A Token for the Journey

~ mstturpin ~ 2 Comments

They take one last drive down Route 66

Photo by the author. Edited with the Waterlogue App

This story was first published in 2019 in the magazine The Weird and the Whatnot. I included it in my book of short stories, published in 2020. That book, The Imposter and Other Stories, has languished over on Amazon since then. I haven’t done much to promote it. In fact, I often forget that it’s out there.

Next Saturday, July 18, that book will be included with several other horror ebooks in a “Stuff Your Kindle” promotion organized by a writing contact of mine, Donna Taylor. https://www.authordonnataylor.com/stuffyourkindle

She will be posting more on her website soon for the event, and I’ll be sharing over on Instagram and here once it kicks off.

In anticipation of this event, I thought I’d share a story that was included in the book, to give folks a look at the type of writing and stories that are in The Imposter and Other Stories.

A Token for the Journey

Together, Dottie and Bill packed the car the night before their last road trip. They rose early the next day and headed out of Oklahoma City along the old highway, now part of OK-66. The car, a restored Candy Apple Red 1967 Mustang convertible, hummed along the blacktop like she understood where they were headed, as though Bill could take his hands off the wheel and the car would continue on, in no hurry to reach the destination and happy for the journey. Bill had promised the Mustang to their grandson, but first the boy had to finish college. For now, the pleasure of driving this fine automobile was Bill’s, and he carried it all with him—the car, the road, the memories—as they started their odyssey. 

Bill mapped the route months before the trip, picking out the bits and pieces of the old Route 66 highway (the parts not swallowed up when Interstate 40 bulldozed through and killed off the small towns along the way). He aimed to land in Arizona before they turned around to head home. One benefit of old age. They didn’t have to stick to anyone’s schedule but their own. 

“Will we get to Tucumcari before dark?” Dottie asked that morning as she smoothed out the road map and traced their course across the folds and crinkles. Parts of their sojourn might take them to areas of spotty phone reception, but the main reason they brought the paper version was nostalgia. They would drive past places they visited years ago on their honeymoon trip from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. Back then, they’d relied on maps and road signs to navigate; it didn’t seem fair to cheat the course with electronic gadgets. 

Dottie, in her lemon-yellow capri pants and crisp button-up shirt, looked cool and sweet against the red vinyl seat. With her hair pulled back in a dotted scarf and the rhinestones in her cat eye sunglasses flashing in the morning sunlight, she looked much younger, like the girl Bill had married fifty years ago. Right then, it seemed they’d have more good days than bad ahead of them, but this wasn’t something they could count on. 

“We’ll make Tucumcari long before dark. And we’ll hit stops along the way, maybe have a late lunch in Amarillo, at the Big Texan,” Bill said. 

Dottie smiled and nodded as she slipped a dog-eared copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology out of her purse. It was her favorite book to read when they traveled, an anchor that reminded her of her days as a teacher. Mornings were best for her, she kept more of herself after a good night’s rest. 

They made their first stop in Clinton, Oklahoma, at the Route 66 museum. The nation’s first completely paved road, Route 66, wound like a river of asphalt 2,448 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. Bill climbed out of the car and trailed along behind Dottie, the old wound in his leg giving him grief after being cramped up behind the wheel of the Mustang. They browsed through exhibits that might have come straight from their own recollection of the Mother Road. Bill’s first trip down that river had been as a kid in the backseat of his father’s Chevy. 

Bill followed as Dottie wandered through the museum, her eyes lit up like a kid’s. It was good to see her so animated. Lately it seemed she spent too much of her days along Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in Greek myth. 

When they got to the last display, Dottie turned to Bill. “I’d like to browse through the gift shop.”  

“All right. Remember we’re in the Mustang, so don’t buy anything we have to haul halfway across the country.” Bill watched his wife disappear behind a wall of coffee mugs and t-shirts. 

Bill leaned against the car while he waited for Dottie to finish her shopping. Standing there, staring out over the parking lot at the blue horizon, it reminded him of those days in the past when he waited for her outside shopping malls. Back then, he’d have a cigarette to pass the time, and the memory of it had him draw in his breath, tasting tobacco and ash on his tongue. Bill glanced at his watch, worried he’d made a bad decision leaving Dottie on her own. He pushed off the car, ready to go into the store, when he spotted her walking out the door of the museum. 

“Now don’t fuss, but I got you a little something.” Dottie laughed as she opened the car door and handed Bill a white paper bag with the museum logo. He pulled out a key chain with a tiny metal token, a round replica of the old Route 66 road signs. 

“Well look at this, it’s just right isn’t it?” he asked as he ran his finger along the edges of the little white shield. It was slightly bigger than a quarter. “I guess it’s our lucky charm,” Bill said. He clipped the Mustang’s keys onto the chain and twirled the miniature road sign before starting the motor. The afternoon had turned out nice, sunny but not too hot, so they put the white vinyl top down before they pulled out of the parking lot.

Outside Amarillo, the old highway became the service road for I-40. The Mustang would handle the interstate just fine, but they rolled along beside it and let the interstate truckers blast past in a rush of diesel-fouled air. The road stretched out in an unbroken silver line straight to the horizon, flat plowed fields on either side. Short green corn stalks poked out of the red dirt, reaching their leaves like arms to the sun. 

Past the town of Soncy, they crossed I-40 to the southern frontage road so they could pass by the Cadillac ranch. Bill slowed down to take in the sight of ten classic Cadillacs buried nose down in the muddy field. They were slanted at the same angle as the great pyramids of Egypt. Layers of peeling paint coated the autos in a riot of color that, to Bill, looked more like vandalism than pop art. 

They first spotted the hitchhiker there. He stood at the edge of the frontage road where the asphalt gave way to loose gravel. Dressed in an olive-green army fatigue jacket, at first glance he blended in with the tall grass behind him. He held a hand-lettered cardboard sign that looked as tattered as his clothes.

“What do you think he’s doing all the way out here?” Dottie asked as they cruised past.

“It is a little odd that someone dropped him there.” 

Bill glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the guy watching as they drove off. His long hair and sparse beard reminded Bill of Odysseus, on the tail end of his journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan war. From his post on the roadside, the hitchhiker took one hand off the sign to wave, and Bill mashed down the accelerator. The pony car rumbled in response, a quarter-sized hole in the exhaust making the engine sound louder and larger than the stock 289 V8 under the hood. 

The highway stretched out to the horizon, an unbroken line of grey. As the day grew warmer, heat waves shimmered across its surface and a mirage appeared ahead of them, turning the road into a false waterway. Soon they arrived in Adrian and stopped to stretch their legs at the Midpoint Café. The white painted concrete block building looked much the same as it must have in 1928. The couple pushed through the doors and walked into a dining room from the past, complete with Formica-topped tables and vinyl covered chairs with chrome legs. They slid into a booth near the front. As Dottie settled across from Bill, he spotted the hitchhiker in the last booth from the door. 

“Isn’t that the guy from outside Amarillo?”

Dottie turned around, her forehead wrinkled. She clutched Bill’s elbow as she bent her head to whispered, “Someone must have picked him up.” 

Bill wondered how he ended up ahead of them. Maybe his ride took the faster route along the interstate, instead of the scenic old highway. The hitchhiker hunched forward in the booth, hands cupped around a thick china mug. A dirty green duffle snuggled up against the bottom of the booth. The man turned toward them and lifted the coffee mug in a salute as though he knew they had been talking about him.

The hitchhiker got up to leave and Bill suggested they linger over coffee and pie. He didn’t want to walk past that guy on the way to the Mustang. When they got up to pay, Bill peeked out the front glass. He saw no one in a faded army jacket. As he dumped a handful of change onto the counter, the key chain with the road sign token clattered out amongst the dimes and pennies. 

“Don’t suppose you take this do you?” Bill said, holding up the souvenir so the Route 66 logo faced the cashier. 

The woman replied with a tired shake of her head, and Bill laughed as he dropped the keys into his pocket. “Better not give up my good luck,” he said. 

They hopped back on the frontage road and followed I-40 until the exit for Glenrio, the ghost town on the Texas and New Mexico border. They pulled the car off the road and climbed out to wander past the rotting wooden buildings that had once housed a café and a motel. Dottie snapped photos with her digital camera as Bill kicked through the high weeds surrounding a deserted gas station with rusted pumps. An abandoned car, a beat-up Oldsmobile with primer-grey fenders, sat on blocks beside the building. The wind picked up, whistling in with a cool front. They’d need to put the top up for the drive into Tucumcari. Black clouds rolled in across the horizon and the air smelled like rain. 

“We better head out before the rain starts,” Bill called out to Dottie as he turned back to the car.  

As he hiked back to the Mustang, he stumbled, his bad knee locking up, and an adrenaline jolt of pain caused Bill to gasp and clutch his chest. Fear ran through him as he slumped against the car. What would happen to Dottie if he fell and broke a hip, or worse? Bill leaned on the warm metal of the fender and zipped up his windbreaker. When his hand found his pocket, he felt the little metal road sign, the key chain Dottie had purchased that morning. His fingers smoothed over the cool, slick enamel and his breathing slowed. 

Bill turned around to search for his wife. A blur of motion at the corner of the gas station turned out to be a tumbleweed. Heavy blue-black clouds drifted over, blocking out the rest of the sunlight. A flash of lighting reflected in the grime-smudged windows of the gas station and revealed what looked like a face pressed to the glass inside. 

“Dottie?” he called, thinking she’d somehow gotten inside the building and couldn’t find her way out. She appeared from behind the station, weaving as she stumbled on the broken asphalt at the edge of the lot. She stopped, looking around as though lost. Bill had his hand on the car door, ready to limp over to her, when she spotted him and waved. He sighed and eased into the car to wait for her. As she shut the car door and buckled herself in, Bill stared in the rearview mirror. The flat landscape reminded him of Amarillo, and the hitchhiker. Bill scanned the horizon, half expecting to see a man holding a worn cardboard sign. 

They pulled into Tucumcari, New Mexico, as the rain started. There was still time before sundown, but the storm clouds hid the sun enough that they spotted the neon lights of the Blue Swallow Motel as they cruised through downtown. The sign promised refrigerated air and TV: as good a place as any to rest for the night. The room had a rattling air conditioner and a queen-sized bed covered in a fluffy white chenille spread. Bill showered and Dottie called Ray, their oldest, to check in. Ray sold insurance in Dallas, and he kept a rolling tally of their chances of meeting catastrophe. Bill listened in on their conversation until he heard the slur in Dottie’s voice, then he reached over to take the phone and tell Ray goodnight. 

The nightstand held a black, hard-backed Bible, and Bill pulled it out and flipped through the thin pages. A verse from Revelation drew him in, and he dozed off reading about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The rumble of thunder and the flash of lighting from the storm outside merged with a dream of Dottie held hostage somewhere far off. In the nightmare, he clutched an old-fashioned rotary phone receiver to his ear and heard his wife’s voice, faint and scratchy, as she pleaded for rescue. Like she was Persephone abducted by Hades and kept in the underworld, only this time there would be no returning to the world above. Where she called from, Bill could never reach. 

The next morning, they woke up to more rain. They checked out of the motel and Bill lugged their bags out to the car. 

“Oh! I know that man,” Dottie said, pointing. 

Somehow, it was the hitchhiker, Bill realized with a start. The stranger turned around then, looking right at them and holding the cardboard sign, soggy and wilting in the damp. As he walked toward the Mustang, the hitchhiker folded the sign and tucked it under his arm. 

“I wonder if I could impose on you for a ride,” he said as he halted at the side of the car near Dottie. 

“There’s not much room,” Bill began, then stopped as he saw Dottie staring at the hitchhiker as though she were puzzling out his name. He reached out to touch her arm. “We don’t know this fellow,” he said to her. 

Her eyes cleared, and she shook her head. “No one should have to stand out here in the rain. The back seat’s small, but you could probably fit if you don’t mind not being able to stretch out your legs.” Dottie looked up at Bill, waiting. 

