by Aaron Dries
Dedication
This one’s dedicated to Anne, Warwick, Brent and Kyle Dries. My family. Thank you for not being anything like the people I write.
I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible efforts of Jian Vun, who was with me every step of the way—again. Nicole Fisher and Jodie Macdonald, thank you for your insights and incredible friendship. And last, though certainly not least, a heartfelt shout out to Don D'Auria, for believing in me from the very start.
Where people ain’t happy
With the luck of the draw
Where the sick and the sad
Have drawn up next door
My old street
Ain’t a street no more
Just a place for the mad
To live without law
And it breaks me,
It breaks me,
It breaks me to say
Time’s put the end in my Endsville
A steak in the heart of the USA
I’m waltzing with the wrecking ball
’Cause this ain’t my home anymore
No, this ain’t my home anymore
– Endsville, Dom King Come
Prologue: An Evening in Washington State
July Twenty-Eight, 2007
The house was a moonlit carving in the dark. There were no chirping crickets, no birdsong—just winter silence. The sigh of trees. Stacy Norman slept inside, unaware of her role in The Forgiveness. She’d been chosen because she appeared innocent, but she would suffer because she’d committed the unpardonable crime of kindness.
Her murderer had appeared at her doorstep two months earlier, asking if a particular family lived there. Stacy had smiled at him and told the tall, deep-voiced man no. “Not much help to you, am I? Good luck, though,” she said, and closed the door, catching a quick glimpse of his smile.
This was the first of three visits he would pay to her house. The second was to scout for hiding places, surveying turns and locating the stairs, accumulating all the information he would need to make the third visit a simple, problem-free affair.
A breath of air through the house, coming from an open window somewhere—it had nothing to do with their entry. Stacy’s murderers had used the key under the doormat, which they had discovered on visit number two. Stacy would suffer because she was kind, but she would die because she was trusting.
The tinkle of ladles, suspended from the kitchen range.
It was a small, rented house on the outskirts of Preston—redbrick exterior and shingled roof that trembled when the winds blew hard. It was a long commute to work at the architecture firm in Seattle, but Stacy knew it was worth it. There in Preston she had privacy and silence, which was enough for her.
She used to be afraid of living alone but not anymore. The solitary life grew more and more inviting with each passing year, loneliness wearing thin. She didn’t own the little redbrick house, but that was okay. Renting taught her the value of patience, of working towards what you want. One day she would live in a home that she herself had designed, paid for and was proud of. It, too, would be on the fringe of a city surrounded by trees. And silence. Just the way she liked it.
Clocks ticked in the living room. Photographs of Stacy’s family back in Maine lined the walls, faces trapped under glass. A dog-eared copy of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues was bent over the arm of a chair. She was fifty pages from finishing.
Her diary sat on the desk in the study, an eagle feather marking her place. Her father had slipped it into her suitcase the day she had left home to study in Seattle. That had been six years ago.
Danny stayed over last night, read one entry. At first I didn’t want him to, but I gave in. Not to him, but to my damn hunger. I know that sounds stupid. Hunger. But I don’t know any other word for it. I’m not making excuses—it was nice. He was rougher than I like but what the hell, right? He made me coffee in the morning. I think I’m falling hard. I don’t know if I want that.
Stacy Norman, the pretty architect who walked the homes of others in her mind, who no longer feared the dark. Stacy who knew that time was short but life was long—that it was okay to be in love, but dangerous to fall. Stacy Norman slept with the knowledge that the world would be the same tomorrow: hard and lonely. She could live with that.
The two men were under her bed. They knew what time Stacy returned from work, what time to hide.
Once her breathing had slowed and sleep had snatched her away, they crawled out from under their hiding spot, Stacy’s gentle snores the soundtrack to their achievement. Their hearts were beating fast, excited. A little frightened. Stacy was their first.
Not a fingerprint was left behind; there were no stray hairs curled up on the floor. Not a trace. Just their heavy imprints on the carpet, disappearing in slow motion. They were careful. The musk of sweat-on-dried-sweat radiated from them. They both needed to piss.
Their breathing in the dark.
The man who had knocked on Stacy’s door and asked about the family was tall and thin, but full of wiry strength. His comrade was short and solid, a little overweight. Fitting under the bed had been a struggle. The tall man straightened up, looking enormous below the room’s low ceiling, stepped forward and flinched when his kneecap popped. The sound shattered the silence. Whatever control they thought they had, disappeared.
Stacy opened her eyes, bolted upright, the mattress creaking under her weight. She wasn’t afraid. The old house groaned at night and the trees outside often played music against the gutters. When she’d first moved in, such sounds would send her running from room to room, armed with a hand-me-down frying pan and her cell phone, searching for intruders who were not there. True, Maine had its fair share of trees, gutters, old redbrick houses—and intruders too—but this was the city. Her parents had cautioned her about home invasions and suburban drug crime in their thick, New England drawls. So when she heard those sounds in the night she often heard their voices too.
Stace, you got to keep the house bolted tight. Tight as a robin’s asshole.
