Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  The voiding of his morning’s breakfast felt good in comparison to the grief in his heart.

  Deputy Dave, looking at least as pale as Rick felt and shaking visibly, was doing his best to get all of the information he could from Alberta Kornfeld; he was having a great deal of trouble getting the facts, because he was also doing the very best to give the woman solace. Rick personally couldn’t give a heap of shit if the woman felt all right about the world or not, like so many of the people in Summitville, she had never acknowledge Rick’s existence unless it was absolutely necessary. He heard her talking of the man that had done whatever had been done to Rick’s best friend without ever really listening to a word she said.

  Rick picked up the battered old Stetson with the sweat stains and dents that had become so familiar to him and forced the tears that were struggling to be free away from his eyes. No one in this shithole town had earned the right to see him cry. The only person that had, was dead. That’s all she wrote, he thought, I’ve had it with this town. I don’t give a good goddam what happens to these people. Goodbye Summitville, hello wherever. Anyplace is better than here.

  Rick stood up, gently placing the hat where he had found it and walked away from the crime scene. Let the town find someone else to do their dirty work, Rick Lewis didn’t care anymore. He stepped out into the overly bright daylight, leaving behind his cares for who had killed Chuck Hanson and why, none of it was worth the grief.

  On the sidewalk outside of the Healthy Housewife, Stacy Calhoun was talking to the little redhead that Mark Howell could almost always be seen with. Rick stared for a long time, noticing the girl’s grief and Stacy Calhoun’s. Rick tried to fight against it, but somethings can’t be resisted. He charged across the short distance between himself and Cassie Monroe—Yeah, that was her name—and yanked her violently towards himself. His rage kept the words quiet, low and menacing. They were coming out all wrong, but he had to at least TRY to warn her. “Cassie, isn’t it?” She nodded her answer, looking pale, but in control; she was the one who had had the sense to call the deputies, everyone else stood around gawking, just as soon as they deemed it safe to stick their heads out of their still locked doors. “Do yourself a favor, Cassie. Stay as far away from your boyfriend as you can. He’s dangerous, you could be the next one hurt.”

  Cassie started to protest, still too affected by what had happened to clearly think through what he had just said. Stacy Calhoun didn’t have that problem, her mother had taught her two things a long time ago: First, you never surrender your dreams, at least not without trying very hard to achieve them first. The second important lesson was that the time for grief and displays of violent emotion was after the work was done. Stacy’s hazel eyes flashed in her round face and she grabbed hold of Rick Lewis, pulling him away from the poor girl he was assaulting.

  “What the hell’s gotten into you, Rick?” she demanded, her voice a furious whisper. “What kind of nonsense is that to say to the poor girl at a time like this! You want to give her advice on her love life, you just wait for another day. Merciful God, where did you ever learn your manners?”

  Rick tried to brush the deputy off, furious at her for having interrupted his warnings to Cassie Monroe. She held on even tighter than before, shouting in his face with her authoritative I Am An Officer OF The Law, and I Will Punish You If You Don’t Behave Yourself voice. “You can stop that right now, mister! I don’t want a scene, but I’ll haul your ass down to the jail right now if you don’t calm yourself down!”

  Rick turned and stared at Stacy Calhoun for all of three seconds, then he went back to try and warn Cassie again. His leaving town was delayed substantially by the deputy having to carry out her threat. Rick would have never thought it possible, Stacy was a good deal shorter than he was and at least sixty pounds lighter. She took him down at the knees and had him handcuffed in less time than it would have taken him to write a prescription; her mother Dino had never bothered with a bouncer in all of her time as proprietor of the bar and grill named after herself and she had taught Stacy well.

  7

  Jennifer Howell was happier than she had been since before Mark was born. Very soon now, as soon as Mark got back from wherever he had gone off to with his friends, her family would be complete again. Beside her in her bed, Todd smiled happily and caressed her hip. That had been the best sex she’d had in…well, since the last time she had been with Todd and it looked like he would be ready to go at it again in just a few minutes.