“This is a fine automobile.” The stranger brushed a hand along the side of the car. Bill frowned, something about the way the hitchhiker touched the car did not set right with him. The trailing fingers seemed possessive, as though the stranger were stroking a lover’s waist. 

“Where you headed?” Bill asked. “We’re taking the long way, going down the scenic road along old Route 66, you’d be better off with someone else.” 

“I’m not in a hurry to get where I’m going,” he said. And with that, Dottie opened the car door and tilted the seat forward so the guy could climb in the back. 

The rain cleared, and the passenger sat back and didn’t speak up again as Bill steered the car onto the interstate. Settled into the soft leather seat, the hitchhiker smiled and gazed out the window. Bill decided they would stay on the highway and take 25 up through Glorietta, enjoying pretty scenery at least. When they stopped in Santa Fe, Bill would drop the guy off and tell him to get another ride. The decision made, Bill relaxed to the hum of the car wheels on asphalt. 

The roadside scenery changed from stunted brush and red rocks to the green of pines and juniper as the road climbed through New Mexico. The postcard perfect landscape reminded Bill of other trips they’d made along the old route. He could almost forget the stranger in the backseat, but a glance in the rearview mirror brought the man’s face into view. Each time the man met Bill’s gaze. The stranger stared into the reflection until Bill felt a heaviness in his chest, as though a thick rope wrapped around his heart and he had to look away.  

In Santa Fe they cruised through downtown, past shops in terracotta stucco and pastel colors. Bill left the hitchhiker at a busy intersection, near a sidewalk art sale. The man didn’t protest, and Bill relaxed as they drove away. After they lucked into a vacancy at a pleasant hotel near downtown, they spent the rest of the day shopping and sightseeing. 

At dinner Dottie pushed her plate of enchiladas away after a few bites. “You finish it, Ray. I’m just not hungry.” 

Bill took her hand. “It’s all right, sweetheart, let’s go get some rest.” He did not tell her she’d called him by their son’s name. 

That night Bill fell into a deep sleep, but in the darkest part of the night, he jolted awake with the strange feeling that someone stood over him, but when he sat up, there was only Dottie lying next to him. He lay back, but felt restless and didn’t want to wake Dottie, so he dressed and stepped outside to check on the Mustang. He pocketed the keys and rubbed the cool enamel of the little Route 66 road sign attached to the chain. 

The lights in the hotel parking lot cast a yellowish glow over the cars, transforming the bright red color of the car into a coppery orange shade. A light mist hung in the air, creating halos around the streetlights. Bill limped a circle around the Mustang and turned to watch the red glow of the taillights from a passing car until they disappeared down the road. When he looked back at his car, he saw a white figure at the far edge of the lot. 

It was a woman, her sheer white robe fluttered behind her like wings. 

“Hey!” Bill called, and the woman turned and came toward him. It was Dottie. Her steps were sure and quick, and as she rushed to him her face changed, her brow smoothing and her cheeks filling with youth and beauty, until she no longer resembled the woman who had set out on the road with him. The robe and nightgown draping her body molded into the shape of the wedding gown she’d worn all those years past. 

“Dottie!” Bill reached out for her and she glided by, a wintry wind in her wake. He twisted, grabbing at her arm, but his hand passed through the robe, as though he grasped a spider’s web. Confused, Bill felt as though he’d lost something. He bit the inside of his mouth, hoping that if he was dreaming, the pain would wake him. 

His wife paused before the road.  

“It’s time,” Dottie said. She folded her hands across her breast and turned her back on him to step off the curb.  

“Time?” Bill asked. The answer came from his dreams, the bad ones, the ones where he’d woken up screaming. The road, once a ribbon of asphalt, now flowed as a river of black water. Somehow, Bill knew if she stepped into that river, she’d be lost to him forever. He’d always feared he would be the first one to go on that last journey, leaving her behind to struggle through life without him.  

“No!” Bill called as the hitchhiker appeared beside Dottie. Bill recognized him then for who he was. Not Odysseus, the wanderer, but the ferryman, Charon, of Greek myth. The one who helps others on to their last destination. 

As Bill reached for his wife, the ferryman spoke. 

“I’m here for her journey,” he said, and stretched out his hand to grasp Bill’s arm. 

A jolt of pure pain fired straight to Bill’s nerves, and his mind went back to that ominous place the other night, to the dream he’d had when he listened to Dottie’s voice calling, but could not go to her. His knees hit the pavement, and he knelt there, gasping as the road beyond the parking lot wavered and shimmered in waves. 

A cool hand grasped his shoulder, and Bill looked up to find Dottie standing there, one hand held by the stranger. 

“Take me instead,” Bill stumbled to his feet and reached out to the ferryman. Nausea gripped him and he bent over, clutching his stomach. Sweat beaded on Bill’s forehead and a sharp spike of agony pierced his brain, like a nail driven in behind his eye. 

Charon scowled as he shook his head. “Only one passage is paid.” 

“Does it matter then, who you take?” 

Bill shuffled into the dark river. He expected the water to swallow him, but he felt solid ground beneath his feet. The cold, however, rushed over his legs as though he waded in ice water. 

“Is it time to leave?” Dottie faded, the white mist that made up her figure melting like wisps of smoke. “Have you seen my husband? He always takes my hand.” 

“Oh Dottie.” Bill couldn’t leave her behind, lost without him to watch over her. “Take us both, then,” he said. 

But Charon shook his head and pulled Dottie further into the river. A gondola, draped in black sackcloth and trimmed in ebony, floated up to them. 

Desperate, Bill thought to bargain with the ferryman, and pulled from his pocket the only thing he thought might work. 

“If it’s a journey you want, climb in and let’s go.” Bill tossed the keys to the Mustang, and the ferryman scooped them from the air. 

“You have a coin?” Charon puzzled over the round bit of enameled metal attached to the key chain, the Route 66 token.  

“I’ve paid for my passage, isn’t that the deal?” Bill asked. 

The ferryman nodded and took the keys. When he touched Bill this time, there was no pain, only a bright white flash of light. The age spots on Bill’s hand vanished, his wrinkled, loose skin plumping and filling with the strength he’d had forty years back. When Bill looked back to the parking lot, he saw his body, an empty shell, curled against the asphalt where he’d fallen the first time Charon touched him. 

The river vanished, leaving the dark grey asphalt of the Mother Road, and the red convertible idling in the center. How else would they take the last journey? They’d motor down the old highway and it would be new again. The route would be exactly as in their memory of all the journeys they’d taken. 

There was Dottie, with her rhinestone sunglasses and ruby lips smiling, a folded map under her arm. “Come on, slowpoke. We’ll put the top down,” she said. 

The ferryman sat in the driver’s seat. Dottie laughed and Bill smiled at the sweet sound of the girl he loved. They climbed into the back seat, and Bill no longer feared the destination. They would travel there together. 

THE END

I hope you liked this tale and be sure to check out the ebooks that will be either free or greatly discounted on July 18!

The Devil Loves a Loser

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

Robbing a casino would be a crazy big start to a criminal career

Photo by Terrye Turpin

Iris scanned the casino, the weight of the gun in her pocket an anchor. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over the clanging slots, wisps of it drifting down. The gamblers stared at the machines, mesmerized like worshipers begging for answers from their gods. Perched on stools in front of the slots, their faces lit by the flashing lights, each pull of the lever was a prayer. Even when the spin hit a payout, and gold tokens clattered out, they never lost that dazed expression, just scooped up their winnings without a sound and fed them back into the machine.

She carried a round gold coin in her left hand. Exactly like the tokens held by every gambler in the casino, one side featured the image of a four-leaf clover. The other side held a horseshoe. Unlike every other casino she’d ever been in, this one used only this chip on every game, not just the slots. No telling how much it was worth. There was no denomination printed on the coin, only the name of the casino—The Elysian.

She resisted the urge to drop the token into one of the slot machines, because she knew one thing for sure – the devil loves a loser. Iris had known this from the time she was a kid in thrift store clothes, stealing food and smokes from the convenience store near the trailer park. Bad luck followed her into the Army, giving her a gift of shrapnel in her back and memories she buried with her dead comrades.

Squeezing past a crowded blackjack table, she spotted Felix, the second man in their group. Tall, and so thin he barely cast a shadow, Felix shifted from foot to foot in a weird dance. Their third member, her boyfriend Chance, should be joining them. Broad-shouldered and solid, people often mistook his size for power, when it was Iris who could deadlift twice her weight.

The building felt impossibly huge, bigger than the outside had suggested. An endless row of slot machines stretched at the back of the casino. And the more she wandered the floor, the more packed it became with people. She could swear she hadn’t seen the front doors open. Where were they coming from?

Felix raised his chin at Iris, then stepped over to the roulette wheel. She made her way to stand on the other side of the table, across from him. They kept an eye on the bulky fellow whom they had determined was the only security detail. The bulge of a gun under his suit jacket gave him away.

 A silver-haired woman dressed in a thin gray cloak brushed past Iris and slid a handful of tokens onto the square marked for black. The wheel spun and dropped the ball onto 18 red. Without pausing, the old woman dumped another pile of gold onto the table. Where had she pulled those from? Granny didn’t look like she had money to spare. Iris shook her head. It wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t there to stop anyone from blowing next month’s rent money. She was there to rob the place. 

They had hatched the plan two weeks ago, when Felix stopped by Iris and Chance’s apartment. Felix had just finished a run through Mexico. He’d driven a semi down to Tijuana, unloaded a trailer filled with hijacked televisions and picked up a different sort of cargo. On his way back to Vegas, he took to the back roads, avoiding weigh stations and troopers. He described the casino as though it were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“I came over a rise and there it was, lit up like Christmas,” he told them. “Nothing else around for miles.”

Iris called out from the kitchen, where she was stacking plates in the dishwasher. “Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating from all that trucker speed?”

Felix laughed. “Oh, hell no. I did wish there’d be something to see besides asphalt and cactus.”

“So, you stopped and checked it out?” Chance asked.

“Sure did. I’ve been looking for a score like this.”

Iris joined them in the living room. As Felix described the casino, she stood behind Chance, where he sat on the couch, and placed her hands on his shoulders.

“This place is old school. The slots are mechanical, and I didn’t see a security camera anywhere. It was past two a.m. and it was packed. Imagine the money going through there.” Felix scratched at a scabbed-over sore on his arm.

“I don’t know.” Chance twisted around to peer at Iris. “Sounds too good to be true.”

Chance stared at her, waiting for her response. He always followed Iris’s lead, waiting for her to make the important decisions. She’d have to weigh this opportunity carefully. Chance and Felix had been friends for years, but unlike Felix, Iris’s boyfriend had never done anything illegal. Robbing a casino would be a crazy big start to a criminal career.

“It might be too good, but it’s also true. Look here.” Felix set a gold token on the coffee table.

Iris walked from behind the couch to pick up the coin. The token was heavy, real metal, golden and warm as though it had absorbed sunlight. How much was it worth? She imagined stacks of these coins and bundles of dollars. Hundreds, thousands, enough money to buy whatever you wanted.

When she had been in the Army, she had dreamed of being stationed somewhere cool and green. Instead, she had temporarily traded the Nevada desert for the sand in Iraq. She learned to dismantle and put back together both rifles and Humvees, and one of those skills got her employed at a fast oil change place. Decent money, but not enough to get her out of the desert.

Holding the token up to the light, she frowned, thinking about how long she would have to work to save enough money to get them out of the shitty little apartment where the rent went up every year and sand blew in through the cracks in the window frames. How many years of dealing with rude customers, smelling the stink of oil and exhaust, digging the grease from under her nails?

“A place like that, it’s bound to have guards, even if it doesn’t have cameras,” Iris said. She dropped the coin into her pocket. “We’d have to get out quickly, have an escape route planned,” Iris said. “We need a fast car.”

