The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  Hunt Public House sat in a cluster of businesses, an island of commerce in the ocean of juniper and scrub and cottonwood that grew thirstily along the Bighorn River. The public house itself was a squat two-story building with a sheet metal roof and a pan-formed plastic sign: a black-tail doe in mid-jump, a red iron sight on her flank. They were taking the name Hunt rather literally I realized, and I sighed as I pulled into the parking lot. It was going to be one of those places.

  The asphalt made an E, with the public house at the center leg. The upper leg terminated at the Suds ’n Shop; judging by the wall of industrial washers and an endcap display of dollar-store Easter decorations (an enormous plush bunny, legs sprawled indecently, took the upper shelf), I decided it was some sort of combo laundromat/general store. The lower leg of the E met a single-story brick structure with plate windows. On the windows, someone had made a weak attempt to scrape off white lettering that read Hunt Personal Computing Experts You’re Best Shot (nobody had worried about the grammar, and I figured Mr. Spencer would be proud of me for noticing if he weren’t so pissed I’d stolen his car) and below that line of half-erased script, bright yellow letters said We Buy Gold, but the windows were dark, and a thick chain wrapped the door.

  So much for the brief commercial boom in Hunt, WY.

  I drove behind the Hunt Public House, where an ancient F-150 was pulled up against the back wall. There was a Cutlass with duct tape holding one door in place, and there was a Firebird sloughing its cherry-red paint. A few yards back, where the asphalt broke off and dirt and weeds sloped down toward the cottonwoods, a soapy blue semi-tractor was parked with leaves across its windshield. It was just the tractor—the front part of the whole assembly, with the cab and the engine so that it could be driven independently but without the long hauling trailers that it normally towed. Cribbs’s tractor, I guessed. No. I hoped.

  The Impala ticked as it cooled behind me, and I trotted toward the tractor. I made a circuit of it. The leaves on the windshield were a good clue, but I checked the crumbling asphalt under the tractor —lighter in color than the wet patches exposed to the weather—and the mud flaps—dry on the inside, the mud stiff and crumbling to my touch.

  The semi-tractor had been here for a day. Maybe two. Through the rain, which had been on and off for almost two full days. Never long enough for the roads to dry out completely. And never long enough that someone could drive it without picking up wet mud and splashing a lot of water on the vehicle’s undercarriage. Take the Impala, for example: as it ticked and cooled, I could see spatters of fresh mud in the wheel wells.

  Why was Cribbs here? Why not—well, I paused as I took a step back and studied the public house again. I didn’t know what Cribbs wanted. Something, obviously. He must have been involved with some of the illegal shipping—human trafficking, drugs, black market merchandise—that Belshazzar’s Feast had coordinated through this part of the world. There wasn’t any explanation of why or how he would know the Lady otherwise.

  Asphalt crumbled, tiny black crumbs shifting under my sneakers as I worried the edge of the pad with my shoe. Suspecting that Cribbs had somehow been involved with the Lady and her operation out of Belshazzar's Feast didn’t explain the rest of it, though. What did he get out of turning his kids over to the Lady? The only way that made sense is if Shay were wrong and Cribbs didn’t care about Tyler and Hannah. And even if Shay were wrong, even if Cribbs didn’t love his kids, why go to this kind of trouble? Why risk a kidnapping charge, even if it got dropped after the truth came out about the divorce and custody settlement?

  I followed the asphalt around to the front of the public house. Aspen leaves, brown from last autumn, clung to my sneakers. Money. People did all sorts of things for money. That seemed too obvious. Too simple. It might have been money, sure, but I didn’t have anything to base my guess on. A thud, thud, thud had started, and it sounded like it was in my chest, more rhythmic than my heartbeat, buried deeper in my flesh. Money. What kind of piece of shit sold his kids out for money? Thud, thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud.

