Bone White

by Ronald Malfi

  “Let me see that ankle,” Paul said, reaching for the boy’s foot.

  The kid slid his leg away from him.

  “It’s okay,” Paul said. “Just let me have a look.”

  The kid’s leg stilled and Paul took the foot in one hand. He lifted the pants leg and saw that the flesh around the ankle was already beginning to balloon.

  “Can you wiggle your foot?”

  “Hurts.”

  “Give it a try.”

  The kid rotated his foot, wincing.

  “It’s not broken,” Paul said. “Just sprained. But you’re lucky you didn’t knock yourself unconscious. What’s your name?”

  “Toby,” the kid said. His voice was small and his eyes, which were still glued to Paul, were still simmering with fear.

  “How come you and your friends were throwing rocks at my car?”

  “So you’d leave.”

  “Why do you want me to leave?”

  “Because you’re white.”

  Paul frowned. This kid was paler than he was. “I don’t understand.”

  “Are you gonna take me away?” the kid said.

  “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “That’s what the other kids said.”

  “That I’d take you away?”

  “That you’d take any of us away. If we got too close. That you’d hurt us.”

  “Why would you think I’d do anything like that?”

  The boy’s breath stuttered from his mouth in bursts of vapor. “Because you’re white,” he repeated.

  “So are you.”

  The boy shook his head.

  Paul glanced across the road in the direction where the other kids had run off. “Some friends,” he said. “Where do you live?”

  The boy pointed across the road and toward a dilapidated tract house nestled along the tree line. A light burned in one window.

  “Let me help you over there.”

  The kid’s eyes went wide.

  “It’s okay,” Paul assured him.

  “W-w-why’d you come back?” Toby asked, shivering.

  “What do you mean? Back from where?”

  Toby’s eyes flitted in the direction of the woods beyond the church before settling back on Paul. “Out there,” he said. “The forest. I saw you come out.”

  Paul realized the kid had seen him coming down the path behind the church earlier that day. Why it frightened the kid so much, he wasn’t sure. More superstitions, he supposed. Or maybe the kid had bumped his head harder than he thought.

  “What did you mean when you said I’m ‘white’?” Paul asked.

  “Bone white,” the kid said. “The devil’s inside you.”

  “Yeah? Why do you think that?”

  “Because you went away and now you came back.” The kid was starting to cry.

  “I just walked up the hill this morning,” he said, nodding across the street toward the path behind the church. “Those are just ghost stories, kid.”

  “Not this morning,” Toby said, sniffling.

  “When?”

  “Last year,” Toby said. “You went away last year and now you’re back.” Toby wiped the tears from his cheeks with two trembling hands.

  “My brother,” Paul said. “You saw my brother.”

  Toby just stared at him, his eyes sloppy with tears.

  “That wasn’t me. Look.” He took his cell phone from his pocket and scrolled through a series of photos until he found one—a rare one—of him and Danny together, Danny’s arm around Paul’s shoulder.

  “You’re twin brothers,” Toby said, staring at the photo.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “This isn’t a trick?”

  “No, son. That’s my brother. Danny—his name’s Danny. You saw him here last year? You saw him here in town?”

  Toby nodded.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “Just here. Around. Here.” He pointed at the Blue Moose.

  “He stayed here?”

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “He was here. He was here.”

  “What happened to him? Do you know what happened to him? Did you see him go somewhere? Did he walk off into the woods?”

  Toby’s eyes kept volleying between Paul and the photo on his phone. “We thought you were him. I . . . I’m sorry about your car, mister.” He began to weep.

  “Don’t worry about the car. It’s okay.” He squeezed the boy’s shoulder.

  “It was a different car, anyway,” Toby said. “I should have known it wasn’t you. Your brother had a different car. I’m sorry for breaking your window, mister. Please don’t tell my mom.”

  “My brother had a blue car.” Paul remembered the printout from the police report that he had in his pocket. He took it out, unfolded it, and showed Toby the photos of Danny’s rental vehicle. “This right here, right?”

