Read Last Exit in New Jersey Online
Authors: C.E. Grundler
The first time Hammon saw Annabel, he was nothing but burned flesh and shattered bones. He was dying, or maybe already dead, the overwhelming pain receding, releasing him. And she appeared, a child no older than him, dark eyes filled with knowing sympathy, this angel in black, slender and delicate, long curls surrounding her like a veil. Then the doctors pulled him back, hooked him up to life support, stuffed the remaining brains into his shattered skull, and stitched what they could back together. He was alive, barely. But his angel was gone.
Until he slit his wrists. Unsure which way to cut, he played tic-tac-toe across his raw flesh. It was easy, numb with painkillers from his latest session of skin graft torture. He would’ve succeeded if no one had noticed. But as his heart stopped beating, she appeared.
Round three: a long drive in a small garage. He’d hoarded painkillers just for the occasion. He knew how it worked now: she wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter. When he was dead, or nearly there, she would come. Soothing numbness spread until he was too weak to cough back the suffocating fumes. He closed his eyes, drifting off, waiting. The music, Oingo Boingo’s
Dead Man’s Party
, became distant. Then he felt a kiss, light and gentle. He turned to see his little angel.
She looked disappointed. “Why are you doing this?”
That seemed pretty obvious. “I wanna be dead.”
“You’re not supposed to be.”
“Do you know how much it hurts to live?”
That same solemn look. “I do.”
“You’re not gonna stop me.”
In reply she only smiled.
He grinned. “I don’t think I remember ever seeing you smile.”
“Until now, you never said anything funny.” She leaned over, kissing his forehead. “I’m sorry.”
He later recalled overhearing doctors arguing, baffled by how he’d driven the car through the garage door, across the driveway, the street, and into the neighbor’s lawn; by the levels of drugs in his system and carbon monoxide in his bloodstream, he should have been dead.
He was, for a moment at least. He felt Annabel’s kiss.
The fourth time he made sure she couldn’t stop him. It was March, and there was still snow on the ground. Again, the overdose of painkillers, enough to numb the shock of hypothermia when he pulled back the pool cover and slid into the deep end, straight to the bottom with barely a ripple. It was a new record for him, he’d flat-lined for over twenty minutes before they found him. There was no reasoning with Annabel, she was furious. But before water filled his lungs, his body temperature had plummeted. The sudden, rapid brain freeze and tranquilizers in his bloodstream had slowed his metabolism. It was rare, but not unheard of, surviving prolonged cold-water submersion. Annabel swore if he so much as tried to kill himself again she’d leave forever. He struck a bargain: if she’d stick around while he had a pulse, so would he.
The fifth time he died wasn’t intentional. He was standing on
Revenge
’s bridge, gazing up in fascination. Over the freshly launched and christened boat, the sky had turned an ominous gray, clouds churning like boiling lead.
“Are you looking to get zapped or something?” Gary shouted from shore. “Get down below.”
Hammon laughed as raindrops pelted him. “Lightning won’t hit this. It’ll hit a sailboat, they’re higher.”
It tickled as his hair stood on end, and he remembered a strange odor. Then he was flat on his back staring up as Gary knelt over him, cursing, pounding Hammon’s chest. He heard cracking: his ribs, it turned out, and he wondered how Gary had gotten to the bridge when he was on shore a blink earlier. Annabel stood behind Gary, her expression grim.
“Get up,” she said.
“Huh?”
Gary jumped back, looking at him as though he’d risen from the dead.
“You did,” Annabel explained. “You were gone for a few minutes. Again.”
“I don’t remember.” He didn’t feel anything; that would come later.
“Your eyes,” Gary mumbled.
They’d gone from blue to gray.
“First things first.” Tony propped a ladder against the boat and climbed up to the cockpit. “Disconnecting the batteries was smart, but those trackers usually have backup power. Let’s take a look.”
“Good luck finding anything.” Hazel gathered her hair and tied it back. “The cabin’s a mess.”
“We can deal.” Tony motioned to the garbage truck beeping its way backwards into the shed.
Nicky climbed aboard as Hazel opened the cabin. Micah peered in, aiming a flashlight around. He turned to Tony. “You’re gonna need a bigger truck.”
“What died in here?” Tony shined his flashlight through the salon. “Good God; it’s worse than Nicky’s bedroom.”