  A part of me was still in the asphalt lot, pausing at one of the misaligned parking stops to scrape an aspen leaf from the toe of my sneakers. But a part of me was back in Emmett’s house, in his dad’s study, my shirt off and Lawayne pawing my back like every scar was just part of his personal tally instead of another fucking seam where my life had broken. That inside part of me, the part that didn’t care shit for the aspen leaf on my shoe or the fact that nobody had ever straightened the parking stops or that the thud, thud, thud was coming from inside the public house, the bass line to shitty pop music, that inside part of me was hearing Lawayne talk to my dad, telling him to put me on a leash, to put me in a kennel, to beat my ass. And my dad’s voice like a bumblebee trapped in an aluminum case, buzzing yes, yes, yes. What kind of piece of shit. That leaf wouldn’t come off my sneaker no matter how I twisted my foot, no matter how hard I scraped along the parking stop’s snub end. What kind of piece of shit. I ran my foot the length of the parking stop. That damn leaf bent in half, its wet tip trailing along the stop, but it didn’t pull free. What kind of piece of shit. I brought my foot down hard, so hard that the shock ran up to my knee, and I knew I was being stupid, I just goddamn knew it, but I didn’t care because that leaf wouldn’t get off my fucking shoe, and what kind of piece of shit did that kind of thing to their kid?

  With one final, savage kick, I ripped the leaf free, and it spun, its tip shredded from the parking stop’s cement, and lay flat on the asphalt. I shook myself out. Who cared about a leaf? And who cared about the kinds of pieces of shit that got to be parents? That was just biology. Stick your dick in the right spot, and if you were lucky/unlucky, a kid popped out. You didn’t have to be smart or decent or talented. And anyway it was just a leaf, just a leaf, they were all over the soles of my sneakers, so what did it matter if there was one more.

  And sure enough, I picked up another leaf, an identical one, on my next step.

  Fuck my life.

  Inside, the Hunt Public House did have a decent bass line going—the thud, thud, thud I had heard outside. It wasn’t pop music, though, as I’d guessed; at least, nothing I had heard before. Older stuff, maybe. Or just something obscure. Hipsters popped up everywhere; maybe one of them owned the Hunt Public House. With the weak bulbs behind thick yellow glass, the inside of the building was mostly shadow with the occasional burl of light knobbing the darkness. There was a bar, a row of taps, and a chalkboard menu with pizza listed as the special of the day for February 22nd. It had been a long time since February.

  Behind the bar, a pair of guys did prep work: one sliced limes; the other washed bar mats and metal trays. They looked like Wyoming boys, brothers: rangy, mud-haired, and each of them in red flannel.

  “No kids,” the one with the limes shouted over the music.

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot today.”

  “What?” He shook his head. “Axton, tell him no kids.”

  The one scrubbing bar mats—Axton, God love him for a name like that—looked at me over his shoulder. “No kids.”

  “Yeah.” When I got to the bar, I glanced around. Bathrooms were on my left. On my right, an archway opened onto another room with a pool table and more seating. A curtain covered an opening further down the wall, and I guessed that was my destination. “I’m looking for somebody.”

  “You can’t be in here,” the one with the limes said. “No minors. It’s against the law.”

  “I’m not trying to buy anything.”

  “Still can’t be in here.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Axton, get rid of this kid, will you?”

  “No kids.”

  “Jesus Christ. I’m just looking for somebody and then I’ll go.”

  “Didn’t you hear him—” the one with the limes started.

  Axton waved him to silence. “Who?”

  “A guy named Cribbs.”

  The one w
ith the limes froze, the knife halfway through a green wedge.

  “Kid, you should just go, all right?” Axton was trying hard to meet my gaze, but he was looking over his shoulder, and I was better than most people at being cold as ice. After a moment, he shrugged, turning his attention back to the bar mats. But as he turned, his eyes slid toward the curtained opening. “Just get lost.”

  “Yeah. I’ll get lost.” I pushed off from the bar and started toward the curtain.

  “Hey, kid. You can’t go back there. Kid! Axton, for Christ’s sake, Cribbs doesn’t want anybody—”

  “Will you shut up, shit-for-brains?”

  Behind me came the sound of the rubber mats splashing into the sink, then footsteps. The brothers behind the bar, if they really were brothers, hadn’t looked tough. They were both smaller than me. But they also worked in a pub, and they’d probably had to get rough with customers before, and they might not feel bad about tossing a kid out on his ass. They might not feel bad, for that matter, about doing a lot worse.

