Salvage

by Duncan Ralston

  "I think you're avoiding the question."

  "Well, it's complicated," he said. "Okay, more to the point. My sister believed that ghosts and God couldn't exist in the same universe. You've read her journal, you know what I mean. See, the Bible does talk about spirit beings, but they're generally interpreted as angels and demons. There's only one instance of an actual haunting in the Bible, but it's not by a ghost, it's a man possessed by demons, haunting a graveyard."

  "So… what? You think Crouch and the others are demons? Or angels?"

  "I don't know what I believe," he said. "I'd never even considered the possibility of ghosts until last week."

  "I wish I could say the same," she said, turning back to the trees that whipped by her window, squinting out, her face brightened by intermittent sunlight.

  They drove in silence, gravel crunching under the tires. In the rear-view mirror, a big old black '70s monster with a shiny, toothy grill emerged from the cloud of dust kicked up behind them. Owen took the corner, and for a moment, it disappeared behind the trees. Then it was back, hogging the road, swerving wildly.

  Maniac, Owen thought. "If we take what the Bible says literally," he said, trying to ignore his creeping paranoia, "demons, or a single demon, has been using Crouch and his congregation as puppets, for their own nefarious purposes. That's one interpretation."

  "You're using rationality to explain the irrational. Isn't believing in ghosts the same as faith, too?"

  "Whether it's demons or ghosts we're dealing with, we're in trouble."

  "Right."

  Behind them, the elderly engine roared. The big American car lurched forward, catching up, and the driver laid on the horn. Jo twisted to look over the seat.

  "Who the hell is this?" Owen asked.

  "That's Jeb's car. Pete Jebson." She scowled. "What's he doing?"

  Owen kept driving to a long, straight stretch and pulled over into the soft ditch. Jeb's behemoth tore up gravel as it ground to a halt behind them.

  The old man wore a look of deep concern as he hauled himself out, visible even before he stood alongside his car. Something was wrong. Smoke or steam rose from the hood. The engine rattled angrily.

  Owen and Jo got out of the car. Owen recognized Pete Jebson right away—he was the bearded old man from Lori's funeral, the man who'd told Owen he looked just like his father. He understood now the old man had meant Crouch, although having seen his father, Owen hardly thought they looked alike. The argument Jeb and his mother had must have been about him being at the funeral. She must have been worried the old man would reveal the truth to Owen, and ordered him to leave.

  "Jeb?" Jo said, moving toward him. "What's wrong?"

  The old man began waving his arms fervently, gesturing for her to steer clear. "You aren't safe!" he shouted. "None of us are! I never should have trusted him! Dink… oh, God, Dink Deakins is dead! Drowned in his canoe! I never should have—"

  The hood shot upward with a vicious BOOM!

  Blackened debris shot out on a gust of blistering steam. Owen and Jo ducked back from the explosion; Pete Jebson wasn't so lucky. A small chunk of metal smashed through the rear window of Owen's car, while Jeb threw his hands up to his face. In a moment, blood began to pour from between his fingers.

  Jo cried Jeb's name, hurrying to his side, and Owen took up behind her, eyeballing the steam still rising from the hood with caution, his mind making unconscious connections: Steam and water, water and Crouch, Crouch and death.

  "Get away from the car!" he shouted to Jo, who threw an irritated look over her shoulder before reaching out to the old man, saying something softly to Jeb, trying to keep him calm. Jeb pushed her hands away, revealing his face. Looking at Jeb's ruined face reminded Owen of Brother Woodrow in his dream, though Jeb had suffered far worse: flaps of skin and white, blood-streaked hair hung loose from glistening muscle and bone, his right eye obliterated, the other rolling wildly in its socket. Jeb's lower lip had been completely torn off, his teeth shattered, sharp little pink and white bits left in his moaning, bloody hole of a mouth that opened and closed as if Jeb were a fish gasping for breath.

  Jo stumbled back, a look of horror in her tear-rimmed eyes as she brought a hand to her widened lips. "Jeb—" she said, quietly, as if raising her voice might make his injuries somehow worse, "Jeb, we need to take you to the hospital."

