Ice Over America

Chapter 5

byIt always seems unnaturally quiet at Pete’s Hideaway once the night’s crowd has thinned out and the music’s been turned off, and this night was no different. Bleary-eyed, I stared at my watch until I could focus enough to make out the time. One thirty-five. There were still a few stragglers at some of the tables, but other than Ed who was tending bar, I had the bar area to myself as I waited for Leanne to finish up the late-night shift. I still had a half a pint in my glass and wasn’t expecting to order any more. As it was, I was barely able to suppress a yawn. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Leanne smiling at me while she bussed a table, and that smile made this and all my other late night excursions on her behalf worthwhile.

I picked up my pint glass with the thought of draining the contents so I’d be done with it, and was surprised to realize that another patron had deposited himself on the stool one over to my left. I lifted my glass in kind of a cheer, and couldn’t help wincing when I caught a better glimpse of him. It was plain to see that he was someone who’d been having some bad weeks, or more likely, bad years. This wasn’t only from how haggard and rumpled and stooped he looked, but from the evident pain steeped deeply into his heavily-lined face. I averted my eyes and mumbled an unintelligible greeting into my beer. Whether he heard me or not I can’t say because he didn’t bother saying anything back. Instead his attention was directed toward Ed as he asked for a double shot of Wild Turkey. Ed, not bothering to look away from the glass he was inspecting, told him that last call had already been announced.

Now that just wasn’t right, at least not if there was any chance that a double shot of whiskey could dull the anguish this poor fellow was clearly suffering. I told Ed that he should pour the man a drink and put it on my tab, and while he was at it to pour me the same. I’m not an easy guy to turn down, especially at the Hideaway. People like me there, including most nights Ed, but even more, they really like Leanne. She’s a dazzlingly bright ray of sunshine in an otherwise dingy dive bar. Without any arguing, Ed poured the whiskey and deposited the glasses. The stranger nodded a thanks to me with an expression as grim as death.

I decided simply buying him whiskey wasn’t enough of a good deed to make up for having Leanne and her beautiful smile in my life. Feeling my bones creaking as I did so, I moved to the barstool next to his and offered him my hand.

“Bob Trumbly,” I said.

“Jim Wheeler,” he said, his voice having a hollow, rattling quality. He accepted my hand, his grip weak. “Thanks for the round.” His eyes dimmed momentarily as his thoughts faded to some faraway place. “I’m not sure I would’ve survived tonight without it,” he said once he came back from wherever he had gone.

When I first saw him I thought he was in his sixties, but as I faced him full on I realized he was a much younger man. Don’t get me wrong, he still looked like hell, but he was probably only in his late thirties, and maybe even younger than that.

“I’m guessing you’ve had a rough night,” I said.

He laughed in a brittle sort of way over a joke that only he was privy to. “That would be putting it mildly.” He swallowed half of his double shot in one gulp, his body shuddering in response.

“If it will help to unload your troubles on me, feel free.”

He started to shake his head, but a glimmer showed in his dismally tormented eyes and a bitter smile twisted up his lips.

“I’ve never told anyone about this,” he confided softly. “Before tonight there wouldn’t have been a chance in hell you’d believe me, but now you just might.” His expression dulled as he added, “It’s a long story.”

I shrugged. “I’m waiting for my lady, so I’m not going anywhere for the next half hour.”

He nodded to himself as he made his decision, then downed the rest of his drink, his body letting out another shudder. I waved Ed over and after some wrangling back and forth, made a deal with him to leave the rest of the bottle of Wild Turkey. After I poured another shot for my newfound companion, he launched into his story, his eyes growing distant again as if he were disappearing into the past.

“There are some people who have it in for you from the first moment they lay eyes on you. You can’t explain the reason for it. It’s just what happens. And that’s the way it was with Chuckie Horan, even though I was only five and he was seven that first time I had the misfortune to see him. It’s funny but I can remember how dumbstruck I was staring at this strange, chubby, bigger kid, unable to understand the reason for the fury muddling his face. It was like a bad dream as I stood frozen watching his fat cheeks turn redder by the second. Then almost as if it was playing out in slow motion he raced across the playground toward me. When he reached me he pushed me down and sat on my face. If my mom wasn’t there to pull him off me he might’ve succeeded in suffocating me.”

