by Ninie Hammon
Stuart turned slowly in a circle, could sense that Cotton was doing the same thing.
It was raining in the woods out beyond the town. You could see it. But no rain fell on Gideon.
Not a single drop.
Rusty lay still, as lifeless as a doll when the trunk lid opened and light flooded into the stuffy space.
“Get up,” Mrs. McFarland said.
He lay motionless.
“Go on, get up, get out of there, I said.”
He didn’t move. Felt her hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and that’s what he’d been waiting for. He’d wanted her to be leaning into the trunk, maybe a little off balance, but clearly not pointing a gun at him.
Exploding out of the cramped space like he flew off the starting block at a track meet, he hit her with his shoulder, knocking her backwards.
And then he was running, full out. He didn’t recall climbing out of the trunk, but he must have done it, jumped out as part of the motion of knocking her backwards. He didn’t remember that part, only felt the cool of the late afternoon air on his cheeks and the damp earth and grass and rocks beneath his bare feet.
There had been no deciding which way to go, no looking for cover, or a way out. He’d merely acted on instinct fueled by adrenaline and saw trees coming up in front of him, maybe fifty feet ahead.
He didn’t hear the sound of the gunshot. Didn’t really feel it tear into his back. Just felt a stinging sensation, like a sand flea had bitten him, not even as painful as a wasp.
Then it felt like an invisible hand slapped him on the back and shoved him forward with a mighty wallop. The force of the shove was so great it knocked him off balance, off his feet, and he flew forward, remembered to put his hands out in time not to face-plant in the weeds. The aroma of their broken stems reminded him of the smell of the lawnmower when he opened it up to change the blade.
He felt himself slide forward on his chest, his nostrils full of the vegetation smell and dust and when he finally stopped sliding, he felt dizzy. Like he felt when he crashed his bicycle. He’d fly over the handlebars steeled for how bad it was going to hurt when he hit the ground. Then he’d hit the ground and it wouldn’t hurt — for a couple of seconds. And he’d think it wasn’t going to hurt at all! That he’d landed on the asphalt or the concrete or whatever and somehow he hadn’t even skinned a knee. Then the pain would hit. A couple of seconds after he crashed to a stop, he’d feel whatever damage he’d done.
It hit now, like that.
Only worse.
Ten times worse.
A hundred times worse.
It wasn’t his skinned palms and knees that shot messages of agony to his brain.
It was his back. His back was on fire. Somebody was standing over him with a blowtorch burning the skin of his back.
Then the world began to fade, gray out.
The pain was gobbled up by the darkness.
“Jolene …”
Stuart hated the fear he heard in his voice, hated the sensation of panic he could feel rising up in his gut, hated the terror crawling on hairy black legs up the back of his throat.
She had been fiddling with the equipment, hadn’t looked where they were looking.
She didn’t turn to him, just cast an answer over her shoulder. “Just a minute. I almost have it—”
The cry got louder. And it was a cry, a sound like children wailing. Not sobbing, not simple tears — wailing. Bereft. Frightened and alone.
Stuart’s eyes darted from one impossible shadow to another.
The rain had picked up out in the woods. But above them …
“Stu …”
That was Cotton, but he didn’t have to call his name because Stuart saw it the same time Cotton did. Above them, straight up in the air, raindrops were falling … sideways. Like there was an invisible umbrella spread out over the buildings. It was a force, an invisible something that shunted the water away.
No, not invisible. You could see it.
It was a canopy of mist.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rusty must be standing too close to the campfire. He can feel the heat of it on his back, like his shirt is about to catch on fire.
“Get up!”
Something jabbed into his shoulder and he heard the words through the fog of burning on his back.
He had to get away from the fire.
Looking out through a forest of eyelashes, he could see only dirt and weeds and a shoe, someone’s shoe. He squeezed his eyes tight shut again.
The foot kicked him hard in the shoulder, and he opened his eyes all the way this time.
“I told you to get up!”
At that moment, the fire in his back morphed in a heartbeat from burning to blazing pain. Every inch of his back from his shoulders to below his waist was an agony so profound he couldn’t seem to breathe around it.
“Want me to shoot you again? I said get up.”
Shoot you again.
Shoot.
He’d been shot.
Mrs. McFarland … she shot him. Not with the pistol. What she had in her hands now was a double-barreled shotgun.
She’d shot him in the back with a shotgun.
And the buckshot had peeled his skin off from his shoulders to his hips.
He cried out, couldn’t help it, and she used the toe of her shoe to push him up off his belly.
“I’m gonna count to three. If you don’t get up by the time I get to three, I’m gonna shoot you in the leg.” She paused. “And at this range, the shot will likely rip it off at the knee.”
“No, please.” His voice sounded high and reedy, like a girl’s. “I’ll get up. I’ll get up. Just don’t …” Then he tried to move and cried out in agony.
“Awww, did it hurt its baby self?” She mocked him in baby talk. “Fall down and go boom? Skin his widdle knee?”
Then the baby-talk whine vanished.
