Threshold

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Hell, at first, I thought maybe Sadie had set the whole thing up, maybe she’d found this kid and was getting back at me because we had a fight this afternoon. But then Miss Dancy Flammarion down there tells me that she’s certain I’ll believe her, and that I’ll help convince you, because she knows what I saw in the fucking tunnel.”

  “This is crazy, Deacon,” Chance says, barely muttering, not wanting to hear any more, and why can’t he understand that and leave her alone? “You know that this is crazy.”

  “Yeah, it is, Chance. It’s absolutely fucking psychotic, and if you ask me, I think the girl’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but that doesn’t answer my question. How the hell does she know about Elise, and how could she possibly know about the night we were in the tunnel?”

  Chance’s eyes hot and wet, and she realizes that she’s crying, hot tears streaking her cheeks, and it’s almost enough to get her angry again, almost enough to push back the fear coiling itself up cold and hard inside her belly; this whole fucked-up night and now she has to start crying in front of Deacon Silvey.

  “Listen to me, Chance. I know you’ve heard the stories about me and the cops in Atlanta, about what I did for them before I came to Birmingham.”

  “You know I never believed any of that shit,” she says, sobbing and hating the way she sounds, hating that she can’t be stronger. Looking down at the floor now so he can’t see her face, and “I know,” Deacon replies. “I think that’s one of the reasons we got along. I never had to try and explain it all to you.

  “But I touched that finger, to see if it was real, to be sure it wasn’t made of rubber or something—”

  And then Dancy Flammarion interrupts him, the albino girl watching them from the gloom at the bottom of the stairs. “Please don’t cry, Chance,” she says. “There’s no reason to cry. I can show you I’m not lying.”

  “Please get her out of here, Deacon,” and she turns away, turns towards the narrow stairs that lead up to the attic, putting all these impossible things behind her, and then Dancy says something else, something that makes Chance stop. She stands very still, doesn’t dare look back at the girl or Deacon, stares through the blur of her tears at a faded Currier and Ives print hanging on the wall.

  “What did you say?” Chance whispers, and Dancy repeats the word, louder this time.

  “Dicranurus,” she says again, and Chance closes her eyes, shuts them tight and lets gravity and nausea and the certainty that none of this is happening pull her to the floor.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Touched

  “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Sadie asks him, and Deacon doesn’t stop staring at the ceiling over Joe Matthews’ bed, the raised fault-line crack beneath the paint where the sheetrock has begun to flake and buckle; doesn’t look at her because he still can’t get Chance’s face out of his head, the cranberry smear of blood across her lips after she fainted, after she fell and struck her chin hard on the floor, bit the tip of her tongue, and he thinks it’s a wonder that she didn’t bite it off.

  “I’m not sure I can, baby,” he says and closes his eyes against the lamp light. The room smells like dust and cough drops, reminds him of being a little boy and visiting old people, his grandparents, an aunt, Sunday afternoon smell to remind him how long it’s been since he had a drink. Lying here with Sadie beside him, wishing he had a glass of bourbon or rye or just a goddamn beer, anything would be better than this dusty place inside his mouth.

  “You mean you’re not sure you want to,” Sadie says, making no attempt to hide her jealousy, the suspicious edge in her voice, and he doesn’t bother opening his eyes, shrugs and “Yeah, that too,” he says.

  “You know, you’re not supposed to just let someone go to sleep after they hit their head like that,” Sadie whispers. “She might have a concussion or something. She could go into a coma.”

  “And I’m sure that would break your heart,” then quick, before she can pinch him or tell him that he’s being a dick, “Anyway, she didn’t hit her head. I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten a concussion because they bit their tongue.”

  Deacon opens his eyes and the crack in the ceiling’s still there, waiting for him, almost reminding him of something he probably doesn’t want to remember. “Turn out the lamp now. I’m sleepy,” and that’s a lie, but at least if it’s dark he won’t have to look at the ceiling anymore.

  “I don’t think I want to. I think this house is giving me the creeps. It’s too big and empty, and it makes sounds.”

