The Keeper

by Barr, Clifford

  A couple of seconds later, Matt felt Becca walk over to him. He wished that Walter had come over as well, but it didn’t really matter what the old man thought. It was over, and Matt would have a lot to atone for, but he had succeeded somewhat with sacrificing himself. He hoped that other people would be able to see it as such.

  His sister sat down on the log next to him.

  After a second, Becca turned toward him.

  “Why?” she said.

  “You know why,” he said. “You got what you wanted in the end.”

  “I didn’t want any of this,” she said.

  “Neither did I.”

  “You could have done it. I was willing to let you do it. This wasn’t like earlier when we were still in Atkins. This time you had no power over me. All you had to do was do it, and you didn’t.”

  Matt didn’t look at his sister. He kept his vision on the valley below them. There were spots of light here and there from cabins and other houses sprinkled all throughout. They were nice cabins, probably filled with people trying to go about their days. He liked to think that they were happy down there and that they would have everything they ever needed.

  “Killing was never something I was fond of,” Matt said. “If it was, I would have killed Walter long ago, or not given him Danni’s NaU.”

  And he’d been thinking lately, thinking about that night of the fair.

  He had gone to the Washington County Fair every year, for almost his entire life. He used to go with Nigel before the man lost his job and grew fonder of having liquor in his system and a belt in his hand. Then he went with Robbie and that section of his family, and then eventually with his friends, all of whom were dead now. That’s what really kicked Matt’s head, thinking about all of the people that would never have any answers, never have any closure. Seven people dead or missing, four of whom were children. They would never know what happened to their children. Matt didn’t think he could go on living, and actually looked forward to the coming darkness, something he hadn’t felt ever since he was much younger, when death looked almost preferable to living in the way he did at that time.

  But the fair was supposed to be a nice time, a place for all of them to forget about the anxieties of life and have fun, and they had succeeded. But it was Matt who disrupted it, Matt who just went and had another attack, leading all of them home earlier than they had planned to be out. If Matt hadn’t had that attack that night, well, then all of his friends would have been spared from the NaU, safely away from all of it.

  It, at some level, at some foundational core, was his fault, and that was a burden he was looking forward to no longer having to carry. Soon.

  “Is Walter all right?” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Becca said.

  It wasn’t giving up, at least not in Matt’s view. It was something else, the manifestation of the chaos to which had been brought upon his life, the desperation, the anger, the fear, all of it coming forth and making him do one thing, and him having the strength and fortitude to look chaos in the face and tell it now.

  But Becca wouldn’t understand any of that.

  “You’ll understand someday, or at least I hope you will,” he said. “Maybe by then, you’ll remember me as I once was and not this thing in front of you.”

  He felt it then. He let go of his side, and the blood started to come out then.

  “I’ll tell Mom you say hi,” he tried to say, but the energy didn’t come to his throat. He fell off the log and into the snow. It felt good on him, so cold and comforting. He reached out and felt it. This wasn’t the worst way to die, and he liked it. Maybe, all of this had been worth something after all. He closed his eyes, and darkness fell completely.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Odd Occurrence in Atkins.

  By Charles Newhall

  Following a terrible storm that racked most of central New York this past week, no other place got hit as bad as the small town of Atkins, New York.

  Akins, an old lumber town that, like many across central New York, experienced an odd sight during a random winter storm, witnesses say. Meteorologist Greg Blush reported that the New York State area was hit with almost two feet of snow over a two day period. Roads were shut down, and I-88, which cuts right next to Atkins, was shut down following concerns about the weather and snow.

  At 8:34 p.m., every window and pane of glass in the small town shattered. People also reported having heard sounds coming from their radios and TVs.

  Upon further investigation, the Atkins police department, with the assistance of the nearby town of Barrenly have been reporting the issue.

  There was also talk of seeing people flying, with colored lights moving under their skin. One such report from a mother and her daughter claimed they saw an angel bring someone to heaven on I-88, but Police Chief Denny had no comment on that. Aside from the windows and the radios, there were large sections of the road that were messed up as well, with cracks in the ground and other things.

  The Davenport Lumberyard, which is currently up for the market, was either broken into or experienced some sort of problem. Large chunks of wood had fallen from their piles, large sections of the metal gate and chain-link fence were ripped up and missing. Police Chief Denny, likewise, made no comment.

  It appears as though we might never know what exactly happened in Atkins, New York that night . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Janice drove through a broken neighborhood.

  Well, perhaps broken wasn’t the right word. Janice had been down and even lived on worse streets than the one she was currently was driving down. She currently lived on a pretty bleak street, though in an apartment now rather than in a house. She hadn’t had a house since she was a kid, before her mother lost her job. Since then, apartments had been the name of the game, though not one she liked playing.