  Toby nodded.

  “Do you know what happened to that car?”

  Toby looked at him. “They took it away,” he said.

  “Took it away,” Paul repeated, the words sinking in. “Who?”

  “Mr. Hopewell.”

  “Who’s that?” The name sounded familiar, though he couldn’t place it.

  “He drives the tow truck,” Toby said.

  “Mr. Hopewell towed my brother’s car away?”

  The boy nodded.

  “From where?”

  “From right here,” Toby said, looking now at the Tahoe. “From right where you’re parked.”

  Son of a bitch, Paul thought.

  “Am I in trouble?” Toby said. His lower lip was quivering again. He was close to spilling more tears. “For throwing those rocks?”

  “I won’t say anything if you won’t,” Paul said.

  “I won’t,” Toby said. “I really won’t. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I paid for the insurance. Just do me a favor and tell your friends they don’t need to be afraid of me, okay?”

  Toby smiled. “Okay.”

  “And no more rocks.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I promise.”

  “Let me help you back home,” Paul said.

  Toby glanced at his injured ankle, then back up at his house in the distance. He was weighing his options, Paul saw. In the end, the kid nodded, then held out his hand so Paul could help hoist him off the ground.

  “Hurts,” Toby said as he took his first step.

  “We’ll make it,” Paul assured him.

  They campaigned across the road and over the frozen ground on the other side toward the small tract house. A shape moved behind the lighted window. A moment later, the side door of the house opened and a woman came out, clutching an ankle-length coat about her thin frame.

  “Who are you?” she barked at Paul. “What are you doing with my son?”

  “My name’s Paul Gallo. I’m staying at the Blue Moose. Your son tripped and sprained his ankle, and I wanted to make sure he got back home safe—”

  “Come,” she called to Toby.

  The boy released his grip on Paul’s arm and hobbled over to his mother.

  “You know better,” she said to her son. Then she looked back up at Paul. “He’s home now. Thank you.” But there was no gratitude in her voice.

  “All right.” He looked at Toby. “Go ice that ankle, okay?”

  Toby nodded and raised a hand.

  “Get inside,” his mother scolded him. She watched as he hobbled up the stairs and disappeared into the lighted doorway. “Who are you?” she asked him again after the boy had shut the door.

  “Paul Gallo,” he repeated.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to make sure your son was okay.”

  “He’s okay. So thank you. And please leave. Please.” In the darkness, Paul could not make out the expression on her face. But he imagined it wasn’t a pleasant one.

  “Good night,” he said, and headed back toward the
inn.

  19

  The inn’s lobby was empty when he returned, though a fire burned in the hearth and the old man’s TV was tuned to an old John Wayne war movie. The vest with the smiley-face button hung from the back of the chair. Paul was hungry again, but exhaustion had settled down on his shoulders, making him feel as though he was carrying a heavy load.

  “Hello?” he called, and waited. But no one came out of the back room.

  Bill Hopewell, he thought, walking down the hall toward his room. It was the guy who had shown up last night with Valerie Drammell. The guy who drove the goddamn tow truck. Drammell, you lying son of a bitch. What’s going on around here?

  He opened the door to his room to find Merle Warren seated on his bed, staring at him. Only the small lamp beside the bed was on, casting half of the old man’s features in pools of black shadow.

  “Mr. Warren,” he said, and it was like the man’s name stuck like adhesive at the back of his throat.

  “You read the Good Book?” Merle Warren said, his speech slurred but direct.

  “What?” Paul said.

  “You read how he took Him to the highest mountaintop and tempted Him with material things?” Merle was holding something in his lap—something metallic that glinted in the room’s dim light.

  “Where’s your daughter, Mr. Warren?” Paul asked him.

  “No,” Merle said, a tone of disappointment in his voice. “No, of course you haven’t. You think you can walk among us, that you can fool us, but you’re wrong. You’re wrong.”

  “Mr. Warren . . .”

