Twisted Fate (Tales of Horror) Read online

  The doorbell rang again.

  “I’m coming!” he shouted.

  By the time he got to the door, he was ready to let the police in on a little secret. His wife was dying in the upstairs room and right now she was sleeping. So the next time they come to his house, could they not fuck with the doorbell.

  He grabbed the knob, swung the door open and stepped back in surprise.

  Joan stood there, leaning against the door frame in her pajamas.

  “What the hell is this?” he shouted.

  “I noticed something about you,” she said as she pointed her finger at him.

  Walter scanned the street looking for nosy neighbors. He grabbed Joan’s arm and yanked her into the house.

  “What did you notice, Joan?” He was surprised he had the willpower to keep most of the anger out of his voice.

  “You always run when people ring the bell or call your phone, but you don’t run for me when I call you.”

  “Actually, I do. I run for you every day. Otherwise you would be in a hospital.”

  He helped her up the stairs. She leaned into him hard. He wanted to ask her how she’d made it to the front door on her own if she could barely walk.

  “I wanted to ring the bell,” Joan whispered. “I wanted to watch you run for me one more time before I die.”

  “You’re not going to start that stuff about dying again, are you?” They were almost at the top of the stairs. “You know that when you call for me, I come running.”

  “That’s only partly true. You run to me, not for me. Walter, don’t kid yourself. It’s been a long time since we were a couple.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, Joan leading the way now. She rolled around the corner with her shoulder on the wall for support. Walter stayed close behind, his hands near her lower back.

  “You sound delusional,” he said. “We are a couple. You have the best in-home nursing money can buy. You’re not languishing in a hospital bed somewhere. You haven’t got much to complain about, Joan.”

  She stopped so abruptly by his office door that Walter almost bumped into her.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the new couch.

  “It’s a chaise lounge. I just had it delivered. I retrieved it from the old house they’re going to tear down for the parking lot expansion.”

  Joan lumbered across the hall and disappeared into his office. Walter followed, knowing the police officer would be there any minute.

  “Joan, what are you up to? You need to get back to bed before you fall. You don’t have the strength for this.”

  “There’s something wrong with this thing.”

  There’s something wrong with you.

  “Everything is okay. You’ve just had a hard day without your nurse here. Now, come on, let’s go back to your room.” He took her hand and tried to coax her out of his office.

  She snapped her hand back and moved toward the sofa.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. Like a swarm of bees attacking a hive breaker, anger swelled in him. “Enough with this shit! I have people arriving at any moment for a meeting. You are going to go back to your room and sleep, or I’m going to carry you.”

  Joan sneered. Then she dropped onto the couch. She tried to make it look accidental, like she tripped, but Walter could tell it was deliberate. In the time it took him to respond, she was spread out the length of the couch, running her hands along the fabric.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” He had forgotten how good it felt to get really angry. His fists clenched at the frustration she caused. The anger was so raw and unglued that he tasted blood. It took every ounce of his humanity not to strike her face. Then her body. And not stop until she was a bloody pulp.

  The expression on her face changed. She rolled off the couch and hit the floor like a sack of lead balls with no bounce.

  Her sobbing and weeping worked on relieving his anger. He unclenched his fists.

  What’s happening to me? Why am I so worked up today?

  Normally her antics didn’t rouse him past annoyed.

  He lifted her waif of a body up over his shoulder and carried her out of his office, down the hall, and into her sour room. She didn’t protest. She lay across his shoulder and cried.

  He dropped her onto her bed and started for the door.

  “Goodbye, Walter.”

  “Goodbye, Joan,” he said, mimicking her words with sarcasm. He stopped at the bedroom door. “Do not come out of this room for anything. I’ll bring your dinner and I’ll clean up this fucking mess after my meeting. Understood?”

  Joan nodded. “I won’t bother you again.”

  He slammed the door so hard the trim near the handle cracked, which pleased him. The crack was his mark, his stamp of anger.

  Today is a good day to be angry.

  He wouldn’t excuse it. Emotions were meant to be felt.

  “Hello?” A male voice.

  He jumped a clear foot. His shout of surprise came out like a pissed-off cat’s cry.

  “You okay?” the man asked.

  Walter looked over the railing and saw a cop standing just inside his front door. Evidently he had forgotten to close the door after Joan’s little fiasco with the doorbell.

  “I knocked,” the cop said, “but it was open. I heard a door slam pretty hard so I stepped in. I’m Officer John Mackay. I called earlier.”

  Walter moved for the stairs. “Of course, come on in. May I get you a beverage?” He stepped off the top stair and waited for a reply.

