Bone White

by Ronald Malfi

  And in that instant, Paul realized what he was looking at.

  “Holy shit.” The words rasped out of his constricted throat. “Holy fucking shit.”

  With his bandaged right hand, he scrolled through the photos on his phone that Danny had sent him during his trek through Alaska. Scrolled until he came upon the last photo—of Danny in the foreground with the cabin behind him taking up most of the background.

  He had looked at the picture countless times, and while he had noticed the crosses flanking the cabin door, he had never paid much attention to the pattern of them—three crosses on both sides of the cabin door—and that there was something in the center of the door. He enlarged the photo and stared at the symbol. It was the eye with the vertical pupil.

  “I don’t believe it . . .”

  It was the exact pattern that was painted on the cinder-block wall in front of him right now.

  It was surreal; he felt almost giddy. His hand holding the phone began to shake, the narrow beam of light jittering along the collection of symbols painted on the cinder blocks.

  He took a step back and ran the beam of light along the wall and back toward the rickety stairwell. More crosses were painted along the other walls in a single-file line, much as they had been upstairs. He looked up and saw a single cross, more faded than the others, on one of the ceiling joists.

  And that was when he realized that the pattern of crosses painted down here—and on the walls upstairs—were not random or haphazard at all. They were—

  “It’s a goddamn map,” he said.

  One of the floorboards creaked above his head. He glanced up, shining the flashlight toward the run of exposed boards and joists that made up the ceiling of the cellar but which were, in fact, the underside of the hallway floor. A light sprinkle of dust rained down from between two of the boards. There came a second creak from above, and more dust puffed out and settled to the dirt floor. A third creak—

  Someone’s up there. Someone’s standing right above me, looking at the trapdoor in the floor that I left open.

  In his sudden terror, he didn’t even possess the wherewithal to wonder what would happen to him if whoever was up there closed that trapdoor and locked him down there; he just listened, aware that whoever was up there was standing directly above him. His eyes shifted toward the stairs that led back up through the trapdoor, expecting to see a boot descend through the opening and plant itself on the first step. He wanted to shine the beam of light over there, but he resisted; instead, he covered the light with one hand, dousing the room in darkness.

  Overhead, the floorboards creaked again. Sweat stung Paul’s left eye. He imagined he could hear someone breathing up there.

  He wasn’t sure how long he stood there in the dark, too frightened to move and make a sound, but after enough time had passed he began to wonder if he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing. It was possible that it had just been the creaking of the house in the wind, wasn’t it?

  He slid his hand off the beam, spilling that cold, pencil-thin light back into the cramped, underground room. The cell phone shook in his hand. Even the throbbing of his headache ceased, leaving nothing inside his skull but the sonorous moan of an arctic wind.

  There’s no one up there.

  He took the stairs two at a time, then stood, panting, in the hall, the cell phone’s narrow beam boring a tunnel of ponderous light down the corridor. Beyond the reach of the light, the living room was a black pool of shadow. He stood there listening, but could hear nothing.

  The flashlight’s beam trembled. He kept expecting a pale figure to step into the tenuous conical of light—a ghost-pale visage that moved with the fluid mobility of something propelled through dark water. But nothing happened.

  He walked down the hall to the living room. The room was just as he’d left it, except that the door with the half-dozen handprints on it was now partway open, exposing a sliver of gray daylight. A cold draft circulated throughout the room.

  Paul angled the flashlight beam toward the floor. There were muddy footprints emblazoned on the buckling floorboards—footprints that glistened with moisture and looked fresh. Footprints, it seemed, of bare feet.

  Paul went to the door and shoved it open. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been perspiring until the cold air struck his damp flesh. He edged out onto a constricted square of concrete that served as the rear porch, and he stared out across the wooded back lot. The rear lot had been cleared of trees, the shorn stumps of cut trees at staggered intervals like land mines poking up through the crust of snow. Beyond, the Sitka spruce, pine trees, and hemlocks wove together in a tapestry, their boughs swaying while interlocked, like parishioners joining hands. Wind whistled through their branches.

