Merv kicks her, catching her in the shoulder.
She ain't one for cryin' much, but tears come out anyway. “What do you want?” The tarp crinkles and something taps her face. Merv, petting her head like he's soothing a dog.
“Please.” She struggles harder, but the tarp doesn't give.
And he kicks her again. “Be quiet. We got somethin' special in store for you.”
She's scared, but a little whisper in the back of her head says things will only get worse from here. She's shaking too hard to form words, so she screams.
“Shut up, bitch.” Merv kicks and stomps 'til finally she gets quiet.
The truck rattles up the dirt trail and Luke jumps out. “What the hell are you doing?”
Merv rubs his fingers, still aching where they were bit. “She was screamin'. Even out here someone would have heard.”
They both pause and listen, but there's no sound but the distant buzz saw of a cicada.
Luke bends down and jostles the tarp-swaddled woman. “Shit.” He unties the rope around the outside. “Help me unroll it.”
They each grab a corner and lift up. The body rolls out on the dirt trail and stops, belly down. Face bloodied, her eyes staring back at them, cool and empty as glass.
“Damn it, Merv. I told you.”
“She was shriekin' too loud.” Merv kicks her again, his mouth twisted up sullen-like. “I had to get her to shut up.”
“Now we'll have to find another one.”
They stare at each other for a moment, angry. Afraid.
The kitchen door of the house is a yellow splot in the darkness, but it twitters. And again. The phone ringing insistently.
Merv nudges Luke. “Come on. Let's get out of here.”
Luke twitches. “Yeah.” He grabs up the tarp and throws it in the back of the truck, flips the spare tire over on top of it so it won't blow out.
The doors slam and the truck backs around, kicks up dirt as they drive back down to the road, past the little house with the phone ringing and ringing and ringing. The tires squeal on the blacktop, and Luke and Merv disappear down the dark road.
11
Percy is tired. They've been on the road most of the day, and the rest of it has been crowded with death and magic that has left him drained. He sits down at a table in their makeshift office, rests his head on his arms. Just for a minute or two while Martinez starts the search for names of women with the Touch who live within the county.
The noises of the room—phones ringing, the growl of voices, the nearly inaudible but bone-piercing whine of the florescent lights overhead—swirl past him and grow more distorted as his breathing slows and he sinks into a fitful sleep.
The dream is waiting for him. The one she told him about. He remembers it well enough now that he's standing in it, but this time it is eerier than normal. The woods seem darker and more familiar. Familiar because he realizes they look like Del's woods. Darker because this time he feels the pull of something down the path.
He walks forward, looking to see if he can see her. She told him she was here.
Somewhere.
She told him he never seemed to see her and passed her by. Knowing it, looking more intently doesn't seem to change that. There's not even a whisper of movement to be seen in the deeper shadows that fall off on either side of the path. No flicker that might be moonlight touching pale skin.
Something calls to him from the end of the path. Not with words. Not with sound even. This summons churns in his guts, drawing him forward even as every step raises the hair on his arms.
He remembers this too. Normally he pulls himself awake, avoiding whatever lies in wait. Not this time. He pulls his sidearm free of the holster on the last few steps, watching for any threat.
The clearing is broad and bright with moonlight. A house sits on the other side, lopsided with the years, kudzu slowly dismantling the rest. Near the middle is a large box, the metal scarred and split at the corners. Standing in it is something in the shape of a man, the height of a man, but made of stuff other than flesh. Ash and coals and fire. So much fire.
He knows this is The Salesman.
Not a ghost.
This entity is beyond human.
There's a woman too. Not Delaney. Someone else. Someone his brain doesn't know and presents only as female. Scared. Screaming.
Percival tries to grab her and pull her back to the edge of the woods where his frantic mind tells him they will be safe. He fires his gun at The Salesman. The bullets send up sparks, but the thing—guilt and fear shaped by the repetition of many tongues into coals and anger—reaches out and grabs hold of him.
Jacket and shirt catch fire. Flames wrap around him, burning. Smothering. Inescapable.
“Huh.” Percy lurches upright, out of the clutches of the dream and The Salesman.
Overhead the lights hum and buzz. Martinez is still on the phone, busy scribbling something on a sticky note.
Percy touches his arms, but his clothes are unmarked. A dream, not a manifestation. But a dream of what? Delaney said she'd seen him before in that dream. Does she know what waits for him at the end of the path?
As soon as he thinks it, he knows the answer.
“Looks like we've caught a break.” Martinez leans on the edge of the table.
Percy rubs his eyes and focuses on the present. “Oh?”
“Sheriff Tolbert put together a list of names to start with. Women rumored to have some measure of magic. We started calling and one of 'em isn't answering.” He checks the piece of paper in his hand. “Neeny Johnson. She runs a fortune telling gig out of her house.”
“Maybe she's out.”
“Could be, but apparently she's not one to leave the house much. Has her groceries delivered by one of the neighbors and doesn't own a car. I'm heading out there with a deputy right now to check things out.”
“If she's only just been taken, there's a chance to keep her from winding up dead.”
“And a chance to catch whoever is doing this.”
