Messages, a Psychological Thriller Read online

  “The hell?” he’d said, dropping to his knees where Arch lay. “Archer, take a breath.” His dad’s hand was on his belly, big and warm and steadying. His voice calm but authoritative. “You’re okay, Arch, just relax and take a breath.”

  Baby Arch had finally whooped in a big, deep breath, getting his color back, and then had started sobbing. Howling out the pain and the fear that Henry had caused.

  His dad had begun shouting at Henry. “The fuck did you do to him?”

  “The little bitch spilled fucking juice or some shit on me!” Henry had been indignant. His stepdad was always picking on him. Always took the little brat’s side. Fucking every time.

  “The fuck? He’s a fucking kid, you fucking waste, they spill shit. How’d you like me to knock you the fuck out every time you fucked something up?”

  “Fucking try it, motherfucker!”

  Henry had jumped to his feet, and Arch’s dad had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. They loomed over Arch, who’d turned onto his side and huddled into a ball. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was too scared to cry.

  Henry’s mother had rushed in and screamed at her husband. “What are you doing? Leave him alone! Let go of him!” She’d grabbed her husband’s arm, trying to pull it down, and as she struggled, she’d kicked Archer square in the face.

  He had screamed in fresh pain, a high, desperate wail that froze the three above him. His mom looked down, surprised, as if seeing him there for the first time. His dad looked toward the windows, thinking the neighbors were going to call the cops for sure this time, the kid sounds like a fucking fire alarm.

  And Henry had pulled back and out of his stepdad’s grip. And he had made sure he mashed the brat’s fingers under his motorcycle boot heel as he stepped back.

  Arch opens the door to the enclosed porch, but he glances over at the Simonellis’ before he steps inside. It’s after eight, so he knows they would be long past their dinner. Probably they are in the living room at the front of their house, watching television.

  Their kitchen is mostly dark, just a small light shining over the sink. Mr. Simonelli had told Arch that Mrs. S left that light on all the time. She didn’t want anyone to look at her house and see it all dark. She didn’t want people to think she wasn’t there if they needed her.

  Arch steps into his house.

  Chapter 8

  The Simonellis sit side by side on their comfortable Bassett couch and watch television. Mr. S has Mrs. S pulled tight to his side, and she holds the hand that holds her. She runs her thumb absently over and over the back of his hand as the blue light flickers across their faces. Mr. S is so used to the sensation of her thumb rubbing his hand–the physical manifestation of her worry, he often thinks–that it no longer irritates him. Had ceased to irritate him years and years ago, in fact.

  Henry is driving his mother’s car. Resentment tangles in threads through his every thought. Hot, red threads of lava that burn a certainty into his mind that he is being acted upon. That it is the world that conspires against him.

  Mary Ellen, Arch and Henry’s mom, is worrying about Henry. She sits in a chair in her bedroom and sees a system pitted against her and her firstborn. She sees this with the emotional maturity of a sixteen-year-old girl who’d gotten pregnant by accident and whose parents battered and abused her for her unhappy situation. And who has never gotten over it.

  Chuck, Arch’s dad, pauses over the red metal chest of machinist’s tools. Sparks shoot through the air behind him, making it look as though his thoughts are extraordinarily exciting. But all he is thinking about is the Mary Ellen he knew in their first year together. The sweet Mary Ellen who’d smiled with gratitude any time he played with her son. Who’d thanked him with tears in her eyes when he’d moved her out of her parents’ home.

  Lacey has fallen asleep on the couch. Too much wine. She was shivering as James left to go sit in his office, but he didn’t notice. Tomorrow afternoon–Monday–she will go to work feeling slightly ill. Not solely due to the hangover, however.

  James is counting. His finger traces up and down his notes while he makes more notes on an additional sheet of paper. His lips move. It has been an enlightening weekend. Revelation lights up his synapses like heat lightning.

  He knows his next move.

