The Midnight Ground Read online

  THE

  MIDNIGHT

  GROUND

  by Eric Dontigney

  THE MIDNIGHT GROUND

  Copyright © 2019 by Eric Dontigney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photographic, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Rampant Loon Press edition published 2019

  First Printing: January 2019

  Rampant Loon Media LLC

  P.O. Box 111

  Lake Elmo, MN 55042

  USA

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living, dead, or undead is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-938834-18-9 (ebook edition)

  ISBN: 978-1-938834-19-6 (print edition)

  Rampant Loon Press and the Rampant Loon colophon are trademarks of Rampant Loon Media LLC.

  To my brother, Troy, for listening to me ramble

  about my ideas when they’re still half-formed.

  Chapter 1

  It always started with something stupid, some seemingly innocuous action that set a ball rolling that I couldn’t stop. No, that’s not true. I usually could stop the ball, but never soon enough. This time, it was taking up a woman on her offer to dance. I’m one of those rare men who figured out early that, bizarre as it seems to most Y-chromosome bearing members of the species, women like dancing. Ergo, if I wanted women to like me, knowing how to dance was probably a good start. I was right about that, as far as it went.

  I was in a tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar that made its home in a flyspeck town. The flyspeck town made its home in a blink-and-you-miss-it county in Tennessee. It was the kind of place where older men tipped their John Deere hats to women and young men drove girls out to the river with a six-pack of beer and a crotch full of hope. It was also the kind of place where the bars were well-stocked with three domestic brands on tap and every kind of country music your sanity could barely tolerate. In other words, it wasn’t my kind of place.

  Still, I’d been driving for a while, fleeing a disaster I had—depending on who was telling the tale—either created or stopped in Miami. The police seemed to be of the former opinion. There wasn’t going to be any evidence, but I hadn’t been in a mood to sit around in a jail cell for days while they figured it out. After I almost ran myself off the road for the fourth time, I decided the next town I came to was where I’d call it a night.

  I checked into the first motel I saw, which was situated next to the bar. There were any number of conclusions one might draw from that setup, but I chose not to draw them. I dumped my bag in my room and headed for the bar. It was dark and dingy, but with an open section for people to dance. I opened with the universal signal of bartender friendship. I held up a twenty. I found myself immediately served by a thirty-something brunette who was desperately trying to pass herself off as a twenty-something blonde. That probably worked out for her by closing on most nights.

  I took a couple of long pulls off the bottle in front of me and did my best not to make eye contact with anyone but the bartender. Eye contact invites conversation and, worse, questions. I wasn’t interested in either. The thing I forgot is that a new face at the local watering hole is going to attract attention, whether you want it or not.

  “Hey mister, you want to dance?”

  I turned on my bar stool and reassessed my prior position on conversation. She was a cute redhead, mostly sober and even age-appropriate for a guy pushing forty. I shrugged, took a sip of beer, and smiled.

  “I’m game,” I said and hopped off the stool.

  Line dancing was the thing there. I had to dig deep and rely on some basic observations to pull it off, but I didn’t embarrass myself too badly. My rumpled suit probably looked out of place, but no one seemed to mind. Well, almost no one. The fast dances gave way to slower dances and people coupled off. To my credit, I did try to go back to the bar. The cute redhead wasn’t having any of it.

  “Where you running off to, cowboy,” she said, grabbing my arm and swinging me against her.

  “Didn’t want to assume anything,” I said.

  “You’re a long way from home, judging by that accent.”

  I nodded, but didn’t answer the implicit question. “Just passing through.”

  “Too bad. You’re a good dancer.”

  She pressed herself against me in a way that wasn’t strictly necessary for slow dancing. That, it seemed, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I felt it, that change in the energy, the way people seemed to move back on instinct, before it happened.

  “Get away from my wife!”

  He grabbed me by the suit jacket and jerked me away from her. He was strong enough that my feet came off the ground and I found myself rolling away on the floor when he let go. I looked up. He was a big guy, nothing special to look at, but he had an honest face. He’d positioned himself between me and her. The ex, I thought.

  The cute redhead started yelling. “Gary! Stop it!”

  “Stay out of this, Liz.”

  I stood up and gave him a level look. “We were just dancing.”

  “You had your hand on my wife’s ass.”

  I knew it was stupid, but I said it anyway. “I’m pretty sure you meant to say ex-wife.”

  Something very like physical pain crossed his face and was quickly supplanted by anger. Everyone had backed away and watched with voyeuristic interest. He rushed me and threw a crushing haymaker. I ducked out of the way and sidestepped. He crashed to the floor with an audible thud.

  The bartender yelled at us both. “Take it outside!”

  Gary lurched to his feet, face red with fury and embarrassment. “You heard the lady.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Spare me. If you’ve got unfinished business with your ex, leave me out of it. I just came in here for a beer.”

  “You’re going outside to finish this, one way or the other.”

  Liz put herself between me and him. It was a gutsy move.

