False Memory

“Me and Fig—” A quick, guilty glance at his mother. “Fig and I figured we might as well make ourselves useful, so we decided to tail Dr. Ahriman.”
    “You what?”
    “We followed him in Fig’s truck—”
    “Which I made them park in the garage,” said Claudette. “I do not wish that vehicle to be seen in my driveway.”
    “It’s a cool truck,” Skeet said. “Anyway, we put on vests just to be safe, and we followed him, and somehow he turned the tables on us. We thought we lost him, and we were out on the beach, trying to make contact with one of the mother ships, and he just walked up and shot us both four times.”
    “Good God,” Martie said.
    Dusty was trembling, overcome by more emotions then he could name or sort out. Nevertheless, he noticed that Skeet’s eyes were brighter and clearer than they had been since that celebratory day, over fifteen years ago, when the two of them had packaged a box of dog droppings and mailed it off to Holden Caulfield, the elder, after Claudette had thrown him out in favor of Derek.
    “He was wearing a ski mask, so we couldn’t positively identify him to the police. We didn’t even go to the police. Didn’t seem like we’d get anywhere with them. But we knew it was him, all right. He didn’t fool us.” Skeet was beaming, as if they had pulled one over on the psychiatrist. “He shoots Fig twice, then me four times, and it’s like being slammed in the gut with a hammer, knocks all the breath out of me, and I’m almost unconscious, too, and I want to suck air, but I don’t because even with the wind howling, he might hear me and know I’m not really dead. Fig’s playing dead, too. So then before he turns back to Fig and shoots him two more times, the guy says to me, ‘Your mother’s a whore, and your father’s a fraud, and your stepfather—he’s got shit for brains.’”
    Icily, Claudette said, “I’ve never even met this purveyor of pop-psych drivel.”
    “Then both me and Fig, Fig and I, we knew Ahriman went away in a hurry, but we laid there, ‘cause we were scared. And for a while we couldn’t move. Like we were stunned. You know? And then when we could move, we came here to find out why he thinks Mother’s a whore.”
    “Have you been to a hospital?” Martie worried.
    “Nah, I’m fine,” Skeet said, finally lowering his sweater.
    “You could have a cracked rib, internal injuries.”
    “I’ve made the same argument,” Claudette said, “to no avail. You know what Holden’s like, Sherwood. He’s always had more enthusiasm than common sense.”
    “It’s still a good idea to go to a hospital, be examined while the injuries are visible,” Dusty advised Skeet. “That’s admissible evidence if we’re ever able to get this shithead into court.”
    “Bastard,” Claudette admonished, “or sonofabitch. Either is adequate, Sherwood. Pointless vulgarities don’t impress me. If you think shithead will shock me, better think again. But in this house we’ve never thought William Burroughs is literature, and we’re not going to start thinking so now.”
    “I love your mother,” Martie told Dusty.
    Claudette’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
    “How was New Mexico?” Skeet asked.
    “A land of enchantment,” Dusty said.
    At the end of the hall, the swinging door to the kitchen swung, and through it came Derek Lampton. He approached with his shoulders back, spine ramrod-straight, chest out, and although his bearing was military, he nevertheless seemed to slink toward them.
    Skeet and Dusty had secretly called him Lizard virtually from the day he arrived, but Lampton was more accurately a mink of a man, compact and sleek and sinuous, hair as thick and shiny as fur, with the quick, black, watchful eyes of something that would raid a chicken coop the moment the farmer’s back was turned. His hands, neither of which he offered to Dusty or Martie, featured slender fingers with wider than normal webbing and with slightly pointy nails, like clever paws. The mink is a member of the weasel family.
    “Has someone died and are we having a reading of the will?” Lampton asked, which was his idea of humor and the closest thing to a greeting he would ever offer.
    He looked Martie up and down, his attention lingering on the swell of her breasts against her sweater, as he always forthrightly examined attractive women. When at last he met her eyes, he bared his small, sharp, white-white teeth. This passed for his smile—and perhaps even for what he believed to be a seductive smile.
    “Sherwood and Martine actually were