Shivers 7 (34 page)

* * *

The woman had been a life model, in her early twenties, intelligent and passionate. James touched her hair and saw her ambition—the way she used to smile. In the shape of her eye he determined an infectious
joie de vivre.
She had modeled for Stickling, of course, and despite promises of fame had scorned his advances. The bruises on her ribs, and her crippled posture, described the artist’s response. James moved his hand to the puncture holes in her stomach and saw a palette knife flash in a cool silver light. He touched the boot print on her chest and envisaged Stickling standing over her, crushing her ribcage with his weight. A tall man, with a scrawl of black hair and narrow shoulders. He carried a long-handled cross-peen hammer. James touched the collapsed side of the woman’s face, and saw the hammer fall.

Her blood in a jar, alongside tubes of paint and used palette cups.

The man had come to him over many nights, and James did not cower, but rather embraced him. He’d been a transient, simple-minded, who had made the mistake of knocking on Stickling’s door in search of work. James had touched his cheap clothes and sensed a heart that wanted only to achieve. His sunken cheeks told of hardship and desperation. James fell deeper. He stripped away the layers and saw Stickling fellating the man, followed by a rush of shame and disgust. The man’s broken bones regaled the level of the artist’s emotion. The hole in the back of his skull was the final, violent flourish.

A second jar of blood on the shelf.

And the child—the little girl in the bloodstained dress. She was, of all the visitants, the most disturbing by far. James cringed at her touch. He wanted none of her depth. But her layers were intricate and vibrant, and he fell into her hardest of all. She touched his face and he heard birdsong. He stroked her hair and saw that she’d been lost in the woods. A long, shadowy man had followed her, skulking between the trees: Stickling. He’d scooped her into his arms and taken her to his house. Her pale skin told James how frightened she’d been, and the bruises on her arms revealed her futile attempt at escape. James counted every tear and heard every scream. He touched the empty space where her face used to be. As hollow as a bowl. He saw that cross-peen hammer again. He saw it fall.

Three jars of blood. Three blood types. Stickling’s made four. And that was when James realized that
Typing the Canvas
wasn’t a painting at all.

It was a confession.

* * *

But there was more to it yet. A final layer. The puzzle. The key. Something about that fingerprint, and those lines. Those deliberate, wandering lines.

He never stopped looking. He
couldn’t
stop looking.

And months passed.

“
WHAT AM I MISSING?
”

Then one day, and quite by accident, with his beard long and his ribs showing, James discovered what it was.

* * *

For three years James worked as campaign manager for the Chesham and Amersham Member of Parliament. One of his duties was to determine effective campaign routes within the constituency, where they could plant their proud blue placards, and go door-to-door where necessary. He bought a large map of South Buckinghamshire and used a red marker to highlight certain roads between key towns and villages. The result was a mesh of lines, looping and crisscrossing, that would appear arbitrary to anyone else, but which he knew as well as the lines on his palm. James had pinned that map to his office wall and looked at it every day for three years. Those red lines glowed in his mind even when he blinked, like the afterimage of a bright light.

That was a long time ago. Happier days, for sure, when he’d had a wife and son…a future. The photograph he’d found in the attic—the one taken in his office, with Stuart sitting on his knee—was a reminder of those days. James smiled in the photograph. Stuart smiled, too. The map was pinned to the wall behind them, its roadways colored in red.

James had looked at that photograph a thousand times and hadn’t seen it. Perhaps he’d been too focused on Stuart. That was understandable. But even when he looked at the map, it wasn’t immediately obvious. It was only when he happened to glance at the photograph via the broken mirror on his dresser that it finally fell into place. His heart had boomed, his eyes like moons. He remembered Angelique Mayer saying that Stickling had lived in Buckinghamshire, and the sound of the final layer being peeled away was like an earthquake.

He grabbed the photograph and a shard of mirror from where it clung to the dresser, and staggered down to the living room. He stood in front of
Typing the Canvas
(its pull had already diminished, he noted), then turned his back and viewed it via the mirror shard. With his heart still pounding, he held up the photograph. His eyes flicked from the red lines drawn on the map, to the inverted painting.

