the girl with the ebony eyes

Jim stomped on the brakes, but the car kept moving. He jerked the wheel to the right, just as Cheryl screamed, and the car flew off the side of the rain-slicked road, crashing through the guard rail with a deafening screech of metal on metal before careening down the embankment.

The descent simultaneously took forever and an instant. They crashed through brush, bushes, branches; over rocks and dirt and gravel before slamming into the bottom of the ravine. Both of the air bags exploded as the car hit bottom, cushioning them as the momentum of the fall propelled them forward into the steering wheel and dashboard.  Jim heard the crash of bursting glass and the crack of exploding plastic.

He was stunned and disoriented, so he sat back in his seat and breathed for a moment. Then he shook his head to clear the confusion and asked, “Are you ok?”

Cheryl nodded as she, too, fought off disorientation. “I think so.” She pushed the deflated airbag away from her, then winced and grasped her side. “Ow. I think I broke a rib.”

Jim sat quietly for another moment, and then asked, “Did you see that?”

Cheryl turned to him and nodded slowly, “The girl?”

The girl was no more than twelve, dressed in a white cotton nightshirt, with skin that glowed white in the car’s headlights. Filling her eye sockets was a black, empty space, that, in contrast to her skin, seemed to suck the light right out of the air. She was standing, unmoving, in the middle of the road, right at the spot in the bend where a car’s headlights reach only at the last second.

#

Jim had seen the girl three times before. The second time he saw her, she appeared in the doorway of his mother’s kitchen as he was standing in the dining room, setting the table for dinner. He looked away, startled, and then looked back. She could have been one of the neighborhood children that his mother baked cookies for if it hadn’t been for the empty space where her eyes should have been.

He blinked and she disappeared. A moment later, he heard a thud from the kitchen, where his mother lay dead from a massive heart attack.

The third time he saw her, he was helping his brother stock his liquor store. Jim was in the back of the store, moving cases of rum, when he saw the girl standing at the end of an aisle. He looked away, and a second later heard the jingle of the front door, then a demand for money, and then the sound of a gunshot.

He raced to the front, but the robber was gone and his brother was dead.

#

“We have to get out of here,” Jim said quietly. Now that he was no longer in shock, he was terrified, but he didn’t want to alarm his wife. She didn’t know that he’d seen the girl before.

“Can you open your door?” Cheryl asked. She looked out her window – her door was pinned against a tree.

Jim pulled the handle and threw his weight against his door. It creaked open and he squeezed out, then reached in and helped his wife climb out.

“What the hell, Jim?” she gasped.

“I…I…I don’t know.” He looked around frantically. He didn’t see the girl anywhere, and he felt a moment of hope. Maybe she failed this time. Maybe this time no one would die.

“What the hell?” she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “What was that?” She stared at the screen and then started to wave it around.

“I’m not sure,” he said as he stepped back to survey the damage. “Baby, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get a signal. Shit – what the hell?” She waved the phone for another minute, then, “We need to get back up to the road.”

“What?” He watched as she took off up the hill. He turned to walk after her but snagged his jacket on a tree branch. As he looked back, he saw the girl again – standing in the darkness, watching them. In the distance, he could hear the rumble of a semi.

“Oh no,” he thought as his heart sank. “No, not Cheryl!” he struggled to free himself – to go after his wife – but the tree gripped his jacket tightly.

“Baby, stop!” he yelled, “Stop!”

“I’m almost there!” she yelled back, and kept climbing.

He could hear the rumble of the semi, could see the headlights approaching, and he prayed that she would stop when she got to the top of the hill. He prayed that she would stop and stand next to the guard rail to flag the truck down.

She reached the berm just as the headlights of the truck cleared the corner. Jim held his breath and felt his stomach lurch as he saw her stumble and fall right into the middle of the road. “No!” he screamed.

His scream was drowned out by the squeal of tires as the truck swerved to the right, following the same path that his own car had taken moments earlier – through the hole in the guardrail, off the side of the embankment.

