“I don’t know. Like you said, he could be an older man.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Tiffany said.
“It won’t take long. Daddy’s just going to see if that man needs some help.”
“Lock the door behind me,” Marcus said, putting the transmission in park and getting out. The rain was now a mist. He switched on the flashlight and walked toward the parked car. The man crouched next to the left rear wheel, wearing a dark coat, hood covering his head, his back to Marcus. Thunder rolled in the valley and lightning crisscrossed the sky, the Blue Ridge Mountains a backdrop of mauve and dark purple.
Marcus felt something wasn’t right. He could see that the man’s car wasn’t lower at one end because of a flat tire. The man slowly stood and turned around, the hood of his raincoat pulled forward over his head, face cast in dark shadow, fog rising out of the valley and crawling toward them.
“Thought you could use some light,” Marcus said, shining the flashlight on the tire. It was perfectly inflated. The jack wasn’t engaged under the truck.
“You’re a good Samaritan.” The man’s voice sounded distant, and it carried a dialect he didn’t recognize, perhaps from living in different places.
“In this weather, figured you could use help,” Marcus said, keeping the direct glare of the light toward the man’s feet. “You don’t have a flat. What’s the trouble?”
The man said nothing for a moment. He reached inside his coat pocket, pulled out a small cigar and lit it. A red flame illuminated unblinking black eyes. Even in the dark, Marcus could feel the apathy, the veiled contempt from the man’s eyes.
“Trouble?” asked the man, the ruby tip of the cigar burning, the smoke mixing with the fog. “I believe you’re the trouble.”
“I’ll be on my way.” Marcus backed up, not turning around, his senses acute. He could hear drips of water against the car, ticking of the engine, a diesel moaning over the mountain, and a gentle but fragile sound in the night — his daughter’s sneeze.
THREE
“What’s Daddy doing?” Tiffany asked, straining to see out the front windshield
“It looks like he’s talking with the man, honey. Maybe the man’s okay and doesn’t need your father’s help.”
“But why’s Daddy walking backward to our car?”
The man tossed the cigar into a pothole near the shoulder of the road, the hiss from it resembling a snake in the night. “I’m the contractor.”
“What?” Marcus stopped walking.
“Preventative maintenance.”
“What are you talking about?”
The man grinned, a vein of lightning in the distance ensnared in his hard, black eyes. He reached inside his jacket again. Marcus thought he was getting a second cigar.
He got a pistol. “I’m just a hired gun, brother,” he said, grinning. The small black revolver looked surreal in the glow of flashing red lights and fog swirling around them. Marcus saw the flash, bright white and a burst of crimson gas.
It was as if he had been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.
As he fell, he heard a long, painful scream from Jennifer, and the terrified cry from Tiffany.
He fell on his back, rain cold against his face, heat of his blood seeping into his shirt, pooling toward his naval. The man stepped over Marcus, water and road grit falling from the man’s shoes onto Marcus’s face.
“Paul!” Bam. Bam. The shatter of glass.
A whimper and Tiffany’s scream. Daaaaddddy! Bam. Silence.
Marcus could hear his breath coming in thick gurgles, the slapping of his car’s windshield wipers, gears of a semi-truck downshifting and approaching in the distance.
The man walked back to Marcus, squatting down. He lit a thin cigar, smoke curling and rising up under the hood covering the man’s head. He sat on his haunches, rain dripping from the slicker onto Marcus’s face, the smell of burnt gunpowder and tobacco in the air. He rocked slowly while squatting, puffing the cigar, watching the life seep out of Marcus. His small mouth curled into a predator’s grin. He whispered. “Die! You hear me? You’re dying now…a slow damn death I thought I would have the pleasure of watching, but someone’s coming.”
The white of the high beams from a semi truck raked over the mountaintop. The man looked in the direction of the oncoming truck. Then he stared down at Marcus, lights coming closer. Marcus looked up, smoke dissipating from under the man’s hood and his face. He had thin lips. Arched dark eyebrows. The eyes were black as coal, unblinking and appraising Marcus — a butcher inspecting a cut of beef. He pulled out a knife, sinking the blade to the hilt on the left side of his Marcus’s chest.
Marcus felt the blade tear though muscle, cartilage, nerves and ribcage bones. The pain was white hot, searing. The truck was coming closer. The man stood, stepping over Marcus to pick up his wet cigar from the pothole. He ran to his car.
Marcus stared up into night sky. There was a separation in the clouds, as if dark curtains were slowly pulled open. Stars pulsed with a secluded and lonely presence. He raised his hand, blood dripping down his arm. “Jen…Tiffany….” His voice was a whisper. Sweat rolled from his face, his heart thrashed, sputtered, slowed and tried to jumpstart, his life draining away. He dropped his hand back to his chest the same instant a meteor carved a fiery trail across the heavens and faded into the blackness that engulfed him.
Marcus sat straight up in bed. Sweat pooled in the center his chest, some of it dripping down his sides. Thunder rumbled and lightning illuminated his bedroom, painting the room in half-second shades of coppery color. For a moment, Marcus felt as if there was no air in the room, the oxygen sucked out, stale and bone dry. Heavy rain roared across the pastures, pelting trees and engulfing the old farmhouse.
Marcus breathed deeply, his heart hammering, jaw muscles sore. Since Jennifer and Tiffany’s death, his dreams ridiculed and haunted him. Some dreams were sweet scenes of his family, only to be juxtaposed with grisly, visceral riddles, dark images of Tiffany and Jennifer’s bodies shot in the head. Others were of people he did not know and had never met. None of it made sense. People and places he didn’t recognize and no dialogue. Only snippets of violence, like poorly edited movie trailers, projected in an incoherent speed deep in his subconscious.
Marcus closed his eyes for a moment and sat on the edge of his bed. Did God have nightmares? If so, did he share them? “What a stupid thought — maybe I’m losing my damn mind,” he mumbled.
Buddy whined, getting up from the cushion where he slept in a corner of the bedroom.
“It’s okay, boy.” Marcus stood and walked to the kitchen. He filled a glass with ice, took a bottle of Belvedere vodka from the freezer and poured two inches over the ice.
He went into his daughter’s bedroom, turned on the lamp and simply stood there. The room was as she’d left it, almost like she was coming home. The bed unmade, stuffed animals at the foot of it. Posters of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift on the wall next to a signed picture of Kelly Clarkson. A vertical bulletin board held tacked pictures of Tiffany and friends at a skating rink, horse shows, and a school trip to Williamsburg. Several blue ribbons from equestrian competitions rimmed the board. On her nightstand was a picture of Tiffany and her mother making Christmas cookies. Another photo was the three of them playing with Buddy in the yard, autumn leaves in the background.
Marcus felt a lump in his throat. He blinked back tears and shut off the light. He entered the family room and sat in a leather chair. Buddy lay down at his side. He scratched the dog’s head. “I’m turning you into an insomniac, too. Sorry, Buddy. But there’s no greater friend to have in a storm than you.” Marcus sat there and sipped his drink. He watched the rain falling beyond the stretching light from the front porch. In the distance, lightning cast the Blue Ridge Mountains into silhouettes of ancient humpbacked, purple dragons that slumbered quietly through the ages.