Hidden Things

by Doyce Testerman

  “You didn’t have to—”

  “If I’m going to die, I’d like it to not be hypothermia that takes me down.”

  Calliope glanced at Vikous, then rolled up her window without comment. “There’s not much chance of that, is there?” she said after a few miles had passed.

  “Of what?”

  “Dying quietly,” Calliope said. Her voice was solemn, reflecting her morbid mood. “Not really one of the options.”

  Vikous met her eyes in the rearview mirror, his expression blank. “Well, it’d be all right by me if dying didn’t come into it at all, but yeah, if it happens it won’t be quiet.” He glanced at her. “You definitely won’t go quiet, anyway,” he deadpanned. “I doubt you do anything quiet.” He chuckled. “Like that time when your parents let you sign up for that school play.”

  “What?” She glanced at Vikous, her brow furrowed. “I don’t—”

  “You were, what? About fourth grade or so? The counselor said you needed to participate in some school functions to help you socialize. You hadn’t been going to the town school for that long or something, right? Help build your confidence.”

  “Something like that,” Calliope said, still frowning.

  “Yeah, but confidence wasn’t the issue, was it? Absolutely no problem with stage fright for the Jenkins girl.” Vikous grinned and his mouth stretched back much too far, which Calliope never liked to see. “You got up in front of everyone and just took over. Your folks were so embarrassed.” Vikous shook his head. “Snow White’s Evil Stepmother tries to kill everyone and take over the world on opening night—just a skosh over the top.”

  Calliope shook her head. “That isn’t what happened. I was trying to explain how she was just . . .” Her frown deepened. “I never told you about any of that. How do you—”

  “I found out after I died,” Vikous said, his eyes tracking the snowflakes that were starting to come down.

  Calliope’s heart thudded in her chest. “You . . . I didn’t think you knew that had happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Joshua turned to look at her, scratching at a long, shiny scar on his forearm—the one from the jungle gym accident. “Good grief, Calli, I called you twice afterward. Pay attention.”

  He grinned and his mouth stretched much too far back.

  Calliope screamed.

  The sound of it shocked her awake.

  “You, ehh, you sleep all right? You get, ehh, a good, ahh, nap?”

  Calliope stared across the table at Gerschon. His ears, still hairy, ended in tufted points that waved in unison with the movements of his bushy eyebrows. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed that before, or the points of his canines dragging at his lower lip. His leathery skin shone in the kitchen light, the fur-smooth hair along his jowls and arms a mix of salt and copper.

  “I had a weird—” Calliope cut herself off and forced a smile. “I slept very well, thank you.”

  “Oh, heh heh, you are . . . ehh, lying, I think.” He chuckled, his eyes slitted and sly, and reached back for a steaming pot on the stove, lifting it by its bare wire handle and swinging it over to the table. “I, ahh, made coffee. You?” He raised the pot, leering at her over the brim.

  Calliope kept her smile locked in place. “Sure.”

  He chuckled as he poured, shaking his head. Steam rose from her cup, but no smell. “Is good, you drink. He wanted you . . . bright-eyed for the . . . ehh, visit.”

  “I guess so.” Calliope felt her forehead crease, but took a sip, tasting nothing but hot, slightly metallic water. “He’s a good guide.”

  “Guide?” Gerschon made a mock-confused face—the kind adults use when a child gives the wrong answer to an obvious question. “You use the wrong word, ahh, I think.” He tilted his head and waggled his free hand back and forth. “Is close in sounding, but . . . guide? No . . . is goad, what Walker is.”

  “Walker?” Calliope cut in. “What—”

  “Sounding same, meaning different.” He paused for a second. “And . . . ehh . . . wrong, anyway. Is what he was. What Walker is now, ehh, I think there is no—”

  “Gerschon likes to talk.” The narrow-faced special agent stepped past Calliope and walked around to stand behind the old man. Gerschon hung his head, his expression ashamed, the small horns on his forehead—something else Calliope hadn’t noticed before—pointing nearly at the floor. “Sometimes he talks too much.” Walker patted him on the shoulder, then wiped his hand on his coat as he looked up at Calliope. “I only mind when it’s to the wrong people.”

