Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  She drove past the sheriff’s station, which had what looked like all the Taylor County patrol cars parked in front along with two state troopers’ vehicles. She didn’t stop, turned onto Main Street then left at the next intersection, followed that street right to the edge of town. She called Patty Littlejohn, the sheriff’s dispatcher. An unfamiliar voice answered.

  “Where’s Patty?” Hallie asked.

  “She’s not here today,” the voice, a man’s, answered. “Can I help you?”

  “Like a day off or just didn’t show up?” Hallie asked.

  “Who is this?” the voice asked suspiciously. Hallie disconnected.

  Jesus. What was happening? What the hell was happening?

  She pulled into the driveway of the small bungalow Boyd rented.

  It was a cold morning, no wind. The clouds were thin, like a dark film across the sky so that the sun seemed distant and faded. Jake Javinovich. Forest Buehl. Patty Littlejohn? All missing. There were waitresses who didn’t show up for work, people who missed their lunch dates. And Boyd? Was Boyd missing like they were missing? There were reapers on the ground and black dogs. The barriers growing thin, that’s what Death had said.

  Jesus.

  Lily’s ghost appeared in the passenger seat next to her, close enough that Hallie’s right elbow was instantly numb from the cold she radiated. No black dog. Hallie wondered if it could possibly be gone for good, but she’d wondered that about the ghosts once or twice too, and look how that had turned out. She looked around carefully as she got out of the truck, because Hollowell seemed to find her way too easily. And despite what the dog had told her yesterday afternoon, she was pretty sure neither of them knew the exact timeline for Hollowell’s reappearance. She wasn’t generally cautious, but she could be careful.

  First point, Boyd’s Jeep Cherokee wasn’t here. Which meant he wasn’t here. Still wasn’t here. Which she’d expected, of course, because if he were here, he’d be answering his phone or calling her or … something.

  The front and back doors of the house were both locked and the windows too. Of course. Because it was Boyd’s house.

  The yard was both deep and wide. Behind and to the north was a garage that was really more like a barn, two garage doors and a loft overhead, the whole thing almost as big as the house. The small side door of the garage was locked. She tried one of the overhead doors. There were outside lights, so there was electricity to the building. She couldn’t tell, though, if the garage doors had openers or were just locked, because either one was likely. In any case, they wouldn’t open.

  She made a quick search of the outside perimeter, the back porch, and the landscaped areas around the house and garage in case he’d hidden a key to the house somewhere. No such luck. Of course. She really didn’t want to go into his house, because what was she going to find? A note, saying, If I’m not back by Wednesday, I’ll be at the following address? But she had to do something and this was something she could do.

  Lily’s ghost bumped against her spine. Hallie circled the house one more time and was just coming back around to the drive when a sheriff’s car pulled in behind her truck.

  “Find anything?” Ole said as he climbed out of the car.

  “He locks everything,” Hallie said. “Who does that?”

  Ole shook his head, hitched his gun belt a half turn to the right, and crossed the drive. “Maybe that’s how they do things in Iowa,” he said.

  “You seriously haven’t heard from him?” Hallie said.

  “I told you.” Ole sounded irritated. He passed Hallie and headed for the back door. Twisted the doorknob in his hand like maybe Hallie hadn’t done it correctly.

  Hallie eyed him for a minute. “Maybe I have a key in my truck I forgot about,” she said.

  “Maybe?”

  “You could do something else while I look.”

  Ole rolled his eyes. “I have to go call something in,” he said.

  It was a plain button lock. She and Dell had figured out button locks one rainy afternoon playing with the one on the front door they never used back home. On this one, Hallie had to pry off a metal strip before she could slide a debit card between the latch and the doorframe, but it was still pretty simple. Ole watched her from the car. She got a hammer from the saddle box in the back of her pickup and tacked the strip back onto the doorframe before entering the house. The back door led into a tiny entry with stairs leading down to the basement and three steps up to a big bright kitchen with white cabinets, a countertop that looked brand-new, battered hardwood floors polished to a dull shine, a bright rag rug in front of the sink, and a small painted table with two chairs and a vase in the center with white and purple silk flowers.