  The old man shook his head violently, red flaps of flesh waggling like lures on a fishing vest. "Ay… away," the old man said with his lipless mouth, and he stumbled off half-blind into the woods.

  Jo turned to Owen with a distressed look, then followed after the old man. Owen gave the old car a wide berth and chased after her.

  Pete Jebson slid down the gravel ditch on his ass. He got to his feet unsteadily, snagged himself in the brambles of a raspberry bush, and tore his shirt breaking free to the other side. Jo avoided the bushes, trudging over a slightly less prickly juniper, and Owen followed in her footsteps. The old man broke for the trees then, swinging his arms out before him, low spruce branches springing forward then back again as he brushed through. He bumped headfirst into a white birch as Owen and Jo caught up to him. His blood streaked its pale flesh, looking like a blazing red trail marker.

  Owen took the old man by the shoulder, trying to be both forceful and delicate. Jeb jerked free and lurched onward, dead leaves crunching underfoot. It was a straight shot through the stand of birches to the clear blue sky.

  "He's heading for the water," he told Jo.

  She nodded, sickly grim. "Crouch is calling him home," she said, watching the old man stagger away.

  Owen rushed after him. Jo hurried alongside him, but when Owen glanced at her and saw the look in her eyes, he knew her heart was no longer in it. She merely pushed on with a vacant stare. They finally caught up to Jeb at the cliff's edge, where he stood silhouetted against the clear blue sky and a skeletal line of hydro towers teetering on the smooth, round bedrock. The loose white sack of his obliterated eye swung on its socket like a clock's pendulum as he turned drunkenly toward Jo and Owen, holding out his arms to steady himself. Off to the right was the massive Mushkoweban Falls Hydroelectric Dam, a smooth wall of concrete with eight sluice tunnels pouring water down into the river below. The roaring water spread out like a frothy cloud.

  "I'ng… solly," the old man said, an apology uttered without lips, a look of shame and guilt still recognizable on the ruin of his face. He took a lurching step backward before either of them could seize him.

  Jo gasped as the old man tumbled over the edge. A moment later, they heard the dull crunch of the old man's bones. Something had broken his fall toward the lake. Owen stepped to the edge and looked down. Jeb had landed on an outcrop a few feet from where they stood, his broken body twisted back around the stump of a tree that had grown at the edge of the cliff. Twenty, thirty feet farther along the edge, and he would have dashed his brains out on the rocky shore below; here, he'd only succeeding in drawing out his pain. He groaned. His tongue came out to lick at his splintered teeth, and came away bloodied.

  Owen looked for a way to climb down without killing himself. The bedrock was smooth, and seemed to have no footholds. Far below, waves crashed against jagged rocks, a vertiginous height. Jeb groaned again, his legs jittering like a dead insect's.

  "Look," Jo said.

  At first Owen couldn't see what she was pointing at. He had to shade his eyes with a hand before he spotted the glistening moisture creeping up the rocks at the base of the cliff. He turned to Jo, catching something in her eyes he couldn't place.

  "What the hell is—?" he started, but he understood before he'd finished. Crouch had called Pete Jebson home; and the Blessed Trinity were rolling out the welcome mat.

  A puddle of water began spreading on the ground around them. Dead pine needles crept forward as the rising water gathered bark and twigs and bits of moss—along with a snail, the stalks of its eyes writhing confusedly—and moved it toward Jeb with a gentle ssshhhhhh. Unholy terror seized Owe
n, then, as the water suddenly rose from the ground, sloughing off the detritus it had gathered—rose and took shape, swirling like a cyclone, lifting Jeb into the air as he moaned in anguish, his limbs jerking outward, his tongue twisting like a blind snake. His remaining eye bulged in dazed fear. Blood spilled from his gaping jaw, and seemed to ooze from his pores as the water spout eddied around him.

  Owen thought he recognized the look in Jo's eyes then: she'd seen this thing before.

  The water spout splashed onto the ground as if it had been poured from a bucket, pitching the old man's ragged remains back over the edge, this time to the rocks below. With a meaty thud, what was left of Pete Jebson bounded off the rocks and into the surge.

