Merry Go Round

By Fred Pruitt

Annie Marino was a beaten woman. She was literally beaten by her husband, who had left her battered and bruised by the side of the road. She felt beaten by life as well. Walking by the side of the freeway on A Dark and Stormy Night she hoped to be struck by lightning and die on the spot. Instead she was offered a ride by The Phantom of the Pickup Truck, with his staring eye and his misshapen mouth and his scarred face and body. He brought her to The Old Dark House, with its howling, slavering dogs, to step into...

A life of utter normality.

In the moldering home of her childhood friend Martin and his daughter she found a refuge from her Princess life with her handsome Prince Charming husband, Frank. Robbed of everything she had, she restarted her life from scratch, finding friendship, good humor, new strength, and even having fun.

Then the Marino family reached out, to try and pull her back into her old life. Annie had taken vows when she married. Did her husband's breaking his vows to love, honor, and cherish relieve her of her own marriage vows? If Frank was trying to reform was she obligated to give him the chance?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fred Pruitt
• Release date: Nov 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370700899

Fred Pruitt

Fred Pruitt is somebody's grampaw. He's retired from both the Army and from a second career. He has lived in many, though not all, parts of the world. He read Robert Heinlein from about the time he was twelve, starting with his boys' books, through Stranger in a Strange Land. He has read The Virginian three times, and enjoys Raphael Sabatini. He's enjoying retirement by writing his own books about people he's known, putting them in situations they were never in in real life.

Book preview

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Wednesday, October 9th, Feast of Saint Denis, Patron of Headaches

The rain was falling in sheets and buckets. It was coming down horizontally when the wind gusted, trying to blow the old pickup truck clear off the Turnpike extension. The thunder and lightning part of the storm was over, replaced now by the continuous downpour and the erratic gale-force winds. The sky was featureless black. The moon was invisible, no star shown. Even the massed clouds were masked in the darkness they imposed. Martin had slowed from the interstate speed limit to sixty five, then to fifty, to forty. Now he was creeping along at just thirty miles an hour and sometimes much more slowly. He had a serious cramp in his neck from keeping his head turned so his eye could strain through the obscuring downpour, doing his cautious best to make out what was ahead of him. The rain, in the way heavy rain has at night, was sucking up the light from his headlights. He checked them periodically, not really believing they were on because the night was so dark. The traffic was sparse, but there still seemed to be an accident every few miles, marked by the flashing red and blue lights of police cars, sometimes by the red and white of firetrucks and ambulances. Occasionally there was a police spotlight pointing directly into the eyes of oncoming traffic to further degrade visibility.

Martin was tired. He felt worn out. He was almost hypnotized by the monotonous slip-slop of the windshield wipers. They were set on High, and most of the time High was still Inadequate. He felt like he had a weight on his shoulders. It was an effort just to sit up straight.

At least he was almost home. The day had been very long, very trying, and a few times it had been very painful. The hospital had eaten up most of his day. At least he had been able to make it to see his lawyer to sign his new will before Mr. Rowe and his staff closed up and went home. That was why he was coming home so late. He was looking forward to a meal, to a shower, and then to his bed. He had eaten nothing since breakfast and he was thinking longingly of the contents of his refrigerator.

He had nothing on his calendar for the next day, nothing for the day after, and then he had the entire weekend ahead of him. He thought seriously about spending the next day just reading, listening to music, and playing with the dogs. That was what he wanted, but he had animals to feed, and there was lots of other work to do on, in, and around the house. In places it was literally falling down around his ears. Tonight’s wind and rain were tied closely to tomorrow’s repairs. The work had no intention of doing itself, as he well knew, from years of hard experience helped along by the long ago flat of his father’s hand. There was also Isabel to think of. She deserved much more than the run down farm, with its dilapidated house and its weed-grown lawn and its rocky fields.

His exit, number 87, was coming up, he knew. He kept cautious watch for a mile marker. 83.1 crawled by, just a steel pole set securely by the side of the road, barely visible in the watery light despite its reflecting numbers. Three and a half miles and a bit left to go, then he would be on the familiar road home. He might skip the meal, he thought tentatively. He wasn't that hungry, despite the occasional querulous groan from his stomach. He was a lot more tired than he was hungry. He might skip the shower, too, even though he hated going to bed when he felt sweaty and worn. He always felt like he was fouling the sheets when he did. Tonight he might very well say Foul and be damned. That was why he owned a washer and dryer and more than one set of sheets.

