by Dean H Wild
“Harley. Over there,” Mick shouted. “Is that them?”
“The one standing sure looks like Cy Vandergalien’s dad in a younger day. Francis,” he called out. “Francis Vandergalien.”
The standing man’s head tipped just a little and he stopped his tamping. Then he winked out. The other two men disappeared a split second later. Mick’s sense of alert remained, perched at some sort of apex.
“There,” he said and strode toward the place where the men had been, and he hoped against hope the weed-covered object he spotted was what they were looking for. He pulled back old grass, kicked away decades worth of stone and dirt and gazed down at a stub of black pipe poking from the ground. “It’s here. I don’t know how they got it through the rock, but it’s here.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Harley said, and then cast a contemptuous eye at the drop-off and the hail of objects. “We’re good to go on the double barrel, then. Damned if we aren’t.”
“That’s great,” Will said, drooped in Harley’s grip like a broken scarecrow. “I might not be able to see straight but the end is near. Got that, you Crymost mother fu—”
The rest of his words were drowned out by an earthy cracking and crumbling sound from the drop-off’s rock face. Dust and melon-sized hunks of limestone streaked down as Mick rushed toward his friends.
Earth and rock rained down before he could reach them. Harley and Will became sepia silhouettes, and then they were swallowed by dust. Mick heard a single painful bark, unable to tell which of his friends it was, and then a door-slam blow to the back of his head made the world a ringing blur. He dropped to his hands and knees. Stones thumped the ground around him and pelted the pool with chuckling sounds. What seemed like hundreds of impacts died to a few, and then none.
“Guys?” he called out. The dust began to thin. “Harley? Will?”
“Here,” Will poked his head from a nearby shrub. A coating of dust gave him the countenance of a powdered stage performer. “Harley threw me. I know he meant well but for Christ’s sake, he threw me.” Then, with a glance to his left. “Did you have to throw me?”
“Shit fire,” Harley spoke up and made a tip-of-the-tongue sputtering noise. He got to his feet a few yards to Will’s left. He was clutching his right elbow. A trickle of blood from his forehead described a harsh line on his dusty face. “I’d throw you again if I thought it would get us up top any quicker. We should get climbing before there’s a round two.”
“Lead the way,” Mick said. “Will, how are the legs?”
“Pretty wobbly, still. It’s this place. Gotta be. Damn, I hate feeling so helpless.”
“Harley, can you take him?”
Harley shrugged. “Much as I’d like to, I think I’m on my own power. This arm. I suspect it’s broken, Mick.”
“Damn,” Will said again.
Mick looked to The Crymost pond which was a calm, glassy oval of green. An eye, which sucked in sorrows instead of light and images. An eye regarding them with loathing.
Judy leaned over the ledge. “What just happened down there?”
“We got some more punches thrown our way. Some bad ones. But we found the breather pipe.”
“Come back for me.” Will stood upright but his knees wobbled as if made of loose sockets and ball bearings. “I’m just going to slow you down.”
“I’ll help you.” Mick took a firm hold of Will’s waist. “Slow and easy. Let’s hope if The Crymost sees we’re on the way out, it will hold back any more punches.”
CHAPTER SIX
The climb was slow. Once, near the beginning, Mick lost his grip on Will and nearly sent him tumbling down the slope. Near the halfway mark, Harley sat down on a hump of rock, panting.
“Hold up,” he said through gritted teeth as he hugged his damaged arm. “I got to sit a minute. This is the worst hurt since the cancer.”
Mick and Will sat to wait it out. Judy, who regularly popped her head over the edge to check their progress, called down to him.
“Mick, I’m going to walk into town and get a working car up here. I’ll park it on The Plank. I don’t think any of you will be up for a hike back to Knoll once you get up here.”
“You’re right about that,” he called back, his heart nearly bursting with gratitude.
Harley grunted. “Said it before and I’ll say it again. She’s a peach.”
