The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  A glimpse of movement drew his gaze across the street, where a woman with black and blond hair was fueling her red Chevy at the Texaco station. She looked away from the pump as he passed, and a cigarette glowed between her lips.

  The town was awake. Was it in fact day? Had he spent the whole night in the grave and this was 1:40 in the afternoon? He ran his fingers through his hair to banish the ridiculous notion.

  Sure, it was a bit surprising to find such rural stores open twenty-four hours, but obviously they were catering to a peculiar clientele.

  Things were more normal in the downtown area. The headlights reflected in dark windows and the engine hummed past empty sidewalks.

  Brad crossed Larkin Street at the center of town and followed Adamah Road toward the river. No sign of a police station.

  Soon, the white specter of the Locust River Hotel loomed on his right, where the town ended at River Street.

  As he turned right, following the curb, something flicked at the edge of the headlights.

  Again, his mind short-circuited. He processed the image from memory. Someone was standing out on the bridge. A figure holding an umbrella, staring down at the water.

  He hit the brakes, got out of the car, and walked back to the bridge’s entrance. The putrid scent of the river rose around him as he stepped onto the pale concrete expanse. Stray gravel rattled away from his shoes.

  The figure appeared abruptly, as if rising from muddy water. It was a tall person wearing denim overalls. A ragged umbrella was gripped by a frail hand, and the face was turned toward the river. Ash-colored hair floated down her back—it was a woman. Brad glanced over his shoulder. He’d left the car door open, and he could see the interior light from here. Just a hundred feet or so back to the road. He stuck his hands in his pockets and approached. “Good evening.”

  No response.

  “Is it okay if I talk to you?”

  The person rotated slowly, like a figurine on a music box. A small nose and colorless lips came into view. Impossibly wide eyes, unblinking, looked around the umbrella rod held a foot in front of her face.

  Brad’s feet caught on the pavement.

  It wasn’t a woman. It was a child. The wispy hair and undeveloped features placed her at no more than twelve. But her height . . . she was six feet at least; he was afraid if he approached any farther she would continue to grow, warping out of proportion like a reflection in a twisted mirror. The arm that did not hold the umbrella hung down limp and white, and bare toes peeped from beneath the towering legs of her overalls. Her voice was a high whisper. “I’m Harlow. I came out to watch the lightning.”

  Brad rearranged his stance. “Okay. It’s going to storm?”

  “Don’t you see the clouds?” Her eyebrows inched up. “They’re very thick tonight. And more are being shoveled on all the time.”

  “Okay. Do you know where the sheriff is?”

  “Oh, yes.” And then the briefest pause. “Mister Sorrel’s in the mill. He thinks I can’t see his lantern from here. Just a little glimmer.”

  “The mill. Where’s the mill?”

  “You were going the right way. Edge of town. Just cross the high grass.”

  Something wistful in her tone. His feet itched to retreat. “You all right? It’s not a good idea to be out alone at night. Especially in the middle of the road.” The words felt bland, required.

  “I’m not alone,” Harlow replied.

  “Really?”

  “See the doggy?”

  The air blinked white-hot between them. In the flash he saw a large basset hound seated twenty feet farther down the bridge. Glassy eyes glittered. It sat as still as a taxidermized animal.

  “I see that.”

  “The lightning’s started.” She rotated back toward the river.

  “Well, thanks for the help.”

  “I’m Harlow. Don’t forget it, now.”

  “I won’t.” He shot another glance at the stiff, motionless dog sitting off in the dark.

  Brad’s feet carried him quickly back to the car. Had the creature even been alive? And why was the girl allowed to wander the night like that? Nothing good happened when kids walked around alone for too long. Solitary thoughts became their companions. Rubbing his chin on his shirt collar, he drove over to the next street—DeWitt, it was called—and turned down it, away from the river.

