“Yeah, well, I’ve got about three more seasons of Xena I plan to watch while I pretend like I don’t exist. So I’m afraid I’m too busy for questions.”
“I’m sorry,” Brynn said, as the door was closing. “I’m sorry about whatever happened to you.”
The door hesitated.
“Thank you.”
The door closed.
* * *
We reconvened with Heather, out by the street, and told her what we’d learned.
“Hey, that’s more than I’ve gotten out of her,” Heather said, “and we used to live together.”
“So Sebastian Miller,” I said.
“I bet he’s at Dawson’s right now. The diner or grocery store or whatever. He’s there most weekdays. Only opens the gift shop on the weekends.”
“Do we go to Dawson’s or the gift shop?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” Brynn asked. “Isola was pretty clear about that. We’ll go to his place, now, while he’s not home.”
“And just break in?” Heather asked.
“Yeah,” Brynn said.
Heather seemed to think that over for a minute.
“Alright.”
* * *
We had to bike down side streets to avoid Dawson’s, but it still didn’t take us longer than maybe ten minutes.
Everyone we passed looked friendly, but riding through town during the day you could tell the town was poor. Destitute, maybe. About a third of the houses were abandoned, and most of the rest were poorly maintained. Every road but the main one was full of potholes. They were probably maintaining the main road for the sake of tourists, if one day the tourists came back. Or maybe they were maintaining the main road for their own sake, for their own dignity. It was hard to tell.
We cut through an alley, the small-town kind that goes between backyards instead of brick buildings, to approach the gift shop from the back. It was easy to pick out the right place: a twenty-foot-tall brontosaurus, with purple paint chipping off its concrete, kept watch over the backyard.
“How will we get in?” Heather asked.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Don’t know and don’t know,” Brynn said. “We’ll know it when we see it, to both questions.”
The building was a plain cube, two stories tall and peppered with windows. I went to the closest one, popped the screen out, and tried to lift the glass. Locked. I put the screen back in and went to the next one.
“You get much crime in Pendleton?” Brynn asked.
“No, not really,” Heather answered. “No cops in town either. Sometimes the county sheriff comes in to handle something, but we’re pretty much on our own.”
“People usually lock their windows?” I asked. The next window was locked too.
“No,” Heather said.
“Asshole has something to hide,” Brynn said.
“I mean, we are trying to break in,” I said. “Kind of justifies his paranoia.”
“Help me up this apatosaurus,” Brynn said. It was deceptively hard to get ahold of, since the ridge of its back was just out of reach from the ground and the whole belly of the thing was round.
“I think it’s a brontosaurus,” I said. I gave her a boost with my good arm and she straddled the beast like she was riding it. Vulture would have wanted a photo for his Instagram. Hell, I wanted a photo, because Brynn looked awesome as a crust punk dino-riding cowboy. But, you know, you’re not supposed to take pictures of yourselves at the scene of any given crime in progress.
“I thought brontos weren’t real?” Brynn said. “I thought they were all apatosauruses now?”
“Nope.” My youngest niece had been obsessed with dinosaurs, last time I’d gone to see her in Illinois. She’d schooled me good when I’d tried to say brontos weren’t real. “They count as real dinosaurs again.”
“Next thing you’ll tell me that Pluto is a planet.” Brynn reached down to help me up, but I waved her away. My shoulder was way too still-stitched-up to climb something like that.
Brynn started to climb up the beast’s neck, toward the building.
“You think it’ll hold?” I asked. By which I meant: I don’t think it’ll hold.
But in a second, she had scrambled up the little bronto head and was looking at the wall of the building, about five, maybe six feet away.
She was going to jump. She would have to cross the distance and get ahold of the narrow window ledge, pull herself up, then hope the window was unlocked because there was no other logical way down.
“Hey, uh,” I started.
“I’d really rather you didn’t!” Heather shouted.
Brynn jumped.