“Yeah,” he said, not without a crack of worry in his voice.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chastity noticed the intensity of the smell at about nine o’clock and tried to put it out of her mind, but by noon she was unable to keep from looking into it. The source was Roderick; of course, it was. Roderick had been in the guest room all day, sleeping she presumed, storing his energy like an old dry cell battery, releasing an odor of rot instead of ozone. She crept up the stairs and waited at his door.
The possibility that this was her last opportunity to end the dark magic presented itself, startling and abrupt. She pushed the door open, suddenly resigned to the idea if he was completely, safely in a deep sleep, she would make her move. But what might that move be? Slit his throat with a knife from the kitchen rack? Beat him with the bat she kept by the front door until his head was a senseless glob of shattered bone and bloody silver hair?
Two steps in, she stopped short. Roderick was stretched out on the bed, pale and naked, his eyes at a sleepy half-mast. His lips, a colorless gash, moved in twitches over jagged teeth. He was a wasting thing, his skin clinging close to the bone. Vulnerable.
She stepped up to the bed, her hands twisting against one another. One of the pillows was on the floor, ejected during his rest (recharge, preparation), and she crouched to pick it up. So frail, she thought as her gaze swept over his pale neck showing just a whisper of pulse, the hollows of his ribs, the flattened gray casing of his penis. She leaned close, the pillow in both hands as if it were a book she wanted to show him up close. She tensed her back muscles. Her jaw tightened until her teeth complained. Death. It’s coming all right, Judge Roderick. In fact, it’s here—
Pain shot up her arms in bolts. She stumbled backward and flung the pillow across the room as if it were the source. Agony awakened in a course of explosions down her spine. It nested between her legs where last night’s aches were just beginning to abate.
Roderick’s head rolled toward her, his heavy-lidded eyes burning with Crymost green as if his skull was stuffed with phosphorescence. On his lips, an almost pleasurable smile of admonishment. She was to deviate no more, that smile said. She was to make ready his departure and not play the precocious one.
Her pain amplified, invading her from skullcap to heel tips, and as if by a petulant hand she was flung toward the door. Blood coursed down her inner thighs and jetted from her nose. She caught herself on the doorframe with hands made of white hot agony.
“I understand,” she said, the words hot and blood-tinged. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it all. Please stop.”
The pain ebbed away. A sob rolled out of her. She collapsed in the hall, her hands clapped to her mouth, her thoughts roiling.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You all look terrible,” Judy said as she helped them into the car. “No clinic. I’m taking you into Drury, to the hospital.”
While Judy drove with determinate ease, Mick evaluated his injuries. The heavy stain on his shoulder told him his stitches were torn open. His arm and his upper thigh housed the thump of deep bruises. His ankle also pounded, an extra injury he didn’t remember getting.
“This is too much,” Judy said at last. “We should all drive to Egg Harbor together, while we’re able. Put Thekan and the rest of it behind us.”
“I can’t do that,” Mick said, “not anymore.”
She fixed her eyes on the road, her lips pressed together.
Harley sat forward. “Once we blow the double barrel, I’m all for high tailing it out of town, though. Let whatever happens take its course.”
None of them spoke after that. Mick suspected each
of them was evaluating how time was slipping away from them like a precious element down a deep, dark hole.
CHAPTER NINE
Mick was admitted first, even when he pointed out Harley’s broken arm was more urgent.
“That might be so,” a nurse in stretch polyester pants told him, “but you’re the one who’s bleeding. That bumps you up to first class.”
She laughed. It jiggled her whole head and made her earrings—ridiculous Tweety Bird faces—waggle.
“I need to find a payphone,” Harley said. “Let Beth Ann know where we’re at.”
“I feel bad about keeping her in the dark,” Judy said from her waiting room chair. “You could use my cell but it has no signal, even this far away from . . . well, from home.”
“Use mine,” Mick said and tossed his phone over while the nurse held the door open for him. He gave her an earnest look. “How long is this going to take, anyway?”
“You need to be someplace special?” the nurse asked with a sudden glint of worry in her eye.