  There was no one out there. The muddy footprints descended the concrete steps of the porch, but there was no evidence of them continuing along the ground, no impressions of them in the snow.

  He stood there shivering in the cold for an indeterminate amount of time, staring off into the shadowy spaces between the trees. That darkness seemed bottomless, infinite. Snow twirled and spiraled and seemed to float up and never touch the ground. He was overcome by the urge to step off the porch and walk straight into those trees. To see where they’d lead him. He could almost feel the hook in his mouth, reeling him in . . .

  He stepped down off the porch and took three long strides across the yard toward the cusp of the forest. A gust of wind funneled through the trees and blew the hair from his sweaty forehead.

  This is where—

  But the spell was broken at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Paul blinked, clearing his head. He walked around to the front of the house, where he was frozen by the sight of headlights trundling through the woods toward the house. Paul crossed over to the Tahoe and watched as Valerie Drammell’s truck came to a stop.

  “You’ve got a real thing about wandering around in the woods, don’t you, Gallo?” Drammell said, climbing out from behind the wheel. “Must be an East Coast thing.”

  “I had to see the place.”

  “That’s called breaking and entering,” Drammell said. “Trespassing, too. And I already told you this place is a crime scene. I thought we were clear on that.”

  “Your pal Bill Hopewell towed my brother’s vehicle,” Paul said. “Were you aware of that?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.” Drammell lit a cigarette, then leaned against the grille of his truck.

  “You people are covering something up out here.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Gallo. No one’s covering anything up. You’re beginning to fall apart on me, is what I think. Could be the solstice.” He glanced toward the gunmetal sky. “Days getting shorter and shorter.”

  “I think the police need to come back out here. Ask you some more questions.”

  “Good idea,” Drammell said, blowing a stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Go back to Fairbanks and tell ’em to get their butts on up here. What happened to your hand?”

  Paul glanced down, having forgotten about the bandage. “Mr. Warren back at the inn came at me with a knife last night.”

  “Making friends everywhere you go, I guess.” Drammell sighed. “I think it’s best you leave the Hand, Mr. Gallo. What do you say?”

  “I’ll leave when I’m ready.” He tried to sound tough, but his voice hitched on the last word.

  “Come on, Gallo,” Drammell said, folding his arms over his chest. He sounded bored. “I’m just doing my job. You go wandering around out here and hurt yourself, I’m the guy who’s gotta deal with it. You get me? I feel bad about your brother, I really do, but I can’t have you bumbling around a crime scene. Am I right?”

  “You’re not gonna bully me out of town.”

  “Yeah, well, I spoke to Jan Warren this morning. Says you tore apart your room. Stripped the wallpaper right off, then slashed up the walls underneath. That true?”

  “No. I mean, I took the paper down, but I didn�
��t do anything to the walls. That was already there. I think Danny may have—”

  “Enough,” Drammell interrupted, his voice raised and echoing across the hillside like the report of a pistol. In a much more tempered tone, he said, “She won’t be renting that room to you another night, so it ain’t me bullying you out of town, okay? She wants you to get your stuff and hit the road. Right now.”

  Paul just stood there, his whole body vibrating, unsure what he should say or do next.

  “You go on back to Fairbanks and talk to whatever cops you want. I’ll be happy to speak with ’em myself. But we’re done here, you and me. There’s no grand conspiracy. There’s nothing. Got that? We’re all done here.”

  “Right.” The word came out of him in a croak. He climbed back into the Tahoe, cranked the engine, then had to execute a clumsy three-point turn to navigate the vehicle around Drammell’s truck. He drove back down the hillside toward Durham Road, glancing only once at the Tahoe’s rearview mirror to see whether Valerie Drammell would follow him or not. But Drammell seemed content to remain propped against the grille of his truck, smoking his cigarette as a dusting of snow collected on his shoulders.

