HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down

by T. J. Brearton

  She and Jared sat breathless, unable to move. Her heart was triphammering — she could feel the pulse in her ears, her jaw, her neck.

  They watched the screen door. A hand: human enough maybe, pale and shining wet, with baby-like skin that looked both waxen and delicate, hooked into a claw. It rose up and found the latch to the screen door.

  And a second head appeared, right next to the first one, so close that the ears (if they were ears — one appeared as a mere unformed lump of skin) were touching.

  Two heads were looking in at them, just behind the screen mesh, peering in with two sets of misshapen eyes — one eye barely articulated, just a small rent, with a murky pea-sized ball within the cleft of skin.

  The screen door started to open, and that’s when Jared fired the shotgun.

  * * *

  Elizabeth had met Christopher at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. She had been eighteen, and he twenty-four.

  Jared, she met four years later at a concert. He was the consummate rocker — long, flowing brown hair, torn jeans. He’d played the entire gig — or most of it — with his eyes closed, and when the band had offered him solo time, Jared had been truly magnetic.

  They’d made love that night when a group of them — musicians and groupies alike — had shacked up in a wintry board-and-batten cabin in Vermont. He hadn’t initiated the sex; she had. His aloofness had made him all the more appealing, and she’d been unable to resist.

  “Get out of here,” Jared said now, the shotgun gripped in his hands in a way that reminded her, absurdly, of him playing guitar. He stood up, pointing the weapon down at the floor, gripping along the stock. “Elizabeth, get out of here.”

  The screen door had been obliterated into a ragged hole of splintered wood and wire mesh, blown outward. There was no sign of the things that had been looking in, only the holly which grew up between the weathered slats of the old porch.

  Elizabeth did as she was told, and, getting to her feet, started to back away and out of the kitchen.

  For one last instance she thought again of Christopher. Though she knew it hadn’t been him outside just now, struggling to look in, to get inside their home, her mind still visited the idea. Envisioning how he’d stood in that kitchen, not too far from where Jared was now, the pool of glistening water spreading at his feet. She remembered the sound of his voice when he spoke his solitary word to her. Her name. She suddenly fully understood why the quality she’d heard in his voice earlier in this troubled evening had so bothered her. It was the same intonation she’d heard the final time Christopher had ever appeared at NA. He was afraid he was going to start using again, and was trying to explain it to the group, trying to tell them that it was hopeless, that he wasn’t meant to be sober, that it was either using or death. It wasn’t that he had sounded scared, or angry, or volatile even — nothing like that would have alarmed her. It had been the quality of resignation, the sense that bigger things, inescapable things, were moving and orchestrating the world.

  That thought scared Elizabeth more than anything else. It made her think of natural disasters, of people helpless as something else took them over. That the world was, finally and inarguably, something that could not — not now, not ever — be controlled. It could not be fixed up and refurbished to conceal the venal sins carried inside, could not be rebuilt and repainted to cover grief and longing. A world where hideous things that were just beyond the pale could arrive at any moment. It was only a matter of time.

  “Back,” Jared said. “Just get back.” He had his hand out behind him, half waving at her.

  She thought she smelled something in the air. She knew the fireworks smell of the shotgun. There was that, but there was something else. She’d smelled deer blood before, even coyote offal (spending entire weeks here with Jared during hunting season had opened her olfactory palate up to many different odors, from animal decomposition to the very tangy smell of Jared himself after three days in the woods), but this was different. The only thing she could associate it with was vomit. Not booze-vomit, not food-poisoning, but the stink of heroin. The smell of puke when there was nothing in the stomach to upchuck, only bile, and only from the deep recesses of the body, the places where the decay of affliction has taken hold and begun to spread its scourge.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Who are they?” Tom asked. Nearby was the bedroom he’d made into a den. A rifle was mounted above the doorframe in the inside of the room. It was a Kimber Montana, bolt-action, a cherry of a gun, and the .308 caliber bullets were in a Maxwell House Coffee can on a shelf above his antiquated Dell computer.

