A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  It was an evil, hungry place.

  In the years that followed, I prayed more than ever before and did my research. I found no record of a slave house or any other building having existed atop that hill. Two men did die during construction of the water tower, and a third worker was killed during an argument with another worker. There were also many credible reports of animal carcasses being found on the property. Not surprisingly, most of the devil worshipping stories turned out to be nothing but rumors and campfire stories; nothing was substantiated.

  I believe now it is the ground itself that is wrong. It acts as some sort of mysterious conduit, perhaps even a portal or a doorway to another world or dimension. I believe it allows whatever it is that dwells in that other world to control its chosen one in this world. Why it demands blood? I do not know. The tower itself remains another mystery to me. Does it act as a sort of lure to attract people there, so there are higher numbers to choose from? If so, why was I selected? What did it sense inside me?

  I don’t know these answers—and that is a blessing.

  8

  Can you guess now how this story will end?

  There will be another body soon, of course.

  And they will find it sprawled there beneath that stupid old water tower.

  I see the tower silhouetted against the western sky most mornings. I watch the setting sun paint it a golden shade of orange most evenings. But I haven’t placed a single foot in its shadow for close to four decades.

  Someone else has been chosen; I know that now.

  Stranger or friend, I do not know, nor do I wish to.

  I pray myself to sleep every night.

  I pray for the lost soul of the chosen one.

  I pray for the lost soul of this town.

  And I pray for the deceased.

  But most of all, I pray that I don’t wake up one morning and feel the urge to slip on my walking boots and pick up my cane and make the long walk up that hill again.

  (This campfire story, for Jimmy Cavanaugh)

  BROTHERS

  1

  When I rolled into the precinct just before eleven that humid August night, I saw my brother Michael walking out the west door.

  I’d been able to get him on the force seven years ago, despite a still ongoing hiring freeze, and he was generally doing well. It didn’t hurt that at the time I’d just received an award for stopping a man who’d just killed three people in a convenience store. I’d chased him in my car, warning him in the dark alley to stop running. He had turned around and put three bullets in my windshield. I ran him over and killed him.

  I’d asked the commander a few times before about hiring Michael. He knew about Michael’s past and problems. He’d always said, “Let me think about it.”

  Since joining the department, Michael had become a dutiful cop. On other matters, which he insisted weren’t my business, he wasn’t doing well at all.

  He worked the same shift I did but he was already in civvies, a crisp white short-sleeved shirt, dark slacks, and a brisk, slightly wood-scented cologne.

  He must have been lost in his own thoughts, because he almost walked right into me.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up. “Didn’t see you.”

  “I wanted to apologize for the other night.”

  He grinned the grin that had won him a hundred hearts. My little brother got the family’s blonde good looks. I got the family’s work ethic. Or, as our mother always put it, “Little Mike got the looks, but Chet got the maturity.” In her sweet maternal way, she tried to pretend that both attributes were equal. Maturity, in case you hadn’t noticed, has yet to get even one female into a bed.

  He clapped me on the arm. “Hell, Chet, we’re brothers. You were just looking out for me the way you have since Mom died.”

  When I was sixteen and Chet was twelve, Mom drowned in the YMCA pool after suffering a stroke. Freak accident. The news reports called it that, the Y called it that, the coroner called it that, the priest at the burial site called it that, everybody at the wake called it that. Even fourteen years later I wince when I hear that term.

  Dad took over. Or tried. But he’d always been a better cop than a father. It was from his side of the family that the blonde good looks came. For twenty-one years of marriage, Mom had been able to pretend that all the nights Dad spent carousing with other cops were spent bowling and playing nickel-dime poker. The only time I’d ever heard them argue about those nights was when a drunk lady called at two a.m. and demanded to talk to my dad. Bowling alleys don’t make those kind of calls.

  Other cops, male and female, walked around us now, goodnights and goodbyes on the air thick as fireflies.

  “I’m not mad, Chet. I just want to run my own life. You don’t need to play dad anymore.”

  And I had been his dad for five years. Made sure he got a B average, made sure he wasn’t into drugs or alcohol, made sure he wasn’t hanging around with the wrong boys, made sure he honored the curfew hours I set for him.

  Dad spent more and more time away from the house. He got himself what he called a “woman friend” and half-ass moved in with her. One night when he was home and puke-drunk, I heard him sobbing—literally, sobbing—in the bedroom he’d shared with Mom all those years. I went in and dragged him to the bathroom and got him cleaned up and then ripped the covers with the vomit on it off and got him settled in. He grabbed my hand and gripped it hard, the way he used to. He didn’t seem to realize that these days my grip was a lot harder than his. Before he passed out, he said: “You gotta watch Michael. He’s gonna turn out just like me. I was such a shitty husband to your poor mother, Chet.” He started sobbing again. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. “I’m goin’ to hell, Chet, the way I treated that woman, always sneakin’ off for some strange broad. You got to know that I loved her. She was the only woman I ever truly loved. Those bitches I ran around with didn’t mean nothing to me. They really didn’t.”

  Michael lowered his voice and said, “It’s just this little thing I’m having on the side is all. It’ll wear itself out.”