Grinning, Felix bounced in his seat. “I can get one.”

“And a gun,” Iris added.

At this, all three quieted until Chance cleared his throat. “We hit it, we’ll be set up for life. Head down to Mexico and live like kings,” he said.

“Okay,” Iris said. But not Mexico, unless it was someplace on the gulf. The beach might be fine—lie there on a towel and sip margaritas and listen to the ocean. “We’re in. There’s one more thing we need, and this is how we do it…” She told them her plan.

On the night of the robbery, Felix arrived in a 2019 Dodge Charger. Iris didn’t question where he got it. It took them two hours to reach the casino, following Felix’s vague directions. Iris rolled down the windows, filling the Dodge with the scent of sage and sunbaked earth. The asphalt road spooled out like a gray ribbon. She had been about to give up and turn around when the glow of neon green lit the horizon.

They circled the building, and Iris noted the back entrance to the casino. She parked next to a 1956 Chevy with a thick layer of dust coating its turquoise paint. All the cars in the lot were covered, as though a sandstorm had blown through. Iris checked the safety on the pistol Felix had given her, then tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.

Gold columns stood on either side of the revolving door at the casino entrance. Iris paused for a breath at the top of the steps leading to the door, while Felix and Chance hung back behind her, waiting. She had the option to turn around, leave, and the guys would follow her. Instead, the door spun open as though inviting them in.

They split up to reconnoiter the space. When they met at the roulette wheel, Chance sidled up next to Iris and spoke in a low voice. “Found the office. It’s at the back, past the blackjack tables.”

“That’s got to be where they store the cash,” Iris said.

She tapped the side of her nose—the signal to start their plan. Felix and Chance set off. They each had a single smoke bomb, and in forty-five seconds they would light them.

Iris weaved through a crush of people. The closer she got to the office, the more bodies crowded in around her. She mumbled excuses as she pushed against unyielding flesh. Not one of them talked, and each had a vacant stare like those in a trance. It was as though these gamblers knew what she intended, and they were determined to stop her. She had to get through. That money was hers.

She was at the start of the hallway leading to the office when she heard Felix yell, “Fire!”

The people in front of her parted, then shuffled forward, away from her. Iris expected screams and confusion. In fact, their plan depended in part on this. In the rush of people escaping the fake fire, Felix and Chance would slip out and meet her with the car at the back. Instead, the only sounds were the continued ringing and whirring of the slot machines. A fog of blue and gray smoke filled the casino and filtered into the hallway.

Iris passed through the crowd. Behind her, they swayed and bumped into each other. A low hum sounded, like an electric motor starting up. She ran toward the office. Just as she reached the door, a gunshot boomed from the casino floor. And at last, someone screamed. Then another shot, another scream.

Iris turned. Should she go back? No. Whatever had happened out there was over. Banging on the metal door, Iris yelled, “Fire!” Whoever was inside ignored her. Maybe no one was there? An alarm sounded, the blare of a claxon horn overpowering all other noise.

Again, she beat on the door. The alarm cut off. She drew the gun, then with her free hand grabbed the handle to the door. It swung open.

Iris stepped across the threshold, and the door shut behind her. Inside was a darkness so thick it felt solid. She reached out a hand, fumbling. Her fingers brushed the edge of a table, and when she swept her hand across it, she knocked loose what she thought must be a stack of the gold chips. They clinked as they struck the floor. She fell to her knees and scooped up as many as she could with one hand, then dropped the pistol so she could pick up more coins. The door opened.

The security guard stood at the opening. He raised his gun, the barrel a giant blank eye staring at her. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it came from a deep well. “Win? Or lose?”

For an answer, Iris grabbed for her gun. The blast from the guard’s gun deafened her. Pain blazed hot through her chest before the world turned cold and black.

She woke outside the casino, on the steps leading up to the revolving door. The guard stood in front of her, and she flinched when he lifted his hand. But this time it was empty. He took her arm and led her through the doorway.

“You chose to lose,” he said in answer to her unspoken question.

She followed him inside, to an empty seat before a slot machine, and dropped her gold token into the machine, pulled the lever, and prayed for paradise.

THE END

Bad Egg

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A West Texas girl makes a memorable trade

Photo by Terrye Turpin

I was talking to my writing group tonight about recording family stories and I remembered this little fiction tale I had posted on Medium. This is one “inspired by true events” told to me by my mother. She did trade the eggs for magazines, but that’s the only part of this story that’s true. The rest is a more colorful tale I’ve filled in. I think she would have approved of the changes.

Bad Egg

Sherry Corker stared at the tilting stack of cardboard boxes lining her mother’s closet. They’d already cleared out the kitchen, boxing dented pans and mismatched glassware to tote off to the Goodwill. Her mother fluttered in the living room, circling the floor and saying her own goodbyes to the home she’d lived in for over forty years. Sherry had finally convinced her mom to move into a retirement community near her home in Dallas.

“What do you think she’s stashed here?” Sherry’s patient husband, Dave, asked.

“No idea. Could be anything from half-filled books of Green Stamps to Dad’s old boxers. Mom never liked to throw stuff out when she thought she might find a use for it later.”

Sherry pulled at the tape holding the topmost box closed. A puff of dust brought on a sneezing fit. When she’d settled down, she lifted the flap of the box and peered inside. “Well. I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Dave craned to see inside the closet.

“Nothing important.” She held out a crinkled and yellowed magazine. “Modern Farm Life. Look at this, she saved every damn one.”

Sherry shook her head, lost in memories of her West Texas childhood. She’d grown up poor, but never really noticed because her close friends were all the same girls in homemade dresses and hand-me-down jeans. They had fathers who never could wash the stink of the oil fields from their clothes and mothers who could stretch a chicken dinner like Jesus feeding the five thousand.

Sherry’s family — mother, father, and her older brother Ed, had it a little better than most. Her mom kept chickens, and they had a garden that kept them in fresh vegetables. But there was little money for extras.

The day the traveling salesman came by, sixteen-year-old Sherry lay in the front yard, sunning on an old quilt and sipping on a glass of strawberry Kool-Aid. The nearest neighbor was more than a mile away, so Sherry felt sure no one would see her loosen the straps of her swimsuit top. She stretched out face down on the quilt, burying her face in the soft cotton and enjoying the warmth of the sun on her bare back. The sweet scent of coconut tanning lotion drifted through the air.

A cloud of dust heralded the stranger’s arrival. He pulled his car to a stop in the dirt drive in front of the house. Dust settled on the Mustang’s body — turning the jet-black paint to a smoky gray.

“Hello there!” The stranger stood next to Sherry’s quilt, his shadow blocking the sun.

Sherry clutched her bikini top and scrunched up a fistful of quilt as she sat up. Blinking, she studied the man. He looked younger than Sherry’s dad, but older than Mr. Bradford, the junior high math teacher Sherry had a crush on. The stranger’s hair was the soft greyish brown of mouse fur. A cowlick stood up at the crown of his head. Yellow sweat stains circled the underarms of his white cotton shirt. He had a leather satchel slung across his shoulder.

“Your folks home?” The man took a toothpick from the pocket of his shirt and turned to study the front of the house before swiveling back to smile at Sherry. He moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

Sherry stood, gathering the quilt in front of her. “My mom’s inside. You can knock on the door I guess.”

She went around the back of the house, and after she’d slipped a large t-shirt on over her bathing suit Sherry crept into the kitchen, where she could hear her mother in the living room, talking to the stranger standing on their front porch.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have it in our budget to spare for magazines.” Sherry’s mother had one hand on the door, and she leaned partway out. The stranger smiled over her mother’s shoulder as Sherry strolled up.

“I understand. These can be hard times for folks. I work on commission, so I know how it is.”

“You’d have better luck in town, I think.” Sherry’s mother moved to close the door. The stranger put a hand on the jamb.

“Town folks aren’t interested in the things we have in here.” He reached into the satchel and drew out a magazine. “Like I mentioned, here’s a whole wealth of information for folks like you, tips to make the most of what you have. You can pay monthly.”

Sherry’s mom took the magazine and flipped through it. The colorful cover pictured a man in a straw hat, riding on a tractor. A tow-headed boy sat on his lap. Her mother stared at the magazine the same way she looked over the dresses she couldn’t afford at Beall’s department store. She thrust the magazine at the salesman. “Can’t do it and that’s that.”

“I’m sorry to see you let down like that,” the man said. “Tell you what, I’ll trade for it.”

“Trade?”

“Whatever you got.” The man’s gaze met Sherry’s. She stepped behind her mother and backed away.

“Eggs?” Sherry’s mother lowered the magazine. “How about a dozen fresh eggs?”

“Deal.” The man nodded to the magazine. “And you can keep that one.”

“Sherry, run and fetch a dozen eggs. There’s carton in the pantry you can use.”

She’d gone a half-dozen steps to the coop when Sherry remembered the box of bad eggs her mom had set aside that morning. They’d throw them out later, but her mom had forgotten them after she’d sorted them and now they waited on the back stoop. Carefully, Sherry placed a dozen of the bad eggs into the carton. He’d never know the difference, not until he got to where he could crack one. By then he’d probably just think they’d gone bad in the heat.

When Sherry got back to the living room, her mother sat in a recliner, flipping through the magazine. The salesman was nowhere in sight.

“Take those eggs out to the man.” Her mother waved Sherry out the front door.

Outside, the stranger leaned against the front fender of his Mustang. Sherry held the eggs out to him. He took the carton and tossed it into the front seat of the car, then closed the door.

“You smoke?” He offered a cigarette to her, then laughed and stuck it in his mouth. “Just kidding. How old are you anyway?” Striking a match, the stranger cupped his hands against the wind and lit his cigarette.

“I’m old enough, I guess.” Sherry tugged at the hem of her t-shirt, pulling it down to the tops of her thighs. She shivered, both thrilled and frightened at her boldness.

The salesman stared at the house, then motioned Sherry closer. “Old enough, but I bet you never been kissed.”

The man’s lips tasted like ash. His breath stank of onions. When he tried to thrust his tongue into her mouth, Sherry twisted away and wiped his spit from her chin while he laughed at her. She stood in the yard while he drove off, the Mustang growing smaller and smaller until all that was left was a puff of dust on the horizon. She grinned, thinking of when he’d crack the first of those rotten eggs.

The first magazine arrived the next month, and every month after that, for almost twenty years.

THE END

Curtain Call

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

He wanted a friend who loved horror movies

Photo by Terrye Turpin edited with the Waterlogue app

The way it started, I just wanted someone to like me. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to be more than that weird kid who lived with his grandmother above an abandoned movie theater. When people looked at me, they saw a scrawny boy with shaggy brown hair whose pants didn’t cover his ankles. I’d had a growth spurt after my thirteenth birthday, and my grandmother’s clothing budget hadn’t caught up.

I don’t remember my mother. She dropped me and a load of dirty laundry at her parents’ house when I was three and she never came back. Not a bad deal for me, though. Better to have lived with Pappa and Babba in a tiny loft apartment than with a woman who thought as little of me as she did her stained towels and ripped jeans.

The movie theater was one of those old-fashioned ones, with a velvet curtain hiding the screen mounted above a real stage. It had last shown a movie back in the 1980s. For a while, when Pappa was alive, we’d rented the place out to an evangelical church. Babba tired of being woken on Sunday mornings with choruses of Onward Christian Soldier. The congregation moved on, but they left their out of tune piano.

Now, dusty cardboard boxes covered the wooden stage. Most of the folding seats had torn upholstery, with stuffing spilling out like dirty clouds. Spots of mold dotted the threadbare velvet curtain and the place stunk like something old and damp, dredged up from the bottom of a dark lake. I didn’t mind the smell, though. Days, I’d turn on the faint lights high in the ceiling and prop open the door to the alley behind the theater so I could curl up with a book among the stacks of boxes on the stage. And if I heard scrabbling, shuffling sounds from the auditorium, I’d tell myself it was just rats. Without Pappa, I didn’t like to go in there at night.

