Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong Page 10

I told him it was all right: I told him it was a misunderstanding.

  “Should I call 911?”

  “No! No, please. It’s just my boyfriend—but things will be all right now.”

  I was upstairs in my room when my mother called up to me, sounding hysterical.

  On the local ten o’clock news it was announced that a Strykersville resident, Desmond Parrish, had died in a single-vehicle accident on the thruway. His car, driven at an estimated eighty miles an hour, had crashed into a concrete overpass six miles south of Strykersville.

  We stared at film footage of the wreck, partly obscured by the flashing lights of medical vehicles and flares set in the left lane of the interstate highway. A young woman newscaster was saying solemnly that death was believed to have been “instantaneous.”

  We stared at a photograph of Desmond Parrish looking very young, with schoolboy eyeglasses and a knife-sharp part in his hair.

  “That can’t be Desmond! I don’t believe this. . . .”

  My mother was more upset than I was. My mother was gripping my hands to console me but my hands were limp and cold and unresponsive.

  I was too shocked to comprehend most of the news. The “breaking news” bulletin passed so swiftly, within a few seconds it had ended and was supplanted by an advertisement.

  My mother embraced me, weeping. I held myself stiff and unyielding.

  I was waiting for the phone to ring: for Desmond to call, a final taunting time.

  That night I dreamt of Little Huron Lake rippling in darkness.

  In the morning we read in the Strykersville paper a more detailed account of how Desmond Parrish had died.

  The front-page article contained another photograph of Desmond taken years before, looking very young. Again, Desmond wasn’t smiling.

  The photograph ran above the terrible headline:

  strykersville resident, 22, dies in thruway crash

  Witnesses of the “accident” reported to state troopers that the speeding vehicle seemed to have been accelerating when the driver “lost control,” slammed through a guardrail, and struck the concrete abutment head-on. No signs of skidding had been detected on the pavement.

  The wrecked automobile, a 1977 Mercedes-Benz, was registered in the name of Gordon Parrish, Desmond’s father.

  Desmond Parrish had been driving without a license. At the time of the crash his parents had not known where he was: he’d been “missing from the house” since the afternoon.

  Again it was stated: “Death is believed to have been instantaneous.”

  New York State police would be investigating the crash, which occurred outside the jurisdiction of the Strykersville police department.

  Soon after, a woman who identified herself as a detective with the New York State Police came to our house to speak with me and my parents.

  The detective informed us that a “cache” of photographs and “journal entries” concerning me had been recovered from the wrecked car.

  Police were investigating the possibility that Desmond Parrish had committed suicide. The detective asked me if I had been “intimate” with Desmond Parrish; how long had I known Desmond Parrish, and in what capacity; when had I seen him last; what had been his state of mind when I’d seen him.

  Calmly I replied. Tried to reply. I was aware of my parents listening to me, astonished.

  Astonished and disapproving. For I had betrayed them, in not sharing with them all that had passed between my boyfriend and me.

  Never after this would they trust me wholly. Never after this would my father regard me, as he’d liked to regard me in the past, as his little girl.

  For instance, my parents hadn’t known that Desmond had been “stalking” me—that he’d left a threatening message in my locker at school. They hadn’t known that I’d seen Desmond so recently, on the very day of his death.

  They hadn’t known that he’d wanted me to come with him in that car, to drive to Little Huron Lake.

  I would give a statement to police: Desmond had confronted me behind our school building at about 5:20 p.m. By 9:20 p.m. he had died.

  The vocational arts teacher who’d come up behind us, who’d surprised and frightened Desmond away, would give a statement to police officers, also.

  There’d been an “altercation” between Desmond Parrish and the sixteen-year-old high school sophomore Lizbeth Marsh. But Ms. Marsh had not wanted the teacher to call 911, and Mr. Parrish had driven away in his father’s Mercedes.

  It was believed that prior to the crash he’d “ingested” a quantity of alcohol. He had been driving without a license.