He caught a brief glimpse of white on the shoulder of the road, then lost it in the pelting rain and the uncertain light. An animal? They were already into deer rutting season, and they were plentiful on the roads. He slowed a little more, his eye trying to pierce the heavy rain, searching the shoulder.

Then he saw it again and he was able to keep his eye on it. The white smudge resolved itself into a human figure. At first he couldn't tell if it was male or female. He thought for a moment or two that it might be a child, but the walk was different. Even in driving rain like that, a child wouldn't plod in just that way.

He considered briefly, then slowed still more, the truck creeping. Another car went around him, faster than it should have for the conditions. The truck shook as the car splashed both the pickup and the trudging figure. The girl staggered under the impact of the water.

He wasn’t sure why, but the splash made up his mind for him. He pulled over to a stop on the shoulder, putting his emergency blinkers on and backing up a few feet. If he didn’t stop he would spend the night wondering what had eventually happened to the poor, soaked soul.

The figure approached and he guessed, mainly from the toe-in walk, that it was female. She wore a tee shirt, short denim shorts, and sneakers, the unisex uniform of twenty first century western man and woman. The length of the shorts also suggested woman – most men wore longer, uglier shorts. It had been cool enough before the rain had started that she should have been wearing a jacket and long pants. He guessed she had gone directly from the house to a warm car and had expected to go from the warm car directly to the Great Indoors. The temperature wasn’t bad for October in the mountains, but that meant it was in the low sixties. Falling from the upper atmosphere the rain would be considerably colder. Walking in the driving rain she must feel frozen.

She didn't run to the truck, merely kept trudging until she was up to the passenger side door. He leaned over and opened it for her. She was slim almost to the point of being skinny, reasonably young, and soaked through and through. She looked pretty beat up, her face swollen and both her eyes black. Her lips were swollen and looked pulpy. There were bruises visible on her arms and legs. He hadn't seen her car anywhere visible off the road, but that was no guarantee, given the rain and the wind and the woods lining the road.

She looked into the truck, saw his face, and recoiled. That was nothing unusual. Too bad, he thought to himself. If she didn't want a ride she could stay in the rain. He was too tired to argue about it. If she didn’t want a ride, he could call for the police to come and collect her.

Get in, Martin whispered.

---00---

It was the kind of day that only comes in nightmares.

This couldn't possibly be a nightmare, Annie knew. Nightmares only last until the Big Black Dog bites, until the dreamer falls off the cliff, until the monster gets her. Then she awakens in her bed with a jolt.

Her nightmare day just kept going, hour after hour, incident after incident, until she was sure she could stand no more. Then there would be another outrage, worse than the last.

She trudged on through the downpour, putting one soggy foot in front of the other. Her feet hurt, feeling like they were raw and blistered from rubbing in the wet, swollen shoes she had thrown on without socks. Her calves hurt and she had a shin splint. Her hair was plastered to her head. She had reached the point where she was hoping she would get struck by lightning and see an end to it all.

There was no such luck. She remained unincinerated. She would probably, she guessed, catch pneumonia and die, but that would take entirely too long, days at least, maybe even weeks. She didn't want to wait that long. She just wanted to lie down and rest, preferably forever.

"You win, life, the thought kept going through her mind. I give up! I quit!"

The old dark red pickup truck approached, slowing. She felt her hopes rise. Most of the traffic on the Turnpike Extension was going too fast to notice her and stop in time. Maybe this one was slowing to offer her a ride. More likely he was slowing to look for the turnoff that she knew was up ahead.

A car went around the truck, going as fast as if the road had been dry. It hit a dip, a flood of water on the road surface. It swerved, its rear end coming around a little as it hydroplaned and it raised a sheet of water six feet high. It splashed the truck, and it splashed her, drenching her already drenched body from head to foot. The bath felt like ice water.

Bastard! she said wearily, after spitting out a mouthful. At least she was a step closer to pneumonia. Maybe there was an end in sight for her.

The pickup stopped on the shoulder. She saw the shining red of its tail lights, beckoning her through the rain's haze, saw its backup lights go on. He only backed up a few feet, for fear of hitting her, unable to see much behind him. She didn't have the strength left to run to it, much as she wanted to accept the ride, to sit in the warmth, out of the rain. The best she could do was a barely perceptible quickening of her step. She managed to keep putting one sore foot in front of the other, hoping he wouldn’t get impatient and leave.

