The Year of the Storm

by John Mantooth

  I put my hand over his mouth again.

  “You going to shoot a lawman?” Sims said.

  “They told you some shit about me,” Pike said, and his voice was ragged, full of sharp edges and menace. “But they must have left out the most important parts. I’m a crazy motherfucker. I spent nearly three years in the Hanoi Hilton letting Charlie pour sand down my throat. I’ve killed before, and it ain’t nothing for me to kill again.”

  Sims was silent.

  “Now I’m going to step out of this doorway and you’re going to walk out of this cabin and get back into your cruiser. You’re going to drive all the way back to the sheriff’s office and tell them what a crazy, murderous bastard Walter Pike is.”

  I heard footsteps, shuffling. The door groaned opened.

  “Tell your sheriff if he wants me, he better send more than Deputy Sims next time.”

  “Oh, we’ll be back.”

  “Bring the whole damn force next time.”

  The door slammed. Cliff tried to get up. I held him down. I wanted to wait until I heard the cruiser pull away.

  A few minutes later, it did.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  When we came from the back, Pike was seated, using his oxygen tank. He looked pale in the lantern light. The shadows around him had lengthened and he seemed to have become lost inside them.

  “We got work to do,” he said. “This is going to happen sooner than I planned.”

  “Okay,” I said. “The sooner the better. Just tell me what to do.”

  Pike chuckled softly. “So you’re not scared? I mean after what just happened, you still trust me?”

  I thought about this for a second. I knew that I shouldn’t trust him, and my parents had raised me to stay away from men like Walter Pike. He was obviously not playing with a full deck. He was a beaten, broken man, prone to outbursts of violence and masochism, and maybe some of that would have mattered if I hadn’t been so sure that he was telling the truth. At fourteen, I believed the truth was in someone’s voice, the tone of it, and for the most part this belief did not fail me. I only wish this ability had followed me into adulthood. But like so many things that change when you get older, determining who was telling the truth and who wasn’t became akin to navigating an endless series of switchbacks and dead-end roads in a blinding snowstorm. All you could do was close your eyes and guess.

  Not at fourteen. At fourteen, I knew.

  “I trust you.” I had no more gotten the words out of my mouth when Cliff elbowed me.

  “What?”

  “Can we talk? Alone?”

  I looked at Pike. He nodded. “Better make it quick. We’re about to have police all over the these woods looking for me and you.”

  Cliff and I walked outside. The air was humid, the way it gets before rain. It was quiet out here, except for the sound of bullfrogs down by the pond, the drone of their voices broken only occasionally by the night sounds: a branch breaking, the hoot of an owl, the low rustle of wind sweeping through the leaves.

  Cliff grabbed my arm. “What are you thinking?” His voice was fierce, urgent.

  “What do you mean, what am I thinking? You heard his story too. Don’t you believe him?”

  Cliff let go of me and stepped back. He put his hand over his face. For a second I thought he was about to start crying. “It doesn’t matter if I believe him or not. It can’t be true. It just can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He laughed then, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh that someone does when something is funny. It was the exasperated, I-don’t-know-what-else-to-do kind of laugh. There was an edge to it, and I knew then Cliff had already had about as much of this as he could take.

  “Why not? You are absolutely kidding me, right, Danny? Well, let’s just see. Well, why don’t we start at the beginning? He says they threw Seth into the quicksand. I’ve told you a hundred times, quicksand doesn’t work like that. People don’t sink into it like they sink into water. That’s just the movies. This simple point puts his whole narrative in doubt.”

  “Narrative—what?—you’re kidding, right? You’re willing to believe that somebody can slip into another world, but you question drowning in quicksand?”

  “I never said I accepted the slipping. The quicksand was first, so I started with that. He’s lying. Let me take that back. He’s delusional. Shell-shocked. Probably not quite the same as lying, but the effect is the same.”

  “And what’s the effect?”

  “The effect is trouble for you if you go along with him.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Danny. Right now. Let’s get out of here. He shot at a police officer, for God’s sake.”

  “Sims had it coming. He’s an asshole.”

  Cliff sighed. “Let me repeat. He shot at a police officer. Asshole or not, that’s a huge deal.”

  I was about to speak, to try to explain that asshole didn’t quite do Sims justice, when we heard it. A siren.

  Pike’s door swung open. “Time to shit or get off the can,” Pike said. “You coming with me or not?”

  I knew he was speaking to me and me only.

  “Depends,” I said. “Are we going to get my mother and sister back?”

  Pike stepped out of the cabin. He was smoking a cigarette. “Is there anywhere else?”

  “Then, yes, I’m coming.”

  Cliff shook his head in disgust but offered his hand. I took it and squeezed. When I let go of his hand, I knew our relationship would never be the same again.

  —

  Everything went to hell after that. Apparently, a squad car had been sent out ahead. It pulled up way before the one with the siren arrived. Cliff had just disappeared into the woods heading back home while Pike and I were caught in the headlights.

  We ducked into the trees just as an officer on the car’s loudspeaker told us to freeze.

