Andy Deane Read online

  Andy Deane

  THE STICKS

  PROLOGUE

  From The Daily Report; Jefferson, Virginia; November 3rd, 2001

  Police in Jefferson, Virginia have found the remains of several local citizens after a massacre took place late Sunday night. At least two of the victims have been identified as local policemen, though the names of the deceased are being held until the investigation of these grisly murders is complete. The man suspected to be behind the deaths was found dead in his Jefferson, Virginia home early Monday morning, and police are calling the undisclosed man's death a suicide. The horrors confronted by police are being described as bloody and gruesome. Officer Jamie Harland, the lead investigator of the crimes, stated that the victims had been torn to pieces, as if by a wild animal, and that many of the victims appeared to have been partially eaten. "I've never seen anything in my life I could compare with this. I never thought I'd see something like this happen in Jefferson."

  Though Jefferson authorities believe the murders to be the work of a lone serial killer, police are advising citizens of Jefferson to stay off the streets after dark and to check that their windows and doors are locked until further notice, for fear the madman may have had an accomplice. "I'm not sure what clearer message there can be at the moment: Certainly Jefferson suffered greatly at the hands of this animal; now we need everyone in the area thinking of their safety and the safety of their families first," said Chief Superintendent Harold Tweed of the Jefferson police. "Clearly it's not safe, and until we wrap up the investigation of these murders we encourage the people of Jefferson to stay off the streets at night."

  While the bodies of at least five other victims have not been identified pending autopsies, Jefferson police are working around the clock tonight with the cooperation of Richmond police to see an end to this ghastly episode, by far the worst in Jefferson's history.

  I still have this article taped up on the wall beside my PC at home. It lets me know what I went through was real and helps remind me I'm not crazy. Some folks in town said the article was too harsh, even went so far as to demand the guy who wrote it lose his job, but they're full of crap. If they ever found out what a gentle spin this small town journalist had thrown on the story their mouths would snap shut faster than a grown man force-fed a second spoonful of shit. The general public doesn't have much of an appetite for horror, or anything scary for that matter, so they'll never read the whole story in a newspaper. NBC hasn't called yet, so I'm assuming TV doesn't want anything to do with it either.

  It took me a while to get up the nerve to sit down and put all this on paper, mainly because writing something down and reliving it are pretty much the same thing when what you're writing about is the most terrifying time of your life. Newspapers have the luxury of being more detached, and seldom give specific details. For example, when they write about a guy being shot, they usually leave out the parts where he died in a pool of his own piss, screaming for his mother until he bled out. The readers don't want to hear it, and for most people the scary stuff's easy enough to avoid. They lock themselves in a horribly dull routine of going to work and sitting in a cubicle for nine or ten hours a day then head home to suburbia for even safer and more predictable routines. They close their eyes and look the other way because they don't want the truth?can't deal with it?but sometimes the things hidden in that truth won't be ignored. That's real life. And real life can be a motherfucker.

  I've seen my fair share of hell, locked eyes with the Devil for a while to see who'd flinch first. Most people won't ever go through an ordeal like mine, and that's a damned good thing, because I don't know many folks who could've pulled through it with their sanity intact. Of course eventually everyone has a brush with death. It's unavoidable, inevitable even. A relative comes down with brain cancer, some guy drops dead of a heart attack in the local supermarket, or the neighbor's kid gets mauled by a stray dog. And that's when it all comes crashing in on people: the truth, the horror.

  Think what you want, believe what you want. All I can tell you is, here's what happened when that horror came looking for me.

  CHAPTER 1

  The giant next to George had been giving me hard looks all night. I'd tried to avoid eye contact the best I could, but even though this guy was bigger than me I figured I could take him down if fists started flying. He was wearing a light blue turtleneck, and not even Steve McQueen looked tough in a turtleneck. With the exception of a brief and uncomfortable introduction earlier in the evening, we hadn't spoken a word to each other, but somehow I'd rubbed him the wrong way. I still hate The Lord of the Rings to this day because of that night's events, and no thanks to that dork George, I think I learned everything there was to know about the movies and books about thirty minutes into his lecture, all the way down to what color elf shit is.