Stickling had added a lot of artistic subterfuge—random loops and swirls—but the darkest, broadest red lines, running diagonally across the canvas, precisely mirrored a network of roads in South Buckinghamshire.

Typing the Canvas
was a confession. It was also a map. Which meant that the fingerprint, placed somewhere between Little Chalfont and Seer Green, was a location.

James lowered the mirror shard and smiled.

“Let’s go for a drive,” he said.

* * *

His car had sat idle for eight months. The battery was dead and it had a flat tire. A wonder it hadn’t been towed away. James called the AA and within an hour they had it running like new. With
Typing the Canvas
on the backseat (the only way he could leave the house was to take it with him) and old clothes hanging off his emaciated body, he pulled away from the chaotic stink-hole he called a home, and drove east to Buckinghamshire.

He made one stop along the way: a hardware store on the outskirts of town, where he bought a pickaxe and shovel.

* * *

It didn’t take him long to find them.

They’d been buried in a small, wooded area known locally as Magpie Grove. He parked as close as he could—what would be the top edge of the fingerprint—and walked from there, painting under one arm, pickaxe and shovel on his shoulder. It was sunset. Clear tangerine light filled his eyes. The air was crisp and fresh. He crossed farmland, scattering sheep and cows, and reached Magpie Grove as the nightjars started singing. It was gloomy between the trees but the painting guided him. He stepped slowly and thought perhaps the visitants walked alongside him, but couldn’t be sure. When he turned he saw only the shapes of trees, as black as charcoal sketches. At some point the painting lost its hold on him. He threw it to the ground and started digging.

It was soon too dark to see, but he dug a little deeper and then rested. He curled up in the shallow hole and slept. Stuart flew a blood-red kite through his dreams. James woke to the sound of birdsong. Dawn light slanted through the branches. A fox slept beside him, but was quickly startled awake by his movement and sprang away, tail bouncing.

James resumed digging. He went deep, his hands ragged, bleeding. Just when he began to believe he would find nothing, his shovel uncovered a wet patch of burlap. He worked faster and didn’t stop until the job was done—the remains of three bodies dragged from the earth. Their cerements, mostly rotted, separated easily. He saw their shattered skulls, their broken bones.

He sat at the edge of the grave and lowered his face into torn hands.

* * *

The nightjars were singing again by the time he left Magpie Grove. The sky was beautiful copper. He walked straight and tall despite his fatigue, the pickaxe on his left shoulder, the shovel on his right. He had buried
Typing the Canvas
in the hole he’d dragged the bodies from. A fitting resting place, he thought. With each shovel full of earth he’d felt the uncomfortable edges pressing into his psyche gradually drawing away. The headache persisted, though. And the darkness, like a shadow at his shoulder.

He’d left the bodies uncovered. Crumbling skeletons like chalk marks in the leaves. They’d be discovered soon enough. Questions would be asked, and never answered. But that was okay, James thought, because in the end they’d be given a dignified burial. They, at least, would find peace.

Home by midnight. He ran a bath and washed the filth from his body, then crawled into his fleapit bed. Sleep didn’t come easy. He tossed and turned for hours. His dreams were fragments, choked with shadow.

He spent most of the following day staring at the empty wall where Stickling’s painting had hung.
That’s my life,
he thought.
A bare and soulless space.
He had nothing. No job, no family, no friends. And soon—when his savings ran dry—no house.

He needed something, he realized. New color, new depth. Something to help fill the emptiness.

A creative outlet, perhaps…

“Hello, William.”

“James. My goodness, what a surprise.”

“Indeed.”

James sat in his armchair, holding his phone in one hand and a piece of mirror in the other. His partial reflection fascinated him. As with all great art, it asked questions. One in particular: what lay beyond the broken glass?

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” William asked, and James imagined him sitting in his own armchair (his wouldn’t be piss-stained), with the fat smell of Chesterfield furniture in the air, and a shot of fine cognac balanced on his palm. Annie would be there, rubbing his shoulders, perhaps, or selecting which of Debussy’s compositions they should make love to.

“I thought you should know,” James started, sneering into the mirror, “that I took your advice; I sought help.”

“Splendid news,” William replied.