  On this flank of town, the buildings lined only the left edge of the street. Off to the right, a disintegrated sidewalk and a quiet procession of box elders bordered a field. The black-and-white police cruiser was parked there, an old Ford Galaxy straight out of Mayberry, complete with the bulbous single-cell emergency light on the roof. Flaky decals on the door read three summers sheriff’s dept. The back glass reflected brightly as he pulled up behind it.

  He got out and closed the door gently. Walking to the cruiser, he examined the dark windows before turning toward the field.

  The dark redbrick bulk of the old cotton mill rested across the sea of grass. As he crossed toward it, the lightning once again fizzed through the clouds and revealed the gaping eyes of row upon row of collapsing windows set three stories high. What was the sheriff doing in there?

  By the mill, he followed a trampled path to a small doorway. He drew a breath and stepped inside. It was a narrow corridor, leading right. The heat and smell of yesterday afternoon were preserved in the old brick. He followed it for a short distance, then turned left. The vast interior of the silent mill opened before him.

  The floor was dirt. About halfway across the building, the floors above seemed to have fallen in; he could see a jagged line where the ceiling ended, and grass grew inside the walls.

  Just below the ceiling’s edge, a figure labored in a corona of yellow lantern light. Sorrel, dressed in his same black suit, gripping a wide push broom. A collection of buckets stood around his feet. Brad watched as he leaned the broom against his shoulder, lifted one of the buckets, and poured water across the ground.

  Brad felt ants in his shoes, biting his feet, crawling up his back, tingling on his neck. He pulled out his phone. He needed to have pictures of all of this.

  Tossing the bucket aside with a clang, Sorrel repositioned the broom. With slow, even strokes he spread the water across the earth. The soft squelch of mud accompanied the strokes.

  The instant the picture froze, Sorrel looked up. He straightened, as if Brad’s entrance had sent a ripple through the floor that he felt through his boots and the shovel shaft. “Who’s down there? Harlow?”

  Brad restrained a curse: How clumsy had he become? For a moment he lingered in the shadow of the door, hoping his stillness would render him invisible.

  The tired voice called again. “Bradley Ellison? So this is what your investigation’s gonna be. Sneaking around at night in the dark.”

  Stowing the phone, Brad squeezed his hands in his pockets and walked into the open. The rain-starved floor scuffed like concrete beneath his shoes. “Actually, I came to get some clarification,” he said.

  Sorrel’s face emerged from the gloom. He wasn’t smiling. “You should be home in bed. With your wife.”

  Frustration was already twisted up inside of him. The mention of his fiancée wound it tighter. He pried a smile onto his teeth and looked at the mud puddle around the sheriff’s shoes. “I could maybe say the same.”

  The sheriff scratched his forehead with the end of the broom handle. “It’s cooler to work at night.”

  “Yeah, driving in, I noticed a lot of folks seem to agree with you on that.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Drawing out the phone again, he tapped on the photo gallery and held the screen toward Sorrel.

  Sorrel squinted. As Brad scrolled through the pictures, the sheriff’s grip on the broom handle became so tight it looked painful. He let it fall.

  Then he lunged
forward.

  Brad recoiled, but the man only brushed him, knocking the phone from his hand. He was already halfway to the door by the time Brad retrieved it from the mud.

  Stuffing it in his pocket, Brad sucked in his words and followed.

  The lantern remained behind, illuminating the glistening mud bed.

  Lightning flared again as he tracked the sheriff across the field. The man’s giant strides carried him to his car a good ten seconds before Brad arrived. The police cruiser rumbled to life and heaved away from the curb. Scrambling into his Accord, Brad continued to pursue.

  The sheriff drove without headlights. The white car swept along the curve at the end of DeWitt Street, running at the edge of his own lights.

  They skirted the edge of the downtown district and approached an intersection with Adamah Road. The Texaco station appeared in the driver’s-side window. By the light of its canopy, Brad saw a hunched figure pushing a buggy down the middle of the opposing road. She had almost reached the intersection.