Exhaustion showed in his red-rimmed eyes. He absently brought his drink to his lips for another sip before continuing his story.

“That was when it all started. Horan was only two years older than me, but that was more than enough at that age, and over the years he grew from a chubby little kid to something fat and blubbery. I, on the other hand, stayed as thin as a w**d, at least until I hit thirty. I wasn’t a weakling, but I had no chance against him, at least not then. I’ll spare you the indignities of what he did to me. Suffice it to say, it was pure misery, and he had me living in a constant state of fear where I was always looking over my shoulder, always afraid that he would get me. And more often than not he did. Over the years I stopped thinking of him as anything human, but instead as a piggish, nightmarish monster. And those times when he’d be on top of me beating me, I could see how badly he wanted to seriously injure me or kill me, and that the only thing stopping him was that he didn’t want my torment to end by him going to prison or me being dead. That was the only reason he restrained himself.

“By the time I was fourteen, I was strong enough to where I could fight back, but that didn’t stop him. He’d wait until he could catch me off-guard, or he’d focus his nastiness in other ways to hurt me. Spreading rumors, turning others against me, leaving me awful presents, and worse. He did really terrible things to me, things that would make you sick to your stomach if I told you about them. A lot of it I couldn’t prove was him, but I knew he was the one behind it.”

It pained Wheeler to revisit those memories. That was evident from the way a deadness had settled into his eyes and how his voice trailed off. He needed more of his whiskey, and at that moment I also needed to take a drink. After our glasses were empty and back on the table, I refilled them, and Wheeler continued his story.

“When I was sixteen our family moved to another state, but I still couldn’t stop myself from thinking that Horan was out there plotting his next move. Even though he was five hundred miles away then, he still had me looking over my shoulder, afraid that he would be showing up at any moment.”

His voice trailed off, and it took a long ten count before he continued again. I stayed silent, intrigued by his story.

“Eventually I accepted that I really did escape him, but all those years of bullying and worse left me seething in rage, and I had a hard time moving past it. When I was nineteen, I heard that Horan died in a drunk-driving accident. It was a relief to hear that, but it also left me even more enraged because it robbed me of my chance of someday tracking him down and confronting him. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if that ever happened. Maybe I would’ve just told the bastard off, or maybe I would’ve beaten him to an inch of his life. I can’t say for sure which of those it would’ve been, but as relieved as I was to know that I’d never have to worry about him again, I couldn’t help feeling cheated.”

“Wait, you were nineteen when this happened?”

“That’s right.”

I was confused. Partly from the tone of Wheeler’s voice when he told me how he was never going to have to worry about Horan again, and partly because the story wasn’t going where I had expected it to go. So what was it going to be? That Horan had somehow struck from beyond the grave by arranging a diabolical plot that would take place fifteen years after his death? Was it going to be something as farfetched as that? But then an idea came to me, and I nodded in a knowing sort of way.

“He didn’t really die back then, did he?” I said.

“No. He died all right. I can guarantee you that.”

Wheeler’s voice sounded odd once more as he told me this, and it occurred to me what this was all about. He was only giving me the backstory to explain how Horan had messed up his life, even though the guy had died fifteen some-odd years ago. What Wheeler was going to tell me next was how his life had spun out of control because of Horan’s a***e until reaching his current sad state. I could sympathize with him. In my own case my old man had a mean streak a mile wide and would whip me if he thought I looked at him wrong, and many times he needed less of an excuse than that. I left home when I was seventeen, and I had some tough years where at times I’d find myself choking with rage. Maybe if I didn’t eventually find Leanne I’d be in the same private hell Wheeler was in now.

Wheeler raised an eyebrow at me. As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “You think you know where my story is going?”

“I have an idea.”

