For a breath the four-barrel carburetor sounded like a deranged vacuum cleaner, then the big V-8 gulped and roared, drowning out all other sounds. The old Silverado closed up behind the smaller car quickly. Hershel held down the horn as the push bumper rode inches from the sedan’s rear.
Hershel had built the push bumper himself, from heavy steel pipe. Four equidistant uprights were welded top and bottom to crossbars, one just below the truck’s bumper, and another just above the hood. He’d told her it was for emergency help with stalled or stuck cars, but the only thing she’d seen him use it for was to drag scratches in vehicles parked too close at Wal-Mart.
Then Hershel swung the truck left into oncoming traffic. Gina gave a yelp and forgot her resolve, reflexively clutched the dashboard. Horns blared as cars dodged onto the shoulder. He ignored the danger, squeezed the Lexus between his fenders and the shoulder.
Eyes closed, she tried to think of something besides imminent death. Of things she didn’t like about Hershel, his driving was top of the growing list. He could sometimes be personable, even charming, but behind the wheel he changed. She’d told herself it was just while he drove, but more and more that rage seemed to affect their relationship. Rather than dwell on that further, she opened her eyes and looked back out her window.
The Chevy Silverado towered over the Lexus, a cliff of flat-black side panels over slick pool of gray roof. The driver of the luxury sedan made the right decision and braked. Hershel swerved in front of the car and roared through the exit, flipping the bird all the way. Satisfied with his victory, Hershel slowed and lit a cigarette.
“Don’t be such a damn crybaby,” he said. “That’s why I’m drivin’, remember? If you don’t like it, drive yourself.”
She just nodded, refused to answer aloud. He was right, she didn’t like driving, but she was about fed up with his redneck crap. The rest of the drive was made in uneasy silence while she stared out her window. She could see her own face dimly reflected in the glass, a ghostly overlay of someone she hardly knew – a black eyed, black haired woman who looked older than her years, an addict twenty months clean, a girl who’d left her own father behind to die alone.
Something on the side of the road attracted her eye. She found herself exchanging stares with another coyote, a twin to the first. The animal perched on a roadside tilted rock, head cocked sideways, tongue lolling through a predator’s grin. It seemed to watch her as long as she could see it. With a shiver she turned her eyes forward and watched the road.
As they entered the city limits, a green sign caught her attention: “MoDOT Adopt-a-Highway, Ste Genevieve High School.” It had been a long time since she’d thought about this town, much less the times in school. She’d never really enjoyed school, but regretted not graduating. Of course, her biggest regret of high school was missing prom with Danny Grasmuck.
They’d called her Reggie at school, or worse sometimes, but Danny had always called her Regina. Even after she’d blabbed to him about her imaginary shadow friends he’d been cool. After that he would privately call her Regina Umbra, Latin for Queen of Shadows.
There had never been a question of who she would go to prom with; the only question was how far she’d been prepared to go after. She’d run away after that last, big fight with Daddy and never found out – more regrets she didn’t want to face right now.
Out the window, trees and Halloween decorations swept by as they drove up Seraphin Street. One of the oldest streets in Ste. Genevieve, it climbed a mile from the Mississippi flood plain, ending on 4th Street, atop Stonewall Bluff. Her strongest recollections of this street were watching it pass from a moving car just like this. She’d had few friends to wander around the neighborhood with, and her father had rarely allowed her out after sunset.
Gina could see the town had bloomed, sprouting coffee shops and fast food places, but the hill was eerily unchanged. Some houses looked older, and a few trees might be gone, but the feeling of age and history was still there.
“Hey,” Hershel said, hand shielding eyes from setting sun’s glare, “this it?” He turned the truck’s nose into a gravel drive and stopped.
Dim memories of the old house brightened. The outside was shabbier, the yard more grown over, but every window and each shadow was clear in memory. She could almost see her own face in the second floor bedroom window, looking longingly back out to the world. The century-old house had been her home and playground as a solitary child, and seemed a prison to a lonely teenager. Now it was her legacy.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Every window was lit, and she knew every lamp and room light was on. There were no curtains, no shades, nothing to cast a solid shadow, just the way her father had always insisted. She took a couple of deep breaths. Daddy never liked shadows.
“Nice places around here. Gonna be worth a pretty penny.” Hershel eased the truck up the steep drive, parked with the bumper a couple of yards from the native stone retaining wall rather than in the circle. “Need to work on this yard, though.” He got out, still talking about market improvements. Thanks to his occasional employment in construction, Hershel thought he was a real estate expert.
Gina forced herself to get out of the truck and follow Hershel up the walk. Tricks of the sunset light or her emotional distress made shadows flicker in her peripheral vision. Nothing was moving when she looked, of course. As she reached the porch she smelled bitter smoke, but the next breath it was gone.
Dealing with Hershel, seeing the house, and facing tomorrow’s funeral, Gina wondered if the stress was affecting her. She rubbed her eyes, resolved to keep it together. Maybe she could find a meeting tomorrow.
“Look at this.” Hershel was already on the wide porch, holding the white-painted front door open. “Wasn’t even locked. What the hell?”
