by John Hart
“I’m here because we’re not as different as you think.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Do you want to talk about what’s happening?”
Cree laughed, but it was more like a sob. “With you, no. Let’s not pretend.”
“Maybe I can help—”
“You can’t.”
“Cree—”
“Just leave me alone.”
She sank onto the mattress and Luana touched the damp place made by her daughter’s tears. “I’ve never been much of a mother—”
“Any kind of mother.”
Luana nodded because it was true. “I’m going out for a while. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? You can talk to me, you know. I was your age once.”
“Say hi to your friends at the bar.”
“Sweetheart…”
“I thought you were leaving.”
Luana nodded in the silence. In the hall outside, she touched the door once, then went to her room and dressed. She put aside the housecoat and worn slippers, then tidied her hair and found a dress that was modest over plain shoes. Putting what money she had into a small clutch, she looked once at the bottle, but left the apartment without it. That was hard, but not the hardest part. At the apartment next door, she knocked and waited, and tried to smile even as the neighbor frowned.
“What are you supposed to be? Some kind of church lady?”
Luana smoothed the dress, embarrassed to know her neighbor of ten years had never seen her out of a bathrobe or short skirts or sweatpants. “I need to use your car.”
The neighbor frowned around a cigarette. “You’re a drunk.”
“No more so than you.”
“That may be true, but it’s my car.”
“Not now, Theresa. Not your normal bullshit.”
Theresa laughed once, an otherwise unflinching woman, soft and colorless except for her eyes, which glittered. She and Luana drank together in one apartment or the other, and once a week they’d meet in the local dive by the chicken shack, the two of them side by side over cigarettes and off-brand liquor. They were friends the way cellmates were friends.
“It’s important,” Luana said. “I need it.”
“To drive where?”
“East and north. A few hours.”
“No.”
“It’s for my daughter.”
Theresa squinted until the marble eyes all but disappeared. The car was thirty years old with plastic taped where the right window should be. It was worth a few hundred bucks, but Luana was the only friend she had. “Screw it,” she said. “I’ll drive you.”
The drive out of Charlotte was loud and unpleasant. The plastic slapped and cracked, and exhaust leaked in from a hole rusted through the floorboard. Theresa tried conversation for the first hour, but Luana didn’t have it in her. “Turn here,” she said. “Take the next highway east.” Traffic fell away the farther they moved from the city. Eight lanes went to four and then two, a narrow blacktop through the pine and sand hills, then into Raven County.
“The hell are we doing out here?”
Theresa was on her second pack of menthols. A city glinted off to the left, but they were moving past it, back into the openness of small houses and sunbaked fields.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” Luana said. “And you know most everything about me. The divorces. The jail time. This is different. I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Yeah, well.”
She was doubtful, but Luana didn’t apologize or explain. A line of forest rose in the distance. There were hills beyond it. “There’s a crossroad,” she said. “Two miles or so. Stop there.”
Five minutes later Theresa pulled onto the verge where two roads made a giant X in the world. Forest ran off to the left. To the right, a cornfield surrounded an unpainted house. Biting her lip, Luana looked up one road and down another. It looked the same, but she was unsure. “That way, I think.” She pointed left, and they followed the forest for another mile. “Yes. Go left there.” The road forked, then turned to gravel. “There’s the driveway.” Turning onto it, the old car scraped over the low spots, then rolled to a stop where a stream cut across the drive.
“I can’t cross that,” Theresa said.
Beyond the stream an old shack stood under the trees. “It’s okay,” Luana said. “You’d not be welcome anyway.”
“And you will?”
“I’m not sure. Wait here.”
“That sounds like a fine plan.” Theresa reached into the glove box and pulled out a small revolver left on the nightstand twenty years ago by some man, now forgotten. “I’ll be here if you make it back.”
“Don’t joke.”
Luana opened the door, and metal screeched. The stream was shallow, but her shoes got wet and she left prints in the dust for the next twenty feet. Sixteen years had passed since she’d been here. She didn’t even know if the old woman was alive.
“That’s far enough.”
The voice came from the shadows under the porch. Luana squinted and saw a shape in a chair by the door. “Is that Verdine?” she said.
“Who’s asking?”
“Luana Freemantle.”
“You can’t be Luana Freemantle. I told Luana Freemantle sixteen years ago I’d shoot her next time she stepped foot on my dirt.”
“That was a long time ago. I was a kid.”
“You called me a crazy old hag, a jumped-up know-it-all with no right to look down her nose at better people.”
“I brought you my daughter, is what I did.”
“Only because you were too scared to face your mother straight on.”
“Can I come up or not?”
“Are you drunk again?”
“No.”
“Is this some kind of social visit? ’Cause this ain’t no runaways’ club.”
“My daughter’s dreaming.”
“Not outside the Hush, she’s not.”
“Would I be here otherwise?”