  Calliope’s eyes narrowed. “Like you?”

  Walker’s pin-bright eyes met hers, but he spoke to Gerschon. “Miss Jenkins and I need to have a talk.” His face was blank. “Give us a minute.”

  Gerschon started to stand, but caught Calliope’s gaze. He hesitated. “You are . . . ehh, okay with this? This talk?”

  Calliope looked up at Walker, her face deliberately calm—the kind of bored look she knew irritated most people—then back to Gerschon. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m dreaming, right?” She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. “It’s not like he can do anything.”

  Gerschon opened his mouth to say something, but his eyes slid sideways—to Walker—and he nodded. “Oh-kay,” he said, the word a rough whisper. He shuffled out of the room, his small hooves dragging on the linoleum as though his legs were in shackles. Calliope watched him go, watched his tiny cloven feet, then turned back to Walker, eyebrows raised in silent challenge.

  “Right.” Walker sniffed, the nostrils of his hatchet-blade nose flaring. “Let’s talk.”

  “Whatever,” Calliope replied, her voice thick with boredom. “But I don’t see the point. I know this is fake.” She gestured around the kitchen. “We left Gerschon’s place almost a day ago.”

  “Oh, I know. Sorry about that.” Walker’s face—except for his eyes—took on a look of apology. “It’s the best I could manage, since I was never able to find that bloated stain you got White’s message from.” He leaned on the table, stretching across the open space toward Calliope. “Help me make it more accurate.”

  “H—” Calliope cleared her throat. “How?”

  Walker smiled, the too-sharp angles of his face pulling up into harsh V’s. “If you’re not at Gerschon’s, where are you?”

  The lights in the room went out, and the darkness filled with whispering voices.

  Calliope jerked upright, heart thumping, fumbling through the darkness for a light switch. A blocky red alarm clock LED near her grasping hands showed 1:43. Next to the clock, she found a lamp, then the switch at its base.

  A motel room. Dark windows. No one else in the room.

  Calliope got out of the bed and padded to the window. Pulling aside the curtains, she could see that the snow that had kept them off the roads for the last twelve hours had stopped falling. In the reflection from the darkened window, she could make out the room behind her clearly.

  Still no one else here. Her gaze came back to her own face. Except me.

  In the reflection from the window, her dark eyes looked like black plastic.

  12

  “WE’RE MAKING LOUSY time,” Calliope said.

  Vikous looked up from his breakfast and mumbled something around a mouthful of toast and scrambled eggs. He kept his hood raised in the diner, but Calliope found that she had no trouble seeing his face within its shadows anymore.

  “We left my house four days ago and we haven’t gotten halfway there.”

  Vikous lifted a gloved hand and extended his index finger in the air while he swallowed. “First day we got started late, then the trouble at the motel.” He extended a second finger. “Short day to get to Gerschon’s, which was sort of out of the way, but worth it.” He extended a third finger. “Then the snowstorm came on in the middle—”

  “I know,” Calliope said. “I know why it happened.”

  Vikous speared hash browns with one hand and grabbed packets of jelly from a dispenser on the table wit
h the other, the former going into his mouth, the latter into a pocket. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I want this to be done; I want to get where we’re going and find out what’s going on.” Vikous gave her a look. “What?”

  Vikous continued to watch her face, then set down his fork and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “You’ve got some sort of notion that getting where we’re going will fix everything. This isn’t a fairy tale—it really couldn’t be, at least not the kind they tell little kids. There’s more to it than that.”

  Calliope set down her coffee cup, hard enough to slosh some of the liquid over the edge. “Then what’s the point?”

  “You tell me,” Vikous said. “You’re the one that got Gluen’s supersecret message from behind the grave.”

  “I’ve told you what the message was,” Calliope said. “So maybe you could quit—” She stopped. “Tell me what you just said.”

