Bone White

by Ronald Malfi

  The shriek came a third time, and now it sounded like it was just beyond the hill. It was no animal.

  Paul took a reflexive step backward, and was thrown off balance as his right foot sank into a muddy divot in the earth. He dropped to one knee, stripping a handful of pine needles from the branch he’d been clutching, and felt the icy mud inside the hole spilling over the top of his boot and soaking his foot.

  When Paul glanced up, he saw a pair of pine boughs swing as if disturbed. He listened, holding his breath, and thought he could hear the inimitable sound of footfalls crunching down on a thin layer of snow close by.

  Paul reached out and wrapped one arm around the thin trunk of a nearby spruce and used it for leverage as he wrenched his boot out of the muddy sinkhole. His foot had gone numb, but he managed to stand. The moon cleared the clouds and drove columns of bluish light down through the interlocking branches of the pines, throwing optical illusions at his eyes.

  He swatted at the branches and cut his way through the trees. The undergrowth attempted to snare him and drag him to the ground, but somehow, in his panic, he was able to defeat it. When he fell over a deadfall and splashed down on the other side into a puddle covered with a thin shellac of ice, he realized he’d gotten disoriented and wandered too far from the path.

  He crossed over to the place where the moonlight managed to permeate the trees. His heart was slamming in his throat. Snowflakes seemed to hang suspended in the air, making the blackness all around him appear as if it had been poked with holes. The darkness beyond was infinite. It was impossible to see into the spaces between the trees. How had he gotten so far off the path?

  His voice carried out between the trees, as insubstantial as the swirling bits of snow that collected against his hot and sweating face: “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  He backtracked through the woods, scraping himself against tree limbs, his face and hands tacky with pine sap. When he reached the path, he felt relief wash through him, though his heart was still thumping a mile a minute. He headed back down the slope at a good pace while still wary of his footing. Midway down, he became convinced that something—someone—was pursuing him. He kept checking over his shoulder, his line of sight obscured by the clouds of vapor wheezing up from his throat.

  By the time he reached the bottom of the hill and crossed out of the woods, he was in a full-fledged panic. He darted around the old church and ran across the snow-covered field toward the road and the Blue Moose Inn beyond. When he reached the inn’s front door, he gripped the knob with two hands, turned it, but it wouldn’t budge. It had locked behind him and he’d left his key back in his room.

  He took a moment to calm down. His back against the inn’s door, he peered into the distance and at the place from where he’d just come. There weren’t any streetlights here, so he was only able to make out the steeple of the church by the light of the moon.

  He waited, expecting a figure to amble out of the darkness and onto the snowy road.

  Waited.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  He went around the side of the inn and toward the squat, stucco building tucked behind where he’d parked the Tahoe. The flickering blue light of a television set glowed in one narrow window beneath the eaves.

  Paul hammered on the door. His nerves felt like live wires. Calm down, calm down. A moment later, he could hear someone moving around inside. He heard the clunk of a dead bolt and then the door cracked open. Jan Warren’s masculine face hovered in the spectral light of the TV.

  “Someone’s out there in the woods. Someone’s hurt.”

  Jan Warren peered over his shoulder and into the darkness. “Huh? Where?” she said.

  “Out behind the church. In the woods. I heard . . . it sounded like someone screaming.”

  She looked him over. “Come in here,” she said, and opened the door wider.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, two men showed up. The slim man with graying temples and a pinched, nervous-looking face was introduced to him as Valerie Drammell, the village safety officer. The other man—a round-shouldered woodsman with a beard and a dour disposition—was Bill Hopewell, a local mechanic and handyman. Paul, seated in a threadbare recliner in the squalid little residence Jan Warren shared with her elderly father, Merle (who had somehow slept through the ruckus), explained to Drammell and Hopewell about the figure he had seen outside his window, the footprints that led across the road and behind the church, and what he’d heard once he was in the woods.

  “It was a person screaming just over the hill. Someone who was hurt. I tried to go in the direction of the sound, but I got turned around and disoriented.”

  “A person,” Drammell said.