“Jesus, Dad!” They had laughed.
Yessum, always ask who’s knocking before you go and open up that door.
“Okay, Mom.”
Maybe we should get you a gun for Christmas.
“Ha, yeah right. There’s a spirited idea. No thanks, I think I’ll settle for the usual Sears socks and Barnes & Noble gift cards if that’s okay with you.”
Once Stacy had learned the intimate noises of her new home, her decision not to get that gun and to leave that spare key under the back door mat was a very deliberate one. She refused to live in fear anymore.
Stacy Norman would die because she was proud.
In the dim light she saw two white faces bleed out of the darkness. One smiled and the other looked sad. In the fleeting moment between seeing them and the pinprick stab of the needle in her neck, she recognized the faces for what they were. Greek dramaturgical masks.
Comedy and Tragedy.
Five days passed. In North Bend, near the Snoqualmie region in upper Washington State, the shorter of the two men walked out of the house and dropped to his knees. He dug his fingers in the lawn, churning soil until its scent ran sweet. All of his life had been spent either tending to the land or farming animals. The smell of earth was home to him. He was gasping, eyes red from crying.
The trees shivered in the wind, their uppermost branches scratching at the grey belly of the sky. It was a bitter morning.
He was dressed in a bloodied apron, his cheeks smeared with grime.
A few minutes passed by and he heard the rear screen door slam behind him. Slow, deliberate steps drew close. He heard singing, soft and out of tune.
“‘Got me a wayward girl, cute as a bee. See-sawin’ across the universe and e
nding up with me…’”
The footsteps stopped behind him and the short man felt someone touch his shoulder. It was a soft, smooth hand, one which hadn’t spent its life tending to fields and farms. Rather, other more delicate matters. Now they both had calluses. They had been working on the girl for five days straight.
“‘…Packed our bags in two battered cases. Shot out of town past a sea of shocked faces…’”
There wasn’t enough light in the yard for the sun to cast the tall man’s shadow, but his friend, still on his knees, felt it over him anyway. They stood that way for some time, the tall man continuing to sing. Soft rain started to fall.
“‘…Down a road leadin’ home, just me and this girl. Who travelled the universe so I can show her my world…’”
Morning cartoons blared from inside the tall man’s house. There were no more screams.
“‘…Where people ain’t happy with the luck of the draw. Where the sick and the sad have drawn up next door. My old street ain’t a street no more. Just a place for the mad to live without law…’”
Stacy had been a little lamb, a thin mess of blood and bone wrapped in a woolen sweater. The tall man stopped singing and smiled. His tongue slid over his lips—they were dry and broken. His body was alive with tingles. He even felt dizzy.
Stacy. He wanted to say the name out loud but didn’t dare. She was an architect, just like him. He had redesigned her for his purposes, for The Forgiveness.
Her name had a texture, a flavor to it, innocent but stern. Chocolate turning to charcoal.
Phlegm rattled in his throat and he forced the sticky wad down.
The two men were surrounded by trees, which didn’t judge or stare. This was the glory of inanimate things—you could always escape from them. People were harder. In a way, the trees were their allies. They could conceal certain things. Even them. They would have to be careful.
Rats swarmed among the bushes at the end of the yard. The glimmer of black eyes, tawny fur camouflaging with the deadfall. They chirped and squealed in their high-pitched way—it was painful to hear. Stacy’s cries had been easier to listen to; the tall man didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because he was grateful to Stacy for her sacrifice, and for the rats he felt nothing but disdain.
Vermin—disgusting little things. Those bastards could chew through anything with their razor teeth, and worse, they were too stupid to fear the traps he’d set, or the poisoned bait he left in the dankest corners of his house. He could hear them scurrying behind the walls at night, so close they might have been chewing inside his head. He had no idea how they had gotten in. Rats were sneaky.
The tall man’s hands weren’t shaking because of the cool, morning weather. They shook because he was excited. He could still remember the number of eyelashes Stacy had, and how they had felt in the hollow of his palm after he’d plucked them out. One by one.
“She suffered,” said the shorter, more solid murderer. His breath smelt of nicotine gum. Of the abattoir.
“Yeah.” The tall man had a faint Southern lilt to his voice, softened by his years in Washington State.
“I never thought you could feel so downright horrible.”
“Yeah.”
The taller man handed his friend a cigarette and a fifty-cent lighter that he’d bought at Ken’s Gas and Grocery in town. He didn’t smoke himself and had bought the Camels because he knew his comrade, his friend, would need them. Today more than any other time.
Bloody, soil-stained fingers held the cigarette over a wisp of flame. The shorter man spat out his gum and took a drag. He felt his lungs fill with smoke, held it. The tingle that reminded him of what a fool he’d been to quit in the first place. The short man paused and looked at the rats among the trees, waiting for nightfall, and exhaled. He thought of his wife back home in her bed. His knuckles hurt. Arthritis.
