Jack and Mr. Grin Read online

  He took a deep breath and sat down on the recliner.

  In twenty-four hours, he was either never going to see Gina again or someone was going to die. Both of those things burned him to his soul.

  Nine

  He had never been so confused in his life.

  This whole scenario just seemed preposterous. Really, who did this happen to? He knew there were some people who found themselves, continuously and repeatedly, in odd situations. Trouble maybe. Some people were born trouble. It was like something in their brain just didn’t function like other people. They always went about things the wrong way or did things they didn’t really have any business doing in the first place.

  Sitting in the recliner, he took a deep breath.

  He was not one of those people. In his twenty-odd years on this planet, he had led a relatively trouble-free existence. He was born an only child and he didn’t think there were that many kids who could complain about too much attention. No, he received just the right amount of attention. That was why his parents had only had one. Not for any physical reason and not because they wanted to dump all of their attention and affection on this one single human. No. It was because they had their own lives when he was born and didn’t plan on throwing both of their lives and interests away to focus on a slew of children. If they were strong individuals they felt he would be a strong individual. And he liked to think he was, for the most part.

  He made it through school without being bullied. He could have easily gone to college if he wanted to but that seemed dull. He wanted to get out of the house. He wanted to be on his own. If he went to college that would be like tying himself to his parents for four more years, at least. Maybe this lack of trouble he had was more a sense of purposeless directionlessness.

  Relationships were easily come by and just as easily buried in the dust. He didn’t think of himself as an abnormally cold person but, realistically, he found himself with a girlfriend when he wanted something else to bury his cock in besides his hand and, eventually, he inevitably tired of this person because there was a lack of connection. None of them mentally turned him on. And he didn’t think any of them could manage to physically turn him on day after day. Until he had met Gina. From the time he met her he knew there wouldn’t be anyone else. If she didn’t feel the same way about him in the long run and left him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her and he knew he wouldn’t give up women but he did know she would be the girl who every further girl would be judged against. It wasn’t any one thing he could put his finger on unless, maybe, it was mutual understanding. He knew what she wanted out of life. She knew what he wanted out of life. They made each other laugh. Life was better when they were together.

  And even though they had lived, showered and slept together all this time, he still found her mysterious. Occasionally, he would find himself wondering what she was thinking, knowing it probably wouldn’t be what the average person was thinking. The way she moved, sometimes the way she talked, was completely different for him. He couldn’t even exactly put his finger on it. It was like her smell. Something new and different and entirely her own and infinitely pleasing.

  Now he found himself, absurdly, without her.

  Was it possible she didn’t feel the same way he did? If she didn’t, it wasn’t something she had ever mentioned. She had, many times, said things like, “When we get married...” or “When we have kids...” As though these were things they both knew were going to happen. And he had never intervened on those musings. Had never given her any reason to believe he wanted anything different.

  Unless maybe he had just waited too long. That happened, he guessed. Women who wanted to get married waited for the boyfriend to propose and if he didn’t do that in some mysterious allotted time only she knew about then maybe she grew cold and moved onto someone else.

  But that just didn’t seem possible. They had always been open with each other. About everything. Or so he thought. He guessed one person can never truly know someone else and maybe that was what this all boiled down to.

  Now he had to think about finding her. Somehow this made him feel cheated. It made him feel singled out. Like God hated him or something even though he didn’t really know if he even believed in God. This was an unrealistic challenge. One he felt like he shouldn’t have to be going through. There were things he knew would come up. Jealousy over past loves. The threat of one of her coworkers, maybe. One who seemed to have much more in common with her. One who was able to spend more time with her. One who was a better match for her. Maybe they would develop different interests. Maybe she would get tired of him working too much overtime at The Tent.

  He did not delude himself into thinking there wouldn’t be arguments even though, thus far, that hadn’t happened. Maybe they didn’t know how to argue. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she thought he hated arguing so much she couldn’t truly open up to him, feeling like he would just say anything in order to avoid arguing.

  He found himself the God of a whole world of maybes.

  Maybe he should get off his ass and start looking for her. He could sit here in his chair and think his head off but that wasn’t going to get him any closer to Gina.

  God, this was just so fucking ridiculous.

  He shouldn’t have to be doing this.

  It was really difficult to wrap his mind around something this insane. A needle in a haystack. And while he knew Gina, while he thought he would probably have definite ideas about where to find her, he knew nothing about her captor. Were they even in Alton? He didn’t know, but he didn’t think they could have made it too far. And were they even on the move? Would he be looking for a fixed location or would he be chasing them?

  Okay. He had to think. He had to think about her and he had to keep the rules in mind, even though it was so fucking difficult to even take the rules seriously. This meant he couldn’t really let anyone know she had been kidnapped because that person would undoubtedly go to the police. And he didn’t have much time to work with so he had to act quickly.