  And currently, she was losing. Ever since Dan died, making the monthly payments for rent had been hard on her, but much harder on the kids. Hell, she had to spend almost every waking hour of her life at the Stewarts, trying to make enough money to cover rent, groceries, and the hundreds of other mysterious expenditures that kids seem to bring with them. She wouldn’t have changed her children for the world, but they were expensive little things. They were supposed to have a bright future in spite of all that, though, one where they didn’t have to worry about the things that they worried about at the present moment.

  But all of that was supposed to change.

  Janice was surprised when she got the call. She was just about done with Trucker Mike’s order when the phone rang in the back of the store. Now, most of the phone calls that come to individual Stewarts stores were either personal or corporate.

  Janice almost never got calls at work, and the only reason one might call her was that something had happened to the kids. That’s why, when Lydia called out her name and handed her the phone, time seemed to stop.

  What could it have been? Little Molly hadn’t looked all that great that morning before the bus came, but Janice wouldn’t have been able to find a sitter in time to cover her while she stayed home, so she just packed her daughter right up onto the bus as though things were normal. Maybe the chicken Janice had cooked the night before had been undercooked, and the two children were sick? Maybe Brenden got into a fight again and was currently being brought to the hospital, where the doctors there would learn that no, in fact, Janice didn’t have health insurance.

  Her thoughts kept on like that for a second or two, before she brought the phone to her ear.

  Walter spoke through the phone.

  She hadn’t seen Walt since the great blizzard a few days back. As far as she was aware, she occupied that position with almost everyone else who knew Walt. The man had disappeared the night all of that commotion happened that night on I-88. The man had disappeared.

  But none of that seemed to phase the old man as she talked to him on the phone. He asked her how her day was going, how the kids were, how Stewarts had been
the last couple of days, and some other things that she quickly forgot. Every time she tried to ask him about where he’d been, or what happened that night on I-88, he would skirt around the question and brush it off. Finally, he told her to meet him at an address the following day and to not tell anyone about it or that she had spoken to him. And then like that, the line went dead. If Lydia didn’t ask him who it had been on the phone, Janice might have just thought she dreamt the whole thing. It was weird. Against her better judgment, she decided to head to the house.

  She had the morning off, only having to go into work later in the day until closing. She got in her car and drove over to the other side of Atkins.

  Janice already knew where the address would lead her. She had looked up Walt’s house multiple times over the years, just to make sure he did, in fact, have a house that he’d be interested in selling to her if he died. A small part of Janice had actually been concerned when Walt went up missing that he wouldn’t be able to get the house to her. It was a selfish thought, and one she kept to herself. She loved Walt, but she really wanted that house.

  Even if it no longer had windows.

  All down the street, there were contractors and Lowes trucks and Home Depot trucks here and there. Everyone was having new windows installed.

  The talk of the town was that something had happened with the electricity that caused all of the radios and televisions to emit a loud sound the right frequency of the cold glass, causing it to break. The running theory was maintained by eye and ear witness reports who heard a loud, odd (people dared to call it monster-like) voice blare over the radio. Considering that everyone near a radio reported the same thing meant that yes, some weird frequency had gone about and caused all of this destruction.

  There were also gaping holes in the ground on the road around Walt’s house. People reported seeing people fighting and throwing one another around the town, but Janice didn’t know about that. She doubted anything that spectacular would ever happen in the small town of Atkins, New York.

  Janice pulled right up to the driveway and pulled in. Walt’s truck wasn’t there, and there was no indication of anyone living in the house in front of her. Also, all of the windows were in there, as though they had never broken. If there was any indication of something weird happening with Walt, it was that he still had his windows.

  Besides that, the house looked nice. Janice stepped out of the car and over toward the house.

  She still could be dreaming.

  The front door opened. Walt walked out. His eyes had alertness to them, and his cheeks a color that she hadn’t seen on the man before. He motioned for her to get inside. Looking around once more, she walked up the step and into the living room.

  Janice had the utmost respect for Walt. However, she expected his house to be just a strike or two close to being a wreck. An old man living alone in his house with about as much of social life as a graveyard didn’t leave much of an incentive for him to clean. The man always looked nice whenever he came in for coffee, or to pay for gas, but his house wasn’t him, and he could have let the place run to shit over the years.

  But the house was clean. The furniture was all arranged, no duct or cobwebs littered the room’s interior. There was a lack of photos and any decoration, but aside from that, the house looked perfectly normal.

  “People are looking for you, Walt,” Janice said. “You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”

  “No trouble for me,” he said. “Just going through something right now. Nothing too major.”

  “You might want to tell the police that,” she said. “Half of the police force from here and Fulton-Montgomery County are looking for you.”

  “The police wouldn’t want to hear anything I would want to say,” he said. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t believe anything I told them.”

  “Well then, tell me, what happened on I-88.”

  “Ignorance is its own kind of bliss,” he said. “Trust me, the last thing you would want right now is to be brought into the fold with everything.”