  The industrial vinyl underfoot bristled with the spillage from sticky drinks, a fur of dust that had settled since whenever this place had last been mopped—a few decades ago, I guessed—and a snack mix of pretzels, peanuts, and those little bagel wafers. They probably put out bowls of the stuff from time to time. Every step I took sounded like velcro ripping, and behind me, Axton was coming faster.

  As I grabbed the curtain—thin cotton that had gotten thinner with age, a layer of oil and nicotine filming the surface yellow—a hand grabbed my arm and hauled me back. Tried to haul me.

  “Kid,” Axton’s voice was low, almost sad, and then something pricked me low on my back. Steel. Sharp steel. “You should have just gotten out of here.”

  THE STEEL DUG INTO me again, the point passing easily through my sweater and dimpling the flesh low on my back. Warm blood trickled into my waistband. Just a trickle. The edges of my world went red—not from the pain, it was just a pinprick, but from the sudden rush of fear and anger.

  “You want to see Cribbs. Why don’t you tell me why?”

  He hauled on me again, and the top of my body went with him, while the lower half tried to remain fixed in place, bent against the narrow point of steel embedded in my skin. Axton hauled on me once more.

  I was big. I was heavy. I was mad. I didn’t haul.

  He was touching my arm. It would have been easier if I had turned to look him in the eyes, but I didn’t want to give him even an instant of satisfaction. He was touching my arm, and that would be enough. My inner sight opened. The hypertexture of the other side overlaid the public house: the tobacco-smoke haze on the curtain suddenly gained depth and complexity; the lines of my veins, blue like river water under winter-pale skin, became sapphire threading through snow. I heard a soft voice at the edge of consciousness, but I ignored it and reached across, into Axton’s mind, and found the darkness waiting for me.

  It was quiet in here. I hung in that void. And disappointment rasped inside me like a match on a strike strip. I didn’t feel any better. That black hole in the back of my head, the thoughts about my dad, about Austin, about Emmett—they didn’t quiet down, they didn’t go away. They were still there, eating me up in pieces.

  Why? When I had come apart, when I had entered the other side fully and ripped Krystal’s soul across planes, I had felt great. Beyond great. It hadn’t just been peace; it had been bliss. Here, now, in the darkness of this Wyoming bartender’s head, I still felt like shit.

  I had to go deeper into the other side. I had to go farther. Away from me, away from myself, away from my body. The thought glowed; it was like that security light I had seen from Dad’s window the night before, just a speck of white tacking the void into place.

  Time was passing, I realized. Slower here, but still passing. I needed to deal with Axton, and then I needed to get upstairs.

  Dipping into the dark stillness of Axton’s mind, I looked for the source inside me: a memory from my own childhood. Nothing terrible. Nothing that might cascade through Axton the way I had set off that landslide inside Emmett’s head. This was simple, small, safe. It was the memory of lying on a quilt spread on the grass, the sky dark and open, and a daddy long-legs crawling onto my arm. My first reaction, my only reaction that persisted in the memory, was stark, brainless terror. Then I was free of Axton’s head, and my inner eye snapped shut, and the hypersaturated colors of the other side faded.

  Axton squealed. It was the only word that fit the noise: a high, desperate glottal sound. Then metal chimed, and the knife dropped down to bump against my sneaker as Axton jumped back.

  I spun around. Axton’s mouth was wide. That squeal, deep in his throat, was still choking him. He took a rickety step back; he caught up against a chair, and it tumbled, and the clatter seemed to snap whatever was holding Axton. The squeal turned into a full-on, “Fuck,” and he ran. He crashed into the pub’s front door at speed, slipped, and his legs went out from under him. The next instant he was scrambling out between the doors on hands and knees. I met the other brother’s eyes and pointed the way Axton had gone.

  Other-brother ran too.

  A knife. I glanced down at the long deadly blade. Not a paring knife for slicing limes. Not a box cutter for breaking down cardboard. You could skin a deer with a knife like this. Or you could bury it in a kid’s back. If you hit low, the kidney maybe, you might not even give him a chance to scream. I didn’t have definite proof. I didn’t know, not for sure. But I had a pretty good sense that Axton had planned on killing me before he let me get to Cribbs’s room.