  “They’re wagerers.” Though Christopher’s body language suggested he wasn’t alarmed, the kid’s face was rigidly composed in the dusk of the living room, glowing ghostily in the light from the snowy outside.

  “Wagerers? What are you talking about? Friends of yours?” Tom took a sideways step away from Christopher, towards the den and closer to the rifle. He looked from Christopher to the outside, squinting through the haze of falling snow, willing the shapes in his driveway to wax clearer.

  Tom made out the four figures in the driveway. They had taken position and now stood still, as if waiting.

  “They’re not friends of mine,” said Christopher. “But I know them. I know what they are.”

  “You’re into gambling? Is that it?”

  “The word ‘wagerer’ is a kind of translation.”

  Tom wanted to question the kid more about it, but stopped himself. It didn’t matter what the hell the kid was saying, not now. As the eldest of two sons, Tom had been the one to tuck his brother, Charlie, into bed when the old man was too lit — which was almost every night. There had been no time for Tom to suffer his own night terrors, he was too busy reassuring his younger brother.

  It didn’t matter what Christopher said or what Tom thought about the young men on his lawn, because it was two in the morning. It was hard to trust your mind in those ditch hours.

  Charlie would say that a little boy lived in a hole behind the door. The little boy was dirty and gray, Charlie would tell Tom, with a very pink tongue, and other pink things on him, like leeches or peppermint gum. Charlie had gone on to write for the San Francisco Chronicle for a while. A journalist, working his way up to editor. He could talk his way out of anything, Tom knew; words were Charlie’s stock and trade. It was how he’d gotten out the stain.

  “Tom,” said Christopher.

  Tom Milliner jumped, snapped out of his reverie. He blinked and looked around at Christopher. The kid looked at him levelly, still with his rigid composure. His expression was resolute.

  It took Tom a moment to backtrack his thoughts — how had his mind wandered so far off? He wasted no more time, immediately going into the den and pulling the Montana rifle down from the hooks over the door. He went for the coffee can and fished for the .308s.

  “That won’t help you,” said Christopher. He was now standing in the doorway.

  Tom loaded the gun. The magazine clip held five shots.

  “Oh no? I know what a wager is, I’ve done my fair share of laying them down. Never had any luck. But who in the Christ did you bring to my home?” He realized he was nervous, and didn’t like it.

  Tom passed by Christopher, bumping against his shoulder. He headed toward the front door.

  “They won’t speak to you,” Christopher called after him. Tom paused, looking down at his rifle. He thought once more of little Charlie, lying in the top bunk, staring at the hole in the wall. Then he banged out the door.

  * * *

  The snow had silenced everything except for a distant ringing, ever so slight, and the thrum of blood in his ears. A few inches of the snow had already accumulated, and below it the ground had turned frozen and slick. Tom stepped carefully. He pulled his hunter’s coat tight around him.

  The evergreen treetops swayed above him against the night sky. The wind brushed his face.

  The four figures were there in his driveway. Their positions coul
d have been random or strategic, it was hard to tell. One was closest to the house, almost where the driveway opened into the turn-around. The next was behind and to the right by about five yards. The third was closer to the second, but the fourth was a straggler, ten or fifteen yards away from the third, right at the edge of Cherry Road.

  “What’re you doing on my property?” Tom’s voice didn’t carry far, absorbed by the snow. Some nights, dry nights in the summer, you could hear people all over, could make out the clanking of dishes and murmured conversations from houses a quarter mile away. Not tonight. The snow claimed these sounds, except for that slight distant ringing.

  He walked with a good stride, still mindful of the slick ground beneath the snow. He carried the rifle at hip level, like a gunslinger.

  “I said: what are you doing on my property?”

  The four figures were no more than shadows, making him think of sheets draped over furniture in dark abandoned rooms. They stood beneath the dark tunnel made by the trees.

