All the Little Pieces. Jilliane Hoffman
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yellow. A medical clinic.
The buildings appeared old and rundown, dating to the forties or fifties, if she had to guess. Most of the signs were hand-painted on the businesses that looked like they were still in business: Chub’s BBQ, Sudsy Coin Laundry, Frank’s Restaurant. Other businesses were clearly gone and had been for quite a while. It looked like a town that might have had a heyday a very long time ago.
There were no cars parked on the street or in the little lots adjacent to some of the buildings. It was only her in the Town That Used To Be. The wind rocked the street’s second and final traffic light. She watched it swing back and forth on the cable like a gymnast getting ready to flip over. A streak of lightning splintered the sky, striking terrifyingly close. Raindrops the size of quarters began to ferociously pummel the car, making it literally impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her. She was in the heart of the storm. There would be no outrunning this rain band or driving through it. She pulled over defeatedly in front of a sign that said ‘Valda’s Hair Salon’, which she couldn’t tell was closed for the night or closed forever.
The adrenaline rush from running off the road earlier had subsided. She wasn’t panicked now as much as she was mentally overwhelmed and physically exhausted. And discouraged, because even though she was on the right road, she was still a long, long way from home.
Time for a smart decision – maybe the first one of the night. It was probably best to wait out the squall and let the worst of the rain band pass. What she didn’t want was to get lost again. Or run out of gas. Or worse, have an accident. There was no one out here to help her. She turned off the car to save gas, raised the volume on the radio so Maggie wouldn’t hear the thunder, and settled back to wait out the rain. The bands seemed to move quick; the worst rain should pass through in the next ten minutes.
Faith turned and watched Maggie, still shrouded in her blanket like a ghost, sleeping peacefully in the rearview. Her hand had slipped out the side of her Cha-Cha and tiny fingers – that Faith noticed her cousins had painted a bright pink – clutched Eeyore to her chest. She was definitely out for the night, which was a very good thing, having slept through Faith’s run off the road and into the cane stalks, and now through rain that sounded like a million Drummer Boys going at it on the roof. She placed the beach towel over Maggie’s bare feet. Watching her sleep made it easy to forget how difficult raising her was at times, although one look at the back of the passenger seat would probably remind her – there was likely a hole in it from the latest tantrum. Maggie’s ‘fits’ were one of the reasons she and Jarrod had decided not to get a new car for a few years – one that would have had GPS; they were waiting for Maggie to grow out of this challenging phase that was looking more and more like a condition.
Faith leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Her brain had no more real estate left for a new worry. And she didn’t want to think about Charity’s kitchen, or Jarrod’s intern, or the snickering Nicknames who would be talking about her in the morning over an Alka Seltzer. Instead, to pass the time, she thought about all the things she had to do tomorrow: she had a stack of purchase orders at Sweet Sisters that had to be signed, then the ad copy had to be written for the paper, and Maggie had ballet at four. If they were going to see a movie, it would have to be before that. There was laundry in the bucket …
A loud but muted bang sounded near where her head was resting against the seat, by the window. She sat up with a jolt and looked around. The SUV’s windows were all fogged. She wiped the drool from her mouth and looked at the dashboard clock: 1:11.
Thwap!
It was at the driver’s side window. Something had hit the window.
‘Help me!’ a voice said.
Faith’s blood turned to ice. There was somebody out there.
It was still dark, but she couldn’t hear the rain any more. She wondered if she was dreaming, if this was all part of a dream. Her hand hesitantly moved over the driver’s side window, gingerly wiping away the fog with her fingertips. The glass was cold. And wet. Water ran down her palm and up the sleeve of her silk blouse, making her shiver.
Something did not feel right. Something was very, very wrong.
She pressed her face up to the glass to see what was outside.
And the real nightmare began.
The girl stood there, her palms pressed flat against the window. Strands of long, dark hair were stuck to her face and neck; a blue leopard-print bra was visible through her dirty, wet T-shirt. Costume dragonfly earrings dangled from her ears. She stared at Faith with deep-set brown eyes that were streaked with heavy black eyeliner that had run down her cheeks. She put her face up to the window, her cracked lips touching the glass. ‘Help me!’ she said in a raspy voice. Katy Perry crooned on the radio.
Faith jumped back in her seat, smashing her hip into the center console. She looked around the car, but all the windows were fogged. She had no idea what else or who else was out there.
The girl turned to look behind her. Strands of her wet hair whipped against the window. Then she looked back at Faith and slapped the glass again. Her palms were filthy. ‘Hurry! Damn it! You have to let me in!’
She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t yelling, either. She was talking excitedly, but in a hushed, croaky voice. Faith moved off the center console where she was perched, and wiped the whole window with her sleeve to get a better look at what was outside. The girl’s face was inches from her own; she could see the diamond stuck in the middle of her bottom lip, the tiny hoop in her nose. Two more silver hoops pierced an eyebrow. A line of blue star tattoos ran up the inside of her wrist, all the way to the elbow. On her neck was a tattoo of a pink heart wrapped in chains. ‘I … I … can’t,’ Faith stammered, shaking her head.
The girl made a squealing sound. ‘He’s coming!’
A man dressed completely in black suddenly appeared beside her, like a vampire who materializes out of a thick fog. He had shoulder-length dark waves that clung to a chiseled, bony face carpeted in gruff that was well past a shadow and not quite a full-on beard. He was slender and tall – much taller than the girl. His long fingers found her tiny shoulder, swallowing it whole, and he pulled her to him. She stumbled back, almost falling, but he caught her before she could. Then he spun her around and bear-hugged her. Her feet dangled in the air behind her when he lifted her up. Faith saw that she was barefooted; her feet, too, were filthy. The man dipped her and kissed her hard on the lips. Then he looked over at Faith and grinned.
It was surreal, as if she were watching a staging of a contemporary take on the iconic V-J day Life cover, where the soldier greets the nurse upon returning home from war. She rubbed her eyes. It felt like she was still dreaming.
The rain had stopped; the moon had finally emerged from behind the cloud cover – at least part of it. It was bright yellow, framed by threatening clouds – the kind of moon that called for a witch to fly by. In the distance, flashes of lightning quietly exploded, like bombs being dropped on far-off cities. Her eyes caught on a red-shirted figure running between the trees of an abandoned lot across the street.
Patches of moonlight lit the chunky remains of a building’s old foundation and crumbling walls, decades neglected and overgrown with shrubs and slash pines. The roof was long gone. Behind the ruins was a densely wooded lot, beyond that was likely cane fields. Chain-link fencing had once tried to contain the property, but that had long since rusted and collapsed in spots. A man wearing dark jeans, a red shirt and a white baseball cap burst out of the slash pines, emerging on the far side of the building.
Using her hands, Faith furiously rubbed the fog off the windshield behind the steering wheel. The man’s red shirt was open, revealing a round potbelly stuck on an otherwise thin frame. When he saw the girl and the man in black, he stopped short, as if there were a line in the woods that he wasn’t allowed to cross. He bent over, hands on his hips, obviously trying to