The Storm King: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  “No luck with the cuffs, I guess?” Nate asked Pete.

  “They don’t feel like much, but they’re real strong. I thought if I got some sweat in there they’d loosen up, but nothing.”

  Nate yanked and hammered and pulled at the flex-cuffs but only tenderized the skin of his wrists. He tried to picture the ties. It was a single loop of plastic tucked into a locking mechanism to ensure a tight fit. He thought that if he could mess up the fastener, the band might loosen, but he couldn’t get the angles to work. He ran his hands up and down the cylindrical post searching for some edge to worry against the plastic.

  “He’s going to kill us,” Pete said.

  “No, he isn’t.” But the kid was right. If they were still here when Owen returned, they were as good as dead.

  “You think he’ll burn us? Like the others?”

  “No.” Nate thought of the silver annihilation of the lake and shivered. “Do you have anything in your pockets?”

  “I’m worried about them,” Pete said. “My friends.”

  “That’s why we’ve got to get out of here. Anything in your pockets? Keys, coins? Wouldn’t turn down a box cutter.” If Pete had something, Nate might be able to use his feet to drag it to himself by pulling at the plastic drop cloth beneath them.

  “Keys are in my pocket, but I can’t get them.”

  Nate watched the boy struggle and contort against the pipe he was tied to. Meanwhile, he continued working at his own cuffs. Pulling and releasing. Tensing then relaxing. Seconds or minutes ticked by. In their windowless basement, it was impossible to tell.

  “I can’t get them.” Pete was out of breath. “You think he could really burn down the Night Ship? It’s such a big place. And it’s gotta be soaking out there, with the hurricane and everything?”

  “Gas will make anything burn, and Owen knows the pier. He’ll probably set it inside.”

  Nate thought that Owen would set the fire on the landward end of the pier, where the shops and cafés used to be, in order to block the kids’ escape down the boardwalk to shore.

  “They could swim for it,” Pete said, uncertainly.

  “Yeah, they could,” Nate said. But that was easier said than done. Out that far, the lake was treacherous, and Medea had it hammering against the pier’s pilings with more ferocity than usual. Just June, an expert Daybreaker, had braved the waters in a dry suit during a lull in the storm, but how would the uninitiated fare?

  Nate was afraid it wouldn’t matter, anyway. Owen was massive and powerful. He didn’t need to rely on stealth and patience if he didn’t want to. If he wanted, he could fall among the children like a wolf among poultry. He could be as brutal as he chose to be in order to prevent their escape, then make his exit and wait for the fire to scorch away the evidence.

  Perhaps the old place had already gone down with all hands, the vicious waters alight with its reflected flames. Within the basement’s soundproofed walls, they wouldn’t hear town sirens going off or fire trucks wailing through the streets. Pete’s friends might already be dead, and Owen could be on his way back here right now.

  Nate slammed his cuffed hands against the pipe in a spasm of frustration. His fingers were tacky where they touched each other. A band of pain was seared around his left wrist. Struggling against his bindings must have torn his skin. The slickness of his blood gave his wrist more give within the plastic cuff, but not as much as he needed.

  Mrs. Liffey’s shaking had settled. Her eyes drooped, not open but not closed, either. The rims of her inflamed sclera glistened like veined crescent moons. Her mouth was still in constant motion, but Nate could no longer make out the words.

  It was difficult for Nate to gather strength from the awkward angles of his arms. If only his hands had been in front of him instead of behind. If they’d been square against the small of his back and not looped around a wide support post.

  But Nate had always been able to find strength when he needed it. He thought of Grams in her hospital bed. He thought of Lucy. He imagined her eyes bulging in her final moments, her cheeks purpling under the weight of Owen. Nate dug for anger, but all he found was anguish.

  Maybe today was the day the lake finally claimed what had slipped from its grasp so many years ago.

