Bad Thoughts

Chapter 12

When the alarm went off Susie stirred slowly, eventually pushing herself out of bed and stumbling to the clock to shut it off. After killing the noise she stood for a moment rubbing her face before turning back towards the bed. Shannon was lying on his back, his eyes wide open, his face drawn in an grim expressionless stare.

“Sleep okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, his eyes glazed and motionless, his body as still as a corpse’s.

Susie began to lose patience. “What’s so interesting up there?”

No answer. No movement, nothing. Was he even breathing? A quick panic overtook her as she ran to him and put her ear against his chest. The skin felt warm. She held her breath and could hear his heart beating. As she pulled away from him she could see his eyes focusing on her.

“Damn you,” she swore at him as she choked back a rush of tears. “Damn you! I thought you were supposed to be getting better!”

He looked at her blankly before rolling his eyes back towards the ceiling.

She stood frozen, staring down at him. An angry, painful sob convulsed through her body. “Weren’t you supposed to be all cured? Isn’t that what your therapist has been telling you?” she asked, her face turning a hard white. When Shannon remained mute in response, she exploded, “Answer me! Are you even in there?”

“Where else would I be?” he said after a while.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and fled to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She stood frozen in front of the mirror and then started to sob uncontrollably. When she saw him lying like that, all she could think of was that he was dead. At least at first. After she realized he had just sunk deeper into his sickness, a hot anger had overwhelmed her, and if she were completely honest with herself she’d admit it wasn’t just anger. When she first heard his heart beating there was something else. Something close to disappointment.

She stayed in the bathroom a long time. First, moving under the shower and turning the hot water on full until it was steaming. Standing there was therapeutic; the hot water calming her, dulling her senses, quieting her mind. After ending the shower, she slowly, methodically dried herself and then stood in front of the mirror and even more methodically applied makeup. By the time she was done it was almost impossible to detect the redness around her eyes.

“Still breathing?” she asked as she left the bathroom. Shannon didn’t answer, but his head tilted towards her.

She dressed quickly, quietly. When she was done she asked if he wanted any breakfast. Shannon shook his head.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be okay,” he murmured. “I just need some time.”

“Well, you’ll get that, won’t you?”

No answer.

“What’s going on? Can you tell me that?”

“I really don’t know.” He tried to smile at her.

“Can you at least guess?”

He shrugged, moving his shoulders up and down as much as an inch.

“So it’s going to be like all those other years all over again,” Susie said after a long pause, an angry harshness edging into her voice.

Shannon let his eyes close and placed a hand over them. “It’s not going to be like that. This year’s going to be different. I’ve already gone further than I ever have before.”

As soon as Shannon said it, he felt the little strength he had left ebb away from him. Susie had become very quiet, very still, as she stared at him. After a long while she asked him what he meant by going further than in the past.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Of course you do,” she said, shrewdly, her voice as brittle as sandstone. “I want you to tell me what’s behind all this.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying,” she stated softly. “And I’m sick of it.” Her bottom lip started to quiver. She bit down on it, turned and left the room. A minute later, Shannon could hear the door to their apartment open and close. Then he could hear the lock turn.

Around ten in the morning Joe DiGrazia called, leaving a message on the machine that he was just checking up on his asshole partner. Eleven o’clock DiGrazia called again and left another message.

A half hour later Shannon could hear a key turning in the front door, and then DiGrazia’s low, guttural voice calling out. Then, his partner’s heavy footsteps along the hallway floor.

There was a hard rap on the bedroom door and DiGrazia peered in, his granite-block face a bit exasperated.

“This is breaking and entering,” Shannon said.

“Not really,” DiGrazia explained as he walked into the room and pulled a chair up to the bed. “Susie called earlier and invited me over. She said you weren’t doing too well. She’s afraid you’re about to slip over the edge.”

“Especially with her pushing.”

“That’s a pretty shitty thing to say,” DiGrazia said. “You’re a lucky man to have a wife like that. Not only is she a sweetheart but she’s as beautiful as all hell. Why the fuck she cares about you, God only knows.” He gave Shannon a hard look. “Pal, you are more than lucky. I’ll tell you, it would be a real shame if you lost something that good.”

Shannon looked up but couldn’t read anything in his partner’s expression. “Am I about to lose something?”

“It could happen. Everyone’s got their limit, buddy boy. I know I’ve already reached mine.” DiGrazia let a sympathetic smile crack his face. “You really do look like hell,” he said. “It’s getting close to lunchtime. Why don’t you get up and take a shower and shave. We’ll go get something to eat.”

