Messages, a Psychological Thriller Page 4

  Arch has found that just watching the girls is enough to give him a boner–all that talk of forbidden sex.

  Arch is short for Archer. When he was a little kid, he hated his name. But now that he’s older…seventeen…he thinks it’s pretty cool. Arch. It goes with his skinny, skater jeans and the flop of dyed black hair that falls over his face. The skin-tight jeans feel rebellious, unique. Although, Joe and Stang have each bought a pair, so Arch isn’t sure how unique it looks anymore.

  His friend Tara has been trying to convince him to put a blue streak in his hair, but he’s not too sure about that, either. He already walks a pretty fine line with his dad, who thinks the skinny jeans and lip ring are for fags. Arch isn’t a fag, and he doesn’t have anything against fags, but his dad sure does.

  Arch finally digs out his mom’s wallet and then looks up and freezes as the floorboards creak over his head. His dad is on night shift, has been for the last three months, and he sleeps from late morning into early evening. He has a hard time getting to sleep on Sundays. Arch’s parents fight a lot more when his dad is on the night shift. Arch can’t figure it out considering that they actually see each other a lot less. Arch doesn’t understand married people. He’s never getting married, himself.

  There are no more noises from above, and he takes two tens from the wallet and stuffs it back into her purse. He thinks for a second and then shoves it to the bottom, piling the other crap on top of it, just like he found it. His pocket buzzes, and it is a text from Stang: where u at doosh?

  Arch snorts and jams the phone back into his front pocket. He turns to the back door and continues through to the covered porch. He sits on the glider and pulls on his chain-encircled, black leather boots. He can already feel the cold–this is a three-season porch, not heated or anything–and he thinks about going back for a jacket. His T-shirt is worn, tissue-paper thin in some spots. He bought it like that.

  “Archer?” his mom calls from the living room at the front of the house. She’d been asleep on the couch, and her voice is rough, clogged with phlegm. “Archer, are you in the kitchen? Bring me a coke?”

  “Shut…the fuck…up.” His dad’s voice trails wanly down the stairs.

  “You shut the fuck up!” his mom says. It is a screech, and he hears her feet hit the floor. Trouble. Arch decides to skip the jacket, and he slips out the back door, careful to not let it slam shut behind him.

  Instead of going down their driveway–his mom might see him–he heads to the back fence and hops it into the neighbor’s yard. Mr. Simonelli is sitting on his deck, bundled in a lined fleece. He’s reading the paper. Mr. Simonelli is about a hundred years old, but Arch still wishes that Mr. Simonelli were his dad. Or that he could at least move in with the Simonellis. Mrs. Simonelli is a tiny, sweet, dark-haired lady who is always–fucking always–cooking something. And the Simonellis never fight.

  “Hey, Mr. S,” Arch says as he clears the fence. He puts his hands in his pockets. These yards aren’t big, and he can hear his mom and dad tuning up behind him.

  “Hey there, son,” Mr. Simonelli says. And smiles. That gets Arch every time. But he just nods in return, hands going deeper into his pockets and shoulders coming up around his ears.

  There is a screech and an answering bass roar behind him, and Arch pictures a chimpanzee squaring off against an exhausted lion. Mr. Simonelli glances at the house and then back to Arch. “Want to come in? Miz S is making sausage and peppers.”

  Arch’s stomach growls, but he shakes his head. “I’m meeting Joe and Stang at Brother’s.”

  “You got enough money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well,” Mr. Simonelli glances at Arch’s house again, “you can stop by after if you want. Miz S made cookies yesterday. I don’t think the kids got all of them.”

  The kids are the pack of kids and grandkids that come to visit Mr. and Mrs. Simonelli at least once a week. Arch spies on them sometimes from his bedroom window. He watches as the Simonellis’ five grown children and eight grandchildren flit back and forth either in the house or the yard, laughing, playing, eating, drinking beer and wine. And man, did they ever hug a lot. It’s like, fucking constant mauling going on over there, and they all love it.