“And in the interest of closure, I would very much like to invite both you and Annie to dinner.”

He grinned as William deliberated. He could almost feel his brother’s doubts fluttering across the line.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” James said. “It’s time to move on, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.”

“Time…” His stained teeth flashed in the mirror. “…to bury the hatchet.”

They ended the call, then James cleared a space in the living room and set up his easel. The blank canvas was like another mirror. He took a seat before it and smiled. It wouldn’t be blank for long.

At last, he had something to say.

GPS

Rick Hautala

“Turn left onto Willow Creek Road,” a voice said.

Mark had recently changed the voice on his GPS to this cold, commanding male voice. When he had first gotten the navigational device, he had—ironically, of course—programmed in the “nagging wife” voice. For a while, he found that relatively amusing; but before long, he realized how—subconsciously, no doubt—he had been trying to make light of how much Eileen had been getting on his nerves lately. Or maybe he chose it to mock her, demonstrating—to himself, at least, when he was driving in the privacy of his car—that she wasn’t the only woman in his life who nagged him.

That had only lasted a few days.

Now, with this long drive from Maine to Florida ahead of him, keeping to back roads as much as possible, he didn’t need any more “stressors” in his life.

Leaving Eileen had been the easy part, but letting go of Jeff—his six-year-old son—had been tough. But circumstances had forced his hand because he certainly hadn’t wanted to leave his boy alone back there with that psycho-bitch.

“But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” as his father—now six years dead—used to say.

Shielding his eyes with his hand and squinting against the morning sunlight glinting off the hood of his car, he scanned the intersection left and right. The Virginia roadside was lush with spring growth. Down south, it was nothing like spring in Maine, which swung in with frozen slush and grit. He’d been driving with the car windows, front and back, open because of the stench in the car. Half-empty fast food containers, apple cores and banana skins, old coffee cups, cigar butts, and a host of other rotting smells filled the small space, but the sweet breeze that filled the car reminded him that spring had finally arrived…

Spring with so many new opportunities.

The directions from the GPS didn’t feel right.

He was positive he was supposed to turn right onto the road, which would take him back to the main highway. Judging by the position of the sun and trusting his own navigational instincts, it just felt wrong. Unless the road drastically changed direction, he was convinced that turning left would head him east or—worse yet—back north.

Except for his car, the exit ramp was deserted this early in the morning, so he slowed down as he approached the fork in the road, not yet committing to either turn. He stopped the car at the fork in the road and sat there with the engine idling, expecting the GPS to correct itself and tell him to turn right after all.

“Turn left onto Willow Creek Road,” the robotic voice repeated.

Mark scowled at it.

“You’re sure ’bout that?” The graphic display clearly showed the road he was on with a thick, red arrow arcing to the left. “I dunno…”

He let out a startled cry when an eighteen-wheeler suddenly appeared in his rearview mirror, bearing down on him—fast. The sudden, sharp blast of the truck’s air horn shattered the early morning stillness, the sound so loud it made Mark’s teeth ache.

Muttering under his breath, he eased into the right-hand turn without bothering to snap on his turn indicator. The semi’s driver gave him another quick, deafening blast of the air horn to express his appreciation for Mark’s skillful driving. Mark resisted the urge to flip him off as he pulled out onto the road he was sure would take him back to the highway.

“Recalculating,” the GPS unit said, and Mark shot it another scowl. Then he shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror to see the semi, so close to his rear bumper he could see only a portion of its shiny chrome grill grinning at him in the mirror.

“Back the fuck off, why don’t yah?”

Just to make his point, Mark down-shifted because he could see, up ahead, that the driver wouldn’t have an opportunity to pass him for a long stretch of road. The jerk needed to be taught some manners, trying to bully him like that.

Mark’s grip on the steering wheel tightened and his teeth clenched as he drove. His jaw began to throb behind his ears.

It was obvious the truck driver wasn’t going to be intimidated. He stayed right there on Mark’s tail, the throaty rumble of the engine so loud and close it punched Mark’s eardrums like the concussion of gunshots, drowning out everything else.

So much for a nice, pleasant drive this morning, he thought.

“Proceed one quarter mile to Casey Road and turn left,” the GPS unit said mechanically.

