“We’re talking now.”
“You didn’t have to come back here. You could’ve stayed in Seattle. Why did you come back?”
“You know a lot about my life, dude.” Alejo shook his head, but slowly his expression twisted into an amused smile. “It was a lot easier up there. I don’t know why I thought everyone here would let it slide. I guess because it’s me.”
“Does Tammy know?”
Alejo laughed. “I guess she does now. We broke up two years ago. She probably thinks this is why.”
“What about Frank?”
Alejo waved a hand. “Frank is Frank. He doesn’t care. He’s probably the only friend I’ve got left around here.”
“Are you gonna leave?”
Alejo folded his arms. “Should I? Seems like you’ve stuck around.”
Brandon chewed on the question; people didn’t usually ask him questions about himself. “I can’t go. I … this is home. I don’t know how to explain it. There’s something here that I just can’t—”
“—get away from?” Alejo asked. He leaned against his car and his dark eyes shone with the light from the passing storm clouds. “There’s things I feel in Snakebite that I don’t feel anywhere else. I could’ve stayed in Seattle, but it felt like running away. It’s like there’s stuff I still have to do.”
“Yeah,” Brandon sighed. “Yeah.”
“So you don’t wanna leave,” Alejo said. “I don’t, either.”
“Which means we’re just stuck.”
“Fun,” Alejo said. He laughed, and it was as quiet and easy as Brandon remembered. “I assume you’re telling me all this for a reason?”
“I…” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. Talking was hard, and putting words to the unidentified years of tumult in his gut was even harder. What did he want? There was a reason he’d chased Alejo out here, but now that he was standing here in the rain, he couldn’t remember. The dark loneliness that always lingered in the ground under him was quiet around Alejo. “I remember you from before all this. You were … I don’t know. Everyone was always happy around you. You paid attention. It always felt like you actually cared.”
Alejo laughed. “Discriminated against one second and hit on the next. Snakebite is really full of surprises.”
Brandon flushed. “Oh, no, I wasn’t—”
“I wish you were,” Alejo said. His dark eyes warmed, just slightly. “If I don’t get murdered outside my motel room, let’s get drinks sometime.”
“I’d…” Brandon steeled himself. “I’d like that.”
And from there, it was as easy as breathing.
It had never seemed easy to Brandon before. In fact, falling in love had seemed like the most impossible thing in the world. He’d built fortresses on the concept of being alone; loneliness was his blood, his bones, his heartbeat. Without it, he wasn’t sure who Brandon Woodley even was.
But Alejo didn’t mind. On their first night out, he told Brandon he dreamed of a family and a house with a porch and a garden where he could grow “one good tomato.” On their second date, he held Brandon’s hand and asked if he thought there was anywhere in Snakebite that they could carve out for themselves. Brandon didn’t know the answer to that. After their third time out, Alejo walked him to his door, slipped a hand into his back pocket, and kissed him square on the mouth. Kissed him like he meant it. Like he wanted to.
Maybe it was a dream. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong anywhere near Brandon’s world. None of it was right. Brandon was Brandon—he was a stone knocking ceaselessly against the lake floor. He hadn’t expected Alejo to reach in and pluck him from the water like it was nothing. He hadn’t expected to feel the sun. Alejo pulled him to freedom and it terrified Brandon how easily he’d done it.
Outside, there was a swarm of people who hated them. Under his feet, there was a darkness that crept into Brandon’s bones. But for a moment, he wasn’t alone. The shadows were quiet.
Now that he knew what it felt like to be loved, he could never go back.
2002
It was strange how much could change over a single year.
Brandon was by himself and then he wasn’t. Alejo had a family and then it was gone. They were together, but they were completely alone.
Rumors about Brandon and Alejo curled through Snakebite like weeds, choking out everything else. For someone who’d been a ghost his whole life, it was a strange thing being the name on everyone’s tongues. Within a month, a new foreman was hired at Barton Lumber and his first order of business was cutting Brandon loose to save the face of the company. Without money, without allies, without family, Brandon was lost.
