by Ronald Malfi
She went back around to the front of the house. The woman was still watching her from across the street, the only neighbor in sight.
“Hello,” Ryerson said, smiling as she crossed the street and mounted the slate steps that climbed the slight hill of the woman’s property. “My name’s Jill Ryerson.” She showed the woman her badge. “I’m trying to find a current address for Gwendolyn Rhobean.”
“She in some kind of trouble?” asked the old woman. She had her hair in curlers tucked beneath a hairnet and wore a floral housedress beneath her heavy overcoat. Her stocking feet were shoved into tattered bedroom slippers.
“No, ma’am. I just had some information for her and have no way of reaching her.” She glanced at the run-down house across the street and made a disapproving face. “I figured it was a long shot coming out here.”
“She left soon after it happened,” said the woman.
“You were living here back then? When it happened?”
“Been living here my whole life. Grew up in this house.”
“Would you happen to have a forwarding address for Mrs. Rhobean?”
“Kids did that,” the old woman said. She had followed Ryerson’s gaze and was still staring at the house across the street. “Defaced the property, I mean.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Started doing it before the poor woman even had a chance to move out.”
“Is that right?” She wasn’t too surprised; bored teenagers had no sense of compassion.
“It’ll be Halloween soon, and they’ll be throwing their little midnight parties,” the woman went on. “I keep calling the cops on them, but no one fixes the problem.”
“How could we fix it?” Ryerson asked.
“Tear down that house,” said the woman. Her eyes—wintry gray—focused on her. A milky cataract covered the left eye in a film. “Raze it to the ground. It’s an abomination.”
Ryerson could only nod her head. It had been pointless coming out here.
“She went to stay with her brother,” the old woman said.
“She did?”
“I’ve got an address written down inside. Give me a minute.”
The woman turned and vanished behind the smudgy pane of her storm door. A pair of eyes watched Ryerson from behind the glass—a black cat with a crooked red bow around its neck. As Ryerson stared at it, a second set of eyes materialized out of the gloom and joined the black cat. This one was a calico. Both felines eyed her through the door. Paw prints had been stamped like commendations on the glass.
The old woman returned clutching a folded bit of paper in one arthritic hand. “It’s been almost ten years. Not sure if she’s even there anymore. We used to send Christmas cards, but that stopped a few years back. She lost her mind, as you can probably imagine.”
Ryerson took the slip of paper and tucked it into her pocket. “I can imagine, yes,” she said, and glanced at the Rhobean house one last time. “I’ll make a call, see if someone can come out here and put up some NO TRESPASSING signs. For what it’s worth. See if someone can do a few drive-bys on Halloween night, too.”
“The kids will still come. They always do. Some of the older ones remember when it all happened. Their families knew the Rhobeans. It’s become this fairy tale about devil possession. They tell ghost stories about him, you know. And not just the kids—they talk about him in town sometimes, too. But I lived here, and I saw the change in him. A sweet child who turned dark.”
Ryerson frowned. “You’re talking about Dennis Rhobean? The father?”
“No, ma’am,” said the old woman. “I’m talking about the boy.”
Ryerson glanced down and saw a third set of eyes appear behind the glass—a brown tabby who stretched out next to the other cats. It yawned like a lion, then stared at her with unwavering stoicism.
“I don’t understand,” Ryerson said. “What about the boy?”
The old woman hugged herself and shivered. “It’s nothing we should be talking about.”
“The ghost stories the kids tell are about the son? Not the father?”
“Nothing that we should talk about,” the old woman repeated. She opened the storm door and stepped inside. The cats at her feet did not move. “Have a good day, Ms. Ryerson. Safe travels.”
The storm door was closed, followed by the heavy wooden door behind it. Ryerson heard the bolt turn. In the window beside the door, the gauzy curtain was brushed aside to accommodate the three sets of eyes that appeared behind the glass, staring at her as if to accuse her of some terrible crime.