Luana waited in the heat and silence. Verdine had left the Hush in her fifties, and that made her special. Most left early or died in the same place they’d been born. That made Verdine an ambassador of sorts, a conduit for medicines and news, for the children who’d left and the one who’d come back. Luana suspected it was those feelings for Cree that kept the rifle in the old woman’s lap, and not on her shoulder.
“Best come on up,” she said.
Luana climbed the steps, and endured the slow inspection. Even in the dress and plain shoes, she felt the disappointment break over her. She was the one who’d run away and broken her mother’s heart, the thankless child who’d taken with her the last, great hope of those who remained.
“They’re gone now. You know that.” The old woman circled her. “Not just your mother and grandmother. Everybody. A way of life.”
“I know that. I tried to get the land back.”
“For money, I imagine.”
“Don’t pretend to know me—”
“And don’t you talk back. I saw the greed in you even as a child. Blackberries weren’t enough. You wanted peaches. When peaches grew tiresome, it was chocolate or tobacco. You still have that fine, silk scarf?”
Luana blushed under the question. She’d stolen the scarf from a tourist at the roadside stand where her grandmother sold honeycomb and dried fish. “Cree is dreaming,” she said.
“Nobody dreams outside the Hush.”
“My daughter does.”
A hard glint came into Verdine’s good eye. Few had the dreams. Most never did. For those who believed as the old women had, dreams of the past were signs and entreaties, raw communication that bound the dreamer to Hush Arbor as the soil itself was bound.
“The Merrimon boy was here.”
“What?”
“Just yesterday. He’s dreaming of John Merrimon and the dying wife, the fever. It’s only a matter of time until he dreams the res
t.”
“You’re helping him?” Luana asked.
“Merrimon men have always been the key.”
“Cree is not a part of that. She can’t be.”
“You’re implying there’s some kind of choice.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“The visions will only get worse. They’ll break her down. She’ll lose herself. Are you guide enough to see her through? Bring her to me. I’ll keep her safe.”
“You’ll use her.”
“It’s what we’ve waited for.”
“Not my daughter.”
“Then go home.” Verdine gestured at the car across the stream. “Go home to your broken daughter. Come back when you’re desperate.”
“I’m not leaving without an answer.”
“Leon.” Verdine raised her voice, and Leon stepped out onto the porch, big and unflinching. “You remember my Leon,” Verdine said. “Leon, this ungrateful, know-nothing little shit-turd was just leaving. Help her along, would you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Leon spread his big arms to herd Luana off the porch. “Wait,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“No one talks down to me on my own porch. Go on. Get. Come back when she’s half-starved or screaming in her sleep or doesn’t know her own name.”
“She’s half-starved now. She screams in her sleep.”
“Then you should have come more respectful. Go on. Get.”
Leon drove her off the bottom step and into the dust. She looked back once from the stream, then climbed into the car. “Follow her home,” Verdine said. “Find out where she lives.”
“If she sees me?”
“I don’t care if she does or not. Just find out where she keeps the girl.”
Verdine watched the small car turn around, then Leon’s truck as he followed. When it was quiet, she settled in the old chair and lit one of her cigarettes. In a century of living, she’d had the vision only once, but could never forget the girl with the knife, the great woman, the one who’d started it all.
A hundred and seventy years …
Verdine pulled smoke into her lungs.
All that time in the ground …
The girl was the key, at last—the girl and Johnny Merrimon.
If only he would dream again.
If only he would see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Johnny was up late, and his eyelids felt like sandpaper. He sat by the fire under a midnight sky, watching embers twist and rise, as if on fine black strings.
He was afraid to sleep.
The emotions were too deep and real. Nothing in life so far had prepared him.
She was his wife.
If he dreamed again, would he watch her die?
Verdine’s cigarettes pulled his gaze like a magnet. They sat on the table across the fire. In spite of the fear, he wanted to see Marion again, to know if the baby lived.…
“She’s not my wife.”
But that was not entirely true. He was Johnny Merrimon, and he was John. He couldn’t separate the two, and it was making him insane. Rising from the chair, he walked to the water and stared out across the swamp. He pictured the old woman and the gleam in her eyes.
Dream this time of darker truths.…
She was manipulating him—she wanted something—but he thought this was how an alcoholic might feel, the knowledge deep down that he would break in the end. Such was the treadmill of his night.
He wanted to hold his wife.
He knew she wasn’t his.
“It’s not my life!”
Johnny stumbled back to the fire and sat for long hours until something moved in the forest. It was a shimmer at first, a trick of light in a forest filling with the dawn. But Johnny’s eyes came back to it. He watched across a dying fire, and when the blankness drifted, it was familiar in the way of lost friends and forgotten places. That’s how it felt to Johnny, as if a dream had come at last, and he was held beneath its weight. Vines parted in the wood, and fear spread like the first touch of something neither warm nor cold. Johnny’s limbs felt heavy, the air in his lungs as thick as liquid. He blinked because something solid seemed to move in all that blankness: a slope of shoulder, a tilted head.
It’s okay to love her.…
The words rose in Johnny’s mind, but were not his words. None of this was real. He told himself as much, trying to speak it aloud, but saying go away instead, saying leave me the hell alone.
