The Backwoods

by Edward Lee

  A common tragedy. You read about accidents like this all the time in the paper, Patricia acknowledged, and you never really think much about it. . . . “There’re an awful lot of police, though. And why all the state troopers?”

  “That does seem strange,” Judy added. “The nearest state police station is a half hour away.”

  “On account a’ what happened earlier,” Trey said. “With the Hilds. They’re still investigating that . . . and now this happens.”

  “But the Hilds’ murders and this fire can’t possibly be related,” Patricia supposed.

  “I don’t know about that, not now.” Another voice sneaked up from behind. Chief Sutter’s disheartened bulk stepped out of the darkness.

  Judy looked puzzled. “Whatever do ya mean, Chief?”

  “The Hilds were closet druggers—crystal meth.” The chief’s eyes roved the cinders that were once the Eald shack. “Ain’t much left a’ the place now, but the state cops found some charred chemical bottles inside, and a burned pot on the stove with somethin’ at the bottom of it that they say ain’t food.”

  Patricia immediately remembered what she’d read on the Internet earlier. “A methamphetamine lab,” she said. “Is that what the police think?”

  “They’re sendin’ the bottles and other stuff to their lab for tests, but it sure looks like it.” Sutter shook his head. “Kinda makes sense when you think about it.”

  It was pretty sad sense.

  Judy stood in something like a state of shock as she watched the police and firemen stalk about.

  Patricia asked the grimmest question yet. “How old was this man’s daughter?”

  “Thirteen, fourteen, thereabouts,” Ernie replied.

  Judy stifled a sob.

  “It’s all the damn drugs,” Sutter regarded. “Goddamn evil shit . . .”

  Patricia could feel streams of heat eddying off the cinders. The night felt more and more like something she was disconnected from—she was a watcher looking down. This quaint little town really is going to hell fast. Four deaths just in the few days I’ve been here. Plus Dwayne . . .

  The night swallowed the heavy thunks of the ambulance doors. Radio squawk etched the air. Patricia put her arm around her sister, who was already blinking tears out of her eyes. Judy’s lower lip quivered when she finally said, “I might have to sell this land after all.”

  No one said anything after that.

  And no one noticed the split second in which Sergeant Trey smiled.

  Eight

  (I)

  Ricky felt high on drugs when he got back home, the tantalizing garbage thoughts filling his brain as effectively as any opiate. The girl had really gotten him tuned up. I love it when the bitches twitch like that, he thought, replaying the atrocity in his mind. And right there on the floor next to her dead daddy! Yeah, it was a great night, all right. He’d torched the place perfectly, too, afterward, and was all the way back in the woods before the fire started to really catch.

  Ricky was a consummate sociopath.

  Can’t wait to tell Junior, he thought. He was cutting through the woods all the way back home, so as not to be seen. This was something they needed to have a few beers over. And he couldn’t wait to tell him about the girl. . . .

  Yeah, my little brother’ll be a mite jealous ‘bout that!

  He could hear the sirens in the distance, which simply brought more satisfaction to his heart. It filled him up very happily, like a big, rich meal.

  Night sounds pulsed around him. Eventually, the trees broke and he was suddenly standing in his backyard. He didn’t see any lights on in the house, though. Guess Junior went beddy-bye, he thought. Usually they both stayed up late, drinking and watching porn. It seemed a brotherly thing to do.

  But Ricky was too keyed-up to go to bed himself. Couple beers and another chew, first, and maybe he’d also pop in his favorite porno, Natal Attraction. He crossed the backyard, stepping over moonlit junk, and went in through the back screen door.

  At once, the inside of the house felt . . .

  Weird, he thought.

  Darkness hemmed him in, and when he closed the door behind him the silence felt cloying, like the faintest unpleasant smell in the air. He snapped on the kitchen light, yet felt no better. He couldn’t shake the feeling, and he didn’t even know what the feeling was. When he opened the refrigerator for a beer, he stalled, hand poised.

  Ain’t that the fuckin’ shits.