In that moment, he remembered the first time he’d seen the girl, when he was twenty-three. It was on the same stretch of road, at the same time of night, and she was wearing the same white cotton nightshirt, with the same skin that glowed white in the car’s headlights. That time, though, she didn’t have coal-black eyes. That time, he didn’t have anyone else in the car. That time, he didn’t swerve. No – the first time he saw the girl, her body, not his car, went flying down the embankment. The first time he saw her, he kept driving.

Now, as he watched the truck barrel down the hill toward him – toward where he remained immobilized – he realized that could see through the front windshield, where the girl with the ebony eyes was sitting calmly in the passenger seat – smiling.

wasps

“Oh, no,” Maggie thought as she watched the wasp crawl out of her ear, “Not again.” She’d been in the middle of brushing her teeth when she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, and she stopped and stared at her reflection in the mirror as the creature emerged.

“No, no, no,” she thought as the wasp unfurled its wings. She didn’t want to startle it, so she held very still – her toothbrush in one hand and toothpaste in the other. She watched it for a moment as it flapped its wings hesitantly, as if to test their stability.

“Please, don’t do that,” she silently pleaded. “Just turn around and go back in.”  Instead, it lifted off her ear and began flying around her head. It circled twice and then darted away, flying quickly through the open bathroom door.

Maggie set down her toothbrush and toothpaste, then grabbed her head and groaned. It had been years since the last time the wasps came – since the doctors told her it was an ear infection, since the doctors told her it was too much caffeine, it was brain damage, it was not brain damage, it was hypertension, it was acoustic trauma – it was irreversible, untreatable, indefinable. Maybe you should talk to a psychiatrist, Maggie. Are you having thoughts of hurting yourself, Maggie? I’ll prescribe something for your nerves, Maggie.

“Oh God, please no.” She looked at the bottles lined up in the corner. There were only two now. Once there were three, and then five, and then she didn’t want to take them anymore. Please don’t make me take them anymore. They didn’t make the buzzing stop – they didn’t put the wasps to sleep. There was only one way to put the wasps to sleep and it didn’t come in a bottle and she put the wasps to sleep but now there were new bottles and…

#

It had been years – years since she took the gasoline and the match to the wasp nest – the one in the gnarled tree out behind her house – the tree that the crazy old man who sold her the house told her to stay away from.  She thought he meant that she was in danger of getting stung – that the wasps were aggressive.

“Just douse the thing with gas, light it on fire, and run,” her father had told her. So she had – and then she’d watched it burn from behind the safety of her screen door. The buzzing began a week later – and she’d gone through tests and more tests and therapy and more tests – but it only grew louder and louder and louder.

Six months later, just when she’d accepted that she’d have to learn to live with the buzzing inside her head, they started appearing – from her ears, from her nose, from her mouth. They crawled out in the middle of the night and built their nests inside the walls and under the floors and in the closets and under the beds.

They crawled into her shoes and fell out of her pockets; they clogged her pipes and infested her kitchen. Everywhere – everywhere – they buzzed and crawled and buzzed and flew and buzzed and stung. Finally, when she could take no more, when she’d been stung for the last time, when she could hear nothing else but the demonic buzzing, she took care of them the only way she knew how: she took the gas can, doused the house, climbed up on top of the bed, and lit a match.

The buzzing stopped.

#

After she’d put her life back together – after she’d made it through years of burn therapy, after the psychiatrists explained that she’d had a psychotic break, after she’d met and married the cute nurse, after she graduated from law school, after they’d had two children – after all of that – on some days she didn’t actually think about the wasps.

She peered out of the bathroom and looked at her husband, lying peacefully in bed. The wasp buzzed around the room, then slipped out of the door into the hall. She followed it, quietly, as it flitted about, and then saw it fly into the room where her two boys slept.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. She pushed the door open, and then watched as the wasp settled into the pillow of her eldest child. “No,” she pleaded, “Please, God, no.”

The wasp walked up the boy’s neck, onto his ear, paused for a second, and then disappeared inside. He whimpered quietly, but did not wake up.

Maggie stumbled back against the wall and slowly slid to her knees. She began to sob quietly. She knew what lay in store for her son – for her whole family – and she knew that she couldn’t bear to see them put through it. There was only one way to fix it – only one way to keep the wasps from buzzing.

