The added weight of the car being towed behind them made it seem as if the scenery were slowly scrolling by and the vehicles simply sitting still. This illusion was enhanced even more for Daryl, who sat in the driver’s seat of the wrecked Honda. Without the rumble of an engine, the interior of the car was eerily silent and he found himself wishing he were in the cab of the truck with his brother. Not to mention that it would be warmer up there. The motor of the car was completely shot, which meant the heater was out as well. Even with his layers of clothing, Daryl could still feel the cold upholstery of the seat seep into his back and ass and his teeth chattered between clouds of breath. Every few moments, he had to lean forward and wipe the frost from the inside of the windshield with his arm, but other than that his part in the operation was monotonous.
Basically, all he had to do was watch for the brake lights of the truck to wink at him and apply pressure to the pedal in the car as well. A few small adjustments were required with the wheel, but for the most part the chain that connected the two vehicles made this a simple task. Which was perfect, seeing as how Daryl had never actually learned to drive. However, this lack of participation also gave the mustachioed man ample time to think… and his mind turned, time and time again, to the book that sat on the passenger seat beside him.
He glanced at it for what must have been the hundredth time in the past five minutes. That worn leather cover, the elegant handwriting, and those three seemingly innocent words: Mona’s Secret Delights. A chill coursed along his spine that had nothing to do with the sub-zero temperatures within the car and his stomach felt as if it had turned into a writhing knot of worms. Earl had said he was just being a little baby, that the book was obviously some kind of joke; but, at the same time, Daryl’s older brother certainly hadn’t put up much of an argument against going straight home and disposing of the car later.
“Everything’s gonna be okay.” He said aloud. “It’s gonna be right as rain, you’ll see.”
The quiver in his voice, however, betrayed the fact the he was trying to talk himself into accepting what he secretly believed to be a lie.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
He looked at the book again and his thoughts immediately turned to Mama. Sometimes, he woke up in the middle of the night with the remnants of a dream still clinging to his consciousness like a tenacious rottweiler. He’d sit in the glow of his night light and listen to his own haggard breath as sweat dried cool on his drenched body.
The dream was always the same: it was Mama and Earl tied to the chairs in the upstairs room, only they were so much smaller than what they were in real life. In fact, Daryl seemed to tower over them as if he were a giant in the halls of his castle. When he walked, the floors rattled with each thudding step and showers of dust cascaded from the rafters overhead. His shadow fell over his mother and brother, engulfing them in a darkness so complete that Daryl could only see the frightened gleam in their eyes.
In this dream, his fingers were actually slender needles that clinked against one another and dripped sizzling beads of acid onto the floor. In each amber droplet, Daryl could clearly see his mother and brother reflected: their faces were gaunt and colorless, their mouths pulled back into screams that never seemed to come, and their eyes wide and glassy. Within those eyes, there was another reflection, this one of a small boy with a blood soaked tee shirt. The boy was being fed into the darkness of a closet whose doorway was lined with fang-like teeth; his feet scrambled over the floor and tears glistened on his cheeks, but still the hands urged him ever onward. For a second, the young boy locked gazes with the towering giant and his mouth formed two words: help me.
The dream always ended with Daryl’s needle-fingers thrusting through the air, their gleaming tips mere inches from Earl and Mama’s chests. A fraction of a second longer and they would both be impaled as the acid liquefied their organs and turned them into empty husks… but that moment of contact was always preempted with a jolt of consciousness and a choked sob. Sometimes, Daryl longed to see the dream through to completion, to see if his dream-self truly was capable of killing the only family he’d ever known. But then guilt would wash over him: he’d push the images to the back of his mind, would pull his own hair until the pain overpowered all thought and emotion, and rock back and forth while silently crying.