  “We need to split up,” he said.

  I tried to reply, but he was already walking away. “Meet me at the storm shelter. One hour,” he said, and then he was gone.

  I took one more look at the police car—two men were getting out now—and then took off as fast as I could run in the other direction.

  —

  For a long time I just ran. Branches beat at my arms, neck, and face. The woods seemed endless, and I was lost. Panic started deep in my gut and crept outward. I didn’t know where I was going. Every time I thought about slowing my pace, I thought about the sheriff’s car and the policeman. Had they seen Pike and me? Or were they searching the cabin right now, disgusted that it was empty?

  I kept running.

  I didn’t stop until I came out of the trees and saw my house looming in the distance. I stopped hard, skidding my Keds across the gravel drive. Rocks flew up, bouncing off my pants leg. Sheriff Martin was standing near my front stoop, under the big oak tree, not too far from where Pike had stood just a few weeks ago. Martin was talking to one of his deputies in the glow of his headlights. The deputy pointed in my direction, and Martin swung around. I wished I could evaporate back into the woods, but I knew there were several dozen feet before I could make the trees again.

  “Hey, boy!” Martin called. “Danny! Come on over. We’ve been looking for you.”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I took a couple of tentative steps back before turning and running full tilt for the trees. Martin shouted at me once, and then I heard car doors slam shut.

  In my rush I failed to find a proper opening in the foliage to escape through and found myself nearly at a standstill, fighting through a thick drapery of kudzu and creepers. Behind me, the cruiser crunched and spit gravel as it closed in on me. I plowed on through, the vines breaking open wet on my arms, lashing my face. Some bent for interminable lengths of time, and then bent more, and only broke when I’d tunneled deep enough to bind myself with other vines, no end in sight. />
  There was a chirp from the road and then Sheriff Martin speaking through his loudspeaker: “If you can hear me, Danny, please stop running. I want you to listen.” There was a pause, and to my surprise I stopped fighting through the vines. I was in so deep, I felt confident they wouldn’t find me, at least not at night unless I gave myself away by making too much noise. I also realized I wanted to hear what the sheriff was going to say. I wanted to hear something about Dad.

  “This man you’ve been with. Walter Pike is his name. He may have told you something different, but he’s a deeply disturbed individual. Danny, let me repeat. He is deeply disturbed. I know you’re angry about your father. I know you’re in a place right now . . . a, hell, a vulnerable place, but you have to think things through, son.” There was a squawk and I heard the cruiser pulling closer. “You have to know that this man may be responsible for killing your mother and sister. Even more, he might have killed those girls thirty years ago.”

  I started fighting through the vines again. The sheriff continued to talk—he must have sensed I hadn’t gone far—but I didn’t listen anymore. If he believed my mother and sister were dead, he didn’t have anything to say that I wanted to hear.

  Sometime later, after the loudspeaker had at long last fallen silent and the pounding in my heart had subsided and my journey through the vines had become more about steady, deliberate clearing than headlong crashing, I reached the end and broke through to open air and space. I had no idea what time it was. I only had the vaguest of notions of how to find Pike, but what was worse was the tiny, tiny seed of doubt I felt growing inside the pit of my stomach.

  I decided to ignore it and broke into a steady jog, aiming as best I could for the center of the woods and the place I hoped would take me out of this world and into the next.

  —

  I heard the dogs before I reached the shelter. Their bleating filled the night from one horizon to the other. With every step I took toward what I hoped would be the storm shelter, I heard the sounds come closer.

  When I finally reached the shelter, I was so tired I could barely breathe. I stood there, outside the hatch, marveling at how I’d been here just a few days earlier, during the storm, and not had a clue in the world that I’d be coming back again with a purpose.

  I opened the hatch and went inside.

  Taking the ladder slowly, I made it to the bottom and held my hands out in front of me to ward off the darkness. “Mr. Pike?” I said.

  There was no answer.

  I stepped closer to what would be the back wall, ducking my head a little for fear of scraping it against the concrete top, and called his name again.

  Nothing.

  I was alone. The hatch was still open, and I could hear the dogs baying through it. They were coming this way. Hands out again, I made my way back to the ladder. I was halfway up when I heard him call for me.

  His voice sounded like a deep moan from hell.

  I didn’t hesitate. Springing out of the hatch, I took off at a dead run. It had started raining, and thunder cracked the sky open, letting out hail and huge, hard pellets of rain.

  He was still hollering my name. I ran blindly toward his voice, ignoring the other voice—the one inside my head—that told me it was foolish to run toward the dogs.

  When I found him, he was on the ground, lying in the mud. His breathing was labored, and he couldn’t seem to stop cursing.

  “My oxygen,” he managed. “Left it. Goddamn it all to hell.”

  I knelt beside him. The dogs were impossibly close, maybe only a minute or two away.

  “I tried to throw them off, but I nearly killed myself doing it.” He grimaced and reached for my hand. “We aren’t far, are we?”

  I looked at him blankly. He squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. “Damn it, Danny. Wake up. How far are we from the shelter?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two hundred yards.”