  The full case of brew he’d put in there this afternoon was untouched. Junior must be sick as a dog to not’ve knocked out ten or twelve bottles by now.

  He grabbed one and closed the door, then walked slowly, brow furrowed, into the front room, switched on the light—

  The bottle of beer shattered on the floor.

  Ricky stared, gut churning.

  Junior Caudill lay in the middle of the floor, eyes and mouth wide open, not breathing. His face could’ve been a pallid mask, gravity pushing the blood to the lowest surfaces of the body, leaving the flesh white as a turnip.

  Ricky’s mourning escaped in a shrill gasp from his throat. He couldn’t say or even think anything about what he was looking at. Junior had obviously been dead for several hours, but that wasn’t why Ricky stared.

  Junior’s pants looked several sizes too large; in fact, they hung so loosely they surely would’ve fallen down were he standing up.

  When the shock snapped, Ricky yelled, “Junior!” and rushed to him, dropping to his knees. His hands floated in the air; he didn’t know what to do.

  “Junior! What happened?”

  In his mind he knew his brother was dead; it was obvious from the pallor. He felt the neck for a pulse, found nothing but cool fat. Then he straddled his brother to administer some inept CPR, like on TV, but he may as well have been straddling a bag of fertilizer.

  “Junior . . .”

  He climbed off then, numb, remaining on his knees.

  Musta had a heart attack or somethin’ . . .

  What else could it be?

  He just looks so fuckin’ weird, he thought.

  Indeed, the arms and legs still held their usual girth—Junior, like his brother, was a big man. Fat, in other words. The big, fat arms and legs looked normal, and so did the fat-covered chest and chubby face. So . . .

  Why did Junior look so strange?

  Ricky pushed his brother’s spotty T-shirt up over the blubbery, hairy chest and belly.

  He shook his head in the utmost dismay.

  There was no intricate way to put it. Junior’s once-proud and very prominent beer gut . . . was gone.

  Had he been dieting? Fuck, no, Ricky knew. His brother had never been on a diet in his life. Diets were for sissies!

  He remained there awhile, sorting his thoughts. He supposed he should call an ambulance, but that might not be the smartest thing to do right now. The local ambulances were at the Point, no doubt recovering the burned bodies of David Something-or-other and his little fox of a daughter. It would seem an odd coincidence. And an ambulance call might bring some police questioning with it. Guess I’ll have to wait, he reasoned, but there was still no reasoning this situation.

  In time, Ricky straggled up. Damn it, Junior. Why’d ya have to die? Never even got the chance to tell you ’bout the hot job I did on them two crackers . . .

  He went to the kitchen, grabbed another beer, then wandered open-eyed around the house. He didn’t turn the lights on; he needed it calm and dark, to help him think on what to do.

  Musta been a heart attack. Couldn’t be nothin’ else. Hash ‘n’ eggs every morning of his life? Shit, I guess the one who needs ta go on a diet is me. . . .

  He wandered around some more in the dark, then found himself in the living room. He didn’t know where he was going, what he was even doing. This was redneck mourning: shuffling around in your dark house with a beer in your hand and a thousand-yard stare. . . .

  With his next step, something crinkled under his foot.

  A glan
ce down showed him a sheet of paper. The hell’s this? he wondered, and picked it up. He was about to turn the light on to look at it when—

  Movement snagged the corner of his eye. He spun around, and—

  His second beer of the night shattered, full, on the floor.

  A thin figure stood staring at him from the hall that led to the bedrooms. It was so dark Ricky couldn’t see. Just a figure there, something barely more substantial than a shadow . . .

  A burglar? It must be. But, boy, did he pick the wrong house to burgle! There was nothing to steal in this dump. This dumb-ass burglar’s about to get his ass killed, Ricky thought with some confidence.

  Unless . . .

  “Who the fuck’re you, scumbag?” Ricky challenged.

  The figure looked grainy standing there in the dark. It said nothing.