He didn’t really want to kill Mama. Sometimes, when he thought about the past for too long, images of the dream would bubble up from his subconscious like a dark and malevolent Leviathan rising from the depths… but, even then, part of him still knew that he’d brought it all upon himself. Mama simply wanted him to be a good boy, to grow up strong and brave, to be more like Earl and less like a sniveling child. Everything she’d ever done was due to love and he had no right to question the methods of her guidance. He just had to try harder, that was all.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
In this situation, maybe Daryl would be able to prove to her once and for all that he was a man worthy of his mother’s respect. Once Mama saw the book, once she knew how Daryl had pieced it all together and insisted that they rush back to her as soon as possible… once she had all this evidence in front of her, she’d have no choice but to heap praises upon her youngest son. He’d bask in her adoration and maybe even get one of the “secret gifts” that Earl was always being taken away for. He had no clue exactly what the gift was but understood that it was the highest form of approval Mama could give; and he wanted that more than anything else in the world.
A loud boom shuddered the car and jarred Daryl out of his thoughts as his body pitched forward. His head banged against the steering wheel and, for a moment, he simply sat there and blinked his eyes as he tried to understand what had happened.
He’d been so lost in thought that he’d forgotten to wipe the frost off the windshield for quite some time and every inch of glass was now covered with an icy film. The morning sun filtered through it, but everything beyond was nothing more than indistinct blobs of color. The car, however, was no longer moving forward…. Earl must have stopped for some reason and Daryl had been so engrossed in daydreaming that he’d never seen the flash of the taillights. Luckily, they hadn’t been going very fast; if they had, then the crash would have been a lot worse and there was a chance he could have damaged the old truck. If that had happened, Earl’s wrath would have been of biblical proportions; and, more importantly, they would never have been able to make it home in time.
“In time for what?” part of Daryl’s mind whispered. “What are you afraid of this time?”
His eyes drifted to the book again and he felt his breathe catch in his throat. Somehow it almost seemed as if, by opening its pages, he’d unleashed some dark and terrible demon upon the land. The chill bumps tingling the nape of his neck were the cold wind displaced by the flapping of leathery wings and the headache clustering behind his left eye was from talons sinking into the soft mass of his brain. He could feel the creature’s presence, pressing in on him from all sides as it repeatedly whispered three words like some archaic incantation: Mona’s Secret Delights… Mona’s Secret Delights….
A flash of color in the rearview mirror caught Daryl’s attention and he saw red and blue strobing through the ice-encrusted glass of the hatchback’s window. The frost diffused the lights into fuzzy halos that flickered and flashed in an almost random pattern. At the same time, Daryl became aware of a sound from outside the car. It was like a voice emerging from the crackle and pop of static, distant enough that the words were indistinguishable but close enough that he instantly recognized the source: a police radio. So that’s why Earl had stopped the truck… he’d been pulled over.
The demon’s hot breath tickled Daryl’s ears as it hissed dire warnings into the man’s thoughts: too late, you’ll be too late, you’ll never be a good boy now, you’ll always be a useless simpering crybaby, no use to anyone, you’ll be too late and it will all be your fault….
A shadow, vaguely man-shaped, passed the window and the tinny voice of the dispatcher sounded as if it were as close as the demon Daryl imagined to be latched onto his back. As the shadow receded, however, so did that sound of the radio, leaving Daryl with only the whispered litany of derision in his mind: dead, she’ll be dead because of you, all because of you, and you’ll never get to prove to her that you were anything other than what she always thought you were….
A voice that sounded as if it were speaking through layers of cotton broke through the contempt that plagued Daryl’s consciousness.
“License and registration, sir.”
Daryl’s heart felt as if it were fluttering so fast that every other beat was missed; his breath came in quick pants and he felt slightly dizzy, as if the interior of the car had lost its grip on reality. And he felt a tremor somewhere deep within him that almost made it seem as if every organ in his body quivered in unison.
His eyes darted to the book again.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
The demon sank its claws deeper into his eye, shredding nerve endings and snyapses with barbed tips that were nearly molten from a thousand years in the lake of fire.
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”
Earl’s voice, low and gravely. Daryl knew the tone all too well: anger tinted with frustration, the way even the most innocent words seemed to mock.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
“Step out of the vehicle now, sir!”
