At Home in the Dark

by Joe Hill

  “You can’t go near there,” he told Lonergan, solemnly (and more than a little drunkenly). “You fall down that crack, there’d be no more you.”

  It was in that moment, gawking at his father’s cock, that Lonergan first understood the concept of death.

  No more you.

  So of course Lonergan spent a good part of his childhood and adolescence checking out the Crack and running little experiments. He’d throw shit down there and listen for the sound of the object hitting bottom. They never did. For all he knew, those objects were still falling.

  • • •

  Isaiah fits in the trunk okay, after a little folding and shoving and pushing.

  But the polar bears on the shower curtain stare up at Lonergan. He feels genuinely bad for them—Hailee thinks they’re cute. They are getting a raw deal, having to hang out with a rotting corpse for the rest of eternity. They look up at Lonergan like, what did we ever do to you, asshole?

  Jovie approaches from behind as Lonergan slams down the lid. She almost startles him.

  “Let me follow you over there,” she says.

  “You don’t even know where I’m going. And that’s the whole point.”

  “How are you going to get back?”

  “It’s not like I’m driving to Ohio.”

  The look on Jovie’s face tells Lonergan she’s going to continue to give him a hard time about this, right up until the minute he’s pulling down the driveway.

  “Look, you following me doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons. For one, you should be home with the kids.”

  “We can bring them.”

  “To watch me dump Brandon’s father’s body somewhere? Not a good idea. Besides, I really don’t want you knowing where I’m going.”

  “Why?”

  “Plausible deniability. And what if someone happens to see us? I’m going to have to disguise myself as it is.”

  Inside the front closet, Lonergan digs out a ratty old Jack Daniel’s cap that came free with a fifth a couple of years ago. Lonergan doesn’t like wearing baseball caps. He thinks his bulldog head looks weird in them.

  Lonergan squeezes the cap over his head and checks himself out in the closet mirror. Yeah. He looks pretty stupid. Jovie appears in the mirror.

  “Why don’t you call me and I’ll come pick you up?”

  “I’m not bringing my cell. Pretty sure the cell towers can track where you’re going at all times.”

  “I don’t even know how far you’ll be walking.”

  “My legs work just fine. I won’t be gone too long.”

  “If you’re going for a disguise, you’re going to need sunglasses.”

  “I lost my only pair, remember? Last year at the shore?”

  “You can borrow mine.”

  Before Lonergan can get the words but they’re lady sunglasses out of his mouth Jovie is already across the room and fishing them out of her purse. She puts them on his face. Oversized lenses with faux-gold trim and all.

  “How do you even wear these,” Lonergan says, looking in the mirror.

  “They’re stylish.”

  “I look like a bug.”

  “As long as you don’t look like yourself. Which is all that matters, right?”

  Jovie has a point. So with that, Lonergan kisses his wife on the lips and sets out to take care of the final arrangements of Isaiah Edwards.

  • • •

  To get to the Crack, Lonergan has to drive down the side of one mountain and go up another. Between those two mountains is the city of Wilkes-Barre, where he grew up. It was a city build on coal mining, and it was people like Isaiah who ruined it. Drug dealers, hopping the Martz bus up from Philly, to ply their wares among the hicks.

  Lonergan saw the city starting to change back in high school. The town square used to be a place to hang out, watch a movie, go shopping, gorge on Chinese food. Now it was a place to get knifed by people looking for their next fix. Heroin hit this place hard about 10 years ago. Which is why he bought a shack up in the mountains—to get away from this mess. The city was no place for Daria to grow up.

  But the heroin found her anyway.

  Much as Lonergan would like to take Isaiah’s corpse on a little tour of Wilkes-Barre, he doesn’t want to be spotted in the Charger. Too many people in town know his face, despite the Jack Daniel’s cap and ladies’ sunglasses.

  So he sticks to I-81, which takes you alongside Wilkes-Barre without actually dipping down into it. Then it’s up 309, straight for Giant’s Despair.

  As cars pass, Lonergan keeps his head low. Sunday morning nosy-bodies would probably notice the fancy car and the Texas plates, but hopefully not him.

