Black Valley

by Jim Brown

  Jerry took the microphone from its cradle and pressed the curved button on the side. “Yeah, I’m taking him home.”

  “Nix that . . . skkrrkk . . .ack here . . . skkrrkk . . . ”

  “Come again, Sheriff? You’re breaking up,” Jerry said.

  The static ebbed. “I said, bring Dean to the station house . . . skkrrkk”

  Dean held his breath. Jerry spoke his thoughts. “Ah shit, what’s happened now?” He handed Dean the microphone.

  “John, this is Dean. What is it?”

  The radio growled.

  “It’s Mason Evans . . . skkrrkk . . . ” Static ate the words. “ . . . skkrrkk. . . . okay but . . . ”

  Skkrkk.

  The signal cleared just enough for Dean to make out the two last words. “ . . . Whitey Dobbs.”

  John Evans rubbed the stubble on his face with the knuckles of his left hand. His eyes were hammocked by dark circles, his brow ridged with deep troughs. “Mason is in my office,” he told Dean. “Let’s go to the break room.”

  Dean nodded and followed. A relatively small room situated at the back of the station house, the break room consisted of an oval table with four chairs, a deep chrome double sink, a soda machine, a snack machine, and an old Kenmore refrigerator that rumbled like an idling 747. A white, industrial-size coffeemaker sat on the chipped Formica counter flanked by brown coffee rings.

  “First Clyde, now Mason,” John said. He took a cup from the dish drainer, filled it with the tar-looking coffee, and offered it to Dean.

  “Uh, no thanks. What about Mason? Is he hurt?” The image of Clyde’s dead, blood-stripped face flashed in his mind. Bile rose in the back of his throat.

  “No. He’s fine, at least physically.” John took a sip of the dark coffee, then made a face like a kid trying to swallow nasty medicine. “But mentally he’s a mess.”

  John leaned back, resting his elbows on the countertop. Dean could hear the old Formica creak under the weight. The coffeepot gurgled, happily creating more of the thick, black ooze for mass consumption. John dropped his head, studying the yellow tile floor that had once been white. “The thing is” – he shook his head – “God, you’re going to think he’s crazy. I mean, he’s my cousin, for Christ’s sake.”

  Dean pulled out a chair and sat. “After today, nothing could surprise me.”

  John raised his head to meet Dean’s gaze. “Okay, how about this? Mason is completely convinced that his daughter is dating . . .” He took a breath. With anyone else, Dean would have thought it was for effect, but with John the gesture spoke to just how hard it was to say what he had to say. “He’s positive his daughter is dating Whitey Dobbs.”

  Dobbs. The name sent a bolt of fear through Dean’s nervous system.

  “That’s” – he started to say “impossible” but censored himself – “improbable. His daughter’s name is Tina, isn’t it? She’s what – eighteen? Dobbs would be at least thirty-nine by now.”

  John stroked his chin and sighed. The coffeepot babbled. The Kenmore rumbled. “This is where it gets weird.”

  This is where it gets weird? Dean thought.

  “He says she is dating a seventeen-year-old Whitey Dobbs. The same Whitey Dobbs we buried twenty-two years ago on Hawkins Hill. Unchanged and unaged, and he says he’s got a picture to prove it.”

  “Seventeen? That’s absurd.”

  “Bingo.”

  Dean rubbed his temples, attempting to dissuade the budding headache he knew lay just below the surface. Crazy was a word that was often tossed around with humor, but if John had assessed the situation correctly, there was nothing humorous about Mason Evans’s condition.

  “Now you see why I called,” John said. He sounded tired; lightning strikes of red laced the whites of his eyes. “The best I’ve been able to piece together is that Tina is off with some guy named” – he took a notebook from his breast pocket and flipped a couple of pages “David Levin, twenty-four-year-old graduate student. Comes from money. His parents have a cabin up on Creed Lake. Maggie’s trying to get the address now.”

  How’s it hanging, Jimmy Dean? The memory of the ruined blackboard flashed full in his mind. He hadn’t told John about this latest vandalism. He wasn’t sure why. “Have you seen the picture?”

