Somebody Wants to Kill Me Read online

  Somebody Wants to Kill Me

  Richard Rees

  Contents

  - ONE -

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  - TWO -

  -12-

  -13-

  -14-

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

  -23-

  -24-

  -25-

  -26-

  - THREE -

  -27-

  -28-

  -29-

  -30-

  -31-

  -32-

  -33-

  -34-

  - FOUR -

  -35-

  -36-

  -37-

  -38-

  -39-

  Richard Rees

  Also by Richard Rees

  In memory of Sherry Strub of north Wisconsin, a great email friend whom I very much miss.

  - ONE -

  -1-

  A gray day in northern Wisconsin. Karen Archer was driving to see her mother and father.

  Her silver BMW coupe emerged from the darkness of the forest, tall white pines bordering a narrow twisting country road, and the familiar tall black-rusting ironwork gates came into view, padlocked as always, and past them the driveway, a wide dirt track winding through overgrown shrubbery.

  She parked in front of the gates, swung her legs out, changed out of flat shoes into stilettos and stood up. Slim, about five six tall, attractive rather than pretty, shoulder length tawny hair, wearing what was clearly a new, ermine collared, white designer coat to knee length, the equally new stilettos accentuated her shapely legs. She took a spray of flowers from the BMW, locked it, and headed along the stony track for the gate, but teetered on her heels. In a pique, she aimed the key at the BMW, replaced the stilettos with the flats, hurled the heels into the car, and relocked it.

  Pocketing the keys, she creaked open a side-gate set into the main gates. Perched on it was a solitary raven with coal-black feathers – the size of a red-tailed hawk. It croaked, flapped its wings in protest, then took flight. Still croaking, it circled as though to attack her before making for a ring of trees that visibly encircled a large clearing hidden from view.

  She headed down the dirt track, winterberry and reed canary grass tendrils impeding her and whipping back at her as she brushed her way through them, as if stretching out to entangle her in their grip, the branches of rampant birches and willows forming an intertwined vault above her head, nature gone wild, creating a choked wilderness, until finally she emerged on to the weedy and untended grassy edge of the clearing.

  She paused and surveyed the cemetery.

  Centuries old, formed in a shallow hollow encircled by a natural embankment crested by trees, white oak predominating, it was dotted with rough wooden crosses rotting with age, and ancient headstones, granite gray in keeping with the dark sky above, some plain, others surmounted by angels with outstretched wings, and gargoyles with twisted faces and protruding eyes, most of the stones tilted at perilous angles to the black earth below them, holed and cracked as if the fossilized skeletons buried beneath it were slowly but surely digging their way to the surface.

  She shivered and pulled her fur collar higher around her neck.

  In the center of the cemetery an oak tree, dead and stripped of its bark, was silhouetted stark against the dark sky, black ravens perched on its white branches, strangely, ominously silent, with only an occasional croak breaking the silence. A thick branch, stretched out low and parallel to the ground, had given the tree its name, “The Hanging Tree”, dated to when, centuries back in time, French Jesuit missionary priests had drugged five Ojibwas braves and hung them by the wrists from the branch in retribution for their local tribe refusing to convert to Christianity. Their backs then scourged to the bone, they were left there dangling, their red, raw flesh eaten by scavenging birds while they were still alive, until, with no sinews to hold them together, their skeletons fell to the ground and were buried by their tribe in a circle around the tree. Cursed by their shaman, from that day on the tree had slowly died, and ravens, revered by the tribe as their spiritual bird, had since perched on it, guardians of the burial ground, driving away the smaller crows.

  In retaliation, the priests were buried alive, standing up to their necks in the same earth then scalped and left to die. It was summer, the sun was hot on their bleeding heads stripped of skin and hair, and the Ojibwas sat cross-legged in front of them and impassively watched them fry to death.