  Soon, Lonergan is approaching the turn-off to the dirt road that will take him up to the Crack. The Charger’s engine screams as it climbs the hill. Lonergan swears he can hear Isaiah’s body bounce around, too, as he chugs up the 20 degree incline. But Lonergan is steady and patient. He knows the Charger will clear it, even if it feels like it might flip over backwards and go tumbling down the side of the mountain at any moment.

  10

  The polar bears won’t even look Lonergan in the eye now; they are resigned to their fate.

  Lonergan checks the trunk one last time just to make sure he isn’t leaving anything important behind. He doesn’t want to send Isaiah into the long hereafter only to later think, shit, so-and-so would have really been useful.

  On his final sweep through the car Lonergan considers the fancy over-sized tablet phone. Shit. He’d remembered to leave his own phone at home, only to forget this one. He presses the home button, but it’s password-and-thumb-print protected.

  Then Lonergan remembers he has access to Isaiah’s thumb. Both of them, in fact.

  And for a moment he considers opening up the phone and seeing what Isaiah’s been up to. Maybe he has hotel reservations somewhere, or emails from friends who have been hiding his drug-peddling ass for the past two months.

  But then Lonergan thinks better of it. This goes against the spirit of their original plan. Namely: pretend Isaiah never came knocking. So better not to open this phone or read anything on it. Because it won’t exist after it goes down into the Crack.

  Lonergan tosses the phone onto the dirt and then looks around until he finds a decent-sized rock. He crouches down and tries to pick it up, but his fingers refuse to work. You want us to actually grip something, after what you’ve put us through tonight?

  He considers stomping the phone with his sneakers. But he could imagine cops someday bagging his shoes and extracting microscopic pieces of glass that could be linked with Isaiah’s phone.

  So it has to be the rock.

  Lonergan crouches down and presses his palms against the sides of the rock. He lifts it, squeezes tight, then gives it a test pound on the dirt. The movement shoots new daggers of pain up his arms. But as long as he can keep the rock between his palms, he can smash Isaiah’s phone and the networking components inside of it.

  It takes a half-dozen slams until the tablet phone is reduced to electronic junk and shards of glass and twisted metal. Lonergan’s arms hurt like hell. But whatever. He’ll be able to rest them all day. Whiskey will certain help.

  Lonergan scoops up the parts with the sides of his hands and heaves them into the backseat of the Charger, then closes the door with his knee. Isaiah is headed to the afterlife like an Egyptian pharaoh, taking everything he brought up to Bear Creek. Well, minus the diapers and baby stuff.

  • • •

  Now comes the delicate part: guiding the Charger to the edge of the Crack and sending it down.

  An important part of the process is Lonergan not being inside the Charger when it tips over into the Crack. Lonergan sits behind the wheel, fires up the engine, which hesitates a little, as if it knows what’s coming. Lonergan throws it in neutral and engages the emergency brake, both of which hurt his hands more than he anticipated. He climbs out of the car, then reaches in and releases the brake. The Charger reluctantly
rolls forward an inch . . . and then stops.

  “Shit.”

  Lonergan eyeballs the terrain in the dim dawn light and realizes there’s a bit of an incline leading up to the edge of the Crack, which is something he didn’t remember.

  Crouching down beside the driver’s seat, he places his left hand on the accelerator while hooking his fingers around the bottom of the steering wheel.

  Lonergan pushes lightly on the pedal. The Charger jolts forward another inch. He gives it a slightly heavier push, and the Charger jumps a half foot, dragging Lonergan across the dirt a little. Lonergan removes his hand and then takes a deep breath. He stares at the Charger as if it’s trying to trick him into hanging on to the steering wheel the moment it tips over the edge. Ha ha, I’m taking you with me.

  Not in this lifetime.

  On the edge of the Crack, a lot of foliage had sprung up since the last time Lonergan had been here. He taps the pedal some more, and the shrubs begin to part in front of the Charger’s front fender. The opening of the Crack was close. One more goose to the gas pedal ought to do it . . .

  But then Lonergan stops. He looks in the direction of the trunk.

  Should he say a few words?

