by Rio Youers
He unclipped Tansy’s keys from his belt (expecting, for one terrible moment, Tansy’s hand to spring to life and clamp around his wrist) and they left the office, locking the door behind them because it felt safer, somehow. Matthew put Ethan in the back of the cruiser. Courtney wanted to sit up front with him, but he told her to sit with Ethan and hold his hand, and she did. Matthew got behind the wheel, backed out of the space marked: RESERVED: SHERIFF, and drove away.
He looked in the rearview mirror as they took the Dead Road out of town.
The mountain looked back, fierce and grey.
It wants you. It will find you.
He kept driving, and didn’t stop until they reached the State Police Department in Liberty thirty-three minutes later. He opened Courtney’s door, and then went around the other side and scooped Ethan into his arms.
“Go on,” he said to Courtney. “It’s okay.”
She nodded, managed the slightest of smiles, and walked toward the building.
Matthew followed the red ribbon of her hair.
Chapter Twenty-Two
2011
Their divorce was uncontested and finalized within eight months. To celebrate, with measured irony and a brazen humour that Matthew had long admired, Kirsty suggested they go on a date. “The tryst of the final decree,” she called it. “In the interest of amity.” Matthew asked if Scalini Fedeli’s in Tribeca—where he’d taken her on their first date—was a suitable venue for so significant an occasion. “It’s a fate thing, baby,” Kirsty had replied.
Matthew had agreed to the date because he still cared about Kirsty, and valued amity in a world where fractures ran deep. He also wanted to see if she looked as good as he remembered. And she did. Better, in fact. She arrived fashionably late, dressed in a satin one-shoulder number that accentuated her toned figure. Her hair was shorter, darker, and the heels she wore insisted Matthew get on tiptoes to kiss her cheek.
He seated her at the table and told her that she looked fantastic, that he knew she would. She indicated his leaner physique, his shorter haircut, and said he looked quite charming.
“Charming?” he said.
“Different,” she said.
“Good different, or bad different?” He took his seat and smiled at her over the candlelight.
“Good,” she said. “Considering.”
Matthew smiled. He had known there was more to this meeting than the furtherance of amity. To the chagrin of numerous news and entertainment companies, he had remained tight-lipped to everybody but the police and Dr. Meeker about the events of last summer, and Kirsty wanted her inside scoop—the pound of flesh owed for six years of marriage, two of which were utterly miserable. That one word, Considering, casually affixed to the compliment, was a blatant invitation for disclosure.
“Should we get the Ca’ del Bosco?” Matthew asked.
Kirsty’s lips twitched. “Very good.”
His reticence could only last so long. He didn’t need Dr. Meeker to tell him that he couldn’t keep the darkness inside, that one day he would have to release . . . to purge. When the time was right, he would accept one of the publishers’ offers and write a book. But he wasn’t ready yet. The wounds were too tender and the nightmares hadn’t stopped. Most nights he woke with his heart pounding wildly, positive that Oliver wasn’t really dead—that he was looming in the darkness, bleeding on the carpet. Boom, he would say. It wants you, Matthew. It will find you. Matthew sometimes slept with the light on, like a five-year-old, and often checked outside his bedroom window, wanting to make sure Oliver wasn’t standing beneath the streetlight, gazing up at his room.
No, he wasn’t ready yet.
His priority, he told Dr. Meeker, was to resume as normal a lifestyle as possible. Dr. Meeker said that his ambition was admirable, but would take time, and wouldn’t be easy. Determined to prove him wrong, Matthew stayed with his parents in Bay Ridge, went back to his job in Internet marketing, hit the gym three times a week, and streamed movies on Netflix. He soon came to realize that such normalcy was a charade. It was, much like Point Hollow’s smiling faces, a veneer, concealing the truth. Life wasn’t the same. People looked at him differently—treated him differently. His colleagues invited him to social functions where they never had before. Even the company president invited him to dinner (a nice, albeit somewhat diluted affair, after having had dinner with the actual President). Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brian had cracked funnies about him. Family Guy, too. He had his own Wikipedia page and several people were pretending to be him on Twitter.
