by Ronald Malfi
“Like what?”
“Like doing something bad to them to prevent them from wandering off into the woods and pissing off the devil, for starters.”
“You’re asking me whether these folks have done something to your brother.”
“It wouldn’t be hard.”
“You sound about as loopy as they do,” Drammell said.
“No one wants me going off into the woods. Including you last night.”
Drammell laughed. “That’s because it was colder than a witch’s tit, Gallo. You wanna go for a hike, be my guest.”
“I’m just saying it would be pretty damn easy to get rid of me out here, if that would put their minds at ease.”
Drammell grunted. “That’s some imagination. You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
Paul waved a hand at him. “Never mind,” he said. Yet he was thinking about Drammell’s baby-in-a-room metaphor, and of that baby as an adult, its mind ruined from years in a windowless box, its eyes wild and crazy and attuned to nothing but absolute blackness, blind as a mole, its fingernails grown into claws. What does that baby-turned-adult do when, for the first time in forever, a hole is punched through that wall and the sun shines through? What does that baby-turned-adult do to the first stranger who comes walking through that hole?
“You just about satisfied out here, Mr. Gallo?”
“Just about,” he said, turning away from Drammell and walking around the inside perimeter of the cabins. There were no doors on any of the shacks, just the crude, warped doorways. As Paul passed before one of the doorways, he noticed something carved into the wood of the shack’s rear wall.
Paul crossed the threshold and entered the shack. The floor was comprised of warped, creaking boards, the walls bowing inward from age and the elements. Bands of sunlight bled through the cracks.
The carving was of a giant eye with a vertical pupil. Paul went to it and traced it with his index finger. Whoever had carved it had wanted it to stay for a good long time, for the carving was deep.
It shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d gone into Baltimore enough times in his life to become accustomed and immune to all varieties of graffito—from the profound to the profane, the vulgar to the enigmatic—but this simple wood-carved glyph unleashed in him a sense of unease bordering on dread. And despite his certainty that he had never seen anything like it before, he felt a sense of familiarity with it, of near déjà vu. As if the animal part of his human brain knew what this was deep down on some base level.
Something passed along the rear outside wall of the shack, moving in front of the bands of daylight that glowed through the cracks and splits in the boards. Whatever it was, it was dark and moved close to the ground.
“That you, Drammell?” he said.
The figure paused . . . then continued its languid, fluid passage around to the far side of the cabin.
Paul took a step back . . . and that was when the boards beneath his feet gave way.
He heard the dry, brittle pop followed by the splintering of old wood. A second later, he felt the floor give out from under him. Gravity tugged at his legs. He went down through a manhole-size aperture in the rotting floorboards, jagged splinters snagging at his coat and cutting into his exposed flesh. As he slid down into the hole, he managed to dig his fingernails in between the seams of two floorboards and arrest his fall.
“Drammell! Drammell!”
Somewhere down below, his feet cycled in midair. He would have thought there’d be nothing but solid earth beneath the cabin, but that wasn’t the case—God knew how deep a drop it was to the bottom of that black chasm.
“Drammell!”
The safety officer’s shadow fell over him, his breath wheezing. “Jesus, boy,” Drammell huffed. “Hold tight.”
Drammell dropped to his knees and reached down the curve of Paul’s back, down past the splintery harpoons of rotted wood, and grabbed hold of Paul’s belt.
“Count of three,” Drammell said, then he counted out loud. On three, Drammell pulled while Paul scrambled out of the hole.
Rolling over on his back, Paul lay there staring at the pattern of sunlight shining through the fissures in the cabin roof. His heart ached, it was beating so fast. Drammell was kneeling beside him, his face pale, his large hands planted on his thighs.
“I warned you this place was dangerous,” Drammell wheezed.
“Duly noted,” Paul said, his own breath hot and ragged in his throat.
Drammell climbed to his feet. He extended a hand and Paul used it to pull himself up. Glancing down, he saw ragged tears through which tufts of cotton purled in the fabric of his coat. When he lifted up his coat and the layer of clothing underneath, he saw a series of bloody striations running along the left side of his rib cage, like shark gills.
“Your face is cut, too,” said Drammell, still panting. “You’re bleeding.” He tapped one of the jagged boards that formed the perimeter of the hole in the floor. “Lucky it didn’t take an eye out of your head.”
Paul touched two fingers to a tender spot on his left cheekbone. “I’m lucky I didn’t fall down there and break my goddamn neck,” he said, wincing at the hot throb of pain that had bloomed along the left side of his face. He peered over the side and down into the chasm. It was pitch black down there. He couldn’t see the bottom. “Is this what happened to the church back in town?”
“The church,” Drammell said. He took an inhaler from his pocket and triggered off two blasts into his mouth.
“I poked my head inside and noticed the floor was gone.”
“Wasn’t exactly the same thing,” Drammell said. “That hole didn’t open up beneath the church. Church was built over top of it. Floor just gave way over time.”
“That makes no sense.” Paul followed him out, careful now of where he placed his boots. “Why would they build a church over a massive hole in the ground?”