“Up yours,” Mark whispered, glaring at the GPS. And then faintly, just at the edge of hearing above the rumbling roar of the semi behind him, he thought he heard a voice say, “Watch your mouth.”

Wondering if he had really heard it or only imagined it, he shifted his gaze to the truck’s grill in his rearview and eased his foot off the accelerator to slow down just enough so the truck driver would know he shouldn’t be fucking with him.

This earned him another, longer wailing blast of the air horn and a couple of quick flashes of the truck’s high beams. Reflected in the rearview, the light stabbed his eyes like lasers, making him wince.

“You
really
don’t wanna fuck with me,” Mark muttered, shifting his eyes back and forth between the rearview mirror and the curving road that unspooled ahead down a steep incline. Even if this road didn’t bring him back to the highway he was looking for, he was satisfied that he was at least headed south. Off to his left, range after range of mountains receded into a distant purple haze. The rising sun struggled to burn away the fogbank that hovered in the valley like a dense pall of smoke.

Mark eased back in the car seat and draped his right arm over the top of the seat, hoping the driver behind him would see just how casual and carefree he was. Lowering the driver’s window all the way and with the backseat window halfway down, he let the slipstream of air tousle his hair and wash like warm water over his face. The fresh, smell of green growing things mixed with tinges of motor oil and burnt rubber that rose from the highway.

This is a good thing,
Mark told himself.

Even with the windows down, the air in the car had been getting increasingly rank the further he drove into warmer climates. The fresh air rinsed the stench from the car.

The road weaved back and forth, curling around the mountainside like a huge, flattened snake in the morning sun. Mark wondered if he was foolish, playing games, irritating other drivers…especially a trucker responsible for a huge eighteen-wheeler. If something happened…if while trying to shut this asshole down he or the trucker made even a slight miscalculation, they both could end up skidding off the road and careening off a sheer cliff into the river valley below.

“Know what?” a voice asked.

It took Mark a heartbeat or two to realize it had been the voice of the GPS.

Perplexed, he glanced at it and said, “Umm… What?”

“That truck driver…?”

“Yeah? What about him?”

“He thinks you’re an asshole.”

The GPS’s voice was thin and barely audible above the shrill sound of the wind whistling through the windows and the thundering of the truck behind him. Mark told himself he had to be imagining the voice and chalked it up to driving too long without a break. He should have paced his driving better, he told himself, and taken longer rest stops; but he was short of cash and hadn’t wanted to spring for a motel, so he had been driving steadily day and night, taking only short breaks.

His knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel, guiding the car down the curving, sloping road, the car swaying gently from side to side. Still wondering if the GPS really had spoken to him, he kept flicking his glance at it while he navigated the road ahead.

“Did you really just…?” but that was all he could manage.

The eighteen-wheeler was still on his tail, impossibly large in the rearview mirror. It looked to be less than six feet from his tail. The wailing blast of its air horn thumped Mark’s chest shudder like a series of punches.

“Are you talking to me?” Mark asked, but the GPS was silent.

He was stressed from the drive, he told himself, and had imagined…hallucinated the comments. He should pull over and take a nap before something worse happened.

He snapped himself back to reality, wondering if the truck might be a runaway. This high in the mountains, he’d noticed numerous emergency ramps angling off from the roads—long, straight dirt exit ramps that ran flat for a hundred yards or so and then ended with a sudden steep upgrade backed by ten-foot tall piles of sand to slow and stop runaway trucks.

What if this guy was having trouble with his brakes?

Maybe he’s trying to warn Mark to get out of his way.

“Screw it,” Mark said, gritting his teeth as he glanced at the grille in his rearview. “We’ll know what’s what if he slows down at the bottom this hill.”

“He’s laughing at you, you know.”

The voice caught Mark off guard, but this time there was no denying that the GPS unit had spoken.

“Are you…? You’re really talking to me?” Mark glanced at the curling red arrow on the digital view screen.

“No, asshole,” the metallic voice replied. “I’m talking to your mother.” After a lengthy pause, during which Mark wrestled with amazement and disbelief, the GPS unit added, “Of
course
I’m talking to you.”