  “Jesus,” Ole said, coming in behind her.

  “Well, he’s neat,” Hallie said.

  “He’s particular is what he is,” Ole said, opening one of the cupboards to be confronted by glasses sorted according to height. “Most particular man I know. If he says he’ll be back on a certain day, says he’ll make his shift, I count on that.” He paused, opened a lower cupboard, and closed it again. “Because I can.”

  “Do you count on Patty Littlejohn?”

  Ole looked at her, a piercing gaze. “Do you know something?” he asked.

  “No,” Hallie said, which was almost the truth. “I really don’t know anything.”

  “I been getting missing persons calls all morning. Well,” Ole amended, “five. Five missing people. No one saw them go. No one knows anything about them. That’s a hell of a problem. And I don’t like it.”

  Lily’s ghost drifted between the two of them. Hallie followed her into the dining room—table, six chairs, a china cupboard with two shelves of white ironstone dishes, two bottles of single malt whiskey and a bottle of Russian vodka, all with the seals still intact. There was a row of low bookshelves underneath the double window, mostly nonfiction about the Civil War and astronomy, with a half shelf of old mysteries on the bottom and two large-format books laid flat that appeared to contain pictures of old tractors and combines.

  In the living room, Hallie picked up three days’ worth of mail, which had been dropped through a slot in the front door.

  “You’re not going to read that,” Ole said.

  Hallie flipped through the envelopes—nothing, nothing, nothing—two letters from a B. N. Hannah. Lily’s ghost touched one of the envelopes, her fingers going clear through, like the envelopes or, more accurately, her hand wasn’t there at all. Hallie tucked the two envelopes in her back pocket. “No,” she said to Ole. “That would be wrong.”

  “Damn right.” Ole went back out into the kitchen and punched the button on Boyd’s answering machine. He turned up the volume and Hallie could hear it as she continued to explore the living room.

  There were three messages on the machine—none of them from Hallie, since she’d been calling his cell phone. One was from the sheriff’s dispatch, asking him to call in. One was from the farm supply in Templeton saying they’d got in the carburetor kit he’d ordered. The last was from someone named Beth, who Hallie had to assume was Lily’s sister because wasn’t that what Boyd had called her—Beth? “I don’t know if this is the right number. I tried your cell.… It’s almost five. I thought you were going to be here, well … earlier. I’m not panicking or anything. But I thought—” There was a loud clatter, a high-pitched sound that might have been a scream abruptly cut off, then silence.

  Hallie looked at Ole.

  “It’s Beth Hannah from Cedar Rapids,” Hallie said because it was what she knew and it was all she could do. “Can you find the address or get someone over there or something? Can you do something?”

  “Oh hell yes,” he said. His cell phone was already out of his pocket and he was punching in numbers.

  There was probably nothing to it. She’d talked to Boyd since then and Beth had been with him, hadn’t she? But it felt like doing something.

  While Ole was on the phone, Hallie went back into the dining ro
om and through it into the bedrooms. It felt wrong. If he wanted her here, he’d have invited her, but something had happened. She knew it. Hell, Ole even knew it. Boyd’s privacy was worth nothing if she couldn’t figure out where he’d gone or what had happened.

  The small south bedroom had a desk and three bookshelves. The top of the desk was clear, nothing but a desk lamp, a pencil holder with three pens, and a leather blotter. She went through all the drawers—there were a bunch of labeled file folders, all taxes and bills, a ruler, a tape measure, a small jar full of paper clips, and some unused stationery. A small laser printer sat on one corner of the desk next to a second telephone handset.

  She left the office and went into the bedroom. The shades were pulled and the light from outside filtered the room in gray and gold, like time stopped here. Lily’s ghost drifted into the doorway behind Hallie, but stopped on the threshold, as if she didn’t want to enter. Like the rest of the house, everything was neat, precise. And yet, it wasn’t sterile. It felt like Boyd, like he lived here. It took only two short strides to cross from the door to the bed. On the nightstand was a clock, and next to the clock was a small black journal and a pen.