  “Drag me.”

  “What?”

  He kicked my shin.

  “Ow!”

  “Drag me. Let’s go.”

  Before I could answer, a streak of lightning jumped out of the sky and struck a nearby tree, momentarily lighting the night up like one of those disco strobes. The world seemed to splinter between light and dark, frozen in a split-second burst of blinding, soundless white.

  The dogs howled. I got Pike under both his shoulders and dragged him through the mud.

  We’d made it no more than a couple dozen yards when he let loose a series of hacking coughs that made me wonder if he didn’t have rocks in his lungs.

  “Let’s rest,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Those dogs aren’t resting. Besides, this storm is going to be a big one. We rest too long, we’ll die out here. The real storm ain’t even here yet.”

  Something told me that Pike’s real problems weren’t here yet either. Something told me he was only going to get worse.

  I got him going again, trying to keep his body off the rocks and sticks, Pike cursing under his breath, me just trying to find the leg strength to keep moving forward. It went like this for another hundred feet before I collapsed.

  “Shit,” he moaned. “Shit.”

  I started to get under his arms again, to lift him for one last heroic pull, but he felt heavier this time, and my muscles quivered as I strained to get him up. The dogs were even closer now, having clearly locked onto our scent.

  We made it three more steps before his weight became too much for me, and we fell.

  This time I just lay there. What was the point? I’d only get him up again and then fall again. I was so tired.

  The dogs drew closer, their throaty calls increasing in intensity and fervor. I wondered what Sheriff Martin would think when he found me here, lying in the mud next to Pike.

  “And where exactly were you and that old fool headed?” he might ask.

  “To the slip, sir.”

  “The slip?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s where my mother and sister are.”

  I saw him laughing then, his mouth first forming a half-open, slack-jawed look of incredulity and then opening wide into a belly laugh.

  And at that point, I’m ashamed to admit, I think I might have been done. The rain was coming down so hard it felt like someone was spraying us with a hose. The dogs were so close, I couldn’t imagine outrunning them, and the faith that I had held so dear for so long was beginning to feel like a fantasy after all.

  Then I heard Pike grunt. He kicked me. I sat up not because I was ready to move but because he kicked the shit out of my knee and it hurt.

  “Goddamn it. I thought you wanted your mother and sister. I thought you were going to do anything to get them. Well, this is it, son. Get your ass up and take my hands and drag me over to the storm shelter.”

  I stood up, getting my legs back under me. They hurt so badly. Then I took his hands and pulled. He groaned, and so did I, but I didn’t stop. If I slowed even the slightest bit, he shouted at me to pull harder, cajoling me with gasping taunts about being weak, about being just like all those other bastards who didn’t believe. Whether it was because he made me angry or because he made me believe again, I can’t say, but I began to pull harder, closing my eyes and driving my legs.

  At some point, Pike said, “Stop,” and I opened my eyes. I was standing in just about the same place I had been standing the day I saw Anna. The shelter was close now. I let go of Pike’s hands and went to find it.

  Chapter Thirty

  In the dark of the shelter, there were three sounds that nagged at me—the booms of thunder outside; Pike’s labored breathing, which was so bad that I tensed before each intake, cringing at the sawing sound that came back up; and the baying of the dogs. They’d obviously tracked us to the shelter. It was only a matter of time before the police discovered the hatch.

  Despite this, I felt
it was imperative for Pike to rest. I’d never heard someone die before, but if I had to guess, Pike was coming pretty damn close to what it might sound like.

  But he refused to rest. “It’s now or never, Danny-boy,” he gasped.

  “What do we do?” I asked him in the dark.

  “Just be still. Wait. Hold my hand.”

  I found his hand in the darkness. It felt cold.

  “Now, just close your eyes, Danny-boy. Just close your eyes and wait.”

  —

  We waited. For a long time nothing happened. Pike talked in between labored breaths. He talked about cigarettes. He told me how if he had his oxygen, he’d put about four in his mouth right now and smoke them all. He told me that addiction is one of the ways we curse ourselves, and he had a double dose of it, what with the cigarettes and the whiskey, but he reckoned if he could have only one, it would be cigarettes. He felt the need for them in his bones, he said. “A deep need, the kind that kills you.” He laughed then, obviously amused by the irony of his situation.

  “Listen,” he said suddenly. “Hear that?”

  “What?” All I heard were the concussive blasts of thunder, so frequent they blended into each other, creating one long drumroll of booms.

  “The dogs. They’ve gone quiet.”

  He was right. I realized it had been several minutes since I’d heard them.

  “Good and bad,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re gone. That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “Think about why they left, Danny.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. They gave up.”

  “Dogs don’t give up, not when they had us dead to rights. The storm. They must have gotten word it’s going to be a hell of a thing. Either that or the dogs just got spooked. I’m betting the latter. Dogs know before people.”

  I said nothing. At least we were in the safest place for a storm.

  Another long silence passed. His hand, once cold, was sweaty in mine. I kept trying to imagine the swamp, trying to make it happen, but nothing did.