Shannon declined, shaking his head slightly. He hadn’t eaten anything yet that day or the day before, but he didn’t want any food. What he wanted was a drink. Several of them. The impulse had been gnawing away at him all morning, working its way into his bones and into his blood. He wanted a bottle, bad. All he could think about was getting one, which was why he knew he had to stay in bed.

“That’s what I get for trying to be a nice guy,” DiGrazia said. “Fuck you anyways. I’m too busy to spend my time babysitting an ungrateful asshole like you. As you know, I’m kind of shorthanded at work with my partner flaking out. And our little mamma’s boy hasn’t confessed yet.”

“You haven’t beaten it out of him?”

“I wish I could. Youth Services has got our little mamma’s boy wrapped up tight. They got a real asshole lawyer for him. The blood drops we found on the pillow weren’t from the victim. This sonofabitch lawyer is fighting us every step of the way. The State Attorney has to go to court Monday so we can get blood samples from the kid. You sure you don’t want to get something to eat?”

“Rather not.”

DiGrazia pushed himself out of his chair and shook his head slowly. “Just trying to do Susie a favor,” he said as he strolled out of the room.

A half hour later he returned sheepishly with a couple of subs. “I have to eat anyway,” he explained as he wolfed down a sausage sub. He had laid out a meatball sub heavy with onions next to Shannon.

“You going to at least try it?” he asked.

Shannon didn’t bother to answer him.

“You going to have to either eat it or get out of bed or lie there all day with it next to you,” DiGrazia threatened, showing a bare-fanged smile and looking more like a bulldog than usual.

“Or toss it against the wall,” Shannon observed.

DiGrazia wiped his hands on the paper bag the sandwiches came in and stood up. “I tried,” he said. “You can’t tell me I didn’t. Have fun lying there and rotting.”

Shannon closed his eyes. He didn’t bother watching his partner leave. When he opened them the room was empty, just him and his meatball sub. He groaned as he looked at it. Smelling it made him nauseous. Since he didn’t have any choice and really didn’t want to look at it all day hanging from the wall, he twisted himself over the edge of the bed and stood up, his legs wobbly. He picked up the sandwich and moved slowly out of the bedroom and towards the kitchen. There, he tossed it into the trash. On the way back, he stopped in the living room and collapsed into his imitation-leather easy chair. It was amazing how bad he felt. Like he was hungover, his head pounding, a hard, tight pressure pushing against his eyes, his mouth feeling like he had gargled with sawdust. He leaned forward and held his head with both hands. It was over a year, forgetting about the double shot of bourbon he had a month earlier and the half a beer he had the night before, since he had any alcohol and it was like he was now suffering from the DTs. A year of being mostly sober and now this. Just like all the other years. Thinking about it made him laugh. The laughing hurt, though, especially in his stomach. He leaned further forward, rubbing his head slowly, trying not to think about how badly he wanted a drink. After a while he stopped thinking altogether.

Of course, he had fallen asleep. Not really dreaming or conscious, just drifting along. Floating in a warm, peaceful blackness. Something was tugging at him, though, disturbing him, forcing an awareness within him.

And then there he was in front of him, grinning widely, ingratiatingly. Shannon knew him instantly. He was older than Shannon remembered-a good twenty years older-as if his memories had somehow aged equivalently with time. The man’s skin now spotted and bloated and sagging slightly around the jaws. His body thicker around the middle. His hair thinner, almost nothing where the ponytail had been. But there was the same malformed chin. The same tiny, slit mouth. And the eyes, pale, almost translucent, like a rattlesnake’s. Shannon felt a coldness as he looked into those eyes.

Standing in front of him was Herbert Winters. A forty-year-old version of him.

“Remember me, Billy?” Winters asked, his voice the same wispy singsong that had tortured Shannon all those years earlier.

“Yeah, I remember you. You’re older. Why is that?”

“You got to ask yourself that.”

“I don’t have to ask myself a goddamn thing.”

“Sure you do. Come on, boy, give it a try. Look deep inside yourself. The answer’s there.”

Shannon turned away, but Winters moved with him as if they were fastened together at the hips, hovering in front of him, his slit mouth grinning in an amused fashion.

“Just go away,” Shannon pleaded. “I don’t want you here.”

“Sorry, Billy Boy. It don’t work that way. You know why, don’t you?”

Shannon had his eyes squeezed shut. He tried running, but he could feel Winters’s warm, rancid breath against his face. There was no use running so he stopped. And besides, he felt too weak to run. His legs had quickly become rubbery and lifeless. When he opened his eyes Winters was still hovering in front of him, still grinning like only he knew the big joke.

“Too stupid to see the obvious, huh?” Winters asked, his grin shrinking to a thin, impish smile. “Let me spell it out to you. The reason I’ve aged twenty years since last we met is because we met twenty years ago.