  The detective told us that the Parrishes refused to believe that their son may have caused his own death deliberately. At the present time, they were not speaking with police officers and were “not accessible” to the media.

  It would be their theory, issued through a lawyer, that their son had had an accident: he’d been drinking, he had not ever drunk to excess before and wasn’t accustomed to alcohol, he’d had “personal issues” that had led to his drinking and so had “lost control” of the car and died.

  He had not been suicidal, they insisted.

  He had so much to live for, since moving to Strykersville.

  He was seeing a therapist, and he’d been “making progress.” He had not ever spoken of suicide, they insisted.

  He’d had a “brilliant future,” in fact. A scholarship to Amherst College, to study classics.

  “You know, I hope, about Desmond’s background? His criminal record?”

  Criminal record?

  We were utterly stunned by the detective’s remark.

  She told us that Desmond had been incarcerated from the age of fourteen to the age of twenty-one in the Brigham Men’s Facility for Youthful Offenders in Brigham, Massachusetts. He’d pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of his eleven-year-old sister in August 1970.

  All that was known of the incident was that Desmond, fourteen at the time, had been canoeing with his sister Amanda on Lake Miskatonic, where the Parrishes had a summer lodge, when in a “sudden fit of rage” he’d attacked her with the paddle, beat her about the head and chest until she died, and tried without success to push her body into the lake without capsizing the canoe. No one had witnessed the murder but the boy had been found in the drifting canoe, with his sister’s bloodied corpse and the bloodied and splintered paddle, in a catatonic state.

  Desmond had never explained clearly why he’d killed his sister except she’d made him “mad”; he’d had a quick temper since early childhood and had been variously diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit disorder, childhood schizophrenia, even autism. He’d been “unusually close” to his sister and had played violin duets with her. His parents had hired a lawyer to defend him against charges of second-degree homicide. After months of negotiations he’d been allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to seven years in the youth facility, which also contained a unit for psychiatric subjects, from which offenders were automatically released at the age of twenty-one.

  This was a ridiculous statute, the prosecution claimed—­anyone who’d committed such a “vicious” murder should not be released into society after just seven years. But Desmond was too young at fourteen to be tried as an adult. He’d been diagnosed as undeniably ill—mentally ill—but in the facility he’d responded well to therapy and was declared, by the time of his twenty-first birthday, to pose no clear and present danger to himself or others.

  The family had relocated to Strykersville, within commuting distance of Rochester. It was hoped that the family, as well as Desmond, would make a “new start” here.

  The Parrishes had never lived in Europe. Mr. Parrish had never helped to establish branches of Nord Pharmaceuticals in Europe. His position with the cor
poration was director of research in Rochester, exclusively.

  The detective showed me a photograph of Amanda Parrish. Did she resemble me, did I resemble her, I don’t think so. I heard my mother draw in her breath sharply seeing the photograph but I did not think that we looked so much alike. This girl was very young, really just a child, with a plain sweet hopeful face, unless you could call it a doomed face, those eyes, haunted eyes you could call them, that set of the mouth, a shy smile for the camera that might even have been held by her murderous older brother.

  I thought of Desmond’s warning about smiling for the camera. How foolish, how sad you will appear, when the smiling photograph appears posthumously.

  The child/sister murder had been a celebrated case in the Miskatonic Valley, since the Parrish family was well known there, had owned property in the region since Revolutionary times.

  “A tragic case. But these cases are not so rare as you might think.”

  It was a curious remark for the New York State police detective to make to us at such a time.

  My father became livid with rage. My mother was upset, incredulous. They wanted to immediately confront the Parrishes, to demand an explanation.

  “Those terrible people! How could they have been so selfish! They allowed their sick, disturbed son to behave as if he were normal. They must have known that he was seeing our daughter! They must have known that the medications he was taking weren’t enough. They couldn’t have been monitoring their son. . . .”

