Sorry for the cliffie last time, here's the next installment! Also I'm out of school now (YESSSSSSS!) so I should be able to update my stories more often. Thanks for reviewing and please keep them coming, tell me how it's going!
Upon seeing the papers, Mort had at first been confused, then dumbfounded as he took them into his own hands and began to examine them. Now, however, something began to stir in the back of his mind. His throat felt tight, as if his voice had suddenly changed; a filter seemed to come before his eyes so that everything was a few shades darker, and blurred around the edges. He couldn't understand. He didn't know how these papers had gotten here, yet he knew they were significant.
Amy would never have left without finalizing the papers. He remembered how desperate she had been. As soon as she had filed for divorce she had asked him for his signature. He had refused, he remembered that, for a reason he could never quite understand, and she had kept asking, both of them getting angrier every time she brought it up, the constant tension driving him further and further into himself.
Yet Amy was gone, and here were the papers, unsigned... and they were THE papers, the very ones she had carried around, shoving them into his face at every opportunity. He was sure of that; in the dark, hidden part of his mind, he was certain.
How had they gotten here?
"You know," said a voice in his ear, so clear that he jumped and looked over his shoulder. No one was there. "Think, Mister Rainey," came the voice again, a thick southern drawl, the vowels stretched out like saltwater taffy. He shuddered; he had heard that voice before. The voice in the dream. He had never heard it before while he was awake.
The papers fluttered out of his hands, onto the ground. He stared at his hands; they were cold. I don't know, he said to himself. I don't.
But his mind was swirling now, all the dark memories he had kept hidden being disturbed, pulled out of their slumber and surfacing in flashes for a nanosecond before they dimmed again. He didn't try to repress them this time. He had to know now—when Amy had finally left, where she had gone, why she had left these papers unsigned.
"I never liked that one," Amy had said, her voice sounding artificial and metallic over the phone.
"What?"
"Well, it was kind of hostile, don't you think?"
"I miss your constructive criticism, Amy, I really do..."
Secret window. That was what Amy had called the window overlooking the cornfield. Only it hadn't always been a cornfield down there—it had been her garden. Always filled with flowers, with three or four feeders for the hummingbirds. She'd loved that garden. Sometimes he'd felt she loved that garden more than she loved him...
Another phone conversation, sometime after the first one. He was irritable, annoyed.
"I was asleep."
"So you unplugged the phone?" Amy's voice was desperate, close to hysterical. She sounded like she had been crying.
He sighed, resigning himself to a long and boring conversation. "How may I assist you, Amy?"
"Mort...they burned down our house!"
The house—he hadn't even thought about that house for years. It was a beautiful house. Amy had taken it after they separated it, and he had burned inwardly whenever he thought of Amy and Ted living in it... Yes, the house had burned down, burned to the ground, he remembered that now, burned like his dreams. Who...?
The memories began coming faster.
He was speaking to Ken on the phone.
"Here's what I think," Ken was saying. Mort could hear him moving around his room in the motel. "Someone hired this guy to hassle you, scare you into giving him some money. But now he's gone too far. Dead dogs, burned- down houses..."
Chico, his dog, his only companion in the cabin.
He pulled aside a sheet and...
He held a shovel in his hands, tamping the earth down tightly over a grave.
"I'll get you for this, Shooter!"
Shooter... A man. A man who had appeared on his doorstep in a bowler hat and a smile that showed too many of his teeth.
"You stole my story."
Shooter... In the dark outside the cabin, Mort shoved up against a tree, Shooter pressing the handle of a shovel hard across his throat. His face was much too close, his voice hostile and threatening.
Shooter... inside the cabin, reflected in the mirror. He was standing on the stairs, perfectly composed, regarding Mort fixedly with a trace of amusement in his eye.
"You're not real." Mort's breath was harsh in his throat, his voice ragged.
"Oh, I'm real, Mr. Rainey. I'm real because... you made me. You gave me my name. Told me everything you wanted me to do."
He had advanced slowly as he spoke until he was standing directly behind Mort. Mort turned to face him.
"Now, what's the real reason I come, Mr. Rainey?"
Mort spoke as if to himself. "Fix the ending."
Shooter's voice was devoid of emotion. "And how do you propose we do that?"
Mort now worked his throat but no sound came out. He yelled inside his head. "No. It's over, that ending is past!"
Shooter answered him, his voice cold. "It was. But you seem intent on writing a sequel. And I'm going to make damn sure that this ending's done right the first time."
Heh... didn't really resolve the cliffie. REVIEW please, it'll motivate me to write faster! :) Not to be pushy or anything...