Or perhaps it was Déjà vu.
When he came out, feeling as if made of patchwork with a fresh, taut new bandage on his shoulder and elastic dressings on his arm, his ankle and his thigh, Judy got up to meet him. Will was in the chair next to her, his legs drawn up so his heels rested on the seat of the chair.
“I can’t get more than two words out of him,” she said in a whisper. “It’s like Nancy, only different.”
“He’s been grabbed hard twice by The Crymost now. He’s fighting to hang in there. You can see it on him. How long ago did Harley go in?”
“Ten minutes. Is it even possible anymore? This double barrel thing you want to do?”
He glanced at the wall clock. The hands crept toward two o’clock. “I’m for damn sure going to try. We all are. Right, Will?”
Will responded with a faltering “Yup. I’m still with you, Mick. I just don’t . . . I can’t always . . . ”
“It’s all right,” Mick said and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s grab some coffee while we wait for Harley. It might be another hour.”
Not one hour, but nearly two.
***
On the road at last, with Harley sporting a cast and sling like a loathsome trophy, Mick replayed Judy’s earlier question—is it even possible anymore?—with real anxiety. Their injuries were going to slow them down, there was no doubt, and the angle of the sun seemed drastic and exaggerated for four o’clock.
Judy kept their speed at a respectable ten miles over the limit, the radio playing softly to cut the tension in the air.
“Holding it together, Will?” Mick asked and glimpsed in the rearview mirror.
He thought he saw a glimmer of green, twin pinpoints, in Will’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. If he did, it was gone as quickly as it came.
“Got my moments,” Will said with a sideways glance. “It’s in my head, you know. I can feel it in there, the way a stone feels in your shoe.”
“You need me, Mick,” Judy said. “You need as many hands in this as you can get.”
“Beth Ann and Nancy need you,” he said. “It’s how Team Logan needs to do this, Jude. Girls up, boys down.”
She pulled the car onto the highway without a word.
CHAPTER TEN
Knoll waited.
The Plank was devoid of traffic as if even travelers from Drury and points north and west, as well as Baylor and points south and east, diverted their usual routes. Some people puttered in their yards or walked their dogs, but with vacancy. Killing time. Waiting for the blush of twilight.
Will made a rusty, grinding laugh. “Cattle in a barnyard, grazing in the trough while the slaughterhouse truck rolls up at their backs.” His eyes blazed green for the duration of a heartbeat. Mick saw it this time and it made him shudder. Then Will lowered his head in shame. “Shit, did you hear that? Maybe you should just tie me up and gag me.”
“Take it easy. We’ll get this done,” Mick said. “Hopefully in short order. Right Harley?”
“Once we get the power to the double barrel, I’ll want to test her out. If I don’t find any bugs, it will be magic time. We can pull the trigger and be out of town in an hour. Short enough order for you?”
“There, you see?” He squeezed Judy’s hand, which he’d been gripping since they drew near the town. “We’ll be right behind you, more or less.”
“Will you?” She shot him a glare laced with concern, a single name at its root: Thekan.
Beth Ann came out as they pulled up to the house and wrapped Harley in a powerful hug. They exchanged a few words and then Harley tapped the window on Will’s side. “The ladies have some bags in need of loading, if you gents are so inclined.”
Will went eagerly, leaving Mick and Judy alone. The air seemed full of words, none of which they were quite able to grasp. Finally, he said, “Just get them there. Get them safe. It’s more help than you know.”
“You be safe.”
He didn’t prepare for the kiss, didn’t feel himself move in, but it was there, firm and forceful. They broke it mutually, with an intuition borne of years.
“Call me. When it’s done,” she said after him. “So I know you’re on the way.”
“When it’s done,” he said back and then went to the porch to help with the bags.
When the car pulled away, Judy and Beth Ann in the front, Nancy in the back, it was five pm.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They made the short walk to the bar, Will in the lead swinging a propane-powered Coleman lantern to light up the double barrel room.