“You've talked to Elliot and MacKenzie?”
“They're checking the last couple of names on their list. Hopefully they'll find something.”
Percy nods. “I need to talk to Delaney Green again.”
“Why?”
“I didn't ask her enough questions.”
Martinez glares at him. “You think she's got something to do with this after all.”
“I think she knows more about it than she first told me.”
“Then she lied to you.” Martinez crosses his arms as though he will get between Percy and danger.
“Yes.”
“And you think you can get the truth out of her this time?”
Not if she doesn't want to tell me. Percy shrugs. “Seems like things have changed.”
“Well, I'm headed out to Neeny Johnson's place.” He says it as if that settles everything.
“Good. I'll take a car and go talk to Miss Green.”
Martinez looks at him in alarm. “You should...”
“I'll be fine,” Percy says, pushing his chair back with more confidence than he feels. “Call me when you get to Miss Johnson's house. All right?”
Martinez hesitates, but this is the stuff he's good at, and they are all eager for a break in the case. “Okay.”
“Be careful,” Percy says, offering his hand.
“Hah.” Martinez shakes it. “All right. Take an officer with you.”
“Sure.” He rolls the kinks out of his shoulders and heads down the hallway, emerging from the dry, cool air of the library basement into the humid night. Walks across the muggy parking lot to the sheriff's department to get a cup of coffee and find a deputy willing to drive him out to Greenhaven.
The latter proves more difficult than anticipated. A nervous young man by the name of Collins shuffles through a list on a clipboard, shaking his head the entire time. “Looks like everyone's on assignment, sir.” He licks his lips. “If you want to wait, someone might be available i
n an hour or two. Maybe.”
Percy frowns. “I need to go out to Greenhaven.”
“Yes, sir. I understand. But...” He pauses, cheeks flushed with the effort of thinking of a valid excuse.
Sheriff Tolbert and ex-Sheriff Mains come out of Tolbert's office. “Is there a problem, Agent Cox?”
“He wants someone to go with him to see Miss Green again.” Collins blurts it out before Percy can say anything. “But we're... busy.”
“Ah.” Tolbert frowns. Clearly he's not keen to send anyone out to Greenhaven either.
Mains chuckles. “I'll drive you out there.”
The sheriff nods. “Good idea.” He looks at Percy. “You don't mind, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“That's done, then.” Tolbert nods, satisfied. “Give 'em the keys to 39.”
“Yes, sir.” Collins opens a cabinet on the wall and retrieves a pair of keys. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Mains looks at Percival. “You ready to go?”
“Yes. The sooner, the better.”
The parking lot is still radiating waves of heat, but little wafts of cooler air trickle across. Percy frowns. “Is it always this warm?”
“In summertime, yeah.” Mains pauses to look for car 39. “You must not have been down here long.”
“A few weeks. And most of that's been in the office.” Percy tilts his head back, watching the stars blinking through the brown and violet dusk overhead. “Can't see the sky like you can here.”
“Naw.” He shakes his head and unlocks the door on the cruiser. “That's the problem with the big cities. You lose yourself in 'em. Couldn't pay me enough to move away from the stars.”
Percy slides into the car, careful not to slosh his coffee. Then buckles his seat belt as they pull out of the parking lot. “You don't seem afraid of Miss Green.”
He laughs. “Are you?”
“Not yet.” He looks at the ex-sheriff steadily. “But everyone else...”
“It's not that I ain't scared of her. There's lots of things in the world that should scare us. Disease. Critters. Freak accidents. I could stay at home, lock myself up in a room, and hope death wouldn't find me, but a smart man knows it don't work that way. If a bullet's got your name on it, it'll find you.”
Percy takes another sip of coffee. “She's seen your death, too.”
“Not sure what you mean.”
“She told me about a dream that I'd had. Said she'd seen me in it. Only this evening, I stayed there—despite a feeling of creeping dread—and it ended... I ended in the arms of The Salesman.” He touches his arm again, still feeling the flames eating through his skin. “I figure she must have told you something similar. That's why you aren't afraid of her.”
“Ah.” Mains works his lips together for a few minutes. “I first met Del when she was small. She'd run out in the woods to hide from her mother and gotten a little turned around. Eventually her father called us to help look for her. I found her about a mile away, sitting on a fallen tree as calm as could be, even though it was full-dark by then. Waiting for me.
“Just a little thing with a milk-white face and eyes that don't match. Like the Maker ran out of parts.” He chuckles. “But there she was and I said, 'It's okay honey. You don't need to be scared.' And she looks at me, ever so solemn. 'I ain't scared. I knew you'd come.' And something in the way she said it, I knew she didn't mean she knew someone would come lookin' for her. She knew it would be me.
“So I say, 'How'd you know that, little girl?'
“'Oh. I know lots of things. And my name's Delaney, but I suppose you can call me Del.'
“And I said, 'Lots of things? Like why the sky is blue?'
“'Oh, no. Like how you'll die, Mr. Mains.'” He stops. His hands knotted so tight on the steering wheel the bones show through his skin. “Such a little thing. She reached up and took my hand and asked me if I wanted to know how it would happen.”
