Here's the first three chapters from my new novel, Where the Dead Go.
You can pick it up for $3.99 on
Amazon and
Kobo.
Where the Dead Go
Copyright 2014 Anthony Izzo
1
Mia saw the blood again. She saw it every night in her
dreams. The walls had been painted with it. The cops had walked her out, an
officer the size of a linebacker shielding her eyes so she didn't see it all,
but she'd peeked, as kids were apt to do, taking in the great splash of it
across the yellow linoleum floor. There was the blood and the sight of her
mother's dead, white hand, two of the nails ripped off in the struggle to save
her life.
That is what she'd seen this time; Xanax hadn't helped. Nor
had Ambien or any of the other shit the doctors had prescribed for her.
Sometimes the dreams were about the blood. Sometimes there
were gallons of it, sloshing down the hallways of her childhood home, drowning
her, the metallic liquid filling her mouth and lungs, Mia awakening, feeling
like there was something sitting on her chest. Other times she would bolt
awake, hairs on her neck at attention, ice running down her spine, thinking
she'd heard someone in the house, just as she had that night long ago.
She sat on the edge of the bed in her one-bedroom apartment.
There was a pile of laundry that had taken on a peculiar funk. A half-eaten
microwave pizza rested on a plate on the nightstand. Next to that was a
piss-warm, half empty can of Busch lite.
Had to go to the budget beer. Cheap buzz. God I need to
clean this place up.
Killer on the road. That's how they had referred to him, the man (or men) that
had come out of the night like grim phantoms and left Mia without a family.
Shit, she needed a beer. The drinking had started in the
past month, Mia sucking down cheap beer in the hope that a quick buzz would
help with sleep.
She went to the kitchen, where three empties sat on the
counter. She opened the fridge and found the empty twelve-pack of Busch. Shook
it just to make sure there wasn't an extra beer hiding in the twelve-pack. But
it was empty.
She looked at the clock. It was just past two in the
morning. The Red Apple down the street was open 24/7. It wouldn't take long to
walk down and pick something up. Just one to take the dead-as-dogshit taste out
of her mouth. To quench her thirst.
Who are you kidding? That beer's to help you pass out and
hopefully have a dreamless sleep.
The dreams troubled her, but there was something worse. The
visions had returned. At twenty-nine, Mia had thought she was free of them.
They had stopped a few years after her family had wound up butchered on the
kitchen floor. But in the past few weeks she'd kept having the same one.
They would come at odd times, never predictable.
She would see a linoleum tile ceiling through clouded eyes.
A liver-spotted hand with an IV jabbed in it, covered by tape to keep it in
place. It had been someone in a hospital bed, and when the visions were
particularly vivid, she would hear the muffled electronic beep of monitors and
smell the piss from a catheter bag. These would come at inopportune times: when
she was standing line at the bank; standing at the gas pump, the gasoline
sloshing on the ground as she zoned out. There would be stares from strangers,
because she knew she had mentally checked out during the visions and likely
stood there like a zombie from a Romero flick.
Now, she crushed the Busch Light case and stuffed it in the
overflowing garbage can under the kitchen sink.
She returned to the bedroom and threw on flip-flops. Pink sweatpants
and a Buffalo Sabres hoodie rounded out her ensemble. When she was on her way
out the door, she snatched her purse and entered the apartment hallway.
Based on the smell in the hallway, Mrs. Jenaway had fried
fish again. The heavy, greasy odor permeated the hallway.
I've got to get out of this place.
2
She entered the Red Apple, glad to be away from the fish
smell in the apartment hallway. Mia sniffed her sweatshirt and found the greasy
odor had permeated her clothes. She walked to the back of the store and looked
at the beer section. Heineken, Sam Adams, and Guinness were in the high-rent
district. Labatt's, Molson, and Coors were in the suburbs. She scanned right
and found her section: the ghetto of the beer cooler, populated by Natty Light,
Milwaukee's Best, Genesee, and Busch Light. She grabbed a twelve of Busch Light
and walked to the counter.
The clerk leaned on her elbows, bent over the counter. She
had straight-cut bangs across a pimple-studded forehead. Her nose was bulbous
and red. “Nice night for a walk.”
“Not bad out,” Mia agreed.
The clerk slid the beer across the counter. “The good stuff,
huh?”
“Just ring it up, please. I'm kind of tired.”
“I’ll need ID.”
Mia fished in her purse, dug past a hair-clogged brush and a
tampon, grabbed her wallet, and took out her license. The picture was eight-years-old. She felt as
if she didn't really know the smiling, fresh-faced girl in the photo. The girl
that had been asked to leave the University at Buffalo after it was found out
she was spending her nights at her history professor’s apartment. He’d resigned.
Last she’d heard he’d move to Cleveland and was working in real estate.
The clerk took the license, checked it, and said: “Holy
shit, you're that girl.”
Yes, that girl with the hair and the two boobs. There's lots
of us. We are legion.
“I'm sorry?”
“The Gordon House Massacre. You're her.”
This happened a lot, Mia getting recognized. She had been
splashed all over the local news after the murders. In addition, she'd been on 20/20,
60 Minutes, and had been featured in a two-hour special on MSNBC. The local
news had recently done a follow up story on the fifteen-year anniversary of the
murders. If this was fifteen minutes of
fame, she wanted no part of it.
