by Dean H Wild
Kippy advanced and Thekan stepped back in kind. He had the son of a bitch’s number. Damned if he didn’t. The book was Irma Casper’s, and he found it in a carton of items from the old river church he’d kept for years. When he came across it, it stuck out because it was wet. Like Orlin’s box, it was a recent arrival.
“See, there’s always gonna be folks who remember.” His heart hammered, his breath felt sharp and clean in his lungs. “Once we get it all figured out, there’s folks in this town gonna put a stop to a few things. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. His’try lives, shithead.”
Thekan jerked his shoulders as if wrenching out his next words. “I will not be deprived.”
Invisible force struck the book in Kippy’s hands. The sensation brought home boyhood memories of a hardball defying the protection of the oiled mitt and jarring every bone and tendon from fingertips to shoulder. The book was sundered as if by a shotgun blast, loose pages fluttering ceilingward from the hardboard spine. They withered and darkened as they skirled about the room, twisting into meaningless curls of ash.
Kippy staggered backward. What a foolish old man he was. What stood in his house was a pernicious thing, and Mick Logan would have told him so. Will Adelmeyer, too, because even an Adelmeyer wasn’t too hardheaded to see it. Kippy spat out the word topmost in his mind.
“Foo!”
It was a ridiculous word, old, something from childhood funny papers, but it helped him break away and run to the nearest door. The cellar. He felt too slow and yet fumbled all the way down the stairs and into his workshop.
He rushed toward his workbench and carving table. Thekan sprang down the stairs behind him, wolf-like. The pegboard across the room, full of dangling chisels and wood rasps, glared in the fluorescent lights like an arsenal. Kippy dove on it, snatched a three-quarter inch chisel and rushed back, confronted Thekan at the bottom of the stairs. Thekan regarded him, evaluative, like a patron assessing some incompetently done museum exhibit.
“Evert the Digger, the Carver, the Rememberer,” Thekan said. A drop of blood bobbled in the corner of each eye. “I didn’t ask for this obligation, you know. My awakening and the realization of everything bestowed upon me were rather alarming at first. But I hope to do well. It’s a promise older than the both of us. Do well and know your reward. Too bad your contrariness has left me only one choice.”
Kippy felt cold energy swirl through the room. The clatter from the pegboard behind him was like an icy chuckle as blades and chisel tips turned erect. He formed a quick and grave assessment: at least twenty chisels back there, maybe more, all tensed like quarrels waiting to be fired, all aimed at his back. “This doesn’t end with me, you know.”
“I’m aware. But I have more time. Unlike you. Goodbye, old man.”
Kippy felt an explosive rush of air as his chisels, lovingly worn smooth by his own hands, streaked toward him. He tensed, and then knew a second explosive rush, this one of unbearable mortal pain assaulting his shoulders, his back, his spine.
Aw, hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Morning. Mick crept past the guest room door and eased down the stairs. He found Judy in the kitchen drinking coffee.
She poured him a cup and handed it over. “We should get this hammered out before Beth Ann comes down. What’s the plan?”
“I still want to round up Will and Kippy and see if we can’t all have a sit-down with Harley sometime today. After town business, of course. I’m guessing Cy will want to talk about the town vote this morning because we only have two days and nowhere to hold it.”
“What about that old Ice Dreams shop?”
He shook his head. “It’s a dump. And there’s really no time to get it ready. I’m not sure what the answer is.”
“I’m available for today’s meeting too, you know.” She finished her cup, set it aside. “I took the day off. After last night I just . . . there’s so much to process—”
“Wonderful.” Beth Ann’s voice made them look around. She bustled into the kitchen, her phone to her ear. “I can do that. Yes, I will.” She was pulling on her jacket with errant tugs. Her face was lined with sleep and her hair was a pillow-tousled mess. She flashed them what was either a beaming smile or a frantic grimace. “I’m leaving now. Thank you.”
Hysterical was Mick’s assessment as he got up, ready to stop her from bolting deliriously through the back door and into the dewy morning. At the last minute he held his position.