  “It’s an old house,” he says. “Old houses make sounds.” He rolls over onto his side, puts his back to the wall, and stares at her: Sadie lying on top of the white chenille bedspread in nothing but her panties, her small nipples the color of a burn, and she’s staring up at the ceiling, too.

  “What was that word?” she asks again, like she hasn’t asked him the same question two or three times already, and “I told you I don’t know,” Deacon says.

  “Whatever.” She rolls her eyes and starts chewing at her lower lip, gnaws away a small patch of her black lipstick and probably some skin in the bargain.

  “Christ, Sadie, why don’t you get up, go down the hall, and ask Dancy what the hell she said? And why don’t you ask her what it’s supposed to mean, while you’re at it?”

  “I did. I asked her while you were up there in the attic with Chance,” and she frowns and points at the ceiling, the crack in the ceiling. “She said she didn’t know. She said Chance knew.”

  “Then just turn out the light, and in the morning you can ask Chance what it means.”

  And for a moment he thinks that maybe she’s actually had enough for one night, enough unanswered questions, enough weird shit even for Sadie, that maybe she’ll finally turn off the lamp and he can get some sleep. Plenty of time in the morning to think about what happened on the stairs, to think about Dancy and Chance, Elise and the tunnel; plenty of time then to tell her what he does and doesn’t know, later, when the sun is shining and the sky is harmless and blue and far away. But then Sadie rolls over and he can see exactly how mistaken he is, that she’s a very long way from sleepy, a long way from resigned. Those eyes too bright, too full, too hungry for secrets. Afraid of the sounds an old house makes at night, but she’s starving to learn something really terrible.

  “What’s happening here, Deke?” she asks him, and there’s not the slightest trace of sarcasm left in her voice, no room for anything now but reckless curiosity. “And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I know that you know something. I saw the look on your face when you touched that thing in the jar. I know what that look means.”

  “You don’t know half as much as you like to pretend,” and he brushes back the tangled black hair from her eyes, small and intimate gesture that might distract her, if he’s lucky. But he isn’t, and she pushes his hand away, holds it locked up tight in hers so he can’t try that again, can’t do anything but answer her questions or tell her to fuck off.

  “At least I don’t pretend I don’t know what you did for the cops when you lived in Atlanta, and I’m not going to pretend you don’t have some idea why Dancy needs to talk to Chance so badly, or where that goddamned finger came from. I know better, Deke.”

  And he thinks about pulling his hand away, then, shoving Sadie roughly out of the bed, thump to the cold hardwood floor, and she can get pissed off if she wants, can find somewhere else to sleep, somewhere else to lie awake till dawn, eating her lipstick and looking for whatever profound and appalling revelations she thinks he’s holding back, all the truths he’s holding hostage. It would feel too good, he thinks, taking his stingy measure of satisfaction from the thought alone and wishing that it made him feel just a little bit guilty, just a little ashamed down deep inside. You’re an asshole, Deke, and that’s Chance’s voice in his head, Chance who only wanted them to leave her alone, to go away, and now it’s too late.

  Deacon pries Sadie’s fingers from around his hand. “Go to sl
eep,” he says, not sounding angry, but no room for an argument there, either, and he turns to face the wall and all the things waiting for him when he shuts his eyes.

  After he left college, dropping out of Emory halfway through an undergraduate degree in philosophy, Deacon Silvey was swallowed alive by Atlanta like Jonah by the great fish and, in the end, there was very little left to spit back out. Kant and Sartre and Kierkegaard traded in for convenience store jobs, liquor store jobs, anything to pay the rent and enough left over to stay drunk whenever he needed to stay drunk. Weak enough orbit to begin with, downward enough spiral, falling into the sun sooner or later, a lot sooner if he hadn’t met an APD homicide detective named Vincent Hammond.