  “Gary, you have to stop doing this. I’m not your property.”

  He got a look on his face I recognized. It was the expression my stepfather had gotten right before he knocked my mother around the living room. Gary was going to take his anger out on someone. I stepped up behind Liz.

  “I changed my mind, Gary. You want to take this outside? Let’s go.”

  I turned on my heel and made a beeline for the door. I walked fast because I didn’t want him on my heels when I hit the night air. I’d seen how that turned out too many times before. He came out the door and a couple of his buddies came out the door with him. It was painfully predictable. I made a big show of taking off my suit coat. Then I took off my tie and my watch. I watched Gary and his buddies working themselves up mentally to hand me the ass-kicking of a lifetime. I regarded them from five feet away as I unbuttoned my shirt and slid it off. I noticed a handful of looky-loos clustered at the bar’s door.

  I let them take a good, long look. Then I folded my shirt and set it on the ground. “Any time you’re ready, boys.”

  Gary hadn’t learned his lesson. He came at me the same way, a brutish charge and a wild swing. I didn’t sidestep it this time. I turned into the swing, grabbed his arm and used his own momentum to swing him through the air over my shoulder. I didn’t let go of his arm. There was a sickening crunch as his shoulder dislocated and Gary screamed. I danced back a few steps and looked at the other two. One decided to cut his
losses and vanished back inside, the watchers parting seamlessly to let him pass. Gary’s other friend pulled a wicked-looking hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. Someone in the crowd whipped out a phone and started dialing.

  I eyed the knife and gave him a little smile. “You sure about this?”

  He closed on me slowly, waving the knife back and forth. I circled around him, staying out of reach. That was the big problem with a knife. If you wanted to use it, you had to get close. Impatience won out and he darted at me. He swung the knife in a wide arc. I leaned out of the way and then kicked him in the stomach. A kick like that hurts, no question, but it also knocks the wind out of you. It’s hard to concentrate on a fight when you can’t breathe.

  He stabbed in my general direction. I slid past the blade and slammed my elbow into his nose. I felt the cartilage give way and blood spurted from his nostrils. His expression went slack for a stunned half-second. Then he dropped the knife and grabbed at his face with both hands. I moved back from him.

  I thought about it for a moment. “You can stop now. I didn’t want this fight in the first place.”

  I saw the decision on his face. I was in motion before he took his first step. I doubt he even saw the foot that connected with the side of his head. He probably felt it, though, right before he lost consciousness. By the time I got my shirt, tie, jacket and watch back on, the local cops arrived. Surprise, surprise, they took me into custody.

  What did surprise me was when they didn’t book me for anything. The sheriff, a heavyset guy with a bushy mustache, invited me into his office. The brass nameplate on his desk read, Jeremy Barnes. Despite looking a bit like a living, breathing cliché, there was a shine of intelligence in his eyes. Or maybe it was experience. The older I get, the less sure I become that there is any difference between those two things.

  “Sorry to drag you down here like this, Mr. Hartworth,” said Barnes. “I know you didn’t start that fight.”

  “That’s true. I didn’t.”

  “Sure seems like you finished it, though.”

  “Couple of guys come after you in a parking lot, one of them with a hunting knife, you take it seriously. Or you get dead. I took it seriously.”

  “Can’t argue that. Really, I just wanted to get you out of there until everyone went home. Gary has a short fuse. Plus, the ink’s barely dry on the divorce papers and he’s got a lot of friends. I bring you in here, everybody figures justice gets served. Nobody goes looking for it by themselves.”

  “That’s smart. I’ll sleep in one of the cells if it’ll help you sell it.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. Idle curiosity, you planning on staying long?”

  I weighed the words, trying to decide if he was asking a real question or quietly suggesting I get the hell out of his town. I decided he was just asking. “No. I was just planning on the one night. I imagine I’ll stick with that, barring something unexpected.”

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d read more in my words than I meant to communicate. His mustache moved up and down a few times. “The unexpected happen to you a lot?”

  I shrugged. “No more than anyone else. I just notice it more, I think.”

  He leaned back in his chair, which squeaked quietly, and folded his hands across his stomach. “I expect you do. Mind if I ask what you do for a living?”

  That was a deceptively complicated question. “I’m kind of a jack of all trades. I take the work I can get.”

  It was true, as far as it went. I did my best to avoid outright lies. Vague truths lend themselves to whatever specifics you want to give later. Outright lies, you have to remember verbatim. Who has the memory for that? Barnes regarded me impassively. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was, in some inexplicable way, telling him a lot more than I intended. It was possible that he just made everyone feel that way. It’d be a useful trait in law enforcement.

  “You’re pretty cagey, Mr. Hartworth. If I ran you through the system, would I find something interesting?”

  “Probably.”

  There was no point lying. Either he’d already run my name and knew the answer, or he’d gotten a bead on me. I didn’t see the point in aggravating the man after he did me a good turn by not booking me.

  “Care to share?”