  Next to him, Pete was sniffling. Tears cut shining streaks down his face. The boy wasn’t looking at Nate anymore. He wasn’t looking at anything. Pete would die, too. So would the children in the Night Ship. When Nate thought of them gathered there, James and Tara and all the others, he tried not to think about what they’d done, but who they were. Kids with families and futures. Kids like Livvy. Kids just like he and Lucy and Tom and Johnny had been.

  He leaned forward to press his left thumb against the curve of the post. As if in the clutches of a medieval torture device, he increased the pressure as he leaned forward millimeter by millimeter.

  “Tell me what you planned to do to Owen after you broke in through the window upstairs,” Nate said. He visualized the first carpometacarpal joint. He shifted to tweak the angles, clenched his teeth, and forced himself forward.

  “Huh? Oh. We were going to mess with his water filter. Add a heap of red dye concentrate to it so all the taps would run red like blood.”

  The pain at the base of Nate’s thumb grew from an ache to a warning to an alarm. He felt things stretch in ways that they weren’t meant to stretch.

  “But then we saw…her,” Pete said. “And he caught us. Then I think Maura made it upstairs, but he—he must have—”

  Nate heaved all of his weight forward in a sudden lurch. He wasn’t sure at first if the crunch that resulted was audible or the kind of sound that only resonated within the body it originated from, but as his peripheral vision went black, Pete stopped talking.

  The pain was incandescent. Nate sweated limply against the floor and marveled at how many shades of agony there were. Easily as many as there were of anger and sadness. But what about happiness? he inquired of the plastic drop cloth. Eating out of containers with Grams at her little kitchen table. He, Tom, and Johnny casting from the dock on a summer morning. Meg’s smile when he woke to find her looking at him. Livvy’s tiny finger when she pointed at something she’d never seen before. For him happiness arrived in one flavor, but that never made it less sweet.

  “Um, Mr. McHale? Are you, like, okay?”

  “Call me Nate.” His fingers quivered as he compressed them against his dislocated thumb. It was still a struggle as he slid his mangled hand out of the cuff. In his troubled years he’d dislocated this thumb twice before. He thought that maybe its history of trauma had made it easier to dislodge now. He thought that maybe the suffering you’ve already survived is sometimes the only thing that can keep you alive.

  Nate was dimly aware of Pete swearing in awe as he got to his feet and cradled one hand in the other. It took a moment for him to find his balance. A wave of nausea hit him as he surveyed his askew digit. He attempted a clinical distance as he snapped it back into place. This time the adrenaline coursing through his system dulled the edge. If nothing else, the pain wiped aside most of the lingering effects of the chloroform.

  “I’ll look for something to cut you out.”

  “Don’t leave me here!”

  “I won’t.”

  The walls of the mirrored alcove were angled like a department store fitting room. A post like the one Nate had been bound to was near its center. Chained to it in her wheelchair, Mrs. Liffey would have no option but to see from a dozen angles what had been done to her. A second alcove, next to the first, had a small kitchen with a refrigerator and sink. The corner across from the fridge was tiled and had a showerhead. If it was possible, it smelled worse here than it did anywhere else in the fetid basement. This must be where Owen sometimes hosed his mother down. A bin piled high with solid blankets was nearby.

  Nate found a knife in a drawer. The blade was one step up from a letter opener, but he was able to use it to cut Pete’s ties. The boy gasped as he clutched his
arms to his chest and began rubbing the blood back into his hands. To get to his feet, he had to grapple his way up the post to which he’d been bound.

  “I’m going to piss myself. I’ve had to go for, like, a day.”

  “There’s a sink in the back.”

  “Do you think it’s okay?”

  “I won’t tell.”

  As Pete staggered away, Nate bent to whisper into Mrs. Liffey’s ear. “We’re going to get you out of here.” The woman seemed half asleep, but at least one word was still on her lips.

  “No, no, no—”

  Nate went up the steps to test the door to the main floor. It felt more substantial than the average interior door, and the locks and chains further reinforced it. Nate could hear them jangle as he battered his shoulder against it. Each jolt sent voltages of pain up his arm from his damaged thumb. It was back in its socket, but he must have torn something along the way.

