Read Online Headstone City by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online

sticking to the side of her face.
    Howards looked down at himself in the back of the Buick, noticing his shriveled pecker but not feeling the cold. “Why am I here?” he asked.
    “I wanted to talk with you,” Dane said, and pulled away from the curb. He drove slowly along the roads closest to the water.
    “Make an appointment. Have I been hypnotized?”
    “No.”
    “Drugged?”
    “No, warden. We're on a night ride together.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Relax and find out.”
    Dane couldn't get into it too quickly because the warden never allowed anybody else to speak. He'd have to blather on for a while and, after he wore down a little, he'd act like he'd been giving the other guy a chance to talk the whole time, and say, “Well?”
    Stroking his slight trace of beard stubble, Howards stared out at the fog undulating across the Sound, swarming around the car. “It's dark. And I find myself sitting in the back of a GM with you. And I'm most certainly naked. This is quite literally the stuff of nightmares.” It struck him as funny and he let go with a confused smile. “I'm occasionally plagued by dreams of being gang-raped by prisoners.”
    “Put your mind at rest about that,” Dane said.
    “Are you going to kill me, Mr. Danetello?”
    “No.”
    It was the “Mister” that always got to Dane. The guy saying it more like he was a high school principal trying to shake up a kid caught in the hall without a pass. Dane hated and enjoyed it at the same time, in about equal parts, but he wasn't sure why.
    “You're not really here, warden.”
    “I'm not?”
    “No. You're still at home in your bed.”
    “How ridiculous. Your psychiatric examination results showed you were a borderline schizophrenic, but I never saw any evidence of that until now.”
    It actually annoyed Dane, hearing that sort of shit about the psych tests. The cons who talked to the doctors usually fooled them into an early parole, saying how they were cured, they just wanted to give something positive back to society. Then on the morning of their release they went and took out a whole family with a meat cleaver. They go right back into the can and the doctors start flipping through their files trying to figure out where they went wrong.
    “Do you remember getting into the car?” Dane asked.
    “Yes.”
    “How'd you do it?”
    “What a foolish question.”
    “Then answer it.”
    “I—” Howards said, and fear reared up in his eyes. The warden did a good job at keeping control and not losing his cool. Dane had found him hard but fair. A bit too stuffy for his own good but not often judgmental. He was a little street ignorant and so he was more honest than other men in similar positions of power. Because he didn't have quite so much on the ball, he was somehow easier to deal with.
    “How?” Dane repeated.
    “I never opened the door, did I? I simply . . . entered.” Still reasoning his way through it, voice calm but lifeless. “I feel rather disconnected, which is not an altogether unpleasant experience.”
    If he didn't feel that way, he'd be screaming his ass off, halfway out of his head, knowing his soul was separated from his sleeping body. “Glad you're enjoying yourself.”
    “I didn't say that. Is this what the New Age metaphysicians would call my astral self?”
    “Call it what you like,” Dane told him.
    “What do you call it?”
    “I don't put a name to it.”
    “You often avoid questions put directly to you. The prison psychiatrists noted that in your files as well.”
    Dane tried not to sigh and failed.
    Sort of funny, the way the warden started staring at his hand, like he thought it might become transparent. Bringing it up to his eye, looking at the palm and inspecting the other side, touching his fingers together. What would those fuckin' doctors tell him now?
    Howards bent forward and said, “How odd and unique, to be born with this gift.”
    “It's not unique and I wasn't born with it. At least I don't think