Life was a long way from normal.
“The soft egg yolk raviolo, to start,” he said to the waiter. “Followed by the wild striped bass.”
Kirsty ordered foie gras and venison.
“How’s work?” Matthew asked.
Her eyes fluttered. “Busy,” she replied. “After the promotion.”
“The promotion? Congratulations.” He raised his glass.
She clinked. “Thank you. How are your parents?”
“Oh, they’re—”
“Enjoying your new-found fame?” Her lips were red from the wine, accenting the acerbic quality of her voice. “Proud of their little boy?”
Matthew took a sip from his glass and set it down. “Firstly, I wouldn’t call it fame. Secondly, whatever it is, we rarely talk about it.”
This was true. Matthew’s ordeal, and the ensuing fallout, had proved demanding on Matthew’s parents, particularly his mother. Of the human remains recovered from the mountain, forensic anthropologists confirmed—consistent with written documents gathered at Oliver Wray’s house—those belonging to ten-year-old Jonah Trey Callum, missing since 1958. Jonah was Sarah Bridge née Callum’s older brother: Matthew’s uncle. Sarah, who was seven years old when Jonah went missing, claimed to have no memory of him, or of the incident. Her parents never spoke about him, she said, which was why she had never mentioned it to either Matthew or her husband. It sounded plausible, but Matthew secretly questioned his mother’s reasoning, and shuddered at the idea of her being part of Point Hollow’s enduring secrecy.
They buried Jonah next to his parents (Grandma and Grandpa Callum) in a cemetery in Utica. His was one of many bodies removed from the mountain, and finally laid to rest.
The FBI searched Oliver Wray’s house. Information taken from his computer, as well as handwritten notes and documents found on floppy and compact discs, incriminated Oliver in the disappearance of eight children over an eighteen-year period. A matter of formality, subsequent evidence—consistent with statements from Matthew, Courtney Bryce, and Ethan Mitchell—found Oliver guilty of the three survivors’ kidnap, incarceration, and attempted murder. In all instances, Sheriff Edgar Tansy was named an accomplice.
Both men were cremated at a private service in Point Hollow. Sheriff Tansy’s ashes were given to his widow, who scattered them in Gabe’s Meadow. Oliver’s were given to his father, who, according to rumour, poured them down the toilet and shit on them.
“How’s the foie gras?” Matthew asked.
“Delectable,” Kirsty replied. “The raviolo?”
“Wonderful.” He showed her an entirely false smile. “More wine?”
“Please.”
Matthew poured, still exhibiting the fake smile, which he had come to master over the preceding months. So much of his soul was in pieces that a mask was entirely necessary, at least until said pieces were retrieved and slotted—forced, if need be—back into place. Otherwise he would be walking around with the stricken expression of a plane crash survivor. Memories of the ordeal, the nightmares, were bad enough, but documents recovered at Oliver’s house revealed the reason Matthew had been targeted.
FBI Special Agent Nicola Blount showed him these documents to ensure he had “appropriate information” in the event of him selling his story.
“It is prudent of us to clarify and
advise,” she said. An older woman with a firm chin and no upper lip. “And to remind you that Oliver Wray was highly delusional.”
“And Sheriff Tansy?”
“Highly delusional.”
“Convenient,” Matthew said. “I smell chicanery.”
“On the contrary,” Special Agent Blount said. “You’re a smart man, Mr. Bridge. I wanted to show you these letters and journals so you can see how ludicrous they are.”
“But I am related to Trey Moffatt,” Matthew said. “He would be my great-grandfather, right? And my Uncle Jonah’s remains were found in the mountain. That doesn’t sound ludicrous to me.”
“Certain aspects are true, but not nearly all. You want to believe in curses, Mr. Bridge? Haunted mountains? Fine by me.”