  Arch wonders what would happen if he went over there during the weekly get-together. Just knocked and went in. Maybe he’d just get kind of manhandled along with them. Like being rolled around in a wave down the shore.

  That would be pretty cool.

  “Okay, maybe,” Arch says. He glances at Mr. Simonelli’s face and away. Arch has found it’s easier to look at people through small glances…easier than staring them in the eyes. Though he doesn’t know why that is.

  Mr. Simonelli is smiling again.

  “Well, any time, Arch, you can come by any time…you know that, right?”

  Arch nods and chances another quick glance at Mr. Simonelli. Mr. Simonelli is still smiling, but there is something more in his eyes. A question, maybe, but Arch isn’t sure how to answer it. So he just raises one hand in a wave and turns to trot through the Simonellis’ side yard, heading across to Willow Street, his boots jingling. As he passes the kitchen window, Mrs. Simonelli’s wrinkled little face appears…Arch knows she has to stand on tiptoe to be able to see out the window over her sink. She is smiling and waving as Arch passes by. He raises a hand, nods, and keeps going.

  Joe and Stang are already through a slice each when Arch gets to Brother’s. Crushed red pepper flakes litter the table around Stang’s grease-spotted paper plate. They nod as he comes in, and he nods and continues to the counter. Behind the counter, Tony is lifting a pie into the oven, and the heat wafting out envelops Arch. He breathes in, filling his lungs with the yeast smell of rising dough and hot, melting cheese.

  Tony, short for Anthony, turns and raises his eyebrows at Arch. Tony is one of the two brothers who own Brother’s Pizza. He’s old, maybe thirty-five, forty. He’s kind of a dick. He hates teenagers especially, and unfortunately for him, they are the bulk of his business. He and his brother talk about it all the time. How teenagers, kids in general, are terrible nowadays. Forgetting how obnoxious they’d been as teens themselves.

  “Pepperoni,” Arch says, and Tony pulls a slice from one of the pies on the counter and puts it in the pizza oven.

  “Something else?”

  “Yeah…soda. Oh, and fries, too.”

  Tony rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. Arch shrugs and holds out a ten. Why put fries on the menu if you fucking hate making them?

  Tony hands him a cup for soda. “Fries’ll be up in a couple’a minutes.”

  Arch turns to make a ‘fuck this guy’ face at Joe and Stang, but they are huddled over Stang’s iPhone, thumbing through pictures and laughing.

  Arch wonders if everyone is happy except for him. And his parents. And Tony.

  Movement catches his eye in the parking lot, just beyond Joe and Stang and the big plate window. That same gray Impala that he’s seen a couple of times this weekend. Same guy driving it. Dude’s staring at me pretty hard, Arch thinks. But he doesn’t tell Joe and Stang…they’ll just tell Arch he’s a fag magnet.

  Ask him when can they meet his new boyfriend.

  Chapter 6

  Brother’s Pizza. Brother’s. Skip the Pizza part. That’s better. Eight letters divided by two syllables…it’s not a three, of course, but it’s still even. No shitty remainders. No fucked up decimals. Take out the apostrophe and it’s even better. Smoother.

  James is so involved with looking at the sign on the top of the strip mall façade that he’s forgotten to keep an eye on the kids inside. When he looks down, he sees that one of the teenagers–18 Oak Ave–is standing with a red and white paper cup in his hand, staring right at him. James puts the car in gear and backs away.

  At least the other two didn’t see me, he thinks. At least, I don’t think they saw me.

  James is nervous. He knows he needs to do something…the handwriting is all over the wall on this…but he
still can’t decipher the true purpose. The exact act required. The front part of his mind says he needs to talk to these kids, 18 Oak Ave in particular. The middle part of his mind is wary. Leery of making contact. Not sure about any of this. The back part of his mind, the largely unacknowledged part, is running in tight circles, a rabid weasel, scratching and scratching and squeaking a message of murderous intent.

  James feels the itch of the running weasel’s nails, but he can’t hear the squeak.

  Or rather, he thinks he can’t hear the squeak.

  He now understands that losing his job last Friday was the catalyst for his current actions. Hell, the whole past year.

