Grayland

by James Bierce

  “Sarah, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you. What’s wrong?”

  “She’s coming up the driveway, keep the doors locked — and don’t call me back.”

  He hands the radio to Larry, then waits for Amanda to pass by the walkway to the shed before aiming his gun at her.

  “If you pull that trigger, we’re gonna be surrounded by those fuckers — more than we can handle,” Larry warns him.

  “I’m well aware of that.” He keeps her in his sights as he watches her walk up onto the porch and knock on the door, but she doesn’t even stay long enough for an answer. Instead, she heads around to the side of the cabin, trying to look through the covered windows as she passes by them. “I don’t see Beth’s gun, do you?”

  “No, but she could’ve hidden it somewhere in that coat she’s wearing.”

  “Come on, let’s get a little closer.”

  Everyone inside the cabin, including the two boys, are holding loaded guns as they listen to the harrowing screech of Amanda’s knife as she runs it across the glass pane of the back window. Then they hear a knock again, this time coming from the back door.

  “Mom, I’m scared,” Ben cries, his gun shaking in his hands.

  “Shh, I know sweety, she’ll leave soon, I promise,” she says, gently taking the pistol from him and placing it into her own pocket.

  “No, she won’t. She’s coming in.”

  As the words leave his mouth, the doorknob starts to rattle. Sarah aims her gun at the door, reminding herself that what’s on the other side is only a young girl, disturbed as she might be.

  “Why don’t we just shoot her through the door?” Matt asks.

  “Because it might be your father or Larry,” Sarah whispers back. “Just be patient, and only shoot if I tell you to.”

  A few moments later they all hear a commotion outside, followed by the agonizing screams of a girl. Sarah runs to the window and looks out through the curtain, and sees Curtis on the ground straddling Amanda, his hands wrapped tightly around her throat. As soon as Beth sees him, she unlocks the door and runs outside, hitting Curtis in the head with the butt of her rifle and knocking him down. Still dazed from the hit, Curtis tries to get up, but then finds himself face to face with the barrel of her gun.

  “Beth, what the hell are you doing?” Larry screams at her.

  “She’s a fucking child Larry! I’m not gonna stand by and let him murder a child.”

  Curtis slowly and cautiously stands up, his legs still wobbly and weak. “It’s too late, she’s already dead.” They all look at Amanda’s limp body, her bloodshot eyes still wide-open and frightened. He pushes the barrel of Beth’s rifle down as he passes by her. “Don’t ever point that at me again, understood?” He waits for an answer, but gets nothing in return. Then as he begins to walk away, he hears a slight coughing sound, and then a desperate gasp for air. Beth kneels down next to the girl, dropping the gun on the ground in the process, then holds both of her hands, trying her best to warm them up. Curtis, seeing life returning to the girl’s body, quickly picks the rifle up and walks back to the cabin, utterly disgusted by the scene. “She’s not staying here.”

  Beth looks up at Sarah, who stares back at her disapprovingly before following her husband back into the cabin. Feeling the small, frail hands hold onto hers, she glances down and notices a number of dark-colored spots on her palms.

  Larry, sitting down a few feet away on an old splitting stump, shakes his head and sighs. “What’s the plan, Beth?”

  “I don’t have a plan.” She sits down beside Amanda and inspects the marks on her neck closely, then notices the focus coming back in her eyes. “Can you hear me, Amanda?”

  The girl nods, then smiles slightly.

  “Even her smile gives me the creeps,” Larry mutters.

  “Larry, shut up.”

  “So what are we gonna do with her?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to take her someplace.”

  “And where would that be? We can’t exactly call social services…”

  “We’ll have to drive her someplace.”

  “You mean dump her? Like a cat?”

  Beth ignores his question and begins inspecting her fingernails, seeing what looks like dried blood underneath them. “We can’t go north, not as messed up as Westport is — and we can’t go east into Aberdeen, it’s even worse. I guess we’ll head south.”

  “How far south?”

  “I really don’t know, Larry, I guess as far as it takes.”

  Beth starts checking the pockets on Amanda’s coat, pulling out candy wrappers and small pieces of jewelry. Then as she checks an inside pocket, Amanda reaches up and tries to stop her, but Beth pushes her hand away and pulls out a small photo. “Larry, look at this…”

  “What is it?”

  She holds it up, a family portrait of the Lockwoods, each of them with a crudely drawn circle around them. All except Curtis that is, he has a large ‘X’ crossed over his face.

  “Beth… we need to show them that.”

  “No, we don’t. You think it’ll change the way they feel about her?”

  Larry looks down at Amanda, who smiles back at him, with a warm look in her eyes that contrasts with the overall look of death on the rest of her face.

  “I’m not at all comfortable with this…” Larry protests.

  “With hiding the photo?”

  “No, with any of it.”

  Amanda grabs hold of Beth’s hand, who quickly jerks it away by instinct.

  “I’m sorry,” Amanda says softly, her voice sounding like rough sandpaper.

  “That’s okay, you just startled me. Do you need something?”

