Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  Brett’s cowboy hat had been knocked off and her perfect straight blond hair—perfect cowgirl hair, Hallie and Dell had called it—was shoved up into the collar of her shirt, two strands of it running straight across her face and she didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Brett,” Hallie said.

  Brett looked at her, her pupils huge and dark. “They weren’t here,” she said. “They weren’t here!”

  Brett Fowker didn’t believe in the supernatural or in strange unexplainable things. She’d been with Hallie and Boyd back in September when they confronted Martin for the final time in the old cemetery in Jasper. She’d seen weather that couldn’t be explained, had seen—or heard about, anyway—Lorie after she was burned to ash. But afterwards, even after Hallie had explained it all to her, she’d said—I don’t think that’s how I’ll remember it. Honest about it, but determined all the same not to let it change the world she knew.

  And yet, here they were. “They weren’t here,” she said again.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said, “they weren’t.”

  Brett took a deep breath. Before she could say more, a woman Hallie didn’t know climbed out of the cab, sliding across the bench seat to the driver’s door because the truck was at a tight angle to the Humvee and the passenger door no longer opened. She wore stiff blue jeans, a yellow silk blouse, and hiking boots that didn’t look like she’d ever done any hiking in them.

  Seeing that they were both all right, Hallie took a closer look at the accident in front of her. It had to be Hollowell. And she could feel an itch along her spine, because he was coming, had to be coming. This accident felt creepily familiar, but wasn’t something she recognized immediately. Maybe it was the military vehicles, the desert paint; maybe it was more.

  “Is everyone all right?” Hallie asked.

  Brett glanced at her passenger, who nodded, brushing a hand down her arm as if she had to check. The right front bumper of Brett’s pickup was hooked under the rear of the Humvee, the headlight on that side had shattered and the grille looked like some of the plastic had broken, but it looked drivable.

  “If I—,” Hallie began. There was a flicker, like hot air rising, and Hollowell was there, directly behind Brett. He wore black wool pants, black loafers, a black polo shirt buttoned to the top button, and a gray wool blazer.

  He grinned at Hallie.

  She took a step. Hollowell raised his hand, cupped slightly like he intended to grab Brett by the back of her neck. Hallie stopped. Hollowell drew back his hand. “Leave her alone,” Hallie said, her voice tight like twisted wire.

  Brett frowned.

  Hollowell said, “I want you to come with me.”

  “No,” said Hallie. “I’m not your bargaining chip.”

  “What are you talking about?” Brett said.

  “And you can’t kill me.” Hallie ignored Brett for the moment. “It doesn’t work.”

  “I can kill her,” Hollowell said. “Just one touch.”

  “Hallie…,” Brett said.

  The woman with Brett said to her, “Is she okay?”

  Hallie said, “Can’t they see you?”

  “It’s not their time,” Hollowell said smoothly. “So, no. But I can still kill them.”

  She was too far away, wouldn’t be able to jump him before he touched Brett and probably the woman with her and they died. She stalled. “What is this?” she asked, waving to the wreckage to her left.

  Hollowell took a step back, but he was still shielded by Brett. Hallie wished she could will the two of them back into their truck, wished she and Brett had been the kind of friends who’d made up secret languages when they were in third grade, special sign language or secret code that meant—get back in the truck.

  “You don’t recognize this?” Hollowell asked. “I thought you would. In Afghanistan, the first few months, you had a boyfriend.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Hallie said, though she sort of had. He’d been a marine, a few months younger than she was, both of them pretty experienced by that time and everyone else had seemed so young. They’d hung out together, played a lot of poker, slept together twice, and then he died. Hallie remembered what his captain told her, that they’d gone out to recover a broken-down Humvee. A sandstorm came up, they drove right into the Humvee they’d been looking for, and when they got out to inspect the damage, they’d been shot by men who had sneaked into place when they heard the two trucks collide.

  So this was that. Sam Paradi’s death. Hallie blinked. Damn Hollowell anyway.

