“Just one question before I start,” I asked her. “Are you listening to me as Miss Hanratty or Officer Hanratty?”
“Didn’t know there was a difference,” she rumbled. “Everyone in this town wears two hats, at least.”
I shrugged and took a drink, barely managing to avoid spilling from the overfull mug. Definitely from the bottom of the pot; I could feel the grounds on my tongue.
Still, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I gulped it down, wiped my mouth on the back of my wrist, and started talking. Hanratty listened, nodded, and grunted a couple of times when that was called for, but mostly she just let me ramble. I told her about seeing the car out on the road and about going after it, and about the start-and-stop chase that we’d had halfway to the county line. I wasn’t proud in the telling, but I didn’t leave anything out, either.
“Did you see the driver?” Hanratty asked, when I finally wound down.
“Nope.” I looked sadly into the empty mug. “Best I got was a silhouette against the lightning.”
“And?”
I shrugged. “And whoever was in there must have had a hell of a time fitting into the front seat, because they were not thin. Not thin at all.” I thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure it was a man. Seemed to be shaped like one, anyway, though you spend enough time in Cambridge and you learn not to make assumptions on that sort of thing.”
She didn’t laugh, nor did she offer to get me another cup of coffee. Instead, she crossed her legs—a damn impressive sight to see, I might add—and scrunched up her face in the sort of “I’m thinking” look you usually only see on small children and Elmer Fudd. When she spoke, she didn’t sound happy.
“So you’re telling me that out of all this, out of Carl’s story and your story and your run in the rain, we’ve got nothing but the shadow of a fat man to go on?”
“That’s about it, yeah. Unless someone saw the car driving out here, or driving off once I was dusted.”
Hanratty snorted loud enough to rattle the window. “Mr. Logan, you were not dusted. You were mudded, not to mention played. I’d tell you that you did something stupid there, but that wouldn’t be true. You did so many stupid things that I don’t even know where to start the list.”
To my surprise, I felt a genuine twinge of embarrassment. “I know, I know. But I saw the car and…” My voice trailed off. “I just got mad.”
There was no sympathy in Hanratty’s voice as she creaked to her feet. “You nearly got dead, is what you got. Look, here’s what I want you to do if your car comes around again. I want you to call me, and then I want you to lock your damn door and sit the hell down. You got lucky this time, Mr. Logan. Your little friend could have just thrown the car into reverse after you went down, and then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Hell, he left you there to die. Next time, I want you to take this seriously.”
“I had been,” I said mildly. “Last time I was in town, I got the impression that you weren’t.”
Her face got hard, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. “You get a lot of wrong impressions, Mr. Logan. I’ll be going now. Nice to see you back on your feet. If you remember anything else, give me a call.”
I opened my mouth to say something, and a look from Hanratty shut it. “I’ll show myself out,” she said, and she stalked off. The slam of the kitchen door told me she had indeed found the exit on her own, and furthermore, had done so with style. I waited to see if she was really going or was instead going to stick her head back inside my door to yell something else.
The part of me that bet she was coming back in would have lost if there’d been money on the table. Even through the closed door and down the hall, I could hear the thump of a car door closing, and then the angry cough of a big sedan’s engine coming to life. By the time the gravel was spitting out from under her wheels, I’d already stood up and started heading for the last place I wanted to be.
The door to my parents’ bedroom was firmly closed when I reached it. The floor didn’t show any water, or any footprints. If Carl had been there, he’d mopped up after himself pretty good.
Gingerly, I put the coffee mug down on the hallway floor, then nudged it against the wall with my toe. My hand reached out for the doorknob, then hesitated. It just hung there in the air, not moving where I told it to.
“What the hell?” I said to myself, and I closed my fingers into a fist. They curled themselves into shape easily, but when I tried for the doorknob again, my hand froze in midair. I pulled my hand back, and it went easily. Tried to move it forward, though, and it stopped halfway there.