  “No, thanks. I just have a few questions for you and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “Come on up to my office. We’ll talk in there.”

  Officer Mackay followed Walter into his office. Walter sat behind his desk while the cop took a seat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. The officer pulled out a pad and pen and began talking. It took ten minutes to get through most of the preliminary questions for the cop to establish that this was nothing more than a workplace accident.

  “So I guess that’s it?” Walter asked.

  “For now. Since you own the property and were employing them, the Workplace and Safety Board will want to talk to you, too. You’re going to have to wait on those demolition plans until our full investigation can wrap up. Shouldn’t take longer than a week.”

  Walter stood from his chair. “That’s fine. I completely understand. Now, if that’s all, I need to attend to my wife.”

  The cop put his pad away, got up and headed for the hallway.

  “That’s some couch you have there.”

  “Thanks.”

  The officer slowed and stopped by the door. “Look at the legs on that thing. They look like claws or talons of some sort. Where would you get an antique like that?”

  Was this a trick question?

  The cop was just at the house where the couch came from. He talked to Mike and the demolition guys. He had to know the couch came from that house.

  “I received it today. In every piece of property that I buy to demolish, I try to find something to bring home. Something to say that the life in the house isn’t completely destroyed. This couch will live on long after the house is converted into a parking lot.”

  The cop nodded as if he knew something that Walter didn’t. He could see the cop wanted to play the I’m smarter than you are card.

  Let’s evaluate pay grades, asshole. Then we’ll see who’s smarter.

  They stepped into the hallway.

  “Sad what happened, eh?” the cop asked.

  “Very sad. Accidents can happen. People die every day.”

  A door banged against a wall somewhere.

  “What now?” Walter said out loud.

  He hustled past the cop and up to Joan’s bedroom. She lay just inside the doorframe on the floor, face down.

  “Okay, let’s get you to bed.” He struggled with her dead weight. His peripheral vision revealed the cop had followed him.

  Joan seemed heavier than before. Walte
r set her down and caught his breath. He looked over at the bedside table. Strewn across the top beside the food tray were a small collection of needles with all their plungers pushed to the bottom.

  He looked at his wife’s arm. Blood had trickled from the inside of her elbow where there were over a dozen puncture marks.

  The cop talked into his radio, calling for an ambulance. Walter backed away from his wife’s body as the cop checked for a pulse.

  “People die every day, eh?” the cop said, repeating Walter’s words from moments ago.

  Walter needed a stiff drink. It was past nine in the evening. The last of the authorities had just left. As far as anyone could tell, Joan had killed herself.

  His son had shown up about an hour after his mother had died. He locked himself in his room where Walter could hear him crying.

  What the hell’s going on? Where did this day come from? Everything’s so fucked up.

  He poured more whiskey into his glass from the small bar in his office. He hated funerals and now he had two to deal with. Send flowers to one and arrange the other. Nothing pissed him off more.

  Wait a minute, he thought. My wife just died. Why am I angry with her for the inconvenience? Shouldn’t I be grieving? Perhaps it’s because the Joan I’d married died many years ago.

  Her mental attitude toward the diabetic condition had deteriorated rapidly. With a better grasp of what challenges she had ahead of her and a will to overcome them, he would have had more respect for her. All she did was whine and complain like life owed her a chance. With a better diet and some exercise, his wife would be alive and in a healthier place.

  Fuck her. She asked for this.

  He tilted his whiskey glass back and shot the rest of it into his mouth. It raced down the back of his throat with a welcoming bite.

  Would Alex ever stop bawling like a fucking baby?

  The bottle of Canadian whiskey was empty now. He set his glass down and left the office en route to the cellar for another bottle. As he passed Alex’s closed door, he stopped.

  Damn, can that kid cry. Is this how twenty-year olds grieve?

  Walter banged on the door. “Alex, what’s going on?”

  The weeping continued, unimpeded. Walter tried the door handle. It opened. He stepped in and stared at his son, curled up on the bed.

  “You gonna be okay?” he asked, not expecting an answer. At least not one he’d like.

  Alex nodded and made a feeble attempt to wipe his eyes.

  “Look, get yourself together and come to my office. I’m going downstairs. I’ll meet you back there in a few minutes. We can talk.”

  Alex buried his face in his hands.

  “Did you hear me?”

  He moaned acknowledgment.

  “I’ll meet you in my office in five minutes.” Walter walked away, leaving his son’s door wide open.