She finally got there. The door was open, the inside light was on. It was an invitation to get out of the storm.

She looked inside and she wondered if she had wandered into a horror movie. Get in, whispered the Phantom of the Pickup Truck.

"Keep walking, her better judgment told her. He's going to rape you and murder you with a chain saw and probably mutilate the chunks of your body before he buries you in the middle of the woods in the pouring rain."

The right side of his face was horribly scarred. He looked demented, his mouth partially open. His right eye stared straight ahead while his left looked at her.

She felt a bit of warmth escape through the open door. He was sitting in a warm truck. He was dry.

There was no jolt for her. There was no bed, no warmth, and no safety. There was no pillow for her to fluff, grumble, and go back to sleep.

She hoped he made her demise quick. She couldn’t take much more. She got in, shivering with more than cold.

Try closing it again, he suggested. It’s not closed right.

The light on the dashboard was complaining Door Open and making a bonging sound. She opened it, decided against jumping back out, and closed it a second time. The dashboard light went out. Did the doors in nightmare murderers’ pickup trucks sometimes not close right?

You wreck your car? he whispered after she closed the door again, his voice as sinister as his appearance. Then, prosaically:

No, she responded. My husband kicked me out.

Of the car? he croaked.

Yeah, she said, nearly whispering herself.

He put the truck back in gear and a few minutes later he took Exit 87. The truck breezed through the toll gate, the E-Z Pass on his windshield whisking them through. The rain seemingly slowed down to let him pass, then picked up strength again – merely an illusion caused by driving under and then leaving the roofed shelter over the toll booths. She was pretty sure monsters didn’t have E-Z Pass, either.

He made a right turn onto State Route 209, heading north through Summit Hill after stopping briefly at the stop sign. She thought even more briefly about jumping out and running at the brief stop, but it was still raining just as hard. Her teeth chattered and she was shivering uncontrollably.

There's a blanket behind the seat, he croaked.

Are you going to kill me? she asked, not intending to. It just slipped out, propelled on wings of panic. It was what was on most of her mind. At this point in her nightmares she was always frozen in fear. She was surprised she could speak at all.

No. His whisper dripped sarcasm. Are you going to kill me?

She shook her head, wide-eyed, relieved perhaps, but also embarrassed to her core.

Blanket's on your side, so you have to crook your arm back the other way. His voice was eerie, somewhere between a whisper and a croak. You can reach it easier if you kneel on the seat. Is there someplace you want me to let you of?

I… don't know. He kept my purse. I don't have anything. No money, no ID, no phone…

There was no one to call if she did have a phone.

Should I take you home? He sounded like it hurt him to talk. He wiped the corner of his mouth absently on the back of a large, scarred hand.

She shook her head. There was nothing for her at home. Maybe later. Again. There hadn’t been anything there for her to go back to the last time either. She had gone back only because she had nowhere else to go.

Okay, he whispered.

Annie wasn’t sure what okay signified. Probably it meant that he wouldn’t have to burn her identification before he buried her mutilated body. She had a vision of her face, her dead eyes open and staring into the rain, as he shoveled dirt on top of her. She guessed it would actually be mud, given the weather.

Or maybe he would burn her things afterward. She had no idea what the preferred sequence of events was for bloody murder.

Her host had the heater on. She retrieved the blanket after unsuccessfully trying to make her arm behave as though it was double-jointed. She finally gave up, unbuckling her seat belt and kneeling on the seat to get it while the truck beeped and buzzed in complaint about the violation of its built-in safety rules. He didn’t grab her butt while she did it. She considered that a good sign, though she had no idea what he would have done with it if he had.

She huddled under the thick army blanket, luxuriating in the warmth. Eventually she stopped shivering except for an occasional spasm. Some day, she thought, she might be warm all the way through again.

He stuck with 209 for awhile, to the light in Jim Thorpe, then took Route 903, through the tiny little mountain towns. For a few minutes she thought he was taking her to her house, but then he turned north, then took left past the old rest home. He turned onto a dark country road, woods on either side, unrelieved darkness overhead. Once he stopped to let two deer trudge tiredly across the road in front of them. She had never been out this way, despite living in the general area all her life. It was remote, way the hell out in the sticks. Did he actually live out here? Or was this The End, The Place Where All the Bodies Were Buried?