  The braves and the priests were the first to be buried in the hollow, but from then on, others were interred there over the centuries, serving the nearby outpost of Ravensburg and the sparsely populated country for forty miles and more in all directions – fur trappers, early settlers, and plain good-for-nothing miscreants lynched from the same branch, whose spirits, it was said, roamed the burial ground from midnight to dawn, crying out for vengeance. Neglected for years now, the only time to visit the graveyard was at midday when the light was at its best, before creeping shadows began to once more enfold the silent hollow in their dark embrace.

  Karen shivered again and pulled her fur collar higher.

  Hurrying between the ever-spreading brambles and the graves, only a few with flowers and all withered, telling it was months since anyone had last visited here, she reached a black marble headstone that stood out among the other granite stones and crosses surrounding it. Its earth had not long past been dug up and was still mounded, not yet sunk.

  The headstone’s gold lettering read:

  ELIZABETH RYAN

  Aged 37

  WILLIAM RYAN

  Aged 53

  Placing the flowers on the black marble base below the headstone, Karen caressed the name “Elizabeth Ryan”, gold letters faded now after fifteen years of weather-beating.

  ‘I miss you Mom. I’ll bring Paul with me next time I come.’ She affected an air of casualness. ‘Paul? He’s my new husband.’ Exhilaration replaced it. ‘Yes, big surprise, Mom, I’m married now – Mrs. Karen Archer – and want you to meet him.’

  Her gaze shifted to “William Ryan”. His gold letters were recent. ‘And for you to meet him, too, Father.’ Her tone was now bitter. ‘Knowing how much you’d hate the thought of me having a man, someone who lets me be my own person, for the very first time in my life.’

  She addressed her mother again, as if sharing a confidence with her. ‘Fate, Mom, it couldn’t have come at a better time. He was going to change his will – leave most of his money to Madison University, where he wouldn’t even let me attend, making me stay at home and do my art course online. What’s more, scholarships in his name, would you believe: The William Ryan Memorial Fund in economics, just because he was lucky enough with his stock market gambles to think he was an ace at finance, leaving me only a fraction of his money.’

  She scooped up some mud in her left hand and rubbed it in William Ryan’s gold engraved name. ‘But death intervened…didn’t it, Daddy dear? And it all came to me anyway.’

  She paused, as if letting her father dwell on it, thinking this was the way Shylock must have felt when his daughter Jessica – her favorite heroine, in Merchant of Venice, her favorite play in high school – had finally defied his domination over her and eloped with Lorenzo, particularly loving the part when Jessica threw her father’s casket of jewels down to her lover waiting below her window, and stuffing her pockets with Shylock’s gold.

&
nbsp; Jessica sort of mirrored herself in a way. True, it had necessitated her father dying for her to get his money, nor had she flown off with Paul to Positano until months later, but now she was here at his graveside, twisting the proverbial knife into him, it amounted to the same thing, surely. And getting great satisfaction out of it, despite him being earth cold.

  Scraping the mud remaining on her left hand across his lettering again, she knelt, arranged the flowers in a brass-gold rose, then stood and gave a half-twirl for her mother to admire her new clothes. ‘This is the new me, Mom. The coat’s Italian. A Gucci. Paul chose it. It’s how he likes me to dress. Chic, classy, in the very latest styles…

  ‘I’m no longer your little girl, Daddy, all dowdy. After years of the shoes you made me wear, I wear stilettos. How you would have hated that.’

  She returned to her mother. ‘But to tell you how I met Paul, Mom. I was taking Sue with me on a vacation, to start making up to her for what Father did to Uncle John. We looked online – sorry, I should have explained this when telling you about my art course, it’s jargon for searching things on a computer, not just at home but worldwide – and decided on Positano, Italy, on the Amalfi coast, where the film stars go – it’s beautiful there, Mom, the very opposite of here, you’d love it – stopping in Chicago to take in some shows before flying out. We stayed at the Thompson Hotel–’

  She broke off, spoke witheringly to William Ryan. ‘The best hotel in Chicago, Father, where you never stayed, not willing to pay more than your cheap three star prices.’