“Walkies,” Harley said, handing one over to Mick. “Cell phones aren’t cutting it down below. Maybe these will do us better.”
On a first test they seemed to work just fine. Mick hoped their luck continued on that front. He put his walkie in his front pocket next to his cell and the velvet pouch. Chess pieces. He’d almost forgotten about them, but felt comforted to know they were there.
Will opened up and led them to the basement, rummaged in a back room across from the big walk-in cooler and wheeled the generator out for them.
“Never used it,” he said.
It gleamed at them, a logical cluster of components in a cage of protective pipes, the tread of its hard rubber wheels barely dirty.
“Never even gassed her up?” Harley squatted next to it and gave it a once-over with his good hand.
“Never—oh damn, oh shit. I didn’t think about gas for it.”
“What do you think she runs on? Farts and good intentions? There’s no oil in here, either.”
“I didn’t think about that stuff. Sorry, guys”
Mick wanted to take out his phone and check the time, but in a way, he didn’t want to know. “Okay, you two get this thing down the tunnel and hook it up to the double barrel. I’ll head over to Copeland’s and get the gas and oil.”
“Take my truck,” Harley’s voice followed him up the stairs. “Keys are in the visor.”
Copeland’s Gas-N-Go was dark except for a window sign flashing PIZZA in neon red and the pondering glow of the ATM just inside the door. The pumps were on, however, and Mick nearly groaned with relief. He rushed inside, called out for Roger and was met only by the brooding hum of the beer coolers. He grabbed a five-gallon gas can from a low shelf, thought about it briefly, then took a second one before going back outside.
Another car pulled up to the pumps, long and blackly sleek in the just-slanting sunlight. Chastity Borth’s car. Mick was struck by a terrifying vision of Thekan grinning at him from the passenger side, eyes ablaze and dancing while jugs of windshield wash from Copeland’s outdoor display lifted into the air like angry birds and slammed into him, pounding and bruising him. But as he drew closer, only Chastity got out. The car was otherwise empty.
He set his gas cans down and began to fill up. Nothing else stirred except for a lone shape dressed in something billowy and yellow. It rounded the Garden Street corner and cut across to join them. It was
Connie Gassner, out for a walk in her zippered housecoat. She took a newspaper from the machine near Copeland’s front door, then stood between their two vehicles, her slippers yellow shouts on the dull concrete.
“Coming to The Crymost meeting tonight?” Her eyes were burnt-out bulbs in a funhouse display.
“There’ll be no meeting, if I have my way,” Mick said.
No response from Chastity, other than a restrained yet startled jump. Mick saw it from the corner of his eye.
“I hope you’re wrong,” Connie said and swept at a tuft of gray hair lifted by the breeze. “Whatever helps guide this town out of its funk will be a blessing.”
“I agree,” he said, mostly to himself, “but things can’t go on the way they are.”
Connie blinked at him, a flicker of comprehension in her dead bulb eyes. “Take care of yourself, then, Mick. I’ll hope things get better around here soon.”
Then she cast a dismissive glance at Chastity and walked back toward Garden Street, her slippers scuffing an uneven rhythm in the quiet air.
“Me, too,” he said. “Don’t we all?”
Chastity looked at him hard and direct. Her lips parted and a word seemed trapped there, but then her pump kicked off. Tank full. She shook herself, seated the pump hose and drove away.
After the gas cans were filled he went back inside. He was sure Roger kept a generator of his own so his hope was all the necessary additives, including oil, would be on the premises. He went directly to the back storage room; what better place to keep a jenny and all the fixings?
Something nudged him, mentally, just as he passed through the door to the windowless back room. Nudged him too late.
Mick knew about the storage room door at Copeland’s and how the inside was a blind side without a knob or latch, and you’d be sorry if you didn’t use the doorstop to prop it open. More than a few townsfolk were caught by it to the good humor of all over the years. The idea struck him the moment the door slammed shut at his heels. He spun around knowing the exit would appear as nothing more than a flat sheet of steel but he lunged toward it anyway.