  Tom had almost reached the first figure. Now he was starting to be able to make out features, attire. The guy was wearing a parka with a fur-lined hood that fell unzipped across his back. He appeared to be about Christopher’s age. Not surprising, Tom thought, and felt a twinge of regret, or maybe of foolishness, for so impetuously bringing Christopher, a kid he didn’t know from Adam, to his home.

  The young man in the hooded parka was standing as still as statue, looking in the direction of Tom’s house, looking, Tom thought, right in through the picture window. He’s looking in at Christopher.

  Tom stopped walking a few paces from the still figure. He raised the rifle up to his ribcage, pointing at this first guy, while he marked the next with a look.

  This second-in-line, as far as Tom could make out in the darkened alley of evergreens, appeared about the same age. He was a little more elegantly dressed, with a long coat that came to his ankles. Tom glanced to the third figure, and again to the last, standing almost in the road, like a lookout. Then he returned his attention to the one in first position. Tom decided that this one wearing the parka was the group leader.

  There was always a leader in every group. The animal remained in the human being; and in a pack there was a leader, a lookout, a litigator, and a wildcard, among others. This was nothing Tom had ever learned in school — after all, he’d never gotten the degrees other investigators had. This was something Tom had learned on the beat, encountering it in all types of gangs or groups, whether they were meth-cookers, motorcyclists, or city councilmen. You put a group of dogs in a room and within minutes the pecking order was established with the alpha male bossing the pack.

  It felt like Christopher belonged in this group. Maybe he’d strayed from the gang and they were here to claim him back. If so, Tom’s gut told him that Christopher was the wildcard. Tom had only been with the kid a few short hours, but it felt like a fit. And the one Tom stood a few steps away from as the snow fell between them, was the leader.

  “I’m talking to you,” said Tom. He didn’t detect the bulge of any weapon on the kid — but God knows, kids these days were sharper than ever before. They had learned from television, the internet, and their peers how to function like hardened criminals, even before they’d committed a crime themselves.

  “I’m going to pat you down.”

  The young man in the parka didn’t indicate he’d heard Tom. Another one acting deaf and dumb. Definitely of Christopher’s ilk. His eyelashes closed together once or twice, his gaze still fixed on Tom’s living room window.

  Tom removed one hand from the barrel of the rifle but kept it level, holding the stock with his right, his finger looped through the trigger. The safety was off.

  He took the necessary steps closer to the kid and started patting at him, first under his arms, on both sides, then around his waist, carefully, then his legs. He kept his eyes fixed on Parka’s face except for quick darts at the others to see if there was any movement, any change in position. There was none. They all stood as if they were pieces on a chessboard.

  Tom bent at the knees, pointing the rifle up as he lowered himself so that it was aimed at Parka’s sternum. He felt around the ankles. Satisfied that the kid wasn’t carrying, Tom stood back up. As he did he caught a familiar scent. It was the smell of an attic, Tom thought, or of something disinterred from a thrift-store trunk and spritzed with deodorizer. Parka smelled just like Christopher.

  And then there was that distant ringing, not exactly unpleasant, but the kind of noise that could soon get under your skin. You’d wonder at its source; you’d try to hunt it down, but it seemed to come from everywhere, and eventually it would drive you mad.

  He was now eye-level with Parka. His pupils were somewhat dilated, but it was dark. The whites were clear. No telltale burst capillaries. No yellowing of the hardened addict or cirrhotic alcoholic. The porch light was just close enough to reveal Parka’s features: he looked Greek, maybe. The nose was long, slim, and straight, the lips carved, a pronounced divot below the cleft tip of the nose. Tom put the kid at about a hundred-and-seventy-five pounds, in good shape. Suddenly, Parka’s eyes flickered. They moved from Tom’s front window towards the garage.

  The door opened behind him and Tom spun around. Christopher came out into the snowy night, wrapping his coat around him.

  Tom called over to him, “You know these guys?”

  As Christopher approached, the ringing sound seemed to intensify.