“You shouldn’t spend so much time in that place,” Babba scolded. “Go out and find friends.”

“It’s quiet there. And I have all the friends I want.” This wasn’t true. Not the quiet part, and not the friends part. Once, there had been a boy in our neighborhood — Jason Binks was his name. We were in the same class in first and second grade. Jason and I would play fort on the wooden stage, and the theater would fill with shouts and laughter. But he went away and after that, no one wanted to play with me.

When I was little, Pappa would let me sit beside him in the projection room. He had stacks of metal film canisters, old horror movies from the 1950s, the 1960s, and into the 1970s. The room would fill with the stink of hot celluloid as the movie flickered across the screen below, playing to an empty auditorium. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the zombies in Mr. Romero’s flicks — we’d watch them over and over, until the characters felt as real to me as my flesh and blood Babba and Pappa.

No more movies after Pappa died, and I had given up on friends. Then, Cassidy Pearson came up to me during lunch one day.

“You’re that guy who lives in the old theater?” Cassidy glanced over her shoulder, at the table she’d left, crowded with teenage girls. They covered their mouths to hide laughter and stared at us. I tried to ignore them.

“No,” I answered. When she scowled at me, I added, “we live above it, not in it. In an apartment.” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, hoping she hadn’t seen the spot of mayonnaise from my sandwich. The sun behind her lit up Cassidy’s hair like a blond halo. Pretty Cassidy, the star of our junior high school drama department. I bet she dreamed of being a movie star.

“I’d like to see it sometime,” she said.

“Okay.”

Cassidy spun and stalked back to her table. This time her friends didn’t bother hiding their smirking faces. It had to have been some kind of dare, her coming over to talk to me. But I didn’t care, even though it wouldn’t turn out like in the movies, the ones where the good-looking guy takes out the ugly duckling girl as a joke but then it turns into true love.

When I got off the school bus that afternoon, Cassidy was waiting for me. I spotted her, leaning against the brick at the boarded-up entrance to the movie theater. My foot caught on the last step at the bus exit, and I stumbled toward her.

“Hey,” Cassidy said. She gestured toward the faded poster framed next to what had once been the box office. “Is this the current feature?”

I studied the poster — it was from a 1980s slasher flick, one of the B movie reels Pappa and I had watched a couple of times. The image featured a cloaked figure standing over a barely clothed woman. Most of the ink had faded in the sun, but I could still make out the shiny silver of the bad guy’s knife.

“I’m kidding.” Cassidy laughed. “Can we go inside?”

For a second, I thought she might reach to take my arm, but she stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets, and followed me to the alley behind the theater.

“We can’t go in that way,” I said, nodding toward the front. I took out my key to the padlocked chain wrapped on the rear door to the auditorium.

Inside, I flipped on the overhead light and led Cassidy to the stage steps. Our footsteps echoed in the open space, the boards creaking under our feet. This was the best view of the place.

“Cool.” Cassidy spun, taking in the stacks of boxes blocking the screen. “Is it true? This place is haunted?”

“Who told you that?” My voice was sharper than I’d intended.

Cassidy shrugged. “It’s what everyone says.”

I jumped off the stage. “You should go.”

“I’m sorry.” Cassidy followed me, and this time she did grab my arm. I stared at her hand, her long, pale fingers. “Do you ever watch movies in here? I bet it would be really neat, to have the whole place to yourself,” she said.

My shoulders loosened and I nodded. “Let me show you something.”

Together we climbed the stairs to the projection room, where Pappa had stored the canisters with the old movie reels. One by one, I held them out to Cassidy, reading off the titles from each container.

“These are so cool! I bet they’re worth a fortune.” She brushed dust from the projector. “Does this still work?”

When I nodded yes, Cassidy asked if we could watch one of the movies. “Not now,” I answered. I thought of Babba upstairs, waiting for me to come home from school. If I lingered too much longer, she might come downstairs to look for me. “Come back tonight,” I said. “Around midnight.”

After Cassidy left, I went upstairs to check in with my grandmother. I told her I had homework and I’d study in the theater, where it was quiet. I spent an hour pushing the ratty cardboard boxes to the side of the stage, in order to clear the screen. Which movie would I pick for Cassidy?

I worried Babba might not go to sleep early, like she usually did, but she kissed me goodnight right after she watched her news program. I tiptoed back downstairs, to the theater.

Right at midnight a tap sounded on the alleyway door, just like I’d told Cassidy to do. I rushed to open it. I led her inside.

“It’s really dark in here,” she said. “Can you turn on some lights?”

“You can’t have a movie with the lights on.” I took her hand. “Come here, let me show you something.”

We shuffled to the stage steps, and I guided her to the center of the stage. Darkness cloaked the theater, hiding the forms shifting like smoke in the torn seats. I heard them, though — tiny scratching noises and creaks from the chairs. The audience settling in. In a little window high on the wall above the last row of seats I could just make out the round lens of the projector, like a blank eye.

“Do I smell popcorn?” Cassidy asked.

The air filled with the aroma of that stale oil that the concession stands passed off as butter. “Sometimes it stinks in here. There’s probably old popcorn still under some of the seats.” I hopped off the stage. “Wait here. I have to set up the projector. I’ll be right back.”

“Shouldn’t I sit down?” Cassidy motioned to the first row of seats.

“Not yet. Stay on the stage, you’ll see, it’s really cool.”

In the projection booth I flipped the switch to start the movie reel winding through the projector. I rushed back downstairs. Cassidy waited on the stage.

I stood at the front of the stage, with my back to the audience as the film flashed across the screen, and across Cassidy as she stood in the path of the images. I should have asked her to wear white.

“Oh! This is neat! It’s like I’m in the movie.” Cassidy turned sideways to watch the scene behind her — three teen-age girls strolling down a tree-lined street. “Which one is this?”

I didn’t say anything. I hoped she’d recognize it when the music started. A low growl sounded behind me, followed by a moan like someone in pain. Cassidy spun around to face me.

“What…?” She backed up against the screen, her mouth a round “O” of shock.

I turned to see them — my true friends. Werewolves, vampires, zombies — all the old creatures preserved on celluloid and made solid with a sacrifice. They surged toward the stage, all claws and fangs and blunt, dead eyes. As the last of them climbed past me and onto the stage, Cassidy screamed and tried to fight them off.

I sank into a seat on the front row, my Pappa on my left and my old friend Jason Binks on my right. Neither one looked especially well- their clothes were matted with graveyard dirt and most of Jason’s flesh had been stripped from his skull. He hadn’t been preserved by a funeral home like Pappa had.

Cassidy died with a gurgle, her blood splashing red on the screen. As she lay there on the stage the film continued to run and my friends returned to their seats, to watch the movie play out across Cassidy’s still form. Her last performance, everyone agreed, had truly been her best.

THE END

The Dead Man’s Switch

~ mstturpin ~ 1 Comment

A short story

Photo by Terrye Turpin

He opened his eyes to a world gone red. Somewhere nearby a woman sobbed, her keening cries almost drowned out by the chug and clack of a locomotive. The man, forty-two-year-old Roy Ellis, sat up and wiped the blood from his face. Gingerly, he probed the wound on his scalp. A painful lump swelled at his right temple.

Gripping the edge of the seat above him, he pulled himself up, boot heels scraping against the wooden floor. Once he stood, he found a battered and sweat stained cowboy hat on the seat. He straightened it as best he could and put it on before peering out the rail car window at the barren landscape flashing past. Clumps of green sage dotted the pale tan sand. The blue-gray outline of a mountain range spread across the horizon. He was on a train, that much was clear, but what was happening? How did he get here? If he was a passenger, he must have a ticket. He reached into his coat pocket.

Instead of the folded paper of a rail ticket, his fingers brushed something cold and hard. He lifted the object — a gold star with the words Deputy Sheriff engraved on the front. His hand flew to the empty holster at his hip. The acrid sulfur stink of gunpowder hung in the air, blending with the black coal smoke from the locomotive. The open door at the end of the carriage banged against the frame. Roy clutched the back of the seat and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass before he stumbled toward the opening. He dropped the badge into his coat.

The first dead man was behind the last seat. He wore a soldier’s khaki uniform. Watery blue eyes stared with a slack, empty gaze. A black-rimmed hole was centered on the young man’s forehead. A red trail of blood, slender as a crimson ribbon, leaked from the corpse’s nose. Roy rolled the body on its side, searching for a weapon. Nothing. He released it to flop against the floor.

The next unit, a passenger car, held a second victim. This one wore the navy blue of a railroad worker and lay sprawled across the aisle. The sobbing woman sat in the last seat on the right. A bruise bloomed on her cheek. She clutched a cloth to her face and when she noticed Roy, her sobs quieted to gasps, as though she couldn’t draw her breath. Across the aisle from her, a man in a black suit and a dandy bowler hat held one arm wrapped around a small boy. The man’s feet rested on a canvas duffle, half-shoved under the seat.

“What happened here?” Roy held onto the seat back to brace himself against the swaying train. He gestured to the body behind him.

“What the hell? That’s a poor joke.” The child squirmed in the man’s lap and reached toward the woman. The man hugged him close and whispered, “Now there.”

Roy gestured to his wound. “I came to just now. Can’t remember jack shit. Someone hit me a good one.”

The man squinted at Roy, then relaxed. “Train robbers. They blew the safe, then jumped off.”

“How’d they get on?” Roy glanced out the window at the desert flowing past.

“Stopped the train outside Tucson. Train started rolling after the explosion. Then this happened.” The man lifted his right hand to reveal a pistol and gestured with it to the body on the floor. The suit coat fell open and Roy saw a ragged, bloody hole in the man’s white shirt.

“You’re injured.” Roy stepped forward, but the man waved him away.

“It’s nothing.” He dropped the pistol to his side. “You see anyone up there? They were gonna check on the engineer, see what’s going on.”

Roy shook his head. “You stay here. I’ll go.” Later, he’d have to deal with the black-suited man.

He made his way to the front of the train, across the gangway and through the car he’d woken up in, and out to the entrance to the tender, where the water and coal were stored. A narrow corridor led through the storage area. Roy had to turn sideways to fit his bulk through the space.

A body blocked the cab. The dead man lay face down, a puddle of blood pooled around his body. A black Stetson rested on his head, hiding his features. His outstretched hand lay across the stock of a shotgun. Roy stepped over the corpse to gaze through the shattered glass on the cab door window. A second body lay face up in front of the firebox. His closed eyes made Roy think he was asleep, but a dark red rose of a wound covered the man’s chest. Behind him, the dull orange glow of dying coals lit the cab.

A third man, the engineer, slumped over the controls. His hand clutched the lever that, when released, would cut the throttle and slow the train. Not just a lever — Roy remembered the name they called it — the Dead Man’s Switch. So called because you had to be alive to press down the lever. It was a failsafe. In case of an accident, the engineer just had to let go.

“Hey!” Roy called through the window. He tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Stretching as far as his arm would fit, he fumbled for the latch. The small window did not allow him to reach far enough downward. They had wedged something against the lock, through the door’s inner handle. His fingertips brushed against wood and he recognized the familiar shape of an ax handle.

The train rocked through a curve, and the engineer’s body shifted. His head turned toward Roy, as though about to reply. There would be no answer from this man — the lower part of his jaw hung loose, bits of white teeth and bloody gore dotted the front of his uniform shirt. Dead, but still his hand kept its grip on the switch.

“Jesus!” Roy backed away from the door. His boot heel caught on the forgotten corpse behind him, and he fell, hard.

He kicked at the dead man, imagining the cold hands grasping at his ankles. Roy sucked in a breath as his sight went dark. A sharp stab of pain pierced his temple. When he could see again, he stood up. Things were coming back to him now. This was the train from Tucson to Tucumcari. He’d got on… he couldn’t recall boarding. It floated in his mind like the memory of a dream, wrapped around the stink of sulfur and burning coal. Roy bent and picked up the hat from the body, uncovering his face.

