The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  Well. Ok. One exception. With Austin. But nothing else.

  Dragging my scattered thoughts back together, I tried to focus on Tyler and Hannah. The Lady had been gathering children for decades, longer even. She had wanted a psychic. Instead, except for her halfway success with Luke, she had managed to produce only—what had Luke called them? Kinetics? And that raised two questions: first, now that she knew about me, why would the Lady take Hannah and Tyler? And, second, where had my powers come from?

  The image of that faded newspaper came to mind, and I batted it away. I focused on the first question. The simplest answer was to accept Urho’s message at face value. Urho and the Lady had taken Tyler and Hannah for the same reason that they had taken my dad: to control me, to threaten me, to frighten me. That had been a stupid idea, of course. They would do whatever they wanted to Dad; I didn’t give a rat-shit about him. And taking Tyler and Hannah hadn’t made me frightened. It had made me angry. Anger was an old friend. Anger made me strong. I’d had seventeen years, seventeen years today, to get to know my anger, to learn how to use it, to make it serve me. And Urho and the Lady were going to find out just how angry they’d made me.

  The outskirts of Kane cut out a silhouette ahead of me. It was a small town, even smaller than Vehpese, and it showed all the wear of long, hard years on the high plains: brick houses hunkered in the constant wind, their roofs peeling, their glazing thin but double-paned against the harsh winters. I passed a Kum-n-Go, an Arby’s, and a Mexican restaurant called Guadalupe’s with an inflatable cactus sagging against its doors. I passed a post office, and a strip mall abandoned by everyone except a single occupant—to judge by the giant wooden tooth hanging out front, its white paint gone dove-gray, a dentist. Two dogs, long-haired mutts, sniffed their way down the length of the strip mall. One was limping; the other had a bullseye of mud on its flank. They were the only living things Kane had to offer me.

  Built on the west side of Kane, where the state highway left town and headed deep into nowhere, the Kane Motor Court was a single U of detached buildings: an office with a dead neon sign that, at one point, had probably flashed a vibrant blue Vacancy, bracketed on both sides by three cabins. Probably as a concession to the dead neon sign, someone had pasted cardstock letters in the window spelling a single word: ROOM.

  I parked the Impala. I went back down to the state highway and looked in both directions. No semis. No big trucks. Nothing parked along the shoulder, and nothing in the motor court’s lot except for the Impala.

  But I wasn’t stupid enough to leave it there. I went to the closest cabin. I listened at the door. At the window, I squinted against the glare and the watery reflection of my face—I looked like shit, which made sense because I felt like shit—and tried to pick out anything inside. I saw a trim of what looked like a very roughly used polyester quilt, a half-circle of a particle board table, and an empty black ashtray that could have come off the set of Mad Men. Around back, I shimmied halfway up the log wall and slapped my hand against the furnace exhaust pipe. Cold. Then I froze. A small window with frosted glass was set into the wall. The bathroom window; I was sure of it. The screen had been sliced and flopped out of the frame.

  Somebody sneaking out to avoid paying for another night? Or something else?

  I checked the other cabins in the same way. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. The kids had vanished a week ago today. The only information I had—and it was questionable at best, considering my source was Shay—told me that Cribbs had stayed here more than a week ago. It was too much to ask that I’d find him holed up here, playing house with Tyler and Hannah. But I had to check. And something in my gut told me that if Tyler and Hannah had been taken, Cribbs had been involved. I didn’t know how to start looking for Tyler and Hannah any other way, so even if I was wrong, it was kind of a moot point.

  I didn’t find any sign that Cribbs—or anyone else—was staying at the Kane Motor Court. I didn’t find any sign that anyone would ever want to stay at the motor court. I didn’t find any sign that this place would still be standing in three months, let alone in a year. But places like this had a kind of grim tenacity. It would probably stay here long after someone had tamped down six feet of earth above me.