  The way it all began almost funny, almost, if he looks back at it the right way, the wrong way, if he pretends to be a much sicker fuck than he really is, and that summer, 1988 and he was working graveyard shift at an all-night liquor store on Edgewood, all-night target for every nickel-and-dime holdup right there in the grit and grimy heart of downtown. The robberies about as regular as his pay-checks, the long parade of pistols and shotguns, never more than one hundred dollars in the register at a time, but word never got out or no one cared, the gangbangers and crack-heads that indiscriminate, that desperate. And Deke always playing the obedient, cooperative clerk, always eager to please any customer shoving a gun in his face. Sometimes the cops caught the robbers and sometimes they didn’t, and Deacon honestly never really gave a shit either way.

  Then one muggy July night, Deacon rereading a tattered paperback copy of Watership Down, Fiver and Hazel, and the bald white dude built like a steroid case, like a pro wrestler, coming in and not buying anything, just hanging around the back of the store half an hour, pretending to browse, picking up bottles and reading the labels, putting them down again, casting an occasional nervous glance towards the front of the store. Deacon already thinking Let’s just get it over with, okay, just please get this the hell over with, when the guy screwed the cap off a pint bottle of Bacardi 151 and emptied it over his head. Deacon knew he ought to keep his fucking mouth shut, look the other way, but the whole thing getting way too strange, and “Hey!” he shouted at the guy. “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

  Another bottle of rum over the bald guy’s head, and “It ain’t none of your business,” he sputtered at Deke through the Bacardi getting up his nose and into his mouth. “It ain’t none of your business, man, so don’t get in my way.” Another bottle, and whatever was happening, it wasn’t exactly a stick-up, and Deacon was still trying to decide whether to call the cops or just wait for the guy to soak up his fill and leave, when he fished a shiny Zippo lighter from a shirt pocket and flipped open the lid, thumb on the strike wheel, and “Jesus,” Deke said, loud enough that the guy looked up at him, paused long enough for Deacon to make it around the counter.

  “Don’t try to fuckin’ stop me, man. I can’t keep doin’ it anymore, I swear to God, I just can’t keep doin’ it.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon said. “Yeah, that’s cool, but look, let’s just talk about this a second, okay?” and maybe that’s what people said on TV, maybe that’s how television heroes talked suicides off ledges and hostage-takers into setting children free, but the bald guy just smiled at him, sad and exhausted smile, and went up like a bonfire. Sudden comic-book fwump of an explosion and the store was filling with greasy smoke and the porkstink of burning human skin before Deke could even get the dinky fire extinguisher off the wall and figure out which end to point at the crazy son of a bitch. The bottles on the shelves already popping from the heat, sudden staccato bursts of rum and whiskey, more fuel for the fire, for the hungry bluewhite flames racing across the floor, bluewhite tentacles spreading towards Deacon as the man flailed around and screamed, screamed about how much it hurt, his voice barely a ragged murmur above the roar.

  What the hell did you expect, asshole? Deacon’s head full of half-delirious, unreal thoughts as he aimed the extinguisher at the man and tried not to breathe in the smoke stinging his eyes and lungs. Nothing he could do about the inferno already writhing along the walls and licking at the ceiling, no way to even slow it down, but somehow he managed to put the guy out, and then Deacon was dragging him from the store, his hands sinking deep into fire-retardant foam and the stickysoft soles of melted shoes. Dragging him over broken bottles and rough cement, finally over asphalt, and if the guy had a single square inch of skin left on his back it was a miracle. Deacon stopped halfway across the parking lot, choking on the smoke, the world swimming in and out of focus, the bald man black as a burnt marshmallow and still screaming that he wanted to die.

  The windows of the liquor store exploded then, released a searing, crackling blast of heat that knocked Deacon off his feet and would leave his skin pink and tender for days, fat blisters on his face and arms, the backs of his hands, and the shattered glass fell around him in a jagged, noisy shower. One last thing before he passed out, the bald guy so burned he ought to be dead already, ought to be dead as fucking roadkill, but he rolled over and grabbed Deacon’s hand, squeezed it hard, and suddenly there was no more smoke to smell, nothing but the sweetsick rush of oranges and raw fish clogging his nostrils, nothing but the knives at his temples, at his eyes, and Deacon saw the bodies stacked like rotting cords of wood, stacked somewhere dark and cool, before he couldn’t see anything at all.