  George was the type of guy who was so sure of his own greatness he couldn't smell his own shit, and I swear he talked about The Lord of the Rings all damned night. And not just the books or the movies alone, but how they compared and contrasted artistically with each other. George had been going from one clump of partygoers to another, always managing to drag them into a conversation about The Lord of the Rings. Everyone pretended to be deeply interested in what he had to say, and though I couldn't fathom anyone in their right mind giving a damn, at one point he managed to somehow capture the attention of the entire room.

  He preached The Lord of the Rings with the enthusiasm of an evangelist in a room full of rich sinners, and it seemed to work because everyone kept making "ahhh" sounds and nodding at him to signal their apparent fascination with bullshit. The giant was right in the mix, standing next to George and adding his own comments now and then and nodding his big meaty head in agreement.

  The sermon finally came to an end when this knock-out named Jessica called out some slurred mess resembling "here I come," as she stumbled down the hall, her massive chest leading the way. Every head turned to watch her, and George was instantly irrelevant.

  At the start of the party, my girlfriend Alicia had introduced Jessica to me with a brief and somewhat cold formality, and though Jessica was sober at that point I hadn't seen her without a drink since. With two unfinished rum-and-cokes clenched in her fists, Jessica weaved unsteadily down the hallway, babbling incoherently.

  Here we go, I thought.

  George watched for a moment then knelt down to look through the bookshelf beside him. He ran a finger down the hardbound spines, a look of intensity carved across his face as if the Holy Grail might be hiding somewhere among the volumes. Surprisingly, the giant didn't join George's quest, opting instead to grab another beer, blend in with the wall and continue giving me the evil eye.

  Eventually my patience with him wore thin, and after a few drinks, I decided it was time to ask him exactly what the hell his problem was. But before I could take a step in his direction Jessica stumbled by with her drinks, eyes trying desperately to focus but unable to quite pull it off. She assured me she wasn't going to make it across the living room, and wobbling like a bowling ball balanced on a pair of chopsticks made good on her promise, lost her footing and tumbled headfirst into the side of the bookshelf. Rum and coke went everywhere. And as she crashed into the bookcase, the force knocked a statue from the top shelf.

  The statue was of Gollum, an emaciated, animated character from The Lord of the Rings (what else, right?). It clocked George right on top of his head, sounding like a hammer hitting a cantaloupe.

  While I did my best not to laugh, George let out a yelp, and then, whining and holding his head with both hands, struggled to his feet. A small amount of blood trickled down his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. I figured that, in truth, George was more embarrassed than injured, but the giant was right there offering t
o help in any way he could.

  George looked at him as if he'd been gutted and was drawing his last breath.

  I started laughing so hard my eyes filled with tears. I grabbed at my stomach and bent over, which is why it wasn't until after I was able to gather myself that I realized no one else was laughing, and no one else, including Alicia, was amused. I honestly didn't get it. I mean, how much more irony could God have thrown our way that night? No one had the right to be that boring out loud, and the way I saw it, George got exactly what he needed: something to shut him the hell up and maybe make him stop taking himself so seriously.

  But now the giant wasn't alone in his contempt for me. I was getting the stare-down from everyone, except for Jessica, who gave me a drunken pity-smile from where she lay on the floor. The hardest looks came from the big guy, and I figured if a fight broke out his lips were going to be the first ones I bloodied. After an uncomfortable silence, some stuck-up douche-bag who I assumed owned the place asked me through a lisp to make my exit.

  "Look here, buthter, you need to get yourthelf outthide right now!"

  I managed to gather my composure and tried to cool the situation. "Look man, I'm sorry about that," I said without meaning it. "I didn't mean to offend anyone."

  "Thorry or not, ith time for you to go. You've ruined my party and I don't want you in my houth."