  “That’s what you said four months ago.”

  His face hardened. His tactic was to be amiable, kid you away from serious talk. When that didn’t work, he coasted for awhile on irritation that would soon become real anger if he wasn’t careful. “Look, I admit I screwed up my life back when I first left home. I gambled, I did some drugs, I married the wrong woman, I couldn’t hold a job—and I let you take over my life the same way you did when I was a kid. And that really helped, Chet. And I’m grateful for it. I mean, how could I not be? You found my second wife for me, you got me on the force, and you managed to find a bank that would give me a mortgage even with my credit rating.”

  He put both of his hands on my shoulders. He was three inches taller than I was. “I owe you everything, Chet. Everything. But this time—” He shook his head. Then he shot me the Michael grin again. “This time it isn’t any of your business. All right? I know what I’m doing? I’m not going to hurt Laura or the kids. That I promise. But I’m in this thing and I just have to play it out is all.” His hands shook my shoulders with mock fondness—mock because he was sick of me trying to drag him away from the affair he was having. The affair that had put him right back into gambling, drinking too much, even getting into a few fights. Fights can get you kicked off the force.

  He took his hands down. “So can we leave it like that, Chet? Please? I’ll handle it, and we’ll get together at Jen’s birthday party a couple weeks from now and everything’ll be cool. All right?”

  He walked away before I could say anything and got in his car. I hadn’t known until that moment that he’d bought himself a new Pontiac GTO. I didn’t know any other uniformed officer who could afford a new GTO and have any money left over for the wife and kids.

  I stood there and watched him lay rubber out of the lot and suddenly remembered what he’d forced me to do the summer he’d turned sixteen…

  Locally, the place was jus
t known as the Pits. It was a sandy area along a stretch of river. Nothing fancy. Generations of high school boys had driven girls out there to get them drunk and hopefully not pregnant. The Pits were eleven miles out of town. A farm house sat on the top of the hill that looked down on the beach area.

  I had a pretty bad hangover that Sunday morning when Dad came down to the breakfast table bearing the newspaper and his reading glasses.

  Michael and I were finishing our breakfast—cold cereal and orange juice was the usual serving; even idiots could put cold cereal and juice together—when Dad said, “Either of you boys at the Sand Pits last night?”

  I shook my aching head. I’d been on a double date in town.

  Michael, whose hangover had left him pale and sweaty, cleared his throat and said, “I was for a little while.”

  “You there when the fire started?”

  “What fire?”

  I couldn’t tell exactly why but the way Michael spoke those two words…

  I knew something was wrong.

  But apparently Dad didn’t pick up on it. He went over to the coffee I’d made with the help of an automatic machine. “The people who own the farm up there are accusing your little friend Jeff Cosgrove of setting it.”

  “Jeff?” I said. “No way. He’s one of the nicest kids in town.”

  “They found him about a hundred yards from the fire and about six or seven feet from a little red gas can that had only a little bit left in it. He was passed out drunk.”

  Dad looked at Michael. “He’s your friend. Did you see him out there last night?”

  Michael had been studying the words on the back of the cereal box with a zeal he never visited upon his text books. He looked up as if dazed.

  “Uh, yeah. Early, I mean. I mean he rode out there with me, but I didn’t see him after awhile. And then Jenny and I left kinda early.”

  “Well, he’s sure as hell in some trouble. The little Stinson girl kept her pony in that barn. Fire killed the pony and destroyed the barn by the time the county boys could get there.” He walked over and sat down at the table. “The Stinsons have trouble all summer long with teenagers. I’d just as soon you not go out there.”

  Yeah,” Michael smiled at me. “I’m pretty sure you told us that before, Dad. About six or seven million times.”

  “This time I mean it, Michael,” he said as he fixed up his own cold cereal. “I’m pretty sure the Chief’ll ask County to start patrolling out there every night now. And that means a lot of your buddies’re gonna get busted for drinking and driving.”

  This was the point where Michael would usually protest. I didn’t always go along with all of Dad’s rules and protested at times myself. But given what had happened to the Stinsons last night I knew this was time to keep quiet.

  But Michael never kept quiet. And cutting off access to the Pit was serious. He should have been erupting from the table and shouting at Dad. He was out there at least two or three times a week with different girls now that he had his driver’s license. He’d already come to me twice this summer, terrified that a couple of the girls might be pregnant.

  Instead, Michael made a show of looking up at the kitchen clock. He stood up and stretched.

  “I’ve got a date this afternoon. I better start cleaning up my car. Needs a wash for one thing.” He was obsessive about his ’79 Chevy. It was old to everybody but Michael. I didn’t know diddly shit about cars but he sure did. Too bad he didn’t take his romantic relationships as seriously.

  I sensed he was hurrying out to the garage for another reason this particular morning, so I followed him.

  Dad was so engrossed in his newspaper by now, I doubt he even realized I was gone.

  The sunlight made a rainbow of the water Michael was splashing over the red Chevy with a hose.

  I walked over to him. “We need to talk.”

  He faced the car. Wouldn’t look at me. “I’m kinda busy right now.”