  Hallie picked up the journal. She knew what it was. Because Boyd had told her once that he wrote down all his dreams, made lists and charted the commonalities. It was the thing that made him both who he was and who he didn’t want to be.

  The thing.

  Like Hallie’s ghosts.

  She picked up the notebook, shoved it into an inside jacket pocket, and left the room.

  “Well, that was damned unhelpful,” Ole said when they left the house. He twisted the knob on the door after Hallie locked it, like it was automatic, like he always checked.

  “Yup,” Hallie said.

  “Cedar Rapids says they’ll check, but that call was a couple days old. Who knows if they’ll find anything. You know where he went, right?” Ole eyed her like she’d been holding back important information.

  “Iowa,” Hallie said.

  “That covers a lot of ground.”

  Cedar Rapids, where the call had come from, but as Ole had said, it was a couple of days old. She considered. “Maquoketa, maybe. No, he was in Ames last time I talked to him. So, there. I think.” Like she knew anything about any of those places. But she could read a map. She could get there if she had to. And if Boyd wasn’t coming back here or answering his phone, then she would go find him. His dreams could be wrong. Or he could be interpreting them wrong. She could probably leave South Dakota. She probably wouldn’t have a problem. Probably.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed his number again, as if something had changed since the last time she’d done it. Ole took a few steps away from her and pulled out his phone too.

  Nothing.

  “Goddamn,” said Ole after he hung up from his third phone call in as many minutes.

  “Ole,” Hallie said, quiet for her, though she felt like shouting. “How many people are missing?”

  Ole drew in a breath. She wasn’t sure he was going to tell her, but then he said, “Looks like two or three a day the last three days.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” Ole drew the word out, like it had three syllables. “But this is different, right? You know where he went.”

  Before Hallie could respond, she saw something that made her catch her breath. The still-green lawn in front of her, across the drive and past Boyd’s house, was dying. Like a line of death marching straight toward them.

  Hallie stepped in front of Ole, like she could stop whatever was coming before it reached him.

  “Excuse me?” Ole said.

  The black dog flashed into existence beside her, its hackles raised and a low growl on its lips. Lily’s ghost disappeared in a silent puff of winter frost.

  Travis Hollowell appeared, like he’d just stepped from an invisible room.

  He looked at Hallie, looked at the dog sitting at her heels. He smiled, but Hallie thought it was a bit strained, not as cool and relaxed as it had been the first time she saw him.

  “You picked the wrong side,” he said to the dog.

  The dog’s snarl deepened. “My side,” it said.

  “Things have changed,” Hollowell said. Then, he added, this time directed more at Hallie than at the dog, “Your side is losing.”

  “I hear that all the time,” Hallie said.

  “Who the hell are you?” Ole asked. Hallie looked at him, looked at Hollowell. Yesterday at the accident, no one had seen him but her. Now, Ole could. That meant something. She had no idea what. But it probably wasn’t good. And it better not be Ole’s time. Not here and not now. Not if Hallie had anything to say about it.

  “He killed Boyd’s wife,” Hallie said, by way of explanation.

  “What wife?” asked Ole. He put his hand on the flap of his holster.

  At the same time, Hollowell said, like Ole wasn’t even there, “I keep looking for him and I keep finding you.”

  “Good,” Hallie said.

  The black dog growled.

  “Look,” Hallie said. “You better not do anything to Boyd. Because if you have, I will make you wish you’d never come back.”

  “You know nothing,” Hollowell said. He was dressed exactly as he’d been the first time Hallie saw him, same clothes, same shoes, like he had two sets of clothing and he alternated between them. “You should not have talked to him,” he said.

  “What? Who?”