  She let this sink in, then continued talking to her mother. ‘On our very first day there, Mom, Sue took me to a beauty parlor to be hair-styled, and manicured, and made-up – eyebrows, eye-shadow, lip-gloss, the lot – and shown how to do it myself. And in the afternoon, she took me shopping for new clothes for my very first show that same evening, at the Cadillac Palace Theatre – only to find myself sitting next to Paul. Fate again. To use an old cliché, it was love at first sight.

  ‘Did you hear that Daddy?’ she drew out her words, stressing each one ‘…and married but three days later.’ She glanced at her new Cartier gold watch. ‘I only wish I had the time to tell you just how wonderful Paul is, but I promised I’d be back to him soon.’

  A black truck, black windows, it looks like an old Jeep, tops the eastern rim of the embankment and stops hidden in the trees. The driver cuts the engine. In the resulting silence, he looks down on Karen as she rearranges the flowers.

  A butterfly settles on the driver’s tinted window. Orange wings ringed with black and spotted white, it’s clearly a Monarch, king of butterflies. Even more, with a wing span that looks as if it exceeds four inches, this is a king amongst kings, extraordinarily beautiful, taking a rest before continuing its late migratory flight south before the winter.

  The driver eases down his window. The Monarch flies in, seeking the warmth inside the cab, and settles on the dashboard. A black dashboard, pristinely clean and tidy, not the minutest speck of dust or a scrap of paper. Removing a tight black leather glove, the driver places the first finger of his other gloved hand on the Monarch’s body, pinning it down, pulls off its four wings, slowly, one by one, then its four legs, its two antennae, enjoying inflicting pain on the butterfly, then lifts off his first finger and watches its body writhe as it slowly dies.

  Karen caressed her mother’s name. ‘But to finish off what I was saying, Mom, Susan insisted on Paul taking her place, and straight after the wedding she drove back home. But we’d need a car for when we got back, so I bought Paul a new Lexus SUV as a wedding present before we flew out, and left it at O’Hare to pick up when we got back.’

  Finding a rock she scraped it across William Ryan’s muddied gold inscription, leaving gouge marks in the shiny black marble underneath. ‘It was fifty…thousand…dollars, Daddy, from that Bank of America savings account you’d never touch. How does that make you feel down there?’

  She returned to her mother. ‘I wanted to stay in Italy, Mom. Now I’ve got my diploma, I want to paint, and the light on the Amalfi coast is perfect. But Paul has given up his acting career and is writing a novel, and said he’d prefer the seclusion of Ravensburg–’

  She broke off, repeated her mother’s question, ‘What does Paul look like?’

  ‘Well…’ she hesitated before answering it, ‘I suppose he slightly resembles Father. Tall, ten years older than me, and rugged. But that’s where the comparison ends,’ she rushed. ‘He’s better looking and doesn’t dominate me, and loves me just for myself. A man I can depend on…’

  ‘But you would hate him, Father,’ she again scraped William Ryan’s inscription. ‘He’d be a challenge to you. If only you knew how liberating that feels. I’m no longer your little girl, I’m a fulfilled woman, and getting real pleasure – at long last – in anything I can do to upset you. Even in death…’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered.

  Beneath her shining black, one-strap sandaled feet and knee length white socks, the fresh mounded grave opens up. Wearing a black dress with a black lace collar – and the other few mourners long gone – she’s twelve years old again, standing alone with tears streaming down her face, in the gray tomb-stoned cemetery alongside thirty-eight year old William Ryan, a rugged man, some six foot tall, looking down at her mother’s coffin. The brass coffin plate reads:

  ELIZABETH RYAN

  Aged 37

  ‘There will never be anyone else for me, Karen.’ Her father’s voice is gravelly, his expression emotionless. Behind him, distant thunder rolls, lightning flashes, silhouetting him against the sky. ‘And there was never anyone else but me for your mother. My prayer for you is that you will one day have what we had. A marriage built on mutual respect, not on empty sentiment.’ Ryan turns her to face him, grips her shoulders. ‘Physical love is a gift, Karen, to be shared only between a husband and wife, and not to be indulged in on a whim. Promise me. Promise me.’