  5

  Owen and Jo stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing down at the place where Pete Jebson had disappeared into the whitewater, watching for the river to creep upward again, to shape itself—but the water that had been solid enough to fling a man to his death moments before merely evaporated on the hot rocks, and nothing further emerged from the churning river.

  Jo suddenly stalked away.

  "Wait," Owen called, chasing after her. "What was that?"

  She kept walking, facing the road. "I don't know."

  "You've seen it before. Don't lie to me, Jo."

  She rounded on him. "Yes, I've seen it before! What difference does it make? Is it gonna bring Jeb back? Howie Lansall? Your sister?"

  Owen felt the fresh sting of Lori's death as if he'd only just now heard of it. He stood there, hollowed out, mouth agape, as Jo approached him with an accusing finger.

  "If Crouch hadn't wanted you back here, none of this would have happened! That lake was quiet until she came here! Crouch probably had no idea you and your mother had survived the flood until Lori stepped into that lake!"

  "What, so you're blaming me for this? Like it's my fault I was born? Like it's my fault that monster is my father?"

  "You never should have come back," she said weakly, shaking her head. She struck him in the chest. "You should have stayed away."

  Owen took her by the wrist. She struggled, turning her face away. He snatched her other hand and pulled her close. "If you really think this wouldn't have happened without me, what do you think Crouch is doing? He brought me here to end this. One way or the other, I'm going to make them rest."

  She faced him, a look of concern twisting her lips. "What do you mean, 'or the other'?"

  "He wants me to drown; I think we've established that much. If busting open that church and burying what's left of them doesn't work…"

  Jo looked up at him expectantly, fearfully. Owen thought back to that night in his mother's house, the sound of the faucet drawing him to the bathroom, the plunk of drops into a full tub. He remembered running his own bath, needing desperately to know how it had felt for Lori to drown. His father's poison had already entered his mind by then. Owen remembered the bliss in Crouch's eyes as his father held him under. "We have to end this," he said. "And I think I know how. But first we need to warn the others. Beau Parrish and Mr. Wickman could be in danger."

  They pulled into Beau's Self-Serve on the way to Skip's office. The grease-covered kid Owen had seen on his first day in town approached the car. He peered down through the window, first at Owen, then at Jo, squinting when he saw her. Owen wondered if this kid knew her as Crazy Jo, or if the younger generation was unaware of the name.

  "He'p you?" he said.

  "I hope so. Is Beau around?"

  "Beau went off to his kid's place in Haliburton, left me to take care of the shop. Whatcha want with Beau, anyways?"

  "Never mind," Jo said, leaning over Owen to look out at the boy. "Thanks for your help."

  The kid looked confused. "You don't want no gas or nothin?"

  Owen glanced at the gas gauge. "Looks like we're good, thanks."

  The kid gave the car the same look Beau had given it, looking at it as if it were an alien spacecraft, then took off his hat and wiped his grease-streaked brow with his forearm.

  Pulling out of the station, Jo remarked, "I guess he's safe if he's not Beau's kin."

  "Kin?" Owen said, and giggled.

  She shrugged. "It felt appropriate."

  Owen agreed with a nod. "Let's find Skip."

  Less than five minutes later, they pulled up in front of the realtor's office. The lot was empty, but it was possible Skip had walked to work on such a nice day. They approached the door together. It was locked, the lights out inside. A CLOSED sign had been placed in the window.

  "This doesn't look good," Owen said.

  "He's probably just out on a showing. Don't be so paranoid."

  Owen shaded his eyes to peer into the darkened office. Nothing looked out of place. He noted, gratefully, the lack of puddles on the floor. "Maybe," he said.

  Jo was looking at FOR SALE postings in the window when he stepped away from the door. "Owen, I think I know where to find him."

  He came to her side. She pointed at a bungalow advertised as a "starter home," a cozy fixer-upper with "excellent bones."

  "Why there?"

  "Location, location, location," she said.