  Vikous paused. “You’re the one White sent a message to?”

  Calliope shook her head. “No. You used a phrase for it.”

  “Behind the—”

  “Yes, that.” Calliope said. “Where did you learn it like that? It’s not behind, it’s beyond.”

  Vikous shrugged, looking puzzled. “It’s how it’s said with . . . well, us, I guess . . . all of us. What difference does it make?”

  “Walker. Walker said it that way.”

  Vikous searched her face. “The one from back at your office?”

  Calliope nodded. “You know him.”

  Vikous’s mouth twisted. “Walker’s a potential problem, but I think we dodged him. I’m pretty sure those guys from the motel were sent by him, and we lost them, so he’s out of the picture.”

  “Not my picture,” Calliope muttered.

  Vikous raised an eyebrow, his expression wary. “I’m not following.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about him.” She frowned. “I think. I don’t really remember much about the dreams, except he’s there and asking me questions.”

  “Walker is?”

  Calliope nodded again, her body tense for reasons she couldn’t name.

  Vikous searched her face, then set down the fork and started to slide out of their booth. “We’d better get moving.”

  “The number of people tangled up in this,” Vikous said, “is getting hard to keep track of.”

  Calliope pulled into the passing lane for the third time in twice as many minutes. “At least you know these freaks. I’m completely lost.” She glanced at Vikous without turning her head fully. “Sorry.”

  He shook his head, barely listening. He worked his unlit cigar between his fingers, but paid it no other attention. “The way I figure it, that makes at least three groups, not counting Gerschon, tied up in this.”

  “He’s one of the—”

  “He’s a satyr.” Vikous said, answering the question before she asked. “Was. Gave it up.”

  Calliope tilted her head, something half remembered inside her knowing it was the truth. “Gave it up?”

  “Some of it.” Vikous shrugged in his peculiar, hard-to-watch way. “Enough to fit in.”

  “Another way to hide.”

  “Not . . . no.” Vikous shifted in his seat. “What Gerschon is doing isn’t hiding as much as . . . removing just enough of himself that hiding isn’t required.”

  “I like him.” Calliope felt defensive on the little hairy man’s behalf.

  “I like him too,” Vikous replied, “but that’s what he did. He let some of himself go to fit in. Gluen did the same kind of thing.” His jaw muscles worked. “Walker took it a lot further.”

  “And you . . .” Calliope’s voice was even, but sounded distant to her own ears. To hear Gerschon equated to the sour-faced Walker made something in her chest go cold and hard. “You hide. That’s better?”

  “It’s not—” Vikous cut himself off, but Calliope could feel his glare even though she kept her eyes on the curving road. “We all pay prices. The prices Gerschon and I pay are different. Neither is better. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Calliope let the hum of the tires on the highway fill the cab before changing the subject. “Three groups?”

  “Three groups.”

  “You don’t think there’s overlap somewhere?”

  Vikous considered it, then shook his head. “No one’s reach goes that far. White’s killer would have had to plant someone ahead of time. Walker might have sent the goons at the motel, but he definitely wasn’t there, and that’s weird, because he’s the sort of guy who wants to be hands-on.”

  “You know him.” It wasn’t a question, but Calliope felt unexpectedly tense, waiting for his reply.

  Vikous’s expression soured further. “I do, and that’s not great news.”

  Calliope considered mentioning Faegos, trying to explain his involvement without mentioning the diner or the deal she had made with him. She shoved the idea away. “I just want to figure out what happened to Joshua. He said—” She swallowed. Her mouth was dry. “Or why. He told me what happened, I guess, but not why.”

  Vikous did not ask for more. “If we keep going and nothing gets any worse than it is, we should be fine. Nothing’s come apart yet.”

  Calliope thought of the encounter with Faegos and shook her head a bare fraction of an inch—almost a warding gesture. “Sounds good,” she said.

  Vikous glanced at her, then settled his head back, a slight crease in his brow. He said nothing, but in Calliope’s relatively brief experience, his silence was usually significant.