But heroes came from surprising places.
Their hero came in the form of the newly minted head of Barton Ranch. It was Tammy Barton, married and divorced with a blond infant permanently glued to her hip. It was Tammy who just happened to review her family’s books and find a patch of land her father had bought across the lake decades earlier. Who said, in her typical apathetic drawl, If you guys want the land, you can have it. Build something on it, I don’t care. I’m honestly just tired of seeing you around here.
And for the first time since meeting, Brandon and Alejo were free.
They were six months into their new life across the lake when things changed. Summer turned to fall, the bristled ends of the junipers by the lake fell bare, and a cold wind settled into the Owyhee valley. The cabin wasn’t perfect, but stepping away from Snakebite was like breathing for the first time. It was a taste of what life could be. It was the good things, like afternoons lying by the lake, nights by the fire with a book, waking each morning to birdsong and rustling leaves. And it was the rest—Post-it Notes about forgotten dishes, blankets hogged on one side of the bed, days where each other’s company was simultaneously too much and not enough.
On a trip into town for eggs and kindling, Brandon heard the first whispers:… left at the church … just a baby, and they left her right on the front step … who was even pregnant?… Pastor Briggs says it was a camper … foster care, probably. What else can they do?
But like everything in Snakebite, the wonder died just as quickly as it came. After a week of talk about the mysterious baby girl dropped on the steps of Snakebite First Baptist Church, gossip shifted its gaze to a group of teens caught smoking pot outside the grocery store. And while Brandon was ready to move on just as quickly, something about the story caught Alejo like a snag on splintered wood.
“We have to see her,” Alejo said. “It’s a sign.”
“A sign of what?” Brandon was generally good at weeding the skepticism from his voice, but not this time. He sat in their half-built kitchen, wedged between the fridge and a cabinet-to-be.
Alejo stepped inside from the back porch, but his gaze lingered on Snakebite’s hazy outline across the shore. “We talk about wanting a family one day and then a baby girl gets randomly dropped at the church. You don’t think that’s destiny?”
“I think it’s sad.”
If Alejo hadn’t been raised Catholic, Brandon might’ve noted that the god he knew didn’t typically act as a stork for small-town gay pariahs. But he had to admit there was a piece of him, small and afraid, that dared to want this: a family. Even a year ago, it had been too impossible to imagine. A year ago, he’d resigned himself to a life alone. But now he could almost picture it when he closed his eyes.
“We could be her family,” Alejo said. “Isn’t that what our little unit is supposed to be? A collection of things other people threw away?”
“You can’t pick up a baby like you’re grabbing scrap metal off the side of the road.” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s so much you have to do. Paperwork. Money. I don’t know if we can do it.”
“I’m not asking you to commit right now,” Alejo said. “I’m just asking to see her.”
So they did.
Snakebite First Baptist Church was painted cool by the late-fall sun, but the moment they stepped into the church’s nu
rsery, the cold melted away. Brandon wasn’t religious, and he’d never been fond of chalking things up to destiny or divine purpose, but when they approached the girl’s crib and he saw her for the first time—wide eyes as dark as wood smoke, fingers too little to be real, a single tuft of black hair jutting from the top of her head—it was all over.
Alejo’s breath hitched in his chest. “I would never force you to do anything this important, obviously. And I know it’s a big deal, but—”
Brandon leaned into the crib and pressed his thumb into the girl’s impossibly small hand. Her fingers curled around his knuckle and she looked at him with eyes that unmade him. That unraveled him from the inside. He shook his head, but he didn’t pull his hand away. “She needs us.”
And then their family of two was a family of three.
Brandon had been right. It wasn’t easy. It was months of paperwork, interviews, and nonstop work on the cabin to prove that the girl would have a home worth living in. The search for the girl’s parents came up empty, leaving her nameless and alone. She was a mystery—another stone at the bottom of the lake. But this time, Brandon was on the shore. This time, he could do the saving.