  Brad braked. The sheriff did not.

  The woman trundled into the intersection, and the white car swerved to miss her. The woman drew up short, turning her head as it vanished down the gloomy road opposite.

  Brad’s fingers relaxed around the wheel. But as the woman passed through the channel of his headlights, they became taut again.

  Hair, yellow as dying grass, sprouted and spilled from her scalp in all directions, leaving her face obscured. A blue jean jumper was her only garment. It cut off above bare feet, gray with dirt. Feet that never left the ground. Feet that rubbed across the rough pavement as easily as someone sliding on ice.

  The rattle of the buggy drilled inside the car and into his ears until she had passed.

  Blinking, he pressed the car forward again, turning his head as he passed through the intersection. The woman was heading into town. Heading home with her shopping. He looked at the clock.

  1:59 a.m.

  It was more than just a few folks. This town was alive at night. What was going on? Ramming the gas harder, he followed the curving road down toward the other side of town. Low brick buildings flickered outside the passenger window: 24hr Coin Laundry, Brotherton’s Garage, Fillmore Deposit Bank. No police station.

  But Sorrel had come this way. Out the other window, undeveloped fields stretched dimly to a chain-link fence, and beyond that to the forest line. Then the grass went from high to short, and a recently paved turnoff ran into the field, and out there just fifty feet away sat the white car, parked near a square building.

  Brad slowed and twisted the wheel, leaving the road and following the drive. As it bent left toward the building, he squinted through the windshield. An older version of the drive continued straight on through a chain-link fence and down between an avenue of magnolia trees to a huge dark edifice lodged back in the throat of the cove.

  For an instant, a brief scar of lightning revealed the building: sprawling, with a crenulated roofline, an arched portico, and arched windows along two stories. A structure to rival the old mill on the other side of town, though certainly one with a different function.

  The lightning faded, replaced by the chill gleam of fluorescents as he entered the parking lot of the nearer building. Sorrel had left his door ajar and fled inside already. Pulling in behind him, Brad got out, observing the one other car in the lot, a beige Subaru.

  If this place was what he guessed, who else would be here at two o’clock in the morning?

  Kudzu writhed from the field and clung tightly to the single-story structure, transforming it into a building made of leaves.

  Just like the church.

  Here, though, there were signs of resistance. Gashes in the shroud let swaths of relatively recent brickwork show between the leaves. Wilted heaps of the vines lay on the pavement beside a rake and a pair of hedge trimmers. In a cleared patch above the door was an aluminum sign: three summers sheriff’s department. He approached the metal door and went inside.

  The smell of cleaner. Disinfectant.

  A yellow slip warning sign stood atop polished white tile. A string of dirty footprints tracked past it down the well-lit taupe-colored hallway and turned into a room at its end. A hint of voices, murmuring in chorus, came up from that place.

  He started toward them when a nearer voice came from a door on his left. The sheriff.

  “Did you check? I want you to check. Do it quick.”

  The prints on the floor weren’t shoe prints, but actual unshod footprints. He photographed them, then stepped toward the door with the voice. It was slightly ajar, as if it had rebounded after being slammed.

  Inside, Sorrel sat turned away in a swivel chair, hunched over a peeling linoleum desk. A cord snaked beneath the arm that supported his forehead and ran to the phone cradle. An empty Mountain Dew bottle with the label peeled half off balanced atop a chunky computer monitor that was running one of those starfield screensavers. Brad remembered sitting before a screensaver like that in the Providence library, pretending he was flying into oblivion.

  Pushing the door wider, Brad stepped inside.

  The bright tile floors, the LED overhead lights, and freshly painted walls suggested this was a newly constructed building. Governor Haslam’s photograph smiled from the wall behind Sorrel, and the state flag leaned in the corner beside a set of color-coordinated file cabinets.