  Merle Warren stood from the bed and charged at Paul. The item that glinted in his hand was the blade of a hunting knife. Eyes blazing with a terrible madness, he lunged at Paul, swinging the knife blade in a clumsy arc. It was a lumbering and onerous attempt, but Paul’s instinct was to raise his hands in front of his face instead of jumping back to avoid the blade altogether. The blade bit into the soft meat of his right hand, just below the pinkie. Only then did Paul sidestep the old man’s second attempt at cutting him. Merle Warren’s forward momentum sent the old man sprawling to the floor. The old man cried out as the knife skittered out into the hallway.

  “Janice! Janice!” Paul shouted. He backed against the far wall of the hallway, and when he spotted the knife on the floor, he pressed the sole of his boot down on it. Inside the room, Merle moaned and rolled on his side. When his eyes caught Paul’s gaze, he sent one liver-spotted hand groping for Paul’s ankle, his fingers like blunt dowels. But he was too far away to reach him.

  Janice Warren appeared at the far end of the hallway, an apron twisted halfway around her ample waist. She hustled past Paul and entered the room, pausing at the sight of her father sprawled out on the floor.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  “He came at me with a knife,” Paul said.

  “Daddy,” Janice said, bending down beside her father. She sounded like a disappointed parent. “I thought you were asleep in front of the TV. You could have hurt yourself.”

  Paul barked a sour laugh, cradling his injured hand. “Hurt himself, huh?”

  Ignoring him, Jan Warren proceeded to help her father up off the floor.

  Paul bent down and picked up the knife. It had a four-inch blade, and could have easily done more damage than it had to Paul’s hand. The wound didn’t even hurt—not yet, anyway—but blood was pooling in his hand and streaming down his arm.

  Janice ushered her father out into the hallway while the old man mumbled nonsense under his breath. She glanced over at Paul, who stood holding the knife in one hand while staring at the runnels of blood trailing up his arm. She looked irritated with him.

  “Come on with me,” she said to him. “I’ll take a look at it after I get Daddy settled down.”

  He followed them down the hall, keeping a healthy distance from the old man. When they reached the lobby, Janice ushered her father behind the desk. Then she glanced over at Paul. “There’s paper towels under the counter,” she instructed. “Try not to bleed on the floor.”

  Well, fuck you, too, he thought, and went around behind the desk to search for the paper towels.

  * * *

  When Janice Warren returned ten minutes later from getting her father settled next door, Paul was in the old man’s lawn chair watching John Wayne swagger across the TV screen. He’d wrapped paper towels around his hand to staunch the bleeding, but the pressure on the wound was causing the pain to flare up.

  “You think you need stitches?” Janice asked, setting a first-aid kit on the desktop.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If so, I can call Galen Provost from up the road. He’s stitched plenty folks up before.”

  “He’s a doctor?”

  “Taxidermist.”

  Wonderful, Paul thought.

  “I’ll take a look, see what I can see,” Janice said, laying out a series of paper towels on the desktop. “Come on over here and prop your hand up. Let’s have a look.”

  He set his hand down on the desk and peeled the paper towels away from his wound. The gash was maybe an inch and a half long, and although it had bled with zeal, the cut didn’t appear to be very deep.

  Janice gripped his hand with pincer-like fingers. Paul winced. She rolled the hand first one way, then the other. “Hurts?”

  “Just a little,” he said.

  “Can you flex that little finger there?”

  “Yes.” He showed her.

  “All right. I think a couple of butterfly bandages will do it.” She addressed the first-aid kit, rummaged through it. “Where’d you put the knife?”

  He nodded at the edge of the counter, where the knife rested on an issue of Cosmo. “That’s a pretty hefty knife for your dad to be carrying around.”

  “Probably got it from the kitchen.”

  “A hunting knife?”

  Janice said nothing. She took a bandage from the kit and peeled the paper from it.

  “Shouldn’t we sterilize the wound first?” he suggested.