  Suddenly, the pub’s emptiness made my skin crawl. Water still ran in the sink where Axton had been scrubbing the mats. The brother had left a lime slice only half-cut. The thud, thud, thud of the music continued, and I stooped and grabbed the hunting knife, and then I twitched aside the curtain long enough for a look.

  A flight of stairs.

  I hesitated a moment and then moved back behind the bar. I found the radio and shut off the music, and I hit the tap with my elbow; the water sputtered once and dried up. Everything smelled like limes back here. Keys. Where would they keep the keys to the rooms they rented? They would have to be close, right? I pictured the public house in the small hours. The music would still be hammering. The crowd would have shrunk to the loyal, the desperate, and the wasted. The loyal would probably have a place of their own; the desperate and the wasted, probably not. They might stay in their cars. They might try to drive into the vast expanse of the high plains and find a flophouse like the Kane Motor Court. But why risk a DUI? Why go out in the cold, in the rain, onto roads where the Highway Patrol wouldn’t mind having a friendly chat with you and then another, longer chat in the county lock-up? Why do something stupid like that when the Hunt Public House had rooms for rent? And cheap, too. The desperate and the drunk would come up to the bar. They’d settle the tab. They’d pick up a key.

  At least, that was what made sense to me, so I scanned the cramped space behind the bar. There, above a shelf with pickled jalapenos and pearl onions and an open box with plastic-wrapped tampons spilling out, keys hung on hooks. Two keys with identical tags that read 1. Two keys on the next hook—2. Only one key each for hooks 3, 4, and 5.

  Five rooms. Three of them occupied. I grabbed the keys tagged 3, 4, and 5. Then I took the stairs.

  The rooms ran shotgun toward the end of the building; a window punctured the far wall, exposing a rectangle of that dirty-wool sky. All five numbered rooms were on my left. On my right, one door was unmarked, but the addition of a serious-looking deadbolt told me it was probably the office. A little farther down on the right was a second door. No deadbolt. It was opposite Room 3, and judging by the screw holes on the wood, I figured at one point it had borne a plaque of some kind.

  I jiggled the handle on the door with the missing plaque. The sound was loud, and my heart beat a little louder in my ears. The handle turned, and I opened the door. Mops in stagnant water, a
dolly with chipped red paint, metal shelves with a few sad rolls of paper towels. A utility sink filled with bloody bedding. Fear swam in my gut. Was I too late?

  Shutting the door, I studied the hallway again. Ok, so the janitorial closet was opposite room 3. And rooms 3 through 5 were the backmost rooms, with five against the exterior wall. So if they’ve only got one guest, maybe they put him in 3 right away because it’s the easiest room to clean. And 4 goes to the next guy. But 5—5 didn’t make sense. The third guy should have gone in 2, right next to three. Minimize effort and work. Don’t schlep the cleaning supplies all the way down to 5 if you don’t have to.

  I paused. I wanted to club myself on the side of the head. I was a psychic, right? I didn’t need to go through all this process-of-elimination shit. I could just project myself into the other side and walk right through the walls, check each room, and go from there. I opened my second sight, and as the ultra-fine weave of the other side appeared, I hesitated. To project myself onto the other side, even partially, would leave my body here. Helpless. And if Axton worked up the courage to come back—or his brother, which was more likely—then I’d be easy prey for them. I’d likely die before I even knew they were there.

  The swim and surf of blood was louder in my ears. For the time being, until I had someone to watch my back, I wasn’t willing to take the risk. I worked key 5 in my hand. I’d have to do this the hard way.

  Up here, a nickel’s worth of carpet covered the floor. The damn stuff didn’t muffle anything; every step I took sounded magnified by the cheap flooring and the bare walls. If I were Cribbs, if I had taken my kids off the street and hauled them out to this dump, if I were locked up and hiding with them—God only knew why—what would I do? I’d be worried. Not scared, not yet, but on edge. That much was obvious by how Axton and the other brother had acted downstairs. They hadn’t just wanted me to go away; Axton, at least, had been willing to hurt me, maybe kill me, to keep me away from Cribbs.