The inbetween, p.1
The InBetween, page 1
part #1 of Painter Mann Series
The InBetween
by Dick Wybrow
PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS NOVELS
by DICK WYBROW
Hell inc.
One of the best comedic adventure stories I've ever read! Hilarious with a great deal of heart!
-- James Jones
Wow! What a book! I laughed constantly. On top of it being funny it's well written to boot.
-- Scott Luttrell
My husband has yelled at me several times for laughing out loud and waking him up.
-- Kope
Not since reading Hitchhiker's Guide have I so laughed out loud. This is can't-put-down good.
-- Bobbi Shockley
The Mentor
“This truly is a masterpiece.” -- Corey Foley"
No question, The Mentor is a powerful thriller -- but it's also funny.”
-- Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author
The Swordsmen (Fifty Shades of Gray Matter)
“Loved this book... Fabulous!” -- Natasha Schmidt
“
Too funny. Laughing just thinking about it!” -- LadyP
“Brilliant
.” -- Jack White
Get a “bite” of The Swordsmen FREE …
If you’d like a free copy of Book One of Dick Wybrow’s humorous semi-apocalypse story The Swordsmen (Fifty Shades of Gray Matter) and get the latest updates from the author, click here.
Sequel for The InBetween is available January 2020!
THE NIGHT VANISHING
See the first few chapters, free at the end of this book!
Copyright © Dick Wybrow 2019
www.dickwybrow.com
Edited by Red Adept
Cover by Warren Design
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemble to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
To my mother...
who taught me that life is wonderful, but it’s also fleeting.
Especially, when I put my feet on the coffee table.
Prologue
She wished she could dream, but the dead never sleep. Then she remembered—dreams could be deadly.
The Butterfly reached out to brush the hair from his eyes then stopped, not wanting to wake him. But no touch from her would ever again stir him. She remembered how a soft caress of her fingertips could make him quiver.
But like small, dry berries in a deep basket, her memories—little bits at a time—were slipping out through the cracks.
How long had she been here? Back in this room. Their home. What used to be their home. It was only his now.
At first, when she lost the light, she wandered. That tiny room with the strange bed. The scratchy gray blanket with the hole that would always snag one of her toes. The pillow filled with sand.
Then after that, the city and its pulsing sky, so much different than she remembered. Every step felt like walking at the top of a high rise, her toes and heels shrinking back from the ledge. Every step threatened to take her off the side, to forever fall.
She was the Butterfly. Weak and vulnerable. Delicate. Prey.
In the city, the Butterfly had spent days hiding in the Dumpster of an abandoned restaurant. The lock had rusted shut, so no one could get in. Of course, the living were no longer a threat to her.
The dead? They were another story.
She’d seen others like her but shunned them. Given them wide berths, eyes cast down. This skill, if it was a skill, was something she had learned in the handful of months before losing the light.
The Dumpster had come after she’d been pursued. However, a frail Butterfly is a tiny snack, and she’d quickly been forgotten. But they were out there, the hunters.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Her flirtations with religion, albeit never fully embraced, had promised a plan, even for her, after the light was taken away. Movies and books gave some version of the good take the stairway to heaven; for the bad there’s a subway to hell.
But this was neither of those things; this was someplace between them.
Finally, she found somewhere safe. That is, found it again and rediscovered something she’d forgotten ever existed in the world: warmth. At least the hint of it. A flickering glass bulb in a long-forgotten closet. She could almost feel something.
As she crossed the threshold of their home again, a breath caught in her throat at the sight of him.
Her Stephen.
Her husband.
No, wait.
Not husband. That hasn’t happened yet. Not yet. And, well, not ever now.
It didn’t matter. She’d found him again. This was where she belonged, even if he could no longer see her. Hear her. Feel her.
She watched the young man as he ate, when he slept, as he worked late into the night, always on the phone.
She watched when he showered. That was a bit tortuous. Her hand would pass straight through his body. Who knew you could feel sexual frustration after you died? She didn’t remember Dante ever passing that one along.
On the table near his computer desk was the digital picture frame. She remembered buying it for him one Christmas. Or birthday. Or did he buy it for her?
When she’d first seen the screen, it was the two of them, a selfie they’d taken during a stolen moment in DC. So much promise back then. The look in both their eyes reflected the fire, the thrill of youth! Unaware of the challenges on their road ahead but ready for the adventure of a life full of love and success and joy.
Her fire was out. But she wasn’t gone. Not gone yet.
Ten seconds later, the next picture. Outside a surf shop in Daytona Beach. She was laughing. Huge smile, teeth parted. He could do that to her like no one else could.