  22

  He returned to the Blue Moose Inn to find Jan Warren watching a game show on the TV behind the front desk. She stiffened visibly at his approach.

  “I’m just gonna get my stuff and leave,” he said, moving down the hall to his room.

  “You’ll be charged extra for the damage,” she called after him.

  He packed up his things while the wind blew clouds of snow in front of the single window beside the bed. Back out in the lobby, Jan Warren was standing behind the counter writing something down in a small notepad. Paul placed his room key on the counter.

  “Printer’s not working,” she said, not looking up. “I’m writing you up a receipt by hand.”

  “Never mind.”

  Jan ripped a sheet of paper from the notebook anyway, and slid it over to him. He left it there, untouched. She then took the key and hung it on a pegboard that was mostly empty.

  “Who carved up the walls in there?” he asked.

  She froze, her back toward him. “Some guest,” she said after several seconds.

  “Some guest, huh? Some guest from last year, maybe? Some guest who looked exactly like me?”

  She faced him. He was taken aback to see the stricken look on her face. It was almost as if she was afraid of him all of a sudden. “It’s for the best, you know,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You leaving.”

  He let his gaze linger on her for the span of several heartbeats before turning and heading out the door.

  He loaded his bags into the Tahoe, then glanced over at the small building behind the inn where the Warrens lived. Merle Warren stood in the open doorway, staring at him. The old man was dressed in a double layer of long johns and had a ridiculous hunting cap with earflaps cocked askew on his head. His bowed legs appeared to quake in the cold.

  “There’s no getting away from here now,” the old man said. “The devil’s already locked on to you.”

  “Take care, Mr. Warren,” Paul said, and opened the driver’s side door.

  “You’re already dead,” Merle Warren said. The blast of laughter that followed this statement erupted from the old man’s throat with enough force to conclude with a coughing fit.

  Paul got in the Tahoe, turned over the engine, and pulled out onto the road.

  * * *

  As Paul had anticipated, Valerie Drammell was in his truck near the outskirts of town. Propped up on the snow-crusted shoulder, the ancient truck coughed plumes of black exhaust into the air. Drammell was sitting in the cab with the window down, smoking a cigarette. As Paul drove by, he slowed the Tahoe so that Drammell could get an eyeful of his departure. Drammell raised a lethargic hand through the cloud of cigarette smoke that wafted about his head like an aura and waved at him.

  Paul lowered his foot on the accelerator and watched Drammell’s truck shrink in the rearview mirror. The line of crosses on either side of the road whizzed by as he sped toward the main highway, leaving Dread’s Hand behind him.

  If for just a little while.

  * * *

  He stopped at a diner off the highway and ate a large meal—an omelet loaded with cheddar cheese, onions, bits of ground sausage, tomatoes, and with a healthy dusting of salt and pepper on top; several strips of bacon; wheat toast, liberally buttered; hash browns dressed in A.1. steak sauce; and a banana bread muffin packed with walnuts that looked like tiny meteors. He put away three steaming cups of black coffee and fed quarters into the tableside jukebox while he ate. He wasted some time.

  The sun sat framed in the passenger window of the Tahoe as he coasted up the highway. He’d become accustomed to the sight of the sun simmering just below the distant trees, never fully rising in the sky, never fully arching across that deepening expanse; it merely peeked over the far-off horizon, sailed low above the trees, then sank down again in the early evening, taking the day’s minimal heat and all of its light with it.

  He took the Damascus Road exit off the highway and headed back toward Dread’s Hand. When the large white crosses marched toward him out of the haze, Paul felt like he was waltzing back into a dream. Valerie Drammell’s truck was no longer parked at the border of the town; like some character in an old spy film, Paul had given Drammell the slip, and the acknowledgment of this brought with it a fleeting sense of satisfaction.

