“Were you unconscious tonight?”
“I blacked out, yeah. I woke up with that fat guy hitting me on the chest.”
“Roland.”
Tom wondered if they’d used an AED on Mark to resuscitate him. They would have checked his vitals right away. Roland was the ambulance driver, and he thought Dashiell Penney had been the EMT. Tom reminded himself to ask them about Mark.
“You might not believe in an afterlife,” Mark was saying, “you might be an atheist or whatever, but it follows you.”
“What does?”
“Whatever shit you tried to run away from.” Mark scratched his neck. “Death is no escape.”
“Energy cannot be destroyed,” Tom said. It was the only thing he could think to say; remembering Christopher’s cryptic words.
Tom waited. Somewhere in here would be a confession; the kid would admit to whatever trick he’d pulled on Tom’s lawn. Tom hoped no one would come in and dispel the moment. Mark was close now.
“They were once human. Both sides. They were both human. They both lived and breathed and ate and passed waste like we do.”
“They?”
“Peculiarities, isolated, mental conditions. Driven to the edge.”
“Do you think something happened to you tonight, Mark? After you . . . blacked out? Did you go somewhere do you think?”
Mark was staring into space. Then he looked at Tom, and there was something new in his eyes; he seemed to have slipped into a kind of state. He looked like Christopher had when Tom had confronted him on the road leaving the Kingston place.
“Society doesn’t understand,” Mark said flatly. “People like us used to be locked up. We still are. And there is so much to learn.”
Mark looked down at his IV as if he wanted to yank it from his hand. He was shaking a little. The kid was no angel; the kid was as real as the next guy. Tom thought of the burning “lookout” from his lawn. How his eyes had changed, his body engulfed in flame.
It was possible someone had called the cops. On the other hand, many people who lived in the Acres abided by a tacit live-and-let-live code. Wanting to be left alone was often what had drawn them to the woods in the first place.
Tom managed to sit up straighter, wincing at the pain.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “It’s okay.”
He swung his legs off the gurney too. He held out both of his arms, despite the pain, placating. “Tell me just a little bit more.”
“People see the defectives differently.” Mark said, “The ones who die get refitted, get sent back. They’re the ones carrying their hell into the next life with them. They’re griffins.”
Tom nodded. He thought he might understand what the kid was saying, but he also thought he had no goddamned idea.
“Did you . . . is that what happened to you?”
Mark shook his head. A gossamer thin strand of drool hung from the corner of his mouth.
Tom changed tacks. “What do they want?”
“They work for someone else.”
Tom thought of some sort of gang leader. A pederast. Someone who took in wayward teens and turned them into a sick private army. It happened.
“Who?”
“We don’t know, exactly.”
“We?”
Mark lifted his head up. “Wagerers.”
Tom swallowed. He needed water. But he still needed these last few seconds with Mark.
“You’re a wagerer?”
He thought again of watching the young men in his driveway, out through the picture window, and Christopher standing in the house next to him, and having the hunch that Christopher was one of them. Dear Christ, had the thing been real? Had it happened?
“The one on your lawn tonight,” Mark said, and Tom saw a tear slip down the kid’s cheek, which he didn’t bother to wipe away, “I think that was me. It’s not a perfect state, you know. Things bleed from one world to the next.”
Mark looked up at the ceiling, his mouth hanging open, fresh tears ready to overspill.
“But they brought me back,” he said. “Back to this fucking place.”
Tom didn’t know what to say for a moment. Then something came to him. “You’re helping me,” he said. “You’re here for a reason.”
Mark looked at him, tears falling freely now. He cocked his head.
“Am I?”
Then he blinked, wiped the tears and looked around like a man just waking, disoriented and vulnerable.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Mark, what about the little boy? The one Christopher wanted to come here for?”
Mark looked directly across the room at Tom, his eyes seeming to dry up, to harden.
“You’ll have others come and help you, too. Others like me, like Christopher.”