  Brett stepped forward.

  “Tell her not to move!” Hollowell said sharply.

  “Brett,” Hallie said, her voice sounding surprisingly calm even in her own ears. “Do you trust me?”

  Brett stopped, took a deep breath. “Hallie,” she said.

  The other woman put her hand on Brett’s arm. “I can—,” she said.

  Brett said, “Wait.”

  “One minute,” Hallie said. “Just don’t move for one minute.”

  “Are there—?” she stopped, couldn’t bring herself to say “ghosts,” Hallie figured.

  “Sort of,” Hallie said. “I’ll explain. I can explain.”

  “Just … take care of it,” Brett said through tight lips.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said.

  “I will kill them,” Hollowell said. “I have no compunction. Why should I? This is what I do.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hallie said. “Why now?”

  “What you think is not important to me,” Hollowell said.

  “Too bad for you,” Hallie said. “You shouldn’t have stuck a traffic accident in front of me on the highway.”

  Suddenly, the black dog materialized in midair just in front of her, hit the ground, leaped again, and hit Hollowell hard in the chest. There was a flurry of fur and man, Hallie couldn’t actually tell what was happening. She ran forward. Brett saw her coming, grabbed the woman in the yellow silk blouse, and flung them both sideways. The dog fell back, hit the ground hard. Hallie planted her feet and threw the fireplace poker like a spear right at Hollowell’s chest. There was a noise, a weird snapping sound, Hollowell disappeared, and the fireplace poker dropped to the ground in a cloud of dust.

  The dog popped back to its feet, shook itself all over, like shaking off water. “Thanks,” Hallie said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Brett said, scrambling to her feet, “what was that?” Brett didn’t swear very often, mostly when she was around Hallie.

  The yellow silk blouse woman said, as Brett offered her a hand up, “Is your friend—? Is this the friend you told me about?” She looked at Hallie, a crease across her forehead. “And what about these—? Why is no one here?” She seemed remarkably calm, but Hallie could hear a quiver in her voice, as if she hoped projecting coolness would be the same as actually feeling it.

  “Fine. It’s fine,” Brett said. She closed the distance between herself and Hallie, grabbed Hallie’s arm, and said in a fierce whisper, “This was over. In September. I thought that this was over.”

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. “I thought so too. Who is that?” indicating the yellow silk blouse woman with her chin.

  “I don’t think that’s really important right now,” Brett said. “What is this? What just happened here?”

  Hallie took a step back. She walked over to Brett’s pickup and retrieved her fireplace poker and then walked back to Brett. She hefted the poker in her hand, felt the weight of it shift and settle. “Do you really want to know?” she asked.

  Brett sighed. “No, actually,” she said. “No, I don’t.” She stepped back, then stepped in close again. “Will it—whatever it was—will it be back?”

  “I don’t know,” Hallie said honestly. “You should maybe … Here.” She handed Brett the fireplace poker.

  Brett looked at the iron poker. She looked at Hallie. “I didn’t see anything,” she said.

  “Salt should help,” Hallie said. “Line your doors and windows. I think. I think salt will help.”
<
br />   Brett looked at Hallie. She looked over her shoulder at the yellow silk blouse woman.

  Hallie heard the sound of an approaching car. No sirens—so someone had either called it in, saying everyone was walking around, or were about to call it in when they saw the stack of cars. Hallie touched Brett on the arm and stepped away to speak briefly to the dog. “Is he coming back?” she asked.

  The dog had dropped to the ground in the shade cast by the bed of Brett’s pickup truck, as if it had just run a race. It gave her a long look before it said, “If he doesn’t have an assignment, then it will take him a few hours, maybe longer. Has to climb back out.”

  “Really?” Because that would at least be something.

  “You’re trouble,” the dog said.

  “I thought that was why you liked me,” she told it.