“They’re releasing Harley,” she said, bypassed Mick and gave Judy’s arms a celebratory shake. “Better than that, they’re giving him a clean bill of health. His tumors are gone. Gone! The Crymost and the angels have smiled.”
“Are you sure?” Judy’s eyes turned toward Mick, clouded with concern.
“I’m sure that they’re sure. His white cell count is normal. Everything’s normal. They say his recovery is miraculous. Miraculous. Oh, thank you, God.” Her car keys jangled in her hand like a string of charms. “Thank you, angels!”
Mick reached for his own keys. They were in his pocket, next to the chess pieces. “One of us should drive you.”
“You two have done enough,” she said, her eyes brimming. “Thank God for you. My dear friends. Harley will be back home in an hour. Healthy. What a beautiful, beautiful blessing.”
She swept out of the back door, her joy so glaring it seemed reasonless.
Mick moved up behind Judy and slipped his arms around her waist.
“I want to be happy for them,” Judy said, rubbing her hands over his.
Outside, a cloud passed over Knoll, turning the bright outdoors into a shadowed mockery of the warm day on tap.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Mick stepped onto the front porch, his day mapped out in his head, an excitement over Harley’s recovery batting back and forth from light to dark. How oddly the pieces flowed in tandem, the mundane and the unnatural. What happened in Harley’s room, for example. And what Judy saw at The Crymost. They coursed through the everyday now, twisting and sluicing and impossible to ignore or discount, subterranean tributaries of a brighter surface stream.
He trotted down the front steps and nearly ran into the woman coming up his front walk. He blinked at her unexpected mode of dress—a loose colorful blouse and a pair of light slacks—unexpected because this was Chastity Mellar Borth, and he’d never seen her in anything but ankle-length denim skirts and drab tops.
“Good morning, Ms. Mellar Borth. To what do I owe this honor?”
She smiled at him, something she obviously had yet to perfect. “Good morning to you too, Mick Logan. I’m on a mission of servitude today, delivering Knoll some news and some posters.”
She tapped at a stack of oversized paper rectangles tucked under her arm. Red Mellar’s Out posters.
“You’ve had a change of heart, I see,” he said.
“About a great many things. The town vote will be held on my property in light of the disaster at the village hall.” She held up a poster and indicated where the new location was plainly printed. “The Mellar legacy needs to change with the times. Be part of the town’s progress, not its past. There will be an open house, punch and cookies while the voting takes place. It’s time to strip some of the mystery off the Mellar name, don’t you think?”
She held out a poster and he took it. He caught himself scowling. “I must say, you know how to ensure a turnout. There are a lot of curious people in Knoll. If they don’t come to your house to vote, they’ll come just to be nosey.”
She laughed and her eyes sparkled just a little. “I’ve been closed off to the town for too long.” She walked away from him with a friendly wave. “Say hello to your wife. Make sure she comes to vote.”
“We will, but just so you know, I think we’re leaning toward the Mellar’s In camp.”
She picked her way down the sidewalk as if her feet were woefully unfamiliar with her new sandals. “You just come and make your mark. We’ll be glad to see you.”
“What
about Cy?” He raised his voice because she was nearly to the next door down Garden Street. The Merks. There were plastic toys strewn in the yard. “Is he on board with this?”
“He will be once we tell him,” she called back and then let herself into the Merk’s enclosed porch to knock on the door.
We?
He tried to call Cy on the way to the garage but got no answer. Then he called Axel. No answer. Moments later he got his first good look at the interior of the village garage and how a scrim of soot covered everything. His thoughts took a new, pedestrian turn toward how he might begin to clean the place up.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Axel stopped packing long enough to see who called him, then tossed the phone down on his bed.
“Shit.”
Logan. The not-dead testament to how screwed up things turned out. What the hell was he thinking, pulling such a dumb stunt? Just a matter of time before someone fingered him for the fire, no matter what that judge said.