Ryerson’s departure from Chena Hills felt like she was fleeing something unnamable.
28
Daylight broke like an arterial bleed. Paul awoke as if kicked, his eyes springing open, his entire body achy and tense. He was sweating beneath the fur blanket, though he thought that maybe his fever had broken in the night. Still, his nose was leaking like a sieve and the headache was still there, too, although greatly diminished now and lurking somewhere in the far back rows of his mind-theater. His entire body felt bruised and battered. But at least he was able to sit up on his makeshift bed without feeling like the planet was trying to jostle him off into space.
He was alone in the cabin. The fire in the potbellied stove had been reduced to a dull orange glow, but bands of daylight stood between the wooden staves of the opposite wall, bright as molten silver.
He counted silently to ten before hoisting himself up off the foam-covered crates. His legs wobbled and his knees felt like they might give out. Worst of all were his feet. They felt like clumsy, inarticulate bricks swaddled in furs that were tied above the ankles with lengths of leather string. His left foot in particular ached when he put pressure on it. He wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. At least there was some feeling there.
While he’d slept, a tree stump had been rolled beside his makeshift bed. On it was the dented teakettle and the tin cup. Paul filled the cup with water from the kettle, drank it in two greedy swallows, then refilled it and repeated the process.
He stood and stretched his muscles, feeling the tightness of his joints and the tendons that ran down the backs of his legs. How far had he walked last night through the woods? But then he realized it hadn’t been last night—it had been two or three nights ago, hadn’t it? He couldn’t remember what Danny had told him, and he certainly couldn’t rely on his own memory.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. Then on the heels of that: Where the hell am I?
He tried to remember whether Danny had answered any of his questions last night during their brief conversation. But it was futile. He couldn’t even be certain that he had asked Danny any questions. Had it even been last night? Christ, maybe it had all been another dream.
Just crawl back into your sun and go to sleep.
He wanted to. It was ridiculous, but a part of him longed for that semiconscious delirium. All was golden in that gossamer web.
He took a single step, then winced. The pain in his left foot was bad, but at least it was something. His right foot was numb, and it was difficult to walk on it. He recalled a student whose leg had fallen asleep during a lecture, and how, at the end of class, the kid had stood, then immediately collapsed to the floor. His foot had been twisted at an unnatural angle—broken.
The memory made him cautious. He leaned against the nearest crate as he hobbled around the room, getting familiar with the disquieting numbness of his feet. After a few minutes, he felt confident enough to move toward the back of the cabin.
How has he been surviving out here for a year?
At the rear of the cabin stood a wall of rickety wooden shelves. Various items were crammed on each shelf, no order to their arrangement—several containers of lighter fluid next to a chipped coffee mug; spools of twine beside what looked like a transistor radio with its faceplate removed; a box of galvanized nails alongside a tub of Folger’s coffee; drinking glasses and an REI medical kit. One whole shelf was dedicated to ammunition,
Paul realized amid a throng of concern. He knew nothing about guns, but he could tell just by looking at the boxes of ammo that they were for at least two or three different types of firearms—rounds for the rifle Danny had been hefting about last night, and rounds for the six-shot revolver Paul had noticed resting on the pillow beside the plaid bedroll on the floor. He peered over his shoulder and at the bedroll now, only to find that the revolver was gone. So was the rifle, missing from its wall brackets. So is the ax, he noticed, glancing into the empty corner where it had stood the night before. He’s removed anything that could be used as a weapon. He felt like Jack in that fairy tale, having successfully climbed the bean stalk and was now tiptoeing about the giant’s castle. Only this was the opposite of a giant’s castle; this was a Morlock’s fetid dwelling. And he wasn’t up in the clouds, but flung into the far reaches of the middle of goddamn snowy nowhere.
