The Quiet Ones Read online

  THE QUIET ONES

  Brandon Massey

  Dark Corner Publishing

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  Copyright © 2020 by Brandon Massey

  Dark Corner Publishing Edition: March 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Dark Corner Publishing

  Atlanta, GA

  www.darkcornerpublishing.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  The Quiet Ones/ Brandon Massey – 1st edition

  Contents

  March 24, 1994 7:08pm

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  Also by Brandon Massey

  About Brandon Massey

  March 24, 1994

  7:08pm

  Mallory would always remember the night of her mother’s murder.

  It happened on an otherwise ordinary weekday evening at their College Park apartment. Her mom, Debra, sat on the leather sofa in the living room, her brown foot propped on the chipped coffee table as she painted her toenails candy apple red. Dressed in jeans and a forest-green sweater, the sleeves rolled up to expose her slender arms, she was a pretty woman with sad eyes the color of faded pennies. She paid no attention to the evening news on television, where President Bill Clinton talked about his administration’s proposal for universal healthcare.

  Mallory and her big sister, Liz, were doing homework at the glass-topped kitchen table, in a space recently cleared of dinner dishes. The girls were close in age, ten and twelve. They huddled over their work, knobby elbows touching, eyes tight with concentration. Airplanes rumbled back and forth in the twilight sky above their apartment complex, jumbo jets taking off and landing at Atlanta’s nearby Hartsfield Airport, but the girls were so accustomed to the sounds the rumblings were as insignificant as white noise.

  “Dang, that’s good, Liz,” Mallory said, setting down her pencil. She peered at Liz’s work-in-progress: a startling sketch of a monarch butterfly soaring above a grassy meadow, its wings spread to catch the sunrays. A frown creased her face. “But my teacher’s gonna know you drew it for me.”

  “She won’t know unless you tell her.” Liz shrugged. “So, don’t tell her.”

  “That’s called lying, girls,” Mom said from the living room. “Deception by omission.”

  Liz rolled her brown eyes, and Mallory grinned. Her big sister didn’t perform nearly as well in school as she did—Mom said Liz always had her head in the clouds and she was more interested in art than any other classes—but Liz seemed to have so much more fun just being herself and doing the stuff she cared about. Mallory envied her sister sometimes, but she could never act like Liz, even though she had tried. She cared too much about getting good grades and making her mother smile. Her mom didn’t smile often and whenever she did, it was a special treat.

  “Lemme read what you wrote so far, Princess Butterfly.” Liz pulled Mallory’s notebook in front of her. She winked. “It better be good enough to deserve this masterpiece I’m making for it.”

  Mallory sucked in her bottom lip as Liz read the booklet Mallory had been writing, an informative piece about the life cycle of a butterfly. She loved writing—it came as naturally as breathing to her—but letting anyone read her work, especially her big sister, made her stomach knot up like a pretzel.

  Mallory reminded herself that she had done thorough research; a stack of books beside her that she’d checked out from the school library attested to the depth of her study. She hadn’t merely copied what she had written and reworded it into her own paper, either. That would have been cheating and you got bad grades for cheating—it had happened to Liz, more than once.

  “Well, now,” Liz said after she had read for about a minute. She spoke in the tone of a haughty British professor. For years, Liz had slipped into different characters as easily as someone slipped on a pair of socks. “Well, now, student, I have critiqued this paper of yours and in my esteemed opinion, it is simply splendid!”

  “Thank you.” Smiling, Mallory exhaled.

  “Seriously, you’re a way better writer than I’ll ever be, sis.” Liz slid Mallory’s notebook back to her. “You’re gonna write a bunch of books and get rich.”

  “I guess so,” Mallory said. “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna be a famous artist.” Liz doodled in the air with her pencil. “But I’m gonna have a big family too, and live in a mansion, and I’m gonna make my servants do all the work.”

  Liz wanted everything they didn’t have, Mallory realized. Their family was a tight circle comprised of only the three of them and had been for as long as Mallory could remember; never married, Mom had broken up with their father soon after Mallory’s birth, and to hear Mom tell it, the guy was either dead or in prison. Both of Mom’s parents had passed away, she didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and they didn’t have any aunts, uncles, or cousins. If any distant relatives existed, they probably were somewhere in Mississippi, where Mom had grown up and graduated high school before she moved to Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, to find a better life.

  A “better life” had turned out to be a cramped apartment minutes away from an international airport that never stopped buzzing with traffic, a stressful job as a call center rep at an insurance company downtown, and two young girls that Mom raised on her own.

  Mom wandered into the kitchen, wearing flip flops to let her freshly painted toes breathe. She rested her hands on the back of a kitchen chair and studied her daughter’s faces.

  “Homework check,” Mom said. “Mallory?”

  “Almost done,” Mallory said.

  Mom nodded as if this was what she expected to hear and shifted her attention to Liz.

