Dark August

by Katie Tallo

  “You’re right. I guess I just wanted to be close to her. Got caught up in it. I know there’s really nothing there in all that evidence. I’ll leave it alone. I promise.”

  “That a girl.”

  Gus can’t help but smile. She loves her uncle Rory. Her mother did too in her own way. A pity-filled love, but a love nonetheless. Shannon understood something else about Rory that Gus is just now realizing.

  The less Rory is involved the better.

  THE REST OF THE DAY IS STINKING HOT. GUS TAKES LEVI FOR A cool evening walk. As the rosy sky turns a lovely marine blue, Gus mulls over what Stanton told her about Henry. About Kep’s murder. About Shannon being like a dog with a bone. About her wild theories. Gus desperately wants to sit next to Shannon in her office in the garage, look up at that corkboard of evidence, and talk to her about what she knows for sure and what she only suspects. She wants to hear all of Shannon’s wild theories and so much more.

  Gus realizes there is one other person, besides her, who saw her mother during those last days and nights of her life. Augusta’s babysitter, Annalee. Maybe she remembers something. Has some fragment of information that the police don’t know or won’t share.

  Gus does the math in her head. Annalee was fifteen when she babysat for Shannon. She lived on the same street two blocks down. Number 256. That was twelve years ago. She’d be in her late twenties. Probably moved out by now.

  But maybe her parents stayed put.

  Back at Rose’s, Gus makes a quick call to 411 and gets the phone number. The Franklins still live at 256 Hilda. Ken and Beckie. She calls.

  Beckie answers. She remembers Gus and her mother, Shannon. Says she could never forget either of them. Says it like their story is one she’s shared often. Beckie tells her that Annalee now works as a hairdresser at Supercuts in Kanata. Lives with her boyfriend out there. They don’t see her much anymore. Her voice cracks a little. She tries to keep Gus on the phone, asking her questions about her own life. Gus lies about having a job and about going to university, then she asks for Annalee’s cell number. Says she wants to touch base. Grab lunch. Beckie says her daughter will be so happy to hear from her, but at the moment she’s backpacking across Europe. France, she thinks. Maybe Spain. She’s not sure when she’ll be back, but if Gus does eventually speak to Annalee, Beckie tells her to be sure to say hello from her. Like she can’t call her own daughter. Something is broken between them. The wavering in Beckie’s voice tells Gus this fracture causes her a lot of pain. Gus is happy to hang up. Mother pain is the worst.

  She dials Annalee’s number. Voice mail. She leaves a message, asking her to call when she gets back from her trip. As Gus hangs up, she suddenly feels unreasonably desperate to speak to Annalee. As if in doing so, her babysitter will be able to shed some incredibly bright light on her mother’s movements the night she died. On her motivations. On her innermost thoughts. Gus knows she’s being completely irrational, but it feels good to pretend that a young woman in Spain or France is carrying around some fragment of the truth about her mother in her backpack.

  It’s just past nine when Gus retreats to her bedroom. Her oasis. Turns off the lights and turns on the TV. Settles next to a tray of her favorite snacks. Peanut butter on Ritz crackers, a mini Mars bar, dry Honeycomb cereal, and cream soda. The blue flickering of the TV dances across her comforter as she watches an old movie with Cary Grant. It’s about a reporter getting a scoop on an escaped convict. Gus is not really following the plot. Her mind dips in and out of another story that hangs suspended above the bed. The one Renata shared about Kep Halladay’s life. The article about his life mentioned that he’d not been seen since August 4, 2006. That’s it. No blood. No suspicions or theories. Almost dismissive of foul play. As if he decided to retire to Mexico and live out his days drinking margaritas.

  Maybe Renata wrote around the truth more than once.

  First about June’s accident. Then about her father’s disappearance. Or maybe the police hid the facts from the press.

  Levi’s gone to bed in Rose’s room.

  The old movie pulsates. Light banter hums from the screen. Screwball antics. Swelling music. Reminds Gus of lazy Sunday afternoons when she’d lay spooned against her mother on the sofa, watching black-and-white movies. Warm. Safe. Monday hovering closer with each passing hour. Back to school. A distant, bitter pill stuck to her tongue.

