Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  “Funny thing about morgues,” Frank Libby said, “they tend to notice when body parts go missing. And, no, my badge doesn’t get me access to stray corpses.”

  “I can get one,” Brett said. “I’m going to need some help.”

  When he looked over at Eddie, his friend put his hands up and shook his head. “No way, man. No way. I know what you’re thinking and I’m not going to do it.”

  “I’m not squeamish,” Nicky said. “I can help.”

  Brett eyed her suspiciously.

  Officer Libby said, “I don’t know what you’re planning, but just tell me when and where.”

  “Nope,” Brett said. “No cops. This guy can smell a pig a mile away. I’ll need cash though. A couple hundred in twenties or smaller.”

  When Eric pulled out his wallet, Jessie started digging around in his own pockets. Jessie nudged Holdty and Fish to cough up what they had. Most of them pitched in until Brett declared that he had enough.

  “I’ll pick you up at Dottie’s tonight,” Brett said, pointing to Nicky.

  Nicky got out her notebook and wrote it down.

  “Good idea,” Frank Libby said. “Everyone write it down. Brett and Nicky are on finger duty. Lily, you’ll get the fish? Good. Get everything to Jessie tomorrow morning and he takes over.”

  They all agreed and broke into factions.

  Eric got behind the wheel of his uncle’s Gran Torino, waiting for the others to pile in before he started it up.

  Jessie got in back with his sister.

  “What about your friends? They need a ride?” Eric asked Jessie.

  “No. They stashed their bikes before. They’re going to ride those home.”

  “Drop me off at home?” Nicky asked. “I want to grab something to eat before work.”

  “Why don’t you come over?” Eric asked. “I’ll make something for all of us.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Nicky said.

  He turned onto the road that would take them to the bridge.

  In back, Lily sighed. “I hope I still have a job. I’ve been calling in sick so much, it will be a miracle if they don’t fire me.”

  “Same here,” Eric said.

  # # #

  Back at home, they did their best to fill up the house with noise. Lily turned on the TV in the living room, Jessie left his stereo playing upstairs, and they all sat in the kitchen and talked while Eric sliced vegetables. Nicky kept looking at her little notepad, reminding herself of the task she had to do later that evening.

  Eric understood. It was easy to want to forget all that. The urge was powerful to slip back into normal life, however dark and full of misery that life was.

  While the thought was fresh in his head, Eric pulled out his own notebook. The next task on his list wasn’t until the following day. In the morning, he was supposed to walk with Jessie down to the edge of the cemetery and then loop through the headstones to get a view of the transaction from the back. If possible, he wanted to see where the man came from. Logic said that there must be some kind of cave or trapdoor, hidden by the underbrush. On reruns of Hogan’s Heroes, the prisoners of war came up through a secret passage in a stump. Maybe the Trader had some system like that. Eric doubted it. If he saw the Trader come out at all, he suspected that the man would materialize from a shadow in the branches. The tree must be some kind of portal for him.

  Above that entry in his notebook, Eric added another item. “Go to Dottie’s at closing. Go with Nicky.”

  He put his notebook away again.

  “Where are we at with those sandwiches?” Lily asked. “I’m starving.”

  Nicky pushed back from the table. “I’ll help him. I’m better at making them anyway.”

  “Ha!” Eric said. They had come up with the sandwich together. Dottie had always made her Italian sandwiches with lettuce and mayo. Eating them turned into a disgusting mess, and the lettuce didn’t add anything except bulk. One day, leaning over the counter at Dottie’s, Eric had dictated exactly what he wanted on his sub. The key, in his opinion, was big chunks of cheddar and enough pickles to balance the flavor of the onions and olives. In the end, their new sandwich had been a huge success. Eventually, it became a staple on Dottie’s deli menu.

  “What’s up with your water?” Nicky asked.

  Eric glanced over his shoulder.

  Nicky was standing at the sink, raising and lowering the lever to try to wash her hands. Nothing was coming out of the faucet.

  “It worked a minute ago,” Eric said. The power was on. Since the house had its own well and pump, power meant that there should be water unless the…

  The answer came to him. “The filter. The new filter must have gotten gummed up. Jessie, you think you could go down and bypass the filter?”

  “Sure,” he said, pushing up out of this chair. He headed for the door to the back.

  Lily watched him go and leaned forward to make sure he was around the corner before she whispered.

  “You see that? He does things when you ask him to. If I had asked, he would have told me to fuck off and probably broken something.”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. He likes being treated like an adult, you know? He wants to be asked, not ordered.”

  “I’m supposed to ask him to clean up after himself? That should be common decency.”

  Lily started to say something else, but then leaned forward and stopped herself.

  Jessie came back to the doorway, gripping both sides of the frame.

  “Hey. You guys should come see this.”

  # # #

  Jessie led the way down the stairs. Behind him, Lily clicked on a flashlight that she had taken from the cradle in the mudroom. In the back, Nicky was holding a knife from the kitchen.

  Standing back from the new water filter, Jessie reached up, pointing.

  Eric stepped around him and blinked until he could see it clearly. The fittings that Jessie had fixed were still there, but just after them the pipes were covered in a tangle of tiny roots.

