Top Suspense Page 6

  Enticing as the prospect was, he still couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. Steadying himself on the uncertain footing, he started to turn. Let her find the switch herself, if she was so certain it was there. He was certain now that she'd only brought him down here to make fun of his readiness to believe.

  "Hey," she said. "Look at this."

  She was silhouetted against the daylight. All that he could see was that she'd pulled her knickers down to around her knees and she was holding the lower part of her dress up high with both hands.

  He didn't know what to do. There was braying laughter from outside and he could hear one of them saying, "She's doing it! She's really doing it! Have a look down and see his face!" The outlines of their heads bobbed in and out of the entranceway, and Dylan felt trapped and scared.

  "Stop it!" he said.

  Kelly hauled up her knickers and turned, as if to run to the others and leave him there. But as she spun around she went straight into one of the dropped beams, whacking her head right into it at eyebrow level. She stopped. She'd made no sound, other than the cricket-ball crack of bone against concrete.

  Then she dropped with a certain grace, and landed with none.

  There was a silence. Then the others started to call to her.

  "Kelly?" Sam called.

  And Jason shouted, "What's going on?"

  "She's banged her head," Dylan shouted back. "You've got to come and help."

  But nobody came down. He could hear them talking outside. There was urgency and concern in their tone, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

  "Come on," he called out to them, but still nobody came.

  He had to do something. Kelly was lying in the rubbish. He got hold of her under the arms, and started to drag her out. Would she need an ambulance? He was wondering how one could ever get to them, given that every track into the park had been blocked. To get one at all, somebody would have to call for it. That meant a lurch into the world of responsibility. The very thought made him feel sick.

  Kelly's dress caught on something and when he struggled to pull it free, it tore. He hadn't looked at her too closely. She might have been dead, for all he knew. But as he was dragging her, she suddenly revived and started to cry, as if he'd jogged some wires that had sparked her back into life. Once started, she wouldn't stop.

  Outside, she sat on the ground bawling while the rest of them stood around her and watched. Her forehead was cut and the rest of her looked pretty wretched.

  Michael said, "What did you do?"

  "Nothing," Dylan said.

  "Our mam'll go mad."

  Still crying, Kelly was arranging her torn dress over her scratched and dirty legs in a belated act of modesty. She was putting out the same loud, sobbing note, over and over. Her face was all twisted up and streaked with clean teary tracks through the grime. She sat on the pressed-down grass, looking utterly helpless.

  Dylan wondered aloud whether they ought to call someone to come out for her, hoping that someone else would volunteer, but this was quickly deemed unthinkable.

  Jason turned to look down at Michael and said, "You're going to have to take her home."

  Michael, stricken, looked up at each of them. "I'll get killed when mam sees her," he said.

  "You'll get killed if you just leave her here screaming her head off," Sam pointed out.

  They all tried to help her to stand, and she beat their hands away the first time but then couldn't manage to get up on her own. They raised her to her feet. She was bawling too much even to say what hurt.

  The four of them went off one way, in the direction of the estate, and Dylan went another in order to pick up the path that would lead him toward home. He watched them as they crossed the lower fields, and could hear Kelly all the way. She never let up.

  Dylan re-entered the garden using the same route by which he'd left it. His book was gone from the shed, so his absence had definitely been discovered.

  He got back into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom without being seen. Some of his clothes were dirty and so he quietly changed them, opening and closing his drawers and the wardrobe door with elaborate slowness. He hid the soiled clothing under the bed, and then he sat on the coverlet and waited for his mother to find him.

  She found him.

  "I looked all over for you," she said from the doorway. "Where did you get to?"

  "Just on a walk," he said.

  She was obviously displeased with him. "You don't ever leave the garden without telling me first," she said. "Especially not to go down to the Ponds. What's out there has brought us enough unhappiness. How many times have I got to say it?"

  "Sorry."

  "It's always sorry. But it never sinks in, does it?"

  She left him and went back downstairs, and he sat alone in his room for a while. He looked at his model aeroplanes, hanging from the ceiling on lengths of fishing line so that you could squint a little and they'd look as if they were actually in flight. They never moved, but their shadows passed across the walls again and again as the days went by.

  Mostly he could put things out of his mind, once they'd happened. Without immediacy, it was as if they faded and left no stain. But the hurt of Kelly and the others turning on him as they had. . . for some reason, this was something that wouldn't go away.

  He lay back. The hurt shifted. But still it stayed with him.

  Visitors came calling, some time later. He heard their muffled voices down below. He wondered. He wondered who it was. Then he thought he heard his name. Nobody called for him, but after a few minutes he heard his mother coming up the stairs. He tensed as she approached his room along the landing.

  He'd expected her to be angry, but she wasn't. Just very, very deliberate. She sat on the bed, and his heart dived in despair. He'd known scenes like this before, but only rarely. When loved ones died, or his pets "went away'. The serious moments, where his life took some kind of a turn that he hadn't asked for and couldn't control.

  She said, "I'm going to ask you something. I want you to tell me the truth."

  Dylan said nothing.

  His mother said, "Where did you go when you went out this morning?"