Time didn’t slow down or anything. Maybe it sped up. One second I was yelling, and the next second . . . no, the same second . . . Brynn was clinging to the windowsill, which couldn’t have been more than three inches deep. She pulled herself up and crouched on the sill.
Brynn should have been a cat burglar. Actually, for all I knew, she was a cat burglar.
She got the window open and disappeared inside.
“What do we do?” Heather asked. Unspoken: “Do we try to follow her? Because I don’t want to.”
“No,” I said, answering her unspoken question instead of her spoken one. I went to the closest window. About ten seconds later, Brynn was on the other side and let us in.
* * *
I wonder what was going through the head of the person who decided the world needed hundreds of shot glasses with the words “Pendleton, Montana” emblazoned on the side. Because I didn’t share that particular opinion. But what do I know? Maybe they’d moved thousands of them already.
I pocketed one, then spent a full minute having an ethical argument with myself. I don’t have any particular issue justifying theft of necessities or from big box stores. But a shot glass wasn’t food, and this wasn’t exactly a Walmart. The store looked like any roadside bullshit gift store anywhere.
On the other hand, the guy who owned this place was probably a bad man. Isn’t that why we’d broken into his place?
That was terrible logic. That was state logic. A man wasn’t guilty just because he was being investigated.
I put the shot glass back. I’m pretty sure eighteen-year-old me would have laughed at twenty-eight-year-old me. But eighteen-year-old me was kind of an asshole, so I didn’t really hold myself responsible to her. I also didn’t need a shot glass.
There wasn’t much we could imagine him hiding inside the store itself, so after the briefest of searches we went up the stairs to his apartment. Heather took watch by the front window, since she knew what the guy looked like and the truck he drove. Brynn and I combed through the apartment, careful to set everything back into its right place. Since we weren’t wearing gloves—we should have been wearing gloves—we wanted to make sure he never even suspected we were there.
It was frustrating, anxious work. One slipup could land us in prison. Even the natural joy of snooping was diminished by how careful we had to be.
There were two photos framed on the wall: one of Gertrude and a man who must be Sebastian holding hands on a mountaintop, with a valley and river in the distance below. He was an unremarkable old white man, hard to distinguish from any other.
The other photo was of a younger couple in the same place. Probably the two of them thirty years earlier. Younger, he looked happy and handsome. The difference between the two made me sad: happy old couples give me a sort of hope. But judging by those photos, the happiness had been gone for decades.
There were glaciers in the background of the older photo, but they had melted by the time the newer one had been taken. More sadness. Why should the march of time be inherently melancholic? It didn’t seem fair.
I opened the frames, carefully. No hidden notes. Not even a date written on the corner to sate my curiosity.
I hadn’t done snooping like this more than a handful of times. The first time, a couple of us had robbed some rich asshole’s house and
sold his stuff for food. I was young, reckless, and I’d never been to jail, so it was just kind of fun. The second time, the whole affair had been deadly serious. My friend’s mother had been trapped in an abusive relationship, so we’d broken into the man’s summer home for blackmail to hold over his head so she could leave him in comparative safety. That time, the stakes were too epic for it to be thrilling, but righteousness imparts a kind of high of its own. Both of those men had had entertaining secrets like embarrassingly crass porn collections or a false-bottom drawer with cheesy ninja weapons hidden inside.
Sebastian Miller had an easy chair, a bed, a bookshelf full of mediocre-but-not-embarrassing books, and a fuck-off big TV. A mounted deer—nothing impressive—and a run-of-the-mill hunting rifle hung on the wall. My pack stayed empty.
“There a basement?” I asked at last, after I’d checked every damn horror book on his shelf for a hidden compartment.
“Maybe through the office downstairs,” Heather said.
“Okay. Office, basement, and then I give up.”
“We’ll find something,” Heather said.
“What’s he like?” I asked. “He weird or anything?”
“I never thought twice about him until Gertrude came back,” Heather said. “He drives a 1950s truck, that’s about the most interesting thing about him. He used to come by the library sometimes, check out thrillers for himself, romance for Gertrude. Called her Gertie. He was the only one in town who called her that. I don’t think she liked it.”