  “I don’t have any homework,” Liz said. “I’m helping Mal with her paper.”

  “You don’t have any homework?” Mom’s eyebrows arched in a skeptical scowl.

  “No, ma’am,” Liz said.

  Mallory braced herself to s
ee her mother give Liz the third degree, but Mom only shrugged, as if she were too weary to continue the inquisition.

  “I’ll take you at your word,” Mom said. “It’s your future on the line. You’re old enough to know better.”

  “I really don’t have any homework,” Liz said. “Honest. I’m helping Mal.”

  “All right, sweetheart, I believe you. It’s good that you two stick together and help each other.” Smiling a little, Mom touched Liz’s hair; with her other hand she patted Mallory’s shoulder. “No matter what, you girls always stay close, you hear?”

  Mallory was about to say, yes, Mom, we will—when someone banged on the door, five hard raps of a heavy fist against wood. Mom’s smile slipped away.

  “Is that the police?” Mallory asked. Just last week, she had heard the police break down the door at a neighbor’s apartment, a sound so loud it ejected Mallory from a blissful sleep.

  “Debbie!” A man shouted from the doorway. “Open up, baby girl. We gotta talk!”

  “That’s not the police,” Liz said. “It’s Boyfriend Bruce.”

  A sour taste filled Mallory’s mouth. Her mother entertained an endless parade of boyfriends, none of whom stuck around for longer than a few months, the men moving in and out of their lives as though passing along on a factory conveyer belt, and though some of them were tolerable, the guy Liz called Boyfriend Bruce troubled Mallory. He had a nasty temper and yelled a lot.

  “I told him it was over.” Mom rolled down her sweater sleeves. With an impatient flick of her wrist, she batted a strand of dark hair away from her shadowed eyes. “I’m gonna have to get a damn restraining order.”

  “Are you going to let him in?” Liz asked.

  “You girls should go to your room.” Mom squared her shoulders and lifted her chin as if steeling herself for battle. She marched outside the kitchen, went down the hall and out of sight.

  Mallory looked at her sister. Mom had told them to go to their room, but Liz hadn’t budged from her chair. Liz watched the hallway with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

  “We should go,” Mallory said.

  “Not yet,” Liz whispered.

  Mallory heard Bruce enter before she saw him: he had heavy, shuffling footsteps, as if iron weights were attached to his ankles. She could have differentiated her mother’s various boyfriends over the years solely by the sounds of their footsteps: one man walked with quick, light steps that matched his impatient behavior; another guy, with robotic, methodical footfalls, had been a control freak who wanted everything picture perfect whenever he visited.

  But Bruce usually shuffled, slowly, because usually, he had been drinking.

  His baritone voice rebounded down the short hallway, slurred at the edges.

  “I been callin’ you, baby,” he said. “Why you wanna treat me so bad, girl? You know I love me some Debbie.”

  Anxiety corkscrewed through Mallory’s chest. She looked to Liz. Her sister gnawed like a squirrel on her pencil eraser.

  Bruce shambled into the kitchen, Mom at his side. His presence filled the room as surely as if a grizzly bear had lumbered inside from the forest: he was an enormous man, tall and thick, a former college football player from what Mallory had overheard. He wore a uniform for the auto repair shop where he worked, and a Dallas Cowboys cap twisted at a careless angle. Redness tinged his eyes, and Mallory caught a bracing whiff of liquor, the smell swirling around him like a cloud.

  In one burly paw of a hand, Bruce clutched a glass vase bristling with a dozen red roses. The flowers sagged listlessly. In his other hand, he carried a cellophane-wrapped box of assorted chocolates with a red “Price Cut” sticker on the side.

  “Done got you these roses and chocolate and shit so you know I’m for real.” Bruce tossed the box of candy onto the table, and it wasn’t until then that he noticed Mallory and Liz were present. His lips parted in a smile, highlighting a shiny gold tooth. “Hey girls. Daddy’s home.”

  It was a greeting to them both, but Bruce’s wet gaze lingered on Liz. Mallory had noticed more and more men looking at Liz like that whenever they went anywhere, and when she asked Liz about it, Liz said, It’s ‘cause I’m getting a body like a woman, Mal. I got boobies and a booty, and these guys wanna taste of me, they don’t care how old I am.

  It grossed out Mallory, but Liz relished the attention, and Mallory wondered if that was why Liz wanted to hang around to see Bruce.

  “Goddamn, I’m hungry as hell.” Bruce thrust the flower vase into Mom’s hands and looked toward the stove. “What you cook for dinner?”

  “We had spaghetti,” Liz said, cutting off Mom’s response.

  “All right, I want me a plate of that.” Bruce winked at Liz. “Fix Daddy a plate, brown sugar.”

  Liz started to rise from her chair, but hesitated, her gaze shifting from Bruce, to her mother.

  “Bruce,” Mom stammered. Stress lines fractured her face. “We need to talk, in private.”