  He got to the basement, grabbed the bottle of whiskey and headed back upstairs. On the way by Alex’s bedroom door, he took a peek in. The unmade bed was empty.

  He walked over to the mini bar in his office and stopped. Alex sat on the antique couch, scowling.

  “What’s going on with you?” Walter asked, amused that his son could show so much anger. “One minute you’re bawling like a baby and now you look pissed off.”

  “It’s all your fault!” Alex shouted.

  Walter set the bottle down on the bar’s shiny surface and scanned his son’s face.

  “You might want to watch what you say here. Your mother had diabetes. She was very sick. She had saved her needles and chose today to take them all at once. That had nothing to do with me. Are we clear?”

  Alex didn’t respond. He just sat there and glared at Walter.

  “I said, are we clear?”

  “Yeah, I’m clear all right. You killed her.”

  “Okay, that’s it. Call a friend, go to a hotel, but I want you the fuck out of my house right the fuck now!” Walter was conscious of his anger. He was aware of it on a cellular level. It was unfamiliar, but it was welcomed. It made him feel powerful, in control.

  Alex got up from the couch and bumped Walter’s shoulder as he passed him.

  “Watch yourself, young man. I may be in my sixties, but I can fuck around like the best of them.”

  His son’s footsteps pounded down the stairs, then the front door opened and shut with a slam. By the time he poured a glass of whiskey and took his first shot, tires screeched outside and then the sound of metal crunched together.

  He left the office and headed downstairs in a run. Too many people had pissed him off. His wife died today. His son was blaming him. And now one of his son’s friends thinks he can show off and squeal his tires all over the fucking place.

  He opened the front door and jumped out onto his porch ready to scream at the offending driver.

  He blinked and staggered, the whiskey already working on him. Two vehicles had hit each other. A black SUV had T-boned a smaller Nissan. A man was caught between the two vehicles.

  Walter leaned on the doorframe for support. People across the street talked on cell phones. Probably calling for help, but it was too late. The guy was dead. His waist disappeared below the grill of the SUV. A running shoe lay about five feet back under the SUV, still attached to a leg.

  Poor guy. Wrong place at the wrong time.

  “People die every day,” Walter mumbled to himself. He turned around and headed for the stairs. Someone behind him yelled. Someone else cried.

  Why the hell does everyone have to be so fucking loud?

  Halfway up the stairs, he teetered, the whiskey taking effect on his balance.

  “Walter,” someone said behind him. “Ahh, I think you better come and look at this.”

  He gripped the railing beside him as he looked down at Crawford, his neighbor from two doors up.

  Why the hell is my front door always left open?

  “I already saw the accident,” Walter said.

  “I’m sorry, Walter. I really am.”

  What the fuck is Crawford talking about?

  “You heard about Joan?” Walter asked.

  Crawford frowned. “No.”

  “It’s fine, Crawford. Maybe it’s better she’s gone. She doesn’t have to suffer anymore. That’s life. People die every day.”

  Crawford stepped back. “You okay, Walter?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  More vehicles came to a stop in front of the house. The emergency lights splashed a myriad of colors across his windows and doorstep.

  “Sure, people die every day, Walter. But this is Alex. He’s your son.” Crawford stepped backwards out the door and disappeared.

  Walter denied what he’d heard. It couldn’t be. Alex was just here. They’d argued and then he left the house.

  Why the hell would he run out into the street directly in front of moving cars?

  The walk down the stairs seemed long and arduous. Walter made it without falling. He got to the open door and looked at the carnage. A blue tarp had been placed over the man who had been sandwiched between the two vehicles.

  He got to his front steps where he sat down and waited for someone to confirm who was under the tarp. If no one came then it wasn’t Alex. Simple as that. He wouldn’t believe it until then.

  His stomach protested.

  How much did I drink already?

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes. He focused on keeping his breathing steady while he held his stomach, hoping the nausea would abate.

  “Walter, you doing okay?”

  He jumped, lifted his head and banged his elbow on the porch railing. “Why the fuck is everyone scaring the shit out of me today?”

  “Walter, maybe we should go inside and talk.”

  It was that fucking cop, Mackay.

  “Okay. But we talk in my office. If you’re going to tell me that my son was hit by that SUV, I know I’m going to need a drink.”

  “Maybe you’ve had enough already.”

  Wa
lter got to his feet, secured his balance and glared at the cop. “You might be somebody on the street, but on my front lawn all I see is a man trying to school me on drinking. From this moment on, while your visit on my property will be short, I’d watch what the fuck you say to me. I’ve had a terrible day and I’m really fucking pissed about it.”