The only way she knew how.

how i lost my head

Running into the woman that paid to have you killed for your life insurance is enough to startle anyone. She strolled by, as the setting summer sun warmed the nape of my neck, wearing the cornflower dress that I bought her last summer and the black pumps that were two sizes too big – the ones that her heels popped out of with each step. I caught her distinctive gait out of the corner of my eye while I sopped up a plate of olive oil and sea salt with the remnants of a warm baguette.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, in retrospect – we’d often spent a good part of the evening sitting on the patio of the Flying Fig. We loved to soak up the warm, night air, drink a bottle of wine, eat the locally sourced food, and watch people wander up and down Market Avenue as Cleveland relaxed and settled into the weekend.

“Claire?” I pushed my chair back quickly and stood up, hoping to get her attention. “Claire?”

“Harold?” she gasped. Her eyes grew wide as dinner plates.

“It’s me, baby.”

“But,” her face blanched, “you’re dead.”

I don’t remember much about dying. I remember Charlie – that bastard – and I remember his chainsaw; I remember all sorts of unpleasant things about that chainsaw. I remember begging for my life as he fired it up and the feeling of helplessness as he took my head clean off.

The next thing I remember is waking up in the basement of the funeral home with my head firmly reattached and then sneaking out in the middle of the night. It’s the period between the two that’s a bit hazy. I found out from the paper that my body had washed up on the shore of Edgewater beach and my head had followed a day later.

I’d hoped that, when I finally ran into her, Claire would have been able to fill me in. Apparently not. “Well, I was.” I swirled my glass of Grenache and smiled, “Not so much anymore.”

A crowd passed around us, between us, behind us in that long moment: clever, pretty men and smart, well-dressed women crossing the cobblestone street, moving from the patio of the wine bar to the patio of the Brewing Company and vice versa.

She wheezed – the cigarettes were catching up with her, “This can’t be happening. This can’t be.” She wobbled unsteadily.

“Well, I don’t want to keep you,” I said. “It was good to see you, Claire.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Harold,” she backed away slowly, trying to not trip over her ill-fitting shoes. She finally turned, but continued to stare at me over her shoulder.

“Oh, and when you see him,” I said as she walked away, “tell Charlie I said ‘Hi.’”

If she were able to run in those pumps, I’m sure she would have. I watched her as she disappeared around the corner, headed toward the Bier Markt, probably to meet Charlie. I flagged my server down.

“All ready?” she asked with a smile.

“Yes,” I said, as I took the last sip of my wine, “I’m very ready.”

high cheekbones, nice skin

John couldn’t think of a single good reason for a severed head to be in his bathtub. Not one. There was no blood to speak of – just a cleanly severed head lying in the center of the tub, staring up at the ceiling.

He struggled with how to react. He thought about vomiting, but the lack of blood failed to create a visceral impact – and he’d never been particularly squeamish to begin with. Screaming didn’t make much sense either. He didn’t feel particularly threatened at the moment, and the head wasn’t staring directly at him, so he didn’t feel challenged by it. His mind examined several other possibilities before he shrugged, said “Huh,” to no one in particular, and drew the curtain on the shower.

John walked back out of the bathroom, past the coat and briefcase that he’d set down not five minutes earlier, and sat down in his large recliner. He reached down, pulled the lever to put his feet up, and sighed. He thought about turning on the television and decided against it.

“I wonder if it’s still there?” he thought to himself.

“I should look.”

“No, I shouldn’t look.”

“I should look.”

“But what if it is still there?”

“Oh God, I can’t look.”

He looked. It was still there. He wasn’t sure if he was comforted or not by the fact that it still existed. On one hand, he clearly wasn’t crazy. On the other hand – well, there was a severed head in his shower. He did notice two things that he’d been too stunned to notice earlier, though.

First, the head was fairly pretty, all things considered. It looked like it had belonged to a young woman with high cheekbones and nice skin. It seemed a shame that it was now no longer attached to a body. He wondered if she’d be the kind of girl he’d talk to in a bar. Maybe she worked in accounting in an office just like his. He shivered involuntarily.