“They thought sticking a church over top that hole might keep the devil from climbing out.” Drammell nodded back toward the cabin doorway and at the sunken mine in the center of the plateau. “The devil had used up this place and was working his way toward the town.”
“What about this?” Paul said, pointing at the eye-shaped symbol carved into the wood. “Another part of the superstition?”
“It’s the mark of the Keeper,” Drammell says. “That story I heard as a kid, straight from my old man. Legend has it that someone from town was designated as a lookout of sorts. Someone to keep any eye out for any evil that might try to infiltrate the village.”
“I’ve seen this somewhere before,” Paul said.
“Yeah?”
“Not sure where.” For some reason, his mind slipped back to his fainting spell at the front of his classroom, and that circle with the line through it that he had scrawled in chalk on the floor while he was unconscious.
“Come on,” Drammell said, snapping Paul from his reverie. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
18
They drove back down from the old mine and through the woods in silence. Paul had no patience for any more ghost stories—or devil stories, or whatever the case might be—and Valerie Drammell seemed content to remain quiet. It wasn’t until they were back on the main road—that muddy brown strip of roadway whose shoulders were crowded with dirty snow—that Paul spoke.
“Where’s Mallory’s house?”
“Huh?” Drammell looked at him, a cigarette drooping from his lower lip.
“Mallory’s house. Is it close?”
“Close, yeah,” Drammell said. He was still staring at Paul, yet his truck seemed to stay on the winding road. He turned the steering wheel as if by rote memory. “But what do you want to do up at Mallory’s place?”
“I thought I might talk to some of the neighbors, see if any of them can identify Danny from his photo.”
Drammell turned his gaze back to the road. “You just choosing to ignore that whole conversation we just had?”
“I’m not tryin
g to spook anyone. I just want some answers.”
Drammell tossed his smoke out the window, then sucked on his lower lip. The truck slowed to a crawl as he downshifted, the gears grinding. The collection of plastic deodorizers dangling from the rearview mirror clacked together like broken wind chimes.
“All right,” Drammell conceded. “I’ll take you up Durham myself.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s my job.” He pointed to a ball cap that was wedged between the truck’s windshield and its dashboard, the title SAFETY OFFICER stenciled across the front panel. There was a large brass fishing hook bent around the bill of the hat.
“I appreciate your concern, but I don’t think I’m in any serious danger.”
“Nearly got yourself killed back at the mine.”
“Yeah, well, is the ground going to disappear beneath my feet along Durham Road, too?”
“Well,” Drammell said, his face serious. “Guess you never can tell.”
“A police escort,” he said, reclining back in the passenger seat. “I feel like a celebrity.”
“I ain’t no police,” Drammell reminded him.
* * *
Durham Road looked like a dirt go-kart track carved into the wooded hillside. There was a sign for it, though half the letters had been rubbed off, and it bent at such an angle that suggested it had been struck by more than one motor vehicle in its time. The houses here, tucked away from the road and back among the trees, looked like large rectangular shipping containers. Tar paper covered the windows, and the porches had been cobbled together from cinder blocks. Plaster lawn ornaments were in abundance. Moose antlers hung over a number of front doors.
Drammell pulled his truck up onto the shoulder, which was just a sloping hillock of shrubbery, and shifted into Park. When he twisted the key out of the ignition, the entire chassis shuddered, then went still.
“Do you know any of these people?” Paul asked.
“Remember back at Tabby’s I said that most folks here keep to themselves? Well, these are most folks.” He cranked open the driver’s door.
“You’re coming with me?”
“Safety first,” Drammell said, and chuckled. It was the closest to a joke the man had come all afternoon.
It was colder out here, the trees taller and more densely packed together. They were on the verge of the true forest out here, and midway up into the foothills. It was just the slightest shift in altitude, but Paul could feel it. He expected Drammell to lead the way, seeing as how he had insisted on coming out here with him, but he didn’t; he jammed another cigarette into his mouth and, leaning against the hood of his pickup, chased the tip with a match.
Paul stepped over great spools of weeds on his campaign up to the first house. He could see lights on behind the tar paper covering the windows, but still, the place looked about as hospitable as a snake pit. Plastic sunflowers lined the nonexistent walkway leading up to the cinder-block porch, and somehow even their simple existence suggested some level of foreboding, as if they had once been travelers on a similar mission, witched into plastic sentinels.
“Keep an eye out for dogs,” Drammell called to him. He was hanging back a few feet, standing on the edge of the property by the road and smoking.
“Dogs?” That decades-old dog bite on his left arm suddenly itched.
Drammell waved him toward the house.
Paul knocked. He heard movement inside, thought maybe there were footfalls approaching the door . . . and then nothing. No one came to the door. No one peeked out between the gaps in the tar paper over the windows. Whatever dogs Drammell had warned him about were determined to remain just as elusive as their owners.
He knocked again, and this time he heard a TV being turned off.
It’s like they’re hiding from me.
After another thirty seconds, he turned toward Drammell and raised his hands in mock surrender.
“Someone’s in there, but they’re not answering.”
Drammell shrugged.
“Is this going to happen at every house?” Paul asked.
Drammell laughed.
* * *
It happened at every house.