  What was her mother thinking as she lay with one arm across her daughter? Monday looming for her too. Where did she go when she pretended to go to work? Out looking for Henry? Out poking around Kep Halladay’s hometown?

  Questions bubble over into full-on pins and needles in her legs and arms. Gus gets out of bed. Too restless to just lie there. She heads downstairs to her mother’s wall for answers. She doesn’t have to turn on the light in the living room. The blue moon lights up the wall. Gus blurs her eyes. Looks closely at the shapes of the collage in front of her. A pattern slowly reveals itself in the shadowy light. She can see three distinct blocks of evidence on the wall. Three bones that her mother couldn’t let go.

  The first is all about Gracie. The little girl who captured her mother’s heart.

  June’s girl being so young, losing her mother.

  Henry is in the second. He captured her attention. He was the reason she was drawn back to investigating Halladay. Stanton said it.

  Then the Neil kid went missing and she was like a dog with a bone.

  The third block is what kept her mother digging. It’s all business. Kep Halladay’s. Each block is connected. Each leading her mother to the next. Each holding her tight.

  Gus scans this third block. The one with the newspaper clipping from early 2004. The article about Senator Halladay’s landmark business deal with a gas company. It details how a previously undiscovered vein of shale was unearthed, stretching clear across the county. The business tycoon didn’t own the land, but he owned the mineral rights. The deed, signed just a few months earlier, details his purchase of those rights from thirty-three local farmers.

  Gus ponders his timing. Extremely fortuitous. Like he had a crystal ball and knew those rights were about to come in handy. Make him a fortune. And Henry was conducting mineral surveys for the senator. Maybe he was the crystal ball.

  Augusta steps closer to the missing persons report filed by Henry’s parents. In his statement, Kep Halladay confirms the boy hasn’t been seen by anyone at Halladay House in over two weeks. He says this on July 16, 2003. Gus examines the date on the surveillance photograph where her mother wrote Henry’s name beside a question mark. It’s date-stamped July 14, 2003. There’s a door knocker in the photo. A lion’s head. She’s seen it somewhere else. She scans the other photos on the wall and finds it. Behind Gracie, the ballerina, posing on the veranda in the Polaroid. It’s the same porch. The lion’s head door knocker is in both images. Henry was at Halladay House. That has to be where the girl is standing.

  Augusta’s brain is woozy with truths and lies and questions. She stares at her mother’s wall. One minute it feels like the stars are about to align and then nothing. She’s left with a vast universe of random ideas colliding then drifting away.

  She lets the nothingness prevail for now and ambles back to bed. Pulls the comforter to her chin and settles deep into the pillows and drifts off.

  Suddenly everything falls away. Ice-cold water hits Augusta’s eight-year-old face. She’s stricken with a terrible sickening jolt in her belly. It’s so dark. Glass shatters and pricks her skin like a million bee stings. Water rushes over her small arms, up her neck and over her head.

  She can’t breathe.

  Augusta tries to suck in air.

  Opens her eyes.

  Gasps.

  Begins to breathe again.

  She sits up in bed. Soaked with sweat. Trembling as a terrible knowing creeps across her wet, tingling skin, chilling her to her core.

  These vivid midsummer dreams are more than just dreams.

  They are memories.

&nb
sp; 23

  Elgin

  AT SUNRISE, GUS AND LEVI HAVE ALREADY LOOPED DOWN the ramp on the Queensway that splits south toward the 416. Windows rolled down. Summer heat rippling across the pavement despite the early hour.

  Eighty miles later, they’re parked under the willow where they ran into James Pratt and Jocko and have begun to walk. Past the blockade. Straight down the cracked highway toward Elgin. Gus has her satchel looped over one shoulder. The usual supplies. With one add-on. Rose’s gun. Last time she was out this way, there was someone watching her in the cemetery. Might still be around. Better safe than sorry.

  They crest a rise in the road. There it is. They can see the edge of town.

  An abandoned water tower stands just outside Elgin like a rusty sentinel watching over the town’s ghosts.