“Still don’t see it?” he asked, nodding at Shannon’s blank stare. “Let me explain it to you. I’ll talk slowly so you can follow. I’m inside you, dummy. I’m part of you. And I’m not too happy about it. But what the hell can you do, right?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Shannon started. “What do you mean you’re part of-”

“Look,” Winters said, cutting Shannon off, his smile taking on a malicious glint. “Think back twenty years ago, the day you murdered me. Let’s try and remember what really happened, not the bullshit story you made up afterwards. Let’s try and be honest with ourselves for a change.

“Your daddy knew what really happened,” Winters continued, winking in a good-old-boy sort of way. “He knew just by looking at you. And you know, too. Come on, admit it, boy. Who really did kill your poor mother?”

“You did,” Shannon said, dumbly. “She was dead when I got home. You were doing things to her. You were-”

“We were enjoying ourselves. That’s all.” Winters thin smile disappeared, leaving his mouth a tiny, dull slit. “Maybe it was a bit kinky making out on top of the kitchen table, but it was nothing serious. We even still had all our clothes on. And I guess we lost track of the time, huh? Didn’t count on you sneaking up on us. Shit, were you quiet. A little mouse, weren’t you?

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Winters asked, chuckling to himself. “You remember what happened next, don’t you? How, like the little pissant that you were, you snuck that butcher knife out of the drawer and then tippytoed over to your mother and plunged it into her mouth as she lay on that table minding her own business. And then you tried to use it on me.”

“T-that’s n-not true.”

“Of course it is. Explains why only your fingerprints were on the knife. And why there were no other bruises on your mom, except a few along her neck when we were making out earlier and maybe got a little too rough. But nothing she didn’t enjoy. I really had her purring, boy. Had her engine all revved up and ready to go until you killed the ignition.

“I had to break your fingers to get the knife out of your hand,” Winters continued. “It looked like you were out cold. I went over to check on your mom, see if I could save her. But I couldn’t. She was as dead as dead can be. Her eyes bulging, almost popping out of their sockets like pale blue marbles. But you weren’t out cold, were you, boy?”

Winters waited and then went on, smiling sadly. “You did a number on me, boy. Had the knife in and out of me a half dozen times before I realized what was happening. And then it was too late. Remember what you did to me afterwards-to my head? You had it hanging off my body by a thread. That was unnecessary, boy. Truly unnecessary.”

“Y-you deserved it! A-and t-the rest… nothing but a lie!”

“Keep telling yourself that. Which brings us to why I’m here. You created me, you little shit. I’m the image that you needed me to be in. I’m part of you. Buried deep inside you. I’m the monster you had to conjure up so you could go along with your little fantasy of what happened. In all truth, I’m you. The essence of you. And it makes me sick to my stomach.”

Shannon was overwhelmed with a sensation of vertigo. He squeezed his eyes tight as he felt himself spinning away. The invisible bond between him and Winters seemed to be weakening as he twisted upwards. He told himself that he was dreaming. That this was nothing but a bad dream. That he wanted to be far away.

“Not yet!” Winters ordered angrily, thick lines all of a sudden lining his stubby neck. “You don’t leave me now! I’ve got too much to tell you, you little shit! All about Phyllis Roberson. You don’t dare leave now-”

Shannon swung himself up in the easy chair, momentarily in free fall, his heart pounding, a cold sweat breaking over his face.

He was wide awake, Herbert Winters’s image vivid in his mind.

He was alone in his living room, but he could feel Winters’s presence. He could almost still smell the sourness of his breath. He could almost still feel it against his face. A draft from the window sill made him shiver.

Other than the one he had months ago with Janice Rowley, it was the first time he remembered any of his nightmares. In the past, there was nothing he could really hang on to except a vague sense of dread. If these were the type of dreams he was having, no wonder he’d been going nuts.

Shannon looked down at his right hand. He curled his fingers and felt the dull discomfort in his joints. In the cold weather the discomfort was closer to someone hammering nails into his bones.

There was no doubting they had been broken severely and worse. The torture he had undergone was real. The memories he had of that day were real.

So what about that dream?

Why was he conjuring up that murderer?

And what the hell did Winters mean about Phyllis Roberson? An image of the dead woman slid into his mind. In it he could picture the knife sticking out of the woman’s throat. He could see her eyes staring into oblivion.

Shannon forced himself out of the easy chair. He was surprised to find himself as shaky as he was. He moved slowly to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. He couldn’t keep from thinking about Phyllis Roberson. He couldn’t keep the image of her out of his mind. Of that knife sticking out of her throat.