But I dared not confront her. I was resolved to clean up her mess and move on. I couldn’t undo what was already done. All I could do was deal with the situation as pragmatically as possible. I sat on the couch massaging Melanie’s little bare feet waiting for the fearful cover of darkness to fall down upon the earth so that I could return Amber from where she had come. I was sure that her family would be missing her. She had been away from her home for over twenty-four hours. And now that I had more time to consider the mission that awaited me I realized that returning Amber to her home might prove to be a very difficult task. The obvious dilemma of overcoming my fear of the dark aside, there was a good chance that Amber’s family might be huddling in their home in the hopes that she might return. At first I had estimated that they would be at the police station or out searching for her; but this would be unlikely. In all of the police dramas I had watched on television the family was told to stay at home and stand by the phone in case the missing person phoned or returned.
That Amber’s family was concerned there was not doubt. Her cell phone, which I had in my pocket set on vibrate mode, had rung incessantly since noon. Her sister was no doubt still covering for her, but was trying to reach her to find out what had become of her. Her husband had also called several times according to the caller I.D. on Amber’s cell. Every time her phone buzzed in my pocket I jumped like a nervous cricket. I reached into my pocket and turned the phone off. I could not wait to dispose of the cell phone.
Sarah played innocently on the floor with the dollhouse that Amber had bought her for Christmas. I wondered if she had chosen to play with that particular toy on purpose as a sort of snub to Amber. Sarah never gave any indication what-so-ever that she had done anything wrong. She had to know, for God’s sakes, that I couldn’t help but notice a bloody corpse lying next to me in my bed. I drew a deep breath and my eyes teared up at the thought that she was capable of being so unfeeling; so inhuman. Her outward appearance was so innocent. But her behavior was unequivocally disturbing; from her attempt to simulate intercourse with me to her brutal execution of Amber. She was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing and my heart broke at the realization that she was as capable of barbarism as she was of affection.
And who was at fault? I was. I had made her into the monster that was she. My espousement of her had no doubt caused her confusion and her confusion had led her to brutality and her appetite for blood had been wetted as a result of her jealousy and murder of Catherine. All things stemmed from me. There was no chemical imbalance; no birth defect; no hormonal disproportion. I was to blame. And her life, as a result, would be a painful and short lived affair because eventually she would be found out. The baby that I once held in the palm of my hand, who once laid her head on my chest and slept to the beat of my drumming heart, was a child no more.
The sun that had earlier cast a short beam of light onto the floor through the living room window grew visible from where I sat as it washed the room in a blast of yellow splendor. I adjusted the blanket to shield Melanie’s eyes from the glare in the hope that she would sleep until after I had left; but when I rose from the couch she opened her mouth in a deep yawn as she stretched her legs and extended her toes and blinked her eyes open.
“Where are you going?” she croaked, parched from so many hours of sleep.
“I have to go to work.” I had been mulling a variety of excuses and this was the only lie that I could produce that would preclude her accompaniment.
“But it’s Sunday.” She extended her yawn as she sat up. Her face looked much better than it had earlier, her skin was smooth, no longer baggy about the eyes and her eyes were no longer bloodshot, and neither were the muscles in her face disfigured with tension and rage. She looked as pretty as the day I had first met her. “Who works on a Sunday?”
“Tony called a little while ago. There is a problem at a house we finished wiring on
Friday. The customer lost power to half of their house, so we have to fix it. Their refrigerator doesn’t work and neither does their furnace.” I shrugged, and as a contagion to her yawn I opened my mouth and evoked my own expressive drowse.
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know. How ever long it takes to restore their power. Can you keep an eye on Sarah for me?”
“Sure honey,” she extended her hand and I tugged her up into my arms and I kissed her as she pursed her lips to shield me from her stale sleepy breath.
I hugged Sarah and kissed her forehead and then I looked into her eyes and searched for the innocence that had once lived within her pretty blue eyes but I saw only coldness. I forced a smile, “You be a good girl for Melanie.”