  The room was dead quiet, and everyone was staring at the floor except for Lisp and the giant. I looked to Alicia, hoping she'd go to bat for me, but she just turned her pretty head and trained her eyes on a few drops of George's blood that had hit the floor.

  I wasn't too surprised. I'd had a feeling for the past few weeks that she'd been looking for any excuse to get my ass out of her life, and she'd hit the jackpot with this one. I gave her a few more seconds to lift her head and look in my direction, and when she finally did, the writing was on the wall, along with splashes of rum and coke. As the clock struck midnight, I was about eighty percent sure I was single right then and there. It was like a bad clich?, a defeated working-class guy once again being looked down upon by a bunch of snobby assholes, most of whom had been waiting for my exit the minute my boots hit the welcome mat.

  My first instinct was to be an asshole, but I decided that would only make things worse, so I did what any southern man with an ounce of pride would do, I gave Lisp the finger, told George I hoped his god-damned brains rained out through his nose and slammed the door behind me.

  I waited outside for ten minutes, but Alicia never set foot onto the porch. I was some six miles from home, and since my girl had been my ride, I started to walk.

  About a mile into my stroll storm clouds fell over the sky.

  CHAPTER 2

  The late August rain came down cold, but I didn't mind because I was sticky from the heavy, damp Virginia air and the remnants of Jessica's rum and coke. Lugging an entr?e of self-pity with a side of self-loathing along with me, I walked on, the servings big enough to keep me fed for a week. I had a habit of feeling this way every time another girlfriend of mine decided there were greener pastures elsewhere. The worst thing was that they were almost always right, and without fail I'd run into an ex-girlfriend at the mall or a theater, holding hands with some dude who looked a hell of a lot more successful than my sorry ass. And every time, every-damned-time, the ex had the same shit-eating grin plastered on her face that ripped the heart right from my chest. That "Hey, look who I'm fucking!" smile.

  I had known, not long after our first year together, that Alicia and I weren't going to last long. It's much easier to like someone before you know much about them, and like all the others, I wore on her after a while. More than anything it was my lack of aspirations that bugged her. The fact that I wasn't too concerned about landing a career hadn't mattered at first, but as time went on the idea of not having a new BMW in the garage started to bother her. I genuinely liked Alicia, even considered heading off to the community college to see if I could work my way into a better paying job, but it just wasn't in me. I never even enrolled and, in retrospect, I'm happy I didn't throw away six months of my life.

  We laughed together without much effort and she actually enjoyed some of the horror movies from the '70s and '80s I showed her. Alicia always squealed when the masked killer suddenly appeared and attacked decadent teenagers who shouldn't have entered his neck of the woods. And every time one of the blonde bimbos onscreen lost a limb, she'd snuggle close to me and shield her eyes until the blood stopped flowing.

  That night I knew I'd be missing her soft skin and the smell of the lotion she put on her legs before bed. Though being alone was nothing new to me, it always managed to cut deeper than I'd ever let on.

  Seemed the sadder I got the harder the rain came down. Kind of poetic at first, but by the time I had cleared four miles I was soaked to the core, the poetry washed from my skin and replaced by a strong desire for a warm, dry blanket.

  By the time I'd reached the near empty stretch of pavement I'd lived on for the past couple years I was pissed off. There was never much late night traffic on Montrose Road. Now and then truckers pulling the red-eye for DC would fly by and make my screen door rattle, or a stray car would zoom past, but that was about it. When I heard a big rig barreling down the road behind me I stepped off the pavement to avoid getting hit and turned to face the truck as it went by. Next thing I knew the thing hit a foot-deep puddle and shot a water, mud and oil combo all over me. I looked like one of those ducks a leaky oil tanker shit all over.