  I hemmed and hawed for a minute. “Not really. Chalk it up to unexpected things. Sometimes those unexpected things got a little more exciting than I would have cared for.”

  “Exciting. Exciting enough for the police to take an interest?”

  “I can’t control what the police take an interest in. I don’t go looking for trouble, though, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Barnes idly scratched his chin. “You remind me of a guy I knew a long time ago. He was a real quiet guy. Always tried to mind his own business. Couldn’t seem to go outside without falling sideways into some kind of strangeness or another.”

  “That’s a hard kind of luck to have.”

  “It was a hard kind of luck for him. He never talked much about it. It was all in his eyes, though. He’d seen some things. You’ve got that look in your eyes.”

  I half-nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen some things.”

  “Hope it works out better for you than it did for him.”

  I took the bait. “How did it work out for him?”

  “He ate a bullet. “

  I moved my head a little to acknowledge the words. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Mr. Hartworth,” the sheriff started, before the words seemed to die on his lips.

  “Yes?”

  “Look, this isn’t a big city and I’m not looking for things to get exciting in my town. If you get the feeling things are headed that way, I’d take it as a kindness if you’d move on.”

  I nodded. “Like I said, I’m just planning on the one night.”

  The sheriff got up from behind his desk and gave me a half-smile. “Let me show you to your room.”

  I followed him out and he swung open a cell door. I stepped in, half-expecting him to close it behind me, but he didn’t. He pulled open a file cabinet drawer and tossed me a pillow. It was thick and soft. I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I end up sleeping here sometimes,” he said with a shrug.

  I stretched out on the cot in the cell. As jail cots went, it wasn’t even that uncomfortable. I fell asleep in seconds.

  Chapter 2

  I was stretched out on a beach, with an arm tossed over my eyes. I listened to waves crashing on the shoreline and tried to decide if I needed a beer or a mixed drink. Both seemed like a lot of effort, so I just continued to lie there. A minute or two later, I felt someone watching me. I slid my arm away and looked up. Marcy stood there in a very tiny bikini, her dark, wavy hair blowing in the ocean breeze. She gave me a bemused look.

  “The beach, again?” I asked.

  She grinned. “I like the beach, and you like the bikini.”

  “I can’t argue that.”

  “You do realize you’re checking out a dead woman’s tits, right?”

  I shrugged, as much as one can shrug while lying on a beach, and said, “You look alive enough to me.”

  Marcy sat down next to me and looked out over the water. I wondered how much of the beach scene was her construction and how much of it was mine. I decided it must have been mostly hers. I’d have picked a nude beach.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  “The same. Still dead, for now anyways.”

  “It’s been a long time. Shouldn’t you have reincarnated or something?”

  “Has it been a long time?”

  “Fifteen years, give or take,” I said.

  “Strange. You don’t notice time the same way when you’re dead. I guess you do look older. I’m sure I’ll reincarnate or turn into a real angel or something, sooner or later. Are you saying you’re bored with me?”

  “Not at all. Just curious.”

  She turned and gave me concerned look. “You should leave fir
st thing in the morning. Don’t even stop for gas. Just go.”

  “Why?”

  She struggled for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite formulate the idea, and then she shook her head. “It’s one of those things. Just trust me, okay.”

  Those things, things the dead knew but couldn’t communicate, had saved my life more than once. I’d learned the hard way to trust Marcy about them.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She smiled, reached over and pushed my hair back off my forehead. I knew without any apparent sign that the dream would end soon.

  Marcy gave me a look and then rolled her eyes. “You want to cop a feel, don’t you?”

  “Since you’re here…”

  “Adrian Hartworth, show some respect for the dead!”

  I put on my serious face, “I will totally respect you in the morning.”

  She snickered and then pulled off the bikini top. I took advantage of the moment. As the dream lost cohesion, the last thing I remembered was her hand landing in my lap.

  “Fair is fair,” she said.

  “Hey, sunshine, time to get up,” someone said.

  I cracked my eyes and turned toward the voice. I blinked a few times and the room came into focus. There was a split-second when I couldn’t remember where I was, or why, and then it came back to me. The cell door was still open and a uniformed woman stood there. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, trying to clear the cobwebs away.

  “Morning,” I mumbled.

  “You hungry?”

  I stood and walked toward the open cell door. The woman stepped aside and her eyes followed me with curiosity, but no ill intent. She was tall, almost as tall as I was. Her hair was straight, brown and cropped short, with some gray creeping in here and there. She was thickset, but not fat, just solid. Crow’s feet created complicated webbing around her eyes.

  “I could eat,” I said. “Bathroom?”

  She pointed at an unmarked door. I went in, splashed a little cold water on my face, and took a long piss. Images of the fight intruded on me. I felt a moment or two of guilt. I’d been tired and angry. I’d hurt that Gary guy more than I needed to hurt him. Then again, on balance, I’d hurt the guy who pulled the knife less than he deserved. I dubbed it a moral wash and went back out into the station.