  “Something like that happened at our house once,” Nicky said. “The willow tree in the yard sent roots down into the sewer pipe and it make the tub back up whenever we took a shower.”

  “No,” Eric said. “We just put these pipes in.”

  “Give me that,” Lily said to Nicky. She took the knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Approaching carefully, like she was creeping up on a wild animal, Lily got close and then hacked at the roots with the knife. The blade went through the web of roots easily. The smaller filaments shrank back from the edge as they were cut. The biggest of the roots were like strands of twine. She had to saw at a few of them, but they too fell away eventually.

  Eric moved closer to see. He expected that the pipe was crushed, cutting off the water supply. It looked more like the roots had found a way to infiltrate the seam between the pipe and the fitting. He imagined that the interior of the pipes were clogged with bunches of probing roots.

  “A tree is stealing our water?” Jessie asked.

  “No,” Lily said. “It’s him—the Trader. This is what Mom was trying to do. She figured out that the Trader was somehow poisoning the well water. That’s why she wanted the filter. When he realized that we weren’t being drugged anymore, he sent the roots to get us on the other side of the filter.”

  “He controls the trees?” Nicky asked.

  “He is the trees,” Lily said, gesturing with the knife. “Don’t you see? He’s part of the plants and trees around here. That’s why he’s so close to the graveyard. He feeds the people around here, dopes them up through the water, and then harvests them when we plant them in the ground.”

  “Where are you getting this from?” Eric asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Lily asked.

  Nicky shook her head. “I mean, I get it, but it’s not obvious.”

  “It’s obvious to me.”

  “We should get out of here,” Jessie said.

  “We’re okay,” Lily said
. “But nobody drinks the water. Don’t take a shower or bath either. We’ll be okay until tomorrow.”

  “We should be careful what we say,” Eric said. He looked at the roots, tracing them back to where they came through the wall. They had traveled several feet, from the stone foundation over to the pipes, and then found their way into the water supply. He wondered how fast the roots could make it upstairs to where they slept.

  Lily might have been thinking the same thing. She took her flashlight and the knife over to the wall and was cutting the roots back as far as she could.

  “We’ll be okay,” she said. “But Eric is right. No talk about any of our plans, okay? We all know what we’re doing.”

  “We can sleep in shifts,” Jessie said.

  “Yeah. Okay. That’s a good idea,” Lily said.

  “We have a couple of those water cooler jugs at Dottie’s,” Nicky said. “I’ll steal you one if you want.”

  “Good idea,” Eric said. They were all backing away from the pipes, towards the stairs.

  When they went back up, they finished making the sandwiches and sat down to eat. Nobody seemed to be in the mood to talk much.

  Nicky glanced at the clock.

  “Yeah,” Eric said, knowing that she was thinking about when her shift started. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Cool,” Nicky said.

  “I’m going to go… check on things,” Jessie said. He picked up the knife that his sister had used earlier.

  “I’ll go with you,” Lily said.

  LILY

  AS THEY DESCENDED TO the cellar, Lily felt like she was seeing the house with fresh eyes. It had always seemed like an extension of her father. Every timber and piece of trim had been part of his dominion. When a problem came up or project was started, their father always had a plan.

  Jessie paused at the bottom of the stairs.

  “We ought to check the furnace too,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  Lily knew where the furnace was, but the collection of pipes, gauges, and chambers was a mystery to her.

  “Should we call someone?”

  Jessie laughed. “And say what? Tree roots are invading our house, trying to take over our utilities?”

  “Good point.”

  The bills, Lily had found out, were all under their mom’s name. One of the administrators at her mom’s old law firm had sat down and explained everything, listing out all the bills that Lily had to pay and how often they would come. That was all pretty easy to manage. She had a schedule and a checkbook that drew from the trust.

  Jessie pulled a string and an overhead bulb came on. He brushed some cobwebs out of the way and moved behind a thing that he called, “The boiler.”

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “There’s some oil here, but it looks old. I don’t think there are any problems.”

  “Good.”

  Next, they went back to the pipes where the problem had been before.

  “They haven’t grown back,” he said, examining the place where she had cut the roots back to the wall. “Maybe we should try running some water upstairs and see if they’re still blocked.”

  “I guess,” Lily said. “Just don’t get near the water.”

  “Yeah, no shit.”

  “You don’t have to be so nasty about it. I’m just trying to be careful,” she said.

  He shot her a look.

  “What?” she asked.

  Jessie only shook his head.

  “What tree do you think these roots came from?” she asked.

  “I don’t know shit about tree roots.”

  Lily sighed. She bent down and poked at some of the roots that she had cut off earlier. They had shrunk after they were severed. She almost expected them to recoil when she poked at them, but they were just dead roots.

  “We have to figure this out,” she said.

  “Just relax, would you?” Jessie asked.

  Lily looked up at him and started to ask him what his problem was.

  He cut her off before the question could even leave her mouth.

  “You don’t have to be in control of everything you know.”