  Janice’s eyes slid over to him. Her lips tightened. She set the bandage down, then reached under the counter. She rooted around for what Paul expected to be a bottle of peroxide, but instead produced a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She unscrewed the cap and told him to hold still.

  “Is that—” He hissed, the pain surging up his arm as Janice poured the cold whiskey over the wound. It felt like she’d set his hand on fire.

  “Better’n penicillin,” she said.

  “Yeah, I think that’s their motto,” he groused.

  Janice took a swig from the bottle before screwing the cap back on and stowing it back beneath the counter.

  “I spoke to some kid outside who said he saw Danny’s car being towed away from here sometime last year.”

  “Danny?”

  “My brother.”

  Janice said nothing.

  “Bill Hopewell,” Paul said. “He was the guy who showed up last night with Valerie Drammell, wasn’t he?”

  Busying herself with rearranging the items inside the first-aid kit, Janice said, “Was him, yeah.”

  “Are you sure you don’t recall my brother staying here? Because if his car was here—”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Did you have Bill Hopewell tow my brother’s car?”

  She slammed the lid of the first-aid kit, startling him. “Are you accusing me of something, Mr. Gallo? If so, I’d appreciate it if you’d just spit it out.”

  “I just want to know what happened to my brother.”

  “I don’t know what happened to your brother. And now you’ve worked up my daddy, just like you’ve been working up the good folks in this town.”

  He frowned at her.

  “Oh, that’s right,” she continued. “Don’t think I haven’t heard about you going all over the Hand, botherin’ folks with these stories about your brother. Don’t you think we’ve been through enough lately? We don’t need you hanging around, causing trouble.�
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  Paul was too taken aback by her outburst to summon a response.

  “I’m heading next door,” Janice continued. “There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you’re interested. Heat it up in the microwave. Some leftover cobbler, too. Daddy will sleep through the night. Best to keep your door locked, though, just the same.”

  “You bet I will,” he said.

  “Come tomorrow, I think you’d better consider moving on from here, Mr. Gallo.”

  Without waiting for a response from him, she moved across the lobby toward the door. She shrugged on her coat, then stepped out into the night.

  Paul went into the kitchen, located the percolator, and poured some black sludge into a mug. The microwave looked like it had been scavenged from the Titanic, but it did the job. He carried the mug in his one good hand while balancing a plate of peach cobbler in the other as he went back out into the hall. Behind the front desk, the television was still on, though it sounded like the John Wayne movie had been replaced by the news. He caught a snippet of it as he walked by.

  “In other news, authorities report that Joseph Mallory, the man who confessed to the murders of eight hikers over a five-year period in the foothills of Alaska’s White Mountains, has taken his own life . . .”

  Paul darted around the front desk, sloshing coffee onto the floor in his haste.

  “Mallory was in police custody when he was discovered early this morning having . . .”

  Paul watched the entire news segment while holding his breath. It was only a thirty-second report, but by the time it was over, he felt as though he had just run a marathon.

  Back in his room, he dialed Jill Ryerson’s desk number but was dumped straight into her voice mail. He called the main line and was routed to an administrator, who told him that Ryerson was out on sick leave. He started to speak, but the administrator could no longer hear him: The signal was dying. Shaky and unsettled, he disconnected the call. He only hoped that Ryerson had gotten a chance to speak with Mallory about his brother prior to Mallory taking his own life.

  Exhausted and with his hand throbbing, he reclined on the bed, his back propped up against the headboard. The tapestry of the Virgin Mary stared at him from the opposite wall. He had the heater cranked on high, and the blowing hot air was causing bits of wallpaper to peel away at the corners and curl around the collection of crucifixes hanging on the walls. The smell of the wallpaper glue was strong. He ate his cobbler and sipped his coffee while he watched the section of wallpaper closest to the heater slowly ripple and peel away from the wall. It gave him childish satisfaction. The wall beneath was wood paneling, and he could see the bits of wallpaper glue stuck to it. He could see something else, too—a perfect capital Y and part of the letter O gouged into the paneling. It had to be part of some word.