  The next morning, groggy from pain pills and bad dreams, Deacon lay in his hospital bed at Grady Memorial and watched cartoons until the two detectives finally showed up. Officer Vincent Hammond and another guy whose name he forgot almost immediately, but Hammond not someone you forget easily; big hollow-cheeked man always needing to lose a few pounds of belly and no chance he ever would, nicotine teeth and brooding, restless eyes that seemed incapable of lingering on any one spot for more than a few seconds at a time. And fuck all the things Deke’s father had said to him seventeen years before, the threatful, stern warnings, the secrecy and denial, because there was no way he was keeping what he’d seen when the dying man touched him to himself. They could lock him up, throw away the key, feed him antipsychotics for the rest of his goddamn life, and how much worse could that really be than the liquor stores, anyway? So he told Hammond the whole story, told it straight and fast and didn’t really care whether it made sense or not, if the detective thought he was nuts, just as long as he didn’t have to carry the images of those dead and decomposing bodies around inside his head all his life without anyone else ever knowing, without ever knowing the truth himself.

  And maybe Hammond hadn’t believed him, but someone searched the basement of the bald guy’s house and found the ten girls heaped neatly together in a corner, another five buried out in the backyard, resolutions to missing persons cases dating back six years or more. Their killer was dead before the week was out, too far gone to bring back, too much of him eaten away in the blaze, and so the investigation turned on Deacon for a while, long weeks of questions he had no answers for, at least no answers that Hammond wanted to believe. But only the most circumstantial evidence linking Deacon to the killer, the simple fact the fucker had walked into that particular liquor store to set himself on fire, that and what Deacon had known afterwards. Not nearly enough for a warrant, but Hammond showing up at his apartment one night with a dirty sweatshirt in his hand, a child’s sweatshirt with something cute and colorful across the front, and “Okay, Deacon,” he said. “You want me to buy all this psychic bullshit and leave you the hell alone? Yeah? Then I want you to tell me about this shirt.”

  The child missing since 1979, and her name had been Regina, Regina Sparks, and when Deacon Silvey sat down at the table in his dingy kitchenette, enough empty beer cans and gin bottles on the floor and countertops to start his own recycling plant, when he sat down and reluctantly took the shirt from the detective there was nothing at first. The trail gone cold, but not too cold, and finally the smells, the citrus and fish and the pain in his head, and five minutes later he told Hammond that the girl had b
een stabbed to death by her stepfather and the body dumped in a flooded rock quarry in Cobb County.

  “She’s still there,” Deacon said. “Go and see for yourself.” And she was, or at least enough of her dredged from the murky mossgreen water to make a believer out of Vince Hammond.

  That first time, the second if he counted the bald guy, Hammond came back to his apartment and sat staring at him for a long time, half an hour just staring and chain-smoking Kools, like maybe there was some hidden way to make sense of this, some prosaic explanation overlooked, anything short of believing, and finally he shook his head, stubbed out his cigarette, and “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.

  “You said you’d leave me alone . . .” Deacon began, but no need to finish once he saw Hammond’s face, the intent and settled expression there.

  “Sorry, bubba,” the detective said. “I guess I shouldn’t go around making promises I can’t keep.”

  “I saw the look on your face,” Sadie says, making the words sound like an accusation, like a judgment, before the water closes over her again, still and tea-colored water stained by everything that’s lived and died in the swamps; he watches, silent, uncertain, as she sinks slow to the bottom of the pool and lies there staring up at him from the sand and the rotting, shit-colored leaves. The tapering stream of air bubbles from her nostrils and her open mouth, bleeding out her life, bleeding the swamp in, impossible, primordial transfusion, and when it’s finally done, her skeleton is as smooth and clean as the silverwhite scales of the fish that picked the last stringy shreds of meat from her skull. A fat turtle with scarlet spots behind its eyes nestles in her empty ribcage, and a drop of Deacon’s sweat slips off the end of his nose, and now it’s part of the swamp, too.