He shook his head sadly as if I were clueless. “You don’t. I can promise you that. Over the next eight years I drifted, taking on different jobs as I moved around the country. Logging, construction, landscaping, dishwashing, you name it. I had too much anger inside me and was too much of a loner to settle anywhere. The only positive thing I can say about those years was that I never fell into booze or drugs. At least I didn’t let Horan destroy me altogether. Almost exactly seven years ago I was back in the town where I grew up. I don’t know exactly why I returned to the place where I suffered all that misery. Maybe I needed to see Horan’s grave, or maybe something more morbid drove me back there. But that was where I met Susie, and that’s when everything changed for me.”

He stopped to take another drink, his eyes glazing as he once again stared off into some godforsaken world. It grew awfully quiet as a I waited for him to continue his story, and I found myself wondering whether this Susie was going to turn out to make his life the same living hell that Horan had. A spark brightened his eyes, and he showed me a bleak smile.

“Her family moved to town after mine had left, so she didn’t know anything about me or Horan, and she was everything I ever wanted. Kind, generous, and so damned decent. And so unbelievably beautiful in this cute sort of way, with this sweet smile that melted my heart the instant I saw it. I felt so good being with her. More than that, when I was with her, not only did I feel normal, but like I could have a real life. But the most amazing part of it was that she wanted me as badly as I wanted her.”

“So things worked out with her?”

He nodded. “They did.”

“And you’re still with her?”

“I am. I think she’s the most wonderful person in the world, and I still love her dearly. And I have no doubt that she feels the same about me.”

I was confused again, to say the least. This had once again taken a turn that wasn’t making any sense. “So what happened?”

More of his bleak smile. “After a year we got married. Susie wanted us to settle down where we were, and since Horan was dead and his family had moved, I didn’t have any objections. She also wanted me to make something of myself, and I agreed to enroll in the state college. They had a campus two towns over, and with her by my side, I worked my a*s off and had a degree three years later. After college, I got a nice paying job and life was good. Everything was good. After we moved out of her parents’ house and settled into our first apartment together, something happened that you’re not going to believe. I take that back. You might believe it happened, but I’m sure you won’t believe my explanation for it.”

I shrugged. “You never know.”

He gave me a long, hard look before turning his focus onto his mostly empty drink. He shook his head. “It’s pointless,” he said. “You’ll only think I’m mentally ill.”

Well, that wasn’t fair. Not after leading me on the way he had. “You can’t just leave it like this,” I said. “Have a little faith. Anyway, you mentioned earlier that something happened today that might make me believe you.”

“That’s true,” he said. His jaw set in a resolute way, and he took a deep breath. His stare stayed fixed on his drink, his lips set in a hopeless smile. “Roughly three and a half years ago, I left my apartment to go to work, and as I was walking to my car a bird crapped all over me.”

All I could do was stare at him. My voice sounded funny to me as I heard myself asking him whether this has all been a joke.

“I’m telling you what happened. A bird crapped on me. It happened the next day also. When I told Susie about it, she thought it was only some strange coincidence, but I had this funny feeling inside like maybe it wasn’t. Like maybe I had some sort of bad karma with this town. The third morning the same goddamned thing happened, and this time I was running in a zigzag to my car like I was in a military drill. Up until this point I hadn’t gotten a look at the bird, or even knew whether it was only one bird. The fourth day, even though it was sunny out, I took an umbrella, and since the bird couldn’t crap on me, the damn thing attacked me. It turned out to be a crow, and it went at my face with its claws and beak. There was such animalistic fury in that bird, and something in its eyes made me think of Horan. As it went at me, I went a bit crazy myself, and without even realizing I had done so, I’d grabbed ahold of it and had snapped its neck.

“The damn thing had cut me up pretty good. Both my hands and my face. I went to the emergency room and brought the bird’s remains with me so they could test it for disease. I didn’t know whether crows could transmit rabies, and I kept telling myself that it had to be something like that. At a gut level, though, I was thinking something very different, as crazy as it was.

“They cleaned out my wounds and stitched me up. They told me at the hospital that birds can’t get rabies, and they couldn’t find any diseases with the crow that could explain it attacking me. I couldn’t shake this thought I had on what was behind it. That Chuckie Horan had somehow been reincarnated as that bird.”