The office door, behind the checkout counter of the gift shop, was locked with a dead bolt. I got out my tools—I keep a tension wrench and a basic rake in a hidden pouch in the waist belt of my pack, usually to break into Dumpsters for food—and set to work.
“Who the hell are you people?” Heather asked. “Climbing in second-story windows, busting out lock picks like it’s nothing.”
Brynn laughed in that out-of-character giggle of hers. “We told you, we’re demon hunters.”
“We should get a crew name,” I said.
“The Uliksians,” Brynn said, without hesitating.
“We can’t name ourselves after a demon we banished,” I said.
“No, no, think about it,” Brynn said. “Uliksi wasn’t bad because of what he did, stopping those who wield power over others; he was bad because he was the single manifestation of that ideal. We can do that same work, but as people. Not omnipotent.”
“It doesn’t really roll off the tongue,” Heather said.
“Fine,” Brynn said, “fine.”
The tension wrench gave way in my hand, the lock turned over, and I opened the door.
Just an office. Well, an office straight out of the eighties or nineties or whatever. Big, ugly monitor on a big, ugly desk and the carpet was about twice as thick as could be reasonably justified. There were two other doors on the far wall.
“One of you a hacker too?” Heather asked.
I shrugged.
“Sure,” Brynn said. “Vulture is.”
We went through the drawers, found nothing but business receipts and junk mail.
“To be honest, I don’t think we’ll find anything on the computer either,” I said. “I think this whole thing is a bust.”
I opened one of the two doors. A closet. With cleaning supplies and office supplies. I opened the other door.
Now here was something interesting.
The door led to a short hallway—about ten feet long, with another door at the other end. Above the door, someone had crudely carved in Greek letters:
τίποτα ζωντανό δεν θα περάσει
Brynn and I stared blankly.
“Uh,” Heather said, squinting. “Tipota zontano den tha perasei.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“No clue. I can’t really speak Greek. I just learned how to sound it out a couple years ago. Vasilis is Greek, I think I was trying to impress him.”
“How long have you and him . . .” Brynn started to ask. I don’t know if she trailed off because she was shy to ask with me around or if she realized it wasn’t the time and place.
“Five years,” Heather said. “It’s good. Mostly.”
She opened the door. A set of plain wooden steps led down into darkness.
“I sometimes wish . . . I don’t know,” Heather said. “I wish things were easier between us. More relaxed. He’s not controlling, but somehow . . . I just wish I felt more free.”
She took a step through the doorway.
This time, my perception of time slowed down. I saw her hand move and green light rippled out across . . . something. Like someone had strung an invisible window screen across the doorway. Her whole arm pierced that veil, and she screamed. She didn’t have time to stop. Momentum carried her forward. Every bit of her on the far side of the doorway glowed with green fire.
I grabbed for her. The fingers of my hand—my goat-bitten hand—went through the doorway, and it tingled. My wrist, though, passed through and it hurt like fire. Well, most of the times I’ve gotten burned, fire only hurt later once the nerve endings started growing back or whatever. This time, it hurt immediately like how fire hurts later. I got ahold of her jacket and yanked back.
She fell on top of me. She stopped screaming.
If she was breathing, it was too faint to hear.
FOUR
She was alive. I found her pulse easily enough.
“What the fuck,” Brynn said.
“What the fuck,” I agreed.
We dragged Heather back into the office. Brynn ran back into the hallway and I heard her phone snap a photo. She slammed the cursed door shut.
“Found our fucking magician,” I said, as I worked the office window open. Brynn shut and locked the office door.
“Doomsday,” Brynn said. “She’ll know what to do.”
I climbed out the window, Brynn handed me Heather, and we ran for it. We couldn’t lock the window behind us. We couldn’t grab our bikes. Brynn put Heather into a fireman’s carry and we made for a side street just as a 1950s pickup truck roared down the main street and skidded to a halt out front of the building. I didn’t think he saw us.