  “Yeah.” Bruce grunted. “Goddamn right we need to talk. We need to talk about why you been playin’ me after all the money I done gave you. We need to talk about what you owe me, baby.”

  “Girls,” Mom said, in a tone that shut down any possibility of further disobedience. “Go to your room. Now.”

  The bedroom Mallory and Liz shared was just off the hallway. Twin beds lay on either side; Liz’s was on the right, Mallory’s on the left, the threadbare rug in the center serving as the divider. Mallory had a bookcase in her area, the shelves teeming with books on a variety of topics. Liz’s artwork dominated the wall on her side, wildly imaginative drawings of fantastic creatures, mysterious people, and surreal landscapes.

  Mallory sat on her neatly made bed and crossed her legs, fingers interlaced in her lap. Liz paced the rug between them, hands on her hips. They had shut the door, but the apartment walls seemed paper thin, and did little to muffle the sounds outside the bedroom. Mom and Bruce were arguing in earnest.

  “I didn’t know he was giving her money,” Mallory said. “I guess that’s why he’s so mad.”

  “He knew the game,” Liz said. She had a way of talking about the world that mystified Mallory, but Liz moved in different social circles, with her older middle school friends. Still in elementary school, Mallory and her friends chattered about dolls and cartoons and who was friends with who, and they played on monkey bars at recess. “Mom’s looking for a better deal now, okay? I don’t blame her, but she’s gonna mess up my thing.”

  “Huh?” Mallory asked. “What thing?”

  “You’ve seen how Boyfriend Bruce looks at me.” Liz winked and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Tell you a secret: I let him touch me once. Well, more than once.”

  “Why?” Mallory asked, still not understanding what Liz meant.

  “He gave me ten dollars for sitting on his lap and letting him touch my boobies.” Liz thrust out her narrow chest; a silver swan pendant, a birthday gift to Liz from their mother, hung on a necklace between Liz’s budding cleavage. “He got so excited. It was easy money.”

  “That’s gross!” Mallory said.

  “It’s what guys like.” Liz shrugged. “Mom does it, too, with her boyfriends. They all give her money, or she won’t go out with them.”

  “Really?” Mallory asked.

  “I think she found a new rich guy, that’s why she doesn’t want Bruce anymore.” Liz glanced at the door. “Plus, he acts pretty crazy sometimes, like now.”

  They heard something shatter outside the room. Mallory’s heart lurched into her throat. In all of Mom’s fights with men, Mallory had never heard things breaking.

  The shatter was followed by a slam of something heavy hitting the floor. The booming noise made the walls rattle and shook Mallory’s bed.

  Liz had stopped pacing. She had moved to the doorway, hand dancing on the knob.

  “Liz?” Mallory asked. “What do you think we should do?”

  Before Liz could answer, Mallory heard another sound that
gave her a chill so deep it was as though she were standing outside in an ice storm: a strangled scream, like someone trying to shriek but they were unable to get the words out because they had a gag in their mouth.

  Gir . . . gir . . . gir . . . gir . . .

  “Wait here, Mal.” Liz twisted the doorknob and opened the door. She darted outside the bedroom.

  Mallory waited, nibbling on her bottom lip, her hands slick with cold sweat.

  That choked gibberish continued.

  Gir . . . gir . . . gir . . .

  Mallory didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know who was making the noises, but knew in her bones that it was proof something terrible was happening, and she couldn’t wait any longer. Trembling, she jumped off the bed. She ran out of the room on legs that felt as limp as wet noodles.

  Ahead, on the edge of the kitchen, Mallory saw Liz staring at whatever was going on inside, her feet glued in place.

  Feeling as if she were moving underwater, Mallory skirted around her sister.

  She saw the tableau that would be seared into her nightmares for the rest of her life: red roses scattered across the beige tile in a mess of shattered glass; Bruce on the floor in the midst of the glass shards and rose petals, hunched over her mother, his massive hands closed around her slender neck; her mother’s beautiful face, lips parted in a breathless cry and her sad eyes gazing blindly at the ceiling.

  Mallory screamed.

  1

  Twenty-five years later . . .

  Mallory disliked visiting prisons, but sometimes, it was a necessary part of the job.

  At half-past eight o’clock in the morning on a sweltering Tuesday in August, Mallory spun her metallic silver Mazda CX-5 into the visitor’s parking lot at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. The temperature was already in the mid-eighties and forecast to hit a high of ninety-six. Since she was going to be there for a good portion of the day, she hunted for parking in the shade, and scored a spot underneath a crepe myrtle in full bloom.

  Visiting hours at the penitentiary didn’t start until ten—hence, the nearly empty lot—but she wasn’t there in the capacity of a typical visitor.

  She switched off the car, muting Joe Madison from the “Urban View” satellite radio show in mid-sentence. She leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes. A sigh from deep in her chest slid past her lips.