  “What?” she asked.

  He looked at her, frowning. “ ’Scuse me?”

  “What’s the look for?”

  “What look?” He gestured at the front window. “I was looking at the road.”

  She worked her jaw. “You had a look.”

  “I did not—” He stopped himself and turned back to the road. Calliope let the silence build up, a trick she had taught herself in the last few years. It didn’t come naturally to her, but she’d met very few people who could leave a conversation unfinished when faced with a long stretch of—

  “I was expecting another round of questions,” Vikous said. He looked at her, wearing a vaguely irritated expression. “I say something like ‘as long as things don’t get worse, things probably won’t get worse,’ and I kind of expect you’re going to bust me on it. You didn’t. It caught my attention.”

  Calliope smirked, shaking her head. “I’d just been thinking that the fact that you hadn’t said anything probably meant something.”

  Vikous grunted. “Apparently we’re both more interesting when we aren’t talking.”

  Calliope’s mouth quirked. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s told me that.”

  “Likewise.” Vikous leaned his head to the side, stretching his neck. “I don’t mind the questions, though, just so you know.”

  “Really?” Calliope cocked an eyebrow.

  Vikous made a sour face. “I can’t always explain everything, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good questions.”

  “I’m supposed to be good at that,” Calliope said. “Detective agency.”

  “Sure.” He frowned. “Actually, I’ve got a question about that.”

  Calliope kept her hands loose on the wheel and her tone light. “Why a crappy skip trace agency?”

  Vikous rocked his head back and forth. “Sure, if you want to put it that way.” He made a gesture with the hand resting on the door’s armrest. “I’ve heard you sing, so you can’t tell me that chasing down bail jumpers and taking pictures of cheating husbands is the thing you do best.”

  “It’s not,” Calliope said. “But sometimes you can be really good at something and still not be able to do it very well, you know?”

  Vikous looked at her, his expression made even more blank by his shining black eyes.

  Calliope sighed. “Being a good singer doesn’t actually mean I’m very good at being in a band.”

  “Ahh,” Vikous leaned
back in his seat. “Yeah. Okay.” He smirked.

  Calliope scowled at him, sidelong. “What?”

  He shook his head, as though it wasn’t important enough to repeat. “Just wondering if you were McCartney or Lennon.”

  She considered that, watching the dotted lines of the highway slip past. “Buddy Holly,” she finally said. Her voice was soft, nearly lost in the noise of the road.

  “Ahh.” Vikous paused, as though choosing his next words carefully. “So no Nick and Nora Charles fantasies behind the White Agency, then?”

  “What?” Calliope shot him a look. “Josh and I weren’t together when he started the agency.”

  Vikous frowned. “I didn’t—”

  “It was his idea,” Calliope continued, speaking over him. “I had to get my cert as we went. Took more than a year. It wasn’t fun.”

  “Whoa, hey.” Vikous raised his gloved hands. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Just . . . you know what?” Calliope cut in. “Let’s not. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Vikous settled back in his seat. A few seconds later, he murmured, “You just ask good questions, is all I meant to say.”

  The road rolled by beneath them, filling the small cab with its drone. Vikous almost didn’t hear Calliope’s quiet “Thanks.”

  “It’s always how I thought Weathertop would look,” Calliope said. They had emerged from the mountains and were driving north along I-25. Vikous didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. A monolithic slab of native stone jutted out of the tall hill that rose just to the east of its namesake city of Castle Rock. It had loomed ahead of them for the last twenty minutes of their approach, drawing attention with a casual authority.

  “You’ve been through here before?” Vikous said.

  “I drove back home to visit my sister a couple times,” Calliope said. “Then I came to my senses.”

  “You flew after that?”

  “I stopped going at all.” She turned her attention back to the massive hill. “The last time I came through here was with Josh, sightseeing.” She paused. “Stalling, really. We were going to stop and hike up to the top, but they’ve got all kinds of . . .” She shook her head. “It wasn’t something we could set up in an afternoon.”