“Don’t die,” Brynn said as we ran. “Don’t die don’t die don’t die.”
* * *
Doomsday met us at the front door of the library, and we ran up the steps. I was just as out of breath as Brynn, and I didn’t have one-hundred-some extra pounds of friend thrown over my shoulders. I swept dozens of books off the table, and Brynn laid Heather down atop it. I told Doomsday the gist of what had happened.
“You got a hospital in town?” I asked as Vasilis came up after us.
He shook his head. “Nearest one’s about an hour east. We’ve got a little emergency clinic, though.”
“Won’t do any good,” Doomsday said, as she inspected the patient. “It’s not physical damage. It’s metaphysical damage. That green fire, it’s called witch’s fire. Rebecca mentioned it once. Burns the . . . not the soul. Imagine that you’ve got a second body, a metaphysical body. The bones of that second body, that’s your soul. Witch’s fire burns away that second skin, the membrane that protects the soul. It’ll kill you as sure as being flayed.”
“We’ve got to try to reverse the damage,” Vasilis said. “We’ve got to regenerate that second skin.”
“No,” Doomsday said. “Too dangerous. Just need to soothe the burn. Keep it from getting infected while it heals itself.”
“That could take years!” Vasilis shouted. “I’ve been studying this a decade. Half of what you know, you learned here, today, reading from my collection.” He rose to his full height. Everyone freaks out a little bit differently. Vasilis, apparently, freaks out by trying to dominate people. He wasn’t winning me over.
“And she’ll be in a coma the whole time,” Doomsday agreed.
“We have to do this now,” Vasilis said.
Doomsday looked thoughtful. I was going to back her whatever she chose. That w
as an easy conclusion to reach.
“She’s your friend,” Doomsday said at last.
“She’s my everything.”
The two of them, together, prepared the ritual. Vasilis was the teacher, Doomsday the student. It was sort of bizarrely elaborate, complete with ringing the floor with herb-infused salts and washing Heather’s nude body with oils.
Brynn and I stayed out of the way, watching from a couch in the corner. Brynn was folded in on herself in worry. I held her.
Vasilis chanted, in Greek and English. A supernaturally bright red flush moved across Heather’s skin in the wake of his hands as he incanted. By the look on his face and the sweat beginning to form on his brow, it wasn’t working. After a minute maybe, Doomsday joined him. She too looked desperate.
I heard a crack as Vasilis’s hands jerked into an unnatural position. He fainted, crumpling down onto himself and the floor.
Then Heather screamed. Then Heather died.
* * *
Vulture and Thursday came back that evening, before Vasilis came to. Doomsday had briefed them over the phone shortly after it happened, but I imagine it was still quite a shock to walk into the apartment. Heather was laid out on the table, still, with a sheet covering everything but her face. Vasilis was passed out on the floor in a fetal position. Doomsday was pacing. Brynn was sobbing. I was holding her with my good hand. My wounded hand, the hand the goat had bitten, the hand that hadn’t been burned by the witch’s fire, I didn’t let it touch her. I was afraid of my own hand.
“What did you find?” Doomsday asked the boys. She put on the kettle for tea. Sometimes it was unclear if that woman was capable of expressing emotion.
“I guess . . .” Vulture said. “I guess that still matters?”
“Matters more than ever,” Doomsday said. She wasn’t wrong.
“We found their car,” Thursday said. “Pushed into a lake close to the trailhead. Vulture found the tread marks in the dirt, even six months later. I wouldn’t have noticed them. I dove in and found the car.”
“And?” Doomsday asked.
“And it’s a sunken car,” Thursday said. “That’s it. That’s all. No skeletons. No backpacks. Just a fucking car.”
Vasilis stirred. Brynn and I jumped up and helped him to his feet, then to a chair. Doomsday set the tea in front of him. Maybe she hadn’t been as callous as I’d assumed.
The Barrow Will Send What it May Page 4