Wheeler said this with a lopsided grin, as if it were a joke, but I could tell he believed it. A thin smile hardened my lips as I took another sip of whiskey. This is what I get for encouraging strangers in bars to tell me their stories—I end up listening to the rantings of a crazy guy.

I only half listened as he told me how three months later he had to deal with a squirrel that kept attacking him, and whose remains also tested free of rabies, and how a year and a few months later his wife brought home a stray dog that had attached itself to her. According to Wheeler the dog was some sort of pit-bull mix, about a year old, and was once again Chuckie Horan’s reincarnated spirit. That when his wife was around the dog acted overly affectionate, but whenever he was alone with it he could see Chuckie Horan’s maliciousness shining in the animal’s eyes. He listed a litany of acts the dog committed against him, and if he were sane and rational I would’ve explained that all the hostility the dog displayed to him was because the animal picked up on his own fear and hatred toward it. But what would’ve been the point? The guy was off his rocker, so I nodded at the right times, and found myself anxious for Leanne to finish so I could escape Wheeler’s insanity. Like with the crow and the squirrel, the dog was soon dead after encountering Wheeler, although he claimed this time that he had nothing to do with it—that the dog had gotten out of the house (by this time they had moved to a small cottage) and was hit by a car as it raced across the street toward Wheeler in some sort of sneak attack. He stopped for a moment after that part of the story, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then he gave me another of his sad, bleak smiles.

“The damned animal had worked hard to worm his way into Susie’s heart, and although she never said anything to me about it, I don’t think she fully believed me about how he died. Maybe that was what he was after—to take from me the one thing he knew I loved. Susie. I can’t help wondering if he got run over on purpose so that Susie would blame me. In any case, it caused some tension between us which took months to go away. Once we were good again, I convinced Susie we needed to move. The excuse I gave her was that I had this great job opportunity lined up, but the real reason was that I knew as long as I stayed in that town Chuckie Horan would keep coming back, and would keep finding me. So we moved and everything was good. We adjusted to our new town, we were as deeply in love with each other as ever, and I tricked myself into believing that I had escaped Horan for good. Three months ago my wife gave birth to our first child.”

Wheeler’s face crumbled for a moment before he steeled himself and told me how his wife had had a difficult pregnancy. “She almost died. The doctors told me it was really a miracle that they were able to save her. But Susie’s alive and well now, and we have a three-month old son. His name’s Brian, but from very early on I knew who he really was.”

I couldn’t help groaning. He actually believed his son was his old nemesis. He probably also believed the baby tried to kill his wife during her pregnancy to steal from him what he truly loved. I wasn’t planning to argue with him. I knew it would be pointless. But I couldn’t stop myself from telling him that he needed help.

“I told you you’d think I was crazy,” he said, offering yet another of his bleak smiles. “I also know it won’t change your mind telling you how whenever I pick him up he screams like a banshee, and keeps screaming like he’s being murdered until I either put him down or someone else takes him, and then he calms right back down. You’d probably just think he’s picking up fear and loathing from me and simply reacting to it. And I never would’ve told you any of this if I hadn’t taken this photo earlier this evening.”

Wheeler took a phone from his jacket pocket, and after fiddling with it for a moment, handed it to me. When I looked at the photo he was showing me, a shiver ran through me. There was only one way to describe the look on the baby’s face. Nothing else would’ve made any sense. I handed the phone back to him.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, my voice rattling inside my head, sounding unnatural to my own ears.

He didn’t answer me, at least not with words. Maybe I misinterpreted the look I saw flash in his eyes, maybe not. He still had a finger of whiskey in his glass, and he downed it, then pushed himself off the barstool looking somewhat unsteady on his feet. As he made his way to the door, I told myself that this was only a story told to me in a bar before closing time, and I tried to forget it, although I know I never will.

Dave Zeltserman lives in the Boston area. His short mystery fiction, which is published frequently in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, has been nominated for numerous awards and has won a Shamus, Derringer, and two Ellery Queen Readers Awards. His crime and horror novels have been named best of the year by NPR, Washington Post, ALA, Booklist, and WBUR. His noir novel, Small Crimes, has been made into a Netflix film starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and his novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field is currently in film development.

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