  Right after Joe had driven off towards Denver that morning, Jenny had climbed back into bed for an extra hour of sleep. In less than half that time, Todd had climbed through the second floor window into her bedroom. They had a lot to discuss after fifteen years of separation, but that was something that could wait until after the first lovemaking sessions were finished. Fifteen years without a competent lover had been fifteen years too many in Jenny’s eyes.

  By the time they had finished and both cleaned up with a shower, Mark had gone out. He left a note that said he’d be back by suppertime. That was fine with Jenny, it gave her more time with her first love, time she put to good use .

  Smiling into his eyes, Jenny was amazed at how very little he had changed. He had a few more wrinkles and just the right touch of gray at the temples to make him look sexier than ever, but that was it. The largest difference between her first husband and her son was the scar that her Mark would carry for the rest of his life. They were identical otherwise, build height, width, even the ways in which they moved, all of them were identical. Without the scar she would have been confused to see them in the same room together. Maybe Todd swaggered a little more than her son, but otherwise…

  She moaned, caught off guard by the sudden pleasure of his hands probing one of her sensitive spots, moaned again as his fingers were joined by his tongue. They only had enough time left for a quickie, however, the day was moving on and she still had to prepare for when Joe got home.

  Her last coherent thought, before the moment’s passions carried her away, was that the garage would probably be the best place for killing her husband. Cement cleaned up easier than linoleum or carpet and there promised to be a great deal of blood spilled by the time she got done with Joe. Whole lakes of it.

  8

  Tyler and Tony seemed to want nothing more than to have some fun in the sun on the last day of weekday freedom for the summer. Mark was with them one hundred per cent. They were up at the Overtree, taking turns climbing one of the massive red oaks that rested partially in the lake and diving from its branches a good fifteen feet into the water. Mark and Tony had made an unofficial competition of the fun and games and Mark watched Tony make a dive that barely left a ripple in the lake’s surface. It was a beautiful dive. Mark knew he could beat it. He wondered idly how much pain driving into the water was causing the lump on Tony’s broken nose, but the answer seemed to be very little indeed, if the happy expression on Tony’s face was an indicator.

  There seemed to be an odd sort of tension in the air, judging by the strange expressions that swam just under the surface of Tyler and Tony’s faces, in the way they kept looking at each other when they thought that Mark wouldn’t notice; Mark did his best to ignore the strange looks. This was the last day of freedom that he would be able to spend exclusively with these two, the weekend proper was dedicated to Cassie alone.

  Mark thought about Cassie as he climbed from the waters and started towards the massive oak again. His mind seldom strayed from thoughts of Cassie for very long. The texture of the rough bark under his hands and the pads of his feet, as he started to climb towards the diving branch, even this made him think of Cassie and how lucky he was to be with her, how much he loved her.

  He was amazed at how much his world had changed in the last year, amazed again to realize that a year had passed since he had come to Summitville. One year ago, to the very day, he had first laid eyes on the town. A year ago, he had been certain that nothing but pain waited for him in the future. He fl
ashed back to the first time he had seen Cassie, waving and smiling as she jogged past the Howell family getting out of their car and setting foot on Summitville soil for the very first time. He had prayed then that he would be accepted in Summitville, now he knew that he was. Not by everyone, surely, but by the ones that counted.

  Below him, the sounds of Tyler and Tony goading him to dive pulled him from his reverie. Mark decided it was time to show the two what a real swan-dive looked like. He glanced above him at the next well positioned branch on the monolithic tree. It was fully fifteen feet above the one from which they normally dived, a minimum of forty feet above the waters. Mark grinned at the thought of one-upping Tony and started to climb.