  He pulled the Tahoe off the road and drove up onto the snow. A line of large white crosses flanked the right-hand side of the vehicle, jutting at crude angles from the ground. They ran up the hillside and vanished into the trees. He drove alongside them, bringing the SUV to rest just within the cusp of the forest. The vehicle wouldn’t be fully concealed from anyone who happened to pass along the road, but it would have to suffice.

  Paul turned off the Tahoe’s engine. His breath fogged up the windshield; his respiration was whooshing out of him in nervous, staccato bleats. He gazed up at the massive cross that stood beside the vehicle. It was overwhelming, being so close to the thing.

  He got out of the Tahoe, his boots crunching through a crust of snow. The line of crosses entered the trees, but from this vantage point he could see where they continued up into the foothills. They were enormous—at least eight feet high and maybe four inches in diameter. They were dappled with bird shit and bleached to the color of bone.

  He had approximately three hours before the sun vanished below the horizon. If he couldn’t find the cabin in half that time, he’d drive to Fairbanks and tell Jill Ryerson all that he’d discovered while out here in the Hand.

  Zipping up his coat, he advanced through the snow toward the forest, following the trail of crosses, leaving the last vestige of civilization behind.

  23

  Jill Ryerson, who’d spent the past forty-eight hours in bed with a temperature that spiked at 103 degrees, thought she might be dying. Hers wasn’t just an autumn cold or a twelve-hour stomach virus—she was laid up with the goddamn flu. Given that half the Fairbanks division of the ABI had succumbed to the crippling crud over the past several weeks, she figured it had been inevitable. Everyone eventually had to pay the piper, right? It hadn’t helped that she’d been overworking herself and losing sleep. She felt like a petri dish, perpetually germinating.

  It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Or, depending on your outlook, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. She had been fighting the chills and ignoring the cottony feeling in her head for a number of days. But when she could fight it and ignore it no longer, she’d requested sick leave and crawled into bed, where she slept for ten hours straight. It was the first stretch of undisrupted sleep she’d had in about a month. At some point during this ten-hour sleep marathon, Joseph Mallory had unraveled the bandage from his foot. He’d tied one end to the crossbars of his cell and wound the other end around his neck. When Trooper Lucas Bristol discovered
Mallory’s strangulated corpse the following morning, Jill Ryerson was still lost in a feverish dreamland.

  The first phone call was from Mike McHale, informing her of what had happened. A whip of Kleenex corkscrewing from one nostril and a steaming mug of Theraflu on the counter, she’d listened to McHale’s voice in disbelief. It was suicide, McHale had said, but there would be an inquiry, and Bristol might be on the hook.

  The second phone call came from Captain Ericsson, who relayed to her the district attorney’s great displeasure at this unfortunate turn of events. Ericsson sounded demoralized over the phone. When Ryerson asked what she could do to help alleviate some of his heartburn, Ericsson just told her to rest, get better, then get back to work.

  She watched the rest of the story unfold on the news. Bristol was put on paid administrative leave pending the results of an internal inquiry into Mallory’s death. Mallory’s body was shipped to Anchorage for an autopsy. The district attorney addressed a crowd of reporters outside her office on a gray, dreary afternoon.

  The identities of Mallory’s victims were each made public as the families were notified. Some of the families appeared on television, including one from Miami whose twenty-nine-year-old son had been one of Mallory’s earlier victims, according to the medical examiner’s report. The irate father with his doughy congressman’s face thrust a fist against a podium while his brood huddled together behind him, weeping in each other’s arms. Another family consisted of just the father and younger brother of the deceased, who came in from Canada, said nothing to the press, and were photographed leaving the police station before they fled back home.

  Her fever broke for good in the afternoon of the second day, although she still felt like she’d been run over by a Mack truck. For breakfast, she managed to force down some eggs and toast—the first solid things she’d eaten since going on sick leave—and washed them down with two full glasses of orange juice. Later, around lunchtime, she had just settled into a comfortable spot on the sofa and cued up Netflix when her doorbell rang.