  Chapter 9

  On Monday mornings, well before sunrise, William Simonelli rolls the big green trash bin out to the curb. He stands and surveys the dark street in the early morning cold. He can see his breath right now, but it will warm up into the sixties or seventies by afternoon.

  His trash can is most often the first out. It gives him a sense of satisfaction. He’s found that age has made him an early riser, and he understands now why the people up first feel like the virtuous and responsible ones. The ones who get the day going.

  He sees a few lights coming on here and there in the houses up and down Willow. Essex is a workers’ town. Most of these people aren’t in an office from nine to five; they’re bending their backs and flexing their muscles from seven to whenever the light leaves the sky. Or until the job is done. A lot of them are seasonal workers, and through the worst of the winter, they will scramble for odd jobs, but it can be an idle and financially frightening two or three months. When spring rolls back around, as it’s doing now, William imagines this town stirring and stretching, readying its muscles for the hard labor to come. This is the time they’ll make the money they need to survive the lean months.

  It’s a hard-working town, and that makes William proud. He’s lived here his whole life.

  Turning back to his house, a flash of headlights splashes across the side yard from the house behind his. That’ll be Chuck, Arch’s dad, coming home from his overnight. William knows Chuck, of course. Can’t be backyard neighbors for almost fifteen years without getting to know each other a bit, but William doesn’t particularly care for Chuck or for his wife, Mary Ellen. God knows their first kid, her first kid, Henry, had caused them enough trouble over the years. And it’s just a pure miracle that Archer is turning out to be a good kid. William wouldn’t have expected it, not with parents and a brother like that.

  William had retired at sixty-seven from his job with the township. That was eleven years ago. In his first year of retirement, he’d floundered. A working man since he’d been sixteen, he’d not known what to do with his extra time. It seemed to him that before retirement, he and his buddies had talked about little else, but that first year, he had missed going to work. Had missed the camaraderie and the purpose. He’d tried to tell that to his friend John, who was two years behind him on the retirement schedule, but John had scoffed. Mightily. In fact, he’d choked on his mouthful of coffee and looked at William as though he’d come down with sudden onset Alzheimer’s.

  But after that first year, he’d started to get the hang of it. Had even started to enjoy himself. It was just a matter of developing some new routines. For instance, every Thursday morning he met a group of retirees like himself at the McDonald’s. They met at nine-thirty, ten, doing their best to avoid the brunt of the rush-hour traffic. They sat over McMuffins and coffee and talked about the girls behind the counter or what they used to do before retirement. William most often tried to steer the conversation to more current events, but inevitably they swerved back to the past. Or to sickness. That was another big topic in the aged set, William was finding out. Although, he’d bet that his wife’s group of friends talked about it even more, as it seemed to William that that had been the ladies’ habit since before he could even remember.

  On Tuesdays, he did his ‘outside the house’ errands. There were almost always one or two things that needed seeing to. He’d take the Impala and drive up to the township building to get a new recycling bucket to replace the one he’s pretty sure the people renting five houses down stole from him. The renters put out a lot of beer bottles. That would end up being an hour or two depending on who was around to gab with. Or he’d run down to the Ace hardware for a dimmer switch, caulking,
piece of trim…whatever he needed for Wednesday, which was his ‘around the house’ project day. Dan Morgan, the owner of the Ace, would crab to William about the lack of business because of the Home Depot that had gone up five miles away. Dan was in his late fifties, miserable and sour natured, drinking coffee non-stop from a stained, plastic travel mug and constantly hitching up his Dockers over his non-existent ass. But William would listen for a while, nodding in a commiserating way. William liked Dan, even for all the complaining. He knew Dan was just as worried as everyone else about what to do now that he was getting older.

  William was glad he’d worked for the township, had retired from the township. He had a good pension, his medical was taken care of, plus he’d had his own IRA, and now he was getting his SSA. He’d paid the house off thirty years ago, and the only thing they contended with now was the rising property taxes. He and Antoinella weren’t wealthy by any means, but at least he didn’t have money as a constant worry anymore. Not like when the kids were younger.