  “I’m gonna . . .” But Ricky stalled through a thought. It finally occurred to his not-so-spectacular brain that maybe this figure was the guy who killed Junior somehow.

  The figure said this, in a low, grating voice like some slow, black liquid oozing up his throat:

  “Your brother is in hell. . . .”

  And the figure, in a split second, withdrew into the hall.

  “I am gonna kill you so motherfuckin’ dead, you motherfucker!” Ricky bellowed out in his loudest sociopathic rage. His bulk tore down the hall, boots thudding. In the dim darkness he spotted an edge of the figure disappearing into Junior’s bedroom. A second later Ricky was there, eyes sweeping back and forth in the dark.

  There was no one else in the room.

  But the window stood open, framing moonlit darkness.

  Then that utterly bizarre voice seemed to gush around his head in a mad circle:

  “Your useless brother is now a fat whore for the devil’s minions, as you too will be, very soon. . . .”

  Ricky stared in the dark. This time the voice had seemed to have no source. It came from everywhere, or nowhere.

  He thrust his head out the window and saw the figure standing between some trees at the very end of the yard.

  That is one fast motherfucker! How’d he get all the way out there so fast?

  A cloud moved off; then a bar of moonlight fell ever so briefly across the figure’s face, and Ricky’s teeth ground, because he knew who it was. . . .

  And then the figure’s voice returned one last time, not from the figure itself but again a mushlike gurgle churning around Ricky’s head as it bade its final promise before the figure disappeared.

  The voice said this: “Curse thee.”

  Running after him would be pointless. Ricky pulled back into the room, confused, sick, and enraged. But something tempered that rage—even sociopaths felt fear.

  He took deep breaths in the dark bedroom. Now instead of the evil voice it was the sound of cicadas that flowed into the room, and it was then that Ricky realized he was still holding the piece of paper he’d found in the living room.

  He turned on the light and looked at it.

  A single word was scrawled on a sheet of white paper, in something like brown chalk: wenden.

  (II)

  “I want you out of there right now! More murders? That place is dangerous.”

  Patricia sat comfortably on the bed. Sunlight streamed into the room, warming her face. It was Byron she was talking to on her cell, and the previous, very loud exclamation had been his response when she’d told him about the burning last night, and the gruesome deaths of David Eald and his daughter. “Honey, you’re overreacting again. It’s just some people way out on the Point who got involved with drugs—”

  “And those two people who got murdered the other night—what was their name? The Hilds? The Halds? Whatever! They were involved in drugs, too! Which is why I want your butt in your car right now, heading north!”

  Patricia rolled her eyes. “There’s plenty of drug-related crime in D.C., but we don’t move because of it.”

  “That’s four murders in a week,” Byron countered. “No, five. Don’t forget about Dwayne, the whole reason you went back to that nutty place.”

  “The Ealds weren’t murdered. Their place burned down, probably an accident. It’s actually kind of common in makeshift meth labs. Making the stuff involves several flammable solvents.”

  “That’s supposed to put me at ease? It’s okay because it’s common for drug labs to burn down?”

  “No, but I’m just saying—”

  “And it could just as easily be that someone else torched the place, couldn’t it? Another turf murder. Didn’t you say the Hilds were murdered by a rival drug gang for operating on their turf?”

  “Well, it’s possible. That’s what the police think. But . . .” She paused over the phone. How can I argue with him? He’s actually right. The place very easily could have been burned down by a rival drug gang. “Honey, still, you’re overreacting. Everything’s fine here, and we’re perfectly safe. Judy’s still shaken up over the funeral and all, so that’s why I’m here. I told you, I won’t be gone longer than a week.”

  “Promise.”

  She laughed. “I promise!”

  “So what are you going to do today? Chew tobacco? Sit on the porch in a rocking chair?”

  “Agan’s Point isn’t quite that backward. I’m just going to go for a drive into town this morning—”

  “You shouldn’t be driving into town; you should be driving out of town.”