  As it was a little off the beaten path, I only had three neighbors on Montrose. My favorite of the bunch was Hank, a fifty-something good ol' boy with a southern accent so deep he'd need a translator in Maryland. Hank didn't talk much nonsense and didn't want to hear any. He was a hard worker with a primitive sense of purpose, not the brightest guy but not a total moron either. His place was to the right of mine if you were standing in the road, mine being the last before Montrose became a long expanse of empty highway called route 20.

  The four homes on Montrose were spaced a little better than two hundred yards from one another, all on the same side of the road. It looked like years ago some folks decided to start a neighborhood but got too lazy or too poor to get it done. The property value there hadn't increased much in ten years, and if an appraiser got a good look at Hank's place, it'd probably decrease.

  Myrtle's house was the first I passed as I headed down Montrose. I kept damned quiet as I went by, as Myrtle was three hundred and fifty pounds of uncut chaos under a messy nest of dark and dirty curly hair. I'd never spoken to her and had no idea what I'd done to piss this woman off, but she had a habit of running naked across her yard toward me with her middle finger held high and proud whenever I'd drive by. I didn't even want to think about what she might try with me on foot.

  A while later I passed Nate Smith's residence, the only paved driveway Montrose could claim. He and his wife Natalie had a dog named Spike who would chase their laughing son James and younger daughter Susan around the matching Audis in their driveway. The day after I moved into my place the Smiths brought a pound cake by. There was a lot of "welcome neighbor" and "don't hesitate to ask" leading up to an invitation to join them Sunday for church. I smiled and nodded before closing and locking the front door. Never did eat any of that cake. If you ask me, too normal often equals fucked up, but since the Smiths had chosen to live on my side of town instead of somewhere nicer, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

  I felt relieved when I saw Hank's porch light shining on the primer-and-rust colored Camero he had jacked up on four cinderblocks in his yard. His lawn looked like someone had scattered handfuls of ball bearings that grew into a garden of metal trash.

  I hadn't spent much time talking to Hank, but on the few occasions we'd spoken I got the sense that he didn't want to hang around me too much. He wasn't so much rude as he was a dedicated loner. He said what he needed to say very directly, and didn't bother much with small talk.

  While scanning Hank's junk
yard-lawn I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye near a group of beat-up trashcans. I stepped closer to investigate, raindrops exploded loudly against the aluminum cans in the grimy light shining from Hank's house, and heard a muffled shuffling sound.

  A cat that at some point had been mostly white with a few black patches, but now sported a fine coat of brown Virginia mud caked on its wet fur stepped into the light. He stopped at my feet. The look on his face told me he'd had one hell of a shitty night too, so I reached down slowly to pick the little fellow up, and he came without a fight. I'd wanted a cat since I was a kid, but my mother's allergies wouldn't stand for it. The cat had no tags, so I carried it home figuring I could give it a much better life than it was currently living.

  Along the way, I named him Bronson, as in Charles, the toughest bastard to ever grace the silver screen.

  Once I got home I gave the cat a bath and took a long, hot shower myself. After cleaning some of the dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink, I headed for the living room and sank onto my couch with a sigh. The sofa looked ragged, but it couldn't have been more comfortable without a built in massager or a set of tits. Bronson jumped up beside me and meowed hello or maybe thanks, then the little guy lay down across my legs and fell asleep in a hurry. I didn't have the luxury of rest. Instead, I sat staring at the cracked walls of my living room, replaying the night again and again in my head and wishing I could have it all to do over.

  That son-of-a-bitch with his goddamned Lord of the Rings speech had sabotaged my life. Even Alicia sided with him when the shit hit the fan. I think I even saw a trace of sympathy in her eyes.

  The more I thought about it the more jealous I felt. I kept thinking about the possibility of Alicia hooking up with that jerk after I left. If that asshole somehow ended up talking her into going home with him I'd have to do some serious damage to him, maybe finish what old Gollum started. There were some humiliations I was willing to take in this life, like my Grandma demanding that she come along to every middle school dance I attended to make sure I wasn't up to any "hanky panky," but losing my girl to a jackass like George was over the line.