  Below him, an impossible distance away, Tyler and Tony looked on, two small islands in the flawless glittering mirror of the sky above. He could hear Tyler calling out for him to go back down to the lower branch; he could hear Tony calling for him not to be stupid. None of that mattered, this was the last day of freedom, the last day with friends before the whole school thing fucked it up again. Just this once, he was going to fly…

  To show his friends that he wasn’t the least bit afraid, he actually danced a fast footed jig on the branch, pirouetting and bowing as his feet blurred. He never lost his balance. Tony and Tyler below held their breath, waiting for the fatal fall that was inevitable. Mark Backed up to the very base of the branch, the sun on his face warming him and showing for all his almost perfect smile, marred only by the faded scar on his cheek.

  It was the best he had ever done, he ran with a grace and power that would have made the finest Olympic athlete lower his head in shame. His feet left the branch only to come crashing down at the very edge and he was lifted into the air, his own velocity and the buoyancy of the branch throwing him farther than he had ever gone before. For that one second, he thought he knew what it must be like to be God, he felt as if he were looking down upon all creation and he saw that it was good.

  Mark’s shadow blocked out the sun, for one timeless second. In that one second, he saw the waters of the Overtree stripped of the beautiful glare that had been present all day, he saw past the glimmer of the sky and into the depths of the waters. He saw the chrome bumper of Dave Brundvandt’s car winking back at him from just below the water’s surface. He was headed straight for the grinning silver light.

  From Tony and Tyler’s perspective, it looked like Mark had done a belly flop. Only he had done a belly flop on his face. They had watched the stunning dive from within the cool waters, amazed at their friends audacity; no one dove from a branch that high up, no one. It was a thing of beauty, right up until he was about five feet above the waters. Then Mark’s arms flailed and he hit the water.

  When you see someone hit the waters, from any height, you expect to hear a splash. It’s one of the unspoken laws of nature. What Tony and Tyler heard was a solid “Whoooong!”, followed immediately by the originally expected splash, as Mark, his face bleeding profusely, looking like a tomato dropped from around thirty feet, sailed away from the water for just a moment, arching backwards as spewing blood, oh dear God, so very much blood, before he slapped into the waters, some ten feet from where they were.

  Tyler let out a little gasp, suddenly unable to breathe as his heart stopped for a second, then kicked into overdrive. Tony was more direct in his statement. “Fuck Me! Mark! Oh fuck me, he looks bad!”

  ony cut through the waters like a fin on a shark, plowing through the waves and heading towards where Mark had disappeared under the waves. There was nothing to see, Mark was gone.

  9

  They had never worked so fast in all of Their long existence. The Folk covered Mark’s flesh with Their own, shifting the color of Their skins to match that of the waters. They were painfully aware that the ones They could not harm were above Them, trying to save the Chosen One. They also knew that the friends could only cause him death.

  There was no time for subtlety, They reached into his flesh, mending shattered bones and placing his delicate eyes where they belonged. They mended the pulp of his brain as best They could, They altered his memories and hid from his mind the knowledge that he had just died. When they were finished, They forced air into his still lungs, made his heart beat again. They gave him back his life.

  Mark came out of the waters only a few feet from where Tony and Tyler were searching frantically for his body. The air was sweeter even than when he had dived into the depths and it burned as he sucked it into himself greedily. He had been down there a long time, but now and then you had to test your limits.

  Tyler and Tony stared at him as if he were a ghost. Tyler was the first to break from the silence that held them all for several seconds, the first to escape from the mind-numbing certainty that Mark was dead. Tyler was certain that Mark had pulled a fast one and he was furious with his friend. Through wet glass lenses, he looked at his friend; even with corrective lenses, his eyes would never be twenty-twenty, he allowed himself to believe the lie his mind made up, surely he had simply imagined that Mark was truly injured.

  While Tyler and Mark laughed about the situation, calling names and insulting each other’s heritage, Tony went over what he had seen again and again. He had seen blood, he had seen teeth flying free from a shattered face, he had seen Mark flopping backwards like a fish hooked on a line and heaved towards the fisherman’s boat. All Tony could think about was the conversation he had had earlier, with Jonathan Crowley. Tony was torn by the warring emotions, loyalty to a friend and fear of an enemy. Fear that Crowley would hurt him again.

