by Neil Olson
It was late; most houses on the street were dark. The porch light was on at his mother’s place, and several lights inside the house, as well. Will had almost reached the stairs when he saw a dark shape moving swiftly across the side yard. He hesitated. Was that a flash of blond hair? Then he was running again, around the house and across the little field. Trying not to stumble. For just a moment he heard voices, calling back and forth urgently, but could make nothing out. A jagged line of tall shadows marked the edge of the woods behind the house and it seemed like the voices had come from there. Anyway, he could see nowhere else they could have gone. He dodged around the rosebushes and headed for the trees.
The yard had been dark, but beneath the oaks and pines it was nearly pitch-black and he had to slow down. Holding one hand before his face to prevent getting scratched again, he took careful steps forward. His feet made too much noise among the twigs and roots, but even so he could hear others. Feet kicking through leaves. A male voice cursing. He wanted to yell to Sam, but restrained himself. Moonlight opened little gray pockets among the trees and he waited to see a figure pass through one of them.
“Will?” Samantha’s voice, far off.
“Over here,” he called.
“Shut up,” Jimmy ordered from somewhere closer. “Get down on the ground.”
There was a hard, flat bang to his left and a simultaneous thunking sound near at hand. It seemed a long gap of time, but was likely only a moment later that his brain processed this as a bullet striking a tree. A tree quite close by. A bullet aimed at him. All the blood seemed to flush from his head into his legs, and he dropped dizzily to his knees. This was the right move, he knew, even if accidental. Then another quick bang-thunk made his whole body jump.
“Motherfucker.” A deep, angry voice. “I told you to stay away.”
Will found himself flat on his stomach, clutching the cold earth. Pine needles were in his mouth and his heart beat hard enough to shake the ground. His brain felt sluggish. Too stunned and starved of oxygen to even accept what was happening, let alone make a plan. After long deliberation, he lifted his head slightly and looked back along his body to see if any of it was catching the moonlight. No. So it was his voice alone that had drawn the shots.
“Devil boy.” The angry voice was closer now, only a few yards away. The speech was slurred. “Where are you?”
“Cool it, Eddie,” Jimmy called. “This is stupid.”
“Stay out of it, you Mick son-of-a-whore.”
Will could see the muzzle-flash from the corner of his eye as the gun boomed again. Both men were quiet then. He was about to risk a look around when something struck him in the side. The force of the blow, coupled with his terror, made him flip all the way onto his back. A tall shadow loomed over him. All Will could see clearly was the big boot that had kicked him, and the flash of moonlight off the pistol’s blue steel.
“Get up,” said Eddie Price.
“Why?” Will rasped. Embarrassed by his strangled tone. “You can shoot me just as easily down here.” It must have been that other voice inside him that spoke—he would never say anything that stupid. Yet it sounded like him. “I didn’t go anywhere near you. You came into the bar.”
“Nah.” He saw the big, shaggy head shake. “Last night, night before. Standing there across the street. You going to tell me that wasn’t you?”
“That’s what I’m going to tell you, yeah. You going to believe it?”
“No,” Eddie said, aiming the pistol at him.
“Why didn’t you come out and face me then?” said Will quickly. Desperately. “If you thought it was me, why didn’t you come out and shoot me then? Skulking around my mother’s house, you coward.”
His senses became suddenly, painfully sharper. As if someone turned up the moonlight, and he could make out individual trees around him, make out Eddie’s face. Sounds came from far away. Animals scuttling through underbrush, alarmed by the human intrusion. He could see or somehow feel all four of them where they stood in this small, mystical forest of his childhood, and he thought how funny it was that he should die here. A woman’s voice spoke from a long way off, but he could hear it right in his ear. Chanting incomprehensible words.
He came back into the moment to see the arm with the pistol shaking. Whether in anger or fear, Will could not say, and guessed he wasn’t going to find out. He only wished that something would happen before he threw up or pissed himself.
“Eddie, you stop right now,” said Jimmy, very close. “Put that gun on the ground.”
Eddie exhaled deeply. Like a man done wrong. Then he spun around fast.
“I told you to stay out—”
Two sharp bursts came from five yards away. Eddie staggered backward, stepping on Will’s hand. Will managed to extract his fingers from under the heavy boot as the big man straightened up. Swaying, fighting for balance. Then he crouched deeply, rocking there a moment. Then rolled over on his side.
Jimmy came on slowly through the trees. A tight black shadow, his arms forming a V in front of him, meeting where they clutched the pistol. There was a loud thrashing of branches farther off.
“Is he down?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes,” Will said, too softly. Then again louder. “Yes.”
“Is the gun still in his hand?”
“I don’t know,” Will replied, starting to crawl toward the fallen man.
“Never mind, stay away from him.”
The thrashing sound got closer. Coming this way, fast and recklessly, snapping branches and tripping on roots.
“Will,” she called.
“I’m here,” he called back.
“Both of you stay where you are,” Jimmy insisted, hopelessly.