  The office door jingled when I put my shoulder into it. The cramped box of the lobby smelled like artificial vanilla, some kind of air freshener that I guessed was called Sugar Cookie or Grandmother’s Fresh Chocolate Chip or whatever the hell marketing people came up with. There was a nickel gumball machine full of gumballs that had to be at least as old as I was; the colors had faded to pastels. Someone had wadded up a chewed piece of Big Red in the nickel slot. Behind a warped sheet of plexiglass, a big, bald guy was reading Car and Driver. Between the white straps of his A-shirt, coarse, dark hair matted his shoulders. His eyes flicked up at me and then back to the glossy pages.

  “No kids.”

  I leaned against the counter. “I just need a favor.”

  “Get a friend with an ID. Over eighteen. He can pass you the key if he wants, but I don’t rent to kids.”

  “I’m not looking for a room.”

  “Great. Get lost, then.”

  “I’ve got a question.”

  Rolling the magazine, the guy looked me full on and seemed to take me in for the first time. “You from around here?”

  “I want to ask you about someone who stayed here.”

  The guy tapped on the plexiglass with the rolled-up magazine like he wanted to swat my nose with it. “Kid, just get lost, all right?”

  “Cribbs. He’s a trucker.”

  The magazine hovered a quarter-inch off the plexiglass. “What about him?”

  “Everything. Whatever you can remember.”

  “Kid, come on. What is this?”

  “I told you: whatever you can remember.”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then he wagged the rolled-up magazine side-to-side and unfurled it. “Get lost, kid.”

  As he sank back into his reading, I reared back, studying the plexiglass. I couldn’t break through it. And I was willing to bet part of the wall—the parts around the window—were reinforced so I couldn’t break through those either. Places like this had to deal with worse people than me. The door to the back part of the office was steel and set in a steel frame. I wanted to get back there and break his nose, but today really just wasn’t my day.

  For a moment, my third eye opened, and I reached out across the distance between us. Inside the darkness of his mind, I rifled, searching for memories of Cribbs and Hannah and Tyler. It wasn’t easy; I knew how to work through people’s emotions, finding their fears and hopes, even finding the parts of their brain where exhaustion and sleep and dreams and relaxation were processed. But specific memories, memories that were just data, those were hard. Needle-in-a-haystack hard. And after a few extended moments, I returned to my body.

  All right. I was going to have to do this the hard way.

  I hammered on the plexiglass, which flexed under the blows. “Hey, I’ll pay you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got nobody in those rooms.”

  “I already told you: I don’t rent to kids.”

  “I’ll pay you what you would have made off a night.”

  “You got sixty bucks?”

  “The sign out front says thirty. I’ll pay you thirty.”

  “It’s been really slow, kid. Sixty.”

  “Forty.”

  “Cribbs stayed two nights. You want to know anything else, you pay two nights.” He paused, as though struck by how very intelligent this arrangement seemed. “Yeah. Two nights.”

  Pulling out the wad of cash I’d taken from flannel-guy the night before, I peeled off the bills and slid them under the plexiglass. “Sixty bucks. Now quit jerking off and talk.”

  The guy wagged the magazine side-to-side again. “Kid, you got a mouth on you. You want me to come out there and take care of that mouth
for you?”

  “Sure. Come out. Take care of my mouth. And I’ll take care of your knees. You’ll be walking with two canes for the rest of your life. Come on out here.”

  “I’ve got your sixty bucks. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “You have to come out sometime to pee. And I’m really good at waiting. So either start talking, or let’s see how long you can stay in there.”

  “I can call the cops.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that. You’re running a place like this, and you call the cops. I’d really like that. Call them.”

  The magazine dipped again, and the guy’s eyes went to the phone and then to me. His hairy shoulders dropped. “Look, he was here two nights. That’s it.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. He parked his rig up the road. He went out for dinner; I saw him walk back with carry-out from the diner. I—” He hemmed. “I don’t know, kid. There’s nothing to tell you.”

  “Why two nights?”

  “What?”

  “Why did he stay two nights?”

  “I don’t know. He was tired. He wanted to be off the road for another day. It’s not like he told me.”