  “Yeah, it’s a fuzzy Polaroid, but this guy’s got dark hair and a dark complexion. He doesn’t even resemble Dobbs.”

  It had been over a year since Dean Truman had seen Mason Evans and longer since they had spoken. A chasm had developed between them shortly after the burying of Whitey Dobbs, a gulf that had never fully been breached. Mason had taken good care of himself. His form still firm and athletic. But his face was the color of flour and his eyes were wide with fear.

  “Hello, Mason.” Dean offered his hand.

  Mason ignored the hand, instead embracing Dean in a deep bear hug. “Dean, thank God, thank God. If anybody can figure this out, it’s you. You’ve got to help me. Help Tina. You’ve got to.”

  “I’m going to check on the search,” John said, leaving them alone in his office. Dean sat on the corner of the desk. He motioned for Mason to take a seat in one of two padded chairs.

  “Did he tell you?” Mason asked. “Did he tell you who’s back?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Whitey Dobbs, that’s who – Whitey freakin’ Dobbs, and he’s got my daughter. He’s got my Tina.”

  Mason dropped his head into his hands. A mournful wail escaped his lips. His shoulders shook.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Mason said, talking through his hands, not looking up, as if the concern on his mind was so heavy he could no longer lift his head. “I don’t pretend to understand it. But it’s true. That white-haired bastard is back. He’s back and he’s got my daughter.” He moaned in pure, undiluted agony, his pain so raw, so visceral that Dean felt his own eyes moisten.

  As sympathetic as he was, Dean had to ask himself: How could anyone believe that Whitey Dobbs was back and still seventeen years old?

  How’s it hanging, Jimmy Dean?

  Dean suppressed a shiver.

  Then, in soothing, pacifying words, they talked. After assuring Mason that his daughter would be found, that Sheriff John Evans would not stop until she was found, Dean expanded the conversation.

  They talked about Mason’s company, his two failed marriages, the pressure, the loneliness, the kids, and finally the guilt. And all the while Mason clutched his hands and cried. Then he listened as Dean explained that the boy in the picture was a young man named David Levin, that his parents lived in Salem but owned a house on Creed Lake. And that John was calling the parents at that very moment to find out just where the house was.

  “But the picture – it’s Whitey Dobbs!” The photograph lay face up on John’s desk. Mason watched it like a camper would a snake.

  “No,” Dean said, as he leaned back and studied the photo. The young man with Tina Evans had dark hair and tanned skin with an almost feminine face; he bore no resemblance to Whitey Dobbs. “The picture is of David Levin. But – but you saw Whitey Dobbs?”

  Mason looked up at his old friend with questioning eyes. “Then you believe me?”

  “I believe you saw something, but it wasn’t what’s in this picture, so that means it was from your mind.”

  Mason trembled.

  “It’s caused by guilt and stress and a thousand other little things that build and grow until, like an earthquake, something gives.”

  “But it looks so real,” Mason protested. The large electric clock mounted on the west wall hummed in poised silence. Behind Mason the wood-paneled wall was dappled with plaques, certificates, and awards. Dean’s reflection was caught, distorted, and blurred in multiple strips of brass.

  “I know it felt real. That’s what makes it so frightening.” Dean reached over and slid the photograph to the corner of the desk. Mason recoiled, drawing ba
ck in his chair, turning his body so as not to see the picture, even in his peripheral vision.

  Dean pointed. “Look at it.”

  Mason laced his thick arms across his massive chest. His lips were a line in the sand, his eyes squinted. Dean smiled. This was the Mason he knew – stubborn, bullheaded, uncompromising.

  “Look at it,” Dean repeated, more sternly this time. Then added: “Unless you’re afraid.”

  Anger flashed in Mason’s dark eyes. The big man turned back to the desk, paused to take a deep breath. Then, like a man plunging naked into an icy lake, he leaned forward to look at the picture.