“Jacob.” Roy dropped the hat. He knew this man. His hand sought the gold star he’d found earlier. Was this another deputy? Had they worked together? He shivered and thought of the old wives’ tale — someone just walked across his grave.

“What did you find?”

The voice behind him startled Roy, and he spun to face the intruder. The man in the black suit leaned against the opening to the tender. One hand gripped his bloody side, the other held the pistol, pointed down. The tan canvas satchel was slung across one shoulder, the words US Army stenciled on the side.

“We need to stop the train.” Roy nodded to the cab. “Engineer and fireman are dead. The engineer is stuck on the throttle.”

Sweat dotted the man’s forehead and upper lip and his face was pale as curdled milk. “Won’t it run out of fuel? We can just wait.”

Roy shook his head, thinking of the firebox, almost empty of coal, and the dead man driving the train. Despite the lack of fuel, the train rushed on. Would probably keep traveling until it ran out of rail, crashed, or entered the gates of hell. “There’s a curve, right before we reach El Paso. We’ll never make it past if we don’t slow down. Train will jump off the rails and crash.”

“Break down that door!”

“And how would you do that? Can’t shoot it — it’s solid steel. You’d end up shooting us both before you did enough damage to get the door open.”

“There must be something we could use. An ax or a shovel?”

Roy touched his temple. He figured he’d already been acquainted with the ax, and the coal shovel was locked inside with the dead. They’d join them soon, once the train reached that curve. Hell, they might already be dead. Except he thought then of the woman and her child. There were at least two people left worth saving.

“We can uncouple the passenger car.” Roy pushed past the man. He followed behind, protesting.

“How do you know that will work? It’s too dangerous.”

“You go across. I’ll stand on this side and you stand on the other. Together, we’ll pull the release. I’ll jump once it’s loose. Car will slow when the engine isn’t pulling it.”

They reached the car where the woman and child waited. “Ma’am. We’re going to let this car loose from the train. It should slow down and stop, but you need to hold tight and stay put until it does.” The woman stared blankly at him. She clasped her boy to her side. “Do you understand?” When she nodded, Roy added in a soft voice, “I’m sorry for all this.”

Outside the car, the wind from the train’s passing whipped Roy’s hat from his head. It disappeared under the wheels of the locomotive. Across from him, the black-suited man still held onto the gun and the tan duffle.

“You’ll get a better grip if you put that away.” Roy gestured to the gun. “And leave that sack inside.”

The man slipped the gun into the holster at his side. He shook his head, though, at leaving the bag. “I’ll keep this right here.” He set the sack at his feet.

Roy wrapped his hands around the lever that would release the pin holding the car’s connector. “Grab hold from your side and pull.” When the man bent and grasped the bar, Roy asked, “Would you die for that money, Bill?”

The man, Bill, jumped up and bared his teeth. “So. You remember?”

“All of it.”

Bill stumbled back and drew his pistol. “I’d die with it if I stay on this train. But that ain’t going to happen. You pull that lever.”

“And if I don’t?”

Bill nodded toward the train car behind him. “You’d let them die too?” He turned the gun on Roy.

For an answer, Roy bent and pulled on the bar. It lifted an inch, then two. Coal smoke stung his eyes and blurred his sight. Rust flaked off and tore his bare hands. The metal squealed as they hoisted the bar. Roy dropped his hands. “I can’t do it by myself. You need to pull from that side, too.”

A minute passed while the train chugged forward. How close were they to the curve? Finally, Bill dropped the gun and grabbed hold of the bar. Together, they heaved it upward. The pin rose. Just as it popped loose, Roy grabbed the Army duffle and yanked it across the gap.

“Hey!” Bill snatched at open air. His mouth round with shock, he stumbled to his feet. The space between the cars widened as the train pulled away. “Toss that back over!” He drew his gun and fired, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Bill leaped toward Roy.

If he had made the jump as soon as Roy grabbed the money, he might have made it. Instead, he missed the platform at the end of the car by a foot. The steel wheels made quick work of him. Without time for even a gasp, they sucked him under.

Roy heaved the sack from his car and into the slowing carriage. It was too late for him to make the jump, but he’d not go to hell with the money on his conscience. They’d planned the robbery together — him, Bill, and Jacob. No one would suspect a deputy sheriff, so Roy had figured he’d at least get away with his share of the Army’s payroll. The train had stopped for the wagon they’d abandoned on the tracks. After that, his memory grew hazy again. It didn’t matter. He’d been responsible for all the death on the train, even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself.

The locomotive thundered down the rails, intent on its destination. The last train he’d ride. Back in his seat, Roy pulled the gold star from his pocket and pinned it to his coat.

THE END

Hitcher

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A horror short story

Photo by Terrye Turpin edited with the Waterlogue app

This story is one I wrote for a writing class. It lingered on my computer for awhile before I posted it on Reedsy and then on Medium. I never submitted it anywhere else since it had already been published that left it out of most literary magazines. If I had it to do over I’d hold it and try to get it published somewhere. Hopefully someplace that paid a little.

The piece got a whole seven views on Reedsy. It topped out at 37 views on Medium. I like the story, and I think it deserves at least another couple of views. It is a horror story and I’ll include a trigger warning for child endangerment.

Hitcher

They picked up the hitchhiker outside Salado, Texas. Twelve-year-old Kenny, his head hanging out the window like a dog’s, was the first to spot the blind man. He stood on the gravel embankment at the edge of the highway, nothing around him — no gas stations, no fast-food places, no buildings — just the flat expanse of fields dotted with scraggly trees. The last rest area had been three miles back, on the other side of the interstate.

“A hitchhiker!” Kenny whooped, delighted by the unexpected vision, as if he’d spotted a flying saucer. “I think he’s blind,” Kenny added as the car zipped past the man. The hitchhiker held a white cane and thick-framed dark glasses covered his eyes.

Kenny’s father braked at the next exit and circled back. “We can’t leave him on the side of the road,” he said. “Not in this heat.”

The air conditioning in their rented Buick had died with a rattle the day before, ten miles west of Oklahoma City. Kenny’s father made a wrong turn somehow, and they were halfway to Amarillo before he swung the car around. He searched for someone else to blame, and when no one came forward, he blamed the car’s GPS, even though he’d refused to follow the directions spewed out by the Buick’s electronic voice.

In the front seat, Kenny’s mother held a can of cola, dripping with ice water from the cooler, against her forehead. Her breath smelled of mints and menthol from the cigarette she’d sneaked behind the motel that morning. “That man might be a serial killer.”

“Cool.” Kenny squirmed in his seat, struggling to locate the hitchhiker again as his father sped down the interstate.

“He might be a veteran,” Kenny’s father muttered through clenched teeth.

He had never served, but Kenny’s dad had a soft spot for the armed forces. He teared up at the ballpark when they played the National Anthem and claimed his “biggest regret” that he’d never enlisted. Kenny thought it a strange thing to regret — missing the opportunity to be shot by strangers in a foreign land.

“Are you crazy?” Kenny’s mother grabbed his father’s arm when he stopped the car and backed up toward the man waiting on the side of the road. “We’ll wind up dead, chopped to bits along I-35.”

“How many blind serial killers do you know? Hot as it is, he might die out there. You need that on your conscience?” Kenny’s father left the car and approached the hitchhiker.

Kenny, watching his dad talking to the man, commented, “He doesn’t look like a soldier.” The blind man wore torn, dirty jeans and a faded t-shirt with a beer company logo. “How would a blind guy shoot a gun?” Kenny wondered.

“Christ on the cross, Kenny, maybe he wasn’t always blind.” Kenny’s mother leaned her head out the window, then popped back inside with a huff. “There goes your father, playing the hero.”

Kenny’s father held the hitchhiker’s arm and led him toward the Buick. The blind man tapped the ground with his white cane. Bare patches dotted his clipped brown hair. Maybe his barber had also been blind.

“Scoot over, Kenny.” For a moment, as the blind man stooped to climb into the car, Kenny met his own face mirrored in the lenses of the hitchhiker’s glasses.

Grumbling, Kenny scooped up his backpack and slid toward the driver’s side window, his bare legs sticking to the vinyl seat. His father helped the blind man buckle his seatbelt before he sauntered around the car to the driver’s side door. He gave Kenny’s mother a little smirk when he passed her.

“I appreciate the ride,” the blind man said. “It sure was getting hot out there. My name’s Martin. Martin Colson.”

“I’m Roger. My wife, Doris.” Kenny’s father waved a hand toward Kenny’s mother, then looked into the rearview mirror as he continued, “and that’s our boy, Kenny.”

“A pleasure,” the blind man, Martin, said.

“We’re only going to San Antonio,” Kenny’s mother said. “To visit my mother.”

“San Antonio. I haven’t been there in years. Time to go back, I reckon.”

Kenny’s mother stared straight ahead through the windshield. If she stared holes through the blind man, he wouldn’t know. The blind man, Martin, twisted his face, as though searching for something. Kenny wondered what his eyes looked like under the glasses. Were they blank as stones? The man kept his cane between his legs and rested his palms on the top. The backs of his hands were covered with scabbed over scratches. He stank of stale sweat and something else — raw hamburger right before the meat turned bad.

As the car pulled out onto the highway, Kenny leaned into the oven-hot rush of air streaming in the car window. In the front seat, Kenny’s mother crossed her arms on her chest and closed her eyes. The Saint Christopher medal she had draped from the rear-view mirror swung back and forth on a silver chain. “You should call the rental place again,” she said to Kenny’s father.

“We’ll trade it in at the office in San Antonio. They had nothing this size in Dallas.”

“Hard to believe.” Kenny’s mother peered at the windshield, addressing the flat landscape rushing by outside.

“I’m not putting my family in some piece of crap foreign car.” Kenny’s father tapped the car’s digital screen, tuning the radio to a country station.

Kenny figured the rental agency offered to refund his father’s money, and now he planned to get all the free mileage he could from the car.

Ahead of the car, the road flowed into the horizon. Heat waves shimmered across the asphalt, creating an endless mirage of standing water, sparkling puddles that disappeared, then reappeared as the car traveled down the highway.

As they crossed through Austin, a sudden rain shower forced them to roll up the windows. Humidity fogged the window glass until beads of water gathered on the inside. The blind man, Martin, rested his hand, palm up, on the seat next to Kenny. A black fly spiraled down and landed on Martin’s hand. The fly twitched, about to take flight, when Martin snapped his fist closed. His fingers drooped open, and he wiped the crushed fly against the leg of his pants.

They arrived in San Antonio two hours before their check-in time at the hotel. As they pulled off the interstate, Kenny’s father called the car rental agency and discovered they would have a replacement ready after five that evening.

“I can’t stay in this car another minute,” Kenny’s mother said.

“Okay. We’ll stick to the plan, go to the aquarium.” Kenny’s father glanced at the blind man in the back seat. “Can we drop you there? Or, I could pull over at the next exit.”

Martin shrugged. “The aquarium will work. I don’t want to be a bother.”

Kenny’s mother swiveled in her seat. She studied Martin for a moment, then asked, “Why don’t you join us?” She glanced at Kenny’s father. He shrugged.

Inside the aquarium, the family split off in different directions. Kenny’s parents lingered to read the lengthy descriptions posted at each exhibit. Martin shuffled beside Kenny. Occasionally, the blind man asked Kenny to describe what he saw.

“There’re all kinds of fish. Different colors.” How to explain colors to someone who’d never seen the blue of the ocean?

They passed a large tank with white sand at the bottom. Sharks drifted past, their eyes flat and cold behind the glass. Kenny stopped before the tank, leaning forward to study the predators. Martin halted behind him. Their image, displayed in the shark tank, made it appear that they floated in the water while the sharks swam around them.