He crammed more stuff into his duffel bag and his hand came across the plastic pouch old Ichabod left him with, still pretty full. The shit was high test. Maybe something cut into it. Looking at it drove home the source of his latest troubles. Thekan. Even if he packed some damn fine weed, a freak was a freak. He stuffed the bag down deep and pushed some socks—not clean but still going along for the ride—on top, then he slid his rolling papers in next to it.
His immediate plan was a simple one: hole up in Royal Center for a few days if he could get some old drinking buddies to take him in. If not, he’d go all the way to Madison. Lots of childhood friends in Mad City who might let him crash—
His hands stopped their work. Across the room, a doorway was opened into a long hallway and Auntie Alice’s laundry room. The stairs were at the far end. It was there a nearly non-existent light was splayed, like a blush. A man stood there, just a shadow, and the posture reminded him of a vulture perched on a branch. A sliver of brighter light lay across the face, picking out the features of Thekan the Judge.
“What are you doing here?” Axel asked and stepped in front of his work. “I don’t want anything else to do with you, man. You’re bad news.”
Thekan strolled forward, into the room. “This is how you treat the one who would put you in a place of importance in the destiny of this town?”
Thekan’s eyes did not yet burn with their familiar eerie light, but they were about to. Axel could somehow tell.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I require hands to carry out more work in these last crucial days, to guide the fate of this town in a particular direction.”
“I ain’t no politician.” He picked up a wadded T-shirt for his duffel, tossed it down again.
“But you are useful,” Thekan said, and the light was in his eyes now, faint but alive with electric heat. “I specifically chose you. With me you are welcome, and you are wanted.”
Axel scowled at the odd flutter in his chest. A man was speaking, not in the room but in the past, in his head, telling him he was useless and nobody wanted him because he was such a fuck up. The words stung more than anything he’d heard in his then fifteen years of life, but not because of what they said. He had shivered and sweated when he’d said, “Please, Dad,” just before rough hands took him away. He blundered into a bright stench filled with harsh noise, hard beds and harder eyes staring out from behind iron bars.
“That’s bullshit.” His voice sounded small and far away now. “Nobody ever chooses me.”
“Exoneration takes time.” Thekan was next to him, his hands spread in demonstration. “And proper circumstances. I find you to be a joy, my dear Axel. And I reward joy with joy, do I not?”
Two of Thekan’s fingers plucked the air. Axel felt his lungs fill up with sweet, lulling smoke. It was like an embrace. He reveled in it for a moment, then blew out a breath. “I fuck everything up. I tried to kill Logan, you know. Fixed it so he’d burn in the fire I set for you. But he got out somehow.”
“Still, it would have been a favor to me had you succeeded. Mick Logan troubles me in ways I can’t explain.”
“You’re not pissed at me?” He was close enough to touch Thekan now, to know the heat of contact what might come from someone who didn’t degrade, didn’t despise. Instead he drew another deep breath, which was sweeter and headier than the one before it. The room took a lazy spin. “You don’t think I’m a shit?”
“One doesn’t think such things of those they have faith in,” Thekan said, his stare blazing now. “I have faith in you, dear Axel. Much faith. Stay.”
There was a sliding sound behind them as items slipped from the duffel and onto the bed as if plucked by dutiful hands.
“What are you?” The question seemed to come from many places in Axel’s brain, some of them he didn’t understand.
“The one who lifts you up instead of treading over you. The one who gives instead of takes and trusts instead of suspects. I offer much, so much more than the entity which brought me. Where I am willful, its reactions are automatic. Automatic and perfunctory. I am here, and I mean to stay.”
“Stay,” he heard himself say.
Thekan’s arms spread wide. Axel fell into them and wrapped his arms tightly around the man. He pressed his cheek to the man’s breast. The cold squirming presence under the shirt did not repulse him, not really. Nor did the pervasive scent of rot, a singular puff, which whorled at him and then was gone. The man’s fingers traced over his scalp in long contemplative strokes.
“Will you serve me a while longer? Leave what you know of me unsaid, leave my reputation here solid and untarnished, at least until this town sees its inevitable end?”