  The moment hung as if suspended from a single, silver thread of a spider’s web. The clock hummed. Movement was audible outside the door. But in the office, in the room where Mason was staring at the photograph, time hesitated.

  Mason looked up, his eyes as wide and open as French doors, pupils overwhelming the brown-green of his irises. “He’s gone. It’s not him.”

  He looked back at the photograph, no longer trusting his own senses. “It’s not him. It’s some kid. Some normal-looking kid. But . . .”

  The wrinkles in his leathery, sun-washed face, collected like storm clouds and he began to weep – this time with relief. “It’s not him. It’s not Whitey Dobbs,” he mumbled.

  Thirty seconds later the door opened. It was John Evans. “We found her, Mason. We found Tina, and she’s all right. One of my deputies is bringing her in right now.”

  After thanking Dean and John profusely, Mason rushed out to wait for his daughter. John followed.

  Alone in the sheriff’s office, Dean sighed. The tension headache he had been fighting had taken hold. Looking down at John’s desk, he saw the photograph Mason had been carrying like a totem. He had left it behind.

  Dean smiled. That was a good sign. The photo had become the crux of Mason’s delusions; relinquishing it meant he was truly on the road to recovery.

  Dean picked up the photograph drew it close for a detailed look. He was more tired than he thought, the photograph seemed fuzzy and undefined. He closed his eyes for a second, letting them rest behind the lids, then opened them, blinked several times, and again looked at the picture.

  Whitey Dobbs looked back.

  His heart shrank away in fear and terror. A cold pall settled over his mind. His breath was short and choppy.

  Calm down, he told himself. Don’t hyperventilate. Stress and guilt – wasn’t that what he had told Mason?

  It’s just a hallucination. But even the thought of hallucinating was disconcerting to a scientist, and as Mason had said, it looked so real. He closed his eyes, but the image clung to his retinas, like the red tinge of a bright flash. He could see Tina, her hair pulled back and tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a yellow-and-green school jersey and jeans. And beside her?

  The image of the dark-headed David Levin was gone. In its place stood Whitey Dobbs, his arm around the schoolgirl’s tiny waist, his smile askew and vulgar. It was the same Whitey Dobbs who had been buried alive twenty-two years ago. The exact same . . . to the day . . . not a moment older.

  “No,” he said aloud. “Dobbs is not in this picture.” His words lacked that ring of certainty. Yet he knew the statement was true.

  In defiance of his fear Dean opened his eyes and stared at the picture again.

  The ivory-headed teen looked back. Then Whitey Dobbs . . .winked!

  15

  Piper took her second hot shower of the day. She ran the water as hot as she could take it, standing under the spray until her skin turned pink and warm. She dried, slipped on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, then lay across her bed. Sleep took her like a thief in the night.

  She dreamed of severed hands and dying men, and somewhere in the haze of dreams, events became surprisingly clear. All the fragments of her life suddenly made sense. For the first time she knew exactly what she had to do and how to do it.

  But when she woke, confused and disoriented, two hours later, the revelation was gone. All that remained was the screaming urgency of her mother’s long-ago warning.

  Something bad is coming.

  The kitchen clock said it was five minutes till eleven. John took three pieces of cold chicken from the refrigerator, ate them over a paper plate, and washed them down with a beer. The image of Clyde Watkins dead, a hole stabbed impossibly through his skull, clung to John’s mind like dried cereal to a porcelain bowl.

  It had fallen to him to tell Clyde’s wife. The woman, still in shock from news of her husband’s attack, had been too numb to cry. The couple’s eighteen-month-old child had squirmed and whimpered in her mother’s arms.

  John had waited until family members arrived. Even then the wife, the widow, did not cry. The look of total confusion so dominated her features that it was impossible to visualize her any other way.

  Most of the incidents he dealt with as sheriff were pretty straightforward – domestic disputes, trespassing, vandalism, and the occasional dumb city boy playing Daniel Boone and getting himself lost in the mountains.

  Simple.

  But a severed hand? A mutilated woman? A stab wound through the skull?

  Hell, that wasn’t normal for anywhere – even in Portland, even bat-shit-crazy Los Angeles.

