazebo where the smokers smoked, one of the kitchen workers sat on a
bench, reading something on his phone.
Was
it Owen or Tuck?
Marco then realized he left his lighter
in the car. “Hey man—got a light?”

“Sure thing,” Owen
or Tuck said. As he raised his head, Marco noticed a bulge swell from
his left cheek, and then recede back.

Marco rubbed his eyes
before taking the man’s lighter, lit up, and reached to give it
back. But the cook stood, shook his head and made an increasingly
violent pointing gesture at Marco. As the cook stabbed his finger
like mad into the air, something wormlike swam underneath his face in
unison with the intensity of his gesticulations. His features
displaced amongst rolling flesh. A distant but familiar voice emitted
from the man’s twisted face, “It is our time
.
”

Marco whispered, “Pappa
. . . what is this?”

The voice became a
chorus.
The pain is rain, let it
wash
away.

Marco moved closer, his
eyes filled with water.

The figure backed away,
“You okay man?” It was the voice of Owen or Tuck. His brown face
returned only contorted by genuine concern.

“I . . . I’m sorry,
thought you were someone else.” Marco left the cook without
returning the lighter. He clutched it wading through ankle-deep snow
around the facility. The slush penetrated his tennis shoes, numbing
his feet. But it didn’t matter:
The
pain is rain,
is what father said, long lost, tucked away
in the black wrapper of eternity, now returning to speak.

Marco sat in his
Explorer and reached under the seat, pulling up a black case. He
snapped the latches open and found the Glock-19—muzzled in its
leather holster like a wild dog. Thumbing the safety off, Marco stuck
the barrel in his mouth, tasting oil and metal. With eyes squeezed
shut, he thought of Tiffany for a moment, but this hesitation was
fleeting. There was nothing in her memory, no love or even the
semblance of fondness, all was suffocated in emptiness.

Fear of death sprouted
in the back of his mind, but before it could fully blossom, his
finger tightened around the trigger.
Thepainisrainthepainisrainthepainisrain.
The thunderclap
followed a sick, sharp white light.

* * *

“Hey Earl, come get
this,” Scott said, resting his hand on a stack of lumber piled in
the service elevator. He saw a few of the other guys already started
framing their sections.

“Earl.”

No response.

Scott sighed and hit
the emergency stop button. He loaded all the wood himself, no way was
he going to unload it.
Fuckin’
Earl
,
lazy bastard.

Walking around the
corner, a sandy blur whizzed by Scott’s face. One of the old heads,
Ralph, yanked free a 2x4 from its network.

“Quit skulkin’
around behind me, you’re libel to get brained.” Ralph looked over
his shoulder for a moment, then took a step back eyeing the
framework. “Damn kids. Can I borrow your measuring tape for a
minute?”

Scott handed his over.
“You can hold onto it for a bit, I’m running behind. Have you
seen Earl?”

“Thought I saw him
taking measurements in your corner.”

But the corner was
empty, save for Earl’s hardhat set on the ground. Something creaked
from above; an access hatch on the ceiling hung partially opened,
probably leading to an attic.
Hidin’
from work again.
Scott jumped up, grabbing the hanging
pull piece, and the ladder slammed open with the hatch, almost
knocking him in the face. “Hey Earl. You up there?”

Nothing.

Scott decided to go up.
He raised his head through the dark cutout; the attic housed desks,
chairs, even a chalkboard, entombed relics of another time. Dust
specks spun in the dim glow cast from a circular window. The smell of
tobacco came from an opening along the wall, a false panel leaned
next to it. Suddenly, the roar from the circular saws below blasted
to life, startling Scott where he stood.

When he saw the
fiberglass insulation around him, he could have ended Earl’s life.
It was common knowledge, especially amongst framers, that the coating
was flammable.

“Earl?”