By February, they signed the paperwork in the living room of a finished cabin. They called their daughter Logan.
And everything was perfect.
Brandon Woodley once thought of himself as a man in two parts. He was alone and then not. He was the Brandon before Alejo, and the Brandon after. He was the Brandon who sensed shadows under his feet, and then he was the Brandon who felt the sun. But things were different with Logan. His life was not in two parts, or even three—it was a song, and all along it had been swelling toward this. He sat at the piano bench most afternoons and watched sunlight ripple across the floorboards. He watched Alejo on the couch, on the rocking chair, on the front porch with Logan tucked in his arms. He watched Logan grow taller, watched her smile, watched her skip between low-hanging junipers along the lakeshore. Brandon felt the sun on his face and the cool piano keys under his fingers and breathing was easy.
There was a small tremor in his chest that promised it would end soon.
2007
By the time they took Logan to the hospital, there was nothing to be done. The doctors said sometimes, this happened. Children got sick. It could happen to anyone. People lost their daughters all the time—sometimes, there wasn’t a reason why.
Brandon did not cry.
There were no tears in him—there was nothing at all. He was hollow without her. They’d been so close to having a life and he’d made the mistake of thinking it could last. They’d fought through thickets of hate and isolation just to end up here. Childless and alone again. Everything was carved away, scraped from his bones, left bare and numb. There had been warmth in him once that sounded like piano strings and Logan’s laughter and water on the lakeshore, but it was all black and twisted now.
Logan was five years old.
She would never make it to six.
“We’ll be happy again,” Alejo breathed into Brandon’s chest. They sat alone in the cabin; it had never felt lonely before Logan, but without her, he felt every inch of the aching space they’d built. “One day, we’ll be happy.”
But Brandon wouldn’t be happy. He would never be happy if she was gone. The articles that Alejo read told him that the pain would subside eventually, but Brandon Woodley had been in pain his whole life. He’d never loved anyone like he’d loved her—losing her wasn’t a pain that would ever subside. It was endlessly consuming, this hate. He hated this cabin, hated Snakebite, hated Tammy Barton and her perfect blond child who was so, so alive. Tammy would see her daughter grow old, but Brandon wouldn’t. He hated every person who lived while his daughter was gone. The hate welled up in him like a stain. It changed everything in him until it was the only thing left.
Brandon Woodley knew he would never feel the sun again.
They continued on like this—Alejo slowly learning to heal and Brandon simply not. Snakebite First Baptist Church staunchly refused to sell them a plot in Snakebite Memorial, claiming they were only for members of the church, and the hate in Brandon’s chest grew. They buried their daughter in Pioneer Cemetery among the decades-dead founders of Snakebite. She had no headstone, no service, no one to mourn her but her fathers.
Parents weren’t supposed to see their children’s graves. They weren’t supposed to feel darkness under the earth, coiling around their daughter’s corpse. Alejo said they would be happy again, and maybe he would. Of the two of them, he’d always been better at being a person.
But Brandon wasn’t a person anymore—the darkness that lingered under Snakebite grabbed him at his every step. He felt it there.
On the night it happened, he stood in the center of the cabin facing the window that looked over the lake. He couldn’t remember why he stood there, only that it was right. He’d had weeks of this—seeing faces just beyond his peripheral vision, hearing voices too quiet to understand, feeling fingertips on his skin—but tonight was different.
In the next room, Alejo slept in their bed. The night was black and full of something like magic, but darker. It wasn’t under the ground anymore. It pressed against the glass, begging to enter the cabin. It was dark and ravenous. He felt it in his chest, pulsing with death and anger and hate. The cabin reeked of smoke and rot.
Beyond the window, he couldn’t see the water. He couldn’t see the trees. He couldn’t see the glowing campfires on the other shore. He could only see the dark.
“I can’t take this,” he whispered into the empty room. “I can’t take this anymore.”