  "Just playing," he said.

  "Who with? The ones I've had to keep telling you about?"

  Again he said nothing, but the way that he avoided her eyes was a form of admission.

  She said, "There are two policemen downstairs. They're going to ask you this, but I want you to tell me first. Did you touch Kelly at all?"

  Touch her? He'd had to.

  He said, "I pulled her out when she banged her head."

  "Pulled her out of where?"

  "This place they were showing me." He couldn't bring himself to tell her about the other part.

  "Were they making fun of you?"

  "We were all just laughing."

  Then his mother said, "Listen to me, Dylan. They're children. You're twenty-six years old. I've tried to explain this to you but I can never seem to make you understand. You're not one of them. They're not your friends and they never can be. Now, tell me again. Did you touch her?"

  Dylan swallowed.

  "Not like that," he said.

  The hurt was coalescing into something deeper and more vivid now; an apprehension that was all the more fearsome for being without a shape or a name.

  She said, "Come on, Dylan."

  "Come where?"

  "We've got to go down and talk to these policemen."

  "I don't want to," he said.

  "I know you don't," she said.

  And then she took his hand, and he had to let her lead him down the stairs.

  Lee Goldberg's Remaindered was originally published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine a few years back and was a finalist for the Readers Choice Award. In late 2010, he wrote & directed a short film based on the story that is now playing the festival circuit throughout the country. You can catch the trailer on YouTube… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr3SF3VoNCs />
  REMAINDERED

  By Lee Goldberg

  The voice of a new generation sat at the end of aisle 14, where the house wares department ended and the book section began. He peered over the neat stack of paperbacks on the table in front of him and, once again, as politely as he could, told the irritable woman in the orange tank top and slouchy breasts that he had absolutely no idea where she could find wart remover.

  "You're not being much of a help," she snapped, leaning one hand on her shopping cart, which was filled with disposable diapers, Weight Watchers Frozen Dinners, Captain Crunch, a sack of dry dog food, a box of snail poison and three rolls of paper towel. "Look at this, it's doubled in size just this week."

  She thrust a finger in his face, making sure he got a good look at the huge wart on her knuckle.

  "I don't work here," he replied.

  "Then what are you doing sitting at a help desk?"

  "This isn't a help desk. I'm an author," he said. "I'm autographing my book."

  She seemed to notice the books for the first time and picked one up. "What's it about?"

  He hated that question. That's what book covers were for.

  "It's about an insomniac student who volunteers for a sleep study and falls into an erotic relationship with a female researcher that leads to murder."

  "Are there cats in it?" she asked, flipping through the pages.

  "Why would there be a cat in it?"

  "Because cats make great characters," she dropped his book back on the stack, dismissing it and him with that one economical gesture. "Don't you read books?"

  "I do," he replied. "I must have missed the ones with cats."

  "I like cat books, especially the ones where they solve murders. If you're smart, you'll write a cat book." And with that, she adjusted her bra strap and rolled away in search of a potion to eradicate her warts.

  The way things were going, maybe a cat book was the way to go. Things certainly couldn't get any worse than they already were.

  He was wrong about that.

  "Attention K-Mart shoppers," blared a shaky voice over the loudspeakers. "We're pleased to welcome best-selling author Kevin Dangler, the voice of a new generation, who is signing his latest book, Twisted Sheets, on aisle 14. Be sure to stop by and say hello, and on your way, don't forget to visit our garden center, where a flat of spring color is only $9.99."

  He laid his head down on his arms and cursed God for his cruelty. One day, you're signing books in New York alongside Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton for hundreds of adoring readers, and the next, you're sitting in a K-Mart in Spokane, competing for attention against a tray of bargain begonias and losing.

  It was hardly the future he envisioned when his first novel, Frost Bite, burst on the literary scene five years ago with a starred review in Publishers Weekly declaring him "the reincarnation of James M. Cain at the peak of his literary powers." A front-page rave from The New York Times Book Review anointed him "the voice of a new generation."

  His wife Janine, who had supported them both for years as a legal secretary, abruptly quit her job, flushed her birth control pills down the toilet, and demanded immediate impregnation. Giddy with success, Kevin enthusiastically complied.

  Frost Bite landed on the New York Times bestseller list for a week, just long enough to sell the paperback rights for six figures and justify calling himself a best-selling author for the rest of his life.

  One year, five hardcover printings, one new house, two BMWs and one colicky baby girl later, his second novel came out. Personally, Kevin thought Do Unto Others was his best work, an opinion not shared by Publisher's Weekly, which called "the phone book a thriller by comparison." Kirkus Reviews lambasted it as "478 page suicide note for a once-promising writing career." Entertainment Weekly wondered if the author had "undergone a previously undisclosed lobotomy after finishing his last book." The New York Times ignored it altogether.

  It surprised nobody but Kevin when Do Unto Others tanked, remaindered to $1.99 oblivion in just six weeks. He was immediately written off as a one-hit wonder.

  Kevin set out to prove them wrong and started writing a new novel. In the meantime, his enthusiastic spending caught up with him, forcing him to downsize. He traded the house for an apartment and the Beemers for Daewoos, assuring his furious wife he'd buy it all back with the big money from his third book.

