James Hutchins (0roborus) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-08-18 17:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | james hutchins, npc |
The Hand That Did the Deed
Who: James, NPC Arnette and Sam
What: Flashback
When: Summer 2001
Where: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana
Ratings: Low
The cottage in Breaux Bridge squatted on the edge of a lake. Its roof was made of tin, a feature that Arnette Ashburn thought charming until the first wind storm, when the limbs of the live oak trees screeched and scratched across it like fingers. The main structure had a wide front porch where she could watch people come up the dirt path on foot or in their cars, the tires bouncing in the dips and ruts. Sometimes she smelled seafood boils from a church down the way. Pastor John brought her trays of shrimp, crab, corn on the cob, red potatoes, sausage, and sweet onions. He lingered to watch her eat.
There was a shed out back, a wooden structure that leaned after the last storm, and a little dock if she wanted to walk out to the silty water and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. There was something about her scent; they’d nibble at her ankles and the backs of her knees dozens of times until she was sick with fever. Still she liked it here, better than most places, and invited her son to come and spend the hot summer months after his senior year. As Arnette stood by her mailbox, watching the road, she lifted a sandaled foot to scratch at a festering bite on her calf.
After taking Arnette's call, Sam Hutchins had flown into Louisiana and rented a car at the regional airport. He drove the short stretch to her house in Breaux Bridge. With a map and Arnettte’s verbal directions, he didn’t expect to get lost on the way, but he wasn’t surprised to see her pacing at the turnoff, then raising a pale arm to flag him down. James's mother was too antsy to stand in one place. Watching her make a pot of tea was like watching a loved one wait for a doctor to bring back news from neurosurgery. He waved her off through the windshield and parked by a heating oil tank on the west side of the house, not far from his eighteen-year-old son’s bike, a recent purchase that Sam still couldn’t wrap his mind around. He’d be deaf by the time he was twenty.
“Well,” Sam said, getting out of the car and retrieving a portmanteau suitcase. His body was starting to grouch about travel. He rubbed the knot in his lower back and looked around Arnette’s property. “It is a step up.” The magic user’s mouth puckered as he took in the beleaguered state of his ex in her house dress, not saying anything past a dull cluck of his tongue. “Where's our son?”
“He’s inside.” Arnette folded her arms and led the way up the sagging porch steps and through a screen door with a broken hinge. The living room was dim but cozy, with a cuckoo clock mounted on the wall, a ceiling fan ticking overhead, and a woven rug. “Would you like something to drink? I made a pitcher of tea.”
Sam shook his head and began exploring the floor plan of the house: eat-in kitchen, one full bath, staircase leading up, two bedrooms in the back. The first door was ajar and he could tell it was Arnette’s by the fragrance of tea rose wafting out of her linens. He kept going, knocking on the second.
“He won’t answer,” she said behind him. “Not since yesterday.”
“Alright then.” Sam turned the brass knob. The door was swollen from the heat and humidity, so he gave it an inward shove of his shoulder and entered his son’s bedroom. The room was dark and needed airing. Arnette’s lace curtains were drawn over the shades, which appeared to have been duct-taped to the frames to keep out the sunlight. His son was asleep on a twin bed in the corner. Clothes spilled from a tall chest of drawers. An old oak dresser teemed with the life of a man his son’s age: old bowls of crumbs, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, CDs, a pack of condoms, a stick of deodorant, a paperback copy of a Faulkner novel. None of that interested him as much as what was missing.
Sam set his bag on the floor. He leaned down and touched the key hole in the antique dresser. He reached a hand out to Arnette, knowing that in this, if nothing else, they’d be on the same page. The blonde gave him a letter-opener.
Sam inserted it into the keyhole and wiggled it until the lock turned. He eased open the top dresser drawer. There were hardcover books, paper notes, candles, bags of foul-smelling herbs he sniffed and discarded. The witch shook his head and went to the next drawer down, where he hit pay dirt. Arnette joined him on the floor. They sifted through balled-up page after page, sketches of creatures that resembled annelids, strange markings, rust-red fingerprints smudging the margins of the pages, the cause of a nervous gnawing of Arnette’s lip. Sam dropped the sheaf he held and looked in the direction of the bed.
"He was fine," Arnette said. "Everything was fine, but then he was moody. He was gone all hours, I didn't know where he was. Not like himself. People have been around, looking for him."
Sam got up and approached his son. James was asleep on his back in a shirt with the sleeves cut off and shorts. The skin of his cheeks was cool and slack, clammy to the touch. He didn’t rouse when his father turned his face left to right, or when he lifted his eyelids to check the pupils. Sam checked him over for bite marks and counted his son’s steady pulse and respiration. “Where did he get the black eye?”
“He was in a fight two days ago,” Arnette said, leaning against the chest of drawers. She stuffed a sock in its place and closed it.
“Was there a girl?” Sam asked, attention straying to the dresser, the strip of Trojans.
“No,” Arnette hedged. “He stole something in Baton Rouge.” Sam kept staring at her, so she sighed and pointed to an open box deep under her son’s bed. Though she knew it was coming, she still jumped out of her skin at Sam’s exclamation of, ‘Gods!’ upon sliding it out to find a mummified hand and a stump of melted wax, the wick smoldering.
Sam stood up. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
“There’s one more thing.” Arnette turned and led him out of the bedroom, through the back door of her cottage and into the yard, where shadows stretched long from the tall, cypress trees. She could hear the sounds of amphibians in bayou teche. She walked to the peeling shed with its concrete stoop. A jumble of tools were strewn to the side of the building. A shovel, a rake, trowels, a crowbar, a defunct lawnmower. There was also a pile of rotting wood. Arnette lifted the padlock and let the dwindling daylight illuminate the inside of the shed. “He did this last week.”
Sam nodded and stepped into the doorway to see that his son had pried up the floorboards of the shed, one at a time, and dug a deep pit until he hit water. A wall of dirt was stacked around the hole. The smell of the dark, loamy earth burned his nostrils. The ground teemed with insects and worms. Above it, the ceiling was marked with a triangle, three lines, a curving path drawn through. A dimensional doorway.
The witch stood up and scratched the back of his neck, pieces turning, coming together in his mind. Sam looked from this gate his son had opened the week before, to the back of Arnette’s house, where James now slept and could not be roused. Leaving the shed door standing open, Sam ran back into the house and into his son’s room. He yanked the gnarled hand from under the bed and inspected the still-hot wick a second time. “He got this two days ago?” he asked Arnette, who had trailed after him.
“Yes. What is it?” Arnette asked, her fingers fiddling in her sleeves.
“It’s a hand of glory. He’s paralyzed himself.” If he wasn't so angry at his son for opening the door in the first place, Sam might've been impressed by the last-ditch effort to take himself off the playing field.
Sam looked around. "You wouldn't happen to have any milk?"