Mystery Tales: Short Stories

By Rex Bestle

Rex was born on February 4, 1955 in Clearwater, Florida. He moved with his family to Burbank, California in 1962, where he grew up attending schools in Burbank and graduated from Burrouhs High School, class of 1973. He later worked for the Ralph M. Parsons Corp. in Pasadena, CA as a mechanical draftsman and worked on such projects as the Alaskan Pipe Line and the Honolulu International Airport. Rex enjoyed many hobbies, including hiking, fishing, rock collecting and snow skiing. He had taken creative writing classes in high school, which led to his love of writing short stories. Rex was tragically killed in a snow skiing accident on February 16, 1979. His writings were found after his death, just 2 weeks after what would have been his 24th birthday. This book is dedicated in his memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465389138

Rex Bestle

Rex was born on February 4, 1955 in Clearwater, Florida. He moved with his family to Burbank, California in 1962, where he grew up attending schools in Burbank and graduated from John Burroughs High School, class of 1973. He later worked for the Ralph M. Parsons Corp. in Pasadena, CA as a mechanical draftsman and worked on such projects as the Alaskan Pipe Line and the Honolulu International Airport. Rex enjoyed many hobbies, including hiking, fishing, rock collecting and snow skiing. He had taken creative writing classes in high school, which led to his love of writing short stories. Rex was tragically killed in a snow skiing accident on February 16, 1979. His writings were found after his death, just 2 weeks after what would have been his 24th birthday. This book is dedicated in his memory.

Book preview

Girl in The Attic

You said you want to know everything, from the beginning. I will try to record here, for all of you—all that I can remember. Some details are boggy to me at this time… if I can overcome what I’m sure must be a mental block of some kind. I will include whatever comes to mind.

I loved her. All I really wanted to do was protect her to save her from… I’m not even sure what it was anymore. God, if only I could have seen what was happening… what I was doing to both of us. It seemed so right at first. Let me go back to her mother.

I had returned to Brooklyn in August of ’63, after four years in Vietnam. I had joined the Army at the end of the summer of my graduation from high school. They immediately shipped me to Nam. I didn’t even know we were over there… I guess not very many people did. Anyway, my stay in Asia did nothing to alleviate the depression that had closed in on me during my last year of high school. Exactly what had started it I don’t remember, but once it started, everything seemed to compound it. As I said, I returned to my home in Brooklyn, or at least to an apartment near the waterfront. The rest of my family, my mother and younger brother, had moved to Miami while I was in the service. My father, a truck driver, had been killed in an accident in Cincinnati when I was fifteen. I still considered Brooklyn to be my home, so I stayed where I could afford rent and still be in my town.

I worked at various jobs throughout the winter of ’64—mostly delivering coal. Once in February, I think it was around the twentieth, I had delivered coal to a small advertising company in Manhattan. I was unloading to the basement shoot when someone called from a window above me. I looked up to see a pudgy looking man about forty-five whom, despite the cold weather, was wiping sweat from his forehead.

Hey you! he shouted, What’s your name?

Mark. I called back as I continued unloading.

I can use you. Ever modeled before?

I shook my head, laughed and continued to unload. I should have known the guy was nuts to be leaning out of an office window in February with short sleeves.

Hey, I’m serious, the man continued, Take a shower and get up here as soon as possible. Ask for Mr. Lockford.

I stood there for a few minutes contemplating the man’s integrity. Are you serious? I asked at last. Yes. He yelled down. Remember, I’m Mr. Lockford. Be here before four-thirty, he said as he slammed the window.

I did go back at four-thirty and the guy was serious. It seemed that by chance he had looked out his window and saw me, after rejecting some hundred or more male photos for a cigarette ad they were laying out. Apparently they were attempting to change the image of smoking from being fun, to being macho. I suppose I was fairly good looking. The last twelve years had taken a tremendous toll on me, both physically and mentally. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to drift off like that, and it’s just a hard thing to forget. God help me, I wish I could.

I never got along well with members of the opposite sex, except, of course, my mother. It was a few months after my ad had been running, when the client decided to use me in a television commercial. It was then that I first met Clair. She had been chosen to play my girlfriend in the commercial. She struck me as being seductive yet innocent at the same time. We worked together about a week on three commercials. After this, we continued to see each other on a regular basis. I had fallen in love with her almost immediately, though it was sometime before she felt the same about me. She was very talented, and our commercials had brought a deluge of offers for television and movies. I was getting small parts occasionally in television, while Clair was beginning to get parts in movies. It was in the middle of all this confusion and sudden popularity that the two of us were married. I don’t remember whose idea it was, it seemed as though we both decided on it at the same time.

Our marriage was shady from the beginning. This was due mainly by the fact that Clair’s parts were increasingly longer and more important. Mine were, well, bombing. The reviews on the show I was in continued getting worse. In all honesty, despite my looks I was a lousy actor. In any event, this was how it came about that Clair was supporting me financially. The depression that I felt because I was not the breadwinner in our home began to drag me down. The harder I tried to get a job, the worse things would end up.

I don’t know why I never turned to drinking… or drugs, but I didn’t. On the contrary, it was Clair who did. In the middle of October 1965, one year after we were married, I had just come home from one of the few meager acting jobs I had found in the last three months or so. I walked in the house and found her sunken into an overstuffed chair, as though she was imbedded there permanently. I fell onto a couch across from her; it was then that I noticed she was clutching, with both hands, a large glass.