“I . . . ” Axel squeezed his eyes tight. There were tears in them. Bitter tears. “Yes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
When he was ready to take a break, Mick called Will Adelmeyer. “I think today’s the day we check out that tunnel of yours. Harley’s on the way home and I’m hoping he’ll be up for tagging along.”
“Fine by me. But you caught me on the road. My liquor and my beer get trucked in, but when it comes to the pickled eggs and Slim Jims, I’m on my own. Can we do it after lunch?”
“I’ll be there with my flashlight in hand.”
“And maybe some holy water.”
He meant it lightly, Mick could tell, but any levity immediately evaporated.
“I’ve got more to tell you when I see you. A lot more.”
“Yeah, I had a feeling.”
Mick hung up and reached into his pocket, touched the chess pieces resting there. He barely noticed the couple who stepped in through the open door. Not until Harley Kroener said, “Soot did a number on this place. Holy Christ.”
Harley and Beth Ann smiled at him from just inside the bay door. Beth Ann was latched to her husband’s arm as if they were strolling to a church picnic. Mick walked over and gave his friend an energetic and well-practiced shove to the shoulder. “I heard they kicked you out. And I see you didn’t know any better than to come to work.”
Harley was in a Village of Knoll work shirt, cleaned and pressed. The expression he wore was steady and knowing. “I told my honey, here, the same thing I’m going to tell you. I’m feeling too good not to work.”
“But only for a few hours,” Beth Ann said. “You might be feeling spry but there’s no reason to abuse the angels’ gift. You should be going to church right this minute to show your gratitude.”
Harley patted her hand. “You can thank God enough for the both of us.”
“By the way, Beth Ann,” Mick said, “keep this afternoon open. I want to call some people together and talk a few things out.”
Harley planted a kiss on her forehead. “You really need to hear what’s going to be said, honey pie.”
Beth Ann stepped away, her eyes shining. “Call me. I’ll meet you.”
“I will.” Harley waved as she disappeared through the bay doors.
“How are you really?” Mick asked
after a moment. “Is it a miracle?”
“Damn close to one. I woke up feeling like a kid again, and those pains in my side: gone. Do you think it has something to do with last night? With all that weird horseshit going on in my room?”
Mick considered him carefully. “Did Beth Ann tell you anything about what she did last night? She and Judy?”
“She said she asked some angels for help. In fact, she’s been babbling about God and angels all morning, as I’m sure you noticed. I’ve never seen her like that before. You know how we are. Church is a formal thing, like doilies you put out just for company. Once the tea party is done you put ‘em away until next time.”
“Then we’ve got more to talk about.”
“Better hold that thought a minute.” Harley pointed toward the door.
Cy Vandergalien stalked in, a black backpack slung over one shoulder. He listed to one side when he walked as if the weight of the pack was throwing him off.
“There’s not much time,” Cy said and his scowl lent him the appearance of a trout stunned to find itself at the bottom of a creel. An unshaven trout at that. “Get yourselves to work on setting up.”
“You mean for the vote?” Mick said. “It’s out of our hands, from what I hear. Chastity Mellar Borth is taking on the particulars.”
“Yes.” Cy stood before them, his sleepless eyes twitching. “She asked for those portable voting booths we got down at the firehouse. Your number one job is to get them set up in her front yard. Weather’s supposed to hold, so they can stay up overnight. All but the wiring for the in-booth lights. You’ll have to do those tomorrow morning.”
A decorative brooch glittered on Cy’s shirt front. A woman’s brooch with a large blue stone. Mick considered it with a quiet worry. He gave equal consideration to the posters Cy clutched tight against his side. Green posters. Mellar’s In.
“Is everything all right, Cy?”
He’d heard Cyril Vandergalien laugh a few times in his life, a deep and uneven sound. What came from the man’s mouth now was more like a frantic cackle. “Everything is never all right, Logan. There’s always something going to hell somewhere. When most things are off the beam is when you’ve got to worry. Put these up. Everywhere.”