“And you said yes.”
“Of course, I did. By then she had her tongue in me. Bending my ear. Bending my future, too, I expect. Like she's doin' with you.”
“Then you think she has a hand in what's happening here? With The Salesman?”
“Not in raising him. Or it. That one of her inevitables, I reckon.”
“Inevitables?”
“Things she can't change.” Mains grins, dry and humorless. “Just 'cause she has the Touch don't mean she can do whatever she likes.”
“But...”
“If it is her that's brought you here, and given that look in your eye I'd say it is, then she's trying to do somethin' good.”
Percy raises an eyebrow. “In my dream I died.”
“I do, too.”
“And that doesn't frighten you?”
“Hell, yes. But it's been eight years now since I went into that barn lookin' for a meth lab. And eight years since I didn't turn my back on the hay loft.” His grin turns sly. “Once you know the future, you can change it, boy.”
Percy looks at him, breathless. “She's trying to save my life?”
“You have that dream before?”
“Before I met Miss Green? Yes.”
“Bet you always woke up before you got to the end though. Because you were afraid.”
“That's right.” He's staring at Mains hard. Does the old sheriff have a bit of the Touch too? “She wanted me to see how it ends.”
He shrugs. “Well. I can't say what Delaney wants. But if I were to guess, it'd be that she's taken a liking to you.”
Percy rubs his fingers through his hair and hopes that's a good thing. Remembers the way she looked at him when they first met and the strength of her fingers twined though his. “Yes.” He nods. “I think she has.”
“Hah.” Mains pulls the car into the lot at Greenhaven. “Don't worry about it, boy. Better to look the devil in the eye, yes?”
Before Percy can think of a response, Mains is already stepping out of the car. “Come on. They'll just be getting her into bed for the night.”
Percy swallows hard. “I think I want to take her with me.”
“Out of Greenhaven?”
“Yes.”
Mains rubs his chin. “If you say so. I don't suppose it will make any difference.”
“She'll get what she wants.”
“That's right. Whatever it is.”
Percy starts down the sidewalk to the main doors. Whatever it is.
12
No matter how much you try to change things, some things are meant to happen.
This is the third thing Daddy taught me.
I've been dreaming of The Salesman's awakening since I was a little thing. And I've pulled and twisted the threads that led up to it as hard as I could. None of it made a difference. The magic in that haunted tale, repeated countless times over the century and a half since poor Jack Green was murdered, the fear that shaped every telling, these are too much to be undone even by my hands.
But though there are some things can't be changed, what happens next is less fixed. For every bottleneck, for every terrible event that cannot be moved, there are countless ways to resolve it.
This is how I first saw Percival Cox. A single thread that ended with him burning in the arms of The Salesman. I can't say I didn't think he was handsome, but I didn't mean to keep him far from that brutal magic because I loved him. Not at first.
But Percy was a thread that led toward the end of the burned girls, toward me stepping outside the grounds of Greenhaven for the first time since I was thirteen. And I clung to it.
13
I sit on the bed, the piece of paper with the Stevens poem smoothed out on one knee. The memorizing is not so hard, even with the meds making things slow and strange. The hard part is finding a part of my brain the Magiprex hasn't curtained off. The hard part is finding a place I'll be able to find again.
The first few lines are where I left them.
Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground
And gathered them,
I squint at the paper and add the last two.
With flowers around,
Blue, gold, pink, and green.
The door opens and the orderly, Malcolm, sticks his head into the room. “Put your shoes on, Del.”
“It's almost time for bed.”
“Not tonight.” His hand is trembling on the door knob. “That agent that were here earlier is taking you out.”
I catch my lip between my teeth to keep the smile hidden away. “Out?”
“He says you're a witness or something and he wants you in his custody.”
“But Ms. Drowner...”
“Just about split herself in two.” He leans against the doorframe with a grin, his nervousness gone for a moment. “But she ain't got a good reason to keep you here. And it could be...” He pauses.
I don't need him to tell me that some of the paperwork regarding my extended stay is the result of some behind-the-scenes bargaining. A local judge who ain't comfortable with meeting me on the street taking a thinly-justified recommendation that I be kept under continued observation. The lack of an outside assessment once I reached a legal age. And the forged signature on the documents that give my consent to be kept at Greenhaven.
But he doesn't know that I know, and he sure don't want to be the one to tell me. He gets all twitchy-like again and slides over so the door covers everything but his head.
“Put your shoes on. The fellow's waiting.”
I fold the paper up and tuck it safely in my sweater pocket. Then tuck my feet into my shoes and stick the Velcro straps down carefully. “I'm ready.”
Malcolm leads the way, walking fast to keep some distance between him and me. One of the florescent lights is out of sync; as we walk underneath it, the hallway flickers past, matching the rhythm of my heart. I pull the cuffs of my sweater up into my fingers to hide the shake in my hands.
I know that the air outside the gate will not be any different and I will see the same stars I can see from the window of my room, but I have dreamed for so long of being outside the walls of Greenhaven. Now that the moment is here, I'm dizzy with anticipation.
Touch: A Trilogy Page 6