Laundry, open bags of chips, empty burrito wrappers, Styrofoam cups, and half-empty soda bottles carpeted the floor. Pizza boxes, papers, and magazines buried a small sofa. A PlayStation and two controllers hooked into a TV set with an old radiation shield duct-taped over the screen. A milk crate brimmed with
Maxim
,
Weird NJ
, and
Hot Rod
magazines. A baseball cap rested on the compass, Cheez Doodles nestled beneath the depth finder, junk mail blanketed the console, and no two curtains matched. Tony opened one, only to find the window bricked closed. Not actually bricked, but covered in brick-patterned contact paper. The next was a poster of a tropical shoreline. Other windows featured the Manhattan waterfront, Stonington, Maine, and Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
Micah crunched through the salon. “You sure you stole the right boat?”
“I wondered at first, but the keys fit, and,” Hazel held a stack of junk mail up to the light. “Jake Stevenson. J. Stevenson. Stevenson…”
Beneath the debris, the boat was solid wood, constructed with fine joinery. Three steps led down to a dinette covered by dirty non-skid plates and coffee cups. To starboard, a head and a biological warfare experiment shaped like a galley. Up forward, more debris buried the V-berths.
“Your pal Stevenson is one very disturbed individual.” Micah passed her a
Maxim
magazine. Nearly every photo of a woman had the eyes and lips cut away. Page after page of mutilated faces gaped back with sightless jack-o’-lantern grins. Hazel closed the magazine, shuddering.
Tony studied the black rectangle over the head sink. “That’s a unique decorating statement.” He dug around then backed out with a small stack of pictures and a stunned expression. “This is seriously creepy.”
“Creepier than those magazines?” Hazel turned. “What now?”
“Porn.”
That got Micah’s attention. “Really? Lemme see.”
Tony’s face glowed red. “You don’t want to.”
Micah grabbed the pile, flipping through them. “Whoa…Uh…That’s just wrong.” Clearing his throat, he handed them back to Tony. “I can’t look at these.”
“Since when were you squeamish over porn?” Hazel teased. “I’ve seen your apartment.”
“Trust me. I don’t have anything like this.”
Hazel grabbed for the pictures, but Tony rolled them behind his back. “Just trust us. You don’t want to see them.”
Nicky snatched the pictures, dodging clear of his brother. He stared from them to Hazel. Crimson rose in his face.
Hazel seized the pictures. In truth they were fairly tame, more erotica than porn; vintage black-and-white photos of a young woman with dark curls bobbed in a 1920s style, intimately though not graphically exploring herself. That wasn’t the disturbing part. It was the girl.
“Cut your hair,” Micah said, “that could be you.
Is
you.”
Hazel looked through the pictures, trying to convince herself there was no resemblance when undeniably there was. She shoved them into a grocery bag, burying them beneath Styrofoam cups and snack bags. “Weren’t we looking for a tracker?”
She showed Tony the circuit breakers, parallel battery switch, and master switch she’d shut down. “Nicky, get some power up here.”
Nicky nodded, discreetly lifting the grocery bag as he exited, returning minutes later with extension cords and droplights, further illuminating the disaster area.
“You think everything else was weird? Check this out.” Hazel moved debris to open the hatch, lowering a droplight into the engine room as Tony and Micah stared in awe. An immaculate Lehman diesel gleamed like a jewel, surrounded by the best fuel systems money could buy.
Tony climbed down, inspecting the neat, color-coded wiring, looking around the spotless compartment. “This boat’s got serious grounding and a fortune in soundproofing. If there’s anything alarming, I don’t see it. I’d say our best bet’s to get the chainsaws and break it up. I’m sure I can find this beauty,” he patted the diesel affectionately, “a good home, but the sooner this boat’s chopped up and carted away, the sooner there’s nothing to find.”
Hazel looked around and felt ill. The boat was supposed to be a means of escape, not a casualty; why should it pay for her crime? If it were Stevenson’s black boat, she’d be the first one with the axe. But this was an endangered species: a wooden boat. To imagine it had survived all these years only to meet this unfortunate end by her actions was unthinkable. She turned to Micah, desperate. “But…she…we can’t!”
“She?” Micah gave her that same pained look her father did whenever she went off on him for suggesting it was time to sell
RoadKill
.
“We need a boat.