  Saturday was the day for the kids to come home. And bring the grandkids. William loved those days best. And he knew Antoinella loved them, too. She’d send him out early on Friday mornings to the supermarket with a list and then spend the day cooking and send him back out Saturday morning with a new list–always a much shorter one–of the extras she felt she needed.

  Antoinella had stopped driving to the grocery store five years ago. She’d backed into a car trying to exit her parking space and, in her panic, had hit the gas and run into the car a second time. When she’d come home that day, teary eyed and shaky, she wouldn’t tell William what the other driver had said (or yelled), but she had also never picked up the car keys again.

  At first, William had driven her to the grocery store and she’d done her shopping, but even that had tapered off after a while. Finally, she had gotten into the habit of just sending him on his own. In fact, Antoinella almost never left the house. The only place she’d go was to her doctor, who was only two blocks over. And still, William had to drive her there.

  William noted that her timidity grew the more she sequestered herself. When they were both younger (much younger), she’d gone everywhere by herself and then had shuttled the kids to all the things kids needed to go to–football and baseball, cheerleading, band practice, play rehearsals, dances. One Christmas, William had gotten her a fancy chauffeur’s hat, and everyone had laughed as she swatted him with it. But she’d been laughing, too. And she’d even worn it a few times, sporting a ‘dare me and I’ll do it’ grin.

  William pauses when he gets to his garage, the big double door open like an early morning yawn. His arms are crossed against the chill as he thinks about the past, laughing and shaking his head a little, remembering Antoinella’s chauffeur hat. He turns in time to see a gray Impala cruising by. William notes the car for two reasons: one, it’s just like his car, except his car is blue; and two, he’s seen this fella a time or two now. William wonders if maybe he’s just moved into the neighborhood.

  The guy is going real slow, barely moving, foot probably not even on the gas, and craning his neck. William gets the impression he’s trying to see around the house to the back of the house behind his. William steps forward out of the shadow of the garage, and the guy looks at him, startled, and then guns his engine, chirping his tires on the pavement and speeding away.

  William looks reflexively over his shoulder at the bedroom window, hoping the noise didn’t startle Antoinella. She’s developed a habit of clutching a handful of housedress to her chest whenever there is a too-loud sound outside.

  But the window is dark, the dawn just now beginning to streak the glass with pink and orange. William shivers and glances back down the street. Feeling ‘weirded out’, as his kids would have said.

  Maybe he’d mention it to Chuck–let him know someone had seemed interested in his house. If he happens to see him out in his yard.

  Chapter 10

  Henry idles at the curb in front of his mother’s house. The Taurus is running, but the lights are off. He is waiting for a friend to pick him up. He’ll put his mom’s keys under the front doormat when he leaves. This is their standard system for trading off the car.

  He ignores Chuck when Chuck pulls his F150 into the driveway, even though Chuck gives Henry a perfunctory wave.

  Chuck has been a dick to him as long as he can remember, and that’s a long time–Henry was only two when Chuck had started coming around. Henry has a hard time believing his mom’s stories about a younger Chuck who had taken them places like the drag races and monster truck rallies and had even played with him on swings and slides. Who–according to Mary Ellen–had helped raise him.

  Henry’s real dad had split when he heard Henry was on the way. Can’t blame him, Henry always thinks, I’d fucking do the same.

  He checks the watch on his wrist. Dipshit is late again. As usual. Henry knows he can’t count on Mark. Fucking loser. But you’d think he’d be on time once in a while, wouldn’t you? Christ, wouldn’t it stand to reason that he might be on time or even early at least by accident every now and again?

  His rearview lights up, and he sighs and sits up higher, reaching for the keys in the ignition. Here’s the dipshit now. Finally.

  But the lights don’t pull in behind him; they slide by slowly on his right–the passenger side of the Taurus. It is a gray Impala, and Henry can see the guy driving it. The dude is looking right past Henry and eyeballing the house. Eyeballing it real hard, too. Henry has broken into enough houses to recognize the slow crawl, the careful casing.