  He must have been right on with the special project. Fixing everything. He hadn’t been certain at the time, hadn’t been aware of why his mind suddenly began seeing the patterns, why he suddenly became capable of fixing things…but now he knows this is why. This is the real work.

  It was preordained; to get him going so he could begin this work…the real work.

  James drives to the far end of the plaza and parks at the very last spot in front of Perfect Ten and turns off his headlights. The plate glass window–which had been opaqued by his lights–becomes translucent. James’ heart speeds up as his stomach contracts. He feels lightheaded.

  There are three Asian girls sitting on the opposite side of the glass. They are identical with long, dark hair pulled back into tails, thick bangs cut bluntly to just above their eyes and white surgical masks covering from just below their eyes to their chins.

  They are in a row, solemn, bent over extended hands. To James, the hands they work on are hands only…he doesn’t see the customers to whom the hands are attached. His focus is solely on the girls. The three girls.

  Adrenalin careens through his system, making his legs shake; his heels tap out a muffled, staccato rhythm on the floor mat. He feels the weasel itch as a burning. As the day is drawing down to dusk, it seems his vision gets sharper as the light in the salon gets brighter…he can see every detail before him, every bottle, sponge, q-tip and cotton ball.

  Without conscious thought, James thumbs the seat belt release and turns the key, shutting off the engine. He steps from his car, and the cold, damp air of the early spring evening clings to his skin. He trots to the Perfect Ten window and stands, compelled, staring in. The customers’ backs are to him. None of the three girls look up.

  James puts his hand to the cold glass, watches a light fog form around his fingers.

  One girl looks up, and in James’ mind, the other two do the same. Their movements are identical. They could be the same person. One person flanked by two mirrors. Except then he’d see infinite Asian girls, wouldn’t he?

  Their eyes are black. Flat, without shadow or highlight. Shark-like. Inhuman. Fear rushes through James’ mind and something more, a weird clarity, a dash of something that looks like sanity, asks him what, exactly, is he doing here? and then the image of the three girls as identical shatters. Like glass. Like busted mirrors.

  There is movement near the back, and another Asian, an old woman in black pants and a loose white blouse, waves James in with a sweeping, impatient motion of her arm. Come. Come.

  The door opens, and the sharp odor of nail polish remover snakes out and needles his nasal cavities. James blinks, his eyes stinging, and he sees himself from inside the salon, from the perspective of the three girls. He sees three of himself behind the glass, overlapping, blinking. Hand pressed flat. Cadaverous and spooky.

  He rubs his eyes and opens them, and they are swimming and blurry, but he sees from his own perspective again. The old woman is coming to the door to greet the customer that just went in, but she also watches James. Her expression is neutral on top. Suspicious underneath.

  What if it isn’t suspicion? James thinks. What if it’s something else?

  She settles the customer into a chair and starts toward the door, her eyes on James, her mouth a drawn-down bow of determination. James turns and hurries across the lot, unlocking his car as he goes. It weep-weeps in chirping acknowledgment of his urgency.

  He slides behind the wheel, facing the salon again. The old woman stands at the door. The light behind makes her a flat, black silhouette. James knows she can’t see his face; it’s too dark out. Too gloomy. She waves, and before he thinks, he waves back. Then she makes the come, come gesture again, but slowly. Mocking, James thinks, she is mocking me. Just as though she knows he is too afraid, too confused to respond.

  James shifts his eyes to the three girls bent over at their stations. Their posture, the fact of them, the confused mystery of them causes the weasel stir, the itch. But their three-ness, their triplet reality, causes calm to fill his mind, as though the inside of his skull is being coated with cooling paint of thick, marshmallow consistency. It is being rolled on by a workman so courteous, so careful, that he wears only socks, no shoes.

  James lets the soft weight fill his head. As it grows heavier, his body relaxes. Clarity and reality begin to blow gently through his mind, rolling away the heavy fog of the delusions. It is such a slow, subtle shift that even the weasel is unaware of it.