I know, the Dark breathed between the floorboards. It kills you.
Brandon’s breath was a ragged gasp. He’d spoken his grief into the night for months, but it had never spoken back. The cabin was colder than the night outside and darker than black. He wondered if Alejo could hear him talking. He wondered if Alejo was here at all. Brandon felt as though he’d slipped away, suspended between one life and another; between what was and what could be.
Things were supposed to be different, the Dark moaned.
Something opened like a pit in Brandon’s stomach. “I wanted a family. I wanted to be happy.”
What would make you happy?
“My daughter,” Brandon croaked. “My daughter is gone.”
The wooden walls groaned in the wind. The floor beneath Brandon’s feet shifted. Something inside him shifted, too, and he thought he might be sick. The unknowable thing slithered through him, coiling in his stomach, wrapping around his heart like an oily noose. He hadn’t thought to be afraid, but now the fear and the ache were all he had.
Your daughter is buried in my arms, the Dark whispered. Would you like her back?
Brandon sucked in a quivering breath. For the first time since he’d lost her, hot tears stung at his eyes. He knew it was wrong—it couldn’t be that simple—but just the thought was enough. “How?”
I can bring her back to you, just as she was, the Dark offered. For a simple favor, your world could be right again.
“What kind of favor?”
Carry me with you, the Dark whispered, hushed like a breeze. I have lived under this town for years. I want to see the light of day. I want to roam. Give a little of yourself to me—let me come up for air—and I can bring your daughter back.
Brandon wiped at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. It wasn’t true, or it was too good to be true, but he didn’t care. He didn’t know what the Dark was, but he would let it consume him until there was nothing left if it meant she was alive. Brandon felt her little hand wrapped around his finger like a phantom limb.
“What are you?” Brandon asked.
I am the dark created from everything. I am the memories of this place come to life—anger, grief, hate. You know these feelings well. You have felt me here your whole life. In a sense, I am Snakebite. When the Dark stopped speaking, the world was quiet. But I want to be more than a shadow. I want to help you. Will
you let me?
Before he could answer, the Dark crept into Brandon’s lungs and ran in his blood. Its tendrils spread into his skull like ivy. The Dark wasn’t Snakebite, anymore; it was him. Its thoughts, its movements were his. It shifted in him, quiet and black as the night, and he shuddered.
“Yes,” he said. He closed his eyes. “Please bring her back.”
And then the world exploded.
The blast was enough to shatter the lakefront window. The cabin’s roof and walls split, banging against each other in the impact. The ceiling lights flickered on, then collapsed from their bolts and crashed to the floor. The world was a spiraling storm around Brandon, but he was the eye. The calm. The trees shook and the lake rippled out for miles. The shadows around him were thick with magic, suspending splinters of wood and dirt in the air.
The door to the next room crashed open before collapsing from its hinges. Alejo stood in the dark, half dressed, eyes wide with terror. He surveyed the room as though he thought he might be dreaming.
“Brandon?” he asked.
Brandon turned slowly to face him. Draped across his arms, hidden from the debris, a girl with dark hair and unusually dark eyes blinked awake. She looked into her father’s face—into Brandon’s face—and smiled. And though he was full of darkness, Brandon smiled too. He’d done it. Nothing else mattered.
He was the Dark, and he was whole again.
Alejo looked at Logan and his eyes welled with tears. His expression was recognition and fear and love all at once. Slowly, cautiously, he stepped into the room and reached for Logan. She reached back and wrapped her arms around his neck. Alejo’s laugh was sharp with a sob. He shook his head.
His dark eyes met Brandon’s.
“Brandon…” he breathed. “What did you do?”
36
A Goodbye Of The Forever Kind
“Wait,” Ashley said. “So … you’re the Dark?”
Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. “Until a few months ago, yeah. Kind of. I was more like a host for it. I carried it around for years, but I never killed anyone. That’s new.”
The Dead and the Dark Page 25