  “We need to talk about that fire out at the Stinsons.”

  “Don’t know anything about it.”

  “Yeah. Right.” I tried to see his face. “C’mon, talk to me.”

  Still not looking at me. “We’ll talk later if you want to. But there’s no point. I don’t know jackshit about that fire.”

  There was only one way to get his attention. The spigot was ten feet away. I walked over and twisted the knob to off.

  Now he faced me. Now he was ready for one of our occasional fist fights. Lots of bloody noses and bloody lips but never any serious damage. But this time I wondered. He tossed the hose away and came at me. He threw a right cross before he was close enough for it to land.

  Now it was my turn to charge him. While he continued to try to hit me I grabbed him around the waist and hurled him against the side of the Chevy. He landed hard enough to fall to the driveway on his hands and knees.

  I stood over him. He wasn’t afraid of me, but he stayed down.

  “Tell me what happened, Michael. And none of your usual bullshit. You heard Dad. This is serious shit.”

  “You mind if I fucking get up?”

  He had a way of making even the slightest expression, the slightest movement, the slightest phrase insolent. You put enough time in on the streets as a cop and you learned that there are certain people—usually male but not always—that you just can’t break psychologically unless you want to beat them near death, which is something I’ve never done. They are the Fuck You people. Everything they do and say is calculated to let you know that you are an inferior species.

  This was Michael and he put on quite the show getting to his feet. Most of us would look awkward struggling to stand up. Not Michael. No professional dancer could have done it more gracefully. The sneer was in place and so was that look of amused contempt.

  “What’s your problem, Dad? I was out at the Sand Pits, so I must have been involved, right? You think I’m crazy enough to burn down a fucking barn?”

  “You were crazy enough to break into that store and steal baseball equipment. You were crazy enough to steal a car before you were even old enough to drive. And you were crazy enough to accidentally lock that teacher in his closet.”

  “You promised you’d never tell anybody.”

  “I haven’t, but maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have told somebody. Because you’re still doing this shit. You really going to let Jeff get blamed for this?”

  For one of the few times I’d ever known him, he stumbled when he lied. “Well—well, he did it, didn’t he?”

  “Bullshit. He’s afraid of just about everything. That’s why he hangs around you and runs all your errands and takes all your jokes about him. So he can feel cool. He’s afraid to fight, and I remember he won’t go swimming out at the Pits because he’s afraid of the water and he hates to go fast in a car because he’s scared he will wreck—so this is the kid who set fire to a barn?”

  Michael’s composure had returned. “The last time I saw him he was really drunk.”

  “Making it real easy for you to make it look like he did it.”

  I don’t know where Michael bought all his smirks but it was a store with an inexhaustible supply. “You tell Dad all this and he won’t believe a word of it. And you know it. Which is why you won’t tell him.”

  “You don’t have a record, Michael. If you admit what you did, Dad’ll pay for the barn and the horse and you won’t have to do any time.”

  Michael shrugged. “Same for Jeff when he goes to court. And his old man’s got a lot more money than Dad, that’s for sure.”

  He walked over and turned on the hose again. “Besides, you can’t prove a fucking thing. So like I said, I’ve got a date and I need to wash my car. But thanks for the lecture. You know how serious I take them.”

  The whole thing wound up pretty much as Michael predicted. Mister Cosgrove paid for the barn and the horse, and Jeff got probation and no jail time. There was a lot more public outrage over the horse than there was the ancient barn. And Jeff went f
rom the nicest kid in town to an outcast.

  He became a target at school and some of my friends with younger brothers and sisters told me Michael cut him loose as well.

  Apparently, Jeff had been so drunk he’d just accepted the fact that he was guilty as charged. They also said Jeff had started to drink heavily. He was a small kid and got drunk pretty easily. He found himself getting kicked out of the few parties he was invited to, and then he started hanging out with the dopers and the reform school crowd.

  As always, Michael and I got past the whole thing in the way we usually did. He apologized finally, although he still insisted on his complete innocence. For Senior year he even got serious about his studies. He ended up with a B+ average. And he even started listening more to me. It was funny but after a few months the only thing I thought about when the barn incident was mentioned was not poor Jeff but that poor pony.

  That is until the night that Dad called from the station and told us that a drunken Jeff had wrapped his car around a telephone pole out on the old river road, a deadly stretch that claimed at least one victim a summer. Dead on impact, Dad said.

  There was no great mourning in the school community. Jeff had disgraced himself many, many times after his court appearance. There were even a few outraged letters in the papers about how he’d killed that pony.

  Dad said he felt bad for Jeff’s parents and ordered Michael and I to attend the funeral. I assumed Michael and I would go together but he told me he’d just see me there.

  I quickly found out why. He used the occasion to debut his latest and maybe most elegant girlfriend. I saw it as a kind of fuck you. You want to get all teary and hokey about poor dumb Jeff…well, how about this girl? She’s alive and so am I. Jeff was a moron anyway.

  The priest gave a terrible sermon. He’d neither known nor cared about Jeff. He kept sermons like this up his ass. File 239.