“Goddamn.” I stopped trying to move and stared at my hand. It didn’t do anything interesting, so I watched it for a minute, and then was struck by a thought.
“Stupid,” I told myself, and I knocked. Three times on the wood of the door, one after another.
There was no answer, of course, not that I’d been expecting one, but suddenly my hand felt lighter and I could rest it on the knob. Moving quickly, before whatever it was that had stopped me could change its mind, I turned the knob—old crystal, something that Mother always fretted over whenever I ran through the house—and stepped into the room.
No looking around this time. I knew what I was after. No words, either. If there was something in that room—and considering what I’d been through, a mysterious dent in a pillow didn’t seem like so much—it would have to get by without my conversation.
Instead, I made a beeline for the chest at the foot of the bed. It was cedar, and filled the air with its heavy scent. Grandfather Logan had made it with his own hands—had stained the wood and given it to my grandmother on their wedding night. Filled with blankets and lovingly tended, it had been off-limits for hide-and-seek all my life.
“Don’t play in there, honey,” Mother would say, but she’d never mention the real reason.
I flipped open the lid and started digging through quilts. It was a gamble, I knew. If Carl hadn’t taken care of it, if Carl hadn’t known it was there, then the thing I was looking for would most likely be a useless piece of junk. But I was banking that Carl knew more about that house and its belongings than I did, and that he did the same thing for Father’s things as he did for Mother’s legacy.
My hands closed on metal. “Well, look at you,” I whispered, and I pulled the weight up and out.
It was a shotgun, Father’s old Fox Savage 12-gauge. I unwrapped it from its cloth cover and looked at it.
It was perfect. Oiled, cleaned, and looking better than it had when Father had owned it. I cracked it and saw two #6 shells sitting there, pretty as you please. Hell, even the twin triggers gleamed. Clearly, someone had been expecting trouble.
Or had figured I would be.
I closed the gun, then smoothed the quilts I’d ruffled in my search. Whatever I’d run into trying to get into the room, I didn’t want to give it any more reason to get upset. Carefully, I shut the lid. There’d be enough time to look through Father’s things for more shells later. Right now, I just wanted to go sit on my porch with that shotgun. I wanted to sit, and watch, and wait.
And when the son of a bitch who stole my car came back, I wasn’t going to lock myself inside and call Officer Hanratty.
I was going to shoot him.
eleven
I sat out on the porch all morning with the shotgun in my lap. During that time the barrel of the gun got hot under the glare of the sun, four cars headed into town and two trucks headed out, and an ugly dog trotted along the edge of the drainage ditch on its way across my property. I yelled at it to shoo, and it lifted its leg before moving on at its own pace.
Served me right, I suppose. As the sun burned off the last of the clouds, I slowly came to the conclusion that neither car nor driver was likely to show. Still, I didn’t want to go inside. Doing that would have made me feel like a quitter as well as a fool. But the sun got hotter, and the mud dried and cracked, and not a damn other thing happened.
Finally, I compromised by le
tting myself take a trip to the bathroom. Shotgun in hand, I went back into the house and locked the door behind me, then set the gun down on the kitchen table. Carefully, I lined it up to point both barrels right at the center of the door. The toy soldier, I noted with approval, was already posted in that direction. “Sentry duty,” I told him, and I patted the gun as I stalked off toward the john.
I knew it was paranoid. Crazy, even. It wasn’t like I was going to rush out of the bathroom with my peter hanging out to defend the homestead from someone knocking on the windowpane. But I can’t deny it felt better to have the gun barrels be the first thing any intruder might see.
I didn’t bother to shut the door behind me as I went into the bathroom. It seemed silly, me being the only one in the house and all. I did, however, try to shut the window that had been open the day before. It was still cracked a couple of inches, and the wood of the sill was still moist. Carefully, I put my hands on the frame and pulled down.
It didn’t budge. I cursed a bit under my breath and tried harder.