  She just shook her head and continued. “And then I’ll probably just hang around the house and help Judy with some things.” She began to tell him about the big clan cookout tomorrow—if the Squatters still had it now—but as she talked, her focus dissolved. Was that a splattering she heard? Yes, and a hiss. She noticed then that her bedroom door was open a crack, and as she peered down the hall, she saw that the bathroom door, too, stood open a few inches.

  Ernie’s in there taking a shower, she realized. He’s so used to having this wing of the house to himself that he forgot to close the door. . . . This wouldn’t have meant anything to her, but . . .

  She could see flesh.

  A convenient angle allowed the shower to reflect in the bathroom mirror, which she could see a significant slice of through the crack in the door.

  She kept talking to her husband without even thinking, and suddenly had gotten up and walked to her own door for a better view. She could see him in there, all right—he hadn’t closed the shower curtain.

  My God, what am I doing? What if he saw me? He’d think I was a total perv . . . which I guess I am. A female voyeur? Looking at other people in secret had never been a desire of hers, but then a lot of things about herself had changed since she’d gotten back. What would Dr. Sallee say about this? she wondered. It was just the midlife sexual peak of all women, so . . .

  Was it that bad?

  Her sense of guilt struggled to cut into her thoughts—as she continued to talk to her loving husband, no less—but she easily blocked them out.

  And watched.

  And then imagined.

  Suddenly she saw herself in the shower with Ernie, and the more deeply she thought about it, the more clearly the vision focused. . . .

  He wasn’t even surprised as she stepped in; it was as though he were expecting her, as though his flesh were a summons to her desire, and he knew it. When the cool spray hit Patricia’s breasts, her nipples shot right up. Something else shot right up, too, when she put her hand to his sudsy groin. She could feel it beating in her hand.

  Then, in gestures that nearly seemed rough, his calloused hands spun her around by the hips, and then he was feeling her up into a suit of suds. He stood behind her, his manhood hot against her buttocks. He was manipulating her flesh the way a sculptor manipulated clay. Patricia grew short of breath at once, rising on her tiptoes, her mouth and eyes wide open. The rough fingers skipped back and forth between corkscrewing her nipples and massaging her sex. She just stood there and let herself be felt. . . .

  She talked on to Byron, locked in so
me split stream of consciousness, communicating to him and regarding his replies with no real awareness . . . while the rest of her mind delved deeper into the sexual musing. Ernie still stood behind her, the shower hissing over them. One strong forearm locked around her waist, and then he was lifting her up. Her feet came off the shower floor. She could feel her buttocks sliding over his penis as she continued to rise, as if he would penetrate her from behind with her feet off the ground. Her sex burned; she was squirming—

  Oh, God, no . . .

  “Patricia?”

  It was about to nudge into her all at once.

  “Patricia? Damn, I think your cell phone cut out. Can you hear me?”

  Her legs were tensing, her back arching as her inflamed breasts and nipples thrust outward, and she was already beginning to cli—

  “Patricia!”

  Reality slapped her in the face. No, she wasn’t in the shower with Ernie; she was talking to her husband! “I’m here,” she assured him, waiting for her heart to slow down.

  “You sounded way off in space.”

  Not in space, she thought, visibly blushing. Just in the shower. “The reception down here isn’t always that great. When I call tomorrow, I’ll use Judy’s phone.”

  “So how is Judy doing, considering?”

  Patricia tore herself away from the gap in the door, then went back and sat on the bed. Her last real image of Ernie had been of him stepping out of the shower, in the reflection. She struggled to reengage her mind against a backwash of guilt. “Actually, okay, I think. She’s seemed to be handling Dwayne’s death pretty well since I got here, but now she’s kind of rocked by what happened last night. She even said something to the effect that it might be a good idea for her to sell the Point.”

  “I think she should. Sounds like the whole place is turning into Drugtown. Sell it before all the property value goes down the tubes.”

  “Really, Byron, it’s not that bad. There’re luxury condos going up on the other side of the river. That’ll drive any bad elements out faster than anything.”