  It’s midmorning as they enter the town, passing a sign that says WELCOME TO ELGIN, POPULATION 342. Someone has spray-painted an X across the 342 and added a zero next to it. The sign is mounted in a cobwebbed wrought-iron frame. The lower part of the sign is a tourist map. Its bright colors are muted by a thin layer of grime. Gus wipes a palm across the map so she can get a better look at the town. The map lays out the dozen or so streets that make up the two-by-three-mile hamlet. A numbered legend runs alongside the map pinpointing the town’s key features. The two churches, the general store, the funeral home, the town barber, and the central square at the crossroads of Main and Halladay. The square looks to be a couple of miles away in the heart of the town.

  Gus and Levi head straight down Main Street. Side by side.

  It’s like walking into Armageddon. Gus feels like they are the last beings on the planet. The streets are deserted. Silent. Except for the rustling of a hawk picking at bugs in the eaves of a boarded-up house. Gus and Levi walk on either side of the broken yellow line in the middle of the road toward the heart of Elgin. Glancing into the smashed-out windows of a hardware store. The goods on its shelves coated with soot. There’s a diner where a few dirty dishes litter the tables. A funeral home that leans awkwardly to one side. A grocery store, many of the shelves bare, as if someone scavenged all the packaged and canned goods. The meat and produce were left to decompose into piles of ash and bone or to be eaten by rodents and raccoons. The sewer catch basins are rimmed with yellow grease that runs down the trough next to the curbs. An oily river.

  “Stay close, dog.”

  Most striking of all is the stench. Like a barbecue over a neighbor’s fence, only the steak’s rotten and burned to a crisp. Gus wonders how safe it is for them to be breathing in the pungent air. Levi finds a broken spatula. Picks it up and begins dancing like a puppy with a stick, trying to make her play keep-away.

  “Drop that.”

  He ignores her and dances closer to the oil slick at the side of the road.

  “Levi, no. Heel.”

  She lunges for the spatula, but he dekes. Then she remembers the dog cookie in her satchel. She finds it and holds it out. He drops the spatula and bounces over. Bites the air. She pulls it away.

  “Gentle.”

  She rolls her eyes. He stares. She gives up. Hands him the cookie and he snaps at it, nipping her fingers.

  “Ouch. That’s not gentle.”

  She grabs his collar and hooks on his leash.

  They continue down Main. Just past a crossroads, Augusta stops. Something isn’t right up ahead. The road looks warped in the distance. As they continue walking, everything becomes hideously black. Rooftops of buildings are bubbled. Hardening into tumorous aberrations. Hydro poles are twisted where they stand. Power lines litter the street like streamers left over from a parade. Shards of burnt wood and bricks and glass confetti the pavement. Only this was no parade. Something far more sinister blew through town, turning everything in its wake black as night.

  The yellow line at her feet is gone. A layer of soot coats the road, the sidewalks, shops, signposts, newspaper boxes, abandoned cars, a fire hydrant, and a bicycle tipped to one side in a metal stand. All are smeared with black death.

  Still some distance from the center of town, they begin to see it. A massive blackened crater the length of a football field. The epicenter of the explosion. Nothing at the heart of town escaped the scorching heat. Not a tree. Not a bench. It’s all gone. There is no town square. The small hamlet that Renata spoke of so lovingly has no heart. It was forever changed that day.

  Gus inches her way toward the edge of the crater. Levi barks and pulls in the opposite direction just as the earth beneath her feet shifts and falls away. She scurries back to solid ground. He sensed it before she even noticed.

  She looks down. Just a few feet in front of her, the ground is moving. It’s barely perceptible. As her eyes track toward the center of the crater, the earth is turning faster. Looks gooey. Like quicksand. At its core the molten liquid swirls clockwise and disappears into a bubbling hole.

  The crater is alive. Breathing and sputtering.

  Augusta looks for a way around. She moves to her left. Big mistake. The hard earth crumbles, giving way to a muddy pool underneath. Her shoes disappear into a murky soup. Levi scrambles away. She drops his leash, but he doesn’t run off. He barks and lunges for her. Augusta falls backward toward him, landing on the edge of the crumbling earth. He takes hold of her jean jacket in his teeth as she crab-walks backward and drags her heels out of the mud with Levi’s help.

  Back on solid ground, she wraps her arms around her dog. Holds him tight. When she lets go, he shakes off the dirt but stays close.

  They both look around. Taking in what’s left of downtown Elgin. The catastrophic explosion obliterated the main intersection and caused a fire to rage through town, rendering most of it a wasteland of broken trees and burned-out vehicles. A war zone. She can see why no one bothered coming back. No one could live here.