  The wall opposite held less formal furnishings. A collection of fishing poles sprouted from a stand in the corner behind the door; tackle boxes were stacked against the walls; sporting pictures and anatomical charts of various fish, primarily bass, were neatly tacked over the beige paint. Below them, a little glass case contained different types of hooks on three shelves, some shiny, some rusty, all razor sharp. And a picture. A black-and-white photograph in a round frame. A man with slick black hair and a wolfish smile.

  “Okay. Get it covered up before services tomorrow.” A squeak from the swivel chair, and a clunk from the phone cradle.

  “What’s your favorite fishing spot?” Brad asked. When the silence dangled, he turned.

  The sheriff was staring across the desk in his direction. His face was vacant. Eyes and lips slack. The visage of someone drowned.

  Slowly, his face cleared. His hands scooted together and folded loosely on the desk. “There’s a good spot just upstream, across from the mine. The river channels under the bank a bit, right by that graveyard.” He looked up. “You know the graveyard.”

  Brad flexed his smile. “I want you to know that my deepest wish in all this is to refrain from misrepresenting anything I see.”

  “That’s why you dug up the body of an elderly woman.”

  “I didn’t dig her up, I—”

  “Oh, come on.” The man was on his feet, coming around the desk. “The day you arrive, that body goes missing. Wouldn’t that be the perfect stone to throw into this pond and get some ripples going? I know that’s what you’re after.”

  He had come in close, close enough for Brad to pick out the roughed-up skin at the corners of his mouth from a recent shave.

  Brad said, “Is there anything I can do to persuade you otherwise?”

  “Sure. Come with me.”

  Sorrel led him out of the office and out of the building, into the restless night and to the back of Brad’s Accord. He pointed at the trunk. “Open it.”

  Brad used the key and lifted the top.

  Sorrel leaned inside and rummaged. Another silent jolt of lightning revealed the relics of his other cases. After a minute, the sheriff stood back and slammed the lid shut. He started back toward the station, then swerved over and ripped open the rear passenger door and examined the seats and the floorboard.

  Then he slammed the door. “You could have dumped it.”

  Brad bit his tongue and followed the man back to his office. The lawman slumped into his chair, looking blank
ly at the glass cabinet with its tackle and picture, weighing the silence between them. Brad stood at one corner of the desk and asked, “Is there anyone else who might have an interest in that body?”

  “To do what with, Mr. Ellison? I’d like to hear what you think’s going on.”

  “I’m not thinking anything. I’m just here to learn what’s going on.”

  “Don’t give me that. You’re a crime writer. You’ve got suspicions. I’d like to hear them.”

  “Okay.” He put his arms behind his back: docile, giving a report to a superior. “I thought the woman who was buried last week wasn’t dead. And I thought the behavior of those at her funeral was strange.”

  “That’s all?” The man scooted his chair over to the file cabinets and shuffled through a lower drawer. Rolling back, he stuck out a wisp of pale blue paper. Brad took it and read the tight clusters of official text interspersed with blank spaces that were filled in.

  It was a death record for a woman named Marilyn Britain, aged seventy-nine, signed by Michael McDowell, MD.

  “I know,” he said. “I stopped by Dr. McDowell’s office down in Lexington last week. He didn’t seem interested in talking, especially when I mentioned how less-than-thorough his examination had been.”

  “He’d been looking after her for a year. No one was surprised by her death.”

  “But you’re surprised by her resurrection.”

  Sorrel jammed his arms together, and his chair creaked unwillingly as he rocked. “No, what I’m surprised by is your lack of respect for the law. Seems like a crime reporter should know better than to dig up a grave.”

  “Technically, it’s not illegal in the state of Tennessee. And, technically, it wasn’t even a grave when I dug it up since it wasn’t occupied.”

  “Tryin’ to be a smart aleck, huh? Well, technically, I don’t have to let you stay in that house ’cause, technically, it’s my house.”

  Brad nodded evenly. “So why are you letting me? If this isn’t about uncovering things, then what’s it about?”