On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (comprehension books txt) 📖

like Emma. She's not your type at all. She's weird." She squinted her eyes and her top lip sneered at the thought. "Come back and sit by me." She patted the couch beside her. He gave in and took a seat swinging his arm around her and hugging her close. She did feel comfortable, familiar to him, safe. Bill kissed her full round check affectionately.

"You love me the most," she asked in a baby voice. "Uh huh."

"I keep telling you we are meant to be together. You could never love anyone like you love me. Could you?"

"No."

"Bill?" she drew his name out as she said it, "What if I am pregnant?"

This struck him like a lead pipe between the eyes. "What?" he gasped, "Are you?"

"I don't think so." she said innocently, "But what if I were?" She seemed elated with the idea.

"I don't know Joy, I just don't know." The anguish that had been awash in his mind all day took on ever greater proportions.

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"And they couldn't find his head right away. So they had all the men out searching the woods for it. And when they did find it, it was laying in the weeds under the Lacey's porch. Yep, they looked down there and it was smiling up at them between the gaps in the steps."

“Momma, make him shut up." Cindy called towards her mother in the kitchen.

"It's true. Mike's dad told him all about it. Everyone in town is talking about it." Cindy's twelve-year old brother kept on talking. To further irritate her he took his feet in their dirty tube socks and attempt to push her off the sofa.

"Get your smelly feet off of me."   She spit at him.

"Make me."

"Randy, you are such a jerk."

"You can't make me." He opened his mouth and let out a big horselaugh.

" I don't have to." She stood up. In a pair of shorts that had seen one two many summers and a pair of long woolly knee socks, she skated her way into the kitchen.

"What ya reading?" Cindy asked her mother.

"C. S. Lewis."

"Beg pardon ?"

"C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, you should read this."

"That will be a cold day in...."

"Exactly, her mother interrupted her.

Cindy laughed as she poured for herself a full glass of milk and tried to then stir in a heavy spoonful of chocolate.  

"Mom, what do you make of all of this?" Cindy dragged a chair from the table and sat down balancing back on two chair legs.

"Oh Cindy, " her mother looked up and removed her reading glasses, "I make a mess of it, one big mess. Something has gone wrong. That's what it feels like." It was an even more serious of an answer than Cindy had been expecting. She couldn't make her standard ‘wise crack’ reply to this.

"Me too, mom." she faltered. "Something feels wrong to me too."

"Well, murder is always a crazy thing." Mrs. Basset solemnly shook her head back and forth.

"But you always say those who have died are with God."

"Hmmm, Erna Basset drew her focus to a single point on the kitchen table before answering. "That's true. Christians, that is, but it is what is killing them that's what's wrong, unnatural even."

"Probably some crazy."

"That's an over simplification," Erna snorted, "What ever it is, it is pure evil."

"I know, mom, I just hate even thinking about it. "

"I know, baby." Changing the subject Erna asked, "Did you drop that cake off over at the Humphries like I asked? "

"Uh huh, about an hour ago."

Erna looked up and smiled sweetly at her daughter. And then, "Oh I almost forgot to tell you, Emma called."

"I'll go call her back right now." Cindy slid up on her knees in her chair and reached up to grab the kitchen wall phone. She punched out the number from memory.

"Yes, may I speak to Emma?" She paused listening a sour expression on her face. "Cindy, tell her its Cindy, gaaah." She rolled her eyes and mouthed to her mother, "Barbara Lee." In a minute her face lit up as she heard the familiar voice on the other end of the line.

"Hi, watcha doing? You don't sound too hot." Erna noticed her child frown as she listened to Emma's response. "I'm sorry, but you called me." The frown turned to stupefaction. "You didn't?" Cindy looked at her mother, questioning with her eyes.

As Cindy slowly hung up the phone Erna said, "It sounded like Emma, and I feel sure that's who they said they were." Now Erna was puzzled.

Cindy's call had roused Emma from her fitful sleep. Now she felt piqued and sour. The outline from her bedspread had left its pattern on the side of her face. In the overly lighted kitchen Emma rubbed her eyes. "Got to wake up," she told herself. Lethargy had overtaken her. She would go silently to her fate. Emma drug herself into the hall bathroom.

In there the harsh fluorescent light accented her swollen eyes. "I look like a Swedish Eskimo," she told her reflection. After turning on and adjusting the shower, steam billowed into the chilly bathroom. Like a zombie Emma slowly removed her clothes, selected a fluffy towel and climbed into the biting spray.