When the next came up, it was the video they’d taken on a chartered fishing boat off San Onofre. SoCal! She’d been reeling in something big, pulling the line hard. A look of determination on her face mixed with that moment before a fit of laughter. She watched as the camera rhythmically jerked. He’d been cheering her on—Go! Go! Go!—something the speaker-less frame showed only in pantomime.
Stephen had set the frame’s hashtag to her name so that pictures of her in his photo library would display. She knew he missed her as she missed him.
That brief warm flicker turned to fear. How long would she be allowed to stay with him? Would she slowly fade or flick off like a bad circuit? Gone. Off.
If only she could let him know she was right here! Sitting next to him as he ate. Stroking his hair as he worked the phone. Grinding against him as he stroked himself.
A live boy and a dead girl. The ultimate star-crossed lovers!
That same expression had been how her mother had described herself and the Butterfly’s dad. But if there had been a good memory of her father, she couldn’t recall it. And not merely because, in this place, her memory frayed at its edges like a flag snapping in the breeze at the beach, the saltwater and wind stripping away the threads.
In those early years, people would say how the Butterfly was just like her dad, but they didn’t know him. No one did until the end. Then everyone knew.
But she wasn’t like him. She was smart and determined and could even be ruthless. But it only made her successful at whatever she did. When she competed, she always won. Nearly every time.
He had been violent and crazy and dangerous and deadly.
As a child, she had been a weak little Butterfly, and her mother had saved her. Hidden her from her father.
But there had been one last encounter. An impossible visit when his voice was dry as autumn leaves.
Stephen’s laugh broke her spell. He’d answered his phone, but she hadn’t noticed.
Always working. He’ll be governor one day!
This tone was… different though. He was smiling. But that one, that had been her smile. The one for her. Who was he talking to? She tried to listen to his words, but that sound in her brain, that awful fucking crackle and hum!
Why was her father’s voice in her head? Wasn’t it enough he’d blackened her life? Surely she’d earned freedom from him now, in this place!
She shook herself violently—Get out!—and when she stopped, her eyes drifted toward the picture frame again. Stephen and her at a Cubs game. They both had on tiny plastic baseball hats that had once been filled with ice cream.
Another picture. They’d gone skiing. She’d forgotten that one!
The crunching racket in her mind grew softer.
The next picture, a café. She’s mugging at the camera for Stephen.
Another: trying on a big, floppy hat in a small store in a small town during a road trip.
Each picture, every tiny serving of happiness, pushed her father’s voice further and further from her mind.
Then the digital device played the first few frames of a video clip, dark and grainy.
Behind her, Stephen laughed again. She became annoyed. Still on the phone. Who was he talking to? Why was he smiling like that?
Her eyes fell back to the frame, and as she watched, she drew closer to it, pulling away from Stephen and pressing her nose right up against t
What is this?
The aspect was high, from a corner in a parking lot. The pool of streetlight and a handful of cars parked neatly. Except one.
The car looked familiar. It was—
The clip stopped, and then she was frozen in time at a hotel pool, outside and in a bathing suit she’d always hated.
Then another picture and another. How many did he have on the computer linked to the frame? Another, then another, but the smiles now felt less real. As her head began to spin, the crackle returned, growing louder again.
Picture, picture, another fucking picture!
She put a fist to the side of her head, trying to push the ache away, stop the noise. Seconds ticked by like hours, and the agony, the crackle, was being driven into her skull like some cruel, hateful symphony.
When she opened her eyes, a video clip was playing, but not the right one!
There she was, back on the boat off the San Onofre coast, the camera moving and shaking but further through the clip now. She was pulling the fish onto the deck. Puny thing. An embarrassed laugh.
More pictures, more pictures, more pictures, more pictures.
Nothing she could do but wait, and her teeth hurt even though she didn’t have teeth anymore. But her teeth, her jaw—
There!
The dark clip was back. She blinked to get a good focus on the frame.
It was CCTV footage. She knew this clip! It was…
Dammit, why can’t I remember?
Looking closer at the car, she saw that it was a late-model Audi.
Oh no.
Not just any late-model Audi. She knew this car.
No, no! I don’t want to see this.
But she couldn’t turn away.
She squinted to see. Yes, the front end was crunched inward, jagged, about the size of a little boy. Could she see a stain, or was she imagining that?
The frame would show just a few more seconds before it went back through the library once more. She didn’t think she could take that again.
Her eyes locked on the upper-left corner of the frame. She remembered now. Her breath felt trapped in her chest as she prayed for the clip to play just a few seconds longer. And right before it switched, she’d seen him.
Just a fraction of a second, but she’d seen him.
The Butterfly crumpled to the floor and let the chaos in her head wash over her. She didn’t need to see any more. She’d seen it at the first trial. Then, as she waited for the second, it would run on the news. The others in their jumpsuits would laugh and jeer and point fingers, ignoring her tearful requests that they turn the channel to anything, something else, any fucking thing! This only made them laugh harder.