The demon crushed Daryl beneath its weight and caused the doors and ceiling to constrict in response to its incessant murmur: and she’ll hurt you, she’ll make you scream again, there in the dark with the rats and the mice and the scent of fresh blood all up and down your arms and chest, all because you weren’t good enough, weren’t strong enough, because you failed her when she needed you most and lacked the backbone to do what needed to be done….
Earl was shouting now, his voice booming so loudly that the thud of the truck door almost seemed as inconsequential as the chatter on the cop’s radio.
“Fuckin’ pig, I know my damn rights, I wasn’t doin’ nothin,’ you stupid piece of shit.”
“Put your hands on the hood of the car, sir…”
“What? You gonna shoot me, asshole? You gonna blow me away with your big, bad gun? Mother fucker, I ain’t scared of you and that tin fuckin’ badge…”
“Put your hands on the damn hood!”
Daryl panted so quickly that his breath seemed to warm the interior of the car to the point that sweat moistened his armpits and chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that he could force the talons out of his head with his tightly clenched eyes and grinding jaw.
But, even in the darkness, he could sense the book beside him.
Could picture that leather cover….
“Sir, I’m not fucking telling you again!”
The little note card inside the gilded frame…
“Or what? Or what, you son of a bitch? You gonna taser me, pig? You gonna zap my fuckin’ ass? That it, big man?”
The curves and loops of such innocent looking handwriting…
“Step back! Step the fuck back!”
Mona’s Secret Delights.
The shouting from outside of the car now sounded distant, as if it were nothing more than a television playing a little too loudly through the walls of a padded room.
“Come on! Come on, mother fucker! Pig! Let’s do this….”
The growl of Earl’s voice degraded into a garbled mash of sounds that, for some reason, made Daryl think of a man sitting in an electric chair. He could picture spittle spraying from his brother’s lips, drool sliding down his chin as layers of fat quivered and jerked, his eyes rolling back into his head as his body flopped in the snow like a headless snake.
The demon’s spiel had now reached a frenzy and it filled Daryl’s head with a cacophony of hissed whispers whose words bled into one another: now, prove yourself now, show your worth, be a man for God’s sake, grow a pair and make her proud, oh so proud, be a good boy, be the best damn boy she could ever ask for….
Daryl’s eyelids opened and the voice fell silent. Turning slightly in his seat, he looked into the back of the car. His eyes took in the mounds of clothes and baggage, the plastic bottles of brake fluid and motor oil, all the flotsam and jetsam that had come rushing forward when the vehicle had come to its abrupt stop.
And there, poking out from underneath a pink t-shirt, he saw the curved tip of a tire tool.
Reaching back, his fingers closed around the cold metal and he lifted it slowly. It was heavier than he thought it would be… thick and sturdy like they used to make them. Not one of those cheap aluminum rods with the swiveling lug head that came with newer model cars. This was solid, a single piece of forged steel.
Daryl lifted the lever on the door so gently that there was only the smallest of clicks as the latch freed itself. He pushed it open just enough to allow himself to slide through the gap.
Ten feet away, Earl laid on his stomach like some whale that had washed up on an arctic shore. Snow billowed around his body and the cop was behind him, one knee firmly planted in the small of his massive back. The cop had Earl’s arms pinned just below the shoulder blades and the morning sun glinted off the handcuffs as if they were made of silver flame.
Daryl placed one foot in front of the other as carefully as if the twinkling flakes of ice on the snow were actually broken glass. His stare was focused on the little knot at the base of the officer’s skull and every muscle in his body wanted to break into a run. He wanted to hoist the tire tool above his head like some primal hunter and rattle the stillness of the morning with a guttural battlecry.
But he forced himself to proceed calmly. As if he were stalking game in the woods.
And the closer he came, the heavier and more powerful the metal gripped in his hand felt.
One swift blow.
One dull thud coupled with the cracking of splintered bone.
A splash of blood, stark and red against a field of white.
And then he would be the man Mama had always wanted him to be.
He would be the hero.
The protector.
He would finally be a good boy….