Tom reached over to the bed beside him, and took hold of Steph’s glass, and held it up for the kid to see. He slowly rotated it, back and forth, in the air between them. The prismatic band around it refracted the fluorescents.
Mark looked at the glass. To see it there seemed to relieve him of some mounting anxiety. As if there was nothing left to be vigilant about in their discussion.
“You know why there are countries, Tom?”
Tom thought it was the first time Mark had used his name. “Why?”
Mark tapped his temple again with a finger. The IV tube dangled.
“Humans still are most inclined to socially conform to small gatherings. Small groups of ten, fifteen people. Then those groups function like a sort of super person. The group has a personality, a political view, many commonalities. Then those groups form larger groups, and so on. But, after a while, the mind can’t handle things getting any bigger. So we draw a line here and here that says, this is this country, this is that country. It’s arbitrary.”
Mark Massey swallowed and looked out of the room. “And then those lines get crossed.”
Tom blinked, and Tom thought about this. “The defectives . . . they’re coming?”
Mark nodded.
Maddy appeared in the doorway at that moment, followed by George, the PA. Her eyes widened at the sight of the two of them.
“Oh no, babyloves, come on now.”
Tom’s mind raced. He asked Mark the only question that came to him, the natural one. “What do I do first?”
Mark answered quickly.
“I think you have to go to Jared Kingston’s place. You know him? Go to the pond. Find Elizabeth and help her. Keep her safe. The girl first, then you can worry about the boy. The wagerers will be looking after him.”
“Okay, pal,” George said to Mark Massey. “Let’s lay back and let me have a look at you.”
Tom got up from the gurney. He groaned with the effort.
“Honey,” said Maddy.
“I’ve got to go, Maddy.”
“Oh no, doll, you ha—”
“Maddy,” Tom said, pulling his own IV, “I gotta go.”
“You’re not well,” she said. “Don’t kick that can down the street.”
Tom limped to the door. His right foot hurt something terrible, felt swollen. He looked back once and saw Mark, lying down again, the PA George, standing over him, taking his blood pressure. Tom winked at Mark, and Mark smiled grimly back.
He walked out into the hallway and was briefly disoriented. He turned right, towards the emergency entrance. He passed a room where another nurse was putting swaddling clothes around a small child. A baby boy, not much older than three. The nurse was stroking the child’s head and singing to him in a low voice.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Chevy Blazer bucked over the frost heaves on Route 33. With each bounce, fresh pain washed through Tom’s chest like scalding water.
The falling snow was turning to a slushy rain. He checked the digital clock on the Blazer’s dash. It was just after seven in the morning. Dawn had arrived. No one was on the road except for one DEC truck pulled off onto the shoulder. Tom felt alone, as alone as the day Steph and Brian left.
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He approached the turn off Route 33 and onto the service road that would take him first to “Donna’s Road,” so named for the woman who owned the land it cut through, shared by half a dozen homes. One branch led to the Kingston place, where he had been the night before, which seemed a long time ago.
None of the homes were visible from the private drive. Tom had seen most of them at one time or another, though. Some of them opulent places worth millions of dollars. That was Red Rock Falls and its environs. Those who came from elsewhere had plenty of money to build houses, and the rest relied on them for the economy. The middle class was vanishing like last year’s fad, or a new-fangled product on the market which no one takes to.
The Blazer jostled down the private drive. Earlier, Tom had stopped just on the edge of the Falls, before 33 disappeared into darkness and the ragged horizon of evergreen tops, and gotten a pack of smokes and a fresh coffee. With his window down, smoke curling out into the cold night, Tom could smell the pine-scented air and the chimney smoke from the wooded mansions. He flicked his cigarette and turned onto the shorter drive to the Kingston place.