  Crowley…

  Tony lied about when he had to be home, he told Mark and Tyler that he would see them later.

  Crowley…

  He dressed quickly and all but ran all the way to the Charles S. Westphalen High-school Parking Lot. The school had a pay phone, it even had an undamaged phone book, not that Tony needed it. He already had the number he needed in his pocket. He even found a quarter covered by lint in the same pocket.

  Crowley…

  Tony hated himself even as he dialed the number; he’d always hated cowards.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1

  Crowley felt his beeper vibrate four times in his pocket and then grow lifeless again. Something had happened with the Howell boy. Despite his wishes, something had happened to scare Tony Scarrabelli enough to make him call. He didn’t hesitate, he stepped away from his table in the McDonald’s and left the smiling face of Ronald McDonald behind. There was no outward sign of his grief, rules forbade the showing of grief before or after the show was ended.

  Smile firmly in place, Crowley walked towards the edge of town in the direction of Overtree. Crowley walked almost everywhere when he was busy doing what he did. Cars had a nasty tendency to explode or lose their brakes during business hours. Besides, the walk would do him good, his calf was still a little stiff right now.

  They were watching him, too afraid to actually approach him outright. That wasn’t the way They operated. He could feel Their hatred directed at him and it was soothing, a balm for the wounds he had suffered earlier in the day. Just for fun, he located one of the little creatures and stared it in the eyes until it ran away.

  Behind him a car was slowing. He forced back the thought of sheriff Chuck Hanson coming back for round two and made his body relax; tension would only slow down his reaction time. The car behind him honked its horn. He turned to face whatever was there.

  Joe Howell waved happily through the open window across from the driver’s seat. “Need a ride somewhere, Jonathan?”

  Crowley smiled, a different smile than he usually wore when on the job. “I’d like that Joe. I was actually on my way to see you and yours anyway.” The smile became a smirk, slightly ironic in the way it sat on his face. “Town like this, you need to see a friendly face now and then.”

  Joe laughed at that and pulled the lock on the passenger side door. “I know what you mean, if it wasn’t for Sam Watkins giving me the okay around town,
I don’t think any of the family would have friends here.” Joe frowned for a moment, then brightened back up immediately. “Listen, why don’t you come on over and join us for dinner. I know Mark would love to see you again, you can tell him about some of the interviews you’ve done. If you’ve talked to Stephen King or Clive Barker, you ought to be set for life.”

  “Well, I haven’t had the pleasure of those two, but I’ve talked to a few of the big guys in horror fiction. Maybe we’ll see what others Mark likes, chances are decent that I’ve met ’em.”

  “Great. That’ll just make his day. He’s a good kid, y’know?” It seemed to Crowley that the man wanted to say something more, something that simply had to be taken off of his chest before the weight crushed him to a pulp. He nodded quietly and waited for Joe to start up. It took an extra ten minutes to get to the Howell residence after Joe started, but it was worth it. Joe talked a great deal about how he’d mistreated Mark in the earlier years. He hadn’t abused him, he’d just not known how to show the boy he cared.

  Crowley listened sympathetically, nodding and frowning in all the right places. He soaked the information into himself as if it were water and he was a dry sponge. The knowledge would come in handy, when it came time to kill Mark Howell.

  2

  Jennifer Howell hissed between her teeth and waved her beloved Todd back out of sight. “Damn, he brought John Crowley with him. We can’t do anything with him here.”

  Behind her, she heard the returned sentiment of Todd. “Why not? He’s just another person trying to keep us apart.” She shot a quick look over her shoulder at him, puzzled by the sound of his voice. He was standing in the shadows, hidden almost entirely from her view. “Listen, he’s stronger than you might think, but he’s got weaknesses. Kill him first, I’ll handle Joe. But you have to kill him first, okay Jenny?”