“You ain’t hurt bad as you hurt my Dougie. No sir, not by a long shot. But you’re gonna give it back. Now get up or lose your leg.” She paused for a beat. “One …”
Rusty shoved himself up onto his elbows and the raging pain in his back made him nauseous.
“Two …”
He pushed up onto his hands, pulled his knees under him and swayed for a second on all fours. Then he tried to push himself upright, but his balance was off and he staggered and fell again. He heard her rack a shell into the shotgun and found the strength to try again. He pushed himself up, stood there swaying.
She used the barrel to gesture.
“This way.”
She backed out of his way and Rusty staggered off in the direction she’d pointed, back toward the car that was parked on the shoulder of the road. The passenger side door was open. Staggering closer, he saw that there was something lying in the middle of the road in front of the car.
His mind was too foggy to focus, was out of sync with the world so that what he saw remained a meaningless image for a heartbeat before his brain processed it and informed him what it was.
When he understood what was lying on the road … who was lying on the road, he stumbled again and let out a little cry that didn’t have anything to do with his back where buckshot had skinned him shoulder to waist.
Douglas.
His dead body was lying there. Unnatural. He looked like a horrible distorted mannequin lying discarded beside a store window. He was lying on his back and his arms and legs stuck out stiffly from his body. His right arm was a horror, black and purple, five times its normal size, his hand like a catcher’s mitt with fat hot dogs for fingers stuck to the side.
Rusty wouldn’t look at his face. Could not look at his face.
“This is what you done, but you’s about to undo it. You’s about to set it all right. You gonna give back to my boy the life you stole from him.”
Rusty had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
“Now, pick him up!”
Pick him up? If he’d been strong enough to pick Do
uglas up, he might have tried to carry him out of the woods after the rattlesnake had bitten him. Douglas was too heavy.
“Pick him up and carry him here.”
She gestured with the barrel of the rifle and it was only then that Rusty noticed it. The shimmer in the middle of the road. The mirror where he could see Douglas’s distorted body He could see himself, too, and Mrs. McFarland with a shotgun trained on him. Could see that his pants were soaked through with the blood that was pouring off his back, and dripping off his butt, making a puddle of red behind his bare feet.
“I’m almost ready,” Jolene said. She had never turned around, had not seen the mist overhead or the shadows among the buildings, but she could hear the cry that was getting louder and louder.
“Hurry!”
The shadows began to move.
Like shadows stretching out from under trees as the sun goes down, the shadows that should not have been there in the first place around the buildings began to puddle and grow thicker. They became pools of blackness, inky streams coming toward them.
The mist above got thicker and began to sink down on top of them.
The keening cry got louder.
Jolene stepped away from what she was doing, turned to look at them and saw what they could see and she leapt back and cried out, “It’s coming!”
She turned back to what she’d been working on, flipped a switch, and when she did there was a reverberation all around them. Like a gong sounding inside a bell jar, they could feel pressure rebounding off the mist above and the shadows that …
“We shouldn’t be able to hear … feel …” she said over her shoulder, obviously confused. She turned some kind of dial. And the instant pressure it caused slammed into them. Cotton and Stuart covered their ears with their hands, staggering.
The pressure … it was hard to breathe.
Jolene dropped to her knees and clapped her hands over her ears. Cotton stood rigid, his eyes almost bugging out of his head, then he clawed at his throat as if he suddenly didn’t have enough air.
“Sound waves … sealed in …” Jolene gasped.
Stuart felt wet on his upper lip, swiped his hand across it and saw the blood.
“Shadows!” It was a whisper on a gasp as Cotton sank to his knees, pointing toward the buildings behind Stuart. But Stuart didn’t turn because he didn’t have to. The shadows were oozing out in a black tide all around them. Then they separated out and became …
It was like what he used to do to entertain Merrie. He couldn’t make very many shadow creatures — a rabbit with two fingers and his index finger and thumb for the face. Hooking his thumbs together and forming his hands into wings for a bird.
These shadows weren’t tame rabbits or birds. They rose up off the ground like dogs that’d been crouched and were now rising up off their haunches to pounce. Misshapen horrors, distorted monster creatures with horns and claws and sharp teeth in open maws.
The shadows surrounded them. The mist hung just above their heads. Cotton looked up at it and his face twisted, like he wanted to scream but couldn’t. Stuart didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see what was up there that had stapled the look of abject terror on Cotton’s face.
And the wailing. The screeching had reached such a level that Stuart thought his ears might be bleeding. It felt like the sound would split his head open. The world around him began to dim. He was passing out. He was certain without knowing how it was so that if he ever closed his eyes, he would never open them again.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Claude had piloted the ancient Chevy pickup truck belonging to Shep’s brother off Gravel Switch Highway and onto Troublesome Creek Road south of Gideon. He drove down half a mile before he turned off onto a logging road. It was definitely the long way to Gideon, winding over the mountain through the trees. But he wanted to get up on the mountainside opposite Buzzard Knob, which would give them an unobstructed view of the buildings and street below.