“That’s not too strange around here, hun.” She waved her hand at the neighborhood. “It’s a nice town. Probably nobody’s been here since. . .” She decided not to finish that.
“Since the old man kicked Thursday.” He shook his head at her wince. “Well, let’s see if anything’s left.”
If the outside of the house was neglected, the inside was pristine. Wood floors gleamed with polish and the walls looked freshly painted. The Prairie style house was over one hundred years old, copied from Frank Lloyd Wright designs. Gina remembered the furnishings as sparse, but place felt empty now.
“Damn. Looks like it’s been cleaned out.” His eyes went to the door-less hall closet. “Even the doors.”
“No, I don’t think so.” There was an antique bowl full of Halloween candy on the wicker phone stand beside the door, evidence to Gina there’d been no burglary. She lowered her voice, not liking the echoes. “Daddy kept some of the inside doors down in the basement. That’s probably where the extra furniture is, too.” She gave a weak smile and shrugged her shoulders at Hershel’s quizzical frown. “Don’t ask me, that’s why I left.” She knew exactly why her father pulled down the doors; to avoid the shadows cast behind them. Gina just didn’t want to admit to some of the crazy things her father did.
“Well, better check before we call the cops. How do we get down there?”
She led Hershel through the house to the kitchen, showed him the basement door. She hung back as he opened it.
“You coming?”
One of her father’s rules was that she could never go into the basement, which had always been fine with her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but the basement was a dank and dirty maze. A hundred years of junk was piled on rickety shelves, covered with layers of cobwebs. The only time she remembered being down there, she’d been hurt when something fell on her as she played hide-n-seek with her imaginary shadow friends. She’d had a cast for weeks.
“No. I’d like to check things out upstairs, y’know, see my old room.”
“That’s my girl, looking for a bedroom.” He winked. “I’ll hurry up, don’t worry.”
His normal crudeness struck a nerve. She managed to keep smiling until he started down.
“My God,” she muttered, moving back to the front of the house, “where’s my head been? What a jerk. And what does that make me?” Something about being home had cleared her thoughts. Hershel was good in the sack, but he was always good when he got what he wanted. She started up the stairs to the second floor, mind racing back ten years. . .
“Daddy, please. You're just doing this to be mean. Is there one good reason why I can't go out tonight?”
“That's why, don't you understand? The shadows are too dangerous.”
“The shadows?” Incredulous shock made her repeat. “The shadows? They’re imaginary! They couldn't kill Mom. Are you crazy?”
“I saw it, exactly what I just told you.”
“Don't you get it?” Gina’s voice rose with her temper. “Nobody killed Mom, nobody but God! It was an accident. She fell down the stairs -- no shadow monsters, no dark killer, just bad luck, and I'm still paying for it like I killed her myself!” She saw that strike home in his heartsick expression, but he didn't answer, just turned away. Her anger froze at a thought.
“You think I killed her?”
“No.” He turned slowly, ponderously, reluctantly, back to face her. “I think they killed her to get you.” He shook his head. “You're not going out tonight, or any other night while you're under this roof.”
A tearful retreat to her room was suitably dramatic, but too much was on her mind to keep crying. Creeping below her anger was fear, even horror. It couldn’t have been her fault, she knew, but then, why the guilt? Gina knew the shadows weren’t real, couldn’t be real, but still. . . for her? Somebody was crazy here.
She’d run away before dawn, run from being crazy and never planned to look back.
Facing facts now, she’d run away from this house, but actually tried to run from herself. Cousins in New Orleans had shown her the high life. From then on, parties, booze, and drugs had been her first choices for forgetting, for shutting out loss. Then she moved in with friends in Mobile, drug acquaintances in Georgia, a smuggler in Del Rio, whoever and wherever she could get what she wanted.
That had eventually landed her in an emergency room and very nearly in prison. She’d decided to stop using right then. There’d been reason to be proud of her progress these last two years; she’d even written to her father. Just a couple of cards with no return address, not a dialogue yet, but it was a step on the trip to recovery.
Was Hershel just the latest in a new series of self-destructive acts, Gina wondered? Instead of beating her addictions it looked like she’d just switched from bad chemicals to bad men.
“Now what?” she said to the empty stairs. “All the running and distractions and drama, just to keep from wondering if I was crazy or not?” She ground her teeth. “So much time wasted. Crap.” She was halfway up the steep steps when a flicker and tiny metallic ping drew her attention to the light at the top of the stairs.
The bulb burned out with a blinding, blue-white flash. Already distracted, Gina staggered and both heels slipped off the step. Flailing, she fell back, her right hand catching the handrail as her left clawed uselessly against the bare wall. She pivoted around her grip, slammed into the handrail. Both legs came up as she spun backwards up and over the rail. For a panicked instant she saw the toes of her suede boots against the ceiling.
Then her butt landed hard on a step. Somehow she’d spun back over the rail instead of falling on her head in the hall. Stunned, she could only stare in confusion at the shadow of the handrail on the wall, ears buzzing, butt stinging. Something was wrong with what she was seeing, but it took several seconds to focus.
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