Packed beneath the shelves were a cooktop that ran off propane (but no propane, as far as Paul could see), various tools, soap detergent in a bright orange box, scouring pads, several long rolls of polyethylene sheeting, a pair of binoculars, a small fire extinguisher, and various other items. There were also what, to Paul’s untrained eye, looked like animal traps: several metal boxes with leveraged doors and two jagged-tooth half moons he recognized as bear traps. Paul knelt down and examined one of the bear traps. There was dark fur and what looked like dried blood caught between the rusted iron teeth.
He stood, wondering what sort of hallucination he had walked into. Back when Danny had been living with him for those brief months after getting out of prison, the guy ate nothing he couldn’t pop into the microwave. Was he actually out here hunting for his own food now? The notion was preposterous.
There was a doorway cut into the side wall, covered by a patchwork quilt of multicolored animal furs hanging from what looked like a shower curtain rod. He pushed aside the furs and peered into a small, dark cutout no larger than a shower stall, which was packed nearly to the ceiling with unwashed clothes. They reeked of perspiration.
“Mom would be proud,” he uttered, feeling light-headed and giddy. He was about to let the fur curtain swing back over the doorway when he noticed that strange eye-sigil branded into the wood of the back wall. This one was much more elaborate than the crude renditions that had been streaked in dried blood on the walls of Mallory’s house or the one carved into the wooden shack at the old Dread’s Hand mine. The branding was filigreed and the pupil was comprised of two slightly bowed vertical lines that gave it a three-dimensional appearance. The light-headed delirium Paul had felt only a moment before fled from him, replaced with a cool disquiet. He pulled the fur curtain back across the curtain rod.
He looked around for his boots but couldn’t find them. However, Danny had a couple of extra pairs lined up against one wall. He sat back down on his makeshift cot and unwrapped the fur lining from his feet. A pair of thick woolen socks were underneath. They reeked of mildew but at least they were dry. He squeezed his right foot and then his left. There was feeling there in the soles of his feet, but the pins-and-needles sensation in his toes troubled him.
Don’t look.
He had to look.
This is a bad dream.
True. But it was also real.
Sucking at his lower lip, he peeled the wool sock off his right foot. His flesh looked fish-belly white, and somehow more naked than naked. His toes looked okay. He commanded them to wiggle and they complied. He flicked one and felt a dull pain. That was good.
Yes, but what about the other one? The one that feels as if it’s currently being used as a butcher block?
He dropped his right foot onto the floor and propped his left ankle on his right knee. He was halfway through removing the sock when the wool protested. He tugged at it with a bit more strength and felt a searing pain as a fresh wound opened up along the arch of his foot.
“Shit.”
Do it like a Band-Aid.
He did. He tore the sock clean off his foot, and heard the frizzy ripping sound as the wool separated itself from the wound. The sock had begun to fuse to a foot wound as it healed; shearing it from his foot had set the wound bleeding again.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was his toes—the two smallest ones. They were purple and swollen, as if pumped full of air. The taut flesh had overgrown both toenails. He didn’t flick them as he’d done to the toe on his right foot; instead, he gently prodded his smallest toe with his index finger, and just that simple act drove a dozen knife blades into the toe.
Paul winced, leaned over, and cradled his foot in both hands until the pain subsided.
I need to get to a hospital.
“Danny!” His voice echoed in the small chamber of the cabin. He waited, but his brother did not come.
He hobbled over to the medical kit, opened it, and found a fresh roll of gauze bandage. He tore into it, wrapped up the wound along his frostbitten foot, and clamped the bandage into place with two pins. He then maneuvered his way back to the makeshift bed, pulled his socks back on, then slipped his feet into a pair of Danny’s boots. They were too large, even with the thick socks and the bandage on his foot. Paul found this odd. He and Danny had always had the same size feet.
Things are changing, old Jack. Grab that goose that lays the golden eggs and skedaddle the hell back down that beanstalk before you wind up on the giant’s dinner plate.
He grabbed one of the winter coats from the wall peg and skedaddled into the daylight.