“How can you—? You’re not programmed to…to—?”

Mark snapped his focus back to the winding road when he caught himself drifting into the opposite lane. Thankfully, there was no on-coming traffic, but the driver in the semi must have thought Mark was making room for him because he suddenly sped up and tried to pass him on the right. Realizing he was about to get squeezed out, Mark stomped down on the accelerator. His car sped ahead, pulling back into the travel lane mere inches from the semi’s front bumper.

That earned him another ear-splitting blast from the horn, and Mark couldn’t resist sticking his left hand out the window and flipping his middle finger at the driver. The wind tore at his hand.

The scenery was going by in a green blur as Mark negotiated the twists and turns, forgetting for the moment what had just happened with the GPS. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and he realized his stomach was tight and sour.

“He won’t back off,” the GPS unit said.

“Shut up!” Mark shouted, still only half believing he was really hearing this.

“He thinks you’re a goddamned idiot. He’s trying to run your ass off the road.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Because he doesn’t like you.”

“Doesn’t like me? How does he—” but Mark couldn’t finish the question as he glanced at the GPS. With the wind whistling in his ears, he wanted to believe—he
had
to believe he was imagining all of this… Maybe his radio was on, tuned to some talk radio station that was fading in and out. When he looked at the radio, though, he saw that the dial was unlit. He twiddled the volume control back and forth a few times just to make sure the radio was silent.

“You’re not real,” Mark said, hearing the tremor in his voice. “You can’t be.”

His lips were suddenly as dry as paper. He licked them, but there was no moisture on his tongue. A sour taste, like vomit, filled the back of his throat. He felt around until he found the water bottle on the seat beside him, but when he shook it, he realized that it was empty. He had forgotten to buy another bottle at the last rest stop, and up here in the God-forsaken willy-whacks, who knew when he would find another gas station and convenience store?

“There’s no water in hell,” the GPS said.

“Will you
please
shut the fuck up?” Mark shouted, fighting the feeling that he was talking to himself, trying to shut of his own chattering thoughts.

“I’m just saying…” was all the GPS said, its robotic voice as emotionless as ever. But Mark was sure he had heard a mocking tone in the voice, nonetheless.

Negotiating the twists and turns of the down slope, Mark couldn’t help but gaze at the damned thing, fighting the urge to tear it off its window mount and fling it out the window. If he did that, though, the truck driver could report him for littering and get him pulled over. Hell, he had probably already radioed ahead to the local police barracks to notify the Staties to be looking for him.

“He’s laughing at you right now,” the GPS said.

“Really?” Mark’s grip on the steering wheel was so tight his wrists throbbed. “And how, exactly, do you know that? You’re just supposed to give me turn-by-turn directions. I don’t need any shi—”

“I told you back a ways to turn left, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“So you’re doing this to—what? To get even with me? For ignoring you?”

The GPS unit was silent, and Mark concentrated on driving even as the big rig bore down on his ass, swaying back and forth, jockeying for an opportunity to pass.

“I don’t need any crap from you…from you or…or anyone else,” Mark said.

Nothing but silence.

“You hear me?” Mark shouted.

“No need to lose your temper, but we both know how you resolve your disagreements with people, now, don’t we?”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Mark asked, but he winced at the words, and the cold tingling in his wrists moved up his arms.

The GPS was silent.

The road leveled out into a straightaway. Off to the left, through a break in the woods, Mark caught a view of a wide, smooth-flowing stream that laced out across a meadow in wide curving arc that reflected the deep, blue sky. The painted lines on the road were broken, and up ahead Mark could see a rest stop. He considered yielding and allowing the semi to pass, but the thought of giving in sat like a lump of cold oatmeal in his gut. As the road leveled out into the straightaway, Mark stepped down on the accelerator, smiling wickedly when he heard the blubbering roar of backfiring exhaust as the truck driver also accelerated his vehicle.

“Aw’right, wise guy,” Mark whispered, watching the truck swing heavily out into the passing lane. “Let’s see what you got.”

Tension blossomed in his stomach as he sped down the road, keeping his lead on the semi. Wind ripped through the opened windows, thumping loudly, sounding like huge fists were pummeling the car.