  He turns her to look down at the coffin. Pours earth into her hand, demands of her. ‘Swear it, Karen. Swear it on your mother’s body. Pour the earth.’

  Frightened, Karen sprinkles the earth on to the coffin. ‘I swear it, Father. I swear it.’

  Karen’s mind came back to now, the grave returned. ‘But that’s not why you made me swear it, was it, Daddy? You wanted me all to yourself. And not your little girl any more–’

  Her voice broke and she returned to her mother. ‘Poor you, Mom, married to him. It’s no wonder you didn’t live long. And now having to have him with you for all eternity! That would be Hell. Yes, I know I should have had him cremated and scattered. But then, you must understand, he would have blown away, dispersed by the wind, and I would have had nowhere to come to and talk to him. To tell him how much I hate him. Hate him.’

  He puts his black leather driving glove back on and returns his gaze to Karen as she caresses her mother’s name again before she leaves. He whispers at her in a voice cold with menace.

  ‘Say your last goodbyes to them – Karen Ryan.’ He glances at his gold Rolex watch, he loved gold. ‘And add, “See you soon”.’

  Karen rose to her feet. An instinct made her turn her head. She saw the truck looking down on her. Black. Ominous. Its headlights came on, like eyes glaring at her, accentuating the dark day and seeming to silhouette the gray tombstones surrounding her, making it seem that the gargoyles and angels were closing in on her, as if their spread wings were stretching out to reach and envelop her, and keep her bound in their granite grip.

  Suddenly frightened, she spun from the grave and hurried away, half running as she weaved her way between the threatening gray stones to reach the security of her car outside the black gates, the tops of their railings showing above the thick undergrowth choking the dirt track, making them look to her now like prison gates, fencing her inside the hollowed burial ground.

  She began to run for them. The truck seemed to swivel as if on a turntable, its shining, staring eyes following her. Menacing. Its engine revved to
a roar as its driver flattened and lifted his foot off the gas pedal, then flattened and lifted it again. Panicking now, she forced her way through the tendrils stretching out to hold her back, the brambles tore at her coat.

  As if sensing her panic, the black ravens perched on The Hanging Tree swooped down on her, their raucous croaking blending in with roaring of the truck, their sharp claws brushing her hair as they dived in low over her head. She shielded herself with her arms. A raven swooped at her and pecked her wrist, drawing blood. She flayed at it, beating it off, and reached the inset gate. Struggling through it, she dug the car key out of her pocket and unlocked the door. Fighting off another raven, she scrambled inside her coupe and slammed the door shut on it.

  Croaking in victory now, the ravens flew away, back to The Hanging Tree, and re-perched on its white branches, silent again, the hollowed cemetery returned to their keeping.

  Ignoring her bloodied wrist, and the red drops from it spattered on her white coat sleeve, she feverishly inserted her key into the ignition and glanced at the embankment.

  The black truck was gone.

  She started her engine. Throttling it, she did a screeching U-turn into the narrow country road and sped off the way she had come.

  Getting the hell away from there and back home to Paul.

  -2-

  White pines towering over her on both sides of the road, Karen entered the first corner too fast, hit her brakes and her BMW slewed into it, almost mounting a grassy bank.

  With a squeal of her tires she stopped, took a deep breath to calm herself, stretched for a CD, inserted it in the player and listened to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, feeling her tension ease as its relaxing music took her back to Positano and lying with Paul on the beach in the late evening, hearing the waves break gently on the shore, and a full moon hanging over them in the dark blue sky above, its reflection mirrored on the clear waters of the Mediterranean, and behind them gaily colored villas descending a rocky hillside in tiers to the azure, sun-glistening waters below, so much the opposite of gray, overcast Ravensburg, it was hard to believe she was there but days ago.