  It was chilling to think that the Parrishes had been willing to risk my life, or to sacrifice my life, the life of a girl they didn’t know, had never met but must have known about—their son’s girlfriend.

  They would never consent to speak with us. They would consent only to communicate through lawyers.

  At that time I could not answer any more of the detective’s questions. I could not bear my parents’ emotions. I ran away from the adults, upstairs to my room.

  I hid in my bed. I burrowed in my bed.

  So often I’d dreamt of Desmond Parrish in this bed, it was almost as if he were here with me: waiting for me.

  I thought He wanted to take me with him. He loved me—he would not have hurt me.

  In Strykersville today there are too many memories. I never remain more than a night or two, visiting my parents.

  I try to avoid driving in the vicinity of Fort Huron Park. Never would I revisit Little Huron Lake.

  The remainder of my high school years is a blur to me. In the summer I went to live with my grandmother in White Plains, and there I took summer courses at Vassar; my senior year, I transferred to a private school in White Plains, since my parents thought it might be best to remove me from Strykersville, where I had “emotional issues.”

  My old life was uprooted. My old “young” life.

  I thought of wasps in our back lawn, their nests burrowed into the ground into which my father would pour liquid insecticide. In terror wasps would fly out of the burrow, fly to save their lives, dazed, desperate. I wonder if the wasps could reestablish a nest elsewhere. I wondered if the poison had seeped into their frantic little insect-bodies, if mere escape were enough to save them.

  I missed my friends, my family. I missed the life we’d had there, our sleepy old dog stretched out on the redwood deck at our feet. But I could not have remained in Strykersville where there were too many memories.

  The other day I saw him. Across a busy street I saw his hand uplifted and in his face an expression of reproach and hurt and without thinking I began to cross the street to him, and at once horns sounded angrily—I’d stepped off the curb into traffic, and had almost been killed.

  So near any time always

  Rollo’s body was never recovered.

  THE EXECUTION

  She’d said You will have to speak with your father. I can’t intercede for you any longer.

  He left the Delt-Sig house at 1:20 a.m., which was later than he’d planned. Half the house lighted like some weird kind of lopsided birthday cake, which didn’t mean that all the guys were awake or fully conscious but only that scattered lights were left on including lights in the front foyer, the kitchen, and the steps to the grungy basement.

  All this was planned. He’d given her the one final chance.

  Shutting the cell phone on her shrill rising voice Bart? Bart? Don’t you dare cut me—

  Placed a call to DeMarco’s. Pre-ordering eight large pizzas for 10 p.m. the following evening, deliver to the Delt-Sig house at 3992 Stadium Way. Party time!

  He’d be paying with a Visa Platinum card, which, by that time, 10 p.m. of the next day, he would have in his possession, he was pretty sure. Or, by then—(he was vague about this)—his own Visa account might be reactivated.

  Eight large pizzas for an estimated fifty to seventy-five guests.

  The Explorer was parked in the alley behind the frat house. A prominent sign do not park here violators will be towed had been bent and twisted and rendered harmless.

  Can’t intercede for you any longer didn’t I tell you this would happen.

  Your credit has been cut off. Your father warned you.

  Gloves! Almost forgot the damn gloves.

  Not a good pair of his own just a—this kind of cheap black faux-leather gloves he’d found jammed in somebody’s parka hanging from a peg somewhere on campus.

  So they would marvel No fingerprints! Not a single fingerprint has been recovered at the crime scene.

  Black gloves tight-fitting at the knuckles. Black hoodie, black T-shirt, black jeans, black Nikes. Dark-tinted glasses, his eyes were freaky-dilated from the Ritalin and light from oncoming headlights could give him a headache.

  High on Ritalin he’d planned each minute. Nothing impulsive about the I B S—code-name for the Execution.

  Every minute he’d planned. Fuck, every second.

  Every nanosecond.

  And no witnesses!