Kindling
’s gone, and
Witch
…” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t even say it. “Stevenson owes us a boat.”
Tony shook his head and repeated what his dad had said: “Someone sank a chunk of cash into this thing. You can bet they’ll be looking for it.”
“Yeah,” Micah said, “But all my uncle said was, ‘make it disappear.’ I noticed when I got here, that old Wheeler in the boneyard’s moved from repair row to death row.”
Hope rose in Hazel. “
Mardi
?” That boat had been magnificent once, but abandoned for decades and long past restoration. She knew just what Micah was thinking.
Tony said. “The hull’s shot on that.”
Micah nodded. “Exactly. Seems to me we’ve got a perfectly good hull right here. We strip some parts off that one, I’d bet we could make this so no one would ever recognize it.”
“You realize the work you’re talking?” Tony said.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty,” Micah said. “In fact, the worse it looks, the better.”
Hazel grinned. It might just work. “It’ll keep me busy and out of trouble.”
Nicky offered Hazel an eager smile. “I could help.”
Tony looked at the boat and groaned. “We better talk to Lou.”
“Shit.” Hammon mumbled. “Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.” He whacked the side of the display with no improvement. He whacked his head against the display, but that didn’t help either. Gary grabbed him by the hair before he could try again. His already precariously balanced brain was pushing overload. If he accepted Annabel’s nonexistence, would she cease to exist? Was that how it worked? Had he lost his boat, his dearest companion, and his mind all in the course of one night?
“Quit it,” Gary said.
“But…I thought it wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“It isn’t.” Gary slumped against the companionway and stared blankly at the chart, where Hammon had compulsively scribbled the progressing positions of both boats, at least until
Revenge’s
position had vanished.
“I’ll be damned.” Gary leaned closer. “See the course before the signal died, moving from mark to mark.” He traced his finger along the chart. “They took Chapel Hill South Channel. If they were heading east of Sandy Hook, they’d take the Narrows to Ambrose Channel. The signal stopped here, heading two hundred, forty-seven degrees, which puts you here.” His finger stopped at Green 11A, north of Keansburg. “I’d bet they weren’t planning on going much further. Think about it; they left Stevenson for dead, then took
Revenge
, not Stevenson’s boat. They probably wanted to keep a low profile but expected more speed than they got. And…” He circled Keyport and the Raritan River. “I were them, I’d tie up and split before it gets light. I’d bet up one of these creeks, we’ll find your boat.”
But they didn’t.
Yard by yard, marina by marina, they searched. Great Kills, through Arthur Kill, up and down the Raritan River, no boat. The farther they went, the closer Hammon crept toward total breakdown. Hope turned to despair as the sky grew lighter. If
Revenge
wasn’t already abandoned, it wasn’t going to be. It could be hidden under a tarp, in a boat shed, anywhere.
“My entire life is in that boat.”
Gary sighed. They’d reached the navigable end of Cheesequake Creek. Overhead, tires hummed along the Garden State Parkway.
“That barge of yours couldn’t just disappear into thin air.” Gary turned
Temperance
around. He’d been defensive ever since Hammon suggested the rechargeable backup battery may have passed its useable life span. Hammon wasn’t blaming him, just suggesting a possibility, but Gary took any overlooked detail personally. So Hammon sat scratching Charger’s head and staring out at the passing,
Revenge
-less scenery.
And then he saw Annabel.
Wrapped in his favorite sweatshirt, standing on the riverbank in the light of the rising sun, she gazed across the water, her expression distant. Time froze and Hammon watched, captivated, afraid to blink as the light breeze brushed the curls in front of her eyes. How could something that seemed so real not be real? Was his brain that screwed up?
They rounded the bend, and he lost sight of her, breaking the spell, snapping him back to reality. “Gary, go back.”
“You saw
Revenge
?” Gary swung
Temperance
around. The dogs, sensing the sudden change, rose expectantly.
“That way.” Hammon pointed toward the yard they just passed. “Over there.” If Gary could see her, it was proof he wasn’t completely insane.
But she was gone. On the east side, a Travelift cautiously lifted the hulk of an ancient sport-fisherman, the weathered hull so sprung the low sun shined through in places.
“That, my friend, is
not
your boat. I think it’s time we call it a night.”
Hammon blinked. Annabel
had
been there; he’d seen her.
Then again, maybe he hadn’t.