by Blake Crouch
Bart pulled off a glove and cupped his hand over his nose.
“Goddamn you, it’s broke!”
“Now go on and drive the sled up to your mansion. We gonna follow behind. Don’t know if you got a shoulder scabbard, but I wouldn’t advise reachin into your coat for any reason. Rest assured I’ll err on the side a blowin your goddamn head off. Savvy?”
“What do you want? I’m a rich—”
“You remember what happened last time you opened that mouth? Now go on.” Bart lifted the reins and urged his team up the trail, his nose burning, tears running down his bloodied face. The riders followed close behind, and they hadn’t gone fifty feet when one of them retched into the snow.
The other muttered, “Christ Almighty.” Bart didn’t dare look back, but he figured it was the boy, wondered if he’d gotten sick because he was going to kill his first man tonight.
11
It was almost ten o’clock, and Joss figured she’d seen all the customers she was going to see for the evening. But in no hurry to return to her cold jail cell, she didn’t disturb the deputy, who still snoozed comfortably beside the stove.
Lana had gone home for the night, and Joss hated to own up, but she missed the piano, sick as she was of the endless rotation of Christmas carols. Noise drowned out the hush of loneliness, though even loneliness was preferable to listening to that deputy blather on about what big shit he used to be down in Ouray. Joss had given serious consideration to cutting the young man’s throat while he slept—one deep swipe with the bowie she kept under the bar. She could picture his eyes popping open, him reaching for the revolver that she’d already slipped out of its holster, the puddle of blood expanding on the floorboards, sizzling where it touched the base of the stove. But that would just fuck everything up. Besides, where would she go, with Abandon as snowbound as she’d ever seen it? What was another twelve hours?
Joss smiled at the thought of Lana. On her way out, she’d actually bowed her head and mouthed “Merry Christmas”—by far the most verbose that pretty mute had ever been.
The front door swung open and the preacher walked inside and dusted the snow off his frock coat. Stephen Cole glanced around the dead saloon, then walked up and rested his forearms on the pine bar.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Evenin, Preach. Finally come to bend a elbow?”
Stephen smiled. Apparently, he’d left home without a hat, because his hair was wet with melting snow.
“Could I buy you a drink, Miss Maddox?”
“It’s Joss, and yes, always. You off your feed?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“You’re all gant up, just about the palest thing I ever saw.” She placed a new bottle on the bar, withdrew the cork, and set up two tumblers. “Pinch a cocaine with your whiskey?”
“No thank you.”
“Don’t reckon I ever got booze-blind with a man a God. Here’s to you—is it Reverend or Preacher or—”
“Stephen is fine, actually. Just Stephen.”
They clinked and drained their glasses, Stephen wincing.
Joss went to pour again, but Stephen waved her off. “No more of that snakehead for me, but you go right ahead.”
“I’ll mix you a cobbler.” She smiled. “Ladies seem to like it.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Well, I’m gonna get a little more fine.”
Joss filled her glass. The preacher pulled two bits from his leather pouch, set it on the bar, but he made no move to leave.
“There somethin else I can help you with?” she asked.
Stephen pushed his hair behind his ears.
“Actually, I did have ulterior motives for coming here tonight.”
“And what might those—no, wait. Please, please, tell me you ain’t here to make some half-assed attempt to—”
“Save you? No. God saves. I am a very small part of that equation. Besides, it would be an insult to your intelligence for me to think I can convince you of your need for God. You’re a smart woman. You’ve lived many a year in this world and have certainly heard the Gospel at some point. You’ve chosen not to accept Him. It saddens me, certainly saddens God, but you have free will. I respect that.”
“Well, that’s a relief to hear. I didn’t relish the idea a throwin a Gospel sharp out on his ass, but I was prepared to.”
Stephen smiled. “I understand you’re to be sent back to Arizona in the spring to …”
“To be hanged. You ain’t gonna hurt my feelings sayin it.”
“Miss Maddox. Joss. I was walking home tonight from the Christmas Eve dinner, and I saw the lamps glowin in your saloon, and God put it on my heart to come in here.”
“He did.”
“I would like to pray for you, Joss. Right now. It’s Christmas Eve. You’re chained up behind a bar. I can’t imagine the fear you face at having to go back to Arizona next year. I thought I might say a prayer with you. If it could bring you any comfort at all, I would be most—”
Joss leaned toward Stephen. “You think I rejected God?”