  Even if the steps hadn’t offered such a poor vantage, Nate didn’t think he’d be able to knock down the door.

  He heard the rustle of Pete padding across the plastic-draped floor.

  “Better?”

  Pete’s mouth twitched into the bud of a smile. It sat there for only a moment, but long enough for Nate to glimpse the boy underneath the terror. “What’s the deal with the door?”

  “It’s solid, and there are a ton of locks on the other side.”

  An ax or sledge might get them through the door, but Nate doubted they’d find such tools down here. The basement was huge, but except for the kitchen with the shower, it was mostly empty.

  “See if he left your phone—or Maura’s—down here somewhere. Keep an eye out for anything we can use on that door. Weapons, too,” Nate said. The dull knife he’d used to free Pete wouldn’t be any use against Owen, but with the right weapon they might have a chance.

  Pete looked at him in alarm. Nate didn’t like the idea of having to fight Owen, either. The big guy had lost weight since their high school days, but he still had dozens of pounds on Nate, and it was all muscle.

  They circled the basement in opposite directions. Far from the mirrored alcove and overhead lights, some nooks were almost entirely hidden by shadow. Under his palms, the soundproofing material fixed to the walls and most of the ceiling felt almost organic. He groped and probed and hoped, but didn’t find anything useful.

  “I’m sorry about the other night, you know?” Pete said when they both returned to the center of the room. “We were going to tag your grandma’s house. I mean, nothing really bad, I guess, but we shouldn’t have. So…” Pete trailed off and stared at his feet.

  Nate waved away Pete’s apology. It was hard to imagine he’d spent a moment worrying about graffiti or broken windows.

  “There’s nothing good down here,” Pete said. “Nothing to even fight him with. I mean, there are a couple forks and things in the kitchen. But—”

  “There’re a lot of unhealthy-looking foods in the cabinets, and probably more in the fridge. See if you can skim off some fat and spread it on the drop cloth at the base of the stairs. Cream from those snack cakes could work, too,” Nate said. “Maybe he’ll lose his footing when he comes down and we can jump him from the sides.”

  Pete appeared to like this idea and hopped into action. At least it gave the kid something to do. Nate supposed that Owen might indeed slip on something greasy, but this wasn’t the clumsy oaf Nate recalled from high school. Perhaps Owen had never really been like that in the first place. Nate remembered him only through the eyes of a raging, narcissistic teenager, and that boy had already been proved wrong about so much. He’d thought he could do as he pleased and not reap the slightest consequence.

  While Pete tore through the kitchen, Nate returned to the mirrored alcove and kicked at the gleaming walls. He earned decades of bad luck before he knocked loose a long, glittering shard that he liked the look of. It might not do much to slow someone the size of Owen, but if Nate aimed for an artery or key tendon…It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.

  Nate took off his suit coat, bundled it around the base of the makeshift weapon, and rolled up his left sleeve. He traced the letters from the crook of his elbow to halfway up his forearm. Then he dug in with the tip of the shard. It was a clumsy blade for such work and Nate sliced as shallowly as he could, just into the dermis so that the lines and curves of the letters slowly filled with blood. The pain was noticeable but only a ghost of the torture reverberant from his torqued thumb.

  When he was finished, he watched his final words weep crimson across the newborn skin on the underside of his forearm.

  O’S BSMNT

  A message written in flesh was one that could not be ignored. Owen might kill him and all the others, but he wouldn’t get away with it. The lake returns what it takes, and if it drowned Nate, it would also deliver this last message for him.

  Nate considered leaving more notes across the canvas of his body. He could tell Tom and the chief that Owen had killed Lucy, and Mr. Liffey and Mr. Vanhouten, too. He could apologize to Tom and Johnny for every way in which he’d poisoned their lives. He could pare missives of love to Meg and Livvy and Grams onto skin that might not have the time to scab, much less heal.