  But his publisher rejected Twisted Sheets, and so did seven others. His wife decided it was time that the voice of a new generation went to work in her father's shoe store.

  Frantic, Kevin finally sold his book for $7500 to a paperback house best known for churning out an endless series of occult romances by an author who died twenty years ago.

  The instant Twisted Sheets came out, Kevin fled in his Daewoo on a self-arranged book tour. He partly financed his cross-country trek by selling autographed, fifth editions of Frost Bite, which he bought for a buck and, when he could, sold out of his trunk for $20.

  For the last two months, he'd been signing anywhere and any place, desperate to spark word-of-mouth, willing to do anything but have to return to his nagging wife and wailing kid and the nightmarish prospect of selling Florsheims for the rest of his life.

  "I can't believe you're here," a woman said softly, almost whispering.

  "Neither can I," he replied, his face still on the table.

  Kevin wearily lifted his head and saw a woman in her early 20s, dressed casually in white sweat pants and a tight-fitting, sleeveless t-shirt, the words READ BETWEEN THE LINES emblazoned across her boyish chest. Her short, blond hair was tussled in that just-got-out-of-bed way, which made him think of her in bed and all the things she might have done to tussle her hair.

  Kevin started to perspire. She handed him a copy of Frost Bite, the book jacket carefully protected in a clear, plastic cover. "Would you sign this for me?"

  She brought a book with her. That meant she actually came here specifically to see him. To a K-mart. This could be the turning point. A small sign from God that things were starting to go his way.

  "Of course," he eagerly snatched the book from her and opened it to the title page. It was a first edition. She must have had it for years. At last, a fan. They were finally coming out of hibernation.

  "Who should I make it out to?" he asked.

  "To Megan."

  As an afterthought, she picked up one of the paperbacks and set it in front of him. "And this one, too, please."

  "My pleasure." And, he could have said, a tremendous relief. In fact, that's almost what he inscribed in her copy of Frost Bite. Instead he wrote: To Megan, who reminded me why I became a writer.

  "I've wanted to meet you for so long. I think you're the greatest writer," she bounced nervously, watching him sign her book. "This is kind of embarrassing for me to admit, but it's the sexiest book I've ever read."

  Kevin looked up at her again, her unfettered bosom directly in front of his eyes. Self-conscious, he quickly shifted his gaze to her face. She was blushing.

  "I'm very flattered," he said, leaving out the fact that he was also very excited.

  "I really mean it. I used to make my ex-boyfriend read it to me before we made love," she said, a little breathlessly. "I think that was one of the reasons we split up. That, and he doesn't like books."

  "All books, or just mine?" he closed Frost Bite, admiring again the careful way she'd folded the plastic cover over the jacket, and opened the paperback to inscribe it.

  "I'm a librarian. I also collect signed, first edition mysteries. I have hundreds of them," she replied. "But there's only one I keep beside my bed."

  He cleared his throat and glanced up at her chest again. A bead of sweat rolled down his back. She was the most attractive librarian he'd ever seen. "It must be a very impressive collection."

  "Would you like to see it?" she asked tentatively.

  Kevin looked back down at the paperback, as if hesitating over what to sign instead of fantasizing about what a peek at her collection could lead to.<
br />
  He was hundreds of miles from home. His wife would never know. And didn't he deserve just a little appreciation after all the humiliation he'd endured?

  Kevin smiled. "I'll finish up here and meet you in the parking lot in ten minutes."

  # #

  It was a 102 outside, so Kevin cranked up the Daewoo's air conditioner, the occasional puffs of lukewarm air it produced straining the four cylinder engine so much, he had a hard time keeping up with Megan at thirty miles per hour.

  He followed her pristine, '91 Cutlass through Spokane, where KFC was still called Kentucky Fried Chicken, every other car seemed to be an old Ford pick-up with a camper lid and everybody he saw had a Budweiser cap.

  His readers weren't here. They were hanging out in funky coffee houses or laying on the beach in Hawaii or recovering from plastic surgery or jetting across the Atlantic in business class. They weren't eating at Arby's and living in motor homes.

  All the more proof that Megan was a sign. No, a miracle. She was the fishing boat that spotted your life raft just before you were going to eat the other survivors.

  Megan led him to a tiny, ranch-style home in a forty year old housing tract, the decaying rubble of the baby boom. She rolled her Cutlass into the carport and hurried to the front door. He pulled up to the curb and when he got out, she was already inside the house, holding the screen door open for him.

  "Come on in," she said enthusiastically. "I'll get you a beer."

  As long as you don't bring me the hat to go with it, he thought. "That would be nice."

  She stepped aside to let him through, forcing him to squeeze past her to get inside, his body brushing hers so closely, he could feel the heat off her skin.

  He was still enjoying the sensation when he got his first look at her place. It was like stepping into a small town library. The walls were lined, from floor to ceiling and around the windows, with those white Ikea screw-and-glue bookcases, each shelf containing an orderly row of hardcovers, all protected in clear, plastic jackets. He wondered if she had a her own card catalog to go with it.