  The dog laughed. Hallie turned back to face Deputy Teedt coming around the corner of the utility truck, looking it and the Humvee up and down as if he couldn’t actually believe they were sitting here. He looked at Hallie. His expression changed to something approaching resignation. “I should have known,” he said.

  Hallie grinned at him. “Things happen,” she said.

  “Yep,” Teedt said. “I suppose you can explain this?”

  “No, not really,” Hallie said.

  Teedt sighed.

  16

  It was late when Hallie got back to the ranch. Her father was already in bed, one light left burning over the kitchen sink. It wasn’t until she’d taken off her boots, scrounged a sandwich from the refrigerator, and sunk down at the table with a tired sigh that she realized Boyd had never called her. And he was supposed to be back. Late today, he’d said. He should have called.

  She pulled out her cell phone.

  No answer.

  No messages.

  She dialed again.

  Nothing.

  She left a message. “Where are you? Are you home?” Because he would have called if he were back in Taylor County. Right?

  It wasn’t that Boyd couldn’t take care of himself, because she knew that he could. But Travis Hollowell was out there. And he was looking for Boyd. The dog had said Hollowell might not be back for a while, but there’d been plenty of time for him to find Boyd before he created the wreck at the intersection.

  She called again.

  Still no answer.

  She wasn’t worried about him. Something had delayed him, and he hadn’t called because … well, he hadn’t called. She wasn’t worried. It was just that she wanted to talk, about reapers and vehicles that looked and smelled like Afghanistan and friends who had died, about black dogs and Pabby. To talk.

  He never answered.

  She put on her jacket and went back outside, but stopped with her hand on the door of her pickup truck. Where was she going? What was she going to do when she got there? She put her head against the cold glass of the driver’s-side window. If he wasn’t home, was she going to drive to Iowa? Which road? How would she find him?

  You better be okay, goddamnit, she thought.

  The sky was clear, the stars bright points of light above her head. The temperature was already below freezing and dropping quickly. Tonight would probably—finally—be the first hard frost. Hallie turned around and leaned her back against the truck, her hands shoved in her pockets. When she thought of leaving, which she’d thought a lot before all this latest—Pabby and Boyd and Lily—she remembered this, the cold and the quiet. Not silent, because you could always hear things on the prairie—the rustle of dry grass, the wind around the corner of an old building, distant trucks on the highway—but quiet. Hallie’d been to Berlin and London and New York City and she liked the pace, that things happened there, that you could always find something, but she liked this too, that sometimes things just stopped.

  She hadn’t thought about Kate Matousek’s job offer since she’d mentioned it to her father—hadn’t thought about it much at all for the last two days, to be honest—not that she didn’t still want it, didn’t still think it was a good fit for her, or that she didn’t still plan on leaving. But there were immediate things—Pabby and Hollowell and Boyd, always Boyd. Who better be all right, she thought again.

  Because she needed him to be.

  She pushed herself away from the truck and started back across the yard. She heard the wild flutter of a flock of birds taking flight from the bushes west of the house. The shadow when it came this time was long and narrow. She didn’t even see it until it was right there, next to her. Before she could react, it wrapped itself around her ankle again.

  Flash. Flash. Flash.

  A roan horse alone on the open prairie. An orange tractor burning against a cold winter sky. Blue silos. A school bus with a slash of bright green paint across aluminum windows. Hallie didn’t know any of these scenes. Not her life and not her death. But they kept coming. An ice cream stand with boarded-over windows, NEVER AGAIN painted in fluorescent yellow across the front. An autumn tree with brilliant red leaves. Sunset. Sunset. Sunset. Winter storm. She tried to close her eyes. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t even know if she could close her eyes, if she had a body. Would it be like this forever? Had dying finally caught her? Here? Like this? For no reason at all?

  An old man with a cane.

  Hallie didn’t know how long he’d been standing there before she realized that he was there somehow outside the flashing scenes, though those scenes continued flash, flash, flashing behind him. He was tall and very thin with elegant long fingers that curled around the cane’s knob like, despite his age, he had lost very little of his strength. He had a hawkish nose and one pale blue eye half-sunk in its socket. Over the other eye, he wore a black patch. He looked at her. And waited.