  No. Scumbag doesn’t deserve them.

  Lonergan punches the gas pedal and hops away from the Charger, which roars up over the edge and tips over into the abyss.

  And then stops.

  • • •

  The car is nearly vertical, engine still humming, and something is keeping it wedged at the opening of the Crack.

  The Charger looks like Winnie the Pooh, ass hanging out of a rabbit hole.

  Lonergan doesn’t understand it. He’s done this before—sent a car up and over the edge and down into the deep dark. That time, twenty odd years ago, things had gone off without a hitch, even though Lonergan was pretty drunk at the time. And he’s pretty sure that car was bigger than Isaiah’s fancy Charger, too. It was a 1990 Chevy Corsica, and they made cars a little boxier back then.

  So what happened in the meantime? Has the Crack narrowed, somehow? A seismic shift over 20 years that made it a poor choice for dumping cars with bodies in the trunk?

  Lonergan isn’t a geologist any more than he is a detective, but none of that matters now. Somehow, he has to shove the Charger the rest of the way into the Crack. Otherwise, somebody will find the car in a matter of days, they’ll find Isaiah’s body, they’d do some fancy CSI shit, and then he and Jovie would be writing to each other from their respective prisons.

  He walks over to the Charger and gives it good stomp on the rear bumper. Nothing. Stomps again, with the same result.

  This is so not good.

  Lonergan is tempted to give the Charger a full-on body tackle, or climb on top of the damned trunk and start jumping up and down. But Lonergan is pretty sure that would be too great a temptation for God, and Lonergan would end up like a Looney Tunes cartoon. You’d see his Jack Daniel’s cap and lady sunglasses suspended in the air while the rest of him followed the Charger down into the Crack. Only then would they gradually fall, and some rabbit would nibble on a carrot and make a wisecrack.

  No more you.

  Lonergan has to think of something.

  He climbs down onto his belly and pushes through the foliage at the edge, trying to figure out what is hanging things up. Soon, all became clear: it’s the goddamned tires. Oversized bastards Isaiah probably had put on custom-style.

  “Well shit. You’re all about the fancy stuff, aren’t you, Izzy.”

  If Lonergan is going to get this car down into the Crack, he’s going to have to deflate both of them.

  Back at home, Lonergan has any number of implements that would pop each of these fat tires like bubble wrap. But up here on top of Giant’s Despair, Lonergan has nothing but his near-useless hands.

  Lonergan knows he has to press down on the spring-loaded poppet inside each tire’s Schrader valve. Every 10-year-old with a bike knows how it works. But a 10-year-old has a lot more hand strength than Lonergan does at the moment.

  So he begins searching the ground for a nail, a metal pin, something, anything. For a good long time, it is a fruitless search. Lonergan feels like he’s on his knees for months. The sun climbs higher in the sky, as if God’s focusing a spotlight on him.

  “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that, Izzy?”

  If Isaiah has a response, he doesn’t share it with Lonergan.

  Lonergan brushes aside wet leaves and finds the metal chassis of a toy car. There is a lot of rust on the damned thing. Some kid probably left it here a couple of decades ago. For all he knows, Lonergan may have been that kid.

  Lonergan crawls up next to the Charger, unscrews the plastic cap, then presses the toy car chassis onto the poppet. Air hisses out of the tire like a long, silent fart. Lonergan thinks he’s going to be here for a while. But after a few seconds, and completely without warning, the Charger slips into the Crack.

  Lonergan’s survival instincts kick in and he rolls away quick.

  The problem with survival instincts is that they’re short-sighted; they don’t exactly take in the Big Picture. Lonergan lunges out with both hands and claws his fingers into the dirt. His legs swing out and he feels the sensation of absolutely nothing beneath them. As the dirt starts to fall away from beneath his hands, Lonergan hears his father’s voice: no more you.

  11

  Lonergan is too panicked to be aware that the Charger dropped all the way down into the Crack. His eyes don’t know how to process what they’re seeing, and there’s a roar in his ears that blanks out all rational thought.

  His hands continue to claw and claw and claw . . .