Second, in addition to the lack of blood in the tub, there was a conspicuous lack of dirt. John was a bachelor, and, as was his prerogative, he seldom cleaned his bathroom more than once a month. Now, however, the porcelain, grout and tile positively gleamed at him. They were, he felt, malevolently clean.

He shut the curtain again. “Shit.” He wasn’t sure what he was disturbed by more – that the head was present at all, or that whoever put it there took the time to clean his bathroom first.

“God, what do I do?”

“Call an ambulance? No, that seems silly.”

“Call the police? What do I tell them? What if they think I did it? Shit. Shit. Shit.”

He vacillated for a few minutes before deciding, finally, to call his mother. “Hi, Mom.”

“Yeah, I’m ok. Well, sort of ok. I’ve got a problem.”

“Yes, I know I only call when I have a problem.”

“No, I know I should call more.”

“Yes, Dad told me about his doctor’s appointment last time I called,” he said in exasperation, “Mom, I’ve got a problem.”

“No, I’m sorry. I know I’m not the only one with problems. I care about Dad, too.”

“Yes, I’ll talk to him.”

“Hi Dad.”

“Yes”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“No, I’ve never had that done.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I love you, too. Can you put Mom back on?”

“Hi Mom, look, I need to ask your advice.”

“I found a head in my shower.”

“No, a real one.”

“No, just the head.”

“I have no idea where the body is.”

“No – nobody I recognize.”

“No, I haven’t called the police yet. That’s what I wanted to…”

“Ok, ok. I’ll call them right now.”

“Ok. Goodbye.”

He hung up, rubbed his hand through his sandy, blonde hair, called the police, and then waited.

#

“Hrmph. That’s the third one this week,” the officer said as he surveyed the bathtub. He’d shown up within five minutes of the call, which both surprised and pleased John. He didn’t expect a premium to be put on already-severed heads, but he was glad that they took him seriously.

“Third one?” John said, surprised.

“Yeah, it’s been something of an epidemic,” he said, distractedly, as he picked a piece of lint off of his sleeve. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

“Huh.”

The officer motioned to the tub, “You normally keep your shower this spotless?”

John had always heard that police, firemen, and surgeons had ways of coping with the horror that confronted them on a daily basis: gallows humor, irony, and the like. It helped them keep their distance and not get overwhelmed by the reality of their jobs – but the question stuck him as unnecessarily callous. “No, not usually. It wasn’t that clean this morning.”

“I see. Well, that certainly fits the pattern.” The officer drew the curtain back across the tub, turned, and smoothed down the front of his uniform.

“Pattern?”

“Yeah, these types always have a specific pattern. Whether that’s a symptom of their illness or just the method to their madness, it’s hard to say. In this case, it seems that the perpetrator is a real stickler for cleanliness.”

“That seems odd.”

“I suppose,” the officer cocked his head to the side and smiled wanly. “I suppose I should tell you this now,” he paused.

John suddenly felt uncomfortable for the first time. “Go on.”

“There’s more to this killer’s pattern.”

“Oh?”

“It seems that whoever finds the head ends up becoming the next victim.”

John blanched. “What?”

“Every time I get a call from someone, I show up, and then the next day someone else is calling about that same person.”

“Oh.” John’s eyes widened as he noticed the officer’s crisply pressed uniform and immaculately polished shoes.  The walls of the bathroom suddenly felt far too close together.

“You know,” said the officer, “you’ve got really nice cheekbones – very high. And really nice skin.” He smiled – his teeth a gleaming porcelain white. They were, John felt, almost malevolently clean.

#

Karen couldn’t understand why there was a severed head in her refrigerator. It was cleanly cut, without a trace of blood to threaten dripping into the bowl of fruit salad below it. What’s more, it looked like the entire fridge had been wiped down – it was spotless.

She closed the refrigerator door, waited a minute, and then opened it again. The head was still there, starting past her out into the kitchen. It was, she noticed, a handsome head – its sandy blonde hair framing high cheekbones and very nice skin – almost like her own.

After a moment of shock, she called the police.