  Jan Warren, who was standing in the hallway with her arms folded over her ample bosom, said, “I told him it was late and we didn’t need to call you, Val. But he was insistent.”

  “If someone is hurt out there, I’d think you’d want to know,” Paul countered.

  Drammell and Hopewell exchanged a none-too-subtle glance.

  “Listen, I know how it sounds,” Paul said. “But given everything that’s happened out here lately, don’t you think you guys should go check it out?”

  “Mallory’s in jail,” Drammell said. “Ain’t no one else out there. Probably you just heard a wolf.”

  “Or a moose,” Bill Hopewell added.

  “It wasn’t a goddamn wolf and it certainly wasn’t a moose,” Paul said.

  “You watch your tongue,” Jan chided him.

  “Let’s just calm down, everybody,” Drammell said. “Now, where exactly did you hear this?”

  Paul stood up. “I’ll show you.”

  “Sit back down, Mr. Gallo. Bill and I’ll go up and have a look around. Seems like you should just relax for a few minutes and get yourself under control.”

  “You won’t know where to look. I’ll come with you.”

  Drammell and Hopewell shared another conspicuous glance.

  They think I’m crazy.

  “You hurt your face, Mr. Gallo?” Drammell asked.

  “What?”

  Drammell pointed at Paul’s face.

  Paul touched the side of his nose, where it had felt tender ever since he’d slipped in the woods and planted his face onto the frozen ground. “Oh,” he said. It seemed like the pain had returned after Drammell commented on it.

  “He said he fell and hit his head,” Jan Warren said.

  “That’s not true,” Paul said.

  “Did you hit your head, Mr. Gallo?” Drammell asked.

  “I mean, yes, I said I slipped and hit my face, but I didn’t hit my head. This wasn’t some auditory hallucination or whatever, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Maybe you dreamt it,” Drammell said.

  “Or maybe you was sleepwalking,” Bill Hopewell suggested.

  He realized they were poking fun at him now. He said nothing in response—just stared at them.

  Drammell turned toward the door and said, “All right. We’ll take a quick look, the three of us, see what we can find. Bill, you got one of them handheld kliegs out in your truck?”

  “Sure do,” said Hopewell.

  “All right, Mr. Gallo,” Drammell said, opening the door. “Giddyup.”

  Dressed in one of Jan Warren’s oversized parkas, Paul followed them out into the night. He moved with an aggrieved limp, his right foot numb from its dunk in the frozen mudhole, his ankle sore and beginning to swell inside his frozen sock. In the ten minutes it had taken Drammell and Hopewell to arrive, the night had grown colder. Snow was coming down with more purpose now, piling up against the sides of the inn.

  Parked beside Paul’s rented Tahoe was an old tow truck with an orange emergency bubble on the roof of the cab and a decal of the Grim Reaper clutching his trusty scythe on the driver’s door. Hopewell opened the door and rummaged around behind the seats.

  “Where’s these footprints you saw, Mr. G
allo?” Drammell asked. He had unclipped a flashlight from his belt and was running the beam along the powdered ground at his feet.

  “On the other side of the building. But they went down into the street and out to the church.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  He and Drammell walked around to the other side of the inn, Drammell flipping up the fur-lined collar of his nylon parka. When they reached the opposite side, Paul noticed with mounting frustration that the continual snowfall had covered up the prints.

  “They were here like twenty minutes ago,” Paul said, shivering.

  Drammell trained the flashlight on him. Paul raised one hand, blocking the beam.

  “Why don’t you wait back in your room?” Drammell said. “Me an’ Bill can go up into the woods.”

  As if on cue, Bill Hopewell appeared around the corner of the inn. He carried a large battery-powered klieg searchlight with one hand.

  “I’m fine,” Paul insisted. “I want to go with you.”

  “Suit yourself,” Drammell said, and turned back around.