  . . . and then his dumb fingers brush against something that feels like a jagged edge of granite. Oh please. He (thinks) he curls his fingers into tight claws and squeezes the edge the rock as tight as he can. His body weight wants to tug them right off, but he hangs on.

  Lonergan thanks whatever preternatural forces conspired to give him a lifeline with this fucking rock. He vows to never let go. He promises to go to bed early, say his prayers, spend the rest of his life comforting the sick and dying.

  Spiritual intensions are one thing; physical capability is another. Lonergan maintains his grip on the miracle root for approximately six seconds before his eight trembling fingers slip off the edge of the rock anyway.

  He falls.

  Sheer instinct causes Lonergan to throw out his arms and legs like a skydiver. As he falls the toes of his boots scrape against the interior wall of the Crack while his useless fingers spread open to catch hold of something, anything, please don’t let this be it. Something reaches up out of the darkness, twists Lonergan’s ankle, then punches him in the face.

  • • •

  The blood rushes to his head. It takes a long moment to figure out what’s happened to him.

  He’s upside-down, with his boot caught on something. Lonergan has no idea what, but for the moment it doesn’t matter. For all he cares God could have reached down into the Crack and caught Lonergan’s heel with two fingers, Achilles-style.

  He reaches up—or down, he doesn’t really know—to touch his face, which is throbbing. His nose and mouth slammed hard against the jagged rock wall. Blood leaks out of his split lip and pulses out of his nostrils. Only Lonergan could manage to have a nosebleed while hanging upside-down.

  Lonergan allows himself a small moan of disgust, then spits out some blood. Time to assess the situation.

  Under his head there is a yawning void, a darkness that is the most utter black Lonergan has ever seen. The Charger is down there somewhere. Maybe—he was too busy scrambling to survive to listen for the crash. Though did he hear the sound of metal scraping? Or was that the screaming inside his own brain?

  Below his boots—or above him, technically—is the opening to the Crack, which appears to be two stories away.

  How in the hell is he going to get up there?

  Lonergan can’t even fake a sense of ri
ghteous indignation. If there is such a thing as karma, it is laughing its ass off right now.

  • • •

  If it were any other day, Lonergan would twist around until he pulled his foot loose and let the darkness take him. This is what he deserves.

  But this isn’t any other day.

  Right now, Jovie and the kids are waiting for him to return. What would happen if he never came home? It’s not as if Jovie knows where he is. That’s the whole point. If he dies down here she’ll never know what happened. Maybe she’ll think that Isaiah wasn’t dead after all, only faking it, and at some point he overpowered Lonergan and dumped his body somewhere. And he is just waiting for the right moment to come back and take the baby—and maybe take his revenge on Jovie. How will she be able to live that way?

  No, Lonergan refuses to die down in this Crack. He’s fine with dying above ground, just as long as Jovie knows about it.

  Lonergan snorts up blood, spits it out. The spray is messy. More blood ends up on him than on the wall. Wonderful.

  Taking a deep breath, he tries to do a sit-up so he can assess the deal with his foot. The first sit-up reveals nothing, because it’s barely a sit-up. God, he’s been lazy. Lonergan has worked construction since he was 16, and the physical labor kept him reasonably fit . . . until nine months ago, when he stopped working because of his hands. Puttering around the house, he drank more beer than he should. Ate too many sandwiches, ordered too many pizzas, and did very little to work it off. Karma again. What a bitch.

  Lonergan grunts and does another sit-up, his upper-body almost making it to the perpendicular point. He squints but can’t see much of his foot. Is it caught on another root? Entirely possible.

  It takes as much effort to slowly bring his body back to the starting position. Lonergan doesn’t want to just let go and smack the back of his head off the rock wall.

  Nausea washes over him. Maybe it’s a delayed reaction to everything—the murder, the fall, the face-slam. Or maybe it’s because he’s done two sit-ups.

  Lonergan holds his breath and waits for the feeling to pass. Puking would not be ideal at this very moment.

  While he rests, Lonergan considers what he might be able to do if he can free his foot. Wouldn’t that be a scream, being trapped like this until he passes out and dies. Someday spelunkers would find an upside-down skeleton hanging from the side of the rock wall.