Do-Overs and Detours - Eighteen Eerie Tales (Stories to SERIOUSLY Creep You Out Book 4) by Vernon Steve

Author:Vernon, Steve [Vernon, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Stark Raven Press
Published: 2014-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

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There’s a moving van next door. I watch the men in their stained blue overalls hoisting the furniture inside. It’s cheap stuff, mostly particleboard. The signs are easy to read. It’s just another piece of trailer trash, blowing into the park. There’s constancy in transience. Trailer parks rarely stay empty for long. Poverty is an endless rope dragging a rabid dog that would not die.

A small car pulled in beside the moving van. A woman got out. She was tiny with soft blonde hair. A wisp blew across her eyes no matter how often she brushed it aside. The wisp was whispering. That’s what her hair was doing. It whispered low soft wet maddening whispers like rats in the walls. I heard the whispers over here. I could hear her hair and a part of me wants to whisper her name into one of my jars.

She saw me and waved. For an instant I thought she was throwing something. A grenade? A jar? A Molotov cocktail? She waved frantically as if she might be drowning, determined to be noticed.

Very well. I waved back and forced out a smile.

What have you done, I wondered? What is your crime? There had to be something hidden beneath that veneer of tawdry respectability. People are parcels. Secrets, with strings attached. We all hide something.

The paper boy rattled up behind me. I whirled like a nervous gunslinger, my finger on the trigger of the hose spray. The boy balanced in front of me on his red painted bicycle, the steel wires upon his teeth glinting cockily in the early morning sun.

What secrets did you hide, I wondered. Did you cheat your customers on collection day? Misjuggle their change? Did you peep in women's windows, nastily masturbating in their nasturtium beds?

I smiled. I made my face seem harmless. “Your name’s Billy, isn’t it?”

He looked at me. Half scared. The young are so wise.

He nodded.

Billy. I know you boy. I have my eyes upon you. And a cellar full of mason jars. A half an hour later I whispered his name into one of them. Billy. The name tasted of glass and spittle and cold threaded steel. The jar made a sound like a playing card spoked against a slowly spinning wheel as I tightened the lid closed.

I thought about my new neighbor and her soft sun gold whispering hair.

What had you done?

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