"My immediate concern is burying Uncle Giuseppe."
"Chad will be back."
"If Rickerson doesn't kill him, you will?"
"It stops here. These people need to be buried, and we all need to move on."
When Linda looked up at her uncle, one of his fingers was twitching. She sat back, nearly losing balance, horrified and fascinated.
"Come on, woman, take his hand."
Linda pried her uncle's dead stiff hand from his thigh. She took it lovingly in both her hands, and kissed it. Willy nodded, seemingly.
"Dead people," he said.
"They're only human, you know."
Linda had tears in her eyes. They sat that way for a long time. The noise from Rickerson's smoldering home and factory soon ended. Night fell, after a mellow red dusk.
"Where's Jesse?" asked Linda.
"She likes to hang out on Lover's Peak with the junkies. She came close to being a housewife here in Tom's house, but I'm not sure she's gonna make it now."
Linda laughed bitterly. "Guess not."
Officer Donovan arrived with backup. They arrested Willy, and he did not offer up any resistance.
"It was nice meeting you," Linda said.
"This guy?" asked Donovan.
"Yes, this guy."
"He locked Mr. Rickerson in a cage and burned down his home?"
"Bullshit," muttered Linda.
She watched as they led Willy away. When she looked back up at the mummies, she realized her Uncle Giuseppe had turned his head. He was looking at the stars and a beautiful half-moon, as night had fallen, with tears in his eyes.
Chapter 40
I stand over the body of a woman in the moonlight. It is done. After a fierce beating, while she was still breathing, I had to get the knife. I didn't really want to do this. She just made me do it.
Now that I no longer have a home, I no longer have my favorite burial sites. No barn, no shed, no yard. A motel room - and a parking spot. How inconvenient ... I look about anxiously. How do I to get this mess into my pickup truck? Perhaps I should go back to Mother and Aunt Sophie. Perhaps.
But no, I cannot do that. Willy has been arrested. Now he won't get around to finding the dog's body, he won't get around to burying the freak. Heather will be tormented. But after all, she tormented me, too.
So I stand in the moonlight, exhilarated by the kill ?
Jesse lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke with deep pleasure. She set the vodka bottle to her lips, waiting. Her new friend, the guy who owned a fine car, encouraged her to drink.
"Go on, try some," he said.
She giggled, and some of the vodka splashed past her mouth and down her chin, making her white blouse wet.
"Your boyfriend's down at the station," the young man said, eying her breasts and licking his lips.
"He won't be back too soon."
"So I heard," said Jesse, relaxing.
"Worried?"
"You could say that," said Jesse.
"How long have you the two of you been together?"
"Four or five years."
"Where are you staying now?"
"Have to go back to Tom's house, get my things."
"I can come with you ?"
Jesse sucked on her cigarette. She liked the way her new friend fit into his jeans.
"Okay."
"Let's go admire the view into the valley ? shall we?"
Jesse suddenly had a sour expression on her face. The young man ran his fingers over her bare arms.
"I know you're worried. But you're gonna have to get used to the fact they're putting him away."
Jesse threw her butt to the ground and crushed it out with her boots. She immediately lit another. Her new friend pushed her arm aside and gave her a long, lingering wet kiss. After that, she drank greedily, her eyes shiny and her lips curled up into a sweet smile.
"You think?"
"Yes, Jesse, honey. We both know that, don't we?"
She let him lead her around the many parked cars and the lovers and the drinkers making out - to Lover's Peak, where the town lay before them in the valley, the moon and the stars above. He put his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him.
He kissed her again. She kissed back, this time passionately, grabbing at his clothes.
"Let's go to my place," he suggested.
"Okay."
"We can talk about how we can help Willy ?"
"That would be great."
She hopped in his car on the passenger side, and he slammed the door shut a little too quickly. Jesse quivered. It was getting dark and cold. She looked at the moon through the windshield and said:
"Good luck, Will."
And then the new man in her life got in behind the wheel of his pricey sedan sweating and eager, his eyes bulging, his hands shaking only slightly.
Chad Donovan took the call. It was Linda, the waitress from the diner. She began to chatter almost immediately. How she was making arrangements for Uncle Giuseppe's funeral, at last, and how very grateful she was. Chad thought her terribly annoying. He had a very beautiful mannequin on his lap, a girl he had lived with, before she up and left him. But she was all his now.
"Thank you so much for your call, Linda," he said.
"Stay in touch, okay?"
He threw his cell phone on the couch. He looked up at the girl, at her stoic expression and her exquisite beauty. He had caught her on the highway, when her car broke down and she stood there, anxious and hitchhiking. He had her 'fixed' by Rickerson. Chad sometimes wished she had been made more pliable. But he was happy to have her, anyway.
One morning, when he had gone into his special room, he had noticed she had fallen to the floor. Another time, she had a glass in her hand he could have sworn he left on the TV. So, she was moving. She was still "in there". Chad had a chuckle deep in his throat for such things. Aunt Sophie had broken him in, so many years ago. He helped with many a 'Gallery', and had tormented Tom and Rickerson with a 'Parallel Gallery'.
But the spooks had never gotten to him. He didn't let them. So he would go to hell. Chad thought life was hell already. And there was no heaven; besides, he did not need it. He would always find a way.
He kissed his mummy gently goodbye, as he left early in the morning for work. She would still be there when he came home, didn't matter when that would be. She would wait, and she would be there. For him. Always.
Epilogue
Many months later, Willy was in prison, sleeping in his cell. He twitched and tried to turn, but there was not enough room on his cot. He heard Jesse scream, and at first, he didn't really remember who she was, only that a long time ago, he had often had sex with her, had bought drugs with her, eaten with her, murdered with her, and he also remembered that he hit her.
"Oh, yeah, Jesse, that's right ?" he muttered, scratching his arm.
He fell asleep again, snoring loudly. Jesse, in his dreams, screamed again. She was trying to get out of a really fine sedan, but the man she was with, he was grabbing her by the hair, he was forcing her to kiss him.
"Wait for me, Jesse," Willy said.
"I'll be there in a minute, I'll be there to help you."
While asleep, in his crazy dreams, a thought came to him, why she had never come to visit him as he was incarerated, and why he had never thought about it, or even heard about Tom. He had never considered something had happened to her. In his nightmare, he saw her struggling, saw her being raped. Aunt Sophie appeared, pressing her face against his dream's landscape, scolding:
"You are buried on my land ?"
"Go away."
"Bitch," he hissed, "you are batshit crazy!"
"I'm here in prison," he continued, "I'm not even dead yet."
"You will be free one day. And then you will die. A miserable death! I'll be waiting."
"You're just a ? a cunt in a fuzzy dream!" Willy yelled, flailing his arms, pushing her image away.
"Look!" Aunt Sophie said, satisfied, "look what
they did to Jesse!"
And Willy saw his former girlfriend, beaten and bruised, in a 'Gallery', but no one had thought about holy crosses and Jesus, no one had wanted anyone to repent, there were no twelve corpses, there were at least 20, most of them in horrible positions. Into this stack, someone had embalmed and thrown Jesse, after raping and killing her.
"Oh, God, Jesse," whispered Willy and began to cry.
Then his mind conjured up other memories, of her sitting next to him in their car, the wind in her hair, her smile contagious, as she laughed in her pink tank top, her painted lips parted, her wild and pretty hair loose around her bare shoulders.
"And I forgot her!" Willy exclaimed.
"So I never had to deal with the pain."
"Willy ?" a faint voice said.
"Jesse," he answered.
So a part of her was still in this world. He would find her one day, when he was a free man again. He promised.
THE END.
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