  “I thought it wasn’t too major,” she said.

  “It’s not,” Walt said. “But the boat is full right now. No reason to capsize it.”

  The man could very well be crazy. Old man Walt, might have upgraded to crazy old man Walt, lighting his rest stop of fire and escaping in the night.

  But Janice knew Walt and doubted very much that anything crazy or nonsensical was running through the man’s brain at this time. She just wanted answers, but the man didn’t seem too keen to try and provide them.

  “I built this house,” Walter said. “Oh, maybe forty years ago. My cousin helped me, along with my brother-in-law. The three of us worked on the house for a whole spring and summer, working every day on it. Hell, we probably would have gotten it done sooner if we weren’t wasted out of our minds during the entire time. It was fun, though, looking back on it.

  “There also weren’t so many houses around when we built it. All around here, it used to be a forest, before Atkins got some state grant money and decided to plow the forest down and incentivize business to build houses. Turned a pointless forest into a home for a new generation. My point is that this house used to be a nice little cottage out in the country. It’s not that anymore, but it’s still a home.”

  Walt reached into a nearby drawer for something. Janice hoped it wasn’t a gun. But instead of a gun, the man brought out some papers.

  “This is the deed to the house,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

  Yep, it was a dream, all right. There was no way that Walter was really standing in front of her, a fugitive, telling her that his house was now her own. It was the right amount of crazy with a little slice of expectation and hope that made the dream real enough to be false.

  But a second passed. And then another. Walt was still standing in front of her, the world not melting away. He walked over to her and handed her the papers.

  She had a house, a real house. Trying to hold back her excitement, but having it bubble up anyway, she hugged the man. He felt warm under his flannel, almost electric. He hugged her back for a moment before moving back.

  “How much do I owe you?” she said.

  Numbers flashed around in her head. Walt was her friend, but this was a good spot for a property. The personal connection, though, might make him more apt to lower the price. She could run over to the bank after their little meeting and then get all of the finances arranged. She had good credit, enough savings for a small down payment and then—

  “The house is free,” he said.

  Janice’s mouth dropped. She closed it. This day was full of surprises, and they were just getting better and better.

  “There is a cost though,” Walt said, “but it’ll be an easy one to pay. All you need to do is live here, use this home to make a home more or less. I know that sounds like something off a Hallmark card, but it’s true. This house has been empty for so long. It’ll do it some good to have people living in it again.”

  The two of them went on a tour of the house. Everything had been packed up and moved. Walt showed the master bedroom, the kitchen, the television (which looked about as old as he was), the living room, and finally the kid’s bedroom.

  “This room is an important one,” Walt said, “and I think your kids will enjoy it.”

  The kids would enjoy anything better than the small space they currently had. There were other kids in this neighborhood too, real kids. There were kids at the apartment where Janice currently lived, though they weren’t all that great. Not the role model sort of kids that Janice wanted her own to be around. They would be closer to the school, and closer to the Stewarts.

  And before she knew it, she and Walt were walking out the front door, her front door, and onto her now driveway. People were looking over at them, perhaps wondering if that was the missing Walt standing in the driveway.

  Walt said that there was a folder in the kitchen with all of the heating, electrical, plumbing, tras
h collecting, and other information that she could look through whenever.

  “What do I say when the cops come?” she said.

  “Maybe tell them what you saw, word for word,” Walt said, “and maybe they’ll believe you. Maybe not.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “A friend of mine and I have to head up north to take a look at something,” he said. “Something tells me it’s going to be a one-way trip, one way or another.”

  A purple blur appeared in front of them.

  Walt’s truck, steaming as though it had just been through a hot car wash, appeared in front of them. A girl was standing next to it.

  “I hope,” Walt said, “you’re able to make a better life for your family here then I can. There’s nothing more important than family. It took me a long time to see that, and by the time I did, it was too late.”

  Walt got in and honked the horn. Janice waved, though she wasn’t sure what made her do it. The car was covered with purple light and was gone.

  There was an afterimage of the car in her eyes, the way you might see whenever a light bulb breaks or some other bright light shines in your eyes. After blinking it away, there was no trace of the truck at all.

  Janice still felt the papers in her hand and the key to the house. It was all real, somehow. She had gotten a house. Tears welled up in her eyes. She had been able to keep it away from Walt, but now, all alone, with a bunch of strangers watching her, Janice fell to her knees and cried a little. Oh, it felt good to cry. Somehow that made it all real, and real it would stay. A few people were coming over to talk to her. Though they weren’t people. They were her new neighbors. Janice looked at the spot where Walt disappeared, feeling bad that she might very well never know what happened to him. Perhaps she should call the cops, tell them what happened. If Walt was in danger, was in some sort of trouble, then reporting it would be the best for both him and her. The deeds to the house plus everything she told them would hold more weight if she didn’t appear to have a large role in the entire missing Walt mystery.