“Don’t worry,” the tall man said in his muddled accent. He lifted his hand and swatted a mosquito. A red star in the palm of his hand. He should have worn the bug dope, it was that time of year. “Next time will be less messy.”
Part One: Australia
Chapter One
June Nine, 2008
Sydney, Australia
The students were tracing their outlines on the pavement with stubs of chalk, the sound of their laughter drowned out by the thunder. Leaves spun around their schoolbags, dancing over the library steps.
But the attention of the students waned, and the laughter died. They rose, stretched their legs and walked away, leaving behind a series of child-sized stencils of varying colors and sizes.
Noah Deakins, eleven years old, watched all this, his school bag dangling from his shoulder, collar turned up against the wind. His gentle cobalt eyes followed his classmates until they slipped from sight. Cars and trucks rumbled by, shaking the ground. He watched the faces of the drivers, the pedestrians trying to outrun the coming storm.
Butterflies tumbled and fell on nervous wings in his stomach.
It was dark and the storm had almost arrived. He lived four blocks away but waited out the front of the library near his school anyway. His mother was going to pick him up on her way home from work. They were going shopping for a new pair of school shoes—his were worn thin in places and the imitation leather was now the color of the overhead sky.
It was three in the afternoon. Any other day and he would be in the library itself, lost among the books or planted at one of the computers. But not today. None of the things that defined him seemed to matter anymore.
He wondered what it would be like to live alone, without parents telling you what to do or where to be. A place where he could make all the mess he wanted to, where he could trod his shoes over the carpet and leave his backpack wherever it fell. It would be a place where dishes piled high. In his dream home there was a tent in the living room for sleepovers.
Noah had very few friends, the kind that stuck. He was a floater: liked, but nobody’s bestie. He much preferred to be alone, head bent low. It hadn’t always been that way, though.
He took in his surroundings. It was funny—he’d been on these steps a thousand times, but on that afternoon, everything seemed different.
The library, tall and grey. The heavy oak doors swung shut, silence and then opening again. People ran. Always late to get somewhere better.
The park across the road was wide and empty. Only the leaves moved there, whirring and spinning in constant, growing circles.
Rain started to fall, light and delicate at first, but soon it had the strength to dislodge twigs from the bird’s nests in the library gutters. The Mississippi-counts between lightning and thunder had grown close. Noah fished through his backpack and pulled out his old Toy Story 2 umbrella. He used to be embarrassed by it, but now he didn’t care.
The chalk outlines on the pavement washed away in thin rivers of white, blue and pink. Headlights sprung to life on the road. People vanished one by one into their cars, into shops. Into the library.
And then there was just Noah. Eleven years of age and alone on the steps. In the growing dark, in the rain. An eerie silence had fallen, as though the day knew what the night would bring, and was afraid.
Chapter Two
“Where are you?” she asked, hands outstretched. The words quivered as they spilled from her mouth, her breath short and sharp. “I can’t see—”
Moss-covered walls towered over her. The torches weren’t lit but there was light in the air, as though the stones themselves were glowing.
Eyes peered at her from the shadows like twin moons seen from the bottom of a well. Dripping water. The howl of wind through the tunnels. A pair of manacles hung from one wall. As she passed them, she imagined their grip on her wrists, digging into her flesh and scraping at the bones beneath.
“Please. Come out.”
And then she found it: the coffin, its lid rising. White faces, open mouths spilling out. She saw long teeth the color of cigarette stains. Their growls echoed through the fortress. The c
reatures didn’t care if they were seen or heard; she was the last of the living.
The girl screamed. They crawled towards her, hissing through bloodied smiles. This was it.
The creatures were heart attacks and lobotomies rolled into one, pallbearers and withered roses on caskets. They were death. And they had come for her.
She pushed back against the chamber wall and it came crashing down behind her. Spotlights burned bright and the vampires fell to their knees, racked by uncontrollable laughing—
Everything flipped as the camera tilted out of control. There was clapping from the wings. A woman in black theatre dressings grabbed the set, stopping it from hitting the ground. The boom-pole dipped into shot and the victim, who was today celebrating her tenth birthday, tore the wig from her head and cheered.
“Ah, stop it there,” Marshall Deakins said.
A click. The video froze.
Marshall put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. They stung from looking at the computer screen for too long.
Simone, his editor, sat at the desk next to him. They were both grateful that the high-pitched screams of the sugar-high children had been silenced.
In his thirty-one years, Marshall had never hated working more than he did at that moment. He pulled his head upright and looked at the monitor again. It was a blur, although that didn’t necessarily stop at the screen. “Simone, I’m almost done. Kaput. This is nuts.”
The editor wreathed in her swivel chair, blood-shot eyes looking back at her boss through horn-rimmed glasses. She smirked, chewing gum.
“Oh don’t give me that look, Simone,” Marshall said, sipping from the Diet Coke he’d salvaged from the vending machine twenty minutes before. “If you look at me like that one more time, I’m throwing you out on the street. Disowning you. Comprende, amigo? No pay. And no reference.”
They laughed, defeated. Simone punched his forearm.