  “Maybe a little water. My throat is sore.”

  Beth looks back at Larry, who nods and slowly stands up, reluctant to be a servant to a killer.

  “Thanks Mr. Gossman,” Amanda says, which stops Larry in his tracks.

  “How did you know my last name?”

  She smiles again, then sits up. “My throat is really sore, Mr. Gossman.”

  The wind is howling outside, and the cabin shakes every time a gust blows in from the beach. It’s too dark to see anything, but Curtis can hear the constant roar of the fir trees surrounding them, and the loud cracking sound whenever one of them loses a limb — but no matter how strong the storm gets outside, the tension inside the cabin is worse, and it’s still escalating.

  He’s sitting next to the front door, facing the two queen beds on the other side of the room, with his gun plainly visible in his grip. His sons are sleeping in the closest bed, while Larry and Beth share the other. Sarah is sitting at the small wooden table in the kitchen, watching as Amanda tries to squirm out of the ropes — the girl’s eyes locked on Curtis.

  “You should get some sleep,” Curtis whispers to his wife.

  Sarah moves her chair next to him, then notices the gun in his hand. “Will you put that in your pocket or something, you’re making me nervous.” Begrudgingly, he does as she asks. “And no, I’m not going to bed, Beth doesn’t want you watching her alone.”

  “What, she’s afraid I’m gonna kill her again?”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Of course I would, look at her.”

  As much as she wants to argue with him, and as horrible as the idea of murdering somebody is, she knows that he’s probably right. Amanda is cold and soaked to the bone, exhausted, her clothes are falling apart, she’s bleeding from numerous injuries all over her body, and her feet are bruised and bloody from not wearing any shoes for who knows how long — and yet she’s still trying her damnedest to free herself from the rope that Curtis used to bind her. She knows that the girl is never going to leave them alone, and they’ll never be able to live in peace as long as she’s still breathing.

  “So they’re leaving tomorrow morning?” Curtis asks.

  “Yeah, that’s what they said.”

  “How long are they going to be gone?”

  “You
mean how far away are they taking her?”

  “It has to be out of the county — otherwise she’ll end up back here again.”

  “Larry said it’ll be far enough, and that they should be back in a day or two.”

  “Good, we really have no idea how well she knows the area.”

  “Ben said that she grew-up in Westport, so I’m sure she knows her way around.”

  Curtis stays silent for a few moments, then starts whispering — his voice so quiet that Sarah has a hard time hearing him. “You were right, we really should move.”

  “You mean after they get back?”

  “Or after they leave. We can’t risk having her back in our lives.”

  Sarah looks over at Beth and Larry, both of them sound asleep in their bed. “I’m sure they’ll be fine, they know how to handle themselves. I just wish they weren’t taking her south, which is exactly where we should be heading.”

  He looks back at the girl on the floor, seeing blood drip from her wrists where the rope is burning through her skin — but it still doesn’t stop her from trying to break free. “What they’re doing is a mistake, and it’s going to end horribly.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MENLO: DAY 3

  The next morning, after finding David’s crumpled body lying on the floor at the top of the stairs, George couldn’t help but wonder if his friend was genuinely seeking help when he shot him, or whether it was just a poorly executed ruse to lure them into a dangerous situation downstairs. The deeply felt guilt is already beginning to take its toll on him, along with the knife wound that David left in his side. Neither he nor Christine slept during the night, fearful of what might be coming through the weakened door, or that the fires that are growing ever closer might actually ignite something on the roof — but they were relieved to discover that the barn was entirely empty, and in one piece, when the sun came up at dawn.

  Once outside, George and Christine start walking west toward Willapa Bay and the town of Raymond, carrying most of David’s gear as well as their own. The sun is shining brightly today, making its way through the thick smoke overhead and turning everything a strange orange color that looks more like a painting than reality. As they pass by the western barricade that was built by the ill-fated former residents, George looks up at the cemetery on the hill overlooking the valley, and sees countless gravestones with a perfectly picturesque view of the dead town below. The contrast between the two is massive — on one side of the highway is a well-organized and thoughtful way to honor the people who have died, and on the other side he sees the pastures of Menlo behind him, filled with corpses, haphazardly thrown together into piles and waiting to be burned like trash.

  Just a few miles down the road they come to another cemetery, this one much smaller than the last. According to legend, (and the sign beside the highway) the grave sitting on a grassy knoll belongs to a 19-year-old man named Willie Keils. He reportedly died of malaria in 1855, only days before he and his family were to begin their journey from Missouri to the Pacific. It was decided that his body would be placed inside of a lead-lined barrel which would then be filled with alcohol, and that the family would take him out west and bury him properly wherever they settled. George had visited the site as a kid, and had driven past it numerous times on his way to the ocean, but he never really thought about what a struggle it must have been until now. It took an incredible amount of courage to make a trip like that, traveling across an untamed country by wagon, and still reeling from the death of their son. Still, he couldn’t help but feel jealous. Willie’s family were going someplace hopeful, a prosperous place where they could settle down and help build a community from the ground up. His situation was similar in some ways — a grieving husband taking what’s left of his family to find a new home, except that in his version, hope and prosperity died months ago, along with the rest of civilization.