Still, nothing.
“Time to do something stupid, I guess,” I announced to the sink as I flipped the toilet seat down. It had amused me to no end to see that Hanratty had no doubt propped it back up.
That being said, the toilet backed up against the wall with the window on it, and if I wanted to get more pressure on the stubborn thing, the only way to do it was to climb up on the bowl and push down.
Every kid climbs up on the toilet when he’s a kid, and every kid’s mother yells at him to get down. I’d been no exception, and neither had Mother. And so, I took a look over my shoulder and out the open door, just like I had when I was nine, before stepping up.
The seat groaned under my weight, but it held. Carefully I placed my feet directly over the lip of the bowl—no sense punching through and getting my shoes soaked—and leaned down on the top of the window.
It held fast. I pushed harder, throwing all my weight into it. It creaked a little, and some paint flaked down, but that was it. No movement, unless you counted the ominous creaking of the toilet seat under my feet.
“One more time,” I told myself, in part because I didn’t want to quit just yet, and in part because I was feeling the need to use the bathroom for its intended purpose. I dusted my hands, planted them at opposite sides of the window, and tensed my shoulders for the push.
Behind me, the bathroom door slammed shut, then kicked back open against the wall with a sound like a gunshot.
I looked around. The bathroom was empty except for me, as was the hall beyond.
No one else there.
Bullshit. That’s what my gut was telling me. The hairs on the back of my neck were up, and I had the cold certainty in my gut that someone was standing right there, watching me.
Slowly, I let go of the window and shuffled my feet around to face out.
The door slammed shut and open again, harder this time.
“Hello?” I called, realizing that anyone who could answer was in the house uninvited and closer to the shotgun than I was.
All things considered, though, that was preferable to the alternative. ”Eccentric” ran in the Logan line, and it was too short a hop from there to full-blown, batshit crazy.
No one answered, not my “hello” or my prayers. No floorboards creaked, no papers shuffled, nothing.
I was alone. The bathroom door was jumping, and I was standing on top of the crapper with no one else in the house.
No one else alive in the house, a voice in the back of my head said, and I tried to hush it immediately.
It didn’t listen. Think about it, Logan, it continued. Who’s doing that? What the hell happened when you tried to open the door this morning? Who was sleeping in your momma’s bed? It’s just plain common sense.
“I don’t call her Momma,” I said angrily. The door swung again. When it hit the wall, I could hear something crack. “And I don’t believe in ghosts. Carl, if that’s you, I’ve had about enough. This crap isn’t funny anymore.”
Carl didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else, but as I watched, the medicine cabinet flew open. Behind it, the door started swinging again, banging from open to shut and back again faster and faster.
And behind me, something slammed the window shut. It slammed down loud enough that for a moment I thought the gun had gone off. I half-jumped, half-turned to look, and I lost my balance. For a second, my hands cut the air as I reached for something to hang onto, then over I went.
I hit the bathroom floor shoulder-first, cushioning some of the blow. My head hit the tile a moment later with a crack louder than the one the door had made, and a bright light filled my vision. For an instant all I could see was blinding whiteness; all I could hear was a shrill ringing in my ears. I wonder if I’m bleeding, I thought, and was surprised by how calm I sounded. My hand moved to my forehead to feel for blood; it seemed to take an hour to move my fingers that far.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the light and the noise faded, replaced by a sharp pain behind my eyes and a dull one at my temple.
I winced and closed my eyes; I tried to sit up and thought better of it. Lying on that cool floor seemed like a good idea.
Something had changed, though, the voice in the back of my head was screaming. Something was different.
I tried to think about it, but it was like putting sandbags on a broken levee. Every time I got a few in place, the water broke through someplace else and knocked them away.
Still, at least it was quiet enough to let me try to think.
Quiet…
And then I knew. Slowly, I looked up from the floor and forced my eyes open against the too-bright light.