I don’t suppose that’s orange juice? I asked, not really expecting an answer.

Her lips parted nervously as she continued to stare out the window, but no words came to her.

How did it go today, did you see Dr. Bryant?

I’m pregnant. She said, not taking her eyes from the window.

At first I was shocked, we had been very careful. But then the idea of having my own son or daughter began to infect me with joy I had never known before. For several minutes nothing was said. After that I can only remember yelling and screaming. I was engulfed in the fantasy that we both wanted the baby more than anything. Nothing else really mattered. The reality was Clair, the model, was a rising young actress. She was so certain the pregnancy would mean the end of her career. I don’t know how I possibly accomplished what I did. Somehow I talked her into having the baby.

Marie was born in July of 1966. I realize you asked me that question already, but I don’t remember if I answered. Time… time seemed to pass so swiftly. Yet I feel as though I possessed Marie all my life. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt two distinctly opposite feelings about a place or a person at the same time?

I’m sorry, you wanted me to go on, I will. I believe I was at Marie’s birth. Clair fell apart. I don’t know what was wrong. She was in fine shape only a month after having the baby, but she was far too self-conscious. She cried every night. She worried constantly that she would never act again. She cried every morning. She drank heavily; even when things were going right… She died.

Marie was not even a year old that night, Clair drove her car off a dock below Manhattan. They told me she had a dangerously high level of alcohol as well as barbiturates.

Barbiturates…

Damn! I didn’t even know she had been taking them. All of this took place after a party she had gone to. She had left in a hurry that evening with some excuse or another, and I was left holding Marie. Whether or not she was considering suicide when she left, I don’t know, and never will. But her death gave way to the plan. I am afraid I cannot fill you in as to how I first got the idea. I was still in shock over Clair’s death several weeks later, when I realized the pieces of the plan were actually beginning to form. Selling the house and paying off all the bills was the first step. Next, I bought a house here, in Chester. I had to get Marie out of the city, you understand, don’t you?

I know, I know. Talk into the microphone. You’ve been telling me that since you booked me.

We escaped, Marie and I, in August of 1967 to Chester, New York. It was… perfect. None of our old friends knew where I was. Only a few neighbors at our new house would drop by to see me now and then. They never came to see Marie though. To them I lived alone, a widower yes, but not a father. They wouldn’t see Marie… she didn’t live in their world.

She lived in the one I had made for her, a safe world, a quiet world, and an attic world. No one I had known would come to see her; they didn’t know where I lived. The government would never know for the reason that, with the help of a small sum of money, the records show she died with Clair in the accident.

It was… perfect.

We existed for years in this way. The money Clair and I had saved along with the few part time jobs I got around Chester would last us for years. I wouldn’t work full time; it wouldn’t have been fair to her. I was the only human being she ever saw.

I gave her speech; yes it’s true, it was very limited, it had to be. Surely you can see that. What would be the use of teaching her tree if she was never going to see one? I gave her food. I gave her clothes. They weren’t much, but I had never taught her to dress herself, so it didn’t matter. I did everything for her. I could not allow her to learn much; it would have led to other things. Things, which she would not realize, were dangerous until it was too late.

I gave her… her world—with no windows to the harsh cruelty of life all around the house, no door to the injustice of humanity.

I loved her.

It was… perfect.

I would unlock and enter the soundproof, padded, air-conditioned, heated, humidity controlled world that was Marie’s; devoid of a mirror or even the simplest of furniture. The only thing besides the walls was a toilet, sink, and her toys.

I spared nothing to keep her permanently severed from the earth, alone in her distant magical castle tower.

She was fifteen.

Fifteen years in her own segregated world where only her daddy was allowed to enter, a man who had few words to say, none of which she understood. That made our love special. It was a primitive, prehistoric love without all the commercialism that seems needed by anyone else today to show his or her love.

She was fifteen on that hot summer evening. You told me it was last week, I know. But it seems so long ago, so, so long ago.

I was mowing the lawn. It had been far too hot that afternoon so I had decided to wait until evening. I took a break and came in to start my dinner. After checking on Marie I closed her door, walked back downstairs to the kitchen and turned on the stove.

The frying pan left from breakfast looked healthy enough for frying fish for dinner so I left it to heat. It was then that the doorbell rang. Glancing quickly at the open door leading to the attic I left it and went to the living room.

It was Clair.

If ever I had believed in reincarnation it was just then, as I stood with one hand on the door to steady myself against the nausea I felt swarming in my head. I had not noticed any woman for fourteen years, until now.

Are you alright? she asked. Her voice was Clair’s.

Yes… I think so. I said, moving my hand from the door to my head. I must have staggered for she reached out to steady me. Her touch was Clair’s.

I think you had better sit down. She said, helping me into a chair.

Thank you. I said stupidly as I fell heavily into a chair.

My name’s Paula. I just moved in across the street. You looked like you were working hard so I thought I would, well, I made you some lemonade. She said, offering the pitcher.

I nodded.

Here She went on as she poured one of two glasses she had brought, It’s fresh. I must have swallowed it in one gulp. Thank you. For a while