  He remembers that he told Lacey he’d bring home a bottle of wine. He glances once more at the teenagers in the pizza parlor, but can scarcely remember why it seemed so important to talk to them.

  He smiles, thinking of Lacey tipsy with wine, and he points his car in the direction of home.

  Chapter 7

  Arch walks home in the dark. Joe and Stang are horsing around behind him, pushing each other and karate kicking mailboxes. Arch isn’t much of a mailbox kicker. He had been until the day he’d helped Mr. Simonelli put his toppled mailbox back to rights. Mrs. Simonelli had cried about it, Mr. Simonelli told Arch. Said it made her feel unsafe, made her feel like the world was a hostile place.

  “I try to tell her, it’s just kids being kids,” Mr. Simonelli had said, struggling to push the post upright. “It’s different when you get older, though. I don’t know if it’s that you lose touch or you just forget what being a teenager was all about. But the world does seem more…I don’t know…meaner. Faster. Bigger. Incomprehensible.” Mr. Simonelli had put his hands at the small of his back and stretched. Then he’d smiled at Arch. “You just feel a little left behind, I guess, when you’re old.”

  Arch had nodded and continued to pull the mailbox back to plumb. A shovel was on the ground next to Mr. Simonelli, but Arch had already decided that he wouldn’t even let Mr. Simonelli pick the shovel up.

  Arch would do it. He’d take care of it.

  “I did things just like this when I was a kid, I tell her,” Mr. Simonelli said. “We didn’t mean any harm, just didn’t think about the cost. Didn’t think about how it would make someone feel.”

  Mr. Simonelli had put his hand on Arch’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re a good boy, Archer.”

  Arch had paused for a second, not looking up, but then had grabbed the shovel and started filling in around the post.

  “This will probably be stronger than ever,” Arch had said, tamping down the excess. “Even old Wick will appreciate it.” He chanced a quick smile at Mr. Simonelli. Simon Wicknelli was the neighborhood mailman and pretty sour. He left notes about the correct specs for mailboxes and had turned people in to the county if they didn’t shape up fast enough to suit him.

  Mr. Simonelli had laughed as he gave the mailbox a pat. “He just might, at that.”

  Arch wonders now if he should say something to Joe and Stang. Try to explain to them how people feel when their property is damaged. He looks back just as Stang snaps the flag from 6 Willow’s box and tries to chuck it up onto the house. Joe is laughing and trying to cover the sound with his hand. A feeling almost like pity comes over Arch as he watches them snort laughter and resume pushing each other.

  Arch feels a lot older than his friends.

  He gets to his house and peels off as they continue down the street. “See you tomorrow, man,” Stang says. Arch raises a hand and fishe
s his key from his pocket.

  His dad’s old F150 is gone, so that was good. The Taurus was gone, too, but that didn’t mean for sure his mom was out. She let Henry borrow the car a lot. Arch hated Henry. He was his mom’s first kid from before she’d met his dad. She’d only been sixteen when she had him. To Archer, that’s crazy. He was only a year past that himself and couldn’t imagine getting a chick pregnant. Much less being responsible for a fucking baby.

  Henry was twenty-nine and a real fucking loser in Arch’s opinion. He’d gotten into tons of trouble when he was a kid and had even been in jail twice for burglary–home invasions. His mom blamed the cops. She said the cops never did anything to help Henry. Help him? Arch would always think when his mom was on that particular rant, help him what, exactly? Are the police in charge of giving you a better personality? Turning losers into winners? The fuck?

  But he’d learned to never say anything like that out loud. His mom was too fucking delusional. She’d snap his head right off.

  Arch was seven when Henry had moved out, and he was grateful that he left because Henry had always been a dick to him. Arch’s first, really clear memory was of Henry punching him in the stomach so hard that he couldn’t get his breath. He must have been three, Henry fifteen. He remembers lying on the living room floor, feeling choked, hot and panicked, his lungs lying flat and lifeless in his chest while Henry changed the channels from the couch. Baby Arch had stared up the long, long length of Henry’s jean-clad leg and tried to hitch in a breath. His dad had come in, big face looming over his.