Chapter Seven – Faith

 

Nine o’clock, and the whistle from behind me cut through the air like a hot knife through butter as I was putting in one of my stud earrings while looking in my vanity mirror. “Look at you, girl!” Veronica hooted from my bedroom door. “You got a hot date or something?”

A little smile playing at the corner of my lips, I straightened out abruptly and eyed my roommate’s reflection in the mirror as I began to put in the other one. “Keep it in check,” I said. “Just going back up to the morgue for some work, that’s all.”

She stood there in the frame of the doorway, her arm outstretched against the jamb as she lounged against the other, her red curls cascading around her bare shoulders. She was clearly dressed for success tonight with her short skirt and cowboy boots, especially if you considered bringing home a drunk cowboy or oilfield roughneck to be success.

“That why you’re actually wearing makeup for the first time in months?” she asked, laughing a little.

Okay, yes, I was wearing makeup. But, contrary to her view, it wasn’t an outrageous amount. Just enough to keep the shine down on my face in case the beam of a flashlight was flicked our way, or, you know, the bright florescent bulbs over the examination table caught me from the wrong angle.

“Because Dr. Lawrence is working late, too?” she continued, still laughing.

“Ew,” I said, turning to face her as a flash of earlier today, when the medical examiner had slowly clicked his teeth together, appeared in my mind. “Just…ew!”

She threw her head back, roaring with laughter at my discomfort at her dirty suggestion.

I couldn’t really get upset at her, or anything. Veronica was, at her core, a brazen woman.

Besides, I wasn’t even dressed all that nicely. Just unassuming all black. Black jeans, black tank top. I figured, you know, if we were going to be practically sneaking inside, I might as well sort of dress the part.

And so what if I’d put makeup on? Was it a crime to want to feel pretty while you might, or might not be, committing a crime? After all, there was a livestock mutilator out there. What if whoever, or whatever, it was decided to upgrade on its next target, and I was somehow next?

Shouldn’t I at least look nice if someone had to find me like that?

No, that was just creepy. Never mind. Forget that part.

I went over to my little corner where I kept all my shoes and pulled out my black boots. Low heels, high sides. Good for the weather outside, which had a little bit more of a chill than the day before, and something I could run in if I had to. There was no telling where all this would end up, and I wanted to at least pretend that I’d made an effort at being prepared.

“Well, if it’s not the doctor,” Veronica began as she came into my room and sat down on the end of my bed, “who is it, then?”

“It’s nobody,” I replied as I sat down next to her and began to pull on my boots. “Told you, I’m just going in to work.”

“Nobody?” she asked. “Oh, come on, you don’t dress like this for normal work, let alone overtime work. Come on, girl, you don’t have to lie to me. It’s cool! It’s all good! I’ll keep your secret!”

I laughed as I finished pulling on my boots.

Veronica had been my roommate all through college. The first real person I’d met when I’d gone to school. The first real friend I’d made since grade school, when Amy Richards and I had been stuck together by Ms. Smith in first grade because our last names both started with the same letter.

“Okay,” I said between fits of laughter, “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone else, Veronica.”

“Oh my God! I freaking knew it!” she shouted, bouncing up and down on the bed like a maniacal fourteen-year-old.

Why had I decided to tell her again? “Jesus, just calm down, okay? Chill out!”

She nearly squealed as she clapped her hands together. The words spilled out of her mouth like water from a fire hose, a constant babble that didn’t seem to let up. “Who is he? He’s a he, right? Is he cute? Does he have a friend? When do I get to meet him?”

I mean, don’t me wrong, Sam was handsome. Hot, even. But there was just something about him that…I don’t know. Made me wary? Maybe it was just the remains of the pig I was taking him to go see, or the fact that he didn’t seem to carry himself at all like any newspaper reporter I’d ever met or imagined. Seemed that something was just off about him, and the story he was telling.

Rather than unload all this on Veronica, though, I instead decided to play along with her. I rolled my eyes as, both boots now secured on my feet, I got up from the end of the bed. “He’s a newspaper reporter from Tyler. Yes, he’s a he. Yeah, he’s cute. I don’t know, and probably never.”

“Never?” she asked, sticking out her lower lip at me in a girlish pout. “Really?”

“Look,” I said, spinning back on her, “I’m literally just helping him out with a story, that’s it. I just didn’t want to look so weird under the lights in the morgue, okay?”

She looked at me carefully before smiling a little smile. “Sure, Faith. Sure. That’s why you’re meeting him at this time of night? Where are you guys going afterwards, huh? Down to Mac’s Blue Note?”

“What?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief at the suggestion. “No! We’re not going anywhere afterwards. This is just business, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, getting up from the edge of the bed. “Well, I suppose I won’t be seeing you out there later tonight then, will I?”

I felt my face flush in embarrassment. Veronica was always able to scandalize me, somehow. “I swear it’s just work!”

She laughed at my expense as she traipsed out of my room like some cowgirl faerie, content to sow discord wherever she could. Then even more content to leave while the damage grew in her wake.

I grumbled to myself as I returned to the mirror of my vanity and finished touching everything up. Really, I hadn’t done much. I swear.

A glance at the alarm clock on my nightstand told me I needed to get moving, and minutes later I was down the old, slanting hall of our little farmhouse, and through the door onto the rickety porch that never would have passed an inspection inside a city.

The ramshackle place we lived in was just that: ramshackle. It wouldn’t win any awards for beauty, but it might get one for bare functionality. The kind of building that more or less kept you dry, tried to seal in the cool air while the window units were blowing, and kept the sun off your back. No more, no less.

Outside, the pine trees encroached around the building, their spiny limbs pressing in like an oppressive force. The air was heavy with the dust that Veronica’s old Toyota Celica had kicked up upon her leaving, despite the cool temperature, and the stars seemed to shine through with a weird corona around them.

I headed over to my old Toyota Corolla, gravel crunching beneath the heels of my boots, and climbed behind the wheel. I stuck the keys in the ignition, turned over the engine till it rumbled to reliable life, and flicked my lights on.

I gasped sharply and recoiled in my seat for a moment.

Seemingly a hundred topaz, emerald, amber, and ruby jewels reflected back at me from the darkness beyond the house, a colony of wild creatures all camped out on the far side of the building. They were all over the yard, up in the tree that sat on the far side of the building, and all along the old barbed wire fence Tad had told us over and over again he was going to replace. They were on the little picnic table I sometimes ate my breakfast at, even sitting in the decrepit tire swing hanging from another tree halfway between here and where and the pasture began.

In short, they were everywhere. A constellation of staring eyes, all the colors of the rainbow, and some I’d never imagined seeing in nature.

It was like all the lights in the nighttime sky had suddenly descended on our little farmhouse. And, somehow, I knew, just knew, they were all looking at me. Watching me.

My hand shaking, I reached down to the gearshift and put my Corolla in reverse. Turning around to the watch the road behind me, I backed out carefully, turned around, and headed down the gravel road to the gate.

But, even as I drove, I could feel those glowing, gem-like eyes boring into the back of my head.

Whatever was going on, things were getting weird. Real weird. And, as much as I wanted to know the truth that lay just behind the veil, I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle.