Lost Rights

A detective worked late. Most left the department, so he decided to smoke in the office. He opened a window, and turned on the fan. He held the match to his cigarette when the phone rang.

He checked the time. 3:40 am. He picked up the receiver.

"Elkhead police." he said.

"Look into the disappearance of Loren True-Shadow. There is an unopened folder." A weeping voice advised, humming engines in the background, then hung up.

The detective listened to the dial tone, and let the phone fall to his desk. The name sounded familiar, and he thought that maybe it pertained to his current case. He went to the file room; A catacomb of boxes containing unanswered enigmas. He turned on the light, and scanned shelf after shelf. He found the "Missing Persons" files, and went down the shelf until he saw the name "Loren True-Shadow".

He took the box to his office. It felt light, and he heard the exhibits within knocking against the boundaries of the cardboard. He set it on his desk, and pulled off the lid. He found some documents, interviews with Mrs True-shadow and those that saw him last, and not much else. He found no unopened folder, and put the lid back on. Another comedian prank calls the police... he scowled.

He decided to go home and come back to his case at 5:30 after some rest. He put the box back, and shut off the light to the room. He locked it tight, and returned to his office once more to put on his coat and take his things. He closed the window, shut off the fan, and when he reached for his desk lamp switch he heard a shush as clear as a vulture's welcoming.

He turned to his door. An envelope lay beneath. The detective opened his door and looked down the halls but saw nothing but the dimly lit stairwell at the end. No sounds other than humming of air ducts. He looked down and found no writing on the envelope. He opened it, and found it addressed to "Mrs True-Shadow" in shaking hand writing. Pages of a letter stuffed the envelope. The letter had been photocopied multiple times. Chills went down his spine.

The detective locked his office door and took the letter to his desk. The ink inscriptions matched the shaking cursive handwriting. The detective took a pen and paper from his desk and started transcribing the letter. Once done, he felt more confused than before.

His transcription read:

"Sorry for killing your husband. I hope your life is back to normal. I'm not trying to disturb you or stir you up. You probably came to terms with Loren True-Shadow’s death twenty or more years ago. I did not. I wish I could tell you that he didn’t suffer. His death was not painless. I did not rob him, and I did not molest him.

Don't try to give this to the police. I am 87 years old and dying in assisted living. By the time the police find me, I’ll be dead anyway. I write to share the secret I've kept for 44 years to you and inform you of Loren’s death and of his final resting place.

The army kicked me out because I was too good at my job. I started to wonder if I still knew how to severe spinal cords with coffee mugs, pull out beating hearts through armpits, or suck the air from someone’s lungs with a pixie straw.  I got bored of my new job. The year was 1975- a year you know.

I sat in the lobby of Burger World. That's where I first saw him and you riding in a red Grand Am- those cars don't have the personality that they used to have. I didn’t decide to kill him until I saw him again in the Rusty Spigot drinking White Dog moonshine some time later. He made that abysmal substance himself in the basement. His dressing amused me. He wore a nice dress shirt, combed his hair back. I decided to kill him because I recognized him, but on a subconscious level it was because he looked tougher than most. Killing is pointless without a challenge and I was trained to kill the most badass fighters in the world. Other killers would’ve targeted you or a child because women and children are the easiest to kill, but I wanted to be on another level.

I sat before him. He acted shy at first but I asked about his motorcycle. That got him talking. I lied about being in a motorcycle club and invited him to a meeting. This intrigued him, but he didn’t take it seriously. However the lie  made him want to be my friend. He told me about you, and the kids. He told me that his real name was “Loren” not “Larry” but he thought Loren sounded like a girl name. I agreed to call him Larry for the night. I tried to get him away by inviting him to a fight between two members I invented. I intended to drive Loren away from town and tie him to a tree, but he refused my offer and said he had a date with you and wanted to “be on my best behavior.”

Understand that I couldn’t let him go at that point. He saw my face, knew my voice, and I already gave him a name. So, I offered him a fraudulent job. “I'm listening” he said. I told him I’d call him the next day, and wrote down his phone number. I didn’t want him telling you or anyone else.

The job offer was to pull junked cars from the car graveyard in Milton County. A treasure chest of scrap wanting to be harvested awaited enterprising minds. I assured him we’d each make five thousand dollars at the least. I knew this number from your phone calls with him. He needed that money. I saw the looming fear of destitution howl in his eyes.

I never intended to actually pull out those junked Chevies but when I  came to the gravel road that lead to the car graveyard, I found Loren waiting in a self- loader tow truck before the gate. He told me he borrowed it from his cousin. We broke through the gate. The chain gave slow then popped to pieces, and we shot down the gravel. The hill dropped like a test pilot. The wench clanged against the rear. Loren rolled his window down. Traces of dry, late autumn dry timber filled the cab. The gravel wore away to stalks of feral rye. The green foliage turned sunset red, and Loren spread his fingers out to catch the falling leaves.

The slope declined steeper. Loren hit the brakes but still the tow truck slid down. Loren p bit his tongue and wiped sweat from his eyes. He looked like a dog with its face out the window.

The truck broke through the brush into wooded overgrowth. The forest came as us like a dragon’s mouth. Bush and foliage crushed in twin trails behind us. The air tasted like dirt. The trees changed the closer we came from  rail thin trunks and broad but light branch cover, to wild rooted trunks that twisted and wove around other nearby trees.

Loren whistled. Sweat soaked both of our shirts.

“We start with the closest, and work our way down”. He told me,  getting back into the truck. The wenches spun, and the hook dipped. I needed to think because I couldn't kill him like I planned with the hand I drew. So I took the line and slid down with the hook to the first car. I slid the hook around a shiny bumper. The wenches retracted. I jumped off. The slack in the line tensed. The wheels of the tow truck spun slots in the fallen foliage. The back of the withered car lifted from the pile and smacked the walls of the ravine, dragging ups pieces of the car beneath it.

Once out of the ravine, I had the idea to kill him with his own truck. It's not what I had in mind, but I never crushed anyone with a tow truck in the war. Loren looked confused, and a little pale, when he climbed out from the tow truck.

“Hear that?”Loren perched over the edge, and listened through the rain of shifting forest noise. “Someone’s down there. I can hear them!”

“Who?”

“I don't know. Just listen.”

I stood besides him and listened. A mislead soul, one that echoed from the bottom like incense, reached out to us with vocal ropes. At first I thought it was the metal frames being bent or perhaps  just ringing from water trapped in the cars, but as the sound penetrated the narrows of my ear drums I stood in the same pale confusion as Loren. We heard the unmistakable call for help. A gasping, impaled cry rose over the ravine. Those dire notes strained under wounded vocal chords, distorted by metal confinement, and by the rupturing of flesh.

Loren jumped down and frantically searched the cars. He tried to pry open trunks and doors, and asked me to give him the crowbar from the truck. I took it out, and slid down the slope. His face reddened from dehydration, his hair wet and wiry with oils and sweat. His neck muscles expanded as the rusted metal sliced into his palms. I held the crowbar in one hand, and dropped it onto the trunk he tried to open. He grunted and leaned on the crowbar with his massive body. the door  used it to pry open the trunk, but despite the ringing voice, he found no one inside.

“They’re underneath all of this”, he told me, bounding back up the slope. He moved the tow truck around the trashed car, and lowed the hook again. I took it, and slipped it around the front bumper. The wheels smoked. The car lifted. Once it hovered ten feet in the air, the wenches popped, and the truck slid backwards. I jumped out of the way. The shriveled car crashed back into the heap. The truck thundered as it landed on top, and rolled down.

I landed in the mud of the stream and when I looked from the ground I saw the tow truck on its side, waffling on the heap of cars, wanting to capsize on top of me. Pieces of metal adjusted and fell. The tow truck tipped over and rolled down the heap on top of me. Leaves shook from the trees.

I thought I was dead. The truck landed on my upper body. I kicked my legs freely, but my arms and head were beneath the vehicle. No air to breath. Freezing mud flowed into the back of my shirt. I felt the weight of the truck plow my mouth mud into my mouth. I tasted dirt for months afterwards.

Your husband took a piece of metal and used it to shovel the dirt out from under my legs, and he slid me out. He looked at me like a monster. Half of my body was covered in mud with a layer of fresh blood. Open wounds on my forehead and right temple bled profusely. My ear hung by a thread. My nose knocked crooked. One arm crushed to milk powder. I looked like a whole new person to Loren who shook his head, and begged me to get out with him. I barely had strength to stand, so he propped me up, and only then did I understand the danger we found ourselves in.

The voices belonged to the trashed vehicles. Each one whispered to us, and they moved in unison, clanking and shifting, as organs in a body, each connected, but without bones or muscle to keep them in one serene form. Yet they crawled towards us with the broken headlights blinding us with their blue hot beams.

The edges were too steep to climb up with me on his shoulder, so he carried me to the retaining wall. I scooped mud from my eyes, but blood blinded me further. We pressed against the old slimy stones, liquid streaming like molasses from between the blocks soaking our clothes. I know that after wiping the blood from my eyes, I saw in the moments between more blood seeping into my eyes and the lights flooding the ravine with their nova luminescence the monstrosity lurching toward us.

The heap of cars compressed in the middle, tighter and tighter, swelling up like a pregnant uterus, then as the swelling depressed, the horrible grinding and twisting of metal stabbed knives into our ears. The blood filled my eyes again, but Loren’s heavy hands took me by the hips, and I left my feet lift from the ground as the heap of interwoven steel reached out to consume us. I took hold of a crack in the blocks as Loren pushed me up by the thighs. I reached to the drainage holes, two of my fingers clinging to the drain as the other fingers pressed against the smooth stonework.

I didn’t feel him take his hands away, but once I felt relief at the top of the retaining wall, I reached down to take him, but all too late. The heap of cars pressed against the wall, and all I saw of your husband was his hand reaching out from the merging bodies of steel. Of all the things I saw back in the war, I don't think I ever saw anything that haunts me so. In nightmares ever since not only do I see those desperate fingers reaching out to me, but I hear every crunch of his bones, I hear the forsaken screams over the horrid concert of industrial tidal waves. You’ve never heard such a gruesome sound. There’s little worse on earth- or in hell.

I tried to get him out. The car heap filled so much of the ravine that it looked like I might reach him. When I took hold of his cold fingers, the heap pulled my arm in. I squeezed the wall with my thighs, and came loose only because the heap clasped on my wrist and severed my hand- the hand that was trained to use a combat knife with.

I walked up the wooded slope, through the weeds back to the gravel, one arm hanging like a broken crane, blood dripping from my wrist. I wanted to remember the war, but all I remembered was the armless bodies of boys I blew up.

I never returned, and I promise this is where his body remains to this day. In this envelope, please find metal shards and a set of keys. Though they look like nothing the metal fragments were embedded in my flesh from the cars, and until I removed them I felt the persistent compulsion to return to the car graveyard. The injuries never fully healed, and they reopened when these innate desires awake me from sweat drenched sleep.

The keys are to your home. I decided not to use them that day.

Even in your sleep, I hear his screams.

To this day, as devils watch over my shoulder at my writing, I swear, I still hear his voice echoing against steel jaws."

The Detective finished and dropped his pen. The sun rose. Warming light brightened his window. He took his car keys and left. He drove from town to Milton county. He asked a local in a gas station about the "car graveyard". The local tilted his head like a hound.

"Didn't know we had one," He said.

The detective then went to the county courthouse and inquired if any depositories for junk cars existed in the county. They searched for him, and he waited for nearly two hours before they came back empty handed.

The detective mentioned the name "True-Shadow". The secretary looked old enough to remember, and she scratched her white hairs trying to recover a memory. She said someone with that name might've gone missing as a small girl.

"Any family still around?" The detective asked.

The secretary told him to check the cemetery.

The Detective located Milton County cemetery between the trailer parks and the luxury apartments overlooking the bluffs. He walked among the rows. The grass hadn't been cut yet. The wreaths of withered flowers still rested over the merciful inscriptions. He came to a statue of a headless angel. "Nora True-Shadow. Beloved Mother". The inscription read.

The detective lay the letter in its envelope on the tombstone.

That night he worked again into the dead hours of morning, when no gods are awake. At 3:40 the rang phone again. Arty let it sit, but it rang longer than any series of rings he heard before. He took the receiver.

"Elk-"

"Thank you for delivering the letter." A woman's voice uttered, then hung up.