As they strolled away, a chattering toddler crashed into Martin. He laughed while the child’s mother scooped her up. The mother apologized, but Kenny noticed she wrinkled her nose at the blind man, frowning as she backed away. Kenny considered how Martin must appear to them, outsiders. His worn clothing, his body odor, his patchy haircut. Instead of being embarrassed by Martin, Kenny felt noble, like he had accomplished some great good deed.

“Hey!” Kenny paused at the entrance to another hallway. “You want to feed the stingrays?” This would be something even the blind could experience.

“If you want to, yes.” Martin said.

They purchased tokens to exchange for small fish to offer to the rays. Martin drew out his wallet at the counter and thumbed through the bills.

“How do you know how much to give them?” Kenny asked.

“They’re folded differently, see.” Martin eased a twenty halfway out of the billfold and held the wallet out to Kenny.

The leather of the wallet was warm and shaped to the curve of Martin’s body. Kenny touched the money, tugging gently at the bill. He looked up at his face reflected in the blind man’s glasses and eased the twenty from the wallet. Would he notice the loss of his money? Kenny palmed the bill, stuffing it into his pocket.

The stingrays swam in a large open pool, a little larger than the wading pool Kenny had in his backyard when he was younger. While they waited their turn, they trailed their hands in the warm salt water. The stingrays drifted by, rubbing against Kenny’s palm like cats.

One of the aquarium staff explained how to hold the tiny fish they would feed to the stingrays. “Like you’re holding an ice cream cone,” she said.

Kenny wrapped his hand around Martin’s, holding the bait, and guided Martin’s fist toward the tank. Together, they lowered their hands into the warm water. The stingrays swooped over and sucked the fish from Kenny’s hand. How odd, this sudden, sandpaper rough brush against his fist. Kenny grinned. “It tickles,” he said. He shivered, imagining what it might be like if the rays had sharp teeth.

“Yes, it does.” Martin smiled, and lowered another fish morsel.

Kenny closed his eyes as he dipped his hand back into the water. He listened to the splash and slap of the stingrays as they rushed to devour the food.

Afterwards, Martin asked Kenny, “How about a bathroom stop?”

They were alone in the restroom. Kenny stopped at the urinal, one hand on the zipper of his shorts, when he noticed Martin, paused in the middle of the room. The blind man turned his head.

“There’s a stall in front of you, about four steps,” Kenny said. His voice echoed in the space.

“This way?” Martin pointed toward the wall on the east side of the restroom.

“No, here.” Kenny stepped over and took Martin’s arm. He led the blind man to the large stall on the end and pushed open the door. When Kenny moved to step away, Martin clutched his shoulder and pulled him close.

“You aren’t such a good boy, are you?” Martin whispered. Wet flecks of spit landed on the side of Kenny’s face.

Kenny pulled against Martin’s grip, grabbing the door to the stall, but the blind man held on, crushing Kenny’s fingers and dragging him forward.

“You’re hurting me,” Kenny said. He thought he should cry out, but he hesitated, confused. Was this about the money? Did Martin know about the stolen twenty? “I didn’t mean it. I’ll give it back,” Kenny said. He let go of the door and reached toward his pocket.

With his free hand, Martin gripped Kenny’s bicep, his fingers pinching into the flesh. The white cane, held to the blind man’s wrist with a plastic strap, banged against the metal door of the stall.

“Let go!” Kenny struggled. He dropped the money. The bill fluttered to the floor and landed in a puddle of liquid.

Martin bent toward him. His mouth opened, impossibly wide, as though he were unhinging his jaw. Gray fillings capped several of his teeth. The blind man dropped Kenny’s hand and brushed his palm across the crotch of Kenny’s shorts.

At the touch, Kenny thought of the stingray mouthing the fish from his hand. Bitter bile rose at the back of his throat. “No!” Kenny shouted, his voice echoing in the tiled room.

Now Martin clutched Kenny’s arm with both hands. He bent toward the bare skin as though to kiss it, then clamped his teeth on Kenny’s bicep.

Enormous pain, like a brilliant flash of light, enveloped Kenny. He struggled to draw breath to scream. Martin turned his head from side to side, grinding his teeth into Kenny’s flesh. Everything fell away until only the agony remained and Kenny felt if he did not escape, Martin would devour him. He stomped on the blind man’s foot and punched Martin’s ear.

“Ah!” Martin released him.

Kenny twisted away as Martin stumbled backwards, his feet sliding in the puddle between them. The cane slipped from the blind man’s wrist, tangling in his legs. Kenny shoved him. Martin slipped, his head knocking against the toilet. The blind man’s dark glasses clattered onto the tile floor. His eyes, revealed at last, were a cloudy blue, blank and cold. Martin reached out, his fingers groping for Kenny’s leg.

Kenny backed out of the stall, then stooped and grabbed up the twenty. He turned and ran.

Kenny banged out of the restroom. As he ran through the door, he almost knocked down an elderly man standing just outside. The man gave him a scolding look, and Kenny slowed.

Back in the main hallway of the aquarium, Kenny pushed up the sleeve of his t-shirt and studied the mark on his arm. His skin, a vivid red, held a perfect oval of teeth-marks that were already beginning to purple. He pulled his shirt sleeve down to cover the injury and brushed at the tears that fogged his vision.

When he passed the souvenir shop near the entrance, Kenny paused. Stuffed sharks, rubber fish in a rainbow of colors — children’s toys lined the shelves. A display of sunglasses stared out at him, row after row of black lenses. His hand went to his pocket to clutch the twenty-dollar bill he’d stolen from Martin’s wallet.

As he left the shop, Kenny slid the sunglasses he’d bought onto his face. The world became a place of shadows. He moved through the hallways, unseen, a shark gliding past in search of his prey.

THE END

All the Beautiful Girls

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A short story

Photo by the author

The story I’m sharing tonight is one I submitted to an NYC Midnight Contest. I don’t remember the prompts or the word count length. I revised it and then submitted it to a contest on the Vocal website. It didn’t win anything there either.

I removed it from the Vocal website when I cancelled my membership there and held onto the piece, thinking I’d include it in another book of short stories one day. Since then I’ve started working on a novel and the short stories have been put on hold.

Writing a novel is a long slog compared to churning out short fiction. The reward, I think, comes when you finally finish the thing and can put “THE END” to the last page. Completing a short story, the reward comes much faster. I did, however, received a boost in motivation last month when I entered the Novel Beginnings contest held by the ProWritingAid software app. My first 5,000 words was selected for the long list of 183 writers out of over 14,000 entries. I didn’t make the next round, the short list, but I’ll rest on that first win as it has inspired me to keep going and keep writing until I reach that last page of my novel. For now, I hope you enjoy this short story, but be warned – it’s horror and a bit dark.

All the Beautiful Girls

The first girl disappeared on a cold fall evening. Wet, gray leaves cloaked the ground, robbed of their color by the low-lying fog. Claire Avery knew the missing woman, not by sight, but by reputation. The sort of blonde, fizzy girl whose smiling photo had graced the pages of her high school yearbook. Claire would never be that girl. Her jaw was too sharp, her teeth too crooked, her nose too large—no one ever sought her out. The university put up notices, warnings to the students—do not walk alone at night, do not let anyone follow you into the dorms.

The school, a small midwestern college, had only recently begun admitting male students. After the second missing girl, those few young men scurried across campus with downcast eyes, as though the fact of their gender showed their guilt.

Claire’s roommate, a timid student majoring in music history, fled from the school and returned to her hometown. She left behind a wooden cross nailed to the wall. Left to herself, Claire filled the room with empty food containers, discarded notebook papers, and stacks of textbooks. She pushed her dirty laundry under the empty bed, where it filled the space with the stink of acetone and alcohol from her chemistry labs.

The morning after the second disappearance, Claire was showering in the communal bathroom when she heard one of the resident advisors call out, “Man on the floor!” Claire snatched her robe and towel and twisted the handle to cut off the water. The pipes clanged a protest as she hurried into the hall.

One of the maintenance workers, a tall man with long arms that reached almost to his knees, passed by her. Jerry. He had helped Claire carry supplies to and from the chemistry lab. They’d chatted about movies and a mutual interest in old black and white films. More conversation than she had ever had with her fellow students. He strolled past, his flat gray eyes focused down the hall, not seeing her. He held a heavy wrench in one fist. The tool bag around his waist clinked with each step.

A week passed with no sign of the missing women. Were they resting in some weed-filled field, discarded like litter? Campus security tacked up flyers with photos of the girls. At first glance, they appeared to be the same person, so alike they could be twins. People left flowers, candles, toys under each poster—offerings at an altar. More gifts than Claire had ever been given. She stole a tiny purple unicorn from the pile. The dead did not need presents.

November blew in with frost and the hint of snow. While most of her dorm mates left for home and Thanksgiving food, Claire opted to stay at the university. She and a graduate student, a woman whose eyes were always red and swollen with allergies, would be the only people in the dorm. The grad student warned her, “They’re going to do some plumbing repairs this week. We’ll have to shut off the water.”

“No problem,” Claire assured her. Lately, she hadn’t the energy to bathe. Her hair hung in greasy strands. She dressed in layers to hide the stink of her unwashed body.

Monday of Thanksgiving week, Claire woke to a rhythmic, pounding thud. It came from the basement, as though the building had gained a heartbeat. The door to the cellar stairs, usually locked and bolted, stood open. She clung to the rail and made her way down the steps.

Dust, carried on the moist heat from the boilers, wafted up to greet her. The flickering fluorescent light revealed a shirtless man in the center of the basement floor. Sweat streaked his back. He raised a massive sledge hammer and slammed it down on the concrete. The blow echoed in the space. Claire felt it travel up the soles of her feet, shuddering across her legs and thighs. 

As though he felt her watching, the man turned. Safety glasses covered his eyes, making his face resemble some alien creature. It was Jerry. Claire lifted her hand, about to wave. “What are you doing here? Get out!” He waved a gloved hand, shooing her away.

“I’m sorry.” Claire backed away, stung that he hadn’t recognized her. She swiped at her eyes and rushed back up the stairs to her room.  

“Slab leak,” the grad student explained later. “He’ll fix it, then pour new cement. Water should be off about an hour tonight.”

That night, Claire wandered the dim hallway. Barefoot, she descended the stairs to the basement and shone a flashlight across the broken floor. Dirt and broken concrete lay piled in one corner. A hole in the center revealed a crisscross of copper pipes. The gap in the earth below them was as deep as a grave.

Back in her room, Claire watched from the window as Jerry hauled bundles wrapped in black plastic across the lawn and through the side entrance. She imagined him bent under the burden as he descended the basement stairs. Bags of concrete, or something else?

Hours later, when Claire figured the job was done, she went downstairs. He’d left the basement door padlocked, but when Claire tugged at the rusty lock, it sprang open. She lit her way into the basement with the light from her phone, then clicked on the dim fluorescent fixtures.

The overhead lights revealed the slick wet surface of new concrete, a sheen of water shining on top. Claire knelt next to the dark gray square. She breathed in the sweet, musty odor of the cement. Another smell lurked underneath, rotten and foul. Leaning forward, Claire pressed her hand into the soft mass. She put her weight full on her palm, leaving a deep imprint on the cement.

A shadow fell across the stairway. Claire’s breath caught in her throat. Steps thumped across the wood. She scrambled back until the cold cinderblock wall pressed against her. The shadow crept forward until finally, he stood revealed. Jerry. He must have seen the glow from the basement lights. A glint of silver flashed at his side. A knife.

Claire held out her arms, smiling against her fear as he lifted the blade. Did he see her at last? She hoped it would be quick, she hoped they would put her picture beside theirs—all the beautiful girls.

THE END

The Cry at Cliff’s Edge

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A short story

Photo by Terrye Turpin

Some of my first short stories were ones I wrote for the Medium website. One of the publications there was called The Weekly Knob. The editors posted a writing prompt, usually an object, that had to be included in the story. You had a week to come up with something. There was no word limit or specific genre, so this was perfect inspiration for me. In 2020 I compiled many of those stories into a book and published it on Amazon.