  The three men walked across the road, Hopewell and Drammell kicking up clouds of powdery snow while Paul moved in a more reserved manner, favoring his one foot. When they reached the woods, they formed a single-file line with Paul in the middle. When they reached the place where Paul had been standing when he’d heard the noise—he spotted the muddy sinkhole with little difficulty, its surface shimmering with moonlight like some kind of magical stew—Hopewell turned on the handheld klieg. A bright funnel of light pierced the darkness and carved a passageway through the woods ahead of them.

  “It sounded like it was coming from over there.” Paul pointed through the trees and beyond a slight rise in the hillside.

  Hopewell repositioned the klieg. The trees’ shadows rearranged themselves in one synchronized sweep, and it was like watching the world rotate while they remained still.

  Drammell pushed aside the low-hanging limbs as Hopewell advanced, training the klieg light on the deadfall that Paul had tripped over. There was a scrim of snow on it now, and flat, white mushrooms climbed up its damp, mossy bark, looking like a set of tiny stairs.

  “You come through this way, Mr. Gallo?” Drammell asked. He was staring down at the disturbed ground on the other side of the deadfall.

  “Yeah. I tripped over that damn tree and did a face-plant.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.”

  “The screaming I heard came from right over there.” Paul motioned with one hand past the deadfall. The woods beyond were a sightless void until Hopewell addressed it with his searchlight. Then the woods came alive, the shadows shifting and sliding and pooling in inky puddles. The snowy pine branches trembled before them.

  “There’s no one here,” Drammell said. “It don’t even look like anyone’s been walking around up beyond the hill. Not even you, Mr. Gallo.”

  “I didn’t get far. I told you, I got disoriented and turned around.” He felt like an idiot, standing here with one numb foot, his clothes covered in freezing mud, and shivering inside Jan Warren’s parka. No wonder they thought he was crazy.

  Drammell and Hopewell crossed over to the patch of soggy ground beyond the deadfall. Hopewell’s light allowed nothing to hide. But there was no evidence that anyone or anything had crossed this way. The place was desolate and undisturbed.

  Drammell cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted into the night: “Helllo!” The echo carried out beyond the trees and over the hills—ello, lo, lo . . .

  “Should we go up there?” Paul asked.

  “Up there?” Drammell glanced through the interlocking branches of trees and at the darkened landscape beyond. “Hell, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s fuckin’ cold,” Drammell said, and chuckled. “Besides, the three of us go up there now, that nice lady you’re renting your room from will have to call out a search party come first light. Look, Mr. Gallo, we came out here and checked things out. But there’s no one here. You heard some animal wailing off in the distance. You just got a little spooked, is all.”

  Paul’s teeth chattered. “I’m sorry. I feel like an idiot. It’s just that it didn’t sound like an animal.”

  Drammell gave him a clap on the shoulder as he made his way out of the thicket and onto the path.

  They walked back to the inn in silence, Paul too dumbfounded to speak, the other two men, judging by their lethargy, too tired to talk. By the time they reached the tow truck, Drammell was wheezing like a punctured air mattress. Hopewell went around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and tossed in his klieg light. Drammell opened the passenger door, but before he hoisted himself up inside, he turned toward Paul

  “You mind me asking what you’re doing out this way, Mr. Gallo?”

  “My brother went missing out here just over a year ago. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”

  “Gallo,” Drammell said, turning the name over in his mouth. “Yeah, the name sounds kinda familiar. Couple of state troopers came up from Fairbanks sometime last fall looking for him. I remember now. You know about the murders we had up here, don’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I came. That’s why I thought . . .” He didn’t finish the sentiment, but motioned toward the woods in the distance. In the road, their footprints were already filling with snow.

  “I hear the state cops already ID’d the bodies. You might want to consult with them, if you think there might be cause to.”

  “My brother wasn’t one of the victims.”

  Drammell raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. Snow had collected in his salt-and-pepper hair. “Well,” he said. “That’s good news, ain’t it?”

  “It’s not really any news. I’m no better off than I was when Danny first disappeared. I’d like to talk to you about that, if you’ve got the time, Mr. Drammell. I read the police report and know you were assisting those troopers who came out here from Fairbanks.”