  Tom looked around. “What the hell is that sound?”

  Christopher arrived and looked past him at the four young men. “That’s background radiation.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Three-degree black-body radiation.” Christopher’s eyes flicked to Tom. “It’s what’s still there in the radio spectrum, leftover from the origin. Do you know what I mean? From what they call the Big Bang.”

  Tom blinked.

  “Get out of here. Take your friends with you.”

  He took a conscious step back so he could keep all four of them in his sight and in range. The way they were spread out he could have a clear shot at each of them. Though they had shown no aggression, there was an emotional challenge at work. Tom felt the same way as he had meeting Christopher out on the Kingstons’ drive, only now it was compounded; now there were more of them.

  His mind jumped, for the second time that night, to the memory of a road-patrol shift years before. He’d gotten a radio call from police dispatch about a caller hang-up. The call had been tracked to a local convenience store, made from a payphone outside, at about 8:30 PM. There were some fifteen to twenty people in and around the store when Tom arrived on scene. A small group of kids hung around the payphone, and Tom had gone to speak to them. They’d stood about, unmoving, just like this.

  He needed to know.

  Tom jerked his head. “Get over there with him, Christopher.”

  Christopher did as he was told. Now that Tom’s guest had come outside, Parka was no longer looking at Tom’s front window. There was no doubt for what, or rather whom, these young men had come.

  “Okay,” he said. “Last chance. You got ten seconds to start making sense, or I’m going to lock you all up.”

  His words felt flat. What he was really going to do if the leader in the parka didn’t talk was go back to the house and call the state troopers. Tom couldn’t cuff them all and detain them by himself — at minimum, the two closer to the road would run. A troop station was just outside of the Acres, only three miles down Route 33; the trooper at the desk was Billy Wepple and he could be here in ten minutes — if there wasn’t one out who was already closer.

  Parka turned to Christopher and uttered one sentence in a quiet voice. “The boy is at the hospital,” said Parka.

  “Alright,” said Tom, “I’ve had enough.” He brought the rifle up and seated the butt plate high against his shoulder. He aimed between Parka and Christopher. “I’m a criminal investigator with the Red Rock County Sheriff’s Department. Yo
u’re all under arrest for trespassing on private property. Now march toward the garage, each of you with his hands above his head. Do it, now, or I’m going to start shooting.”

  Tom was sure that this would get some reaction from Parka, even if the shooting part was a bluff, but wacked-out as he appeared to be, the group leader still did nothing. Christopher only looked grim. Maybe, Tom thought, a little sad. His expression seemed to say, I told you, old man.

  You should be used to this by now tonight, officer. He heard Steph’s voice, playful. Everyone was chiming in. Everybody was an expert.

  No, the leader in the Parka didn’t show any kind of reaction.

  Not him.

  It was the one standing just on the edge of the road that responded to Tom’s threat — if it could be construed as a response anyway.

  That kid, the one furthest from Tom, “the lookout” Tom had dubbed him, started to give off smoke.

  It looked like vapor, Tom thought, lowering his rifle away from his shoulder unconsciously, like steam was coming off the lookout kid, and then it turned darker, this emanation, and roiled into the sky.

  The kid was starting to burn.

  PART II

  NEW RECRUIT

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Madison was flipping through a People magazine (Jennifer Aniston’s tits were fake, she didn’t care what anyone said — nobody’s baby pillows were that perky). It was a quiet Wednesday morning at the branch hospital called Little Rock. The clock on the wall read 2 AM.

  There was only one patient on the ward, a snowboarder who had tried to ram a tree down her throat after deviating from a groomed trail, slipping beneath the orange tape and doing a little rock-surfing. There was one like her every week.

  The ambulance arrived. Madison got up off of the stool and headed down the hallway.

  Roland and Dash came in rolling the gurney. On it was the kid they had called in about moments before.

  They parked the kid in room one. He was very pale as Madison rigged him up to take his blood pressure.