  “It looks like the fire is to the south,” Christine says, pointing toward the town of South Bend.

  “Good, we’re going north anyway.”

  “I thought we weren’t heading in any particular direction…”

  “We weren’t, but David had this idea a while back, and I thought we might try it. We’ll keep going north, looking for anything along the way that might work for us, and if we don’t find it, we’ll hike up into the old growth forests in the Olympics and disappear for a while.

  “For a while?”

  “For as long as it takes. As long as we have a dry place to sleep and food in the cupboards, we’ll be just fine.”

  “And when we run out of food, then what? We can’t just run around killing our dinner every night.”

  He laughs, realizing what a poor job he’s done in preparing her for the dilemma they’re in. “You expect us to gather canned food the rest of our lives? Those things have an expiration date, and we’re gonna have to start saving them for emergencies only.”

  “Have you ever hunted before?”

  “No, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  They largely bypass any neighborhoods as they make their way through Raymond, seeing only the occasional shadows moving around inside the houses on the outskirts of town. The streets themselves, however, are as deserted and lonely as the ones back home, littered with trash and abandoned vehicles, a few of which still have the badly decomposed bodies of their former occupants inside of them. It’s not until they reach the bay itself, where there’s normally not a soul in sight for miles around, that they first spot a figure on the road behind them. At first, because of the sun shining overhead, George thinks that it must be another person, a normal person, but that thought quickly vanishes when he looks through the scope of David’s rifle. Their gender is still a question, but it’s obvious by they way they’re walking that the person is sick. He waits for a few minutes before taking a shot, but his aim isn’t nearly what David’s was, and the gunshot does nothing to slow them down.

  They keep moving, past the marshy wastelands of the bay, and the windswept trees that line the highway along the jagged coastline of the Pacific Ocean, until they come to an area called North Cove, where the road has fallen into the sea. The erosion isn’t a great surprise to George, or to anyone else that’s ever spent any time on this section of the coast. The ocean currents have been taking the land in this area for decades, swallowing houses, roads, a lighthouse, and even a cemetery several years ago. The last time George was here the waves were already crashing against the pavement of the highway, only a few years after this road was moved further inland for the same problem. The setback forces them to make their way up the hill instead, through a steep overgrown forest that gives them a breathtaking view of the abandoned town below them, but also drains what little energy they have left. It’s already late afternoon by the time they reach the southern edge of Grayland, and their unwelcome companion has substantially shortened the distance between them, showing no signs of slowing down.

  “Dad, I can barely feel my legs.”

  “I know, me too. We’re gonna have to find a place to sleep for tonight anyway.”

  She’s noticed her father holding his side for a few miles now, and she can see the bloodstain leaking through his shirt and onto his jacket, but she knows better than to ask him about it — he would lie anyway. “What about him?” She points behind them, where their follower is still tracking them.

  “We’ll just hope they’re as worthless with locked doors as the others have been.”

  The main street running through town isn’t exactly overflowing with hiding places. The buildings are far apart, but they’re also cheaply made using highly breakable materials like thin paneling and vinyl, and the relative lack of trees makes virtually every building visible from the highway. As George starts walking toward a rundown two-story commercial building, Christine grabs his arm and points to a church across the street.

  “Why don’t we spend the night in there? It doesn’t look so dirty.”

  “Yeah, and the door looks flimsy
as hell.”

  She looks closer, and sees that he’s right — it looks old and fragile, and has a large glass panel right in the middle of the door. “I guess they didn’t figure anyone would break into a church.”

  “He would.” George nods behind them, where the person is standing in the middle of the road only a few hundred yards away, watching their every move. When he opens the door of the commercial building and glances back, he sees them start walking again, only toward the back of the building.

  “Lock the door, I’m gonna see if I can find a rear entrance.”

  “Okay, I’ll check upstairs.”

  “No, stay put. We’ll both check upstairs.”

  After setting his bags and the rifle down beside the door, he pulls his handgun out and quickly looks over a couple of offices in the back, but finds nothing but an old metal desk and some boarded up windows. As he makes his way down the hall, however, he can hear the familiar sound of a door knob rattling at the end of the corridor. The handle is shaking violently, but the heavy steel door stays put. He aims his gun at the small window at the top, then continues forward, hoping to get a lucky shot — but just then the rattling stops, and he hears a thump from upstairs, followed by the fast steady rhythm of footsteps across the old linoleum floors.

  “Did you hear that?” comes a voice from behind him.

  George nearly has a heart attack before realizing that Christine is standing right next to him. “Yes, I heard it. Don’t sneak up on me like that, I thought you were still in the other room.”

  With their guns drawn, they both approach the staircase cautiously, with George in the lead. When he steps onto the first tread he feels a sharp pain shooting from his wound up into his kidneys and back, but the feeling quickly disappears when he sees a dark figure running past the top landing.