“I will. I like Melanie.”
How reassuring, I thought.
I waited until Melanie retreated into the bathroom before I left so that she would not see me leave in Amber’s car and then I donned a pair of rubber kitchen gloves and climbed into the car and made my way down the street and toward the highway to a route that I had mapped out earlier. I hoped to arrive just as darkness fell to limit my exposure to night. If I had waited until dark to leave the house I knew that I would have lost my nerve.
During the almost hour-long drive from Wichita to Hutchinson the night grew dark and the radio and the dashboard light were my only distractions. The radio played a mixture of
Motown oldies but the song that seemed to stick in my mind was the howling deep voice of Sachmo as he sang “What a Wonderful World”.
With Amber’s corpse riding in the back seat, in my jittery state, I kept waiting for her to unfurl her blanket and rise up behind me and claw at my face with those long red fingernails of hers. I checked my rearview mirror incessantly and several times I was startled as I imagined that she was leaning over the console breathing in my ear. Finally I thought I heard her speak and I could actually hear and feel her warm breath inhaling and exhaling against my cheek. The hairs on my arms stood at attention and I must confess that I panicked. I pulled the car abruptly to the side of the highway and I hopped out of the car leaving my door open and scampered into the road hoping that she would jump out of the car and run off; I was convinced that Amber’s body had reanimated itself with some demonic spirit. Standing in the road I was completely focused on the activity (or lack-there-of) inside of Amber’s car and I was oblivious to the elements outside and I was promptly buzzed by an oncoming tractor-trailer which blared its loud whiny horn as it passed and caused me to leap forward towards the car as I clenched my bowels in my best effort retain my bodily fluids. I stood in my lane with my arms outstretched and my hands open prepared to run but at the same time trying to gather the courage to further approach the car. I crept up to the rear window and peaked inside to find Amber’s body resting peacefully and completely undisturbed. As I stood outside in the dark I became more frightened of the sounds of the country wilderness than I was of the body in the car; the hoot of an owl, the rustling of cattle from a nearby field, the Gregorian chant of the crickets in the grass and the gurgling trickle of a stream; all of these innocent sounds manipulated within the expanse of my imagination became monstrous indescribable beasts from the depths of hell so I scurried back into the driver’s seat and I caught my breath. I thought about turning back but I had driven so far and I still had Amber’s rotting carcass to dispose of. I thought about dumping her body in the drainage ditch along side the road and doing an about face, but I knew in my heart that if I had done so I would have been traced and tracked and found-out. I gathered my composure and I put the car into gear and I continued my journey along the two-lane country road.
As the addresses slowly fell and narrowed to the number I sought I slowed Amber’s car to a crawl. I passed a long dark private driveway with the number 46663 stenciled in black on a white-washed quarter sheet of plywood mounted to a tree, which according to Amber’s driver’s license was her address. I turned around in a neighbor’s driveway about a quarter mile past and then turned off my headlights and much to my chagrin the dashboard light as well, and I slowly cruised to the end of Amber’s private road and drove onto the narrow gravel covered driveway. I could hear the crunch of cinder crumble beneath the tires and despite my slow speed the decibel of the stone crushing under the weight of the car seemed high enough to be heard for miles. When I reached the top of her driveway I spied Amber’s house a few hundred yards down a slope. The house was a sprawling ranch with a sandstone façade across the front, blue vinyl siding (the house was illuminated with up-lighting) to the sides and faux slate gable roof made of asphalt shingles. Three small beams of light emanating from round black plastic spheres embedded in the ground shot up like fountains and lighted the stone fascia of the house casting shifting shadows as the evenings misty air shimmied through their glare. Several more brass fixtures, skinny poles with halogen lamps at the tips, lighted a row of shrubs along a walk of beige brick paving stones which wound from the concrete driveway pad to a long open- walled front porch which was lined with dirt- filled flowerless flower troughs.