* * *
It was a quarter after six by the time they climbed back into Drammell’s truck, but civil twilight had already colored the sky a deep lavender in preparation for the long night. Paul had knocked on about eight or nine doors, but no one had answered, despite Paul’s certainty that everyone was at home. At two of the houses, dogs had barked, and Paul could even hear their owners chastising them from behind their closed doors. Still, these doors were not opened. The people here pretended not to be at home.
As Drammell cranked the ignition and the pickup jangled to life, Paul said, “Which house is Mallory’s?”
“He didn’t live down by the road,” Drammell said. He pointed toward a slight dip in the hillside, where a dense black forest rose up to touch the purpling sky. The trees were twice as large back there than they were here alongside the road.
“Can we check it out?”
“Nothing to check out. Anyway, it’s a crime scene. Can’t take you up there.”
“You knew this was going to happen before we even came out here,” Paul commented. “These people not answering their doors.”
“Figured it might,” said Drammell as he pulled back onto the go-kart track of a road. “It’s coming on dark. No one out here opens their doors at night.”
Paul grunted his displeasure.
“So, where to now? Or are you done sightseeing for the night?”
Paul didn’t answer right away. There promised to be no positive outcome out here. Had Mallory murdered Danny? Or maybe the xenophobes of Dread’s Hand had done something to him, like those creepy villagers who burned Christopher Lee alive in that old movie. And somehow worse than both of those scenarios was the troubling possibility that maybe Danny had come out here and done something to himself . . .
“What’s it gonna be, Gallo?”
“You can take me back to my room, thanks,” he said. Then he turned away and stared out the passenger window so Valerie Drammell wouldn’t see the look of composure sloughing from his face. He felt sick. He felt like he was way off course and spinning haplessly in a void. The nights would grow longer and colder, and he’d just keep on spinning, spinning, spinning.
You can still cast an anchor, he told himself, peering into the rearview mirror and at the approximate location where Drammell had pointed out Mallory’s house. Back there. In the woods.
“Listen,” Drammell said as he pulled up outside the Blue Moose. They sat there idling, the truck’s cab filling with the stink of burning motor oil. “I know you gotta do what you feel is right. But if you want my advice, you should call the cops. Let Fairbanks deal with this. No offense, Gallo, but you don’t really strike me as the type of guy who’d appreciate getting snowed in out here all winter. Take a powder. I find out anything about your brother, I’ll call you personally. You have my word on that.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said, and stepped out of the truck.
“And let’s not do any midnight gallivanting tonight, huh?” Drammell grinned good-naturedly.
“Yeah. All right.”
He slammed the door then watched as Drammell made a U-turn in the road. The pickup shuddered and belched gray smog from its tailpipe, and Paul watched it go until the truck disappeared behind an outcrop of pines.
He turned toward the inn and was mounting the front steps when he heard a sharp metallic ding resonate in the air. It was very close—on the other side of the inn, or so it sounded. Before he could even step down from the steps, he heard a second metallic bang, this one deeper, like a mallet to a gong. This was followed by a shrill peal of laughter.
He stepped around the side of the inn to find three kids chucking rocks at the Tahoe. He saw that the rear windshield was a meshwork of cracks and that the body of the vehicle looked like it had been sprayed with buckshot.
“Hey!” he shouted.
All three kids whirled to face him, grins dropping from their pale faces. At the sight of him, their eyes bugged out. Their gloved hands dropped the remaining stones to the ground. The youngest was maybe seven years old, the other two maybe nine or ten. They all looked terrified.
“What the hell are you guys doing?”
All three kids had their fur masks propped up on the tops of their heads. The two older kids tugged theirs down over their faces before taking to their heels: They sprinted across the road, their sneakers kicking up clumps of muddy snow, and they did not slow down when Paul shouted for them to come back.
The remaining kid managed to swipe his own fur mask down over his face, but he failed to line up the eyeholes. He turned to run, too, but got only a couple of feet before one of his oversized boots collided with a downed tree limb. The kid went sprawling to the ground. His hands were up to brace for the fall, but Paul watched as the side of the kid’s head collided with the pile of stones the kids had been using as ammo against the Tahoe.
The fact that the kid didn’t start shrieking concerned Paul. He rushed to the boy’s side and helped roll him over onto his back. The kid wasn’t unconscious—his teeth were clenched, his lips drawn back in pain. Paul stripped the mask off the kid’s face and could see a bruise already beginning to form on the right side of the boy’s forehead.
“You okay?”
The kid blinked up at him. A soundless wheeze escaped his clenched teeth. A look of fear replaced the confusion that fled from his eyes. He swung an arm at Paul and struggled to sit up.
“Relax, kid.”
“Get away!” the kid cried. He rolled onto his side, then sobbed. He drew his right knee up to his chest and clutched at his ankle.
“Easy,” Paul soothed. He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and the kid whipped his head around, staring at him. There was undeniable terror in his eyes. Paul lifted his hand off the kid’s shoulder and held both hands up in surrender. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Yes,” said the boy. “You will.”
Paul shook his head. He glanced at the Tahoe, with its cracked rear windshield and dented quarter panels. The kid was patting the top of his head, searching for the furry animal mask that was no longer there.