  “Who are you?” she asked him, surprised that she had a voice at all, because if she couldn’t close her eyes and she couldn’t walk away, how could she talk?

  “I am Death.” He frowned, as if he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d said it.

  “I’m not going,” Hallie said.

  And she wouldn’t. She didn’t know how she would stop him, but if he was really Death, if there really was a Death, well, he’d left her behind once. As far as Hallie was concerned, he didn’t get a second chance. This time, she would have a say. And she was really pretty stubborn.

  “The natural order of things,” he said.

  “What?” Hallie said.

  “I maintain—” Brief pause. “—the natural order of things.” Like a skipping record.

  “I don’t understand,” Hallie said, which seemed to her to encompass pretty much everything—what was going on right this minute, Travis Hollowell, dying and coming back.

  “Martin Weber went against the natural order.”

  Huh. Because she’d expected him to say that she did, because she’d died, because that’s what everyone else kept telling her. “That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?” she said. “His point, I mean, to disrupt the natural order and control the weather.”

  Death—if that’s who he was—inclined his head. “Thin. The walls. Always, always thin. But now they’re too—” He spoke in stops and starts. “Thin. Too thin. I don’t— I can’t— Tracking is very hard.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  Death smiled, but his one eye looked confused or frightened or maybe both. “Because I can,” he said.

  Hallie coughed and found it impossible to stop. Coughed under the blue white arc of the yard light with her hands like frozen blocks of ice, palms raw from the hard cold ground and bitter cold wind across the back of her neck. But Death was gone and the flashing vertiginous scenes were gone and goddamn what the hell?

  Was that a dream?

  Because it hadn’t felt like a dream.

  Still coughing, she heard the voice again: I want to talk to you. About how things work. I want to talk. She heard it twice, the exact same thing. Then nothing.

  Her chest ached like she’d been clobbered with a two-by-four. She pushed herself up and sat
for a minute on the near-frozen ground. Black dogs and reapers and now Death. Yeah, her life wasn’t weird at all.

  After a few more minutes, she got to her feet, almost not shaky.

  She looked around—for the shadow, for the black dog, for Lily’s ghost. None of them were there. Just Hallie. And the yard light. And the cold north wind.

  Okay, then, the hell with it, she thought. Because this sort of thing didn’t resolve itself just by standing around and worrying about it.

  She went inside, poured herself a glass of water, and drank it. Then, she drank another. The whole supernatural world was knocking on her door. Boyd wasn’t answering his phone. Every auto accident ever was probably going to be reenacted in front of her in the course of the next few days. And people were disappearing.

  She spent the next twenty minutes pouring salt from a big box out of the pantry along all the windowsills and doorframes. She didn’t want to wake her father, so she went back outside and laid salt all along the outside wall below his bedroom.

  She went upstairs with the box of salt. And the fireplace poker.

  She didn’t sleep.

  17

  At seven o’clock the next morning, still no call from Boyd, and as she was getting into her pickup to head into town, Ole, the Taylor County sheriff and Boyd’s boss, called her.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “Hi, Ole,” Hallie said. “How are you?”

  “Yeah, okay, fine. I don’t have time for that shit, what do they call it, small talk? He should be at work right now. He told me he’d be back yesterday. He’s my most reliable deputy. Always exactly where he says he’ll be. So where the hell is he?”

  “Boyd?”

  “Yes, Boyd! Keep up.”

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked.

  “Figured you’d know,” Ole said. “You seem to know everything else.”

  It took her forty-five minutes to drive to West Prairie City, longer than usual because she ended up behind an old Pontiac going forty and had to detour around a bridge that the county was rebuilding. By the time she arrived, she felt like screaming or hitting something or driving a hundred miles an hour down the main street. Because where was he? Where the hell was he?