But the figure came weaving and stumbling on. Through the last cluster of saplings separating them. Not slowing down, Samantha tripped over Eddie’s outstretched leg and fell headlong on top of Will.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Mike Conti had been chief of the local police force almost twenty years. His haggard face said it had been a few years too many. Not that there was much crime, but the mysterious deaths among the troublesome seven families must have been frustrating to the lawman.
“Let’s go through it one more time,” he said, massaging his cheekbones with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, tugging down the gray bags under his eyes.
Six of them sat at the dining room table. Or five, as Muriel kept jumping up to answer the phone or make coffee. Like any of them needed coffee. Abigail seemed the most put together. Sam looked as wide-eyed and shaken as Will felt, and held his hand under the table. Even Jimmy was subdued, but then he had just killed a man. His hands were pink from washing them a long time under scalding water, but there were still bloodstains on his sleeve. He had performed chest compressions until the EMTs arrived, even though all three of them knew Eddie was dead. Now his pistol was in an evidence bag on the table and he would be taking a few more days off. Standard procedure in a shooting.
What was not standard procedure, Will felt certain, was the group of them sitting around getting the story straight. They should be giving separate statements out of earshot of each other. Mike was a good cop, everyone said, and went mostly by the book. But Jimmy was one of his men. Family. As was Sam, by extension and despite the divorce. The troublemaking Conners were being cut some slack, and anyway the matter seemed a clear case of necessary force, even if the circumstances were cloudy.
“I saw Eddie out in the yard,” Abby recited, for the third time. Mike sighed. “Sorry,” she said, “I saw a big guy in the yard, a little before midnight. I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. He was standing behind the oak, messing with something.” The thing he was messing with was a very full gasoline can, the purpose of which no one knew, but everyone could guess. “That’s when I called the station.”
Jimmy was conveniently “
in the area” when the call came through from the dispatcher. Eddie, presumably, had been awaiting Will’s return, either meaning to shoot him or burn the house down, or possibly both. He slipped into the woods while Jimmy checked on Abigail, but Jimmy saw him and pursued. Seeing the commotion and fearing Will might be in trouble, Sam ran into the woods after the men.
“And what were you going to do?” Mike asked incredulously.
“I don’t know,” Samantha mumbled, embarrassed. “Talk to him?”
“Talk to a big drunken man with a gun?”
“Sam can be very persuasive,” Abby said. Not helpfully, Will thought.
Mike swiveled his gaze to Will, the only person in the room who seemed to bring a hint of anger to those sad eyes.
“Why was he looking for you?”
“He had it in his head that...” Will fought to steady his voice. “He thought I was dangerous.”
“Do you know why he would think that?” Mike pressed.
He didn’t know how to answer the question honestly without getting into weirdness.
“I could take some guesses.”
“Let’s leave off guessing for now. Did you threaten him?”
“No.” Yet he could hear that voice in his head. Not if I see you first.
“But he threatened you.”
“He said he would kill me the next time he saw me.”
“You think he meant to?”
“A couple of those shots barely missed,” Will answered steadily. “Yeah, I do.”
“But in the end he hesitated.” It was true, he had. Chief Conti let that sink in, then continued. “You saw him turn and aim the gun at Officer Duffy.”
“Yes,” said Will, without hesitation. In truth, he had not seen Eddie raise the gun, and he strongly doubted—despite the man’s murderous intent toward Will—whether he would have shot Jimmy. Yet there was no way for Jimmy to know that, nor exactly where the gun was pointed.
“The phone call said to stay away from the house,” Mike went on, boring in on him. “But you rushed over there anyway.”
The implication was obvious, and Will had not needed the police chief’s words to contemplate it already. If he had stayed in Muriel’s car, Jimmy might have talked Eddie down. And the black sheep of the Price family might still be alive.
“I thought my mother was in danger,” was all he said in reply. What he did not say is that he had expected Jimmy Duffy to be the source of the trouble, not the one to save him from his own headlong stupidity. He owed Jimmy his life.
The chief nodded. He could find no fault with a man running to his mother’s defense. He stood, scratching at his curly gray hair. The rest of them rose instinctively as he did.
“Well, you should all get a little sleep now, if you can. I’ll need all of you down at the station in the morning to make formal statements.”
“You want me to stick around?” Jimmy asked Sam.
“Sorry,” Mike intruded, looking pained about it. “I need you to come back to the station with me, Jimmy.”
“Sam will stay here tonight,” Abby announced. “We won’t leave her alone.”
Jimmy nodded, but it was unlikely that the idea gave him much comfort. Will reached over and touched his elbow.
“Hey. Thanks. You, ah...”
“Just doing my job,” said Jimmy, turning to follow the chief out.
“Oh, and Will,” said Mike casually. “I don’t know what your plans are. I assume you’re staying on to help out your mom for a bit.”
“You’re telling me not to leave town,” Will said.
“More or less. Until we get this squared away.”