The door to the medicine cabinet sat perfectly still and mostly closed. The door to the bathroom? Open and silent.
Motionless.
An image painted itself in front of me, the picture of the moment I fell and the door swung to a gentle stop.
Right when I’d gotten my feet off the toilet.
“Mother?” I asked the air.
No answer.
Again.
But cool air washed over me. Then I passed out.
twelve
I woke up with my face pressed against the floor. Thinking fast, I got myself up as quick as I could. There was no telling how many people had been coming through the house lately, and the last thing I needed at this point was for Carl or Hanratty or whoever to come strolling in on me facedown and unconscious. That is, if Carl or Hanratty hadn’t been behind what I’d just been through.
Jumping to my feet that fast wasn’t too much of a mistake. My head hurt like hell, and I thought I distinctly heard my brains sloshing around inside my skull when I turned left and right, but otherwise I felt tolerable enough. Gingerly, I touched the medicine cabinet door. It sat quietly on its hinges, not moving. I rocked it back and forth a few times, just to be sure, but there was nothing to it. No abnormal resistance, no cold chill as I touched it—nothing. Nor did the door seem weighted oddly, or inclined to fall open or slam shut of its own accord.
It was just an ordinary medicine chest door that, the last time I’d seen it, had been swinging like the wing of a drunken bat. Doing it all by its lonesome, too.
“This is crazy,” I said out loud, mainly to hear my own voice in the silence. “I need to get out of this house.” I looked around and then added, “Just for a little bit.”
Nothing answered me.
Quickly, before I could change my mind, I grabbed the shotgun and went out the kitchen door.
It was, I decided as I half-shut the door behind me, time to go down into the Thicket.
The neighbors had unkindly referred to the land past the pine trees by that name for as long as I could remember, and it was as good a name as any for it. Since Father hadn’t used the land for what they’d thought God intended it for, it had grown up right thick, and the passing years had made it thicker. Thanks to Carl, the land right by where Mother and Father were buried was passable enough, but on
ce you got beyond it there was less grass and more briar with every step. Here and there trees punched up through the knee-high weeds, a mix of pine and black locust grabbing for chunks of sunlight.
You could look back into it a good ways, a few hundred yards at least, until the trees got too thick and the weeds got too tall for good seeing. There were deer down there, I knew, enough that men from town had paid Father for the right to go hunting on the land. No doubt there was other wildlife in the Thicket as well, coyotes and rabbits and God knew what else. Copperheads, most likely—you couldn’t swing a stick without hitting one anywhere else in the area. Still, copperheads and rattlers weren’t a problem as long as you had a good pair of boots on and made enough noise that they knew you were coming.
For my part, I was wearing ratty sneakers and saying nothing as I went. I did, however, have a shotgun with the safety off cradled in my left arm. No shells in my pocket—hell, I didn’t even have my damn keys—but I didn’t figure I’d be needing any. The Thicket ran deep into the property and was bounded by the back ends of a few of the local farms. No roads ran back there; no trails for dumbass kids to ride their ATVs or their BMXs. Hell, I don’t think Father had been back there more than a couple of times, and then only when Mother had made him walk the property line.
But the Thicket was where I was going, and part of me was hoping some damn fool coyote would pop out of the trees, just so I could unload on it, literally and figuratively.
That wasn’t why I was down there, mind you, or at least not entirely. No matter what was going on in the house, I needed to be away from it for a while, needed some clean air to clear my head before I landed on it again. The house was small, close, old, and I was feeling hemmed in within its walls. Hemmed in, but not safe—apparently someone was coming and going as they pleased, while I just watched and yelled and got made a fool of.
Town was out. I was feeling better than any man who’d been rained on, dropped in the mud, and smacked with a bathroom floor had a right to be, but that still didn’t mean I was up to the walk. Nor did I feel like calling Sam for a lift. I was hoping Sam and I would be friends, and I didn’t want to presume on short acquaintance.
Firefly Rain Page 10