He thought about what Mark Massey had said, with his IV cord trailing, all pale-skinned and hard-eyed. Shaking a little. He thought about the “defectives.” He’d wanted to ask more — even when an investigation led to someone’s fantastical testimony, it was always smart to pursue a line of questioning germane to the fantasy; the lies or colorations almost always revealed the truth. Whether or not the kid was delusional, mentally dysfunctional, or just a compulsive liar looking for attention, he had pointed Tom back to Elizabeth Goldfine. Chances were that despite any crap the kid had been peddling, Goldfine would have something legitimate to do with what was going on. She might be in trouble.
And then there was the idea that if it was all a delusion, Tom somehow was sharing in it.
He was tired. Dog-tired, in fact, and the coffee — almost gone now — was having little effect. He drained what was left of it, tossed the cup over his shoulder, and slowed before the Kingston house came into sight. The first colorings of dawn marshaled behind the trees.
Tom parked and shut the engine at a bend in the dirt driveway. He wasn’t trying to sneak up, but there was no point in announcing himself just yet.
He sat in the vehicle and checked his firearm. Then he got out and walked around the curve in the road, occasionally glancing up at the trees.
The house soon appeared. There was one light on, on the top floor. Tom approached cautiously, his gun in the holster against his rib cage.
As he walked he heard a coyote howl, and then another. The cries were far off, ululating and high-pitched, like a band of wild natives. He detected a whiff of gun smoke, and something else, like a rotten animal, perhaps, as he reached the porch.
He climbed the steps and pushed open the screen door. The wood creaked with his weight. The smell of gunpowder was stronger here. Weeds grew through the floor boards. A moment later, Tom saw the inner door to the house, a storm door which was closed. On the outside of the door frame was another set of hinges. Tom looked down and saw some splinters of wood, and flecks of green paint. It was possible that a second door had been blown to bits, and then removed. Tom froze. He needed to call for back up.
The kitchen light popped on, and Tom’s hand went to the butt of his gun. Tom recognized Jared Kingston standing at the other end of the kitchen with a shotgun.
“Hello,” called Tom. His voice was still hoarse, scratchy.
He coughed once and called again.
“Hello, it’s Investigator Tom Milliner.”
Jared squinted and approached cautiously. Though he carried the firearm with the barrel pointing down, Tom had to assume it was loaded. He realized that the light in the kitchen would polarize the glass and that Jared might not be able to see him, so he stepped closer. Jared raised his weapon. A split second later, Tom pulled his own gun.
“Whoa! Whoa! Police Investigator. Don’t shoot!”
Jared hesitated, squinting harder, his head jutting forward, and then lowered the gun again. He came to the door and opened it.
“Careful with that thing,” said Tom as he stepped in. He kept his gun out, gripping it with both hands, pointing it down. He could demand that the Kingston kid drop his own weapon, but he decided to try different tactics.
“Brrr,” he said, and mimed a shiver.
He looked around the room, then at Kingston.
“Everybody all right in here?”
“Tom Milliner?” asked Jared.
The kid looked bad. Big circles under his eyes. Mussed hair, matted on one side. Gauze taped to one side of his neck, spotted red. His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of fermenting booze.
“Yeah,” said Tom, letting the door close behind him. “How you doing, Jared? You have some trouble here last night?”
“Did someone call?”
Tom shook his head. He looked past Jared and into the next room. Then he looked back at Jared, and at the shotgun.
“Can we go have a seat?”
Jared looked at him, considering. The kid was definitely a glazed-ham at this point; out of it. Then he turned and led Tom out of the kitchen.
“Girlfriend’s asleep.”
Tom kept looking around the kitchen as they walked through. There were no obvious signs of an altercation in here, no blood, no mess. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, unless spotless was out of the ordinary. Which it sometimes, it most certainly, was.
Jared led Tom into the living room, which was formal and purposely bucolic. There were broad, wall-length windows of double-paned glass overlooking another porch and the black slate of the pond below. The house sat on a steep rise.
Jared sat down heavily on one of the worn leather couches. Tom sat on the other, the fireplace behind him, the view of the sky and the trees encircling the pond in front of him.