  First, he would go to her work. He didn’t know what tact he would use but he would find some way to question her coworkers. Hopefully, Maria would be there. She was close to Gina’s age and sometimes, she and Gina went out and did stuff together. If she was having an affair, Maria would know. Then it would just be a matter of getting her to betray her friend and let Jack know who the bastard was.

  He didn’t really know what he could do after that. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. She liked staying home just as much as he did. He guessed he could try her brother, Sam. He lived in Alton so he was relatively close. Her parents were out. He didn’t want to worry them this early in the game. Maybe he could even try old Tim Fox. He thought he recalled her mentioning that he still lived somewhere around here. Hell, it was entirely possible Tim Fox was her captor. The man on the phone didn’t really say he was currently fucking Gina. He had only said she had decided to stop fucking him and start fucking Jack. She had been in the decline of her relationship with Tim when he had met her.

  More like stole her way, he thought.

  Okay, yeah, maybe he had stolen her away but he didn’t see how Tim Fox could be upset or bitter about that. From what Gina had said, he had a woman on the side too.

  Whatever. It was time for him to go out and do something about it. If he lost Gina...

  He didn’t even know what would become of him. He didn’t know what he would do. Spend the rest of his life looking for her, probably. So far, ever since meeting her, whenever he saw himself in the future, she had been a part of that future.

  He opened the front door, ready to go, but things didn’t look very good. Not good at all.

  Ten

  He stood at the storm door. The glass had been pulled up so the middle of it was just a screen. It would probably only be that way for a couple more weeks so they could suck in the last remaining smells of autumn before the wind became cold and they would finally have to shut the glass against the chi
ll in a vain attempt to conserve electricity.

  He smelled the rain even before he saw the black clouds plastered across the sky.

  These clouds went beyond storm clouds. The last time he could recall seeing clouds like that was when he was sixteen, newly licensed, driving along the back roads of Glowers Hook, his hometown. He had looked into the rearview mirror and seen only blackness until lightning came and slit its fat belly. That was the first time he had opened up his car. He never understood reckless speeding before, never understood why that held so much appeal for kids his age. It seemed stupid, unthinking and uncaring. Needlessly placing yourself and others in danger for a momentary blast of adrenaline. But he had sped then. He was only a couple miles from his house, had never even driven in a rainstorm, and knew he did not want to be caught out in that.

  Looking back at that storm, he remembered the strange things accompanying it. Reality mixed with town folklore, undoubtedly, but some things couldn’t be denied.

  People said all the animals left the Hook that day, running off to somewhere safe. Others said they saw no fewer than three tornadoes. Still others reported a strange purple glow over a section of the reserve and outlying areas. All of that could have been mere hearsay but the one thing that couldn’t be denied was the ruination of the Turner property. One minute the house was standing and the next minute it had collapsed. Stranger still, no one noticed it for a few days, like something just caused the eye to glance right over it. And when they did finally notice it, they also noticed the mother and father were missing, along with a couple of other people from the town. The boy, Jack couldn’t quite think of his name, was suspected, but nothing was ever proven because, try as they might, no one could find any motive whatsoever. It was written off to the storm.

  An act of God.

  God and his fucking acts, Jack thought. Yeah, he had had just about enough of God and his stupid fucking acts and tests— if that was what they were.

  Standing there at the screen door, an overwhelming sense of awe swept down his spine. He couldn’t let the storm hold him back, couldn’t let it stop him.

  When the first boom of thunder hit, he nearly jumped out of his shoes. His heart, which had been racing ever since he took the ring out of its secret hiding spot, now threatened to punch out of his chest. The thunder brought with it a sudden and harsh downpour of hail.

  And it had been sunny only moments before.

  He knew these were the worst storms. The ones that just blew up from nothing.

  He would definitely have to let the storm pass before heading to his car. He had no intention whatsoever of getting out into that. It wouldn’t be good for anyone if he was collapsed in the middle of the yard, bludgeoned by hail. He glanced over toward Moran’s place and noticed the old man was still out there. Only now, the storm seemed to have taken his attention away from the tree. He held his arms out to the hail, his face raised to the heavens.

  Jesus, Jack thought, that has to be pulverizing him.

  He opened the screen door, forcing it against the wind.

  “Mr. Moran!” he called.

  But the old man was oblivious. He just stood there, holding his arms out as if to catch the hail, looking like a strange Jesus. He started moving around in a rapturous circle. Jack couldn’t just stand there and watch him get blown to pieces by this storm. What if there was a tornado? What if lightning severed one of those branches from his beloved tree and it came down on his head?

  Bracing himself, he grabbed a throw pillow from the couch, held it over his head, and stepped out into the storm. It was nearly as dark as night outside and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  “Mr. Moran!” he called again.

  Walking quickly, he entered Moran’s yard and put his free hand on the old man’s arm. The saggy, paper thin skin was ice cold. The tree kept some of the hail away but he could still hear the pellets beating a strange tattoo on the pillow.