  “Jessie, if you did anything—and I mean anything—to help out around here, then I would trust you to help out around here, you know? All you do is cut school and treat this place like a hotel. You expect that I’m going to do everything for you.”

  Jessie rolled his eyes. “You left out one thing that you do. You also threaten to have me locked up if I try to live my own life.”

  “I don’t make the rules about when you’re considered an adult. The state makes those rules and they enforce them. You don’t believe me? Be my guest to go out on your own and see how that works out for you.”

  Jessie shook his head and pointed the knife at her.

  “This was your big chance. You’ve been waiting my whole life to try to screw me over. Now you’re going to set me up, aren’t you.”

  She heard feet on the stairs but she didn’t turn to look. She didn’t dare look away from Jessie as long as he was pointing the knife at her. Any second, she knew that he was going to come at her and she had to be ready to turn that blade back on him.

  “Hey,” Eric said.

  Jessie’s eyes cut over towards the stairs.

  Lily saw her chance. She shot her hand forward, grabbing the back of Jessie’s wrist so she could twist the blade away from herself and hopefully wrestle it away from him. His arm felt like a band of steel. Lily couldn’t remember the last time she had tried to overpower her brother. He had clearly grown a lot stronger.

  “Hey!” Eric said.

  Jessie’s wrist turned in her grip, bringing the blade to her arm. The edge had just started to bite into her flesh when Eric grabbed Jessie with both hands. Lily pulled free while Eric disarmed Jessie. They dropped to the dirt floor.

  Jessie hit Eric once in the side of the head before his cousin wrapped him up.

  “Hey! That’s enough,” Eric said. “We have to get you out of here.”

  Jessie fought as Eric tried to wrestle him towards the stairs. A simple idea flashed into Lily’s head. While the two of them were fighting each other, the knife was unclaimed in the dirt. She could pick it up and drive it into one or the other. Then, before he could get away, she might have a chance at the other one. It didn’t matter who went first as long as she got one of them.

  Crouching, she grabbed the knife, but something else caught her eye. It was the roots that she had cut from the pipes. As soon as her hand gripped the handle of the knife, she thrust it away. It clattered into the corner.

  “Stop!” she yelled.

  For a moment, they actually did stop wrestling. Then, the tussle continued.

  Lily got up and began shoving them towards the stairs.

  “Up!” she shouted, directing them away. Whatever was happening in the house, it was strongest downstairs. Lily was beginning to understand.

  # # #

  Once she got them out of the house, they were much more compliant. The Gran Torino was in back. Lily herded the boys towards that, pushed them in through the rear door, and then she got behind the wheel. Driving her father’s boat of a car made her feel like a kid. Lily was pressed back into the seat when she stomped on the accelerator. As soon as they put some distance between themselves and the house, it looked like sanity was returning to their eyes.

  “You guys were going to kill each other,” Eric said. “It’s because of the water.”

  “It was him,” Lily said.

  “We didn’t drink any water,” Jessie said.

  “Look at yourself,” Eric said. Lily glanced in the mirror. Eric was pointing to the front of Jessie’s shirt, which was soaked through.

  “When did you…” Lily started to ask. Her question was cut off by her realization. Her own shirt was soaked as well.

  “You were both dry when I left. You must have drunk without knowing.”

  “We can’t go back there,” Jessie said.

&nbs
p; “At least not until we take care of the Trader,” Lily said.

  “Turn right,” Jessie said.

  “Why?”

  “Holdty is on city water. He has the whole basement of his house to himself. We can stay there.”

  “Great,” Lily said, rolling her eyes.

  “His brother isn’t there,” Jessie said.

  “Thank god.”

  Lily navigated to the Holdt house. It wasn’t her first visit. When she was in middle school, Charlie’s older brother, Dave, had invited a bunch of kids over. None of those friends still lived in town. With the exception of Eddie and Brett, it seemed like all of her classmates had moved away.

  “Where is Dave?” Eric asked.

  “Alaska. He worked on a lobster boat out of Boothbay for a while and then he heard that the money was better out in Alaska. He went out there with the Gagne brothers,” Jessie said.

  Lily pulled up in front of the house.

  “Give me the keys,” Eric said. “I want to go with Nicky tonight.”

  She studied him for a moment before she handed over the keys. “Don’t go to the house though, right?”

  Eric shook his head. “I won’t get any closer than Dottie’s.”

  “Good.”

  Jessie was already headed up the driveway by the time that Lily caught up with him.

  “Are his parents home?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. You won’t even see them.”

  Jessie veered left around the garage and then down a flight of stairs that were cut into the ground between cinderblock walls. At the bottom, he stretched over the puddle around the drain and pushed through a door.

  “Holdty, you better have pants on. My sister is here.”

  She paused before she followed him into the basement, just in case. The little rec room smelled a little funky, but it was warm and dry. Lily remembered the place from Dave’s party. In middle school, he had been the handsiest and horniest of the boys. The room had changed. The wood panelling had been covered with posters of bands and cars. There was a little black and white TV showing The Brady Bunch with the sound turned down.

  Ben Trout got up when Lily sat down.

  “I’m going to grab a butt. Coming?”

  “Nah,” Jessie said.