  “What?” said Ole at the same time. “Listen, mister—”

  “What did he tell you?” Hollowell asked; there was an expression on his face Hallie couldn’t immediately identify—anger mixed with fear and something more, some element that seemed not quite human. Which made a certain amount of sense, since he wasn’t human.

  “Are you talking about Boyd?”

  “Death.”

  Death. Hallie’d half convinced herself that last night was a dream, though given the things that happened, that kept happening to her, she should have known that it wasn’t. But what had Death told her? Not very goddamned much. Nothing about Hollowell, for sure. And even if he had, she wouldn’t share it with him.

  Ole grabbed Hallie’s arm. “Who the hell is this guy?” he asked in a low voice.

  Hallie ignored him, didn’t dare divide her attention.

  Hollowell drew himself up so that he looked razor-thin and almost skeletal. “He’s had things his way for far too long,” he said.

  “Death?”

  “I will get what I want, and neither you, Boyd Davies, or that old fool will stop me,” Hollowell said.

  “This is like that damn stuff back in September, isn’t it?” Ole said, still in that low voice. Hallie nodded, though she didn’t know if Ole would know it was directed at him. She wanted to tell him to get out, wanted to tell him to run while he could, but it probably wouldn’t help. It was probably too late already.

  “What exactly is it that you want?” she said to Hollowell, because the whole conversation—Death and what Hollowell wanted, which she’d thought was some combination of Boyd and Lily’s sister, was not becoming clearer.

  “Immortality.”

  And, finally, that was pretty clear. Except, “Don’t you have that already?”

  Hollowell raised a hand, palm open toward her. “Enough. You will not talk to him again.”

  “That’d be great,” Hallie said. “Except I didn’t decide to talk to him in the first place.” She had one of the fireplace pokers in her truck. She just had to get to it.

  Ole had been moving slowly around Hallie as she and Hollowell talked. She put out an arm to stop him, but he was already a foot beyond her reach.

  Hollowell smiled. He looked at Ole, who had his right hand on his gun. “Is he important to you?” he asked Hallie.

  Ole returned Hollowell’s gaze with an even, steady look that said, You may have appeared out of nowhere, but that doesn’t change how this will turn out. “Who the hell are you?” he said. Hallie was pretty sure Ole
didn’t usually ask for anything twice.

  Hollowell seemed amused. He raised his hands.

  Hallie pulled iron nails from her pocket and flung them at him.

  Before the nails hit him, Hallie felt the push, saw the young maple tree by Boyd’s front porch shatter like old firewood. She grabbed Ole and shoved him backwards toward the big garage at the end of the yard. A window in Boyd’s house burst outward and showered them with glass. “Run!” she said, and pushed Ole. He stumbled and it was too late anyway. The ground heaved up underneath and threw them. Hallie felt herself flying, saw Ole flying in front of her and tried to grab him. She could smell dirt and fire and things that weren’t here, not here—burning oil and gunpowder and—someone screamed and the only thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t the one screaming. Then the sky went black and cold.

  So cold.

  18

  “Hey.”

  Quiet. Familiar.

  “Don’t move.”

  Hallie moved.

  “Ouch.”

  “I said—don’t move.”

  That voice—Boyd. Hallie opened her eyes and, with some effort, sat up.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. Not, hi, or I’m glad you’re okay, though afterwards she wished she’d said one or the other. But, really, where the hell had he been?

  “Take it easy,” Boyd said. “Is anything broken?”

  She moved cautiously. Everything hurt, from the top of her head to her feet, but it all worked. “Nothing’s broken,” she told him.

  She looked around.

  Half the roof on Boyd’s big garage was gone. The entire front yard was dirt and broken tree limbs. It looked like a battleground, like it had been hit by a mortar. Hallie scrambled backwards without thinking, because she could smell it. Afghanistan.

  A quick breath and it was gone. Ironic that Boyd’s hand on her arm and the arctic cold of Lily’s ghost against her spine were what rescued her from that other place. Not so ironic about Boyd—but the ghost, that ghosts were home, that was ironic, like she really had died and was just too stupid to know it.