  As terrible and strange as this place looks, somehow Gus gets it. This wasteland. Where the everyday stuff of life has been ripped away in a split second. She knows how that feels. To be worried about homework one minute and wondering what to wear to your mother’s funeral the next. Everything normal ripped away like a Band-Aid torn off an open wound. There’s something strangely comforting about this blackened town. Strangely familiar. Gus rubs her dirtied hands on the backside of her jeans. Reaches into her satchel for her phone. Takes photos of the barren streets surrounding the warped crater. A hawk loops overhead. Levi barks.

  “He’s not circling for us, Levi.”

  The dog barks again. She looks at him. He’s not looking at the hawk. He’s staring across the crater. She follows his gaze. A lone figure stands in the middle of the road on the far side. A heat mirage obscuring their warbly face. Levi growls. Gus lifts her phone to take a photo, but the figure disappears behind a building. Gone before she can snap it. She’s reminded of the man on the hill near the cemetery and wonders if it’s the same person. A caretaker? Security guard? Former resident who never left? Maybe a squatter or a hiker just passing through?

  She decides to find out.

  Gus picks up Levi’s leash. They head down a side street, giving themselves a wide berth around the crater. She’s hoping there’s a way to circle the town’s epicenter. The farther away from ground zero they get, the more Mother Nature has managed to poke her head up from the devastation. Moss creeps along cracks in the sidewalks. Dandelions crowd around fire hydrants. Ivy winds up posts on front porches. Crabgrass steals across potholes and into basement windows.

  A few blocks from the crater, Gus lets Levi off the leash again. She takes pictures of derelict houses, shops, a swing set in a small park, an abandoned school bus, a street sign, and a bus shelter. Levi eats the heads off dandelions but stays close. The pair comes to a dead end where a small white brick building sits. It’s covered in a mess of pink wisterias. An unexpected burst of color amid the decay. She takes a picture. The flowers remind her of the purple loosestrife covering the fields outside town. Thriving where little else does. A plastic sign hangs from the building.

/>   LOIS GREENAWAY’S DANCE ACADEMY

  Bells ring in Augusta’s brain. Stanton mentioned the name Lois. A dance instructor. The one who took Gracie in when her grandfather disappeared. Has to be the same woman. Lois Greenaway. Gus knows the name from somewhere else too. She digs through her satchel and finds her notebook. Flips through the pages. Lois Greenaway and Edgar Greenaway. Two of the victims of the fire.

  Under great clumps of wisteria and encased in Plexiglas, a bulletin board hangs on the side of the dance academy. Augusta pulls back the flowery vines from the Plexiglas. Tacked to the board are a collection of photographs and a dance class schedule from 2013. The year of the fire.

  One photo features a group of dancers wearing identical red sequin leotards with large white maple leaves attached to their shoulders like wings. Fifth-place medals are strung around their necks on ribbons. They’re all smiles. Red lips. Teeth showing. Eyes painted like showgirls. Can’t be more than seven years old. One tiny dancer in the back row has half her face hidden behind the wing of another, but Augusta recognizes her right away.

  “Look, Levi, it’s Gracie.”

  She takes a photo. Turns and realizes Levi’s not beside her.

  Then she hears him barking in the distance. She can’t spot him.

  She jogs away from the dead end to a cross street. Sees him just as his bum squeezes under a fence. She runs over. A sign lies on its side against the fence. JUNKYARD BLUES AUTO SALVAGE. She’s never been a fan of salvage yards since hearing the story of how her dad met his end. Wonders if it’s an omen. She hesitates, then just as she’s about to launch herself up and over the fence, Levi reappears, squeezing back under. A stick of black licorice hangs from the corner of his mouth. He chokes it down in one bite.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Gus stands on tiptoes and peeks through the fence. A rusty car blocks her view. She grips the top and hoists herself up to get a better view. Just as her head pops up, a large knife hurtles through the air and sticks into the fence inches from her face. She lets go of her grip, pitches backward, and falls on her back. Without thinking, Gus riffles through her satchel for Rose’s gun. She finds it and fires a shot in the air. Levi nearly jumps out of his skin. He lands legs spread, still as a statue. The shot crackles across the abandoned town.