“No problem,” he replied. “Funny, though. That’s just the opposite of what everyone else has been telling me.”
“Yeah, well,” said Mike, not unkindly. “Too late for that now.”
Muriel shot Will a look equal parts anger and worry. She stroked his face before heading for the door, but it felt more like a slap. As Abby came into the room from seeing them all out, her cool finally melted. She smacked Will hard in the chest.
“I said not to come. I told Muriel, ‘Don’t let him come to the house.’ Why don’t you ever listen to me?” Then she put her arms around him. “We could have lost you.”
He might have replied that the message was vague. Disturbingly so. More designed to bring him than keep him away, but it only would have made her feel worse.
“I’m sorry. But you didn’t lose me, I’m right here.”
“Where are you going?” Abby said abruptly, and Will realized that Sam had been sidling toward the back door.
“I’ll be fine at my place,” she said. Her face conveyed that she felt an intruder on this emotional scene. “Really, I prefer it over there.”
“Not a chance,” said Abigail forcefully. “You’re staying with us.”
Sam slumped her shoulders in resignation.
“I can sleep on the sofa.”
“No,” said Will, going to Sam and putting his arms around her, without any reserve or awkwardness. She squeezed him in return and he felt her full, warm shape against him. “You take my room, I’ll take the sofa. You know I hate those damn stairs anyway.”
* * *
No one slept on the sofa. Samantha rocked languorously atop him, forward and back. Breasts brushing his chest, hair gently swiping his face. Her breath falling heavily on his neck. She had climaxed a few moments before, though the only signs had been a sudden clenching of her muscles and her thumbs digging into his shoulders. The embrace of her wet heat was lovely, but he felt nowhere near release.
“You don’t have to keep going,” Will said.
“You don’t like it?”
“I do. I just don’t think I can get there tonight.”
She kept rocking. Speeding up very slowly as she recovered. Kissing his neck, his ear, his lower lip. He closed his eyes.
“You did something in the woods,” he said.
“Shhh.”
“Some spell. I heard you from far off. You made him, you made...”
A ripple of pleasure went through him as she concentrated her efforts. Then another. Then waves of it, until all his fear, hurt and urgency went rushing to his center to be expelled. Leaving his mind empty for five or six blissful seconds. They were still for a while.
“Speaking of spells,” Will finally said.
“Oldest one there is. You feel better?”
“Yes.” She began to slide off, but he held her tight and she stopped. He was nearly asleep when she spoke again.
“The thing in the woods. I was too far away for it to work.”
“No, he felt it. We both did. And he hesitated, just long enough. You saved my life. You and Jimmy both.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, as if there was choice involved. “But if you believe it, then that’s a kind of gift.” She sat up and looked at him. “Right?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Yes.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What do you want, William?”
“There’s a question,” he said, taken aback. “How do I answer that?”
“Any way you like.”
“What do I want from my life?” It was the kind of thing she would ask, but what could he say? It seemed a foolish idea for anyone over twenty-five to contemplate. At a certain point your life just became about getting through it. “Right now, I want the people I love to be safe.”
“Good. And after that?”
Christ, Sam, he wanted to shout, I almost died tonight. But she knew that. What better time to ask oneself such a question?
“Stability,” he said, grasping for a response. And it felt true. “I never had it my whole life. Dad left when I was three. My mother was, well, you k
now. I couldn’t count on anything. I want a stable life. Useful work to do and, and...”
“Wife and kids?” she said.
“I don’t know about kids. I don’t want to screw up some innocent little bastard.”
“The way you were, you mean?”
“The way all parents screw up their kids. It’s not malicious, just inevitable.”
“It’s not,” she laughed. Lying down beside him, right up against him. For such a pale creature, she radiated heat. He craved her heat, and he wondered if he would ever be warm again.
“So you see a future for yourself,” she went on.
“You think I’m trying to get killed?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?”
“Not necessarily on purpose,” Sam replied. “But you can pursue a goal so intensely, you know? So relentlessly that it doesn’t leave room for a future.”
“Like Eddie.”
“Sure, like him. What would he have done if he shot you? Get shot himself. Go to jail. He wasn’t looking past his fear.”
“All I wanted was answers,” said Will sadly. “I didn’t want for anyone to get hurt.”
She pushed herself up on an elbow and made him look at her. Her blue eyes were gray in the darkness, but still bright. Hypnotizing.
“Eddie murdered Doc Chester.”
“We don’t know that,” he protested.
“You doubt it? I don’t. He’s been in plenty of trouble since. Threatening people about selling their homes. He was going to burn down your house! With you in it.”
Will had been thinking about that. The gas can, and Eddie’s words to him outside the Green Apple. Was it possible that the entire real estate scheme was an excuse to demolish this one house? As if somehow that would stop the demon, stop the deaths?
“This is how Eddie was going out,” Sam continued. “You can’t feel responsible.”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, you need to get over it. Eventually.” She kissed his forehead and looked at him again. “So you’re not after revenge?”