She wondered what Frank would do when he came back for her and couldn’t find her. She knew he would be back once he had cooled down. He always came back, apologetic but his demeanor still somehow implying that if she hadn’t been such a bitch he wouldn’t have had to hit her. It was always the same, except for tonight’s downpour.

Half the driver’s face was terribly scarred, as though from burns. The scars were on the right side of his face, and they tugged the corner of his staring eye down unnaturally. There was a near-continuous dribble of tears from the corner. Apparently he was used to it because he made no effort to wipe them, relying on a bandanna around his neck to catch them. He didn’t have an eyebrow on that side, nor an eyelid, just a bulging blue eyeball. She wondered how he closed his eye to sleep. The corner of his upper lip was tugged up into a perpetual sneer, while the same corner of his his bottom lip was pulled down. When his face was in repose two or three of his teeth were visible. He occasionally wiped absently at a dribble of saliva with the back of his hand. The hand was partially scarred as well, the last two fingers stiff and nail-less, the skin wrinkled and gnarled, the thumb and the first two fingers seemingly undamaged.

The left side of his face was more normal, which was what had caused her to think of the Phantom of the Opera at first sight. He had dark hair, short enough that it didn’t need combing, a little longer on top. The burns had stopped just below his hairline and in front of his ear. He had heavy shoulders and a stocky build. If he had kept the left side of his face toward her she would have considered him moderately good-looking – not that she was interested, despite the regular aspersions Frank cast on her fidelity.

He turned off the two lane asphalt onto a gravel road. There was an ancient, battered sign that said Poe Farm. On either side of the entrance there were signs warning No Trespassing, No Hunting, and Beware of the Dogs. Below that one, perhaps whimsically: The Cat’s Not Friendly Either. She didn’t think the place itself looked friendly, unless a person was fond of ravens screeching Nevermore.

Some of her fear had abated while he was driving, helped along by the heater and the blanket. He was just a man, two or three years older than she was. He just happened to be terribly and painfully scarred. She should be feeling sorry for him, not scared of him. She wondered why he had named the place Poe Farm. Maybe he just admired Edgar Allen. Maybe his name was actually Poe.

Some of the fear – tinged with hysteria – came rushing back at the sight of the house at the end of the bumpy gravel road. There was a sudden crash of thunder and a flash of lightning that briefly illuminated the place, as though on cue – the only thunder and lightning since the storm’s approach. The house looked like it might have a butler named Lurch, secret passages, and unspeakable things falling out of closets. It was old, tall, with at least one round turret on the corner, a wide, deep porch along its front and two sides, and wood freshly fallen from its facade. An upstairs shutter flapped in the wind from one hinge, slamming with a sound like a gunshot. The house looked like it brooded over ancient crimes. The driveway was wide and weed-filled, the lawn expansive and mostly mud. There was a barn and other outbuildings visible in the dim light. There was a dumpster not far from the end of the porch, looking incongruously modern.

He parked the truck at the edge of a large mud puddle that extended all the way to the front steps. There was a deep baying of hounds – probably Hell Hounds, she thought – from inside the house as he got out. She briefly considered sliding over and stealing his truck but he had taken the keys with him. Instead, she got out with him.

Hold the blanket over your head to keep the rain off, he croaked.

She did as she was told, since it was a sensible suggestion. It kept the rain off her head, even while she squished through the puddle to the porch, further soaking her shoes. She was pretty sure she had not a square inch of body that wasn’t soggy, cold, and goose-bumped.

The porch was roofed in tin and she heard the patter of the rain like she had always read about but never actually experienced. The gutter had broken loose at one corner. There was water spilling in a miniature Niagara from the end.

He led her up to the porch. The front door looked like it was new, or at least recently sanded and painted. It looked normal. There was no gong, no pull rope, no death's head knocker. He led her around to the side porch, where there was a side door, just as unthreatening. It had a mullioned window that looked into a dimly lit kitchen. He opened the door for her without having to unlock it. The dogs snarled and growled as he pushed it. She took a deep breath before going inside, expecting the worst.

---00---

Martin paused to take his shoes off as soon as they were across the threshold. It was as much a hint to the girl not to go tracking mud across his clean floor as because they were wet. Mac and Cheese rushed at them, tails wagging madly, to greet him. The girl looked like she was sure they were going to eat her. Instead, the dogs did what dogs usually do, which is to thoroughly sniff the new arrival and demand to be petted. She gave them a frightened look, then jumped and waved a hand behind her when Cheese sniffed her butt too intrusively. She was scared of the dogs, despite their wagging tails, but at least she wasn’t offensive about it. Certainly she wasn’t being as offensive as Cheese was being.