“I just—”
“You said I had chosen not to come to God.”
“I just assumed—”
“You wanna hear a story about rejection? The cunt bitch who birthed me abandoned me in a alley in the California goldfields when I was a day old. Man who found and raised me put me up for three dollars to any son of a bitch who had a taste for ten-year-old pussy. Ever husband I ever had beat me. Now the way I figure it, God either approved or couldn’t be bothered to give a shit, so don’t come in here talkin to me about my rejection a God. I’d say He’s had His back to me ever since I took my first breath.” A vein had risen on Joss’s forehead and her big black eyes shone.
“You think God hates you?” Stephen asked.
“I stopped caring what He thinks or don’t think a me years ago.”
“Well, I can assure you that He loves—”
“Look, you don’t gotta come down here, hat in hand, makin amends for God. He knows where I live. He can come Hisself or not at all. Thanks for the gesture, Preach, but you’re barkin at a knot, and prayin with you ain’t exactly on my wish list this year. Now, I gotta close up.” She looked at the deputy. “Al! Get your ass up!”
The deputy startled into consciousness, instinctively touched the revolver at his side, his words slurring. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“We’re done for tonight,” Joss said. “Take me back to jail.”
“But it ain’t but—”
“Al, goddamn it, contradict me one more fuckin—”
“All right, Joss, you ain’t gotta yell.”
Stephen took a step back and regarded Joss with his sad, sweet eyes.
“Merry Christmas to you,” he said, and started for the door.
• • •
Stephen Cole stood under a streetlamp, watching the wind build snowdrifts against the storefront of a vacated barbershop. Across the street, on the second floor of the hotel, Molly Madsen sat in the bay window, looking down at him, her face weakly illuminated by the candle in her hands. He waved, whispered a prayer for her.
He followed the plank sidewalk for several blocks, then turned up the side street that led to his cabin.
His mind brimmed with thoughts of his home in Charleston, South Carolina—the palm trees and live oaks and saltwater marshes, the ocean at sunrise, the faces of his father and mother.
He had come west three years ago because he believed it to be the will of God, had felt compelled to minister to those who lived in these harsh environs.
What he had found were a thousand little towns high in the Rockies, built upon debauchery and greed.
I’ve accomplished nothing, he thought. God, show me one life in these mountains that has benefited from my presence.
Overcome, he knelt in the empty street and prayed until his face had gone numb and his body shook with cold.
Stephen rose to his feet and wiped the snow from his hair.
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He’d taken two steps toward home when he heard it.
He froze. Forgot that he was cold. Forgot his loneliness.
He just stood there in the darkness and falling snow, a strange warmth spreading through him. Having now heard it, he knew with certainty that all the other times, kneeling at the foot of his bed, sometimes hours in the silence, had been imagination and hoping.
It was simply his own name that he’d heard, but it filled him with such blinding peace that he didn’t question for a moment the source.
When God speaks to you, His voice is unmistakable.
2009
12
Six tubes of light swung through the fog that had settled in the canyon—a colony of headlamps moving toward the ruins of Abandon. The air carried the steel smell of snow, though none was yet falling. Night had arrived moonless and overcast, with a darkness Abigail had never imagined possible out-of-doors, like they’d all been locked into an immense, freezing closet. She walked between Emmett and June, with Lawrence a few yards ahead, the two guides relegated to the back, with orders to stay close but quiet. Abigail had brought along her tape recorder and was collecting background information from the Tozers when Lawrence said, “Hold up!” They stopped. Lawrence shone his flashlight into the darkness ahead, the beam passing over a grove of spruce. “Can’t believe I found it in this fog. Here’s what’s left of the cabin of Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice.”
Abigail followed June into the grove. The small woman, swallowed in a red ski jacket, aimed her light at the rubble. Abigail saw a cookstove, cans, rusted bedsprings amid the detritus. Emmett slipped off his camera’s lens cap and began to circle the homestead.
Abigail said, “June, while Emmett’s taking photos, could you tell me how you two got involved with paranormal photography?”