I continued writing short stories and submitting them to different publications on Medium. The Weekly Knob changed their name to Hinged. Sometime in 2022 I stopped writing unique stories for Medium and I just reposted from my website over there.

My most prolific writing years were the ones I spent writing for The Weekly Knob. I loved getting the prompts every week and I interacted with so many lovely writers who were also posting on Medium. The practice and encouragement I got on Medium helped me to become the writer I am today.

Change comes to us all. Websites come and go, publications fold and so do publishers. I will be sharing here some of the stories I posted on Medium, just to make sure they have a permanent home. I had thought about gathering them for a another book of short stories, but I tell myself I have enough work to do just finishing the novel I’m working on. And the overall goal is to share the tales, so here’s the first one, originally published in August, 2021. I think the prompt was “hinge.”

(If you are one of the people who read this story back when it was first published, I apologize, but perhaps you’ll enjoy it a second time.)

The Cry at Cliff’s Edge

On the first anniversary of her daughter’s death, Ginny Stroud drove to the sea. In her late thirties, Ginny had dark brown hair that she kept clipped close to her scalp, like a young boy’s. A thick scar, twisted and rose-pink, traced from her scalp down the side of her face. Another scar, hidden beneath her jeans, traveled from her hip to just above her knee. Beside her, on the passenger seat of the car, lay a stack of paperback books, her leather purse, and a silver handled cane.

Her little red car, so nimble and reliable when navigating crowded parking lots and slick city streets, chugged up the winding road that led to the Inn at Cliff’s Edge. She had found the hotel on a blog devoted to quiet, less-traveled vacation spots. The place didn’t even have a website. Ginny looked forward to the isolation of being surrounded by people who did not know the tragedy that had shattered her family the year before.

The road, a narrow, one lane asphalt drive, appeared chiseled from the cliff face. A low guardrail stood between her car and the drop to the white-capped grey ocean below. With one hand on the gearshift, Ginny pressed as close as she dared to the towering rock on the passenger side of the car. A large white bird swooped across the road at a curve, and Ginny, distracted, allowed the car to drift onto the loose gravel at the edge.

“Oh!” The involuntary cry escaped her as she steered back into her lane. Her heart drummed in her ears and she shook her head at the near accident. Would it have been so bad after all, if she’d broken through the guardrail and plunged into the cold water below?

At the hotel, she tossed her clothes into the antique dresser in her room and kicked off her shoes. Her room, on the second story of the inn, faced the ocean. Opening the French doors that led outside to the iron railed balcony, Ginny leaned out to breathe in the cold, salt scented air. Below, an overgrown trail led to a wooden gate with peeling paint and rusted hardware. Vines twirled through the arch at the top of the gate, and scrubby pine trees obscured the view, but Ginny supposed the path must continue on the other side.

Tired from the drive, she stretched out on top of the quilt covering the bed. She thought to text her sister to tell her she’d arrived safe and sound, but a check of her phone revealed no service. She would use the hotel phone and call that evening, after dinner.

Hours later, she woke to odd shadows cast by moonlight filtering in through the open balcony doors. Disoriented, she sat up, dizzy with the shock of waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. Memory filled in her day — the long drive from her home to the coast, checking into the hotel, and at last — collapsing on the bed. Ginny had swung her feet off the side of the bed when she heard the cry.

It sounded like an animal cry, but the noise fluttered up the scale, then dropped to an unmistakable human sob. Ginny sprung from the bed, wincing at the sharp pain in her hip. She fumbled with the cane propped beside the bed and, grasping it in one hand, limped barefoot to the French doors.

“Hello?” Ginny leaned over the balcony’s rail, peering into the night below. A scant yellow light illuminated the shrubs at the hotel’s foundation, but did little to light the pathway to the gate. The cry echoed again, fading as though the owner were striding away, down the trail on the other side of the gate. It could be a child, Ginny thought, lost out there in the dark. She reached for the inn’s phone beside her bed, then changed her mind and slipped on her shoes.

“Are you sure?” At the hotel’s desk, Ginny questioned the clerk. “It sounded like a child.”

The night clerk, an older woman with gray streaked black hair, shook her head. Deep lines bracketed the woman’s mouth. “There are no children with our guests. You probably heard the hinge on the gate. It’s old and when the wind blows…”

“I suppose that could have been it,” Ginny allowed. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning. “I don’t suppose the kitchen is still open?”

“No.” The clerk shook her head. “But I could open the pantry, make you a sandwich if you’re not too particular.”

“A cold sandwich sounds wonderful.” Ginny read the woman’s name from the white plastic badge pinned to her shirt. “Thank you, Marie. I’m in room 215.”

The clerk smiled, the expression softening her face. “You go on back upstairs and I’ll have someone bring it up.”

Back in her room, Ginny phoned her sister. “I’m here. Safe and sound.”

“That’s good, at least. I still don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now. Have you talked to Dennis?”

Ginny shook her head as she answered. “No.” She’d read somewhere that many marriages didn’t survive the death of a child. Her husband, Dennis, had moved out two months ago. She didn’t expect they would reconcile. She didn’t have the energy to even try.

“Please tell me you won’t hole up in that place alone all weekend. I don’t like to think of you all by yourself tomorrow. Go outside. Is it pretty there at least?”

“It’s lovely, Stef.” Ginny described the inn — the ivy-covered stone walls, the lofty view of the ocean below. She didn’t mention the old wooden gate. “There’s a farmer’s market tomorrow in the town. I saw the sign when I passed through this afternoon. I’ll drive down and check it out.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” Her sister paused. The sound of her breathing filled the phone receiver. “No one ever blamed you, Ginny.”

True, no one had ever assigned fault to her, at least not where she could hear them. Maybe Dennis had doubts, in the nights he had paced sleepless through their home, over whether Ginny could have done anything differently that day. The burden of the accident lay like a slab of stone on Ginny’s heart.

Ginny clutched the phone so tightly her knuckles grew white. She was about to answer her sister when a knock sounded. Her sandwich. “I’ve got to go, my dinner’s here.”

“All right. Remember — we love you.”

“Love you too,” Ginny whispered into the silent phone.

She fetched a couple of dollars and some change from her purse for a tip for whoever had delivered her food. When she opened the door, Ginny spied a tray on the hallway floor, with her sandwich wrapped in paper and resting on a white napkin on its center. A noise at the end of the hall, near the stairs, drew her attention and she glanced that way in time to see a young boy grasp the handrail. He turned toward her before he started down the stairs. Ginny glimpsed dark brown eyes and a shock of black hair that fell across his brow before he fled down the stairs.

“Hey!” Ginny called after him. She waved the money grasped in her fist, but his steps echoed as he disappeared from view.

The next day, at the farmer’s market, Ginny studied the people weaving amongst the booths set up on the town square. The clerk, Marie, had said there were no children staying at the inn, so maybe the boy was local, lived in the town. He looked too young to be working at the inn, but maybe the rules were more relaxed there.

At one booth, Ginny bought a loaf of bread and a jar of local honey. The vendor’s daughter sat on a quilt on the ground playing with dolls. Tears blurred Ginny’s vision — the girl looked so much like Lottie. Sometimes she went weeks glimpsing no one who reminded her of the child she’d lost. And some days she couldn’t even venture out to the grocery store, afraid she might one day lose herself and chase after some stranger’s daughter.

Back at the inn, Ginny felt she needed a distraction. She explored the grounds. In particular, she wanted a closer look at the gate. Brushing aside sticks and tangled weeds with her cane, she ventured along the path. Exercise, her doctor had declared, would do her good.

The gate at close view looked more mundane than mysterious. It might have once been painted white, but now only patches of color remained on the grey wood. There was only one hinge, a large ornate piece of metal with curled emblems stamped on the surface. A shiny brass padlock hung from the hasp on the gate, unusual for its newness. Had someone unlocked the gate the night before? If the padlock had been in place, the wind couldn’t have swung the gate and made the noise that Ginny heard.

The screws holding the hinge in place felt loose when she pushed against them. She ran her fingers across the surface of the hinge and then wiped her hand across the hem of her shirt. Rust, red as blood, stained her clothes.

“You shouldn’t do that.”

Ginny spun to see the source of the warning. The dark-haired boy from the other night stood behind her on the path. As he strolled up to join her at the gate, Ginny saw he was older than she’d first thought, closer to thirteen than the nine years she’d assumed.

“This is not a good place,” the boy said.

“The inn?”

“No.” The boy waved a hand at the gate. “This. The path, the gate. It’s too close to the edge. You should walk on the other side.”

“But there’s no ocean view over there.”

The boy frowned, considering her. “All right, but don’t go past the gate. That’s why it’s locked, you know.” He stepped beside her and placed a hand on the gate, pushing. The hinge creaked, shifting against the wood, but the lock held. Satisfied, the boy stepped aside and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Ginny called after him. “Do you live here? What’s your name? I’m Ginny.”

Walking backward, the boy answered. “Anthony. I live with my grandmother. She works here.”

Something about the boy’s solemn face and dark hair reminded her of the night clerk, Marie. This must be her grandson.

“Marie?” When the boy nodded, Ginny asked, “Where is your mother?”

Anthony stopped and stared past her. “She’s gone,” he said, and then he spun and jogged away.

That evening, Ginny had an early dinner in the inn’s cozy dining room. The place filled with customers, even before sundown. She didn’t think the Inn at Cliff’s Edge had rooms for that many people. It must be the closest restaurant for many of the locals. The clatter of plates and the drone of conversation filled the air. Marie had smiled and waved at her as she walked past the desk to the dining room, and Ginny wondered if Anthony was around.

She lingered over coffee and a slice of apple pie after her meal. The sun dropped low and cast an orange glow on the horizon when she paid her check and limped outside. Her hip ached from too much activity that day, but she felt restless and she wasn’t ready to turn in for the night, wasn’t ready to be alone with her memories of this night the year before.

In the fading light, the gravel path seemed to glow and Ginny picked her way along, tapping at the ground with her cane to make sure she didn’t encounter any unexpected obstacles. When she reached the gate, she noticed the hinge had come loose from the screws holding it in place on the post beside the gate. The padlock still hung from the hasp, but without the hinge, the gate leaned open, revealing the white rocks of the path beyond. Ginny stepped through the opening.

Brush and vines crowded against her, but the trail itself was oddly clear and level, as though someone had swept away the sticks and larger rocks. Pine and salt spray scented the air, and Ginny heard the faint sound of waves breaking against the cliff face below. She couldn’t see the end of the path, and she wondered if it led down to the shore or if it broke off at the edge of the cliff. The further she walked, the darker it grew and just as she felt she should turn back, she heard the cry from the night before. This time it ended, not with a sob, but with a tiny voice calling, “Momma!”

Ginny shook her head to clear it. How many times over the past year had she spun at that cry? Knowing it couldn’t be her daughter, but unable to resist the call of a child.

“Hello?” Not Lottie, Ginny scolded herself, but some other child in need. “Where are you? I’m coming.” She pushed along the trail, toward the voice.

Turning a corner, the path emerged into a clearing. A small figure stood at the center of the space with her arms held out toward Ginny. A girl child. And if the girl’s face wavered, the bones shifting and reassembling, Ginny didn’t care.

“Lottie?”

The child motioned her closer. Behind her, the trail disappeared at a drop-off. Ginny hobbled forward. Tears blurred her vision, but she kept going, toward the girl, toward the end of the path.

“No!” Small hands clutched at Ginny’s back. She whirled around to see Anthony. He grabbed hold of her cane. “Come back. She’s not real!”

“I don’t care.” Ginny shook her head. But before she could turn back around, an angry growl sounded.

“Run!” Anthony pulled her along.