  “Let’s go inside, huh, Mr. Moran? Dick?” he said gently.

  “No,” the old man murmured.

  “We have to. It’s not safe out here.”

  “No.” It seemed a struggle just for Moran to talk. Jack wondered if he’d had a stroke or something.

  “Nowhere,” Moran muttered. “Nowhere with you.”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s just Jack... Jack from next door?”

  Now he tried to lead Moran toward his door.

  “Goddamn you,” Moran muttered.

  “Come on, you’ll thank me later.” Jack thought that last part sounded lame but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He walked Mr. Moran up the three concrete steps to his front door and pulled it open. Inside was dark. It smelled like burnt coffee and toast with a faint gaseous hint of that morning’s scrambled eggs.

  “Come on, let’s just get you over to the couch.”

  “Get your fucking hands off me,” Moran sneered this time.

  Jack didn’t know why his attitude had turned to such vehemence but he was now quite certain the man hadn’t had a stroke. He tore himself away from Jack, turning around in his living room (the same size and shape as Jack and Gina’s) to face him.

  “You get the hell out of here.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Call this help!?”

  The old man stuck out his flappy, wrinkled left arm and pointed to a mark there.

  “That ain’t no help at all,” he nearly cried.

  Jack couldn’t get close enough to him to tell what the mark was. It looked like a fresh tattoo, the way it was all puckered and red around the edges. Maybe even a branding. It was a rectangle, the short sides on the wrist and elbow ends, at the direct center of the inside of his forearm. There was another line through the middle of the rectangle so that it was divided into two squares.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Jack said.

  “The fuck you don’t!” Moran snorted. “Ain’t no coincidence. Your pussy goes missin and then I get this.”

  Now Jack was really confused.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you need me to call an ambulance for you? Do you need me to take you someplace? Are you hurting? Are you okay?” At this point, he was just throwing things out. He didn’t really know what he was saying.

  “I just want you to get the fuck away.”

  “Who did that to you?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Yes. You’re right. I would like to know. It could be really important to me right now. Did someone hurt you?”

  “God hurt me. God hurt me cuzza you.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Lettin you two live over there in sin. I didn’t do right by God by lettin that go on. I should uh been over there ev’ry day, lettin you know the wages of that sin. Now I’m the one who pays.”

  Why did everyone’s accent get worse when they were either drunk or talking about God?

  “That’s... crazy, Dick.”

  “Get the fuck outta my house. You ain’t got no right to stand there and call me crazy.”

  “I just want to know who did that to you.”

  Mr. Moran grabbed a heavy plaster candlestick from the top of his floor model television and held it up in his right arm. Jack couldn’t stop staring at the mark on his left.

  “Get the fuck out,” Moran spoke lowly, slowly, murderously.

  “Who?” Jack said.

  Moran let loose with the candleholder and it drilled Jack in the right shoulder, despite his attempt to fend it off with the pillow, and then the man lunged at him. Jack didn’t think now was the time to probe him any further. Now was also not the time to beat up an old man, candleholder throwing or not. Moran was not very fast. Jack hurled the pillow at him and jerked to his right, plowing through the screen door and nearly unhinging it.

  Moran stood in the doorway and shouted at him.

  “You’ll see! This is your mark, Jack! Your mark! You’ll see!”

  The hail had st
opped but the rain was still pissing and Jack planned on going straight for his car. He just wanted to be away from here. Halfway across his lawn, he seized up.

  A large limb, hell, half the shitty silver maple tree in front of his house, had split and crushed the top of his car.

  Standing there in the rain, the lightning dancing in the heavens above, he slapped his soaked thigh and said, “Fuck me.”

  Behind him, Mr. Moran slammed his door, opened his door, slammed his door, and opened his door only to slam it again.

  Jack was very worried and very scared.

  He turned in the direction of the cafe.

  Eleven

  He had to fight the urge to run to the cafe. Suddenly, it felt like his whole life had been thrust into some kind of terrifying fast forward. But if his body went as fast as his mind wanted it to go, he would be dead by afternoon. He was slothful by nature. If it wasn’t for his current predicament he would probably be sprawled out in the recliner, enjoying a nice little nap. That was what his Sundays were for. Laze. There were some Sundays he and Gina only left the bed to eat and use the bathroom. Those were beautiful, glorious days. If the whole world had more of those days, there would be a lot less hate. A lot less destruction. Forget about war. Stay home and fuck.

  He walked quickly, taking measured breaths.

  His phone rang, chiming from the left pocket of his jeans. Quickly, he pulled it out, noting the call came from an unknown number, and snapped it open.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Some men are born to shake the walls of temples. Other men are meant to crawl through shit. Some men aren’t men at all.”

  He recognized that voice. Imagined those jowls pulled back tight.