You guys want to go out? he whispered as two hundred and fifty pounds of dog crowded them. Obviously they did. They had been inside since he had left that morning. Go get some fresh air, he croaked, and I’ll get your grub. Don’t track mud in the house.

The dogs bolted out the front door, neither waiting for the other to go first, barely fitting through the opening at the same time. They bawooed! the heavens and anything dumb enough to be lurking in the yard. He got their bowls off the top of the refrigerator, got the bag of dog food out of the closet, and filled them, two heaping scoops each. He put the bowls down on their eating mats next to the door, one on either side. They would need a few moments outdoors to get their plumbing comfortable before they came back for their late dinner.

He turned to his visitor, noting that her lips were blue where they weren’t black and blue and puffy. He led her down the hall to the tiny bathroom. You can clean up in here, have a hot shower if you want. Towels are in the linen closet. I don’t have any grown up ladies’ clothes here, but I’ll bring you a robe and a dry tee shirt you can wear as a night dress. There’s a washer and dryer on the utility porch, so you can clean and dry your things in the morning. Are you hungry?

She hesitated and nodded, trying to look at the left side of his face. That was where people usually tried to look when they could bring themselves to look at his face at all. Even Isabel sometimes had to take a break from looking at his bad side.

It’ll be soup and sandwiches, he told her, his voice weakening as he spoke, going from croak to whisper. He wanted to avoid unnecessary chatter, yet still be polite. I’ll put coffee on, too. You look like you need some.

He heard the shower running while he made the sandwiches and coffee. He let the dogs in and listened to them crunching and slurping as they ate, then let them back outside to do their business at leisure. They would let him know when they were ready to come back inside. He took a mop and cleaned up the mud they had tracked in, knowing they would bring more. He looked over the play list on his music laptop, chose Giselle and listened without bothering to watch. The ballet was one of his favorites, and he had watched this particular performance – Zakharova, dancing at the Bolshoi – so many times he could see the story unfold in his head as the music played almost as clearly as he could follow it on the screen.

The dogs were back inside when his visitor reappeared from the bathroom. They had shaken themselves thoroughly and Martin had rubbed them down with a couple towels. He was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a novel on his e-book reader, fighting the Frenchies in Spain while the music soothed the other half of his mind. His robe provided about twice as much coverage as she required. He usually went barefoot in the house, so he had had no slippers to offer her. Instead, a pair of his green wool Army socks bunched around her skinny ankles and drooped off the ends of her feet. She had used his comb and a couple rubber bands to put her golden brown hair into a couple slightly lop-sided pigtails. He had found her a new toothbrush, still in the packaging, a souvenir of one of his many hospital stays.

Her face was a mess. Her husband putting her out of the car in the middle of the storm had apparently either involved slapping her around or else she had landed face-first. Maybe it had been both. She had a timid look to her, maybe beyond what was natural in a young woman without resources in a stranger’s house. He guessed it was his face. Most people did find it off-putting. Sometimes he did, too.

He motioned her to take a seat, not wanting to overwork his throat. She sat, thanked him, and began devouring the hot pork sandwich he had defrosted and warmed for her. She paused for an occasional sip of coffee, drinking gingerly because of the battered condition of her mouth. She had chewed the hell out of the inside of her lower lip and it had only barely stopped bleeding. He had warmed soup for himself, and she accepted when he offered her some. Either she was starving or she liked his cooking or both. The dogs approached the table hopefully, mentally commanding one or both of them to drop a full plate. Cheese lay down beside him, eyes raised hopefully. Mac sniffed the girl’s ankles with interest. Martin was surprised. Usually Mac didn’t take to people quickly, if at all.

He ate soup, swallowing the chunks of tender pot roasted beef in it carefully, drinking his coffee black, watching her as she ate. Her eyebrows, he thought, were too pale. Her eyes were brown, even though her hair and complexion suggested they should be blue. Her hands and her arms looked skinny. She wore a wedding ring-engagement combination on her left hand that looked like it could support her for about six months if she sold it.

You have a name? he finally asked, since she hadn’t seen fit to introduce herself.

Anna,