  I shook my head. Another place, another time, maybe that would be true. If he was somewhere he liked, somewhere it made sense to stay an extra day—a little fun, a little relaxation. Maybe if there was a girl in the picture. But not in Kane. Not the same weekend that Cribbs’s kids went missing. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

  “Did he have anybody with him?”

  “Shit, kid. I tell them they can’t bring those girls in here, but it’s not like I do room-checks.”

  “So he did have someone.”

  “I don’t do checks, I told you.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer. You saw him with someone. You saw him with the carry-out bag. You would have seen somebody else, too. Who?”

  “Look, it was dark, all right. It was . . . it could have been anybody.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman. I mean, she had a dress on. But she didn’t look like those girls that work some of the lots and rest stops. The dress, it was like, a dress. I mean, long. And I couldn’t see her face because it was dark, but she was, I don’t know . . .”

  “Old.” The word leaped from my mouth before I realized I was going to speak.

  “Yeah. Like, maybe his mom. Something like that, right?”

  “Two nights. Which night was that?”

  The guy tapped the plexiglass with the magazine as he thought. “Saturday. The second night.”

  The Lady had come here Saturday night. Why? To talk to Cribbs? My heart pounded in my chest. When I ran my hands along the laminate strip of counter, sweat made them slick.

  “Anybody else?”

  “What are you—”

  “Kids. Did he have little kids with him?”

  The bald guy reared back, dropping the magazine. “Now, look. Just look. I try not to get involved. If this is a custody thing, I don’t want anything to do with—”

  “Did he have kids with him? His kids. His son and daughter. They’d be, I don’t know, eight and six. Something like that.” I couldn’t even remember how old they were. How messed up was that? I was supposed to care about them. I was supposed to protect them, and I couldn’t even remember how old they were. “Did you see them?”

  “Look, they were his, right? His little boy. His little girl. Normally I don’t let kids stay, but they were his, weren’t they? I said one night, they could stay one night.”

  I left. The door jangled shut behind me, and the chilly spring air came to me over the high plains, carrying dust and wet pollen and blowing away the last whiff of Sugar Cookie air freshener. I clasped both hands at the back of my neck, but sweat made them greasy, and I couldn’t stand touching myself.

  I made it to the Impala and slid into the driver’s seat. Ok, so he had brought the kids back here on Saturday. He had stayed two nights, and the second night he had seen the Lady, after he had grabbed the kids. Why? Because already, over a week ago, she had been putting her plan in motion. And part of that plan had to do with taking Tyler and Hannah. Just like Urho had said: he was going to take everything from me.

  I paused. Something didn’t feel right. They wanted me to leave, didn’t they? What did they want?

  Right then, staring out the windshield at the motor court cabin, I felt helpless. I wasn’t going to just roll over and let Urho and the Lady take the people I loved one by one. But I didn’t know what to do. Cribbs had swooped in and taken his kids while Shay was distracted. I didn’t have any idea where he’d taken them. My one lead, the only shot I’d had, had been here at the Kane Motor Court, and it had been a dead end.

  I thumped the heel of my hand on the steering wheel hard enough that the horn bleated. Damn it. I’d come up against bad spots like this before. I’d come up against riddles and mysteries, things that felt like dead ends. But I’d always gotten around them.

  Jangling the keys in my palm, I reconsidered that last part. I had gotten around them. That part was true. But I hadn’t done it alone. I’d had Austin and Emmett and Becca. And they’d done a lot of thinking and digging and working to help me. Becca in particular. She was just so damn smart.

  But I couldn’t ask her for help. I couldn’t even put my reasoning into words, not really, but some of it was the pain of learning that Ginny had talked to Sara and my friends without telling me, part of it was the shame that they all knew how messed up my life was, part of it was the decision I’d made to leave. And no matter how much I told myself that I was leaving to protect them, that I was leaving so they wouldn’t have to deal with the train wreck of my life, I knew that was only part of the truth. I was leaving because of how bad it all hurt. And going back to Becca, asking for her help, would be to walk straight into the worst of that hurt. I knew it was stupid to think like that, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t change it.