She knew how it played out.
Even in just that half second, the tiny, black-and-white grainy image of Stephen looked almost heroic.
The rest of the clip played in her mind. Stephen running to the car. The time in the upper corner said sometime after midnight but not yet dawn. His arms pumping against his sides, coming to her.
But by that time, there was nothing he could do.
Later, her Audi would be towed to a police impound yard. She never saw the car again. It probably got crushed. Turned into bottle caps or cheap pliers that get forgotten in kitchen drawers or maybe cock rings.
Who knows? Who cares?
The last few moments of the clip would show Stephen gently pulling her from the car. A rag doll, she’d refused to awaken. He held her, his shoulders bobbing in huge, heaving sobs as she slept. As she dreamed her deadly dream.
Stephen had wanted to be her hero.
But she could not be saved.
And now there was nothing left to save.
Chapter One
“You get all his dough?” said a large, hairy man with a nose busted more times than the tenth commandment.
“Sure, Hamish, I got what he had under the bed and in his sock, but—”
“You check everywhere?” The man grunted as he folded the dead accountant in half.
“Yeah, sure, I checked everywhere.” The big man’s partner was a young, scrawny kid with cold sores that had festered to such a degree that they no longer required the attention of a medical professional but rather a member of the clergy. “You worried we killed him, and he had the cash? He was screaming bloody murder, so he woulda told us if he had someth—”
“No, no,” Hamish said through clenched teeth. “But this is a Collect & Close, you idjit. On C&Cs, we get fifteen percent of whatever we recover following the close of the postantecedent dead guy’s account.”
The kid chewed his lip and instantly regretted it, as he’d bitten into a blister. It hurt like hell, and his eyes watered, but he knew not to say anything about it. Hamish had long lectured about the young man’s generation being “pussified.” There was no need to give the big bastard any more ammunition during those long drives like the body dump ahead.
“See, I don’t know that legal stuff like you do, Ham.”
“I coulda sit the bar.”
“I know it.”
“I chose not to. Lawyers are scum,” said the organized-crime heavy and freelance hit man.
“You got principles. I hear ya.”
“And I got fifteen percent insteada the usual ten. On account of this was the closure of this knucklehead’s account.”
“Right.”
“So while I grab a smoke, check his shorts and do a thorough cavity search to be sure he ain’t hidden away a roll of quarters or something.”
The skinny kid looked down at the man stuffed awkwardly into a suitcase, gingerly moistened two fingers with his blistered mouth, and, not for the first time on the job, wished he’d paid more attention in math class.
I watched as the man hovering over the methhead screamed yet again as the kid jammed two fingers up his dead body’s ass.
“Stop it, stop it!” the ghost shouted and had been shouting for the last ten minutes. Me, I waited. Before I said anything to a potential new client, it was best to sit tight until they were adequately distraught yet not full-on furious.
Bad things can happen when somebody’s out of control, even here in the InBetween.
The man, who I later learned was named Allister Hale, once again swung his ghostly fists at the skinny kid, crying tears that would never fall.
“Leave me alone, leave me,” he screamed, “alone!”
He then attempted to kick the head of the kid, who was now two knuckles deep in the dead man’s rectum. However, without a solid form—i.e., body—at his command, Allister swooshed right through and dropped flat on his back.
For a few seconds, the kid stopped twiddling his fingers, and his eyes cut left and right. A fleeting moment later, he was back at it, fingers now searching in the dead guy’s mouth.
Same fingers, by the way.
Not that it should matter, but respect for the dead and all, right?
Blechy.
Here lay Allister, now finally under the numbing spell of that familiar concoction of remorse, defeatism, and sadness. His ghostly image warbled with small, breathy sobs as he lay next to his own body, which had been busted up, cut up, smashed, and twisted to fit into a large rollaway suitcase.
This was my window of opportunity: right after the righteous indignation and self-pity screamfest but before the seething, angry plotting for revenge (which, you’re dead, total waste of time, in my humble opinion).
“My name is Painter Mann,” I said as I had many, many times before. “And I’m here to help you.”
Allister the ghost looked toward me then back at the skinny kid, who, somewhat over-eager I would say, was back in the dead guy’s colon. The spook simply waited, staring at me for a moment, then back to the junior crook.
“I’m not talking to him,” I said. “I’m talking to you.”
Allister stared at me like someone who’d just heard the punch line of a joke but somehow missed the setup.
I’m a kind person, but I suppose I was hurrying the guy along a bit, looking for an easy win after a recent case that hadn’t worked out. Not because I hadn’t done everything right to clear that woman. I had. But something went wrong. All the work for nothing. She was stuck in the InBetween despite my efforts.