Matthew flipped through the aged letters, reading snippets here and there.
“Or you can believe,” Special Agent Blount continued, “that the people of Point Hollow did an unspeakable thing in 1917, and invented this story to cover their guilt. You can believe that this fabrication influenced certain weak-minded individuals to commit terrible crimes, Oliver Wray among them.”
Matthew closed his eyes and pushed the letters aside.
“Oh, and by the way,” she went on, tapping her chin with one finger. “Kip Sawyer isn’t really one hundred and twenty years old. He’s a senile old man. Also, we looked into this Leander Bird character and found nothing conclusive. That’s because he didn’t exist, Mr. Bridge.”
“There’s a photograph of him here.”
“That could be anyone.”
“True, but all those children,” Matthew said. “Why did the people of Point Hollow do it, if Leander Bird didn’t exist?”
To which she replied, “Why did they do it, if he did?”
She went on to explain that there would be a “minor adjustment of facts” when presenting this story to the public, in order to protect the people still living in Point Hollow. The official line was that Old Bear Mountain, known colloquially as Abraham’s Faith, was an ancient Mahican burial ground. Oliver Wray (a paranoid schizophrenic) discovered the site and believed the human remains to be offerings to a demonic spirit that lived in the mountain. Actual quotes were taken from his journal: I felt its voice . . . It coerced and commanded . . . I look in the mirror and see a monster. Oliver, in cahoots with the sheriff of Hollow County (who also had mental health concerns), took his victims to the mountain to offer as a sacrifice. The press called it The Mountain-God Murders.
Matthew understood this “minor adjustment of facts” was necessary, and Special Agent Blount’s reasoning made sense, but his uneasy feeling ran cold and deep. He’d read the old newspaper articles and townspeople’s letters—he knew the truth—and saw how he was linked to the mountain. Furthermore, he’d been to Point Hollow. He’d walked the streets, seen the fragile smiles, and sensed the bad energy. The mountain was evil. Of that he had no doubt.
It wants you. It will find you.
And so—like the people of Point Hollow—he had mastered the spurious smile.
“You used to have the venison,” Kirsty said, dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Change of heart tonight?”
“A change of heart in general,” Matthew said.
“Yes, you’re quite different.”
“Good different, or bad different?”
“Didn’t we already cover this?”
Matthew grinned and it was, at least in part, genuine. Kirsty was digging furiously for information and it felt good to be in control. He looked at her. An attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with endless ambition, a wonderful sense of humour, and emotions she could detach like a lizard’s tail. He had loved her once, and cared about her still. Always would. But she wasn’t a part of him anymore. He tried to imagine seducing her, drawing her stony nipples into his mouth and slipping into her cool body. But he couldn’t. He tried to imagine reaching across the table and driving his knife into her left eye. But he couldn’t. She was out of his soul. He had neither love nor darkness for her.
“Dessert?” he asked.
“A moment on the lips . . .” She wavered in the candle’s haze, red crescents in her eyes. “But what the hell? It’s a celebration.”
“I’m having the banana tart.”
She nodded. “What did you have at the White House?”
“We ordered pizza and then shot some hoops.”
“You’re impossible.”
Matthew smiled. “One of those things is true.”
Earlier in the year the President had invited Matthew, Courtney Bryce, Ethan Mitchell, and their respective parents to dinner at the White House. It was, thankfully, a non-press affair, and the first time that Matthew had seen Courtney and Ethan since the ordeal. Meeting the President was an honour, but seeing the children again meant so much more. Ethan was six inches taller, and probably twice as heavy as he had been when Matthew carried him from the mountain. He had a contagious smile and liked to laugh, but the hurt in his eyes was all too familiar. For all the laughter, the boy would be a long time healing.
It was the same with Courtney. She looked strong yet delicate, and stood with her shoulders straight and her chin held high. Her skin was the colour of winter mornings and her hair was full, rich, burning. Her eyes, though, however bright, were stained with hurt.