  Henry snorts laughter. Douche doesn’t even see me, he thinks. Dumb fuck. Even left his lights on. Not very stealth.

  But now Henry is noticing that this guy doesn’t look like a house-robbing loser. He’s too clean-cut, a suit and tie type of dude. Little older than Henry. Staring at the house like he’s looking for someone. Henry’s mind works quickly. Can’t be a friend of Arch’s, too old. Not of Chuck’s either, too preppy. Not an admirer of dumpy old Mary Ellen, that’s for sure. Henry snorts more laughter at the thought.

  Henry taps his horn. Once. Lightly. Just to be a dick. The guy jumps, and he looks so startled, Henry wonders if he pissed his pants. Henry gives him the finger. Fuck off, asswipe, he thinks.

  The guy puts the boot to the Impala and shoots down the road toward Mossy and the highway. Henry shakes his head, still laughing a little. Fucking douche, he thinks. But something is bothering him. The guy had looked…after the first flash of shock…the guy had looked fucking pissed. More than pissed, he’d looked fucking furious. Henry knows that look well enough.

  He is about to put the lights on and follow the guy when his rearview lights up again. This time, the headlights settle in behind him. Mark. Picking him up.

  Henry hesitates, taking his hand off the wheel, thinking. Probably nothing. Guy was just lost or whatever. Got pissed at the horn ’cause he for sure wasn’t expecting it. Henry’s hand returns to the key, and he kills the engine and steps from the car, giving Mark a short wave. He takes his mom’s keys to the front door and slides them under the mat, looking over his shoulder, checking that no one sees. A reflex. God knows he’s pilfered enough keys from under mats, in fake rocks, in the little magnetic hide-a-key boxes under cars. He remembers from high school, one of his teachers saying something about how no one fears theft as much as a thief. Some of the kids had looked confused, but Henry got it right away. Because he understood it was about possibility…how if it’s something you’d do, then it’s a fact that other people are capable of it, too.

  Not that he really cares if someone robs Chuck and Mary Ellen’s house.

  He trots to Mark’s Ranger and pulls open the passenger side door. “What’s up, fag?” he says, sliding in.

  Mark blinks slowly, his eyes incredibly bloodshot. “Huh?”

  “You fucking half-wit, you’re fucking stoned.” Henry sighs and opens the door again. “I’ll fucking drive, you waste.”

  Henry and Mark swi
tch places, and Henry guns it up to Mossy and makes a right, barely stopping at the sign, and heads toward the highway. He makes another right, again barely stopping, causing a car in the traveling lane to have to jump quickly to the passing lane. The car flies past, horn blaring, middle finger raised in an early morning salute.

  Mark bugles laughter. Henry looks over at him and starts to laugh himself at the jackass noises Mark’s making, when his eyes happen on the gray Impala. Guy is parked in the lot outside Brother’s Pizza, facing the highway, his lights off. Henry sees the car is running; there is exhaust curling from the tailpipe. The laugh that had just started dies in his throat.

  The guy is staring right at him, right into his eyes. Henry can see the dude’s hands, white knuckled and tight on the steering wheel.

  And he looks pissed as hell.

  Henry feels an unaccustomed shift of fear low in his belly. Another horn honks behind him, and he realizes he is barely crawling along. He glances in his rearview at the car behind him and then back at the Impala. By now, they have gone past Brother’s parking lot, and he can’t see the driver’s face anymore. Just the vague shape of him in the car.

  Mark is still laughing, huge hee haws. Henry gasses the Ranger and throws it into second gear, then into third, snapping Mark’s head back and his mouth shut.

  “Shut up, dummy,” Henry says.

  Mark looks over, his eyes even redder now, if that’s even possible. “Huh?” he says.

  Henry doesn’t answer, just glances once more in the rearview at the Impala that is getting smaller in the distance. He thinks about calling Mary Ellen, even asks Mark for his cell phone, but as Mark is digging slowly through his pockets, looking terminally confused, Henry thinks fuck it and tells Mark to never mind.