* * *
A white, untouched landscape was laid out before him. Trees shimmered in the sunlight, and the snow, now several inches thick, sparkled as if beaded with diamonds. Danny’s footprints were the only disturbance in the smooth whiteness, carving passages back and forth between the cabin and the trees and around the perimeter of the cabin itself. A small fire burned within a circle of stones just outside the cabin. There was no sign of Danny.
Quaking from the cold, he took a few steps out from beneath the shade of the cabin and stared up at it. There was a crust of fresh snow on its pitched roof, and its fascia was comprised of ashy wooden planks the color of bone, so that it blended with its snow-covered surroundings. Just like in the photo Danny had texted him, there was the eye symbol carved into the door. Those unusual wooden crosses stood on either side of the door, serving as trusses for the overhanging roof... yet there was something beyond their simple functionality that seemed to resonate from them.
A strange notion occurred to him then, one that was as terrifying as it was implausible: that Danny was not really Danny at all, and that his brother had died out here shortly after texting him that photo last year. The Danny-like figure whom he had spoken with last night in the cabin, half his face shielded in shadow while the other half danced in the firelight—the Danny who had rescued him as he lay half-unconscious in the snow—was some other creature entirely. One that wore the mask of Daniel Gallo, like the children from Dread’s Hand who wore the masks of animals to fool the devil.
The notion was preposterous.
The urge to urinate struck him—a strained throb at his groin. He was relieved to feel it. Paul limped around one side of the cabin, unzipped his pants, and liberated a pungent ribbon of hot urine into the snow. It turned the snow a bright orange. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d urinated.
He looked up and saw a series of wooden crosses running around the perimeter of the cabin. These were even more rudimentary than the ones he’d followed through the woods, each comprised of two hefty sticks tied together by twine to form a cross. He followed them with his eyes. In one direction, they cut around to the rear of the cabin and disappeared behind a stand of pines. In the other direction, they formed a fence line that wound around toward the front of the cabin, completing the circuit.
The sight made him feel ill.
He followed the procession of crosses around the rear of the cabin, coming around the far side. Here, against the side of the cabin, was a stack of firewoo
d beneath a blue tarp. A wooden sledge was propped up beside it. He stepped around the woodpile and nearly walked face-first into what he initially thought was a tangle of loose tree limbs that hadn’t fallen to the ground. When he backed up, he saw that it was actually the skeleton of some large horned mammal. It was suspended from a tree by two steel cables, its bones picked clean, its rib cage like an intricate bit of alien machinery. There was still some whitish-yellow hair wreathed around its splayed, marrow-colored hooves. Its skull, with its spiraling ram horns and blunt rows of teeth, looked like something that should be on display in a museum.
He stared at it awhile, watching its limbs sway in the breeze. The bones clattered together like bamboo wind chimes.
Jesus Christ . . .
Beyond the hanging skeleton and the few sparse trees, the ground fell away to a deep ravine. Paul peered over the side and saw large, slate-colored stones rising like the humps of whales from the snow. It was maybe a twenty-foot drop, but those rocks cresting out of the snow made it look deadly. The disturbed snow and the random footprints suggested that someone—Danny?—had been moving around down there.
Something about a boy, he thought, unable to focus on what it meant. Yet the thought was sharp and determined and had the flavor of memory. Something about a boy with the face of an animal . . .
Unable to stop shaking, he crept back through the trees and around to the front of the cabin. When the wind picked up again, he could hear those hanging bones whisper as they clacked together.
“I thought I told you not to leave the cabin.” Danny’s voice echoed out over the clearing. “I wasn’t kidding about that.”
Paul turned and saw his brother, rifle strap clinging to one shoulder of his fur-collared coat, advancing toward him through the trees. He was holding one of the box-shaped traps, and there was something large and furry shifting irritably inside.
“Where were you?” Speaking still caused his throat to burn, but he was able to power through it now.