  That was crucial to the execution: no witnesses.

  Planned the drive. Every exit he’d pass on the drive east.

  Exits from Syracuse he knew by heart. Set the Explorer to cruise control seventy miles per hour but sometimes he drove faster, passing in the left lane. Christ, he loves this SUV! Like his actual soul is outside him, and he can climb inside.

  Held the road steady as a tank. Bulled past eighteen-rigs like they were compacts.

  Three hours and twenty minutes east on the thruway to the Rensselaer exit then into the Village of East Rensselaer to the stone Tudor house at 29 Juniper Drive almost invisible from the narrow road beneath the massed foliage of trees impenetrable as a wall.

  Just the place—showy fake-Tudor, “cul-de-sac” and lots of evergreens—home invaders would target.

  He was excited, which was a good feeling. Like at the start of a new game—like, Brink or Day of Doom—before you know what the terrain is, how fast it’s going to rush at you, and how you will fuck up.

  I B S is Bart’s (secret) game. It will be flawless for, unlike a video game, put together by kinky-twisted genius-minds, I B S is Bart Hansen’s creation.

  He was feeling excited but also a little sulky, sullen. Thinking See I gave you every chance. Both of you.

  He had! All his young life he’d been jerked on their short leash like a dog—fucking neck is raw and bleeding from the tight collar.

  On Juniper Drive he cut the headlights approaching the house. Knowing how when a vehicle turned into the driveway at night headlights flashed up to the second-floor windows of their bedroom.

  It was 4:28 a.m. Later than he’d originally planned but he was flexible. On the drive back he’d make up some of the lost time, he could relax then with the Execution behind him.

  Parked in the circular driveway the gleaming black Explorer facing Juniper Drive for a quick esca
pe.

  He had his house key. Sure. No problem about letting himself in—quietly—but he knew the Vector Security system was on, this was how paranoid his father was.

  Overhead a shredded-looking sky like old Kleenex. And a faint moon rising.

  Made him shiver! The look of the moon, a stirring of hairs at the nape of his neck. He’d seen DVDs of Werewolf of London, I Was a Teenaged Werewolf, The Wolfman as a little kid, so many times that the discs had worn out.

  He would enter the house through the garage. Darkly handsome in his black Terminator clothing.

  It was hard not to see himself on video—YouTube. Stealthy-quick and silent as a panther and unerring.

  There were three sliding overhead garage doors of which one had been left carelessly open. Bart’s father had complained for years that his mother didn’t lower the garage door after she’d parked her car inside—often, his mother didn’t trouble to drive her car inside the garage. She’d scraped the sides of her car too frequently—she didn’t think it was so crucial.

  Burglary in the Village of East Rensselaer was rare. House break-ins, rare.

  Still, Bart’s father wanted the garage doors shut. And Bart’s father wanted the Vector Security on.

  On the rear garage wall he sees it: the ax.

  Jesus! Sighting it with the beam of his flashlight, and he feels a deep shudder in his gut.

  Hanging from a spike on the wall. Wood handle, with a sharp-looking edge. Lean and mean.

  Has to weigh fifteen, twenty pounds.

  This will be Bart’s first time wielding the ax. He’d meant to rehearse—a practice session—never got around to it.

  Dad had used the ax chopping firewood for the family-room fireplace.

  Take it, Bart! Try it. Work up a little sweat.

  In gloved hands he disengaged the ax from the wall. Heavy!

  In the funnel-light of the flashlight he’s surprised—a little shocked—to see spilling out of a corner of the garage so many of his things. Not just his bicycles—a half-dozen—the most recent an Italian racer, fifteen speeds, three thousand dollars but the tires were flat, he hadn’t ridden it in a year or more—also old video games, play stations, electronic toys from when he’d been a little kid, even a Junior Jeep he’d been given for Christmas when he was five or six—he’d been crazy for that Junior Jeep until it broke down and never got repaired.