  As I bounced the keys on my palm, a realization hit me so hard that I fumbled. Scrambling to recover the keys, I tried to work through the thought again. I didn’t have Becca here. And I was too messed up to go ask for her help. But maybe I didn’t need to have Becca. Maybe I just needed to think like her.

  What would Becca do if she were searching for Cribbs? She’d do some sort of profile of him. She’d trawl social media for information. She’d look up property tax records. She’d search white page listings and news databases. I couldn’t do any of those things because I was shit with computers and, even if I hadn’t been, I didn’t have access to one. But I still had a profile of Cribbs. An imperfect one, yes, but still a profile. Shay had given it to me.

  I ran my thumb along the edge of the Impala’s key, trailing my nail along the ridges. What had she told me? That he was abusive. That he was petty and vindictive. That he was self-centered. That he used people and disposed of them when he no longer needed them. How had Shay put it? He’d been dating that girl just so he had a babysitter for Tyler and Hannah, and then he’d kicked her to the curb. Something like that. Shay had told me that he didn’t have a house and that instead when he passed through the area, he liked to stay at the Kane Motor Court—

  My nail skipped along the key’s ridges. He liked to stay at the Kane Motor Court. Or the Gypsy or the Hunt Public House.

  Maybe three nights in one place had been too much of a risk. Maybe showing up with kids at the Kane Motor Court after two nights alone would have drawn too much attention. Maybe he’d just gone to one of his other favorite places. Maybe.

  The drive was a blur of the pilled-wool sky and the sage and the first greening of the Junegrass. As I headed toward Vehpese, I thought. I was going to have to make a decision where I would search next. The Gypsy was a roadhouse, south on Route 127 from Vehpese. That might have been where Cribbs had gone; it wasn’t far from town, and it wasn’t so rough that anybody would wonder about kids—well, they wouldn’t wonder too
much. The Hunt Public House was another story, and a pair of kids would definitely stand out. But the Hunt Public House was also east of Vehpese. Closer to the mountains—closer to the Bighorns, and closer to Hunt Mountain in particular. And I had dreamed of mountains.

  I turned east. I drove through Vehpese, following the state highway through the center of town. In the pallid spring light, with stormwater jeweling the windows and following the draw of aging caulk in heavy runnels, Vehpese looked better. Not newer, exactly. Cleaner, definitely, where the rain had floated away the clamshell takeout containers from Bighorn Burger. But—scenic. Picturesque. Those weren’t the right words, but I couldn’t come up with what I wanted to say. The enormous sky cottony with clouds, the bright glitter of the remaining raindrops, the cement and asphalt dark and wet—it wasn’t beautiful, but it was dramatic. And damn if I wasn’t feeling dramatic as hell that day.

  I passed Bighorn Burger where I was missing my shift—it didn’t matter because I was going to be dead or gone in the next day, but I still felt guilty about leaving Kimmy and Joel and Miguel shorthanded—and I passed The Big Swirl and Lumber Jack’s and the redone stripe of town along the river with its lines of young, springy lodgepoles and its metal and its borrowed Portlandia look. I passed the coffee shop where I had talked to Austin, really talked, for the first time. Not a date, but it had been the day our lives crossed. As I drove a thread unspooled from my heart to that back corner of the coffee shop with the dead plant, and the farther I drove, the harder that string tugged. I crossed the bridge over the Bighorn River, and my stomach dropped and kept dropping, and I remembered what it had been like: the cold water needling my face, plugging my nose, scraping my throat raw as I swallowed and tried to get air. The sand and pebbles scraping my cheek. Emmett’s face set in concern, his wet hair flat across his forehead. The sound of his guitar. The dark and the wind and the sea of buffalo grass. The realization that he was alone.

  After that, I drove faster because I had to find these kids and get the hell out of this place before I made the same mistakes all over again.