“That's me,” Mia said.
“God, that was awful, what happened to you're family. I'm
terribly sorry.”
Maria suddenly couldn't look the clerk in the eye; it was too
much, too intimate. “Just ring me up,” she murmured.
She felt the cool plastic of the license being slipped into
her hand. She slipped it back in her wallet.
The clerk gave her the total and Mia paid with a twenty. She
took her change, her beer, and walked out into the night.
Back in the apartment, she sat in the darkness, moonlight
coming in the kitchen window and spilling on the pile of dishes in the sink.
The clock ticked on the wall, sounding as loud as a passing freight train to
her.
She took a sip of the Busch Light. It was bitter and shitty,
but it was cold, and she planned on getting piss-drunk and passing out until
late morning.
That was when another vision struck, this time like a physical
force inside her head, and she heard a sort of whooshing sound in her mind.
This time there was a choking, gurgling sound that came along with the vision
of the dotted ceiling tiles. It sounded like someone with a throat full of phlegm.
After a moment, the choking noise stopped and she heard a grating voice say: I'm
dying.
The vision faded out and she was left with her beer. When
she picked up the can this time, her hand was trembling.
3
Karen Zelinski took her time walking down the hall to check
on the patient in 1302; in ten years of nursing she had never had a patient
give her the creeps like Edward Allen Gruber did. She thought about the need to
buy a Halloween mask for Jason, her ten-year-old son. He wanted one of those
Scream masks that filled with blood. She reflected that Edward Allen Gruber's
face would make a terrific mask in itself. She'd seen plenty of dying patients,
their skin pale, waxy, and yellow, but Gruber's was different; his skin was
almost chalky, as if he’d been made up to look like a vampire.
She entered Gruber's room. He'd been circling the drain for
the past twenty-four hours. His catheter bag had nearly dried up; the doctors
had confirmed that his kidneys were shutting down.
Karen approached
Gruber, the man with the Halloween face. His eyes opened as she stooped to
check the catheter bag. It was pretty much dry.
She looked into the watery gray eyes. They were much like that of a
stuffed animal, devoid of life.
A steady gurgling
came from Gruber’s throat, a death rattle. His mouth was open and even from
several feet away, she could smell the rot on his breath. His pulse had dropped
and his respiration was shallow.
She took her
stethoscope and listened to his heart; the beat was there, if weak.
He had almost a
full bag of saline, so there was nothing to change there. The doctors hadn’t
much checked on Gruber. He had staggered into the emergency room coughing up
blood and passed out soon after. Tests had shown stage four lung cancer that
had metastasized to his liver, pancreas, and brain. There were no relatives to
contact, only a driver’s license with a picture of Gruber that looked to be
fifteen years out of date.
The social worker
had attempted to find a next of kin or anyone who could provide any information
on Gruber; so far they had been unsuccessful. No relatives, no kids. He had
been born in 1900, but even in his poor state of health, Karen would’ve taken
him for around eighty, not the hundred-plus years listed on his driver’s
license.
As she stood at
his bedside, he let out a long, low gasp. His eyes shot open, revealing little
red rivers where blood vessels had popped. His lips curled back in a parody of
a grin, then his tongue poked out and lolled to one side.
A long breath that
reeked of rotten eggs spilled from his mouth. Karen clapped a hand over her
mouth and nose to try and avoid the stench. The monitors started beeping and
jangling.
If this guy dies, no one will miss him.
The lights began
to flicker and give off a buzz-hum, and when the door to his room slammed shut,
she felt a scream building but stifled it.
Gruber’s head
slumped, his chin to his chest. The room was like the inside of a coal mine.
She stumbled toward the door.
As she headed for
the door, she told her self not to panic, to take deep breaths. A breeze
must’ve slammed the door, and the lights were a fluke. Had to be.
She heard
something hiss. It was like someone whispering too low to hear. She turned and
looked at Gruber.
In the corner near
his bed, something slithered in the corner, a shadow blacker than the darkness
itself in the room. It was vaguely man-shaped, and she watched it drift across
the wall. The shadow-thing kept up its
chattering and whispering. Karen was tempted to plug her ears so she wouldn’t
have to hear it.
Her guts felt like
they’d been liquefied. She gripped the door handle and pulled.
The door would not
open and she pounded on it, yelling as she did so. Someone in the hallway would
have to hear her.
She glanced at
Gruber. He sat up, yanking the IV from his arm. His eyes were still dead glass
and his mouth remained open.
The shadow-thing,
with spindly arms and legs, moved across the floor towards the bed. It crawled
up onto Gruber’s chest and dammit if it didn’t force its way into his mouth.
She saw his cheeks bulge and his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed whatever the
thing was.
Jesus Christ if you’re going to do me one
favor, let this door open.
She gave one final
tug as Gruber fell back on the bed. The door opened and she stumbled into the
hallway, nearly hitting an aide, who was wheeling a linen cart down the
hallway.
This time, she let
the scream out and didn’t stop until her throat felt as if it had been raked by
glass.