  Fifteen minutes later, they found Skip's Caddy parked in the long drive at 12 Peace Falls Road, a hatchback behind it. The man himself was shaking the hands of a young, nicely dressed couple with their child in a stroller. Owen and Jo got out of Owen's car and bustled up the drive as the couple tucked their child in its car seat, both father and mother smiling and twiddling their fingers in its face. Owen felt a twinge of sadness, seeing this: the happy family he'd never had.

  The bungalow stood on a hill overlooking the lake, an ugly house on a beautiful piece of valuable waterfront property. Skip spotted them. "Owen!" he said, coming toward them and sticking out a hand. While Owen shook it, Skip turned his winning smile on Jo. "Well, well, the old crew's back together, huh? To what do I owe this extreme pleasure?"

  "Not what," Owen said, "who. Everett Crouch."

  Skip's brow furrowed. He peered between them at the young family, who were standing by their car with puzzled looks. "Will you excuse us a moment?" The woman nodded, and Skip ushered Jo and Owen aside. "I guess I should have known seeing the two of you back together was bad news," he muttered. "What's this about Crouch?"

  "He's back, Skip," Owen said.

  "He never left," Jo corrected.

  Skip gazed at the two of them, expressionless. Then he laughed as if it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Crouch," he said dubiously, eyes watering.

  "He just took another victim back to his church," Jo said. Owen watched Skip's face for a response, disbelief, perhaps; but the man's face remained expressionless, passive. "A waterspout picked Pete Jebson up and dragged him into the river."

  "The Hand of God," Skip said ominously, looking off toward the lake. He turned to Owen, perhaps unsure whether he should put his trust in Crazy Jo. "You saw this, too?"

  "His radiator exploded in his face," Owen said. "Crouch is using the water. You're not safe; none of us are safe anywhere there's water."

  "And what do you expect me to do?" Skip said. "Run away? Barricade myself in my house?" He pulled a sarcastic look of surprise. "Oh, wait. I suppose I can't do that, can I? Running water."

  "We just came to tell you to be careful," Jo said, seemingly aggravated. Owen guessed she thought they were wasting their time, that Skip would never believe her.

  "Look," Skip said, "let me say goodbye to these lovely people and I'll be right back." He gave Jo a look. "Is that okay?"

  Jo shrugged up her shoulders, nodding. Skip walked away. "He won't believe us," she said, once Skip had stepped out of earshot.

  "We'll make him believe us. We'll take him out to Jeb's car."

  "We should have called the cops."

  "And tell them what? We tell the police, and I'm gonna be a suspect. First my sister, then Howie, who I was seen with the day before he died, and now I'm present at the scene of Pete Jebson's death? It's cut and dry."

&n
bsp; "I'd back up your story."

  "You think Constable Selkie would believe you? He still calls you Crazy Jo."

  She looked at Owen, his words having obviously stung her.

  "I'm sorry, okay?" She shied from his touch. "But just… we have to keep this to ourselves. Just for a little while longer. A day or two, no more. They go digging up those bones down there and bury them, and we'll never figure out what happened to those people in that church."

  "Unless someone confesses."

  "Whoever did it has lived with their guilt for thirty years. Why would they confess now? Dink and Jeb are already the fall guys. We need to figure out how to end this without involving anyone else. Without getting anyone else hurt." He watched her eyes, waiting for a reaction. "Right?"

  She nodded, somewhat sulkily.

  A moment later, the family were driving down the driveway, and Skip came back. "I had a feeling this might be on the horizon," he admitted. "Well, not this, specifically. I mean, who could predict the Hand of God would rise from the lake to take vengeance on poor old Jeb? But something bad."

  "What do you mean, 'take vengeance'?" Owen asked.

  "'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord—'"

  "I know the verse, Mr. Wickman."

  Skip chuckled morosely. "Yes, I imagine you would. I suppose I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Why would God take vengeance on Mr. Jebson? For what reason?"

  "For betraying the church. For leaving the Trinity in their hour of need. Just like I did."

  "It wasn't God's hand, Mr. Wickman," Jo said, with obvious scorn. "It was Crouch."