A false panel—across
from where the man in a yellow hard hat stood—slid open without a
sound. Two elongated figures crawled out from the darkness: one male
and a larger female, both wore tattered robes with cursive stitching
on the breasts: “Resident of Summer Hall”. They stalked like barn
cats—on all fours, arching their backs—approaching their prey.
The man calling Earl was oblivious to their presence, bent on a knee,
examining a package of crushed cigarettes.

The female crawled so
close her mouth began to salivate at the smell of fresh meat,
anticipating the warm blood that would greet her tongue. Then the man
suddenly rose and turned, frozen. Before he could scream, the female
thing leapt onto him and clamped her fangs around his windpipe,
crushing the cartilage like an aluminum can. The warm breath that
rose from his broken throat lessened as the stretched figure fed off
the meat and grizzle around the wound.

When finished with her
kill, she looked back and saw the other with strands of salvia
dripping from his mouth, waiting for her permission. As she nodded to
him, he scrambled over, plucked out the man’s eyes, and sucked them
from his fingers.

Elias made
arrangements to meet Calvin and Nicolette at the Lily Dale deli, and
the kid stuck to his word about showing him to the old Underground
Railroad safe house, even after Dorina threw a fit. Elias arrived an
hour early to get breakfast and got more than he bargained for. The
woman behind the glass came around with a vast sandwich served on a
pizza sheet, an English muffin filled with a scoop of hash browns,
two over medium eggs, four slices of greasy bacon, and to top it off,
the stack was covered with hollandaise sauce.

“One Breakfast
Presley; the morning version of the Dagwood,” The deli-worker,
whose name tag stated: “Barb”, proclaimed.

When Calvin emerged
from the pet isle, Elias was almost finished—wishing he hadn’t
stuffed himself, but his body was starved from skipping dinner last
night. Being stuck in the middle of a mother and daughter argument,
he had left The Black Quill too late, and all the surrounding
eateries had closed.

Calvin’s lips curled
into a smirk. “You must be the first person I seen come close to
finishing one of those.”

“I’m afraid it
finished me.” Elias stood, stretched, and patted his beltline; his
revolver lay hidden, holstered underneath his jeans, but his hunting
knife was visible, sheathed on his belt. “Ready when you are.”

Outside Calvin’s
Bronco sat inched up to the curb. Nicolette sat shotgun, smoking a
Marlboro Red, handsome pretty, a female incarnation of James Dean.
She afforded Elias a curt nod as he slung his duffle bag into the
backseat.

Calvin climbed in
driver’s side—his eyes looking into the rear view mirror. “What’s
up with the Jason knife, E?”

“My life insurance
policy.”

Calvin smiled. “Fair
enough—whatever you plan on doing up there is your business, and
will stay that way as long as I am compensated.” The kid lifted his
hand back and rubbed the skin of his fingers together.

Elias slapped a crisp
hundred in Calvin’s hand.

“Quit being an
asshole.” Nicolette laid a heavy shot to her boyfriend’s arm. No
doubt her hit would leave a grape on his pale skin. She snatched the
money out his hand, then pushed it back towards Elias. “I want to
see what’s up there, too. Take it.”

Elias pushed her hand
back. “Keep it, I’m goin’ inside alone.

“But—”

“Quit arguing with
the man,” Calvin said to Nicolette, sliding the bill out of her
hand. “The place has a weird vibe—I’m willing to bet that you
won’t want to go in once we get close.”

She sighed, crossed her arms, and
looked out the window as Kurt Cobain crooned
The
Man Who Sold the World
over the stereo.

After 20 minutes on
Interstate 60, Calvin slowed the Bronco and turned down a snow
covered driveway, no house in sight from the roadway, the only sign
of residence being a rusted mailbox that leaned forward in the road,
like a sallow hitchhiker. Further down the pathway, wild, barren
saplings obstructed the view of a sizeable house. Its white paint
intermittently peeled in flakes, and the roof sagged under the weight
of the imposing snow. Calvin parked off to the side before the house.

“Sure you’re good
to park here?” Elias asked.

Calvin nodded. “This
place has been abandoned for a while. My dad put an offer on it, the
bank wouldn’t budge off the asking price.”