  The burn of the cuts caught up to Nate, and he rolled his head upward with a grimace. When he did, he noticed that an edge of foam soundproofing material had come loose from where it met the ceiling. One corner of it dangled like an earmarked page. He walked to it and ripped it aside. He tore loose a panel six feet long and three feet high. When the last foot of the section fell away it revealed part of a window. A curtain of rain rippled down its glass.

  The window was small: not more than a foot high. Nate’s rib cage wouldn’t fit through, but Pete was all height and no width. They’d break the window, clear aside all the glass, Nate would boost Pete up and through, then Pete would get help.

  He should have been happy, but instead Nate cursed himself. He’d never in his life been in a basement without any windows. Even Just June’s shack had them. Looking for them should have been the first thing he’d done. People depended on him, and he couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes.

  Nate set aside the shard, and wrapped his hand in his coat. He hammered his fist into the glass. If the children at the Night Ship were still alive, they had little time left.

  Twenty-three

  Night had taken the town along the shore.

  The only light was the electricity that flickered among the ranges of Medea’s clouds and a few generator-powered homes that struck out from the black like ships at sea. The storm’s percussions of thunder and rain were so loud that Nate couldn’t hear his own steps as he waded through the flooded streets running for Tom’s house. They had to go to the Night Ship. They had to finally face the debts of their youth.

  After clearing the narrow basement window of glass and lifting Pete through it and into the muck of a brimming flower bed, Nate had spent long minutes waiting for the boy to reenter the house and unlock the basement door. He and Pete hadn’t known each other long, and their history before the basement was not encouraging. The teen might decide to leave Nate to Owen, and maybe Nate would deserve it.

  “He’ll come back,” Nate told Mrs. Liffey as much as he told himself. “Then we’ll all get out of here.” Whatever future waited for Mrs. Liffey beyond this stinking basement would be an improvement, though how much of one, Nate didn’t know.

  Though he’d been waiting for it, Nate was startled when noise came from the door to the kitchen. He crept to the side of the stairs, as the locks were disengaged, releasing a held breath only when he heard Pete call to him. He was lucky Owen had secured the basement only to keep people in and not keep them out.

  “What about her?” Pete asked, pointing down the stairs.

  “We won’t be able to get her up the stairs on our own,” Nate said. He turned back toward the wheelchair-bound woman. “We’re getting some help, Mrs. Liffey. Don’t worry. We’ll get you somewhere safe.”r />
  She was fully awake again, and shaking so hard that at first Nate thought she might be having a seizure.

  “He will kill you, he will kill us, he will kill everyone—”

  “We’ll be back,” Nate promised. He climbed the last of the stairs and stepped back up into the kitchen.

  “Start knocking on doors,” he told Pete. There was no reason to whisper, but he did anyway. His limbs still carried extra weight from the chloroform, but this lightened with each breath of fresh air. “Get someone to call the police. Tell them about Owen and about the kids on the Night Ship. If the landlines and cells are down, have them drive you to the station.”

  “What if they don’t believe me?” Pete asked as they reached the foyer.

  Nate looked at the boy. Eyes bloodshot from crying, skin matted with pallor, his clothes and hair filthy with mud and soaked with rain. Words were only one kind of language, and Pete exuded a fluent dialect of pure distress. It was easy to forget that the Lake was mostly just a normal town filled with normal people. If this boy appeared at their door, none of them would doubt the story he told.

  They didn’t have time to waste, but Nate found himself cupping the boy’s chin in his hand as if Pete were his own son. “I’m sorry about what we did to your dad.” A lifetime ago, Nate and his friends had felled a tree against the Corsos’ house. A DUI and job termination and divorce had followed. It was impossible to say how closely these events were connected. Life grows one bad thing upon another. But in a universe where small things could destroy whole worlds, Nate and his friends had made people’s lives worse and not better. “I didn’t know anything back then. If I could take it back, I would. I’d take it all back.” He wasn’t thinking only of the Corsos or the Jeffers, but of Lucy and Tom and Johnny and even Owen. They’d thought Nate was their friend, and he’d brought them nothing but pain.