  In the last three years his job had become increasingly difficult. As the big mills closed down, new problems opened up. Many proud, confused, suddenly unemployed men with no income but plenty of bills and time began to drink and then turn ugly.

  The new plant promised new jobs, new hope. Things should be getting better, not worse.

  When Dean Truman won that the whatever-the-hell-it-was award, John Evans was not surprised. By his way of thinking, Dean was the smartest man in the state. Maybe even the world. He had always known that. Some folks, like Mason resented Dean, and he guessed he could understand that, too. But John was never bothered by his friend’s brilliance. In fact, he respected it – used it.

  They had been together since the first grade, an unlikely pair. Dean was thin and large-jointed like a praying mantis. John, always big for his age, was muscular, stocky, and strong like a beetle.

  “Brains and brawn,” John’s father would joke.

  Dean would always defend him. “John’s a smart guy. Don’t underestimate him.”

  But John didn’t mind. He was a practical fellow.

  In school, teachers repeatedly offered to allow Dean to skip ahead several grades. But Dean’s parents would have none of it. “His social skills are as important as his academic skills,” they had said. And John had felt himself fill with deep pride because as Dean’s best friend, he was part of those social skills.

  They each had their strengths and often traded services. It was a good relationship.

  Or was it?

  John had been married twice, but never anything serious. Odd way of putting it, but true. After Judy died, the two old bachelors had begun to spend more and more time together. Maybe too much time. Maybe using each other as a crutch, an excuse not to have to go at it out in the real world.

  He would have to think about that.

  Sex helped. As sheriff, John was always running into some lonely young thing looking for a quick romp in the sack. No emotions required.

  Dean, however, was not so inclined.

  If there was anything John envied about Dean, it was Mavis Connetti over at the Triple-D. She and John had gone out a few times. But she only had eyes for Dean, and the poor fool was letting all that potential affection go to waste.

  John took out another beer, found a bag of half-stale chips, and returned to the table.

  After the award Westcroft College, and by default Black Valley, received national attention. The new NxTech plant could be just the beginning, a facility that would help Dean push his science further, as well as offer a tremendous training ground for young high-tech engineer
s. Sony Disk Manufacturing, which already operated a plant in Springfield, was said to be expressing interest in Black Valley. Things were finally looking up. Black Valley seemed ready to turn the corner.

  Then it all went loony.

  John finished his beer, then went to the bathroom. He caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror.

  He turned to check out his form. He was still a big man – imposing, strong, but heavier than . . .

  Than when we buried Whitey Dobbs in the cold, dark ground.

  Dobbs? He was starting to sound like Mason.

  John went back to the kitchen and broke his own rule by having a third beer. Thinking about Dobbs, about Mason, was stupid – and John Evans was anything but stupid. He was a practical man with a practical man’s mind – and he had dismissed Dobbs the day after it happened.

  Unlike Dean.

  The scientist had obsessed on it. Only, he wasn’t a scientist then – just another kid, albeit a bright kid. But he changed after Dobbs. They all had. The odd thing was, in some ways life had seemed to get better.

  And what about Whitey Dobbs?

  John’s practical mind told him that someone had obviously dug him up. But wasn’t there a storm? Maybe someone dug him up before the storm?

  Sheriff Deats, the law back then, had almost shit a brick when a couple of hunters found the grave. But he wasn’t able to connect it with the boys. It was nothing more than a strange hole in the ground, another mystery to add to the legend of Hawkins Hill. Funny, back in the old days everyone seemed to have some story about that place.

  An icy wind fluted through the trees. Mouth-sized snowflakes plastered his hair to his head like cold, wet kisses. Nathan Perkins grinned behind the bright wool wrap around his face. He was relatively warm, thanks to his scarf.

  Gloved hands fumbled with the keys as he poked at the lock, stabbing repeatedly until he found the hole. He turned the key. Click. The lock hadn’t frozen, thank God. He twisted the doorknob and pushed. The door opened one inch, then stopped.