Ginny stumbled after him. She dared a glance over her shoulder at the thing pursuing them. It grew and shrank, warping from the blond daughter Ginny had lost to the stocky figure of an older man, then to a slim, black-haired woman. The thing’s skin melted and stretched, like putty over a frame of wire and bone. Its mouth dripped a thick, tar-like substance over shark-sharp teeth. The transformations slowed its progress to a shuffling crawl, but Ginny feared they wouldn’t reach the gate before the creature caught them.

“Go on!” She pushed Anthony away, and he ran up to the gate, prying it open further so Ginny could stagger through.

“Help me.” He pulled the gate closed and held it while Ginny fumbled with the screws on the hinge.

“They’re too loose!” The hinge wobbled. The drilled holes were too worn for the screws to hold.

“Just close it. As long as the hinge is on the gate it can’t get through.”

Ginny slammed the last screw into place. Something large and heavy brushed against the wood on the other side. It snuffled and scraped at the gate, but the portal held. At last, it fell silent.

“It looked like my daughter.” Ginny’s legs trembled, and she sank to the ground.

Anthony nodded. “It’s different for everyone.”

“Who do you see?”

“My mother.”

“What is it?”

Anthony shrugged. “I don’t know. It lives there, on the edge.”

There were so many questions Ginny wanted to ask. Why did the hinge keep it from coming through the gate? And why hadn’t anyone tried to get close to the portal? They could at least hide the gate and keep curious people from trying to go through.

But she didn’t ask any of these questions. Not because she felt Anthony couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but because the answer came to her as they walked away from the gate.

The next day, as she packed her things into her car to leave the Inn at Cliff’s Edge, Anthony waved goodbye to her from the front porch of the inn. Ginny remembered the wistful look on his face the evening before, when she asked him who he saw when the creature appeared. She knew that feeling, that desire to glimpse a beloved face just one more time. The answer to why the gate still stood was the trade-off. She’d go to the edge again herself, if she could, to give life to an evil that fed from one’s grief, in order to pretend the lost walked the earth again.

THE END

The Auctioneer’s Song

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A short story

Photo by the author

This is one I wrote for an NYC Midnight story and it’s different from my usual horror style. The original version didn’t advance in that contest. I had included an odd bit about Holly’s ex that didn’t fit with the story. I was trying too hard to include a dark moment and it didn’t fit. In revision I dropped the boyfriend and concentrated on the relationship between Holly and her father. Sometimes less works best. I hope you enjoy it.

The Auctioneer’s Song

They made good time getting to the auction house, despite Holly not driving fast enough to suit her dad, Loyd. Mindful of the cargo in the trailer behind them, she had putted along in the slow lane, taking her time braking and turning.

“Sales gonna start before we pull into the lot,” Loyd muttered. One side of his mouth drooped in a scowl—a remnant from the stroke he’d suffered six months ago. His right hand curled inward, the fingers gnarled and twisted like branches on a mesquite tree.

“Won’t do us any good to be early if we don’t have a live, uninjured animal.” Holly pulled up to the auction barn and left Loyd to supervise the unloading while she carried the paperwork to the office. They had sold off the cows last summer, but kept the bull for the stud fees. Now, the sale of Midnight Max, their Grand Champion Black Angus, would mark the end of their cattle days.

After dropping off their papers, Holly wandered through the sale barn. The scent of hay and manure, the noise of slamming gates, lowing cattle, and whinnying horses—brought back memories. As a young girl, she’d march beside her dad, inspecting the animals for sale, and occasionally voicing her childish opinion. Loyd had always listened, as though her eight or ten years of experience back then matched his.

Outside, her father chatted with a group of men standing under an oak tree. Their faces were all similar—tan, weathered, and wrinkled. Dressed in the same uniform of starched Wranglers and denim shirts, half the group wore baseball caps with feed store logos. The other half, including her dad, sported wide-brimmed Western hats. Loyd stood in the middle of the group, his good hand gripping the hickory staff he carried as a cane. He kept his damaged hand tucked in the pocket of his jeans.

As she joined them, Jim Cole, the auctioneer, reached to shake her hand, then dropped his when he spotted the metal hook at the end of her sleeve. Instead, he touched the brim of his Stetson and dipped his head to her. “Glad to see you here. It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” Holly agreed. Jim had been running the auction for as long as Holly’s memory allowed. “I know you’ll get us a good price on our bull.”

She recognized their neighbors, Grady Burton and his wife, Sue. Stepping forward to hug Holly, Sue said, “Thank you for your service. It’s good to have you home again. I know Loyd appreciates having you around to help.”

Beside her, Loyd cleared his throat. “I might be old, but I can still haul my own water. As for my girl, I hope she’s seen enough of the world to realize this is the best place for her.”

This was a discussion Holly had put off. Injured in active duty, her disability payment had been automatically approved by the VA, so money didn’t have to figure in her decision. If she stayed with the ranch, she’d have to find something to keep her busy enough she and Loyd wouldn’t knock heads like a couple of angry bulls. Or, with the right type of prosthesis, she could continue her military service.

Jim Cole spoke up, saving Holly from answering. “I’d better get going. Auction can’t start without me.”

On their way inside, Holly and Loyd passed a large open corral holding dozens of horses. They milled about, snorting and switching their tails. Several of them, including mares with their colts, lay on the ground, unable to dodge the trampling hooves. Three men had cornered a bay gelding against the near rail of the corral. He reared and kicked as a red-faced, blond cowboy cursed and shook a rope halter.

“Hey!” Holly gripped the gate.

The bay lowered his head, bony sides heaving. Holly could count his ribs, and his hip bones stood out. Foamy white sweat covered his coat.

“Lady, you don’t want this one.” The blond cowboy tossed the halter on the ground. “He’s got a mean streak. Probably be sent to slaughter.”

Loyd touched her shoulder. “Whoever owned him didn’t treat him right. He’s got spur marks and tack sores. Starved, too.”

“Those horses will go to the slaughterhouse, won’t they?”

“Can’t save them all, sweetheart.”

The sound of the auctioneer greeting buyers reached them, and reluctantly Holly followed her father to the sale arena. They found seats in the gallery as the ring handlers herded in the first lot, six Hereford cows. The animals circled, lowing. Jim Cole began his call, the words a ringing cadence flowing smoothly as a hymn. When she was a child, Holly had tried to decipher the words in between the bids. “They don’t matter,” Loyd would say, “Listen for the dollars. Everything else is flavor for the flow.”

She learned to pick out the phrases that repeated between the numbers. “I have, would you give me, I am here.” The lyrics to the auctioneer’s song, the siren call that would help determine the animal’s worth.

Midnight Max sold before noon. “I’m sorry to see him go,” Holly said. “I hope…” Her voice trailed off. She knew better than to get attached to the cattle.

“Don’t fret. He’s got good years left.”

Holly expected Loyd to rise, but he waved a hand. “We’ll pick up the check later. Let’s stay and watch the rest.”

Toward the sale’s end, the handlers brought out the bay gelding. The horse limped, its head down.

“I can’t watch, Dad.”

“Hold up. We can’t save them all, but we could save this one.”

Around them, the bidding continued. Holly leaned to whisper to her father. “I suppose if we bought this horse I’d have to stay and help with him?”

“Damn shame if you didn’t.”

At the next call of would you give me? Holly raised her hand to cast the winning bid.

“I am here,” she answered.

THE END

Carry the Dead

~ mstturpin ~ 2 Comments

A short story from the Writing Battle Contest

Photo by the author

Jonas had settled before the fire, tamping tobacco into his pipe, when a blow sounded against the door. His wife, Ruth, flinched and rose from her chair.

“Fetch the rifle,” Jonas said. He gripped the iron poker from the hearth.

He would not have known the visitor if not for Ruth’s gasp of recognition. White frost clung to his beard and dusted his coat. His sunken eyes stared under the shelf of his brow. In the night behind him, snowflakes as large as doves fluttered.

“Samuel!” Ruth lowered the rifle.

Jonas pulled the man, their neighbor, into the house. What terrible mission had brought him four miles to their home?

Trembling, Samuel set down his lantern. “We’ve lost Aaron.” Samuel turned to Jonas. “I need your help to bury him.”

“The ground’s too hard. Wait until the sun warms the soil…”

“It’s been two nights already. I waited, hoping the snow would stop.”

Ruth grasped Jonas’s arm. “He must be buried before the third day.”

The last coffin Jonas had carried had been his mother’s. She passed in the spring, when his shovel turned the ground as easy as planting a field. They buried her right after her last breath. Sometimes, he heard her voice call his name.

“We’ve hours until dawn, but we’ll need a fire to warm the ground.” Jonas shrugged into his coat.

“Wait!” Ruth scurried off and came back carrying two bundles. “Take this.” She thrust the packages at Samuel. “Salt pork and hardtack. Sorry I don’t have more to send.” Color rose in her face. “Tell Mary I’ll be around when the roads clear.”

Samuel tucked the food into his pockets. “I’m grateful. Truth is, we’ve run short of supplies.”

Jonas paused in the doorway when Ruth called again. She rushed to him and wound her wool shawl around his neck. “Stay safe, Jonas.”

The wind ceased when the men were halfway to Samuel’s home. Clouds scattered, revealing the moon, like a white pearl in the indigo sky. No sound but the crunch of their boots across the snow-covered fields. Their breath hung like smoke overhead.

At Samuel’s home, they found Mary’s mother seated in a rocker at the hearth with the younger child, a girl, playing on a rug at her feet. Samuel handed the old woman the food. “From Ruth.”

The grandmother rose. “She’s with him still.” She gestured to the closed door across the room. Her wrinkled face knotted in anger. “The devil takes us if we’ve come to this. No bread to fill our sorrow, no drink to wash our pain.” She motioned to Samuel. “Go fetch Mary.”

“I’ll go,” Jonas said.

The boy lay on his parent’s bed in the cold room. They had dressed him in black pants that stopped short of his ankles and a white shirt that matched the pallor of his face. His mother slumped from her chair and rested her cheek on the mattress. She clutched one of the child’s hands. 

Mary jumped when Jonas touched her shoulder. “Please, not yet. Would it be bad to have him back?”

Jonas thought of all the ones he had lost. Would it comfort this family, to be haunted by their child? “You shouldn’t tie him to this earth.”

“I’d do anything to keep him longer.”

Jonas eased her to her feet. “The dead are never gone. We carry them with us always.”

Samuel hitched a horse to their sleigh while Jonas carried the boy outside. He wrapped the body in Ruth’s shawl. Bundles of firewood rested in the back of the sleigh. Rather than put the boy there, his father held him in his lap while Jonas drove the sleigh.

At last, they reached the graveyard behind the church. The moon cast the snow in blue light. Bare-branched trees cast long shadows on their work as they stacked wood on the grave’s soil. The fire lit, the men warmed their hands in its heat. A howl sounded from the woods on the other side. Jonas glanced at the horse tethered on the cemetery’s fence. “We shouldn’t leave them there, with hungry wolves near.”

While Jonas tended to the horse, Samuel laid his son beside the fire, as though to warm him. He brushed aside the shawl and cupped the boy’s cheek. “If he died in the spring, we’d live with his ghost.” Samuel drew the cloth back over the boy. “But I couldn’t bear the guilt of it, to face him now. He’d been sick. When he died, I felt relief that there would be one less mouth to feed.”

“Hunger makes wolves of us. You can grieve the dead and worry for the living.” Jonas rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

When the fire had died to coals, Jonas swept them from the grave and sunk his shovel into the ground. Samuel staggered to his feet, but Jonas waved him away. He dug, mindful of the passing hours and disregarding the blisters that burned on his hands.

Jonas finished digging as a line of burnt orange stretched across the horizon. A blanket of soft gray fog rolled in. Together, Jonas and Samuel eased the boy into his resting place. The sun rose, scattering the mist and warming the earth. The ice melted from the tree branches and clear droplets of water fell over the grave.

THE END