  “Tomorrow,” Drammell said. “Call me tomorrow. Janice can get you my number.” He nodded toward the stucco building behind the inn, where Jan Warren’s round face was framed in one of the narrow windows, backlit by the glow of her television.

  “Thank you,” Paul said, and shook Drammell’s hand.

  “In the meantime, I suggest you quit wandering around those woods, particularly at night and in a snowstorm.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Now get back inside and get warm before you freeze to death out here, Mr. Gallo. I’ve already logged enough hours for one night.”

  Drammell climbed into the cab of the tow truck just as Bill Hopewell cranked the engine. The vehicle roared to life, and expelled a cloud of black smoke from the exhaust. Paul went around to the front of the inn just as the tow truck pulled out into the street, leaving behind a helix of tire tracks in the snow. The inn’s door was still locked and he still didn’t have the key, so he backtracked to the Warrens’ tiny residence, where he knocked on the door again, feeling like an imbecile.

  Jan Warren was a mind reader—she opened the door a crack and extended a thick hand, a spare key pinched between two pudgy fingers.

  “Ms. Warren, that path behind the church that goes up into the woods,” he said, taking the key from her. “Where does it go?”

  “Nowhere,” she said. “It’s one of the old abandoned mining roads. It just runs itself out halfway up the hill.”

  “Oh.”

  “But if you keep going, that’s where he buried the bodies,” she said, and closed the door.

  * * *

  Back in his room, he went to the bathroom mirror and was unnerved to see that a decent amount of blood had spurted from his nose and dried in a smear across his upper lip. He cleaned himself at the sink. The water was ice cold and refused to get warm. He glanced at least once at the YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE scratched into the glass as he cleaned his face and hands.

  After he climbed into bed, he tried to close his eyes, but they kept springing open. He kept hearing
that throaty shriek rise up over the hillside, only this time it was in his head.

  Just an animal. Or maybe my imagination.

  His dreams were ferocious things. The only blessed part about them was that they continued to jar him awake, cutting short his suffering. Each time he woke up, he turned his head and stared at the window, wondering whether someone was still standing out there. Wondering whether someone had ever been standing out there.

  “Stop it,” he told the darkness.

  Closed his eyes.

  Opened them.

  Closed again.

  15

  Alaska State Trooper Lucas Bristol, age twenty-two, was afraid.

  He’d wanted nothing to do with the goings-on in Dread’s Hand ever since that madman had been arrested, and he’d thought that volunteering to stay back at the station might be the best move to keep out of that whole mess. That had been when he’d thought that the madman in question, one Joseph Mallory, would be tucked away behind bars down in Anchorage until a permanent cot opened up for him in Seward. That was not the case, however. Once Mallory was released from the hospital (minus a few toes, Bristol had heard), the bastard had been shipped all the way back up to Fairbanks, in an effort to throw off any media that might come sniffing around. So now Bristol was here at his desk, with Mallory just on the other side of that giant steel door that led to Puke Alley. The only other living soul in the building was Bill Johnson, but he was down working Dispatch.

  They were short-staffed, with a good number of guys out with the flu. He’d considered jumping on that bandwagon, too—faking a cough, a few sniffles. He wasn’t a coward by nature, but that guy Mallory just irked the heck out of him. He knew too many stories about Dread’s Hand from his childhood that made him uncomfortable having the guy under the same roof. And he certainly couldn’t say this to anyone. I open my mouth and someone even gets the hint that I’m creeped out by that guy, and the next thing I know I’ll be pushing paper in Soldotna.

  So he kept up a good front.

  And, for the most part, it wasn’t too bad: He played solitaire and listened to music and filed papers. Pretty much just kept busy, which, in turn, kept Joseph Mallory off his mind. Every once in a while, he’d glance up at the door to Puke Alley, with its narrow, wire-mesh window at the top, and he’d think, He’s just on the other side of that door. In these moments, for all the security Lucas Bristol felt, the steel door could have been made of balsa wood. Besides, he’s being transferred to Spring Creek first thing tomorrow morning. I just have to suffer through one more night with the guy. And, really, it isn’t all that bad, is it?