The effect was immediately wonderful. Slowly she rotated under the heavy shower water letting it pelt every inch of her body. Her face upturned under the direct flow, opened her mouth and let the water pour inside. "Ummm, I wish I could stay here for ever," she thought. The heat from the shower burned her skin and made it tingle sweetly. She covered her body with a thick lather of soap and with a coarse sponge began to scrub herself.

"Life can't be so bad," she told herself, "they must have showers in reform schools. All I have to do is to learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of life." She heard herself giggle as she shook her long hair back and forth. "So, I may never see Cindy or Bill again..." she drifted back toward gloom. It was hard to over come such a stiff possibility. "No, I will see them again. We are all still alive. One of these days I will be my own boss. Then I can go anywhere and see anyone I want to see. It won't matter what other people say any more." This stream of thought cheered her again and she bowed beneath the spray of water to let it cascade down her back.

The coolness of the bathroom outside of the shower made Emma shiver. She brusquely rubbed herself down and wrapped the towel snugly around herself. For some reason it reminded her of the blanket in her dream.

She had to wipe off a circle in the mirror in order to see her reflection. "Might as well do a whole beauty treatment while I am in here," she told herself.

Starting with her hair she carefully combed out the tangles. Once her hair was smooth she pulled the stray hairs from her comb and searched for a trashcan in which to throw them, but when she saw none she tossed the loose hairs in to the open toilet.   Then she stole a few of Barbara Lee's cotton balls to apply an astringent to her face. This little act of larceny really pleased her.

With more energy than she had felt all day Emma threw a short terry cloth robe on and stepped outside the bathroom. She walked straight into her aunt's bedroom and turned the small clock radio to her favorite station. Then she danced back into the bathroom.

A bottle of pink nail polish caught her eye. " That's what I need," she said snatching the bottle. She took out her aunt's manicure set made her way back to her aunt's dressing table. Humming she carefully clipped her nails.

"Who said you could use my mother's radio?" the voice burned into her like acid. She froze in her seat and willed her cousin to go away. "I asked you a question." Barbara Lee said from the doorway.

"No one," Emma answered meekly.

"Then don't," Barbara Lee snapped. She remained in the doorway glaring at Emma. The moment dragged on forever. "Please go away," Emma's inner voice screamed. Finally after Emma had flipped off the radio, Barbara Lee slinked back down the hall.

Emma hurried to finish and get back to her own room. She looked down at her nail parings wondering what do to with them. With them and the manicure set she raced back into the bathroom and threw the nail clippings into the toilet. It was at that moment that the bizarre dream from the night before came back to her in full force. "They must share water and you must want it to happen..." the words rang in her mind. "Man, I am losing it," she told the voice. She almost laughed at loud as she stared down into the blue toilet water. Strands of her hair floated on top while her nail sunk to the bottom.

"Great Em, what are you suppose to do, flush her?" she thought out loud. "Good bye cruel world," she remembered a tacky comic figurine her father had once purchased in a roadside park in Tennessee. As she stood there breathing in the cool air that smelled of soap and talcum powder she felt an electric clarity, ‘and spittle’, that is what else the old woman had said. Without allowing herself the luxury of debate she spit into the toilet. With a nervous giggle she said, "Oh and I do wish Barbara Lee would drop dead."

"This is silly," she told herself as she flushed the tank and walked from the room.

 

 

Chapter 19

By late afternoon Lacey was in the front seat of Harvey's cruiser headed for home. "I think we've got all the photos, maps and prints we need, but you won't mind if we come out a few more times and look around will ya?" Harvey was saying.

"No." Lacey was apprehensive about returning to his home. This once safe haven now seemed like a hideous trap, awaiting him.

"And for the last time, there was no one you were expecting at your house last night? No suspicious characters hanging about?"

"No, no one." But then Lacey realized that he had not even been aware of Red's surveillance of him.

"I am going to have to ask you not to leave the area and to be available for further questioning."

"That's fine."

"Lacey, I know this has shaken you up, but try to keep your wits about you. Just keep your doors and windows locked and don't let any strangers in. And remember the killer has not struck the same place twice. Okay?"

This news did little to dispel Lacey's fears. "It could have been me," he kept telling himself.

As they turned onto his dirt road the hairs on his arm stiffened. "You can't be doing this," he told himself, "You are going home. You've been safe in this house for thirty-five years. You'll be safe now." But still his heart raced.

Harvey had lapsed into silence on the last leg of the trip and Lacey wished he could think of some reason to ask the Marshall to stay for a while once they got to the house. But as soon as his house came into sight Lacey realized that there was no avoiding