It didn’t go away.
It circled the fire, and Johnny heard the rustle of it, the dry rasp of a shallow breath.
I want you to love her.…
Johnny closed his eyes, afraid. He smelled rainwater and rotten leather; felt sadness and need and near-forgotten hope. He sank into the chair, and against his will, he slept. When he opened his eyes at last, there was nothing to see. The fire was burned out, the day at least two hours old. Johnny felt the dampness on his skin, the settled stiffness. Standing, he wondered if he’d been awake at all, or if the exhaustion of a long night had simply taken him down. Picking up the cigarettes, he stared into the forest and reached out the way he liked to do. He felt the normal things, the first, faint stirrings.
Had something come for him in the day’s first blush?
Or had a dream just told him to love?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was early morning when Jack’s doorbell rang. He didn’t know how early. Six o’clock? Six thirty? Rising from the sofa, he pulled pants over his shorts and ran a hand through tangled hair. He’d not left the apartment in a long time. Drawings were tacked to the walls and strewn across the floor.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Leslie.”
Jack hesitated. Leslie had called four times, left three messages. She was angry. He understood. “It’s a little early.”
“I don’t care.”
Sighing, Jack glanced at the apartment. The drawings were bad enough. There were also pizza boxes, beer bottles, cold Chinese. “Can we talk later?”
“You skipped Reamer’s meeting. No one’s seen you for days.”
“What do you want, Leslie?”
“You still owe me.”
He hesitated again.
“Buzz me up, Jack. I mean it.”
He thought for an instant of cleaning up the mess. Instead, he pushed the button and buzzed her up. Cracking the door, he heard the clack of high heels on the stairs. She rounded the corner and held his gaze as she took the last four steps.
“You look like shit.”
Jack scraped at his whiskers. In three days, he’d barely slept. When he closed his eyes, he saw the drawings, like flashes in black and white. He couldn’t explain the power they had over him, but thought it was the sense of emptiness and fear, what he knew of the missing and the dead.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“I haven’t been myself.”
“Yeah, no shit.” She pushed across the threshold and took in the clutter. “Jesus, Jack.” She stepped gingerly over drawings and empty bottles. Every wall was covered, every surface. She picked up a sketch; let it drop. “What is all this?”
“Kind of a project.”
“It smells in here.” She opened a window and looked at Jack with something between disgust and worry. “You understand the concept of a law firm, right? Tech-Stone is a big deal. No associate worth his salt would walk away from it like you just did. What the hell is this project of yours?” She found Jack’s research on Hush Arbor, but he took the pages from her hands before she could read of any deaths or disappearances.
“Leslie, listen.” He put the articles facedown on a table and guided her toward the door. “I’m sorry I blew off Reamer and Tech-Stone. I’m sorry for everything, but this is not a good time.”
“Not a good time? Have you lost your mind? People are talking. Partners, Jack. The ones who hired you. Whatever this is. Whatever you’re doing—” She gestured at the walls, the refrigerator, the cabinets. “—you’re going t
o get fired.”
“I don’t really care.”
“Then you are definitely not the man I thought you were. You were going to be the youngest partner we ever had. I saw something in you.”
“Something’s changed. I’m sorry.”
“You still owe me one.”
“Ah. Business.”
“Don’t make that face. I told you from the start it was just sex.” She pulled a card from a pocket in her coat. “I want you to call this man. He’s a New York editor. He wants to talk to Johnny Merrimon.”
“Why should I do that?”
“There’s money in it. Maybe a lot.”
“For Johnny?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you care?”
“Maybe I want to write a book one day. Having an editor’s ear is never a bad thing.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Hey, my life is more than sex and law and money.”
“How much, then?”
“A lot, I imagine. They’re going big, apparently. Color photographs. A special hardcover edition. It’s the bestselling true crime they’ve ever published. They want to send Johnny on tour with the author. Talk shows. All that. They’ve been trying for months to reach him. Just ask him.”
“He’ll never do it.” Jack dropped the card on a table and steered Leslie for the door.
“He just wants to talk—”
“Goodbye, Leslie.”
Jack got her into the stairwell and closed the door behind her. Moving back to the center of the room, he stood where he could turn a circle and see the drawings like a movie. There was a pattern, he believed, a sense of brokenness and malice too disjointed to easily understand. But Ms. Showalter’s drawings were more than random. It was a puzzle, the broken bits of a dim, gray slate.
Removing one sketch, he replaced it with another, then shifted two more. Stepping back, he considered the puzzle with fresh eyes. Something moved in the Hush. He sensed it in the totality of the drawings. It teased in the blank spaces and streaks of black, in the charcoal worked so hard and fast that the paper, in places, was worn shiny. Whatever it was—whatever the reason so many people had died or gone missing—Johnny was in the middle of it. In the tapestry of such deceit and violence, what was Jack’s responsibility to a friend who didn’t want his help? Just how much did one friend really owe another?