Across from him, Jared rubbed at one eye with the heel of his palm and set the shotgun on a cushion beside him, propping it so that the barrel pointed up at an angle. Tom thought he recognized the make: a Mossberg.
“Fuck,” the young man said.
“Yeah? What happened here, Jared?”
“Fucking coyotes.”
“Coyotes.”
“Yeah,” said Jared, and pulled his hand away from his eye.
He blinked that eye — red as a cherry on a cigarette — and continued to scowl.
“Whole pack of them. I don’t know if they were hungry, or rabid, or what.”
“Coyotes don’t go rabid.” Tom’s eyes fell on the bandage fixed to Jared’s neck.
“I know, but something was wrong with them. I’ve had this place seven years and the coyotes don’t do nothing but howl sometimes. From far away. They don’t come around. They’re scared. Sometimes you might see one or two, but not really.”
Tom nodded. “I heard them coming in. She okay? Your girlfriend?”
Jared looked towards the vestibule, the stairs. He settled back into the couch some, spreading his knees apart. “Yeah, she’s sleeping. She, ah . . .” he broke off into a laugh that was short, with little to no humor in it.
“She what?”
“She thinks she saw something else.”
He pointed his forefinger at his ear and twirled it around.
“She’s on meds and whatnot, you know. Girls today.”
“Yeah.”
Tom realized he didn’t have much time. Not because of what Mark Massey had said, but because of Jared’s condition. Tom knew that Jared had had a few run-ins with the police. Having past brushes with the law put guys like Jared on the defensive, made them nervous. Part of that was a good thing, Tom knew, but it could also be a challenge.
“Front door get blown off as you were shooting at the coyotes?”
Jared seemed confused for a moment. Then he said, “Oh, yeah. I’ll burn that later. Gonna redo that whole porch.” He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Lot of work to be done on this place
.”
“Never ends. What about that?” Tom pointed a finger at his own neck. “Maybe you need to see someone.”
“I will,” said Jared.
Tom nodded. “Let me ask you — and this is going to sound a little funny — but, you ever heard of a wagerer before? Or a defective?”
“What?” Jared was leaning back again, his eyes lidded. “A what?”
Tom shifted gears again. “You think it’s a bad idea to wake your girlfriend? What’s her name?”
“Why?”
“Why do I want to wake her or why do I want to know her name?”
“Both.”
“Well, she was mentioned by someone tonight that I was with. I’d like to ask her a few questions.”
Jared glanced at his gun — or he could have been just looking across the room.
Tom thought, Where’s the blood from the coyotes? Cleaned that up, too?
“Who? Who mentioned her?” asked Jared.
“Guy named Mark Massey. Know him?”
“Massey? Don’t know him.”
Tom believed him. “Okay. Know anyone named Christopher?”
Jared blinked his red eyes. “Uh, yeah. Like twenty.”
“Your age about. Kind of a dark kid. Anyone like that?”
For a moment, Tom thought Jared wasn’t going to answer. Then, somewhat congenially, “Yeah, I know him.”
He jerked a thumb towards the upstairs.
“Her ex. Christopher Handler. She doesn’t like to talk about him, but I know she thinks about him. Far as we know, he’s dead. They, uh, they lost a baby together.”
“Lost a baby? Really.”
“Uh huh. Druggies, the two of them. Met in rehab, got pregnant, started using again, both of them, and then the baby, you know, miscarried. She sort of lost it after. That’s why the meds.”
“And you think Christopher Handler is dead?”
Jared shrugged. “Who knows. Probably down in the city, sucking dick for rock.” Jared became enlivened again. “Why? He’s got something to do with all of this?”
“No, no. Just routine questions. Now, I need to go che—”
There was a splash in the pond. Tom straightened up and looked over Jared’s shoulder. He couldn’t see the pond from this angle, so he stood.
HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down Page 10