June led Abigail away from the remains of the cabin. They stood apart from the others, separated by a lightning-fried spruce, headlamps off. “Ten years ago, our son, Tyler, was out riding his bicycle in the neighborhood. He was hit by a van. Died in the street.” Abigail found June’s hands in the dark. “Night after the funeral, Emmett and I were in bed, holding each other. We were talking about taking some pills. It’s a pain like you cannot …
“So we’re in bed, it’s two or three in the morning, and all of a sudden, I just feel this calm engulf me, like the rush of some incredible drug. The air was thick, a living thing, and I felt like I was being wrapped in it. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. Most intense and unconditional love I’ve ever felt, and I was smiling, and I looked at Emmett, and he was, too. We were experiencing it together, and we both knew exactly what it was. Ty had come to us. I felt my little boy’s presence just as strong as I feel you standing here in front of me, even though I can’t see you. He saved us, Abigail.
“Next morning at our local coffeehouse, Emmett saw a poster for a paranormal-photography slide show. We didn’t even know there was such a thing, but having just had our experience with Ty, we felt this conviction to go. Unfortunately, the photographer we went to see was a fraud. I could tell that right away. Most people who claim to be psychic are delusional. The stuff they shoot, it’s camera malfunctions, flash problems, dust particles on the film. But Emmett and I were inspired to buy a camera. We shot four rolls in our room that night—infrared film in total darkness. In the corner above our bed, we captured this fantastic pool of light, like this energy was watching over us as we slept.”
“Your son.”
“Emmett and I had always been artists. It’s why we lived in San Francisco. We threw ourselves into paranormal photography, never looked back. And it’s such a beautiful medium—a perfect intersection of art and history and service.”
“What do you mean by ‘service’?”
“See, it isn’t just about taking photographs of paranormal activity for the aesthetic value. These are suffering spirits who, for whatever reason, haven’t passed to the other side. Most important part of our job is helping them move on. It’s not about the thrills for us, or ‘ghost-busting.’ It’s our calling. If Ty hadn’t died, we probably never would have come down this road. Isn’t it beautiful and sad how these things work out?”
June placed something in Abigail’s hand—a small plastic cylinder.
“What’s this?”
“Emmett shot a roll of film on the hike in.”
“Of me?”
“Of you and Lawrence.”
“Well, that’s … Thank you, but to be honest, I don’t know that I want this.”
June squeezed her hands. “Do as you see fit.”
• • •
When Emmett finished shooting the Curtice homestead, the party moved on, six pairs of boots brushing through dry autumn weeds. They came down a slope, Abigail feeling guilty, convinced the death of the Tozers’ son had turned them out of their minds, yet knowing their story would make the heartbreaking core of her article.
Shapes took form out of the fog. They stood in the grassy lane, Abandon’s ramshackle buildings on either side, tendrils of mist drifting among them through the blaring silence.
“Let’s start in the saloon,” Emmett said, and Lawrence led them across the street, hopped over a few planks—all that remained of the sidewalk—and stepped gingerly into the shack.
“I haven’t been in here in awhile,” he said, “so I’m not sure how sturdy everything is. We’d better just start with the Tozers going in.”
Emmett and June joined Lawrence inside. After a moment, Emmett appeared in the doorway, said, “Would everyone please turn off their headlamps? I don’t want any outside light getting in here, interfering with the shots.”
All the headlamps went dark except for Emmett’s. Abigail stood on the threshold, watching them explore the interior, the beam of Emmett’s light grazing the listing walls and a gnawed-board floor, littered with pieces of broken whiskey bottles, rusted tin-can scraps. The pine bar had toppled over and punched out a section of the back wall, through which the fog crept in, giving the saloon a natural smokiness.
“You can come on in,” Lawrence whispered to Abigail. “Just be mindful where you step and don’t go near the stove. If you look up, you’ll see a hole in the roof. The boards underneath get rained and snowed on. Amazing they haven’t fallen through yet.”
Abigail walked inside, the floor bowing beneath her weight. It smelled of mold and marmot urine and whatever the fog had carried in from the canyon. Emmett and June stood together by the wall opposite the potbellied stove, near an upright piano, half of the ivory keys missing, the rest cracked and jagged, like broken teeth.
Emmett turned off his headlamp, the darkness filling with the click of exposures.
While he shot the saloon, Abigail whispered to June, “Are these spirits ever—”
“Mean?” June laughed. “We get that question a lot. In all our years of work, we’ve encountered only one aggressive spirit. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re just confused, lost, and consumed in their own grief. It’s funny, because once you’re dead, all the beliefs you subscribed to while alive don’t mean a thing.”
Abigail turned on her tape recorder. “Tell me about this aggressive experience.”