Shep sat beside Claude, rifle in hand, with the barrel pointed at the floorboard. It was a 30.06 deer rifle. Not the rifle Shep would have picked if he’d had a choice. He’d never had a rifle fine as this one belonging to Abby’s cousin. Shep had only fired it the one time him and Doodlebug went out target shooting. Put a sight on that thing and you could drop a buck from two hundred yards away. It woulda been nice to have a sight, but he didn’t really need one. Shep intended to get so close he could watch the blood squirt out of their chests.
The rifle Billy Ray had brought to Claude rested on the gun rack behind the seat.
Thunder rumbled and the bald tires on the truck slipped and spun on the wet rock.
“We shoulda stayed on the road,” Claude said, fighting the wheel to keep the truck from sliding back down the incline.
The logging road had been there so long that it had become twin creek beds. The water that poured down the mountainside when it rained had flowed down the double ruts of the road for so long it had worn them down to bare rock.
Claude had downshifted into low gear when they’d turned off onto the logging road and now the old engine on the truck strained and groaned, scrabbling up the wet rocks. Yeah, they shoulda stayed on the road. The higher up the mountainside they went, the more treacherous the going became until it was all Claude could do to keep the vehicle moving forward, inching its way.
Then the engine coughed and died. Claude slammed his foot on the brake pedal, shoved it all the way to the floor and yanked the emergency brake handle to keep the truck from sliding backwards. He could restart the engine, it’d likely crank right up, but without any momentum, trying to climb farther was a useless effort. The tires would just spin. They could back real careful-like down the mountainside to Troublesome Creek Road, but they’d already taken too long.
The two men looked at each other. The water splatting down on the windshield was no longer just drops that had shook off the limbs of overhead trees. It had started to rain again.
There was nothing for it but to go the rest of the way on foot. Shep yanked on the door handle a couple of times before the door swung free. Claude reached back to the gun rack across the back window and took down the rifle. Shep had put extra shells into the pockets on his denim jacket. Claude was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and he had emptied the rest of the box into the big pocket on the front of it. Shep didn’t expect to need a whole lot of ammunition. Two men with rifles firing from above at three people who weren’t armed. Shouldn’t take but a couple of shots each to drop them in their tracks.
Sam raced through the house, crying out Rusty’s name, knowing she was being foolish but unable to help it. She stopped in the doorway of his bedroom. His bedspread was wrinkled — she’d left him here with a stack of comic books, made him lie down because she could see that he was still a little woozy from his ride on the Jabberwock.
The bed was made, of course. Rusty always made his bed. He’d heard some guy give a speech once, saying the rock-solid core of self-discipline started with making your bed every morning. Rusty had decided he wanted to be like that. So he made his bed up the moment he got out of it.
“Rusty always makes his bed,” she said to Malachi, as if somehow that statement would convey to him the same meaning it did to her. He pointed to the shoes beside the bed.
“Is he barefoot?”
Looking frantically around, she couldn’t seem to focus her eyes on any one thing. Malachi crossed the room and put a calming hand on her shoulder.
“One thing at a time. His shoes? Are his shoes here, the ones he usually wears?”
She glanced into the closet and burped out a bleat of laughter. His Air Jordans were right there where they always were. He hadn’t put them on a single time since the last day of school. He’d told her when she bought them for him that he was praying every night that his feet wouldn’t get any bigger. And she hadn’t had the heart to tell him that the chances of a twelve-year-old’s feet not growing at all for the rest of his life were slim indeed. He’d taken s
uch good care of the shoes that they hardly looked used.
His other shoes, his sneakers, lay where he’d tossed them onto the floor when he’d taken them off.
She opened the closet door, checked. He had an ancient pair of high-tops, some hiking boots and a pair of flip-flops. They all were there.
“Yes, he’s barefoot.”
It hit her then, the realization landed on her chest with both feet. She had been denying it on the whole drive from the Middle of Nowhere. There was some reasonable explanation for why Rusty had failed to answer the phone. He’d gone outside … was …?
He was taking a shower. Possible, not likely. Not voluntarily. And you could hear the phone ring in the shower.
He was …
She’d come up with a basketful of ridiculous reasons for why he hadn’t answered, but standing in his bedroom beside his rumpled bed, none of them held any water.
She looked pleadingly into Malachi’s eyes — there was such tenderness and compassion there. She should have cared about that, about him looking at her like that. But right now it didn’t mean beans.
“It’s not really … she couldn’t … wouldn’t …”
The compassion never wavered, but he refused to coddle her.
“It’s obvious Rusty didn’t leave here willingly. Somebody forced him to leave without even putting on his shoes. It was Claire, alright.”
She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Collapsed. Couldn’t breathe.
“If she’d wanted to harm him, she could have done that here. She took him somewhere. For some reason.”
“I can’t imagine what …”
She couldn’t seem to complete a sentence.
Malachi sat down beside her and actually took her hand.
“Let’s figure this out. She took her son’s body … his dead body. What for?”