“I remember you,” she said, and smiled beautifully. “The guy who saved my life.”
Matthew grinned and pulled her close, hugged her so tight that he felt—familiar again, but welcome this time—the forceful peal of her heart.
“I remember you,” he said. A tear slipped from his eye and fell into the flames of her hair. “The girl who saved mine.”
Now he stood with Kirsty in his arms, holding her tight but not feeling her heart. He was reminded of the time they hugged on the morning of their separation, how she had leaned into him, sparing a moment of her loveless body before leaving for work. You’re hurting me, she had said, but he didn’t hurt her this time, and she didn’t hurt him.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said.
They separated, hesitantly, as if knowing this was the last time they would touch, and were not sure how to feel about it. Matthew trailed his hand down Kirsty’s arm, gave her wrist a gentle squeeze, and then stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to hail her a cab.
“So what are you going to do now?” she asked.
“Go home,” he said. “Probably watch the end of the Mets game.”
“Silly,” she said. “I mean with your life.”
A cab pulled over and Matthew opened the rear door.
“I was thinking of moving away,” he said. “A fresh start. Maybe Florida.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why Florida?”
No mountains, he thought, but said, “They have beautiful beaches.”
Kirsty nodded and got into the cab, but held the door open a moment longer. “You’ll be all right,” she said. “Won’t you?”
Matthew thought about the things he had seen, the scars on his body and in his mind. He thought about the nights he had woken up with his heart hurting, drenched in sweat, with no one beside him, no one to hold him. Endless pain. Endless darkness. Too thick to breathe and constantly booming. He thought about Oliver, a red ghost floating at the foot of his bed, his pinpricked eyes flaring in the dark. And the mountain, filled with ash and misery, reaching for him with its infinite arms . . .
It wants you. It will find you.
“Goodbye, Kirsty,” he said.
The door closed. Matthew caught the suggestion of a smile, the suggestion of a wave, then the cab pulled away and she was gone.
He knew he would never see her again.
It’s a fate thing, baby, he thought, and hailed another cab.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Matthew moved to Florida in early June. He bought a beachfront property with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Atlantic. The rooms were spacious and light, filled with the sound of the ocean. It was the perfect place to heal.
Dr. Meeker recommended a colleague in Daytona Beach, whose methods were different, but effective, and with her help it didn’t take Matthew long to settle. He started a small business designing websites, and made several new friends. Florida was good for him. White sand between his toes. Sunshine on his face. Chess with the old folks in Marlin Park, and starlight over the ocean.
But best of all, Angela Vega.
He met her at a coffee shop in St. Augustine. They were reading books by the same author, which served as an introduction, and within moments were engaged in comfortable conversation. Angela was pretty, a little younger than Matthew, with a Bob Marley tattoo on her shoulder and a ring through her eyebrow. She laughed often, and looked him in the eye. For Matthew the attraction was immediate. He asked for her telephone number before the foam had faded from his latte macchiato.
“Are you going to ask me out on a date?” She raised one eyebrow. The one with the ring through it.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Why?”
Because you’re healing, he thought, but said, “Because you like Ian McEwan and Bob Marley.”
“This is true.” She smiled. “You’d be the first person I dated who doesn’t have a tongue stud and/or dreadlocks.”
Matthew’s turn to smile. “Yet,” he said.
They dated, they danced, walked along the beach . . . kissed. Angela settled into his soul like it was shaped just for her. Over the weeks they talked, listened, and laughed often. She called him baby, and always looked him in the eye.
He shared his darkness, and she took it.
———
August 3rd was the first anniversary of Bobby Alexander’s death. Matthew sent flowers and phoned Bobby’s mother. Even talking to someone in Point Hollow—knowing that his voice was being heard there—made him shudder. Mrs. Alexander sounded delighted to hear from him. She asked how he was doing, and reminded him of his promise to visit.