But even this foul beast of shadow could feel the presence in the barn, and in this feeling it could sense its own vulnerability like a walking loophole through the fabric of time.
It did not fear it, but it read Nick’s mind, his thoughts, his small realization of a plan, and the shadow beast realized that the man’s thoughts were plausible. The end could be possible, and so it coiled around Nick’s spine and buried itself deep into the fabric of his consciousness in an attempt to blacken out any thoughts of absolution that Nick could conceive.
The man rocked as the motes drifted in the still air. His knuckles clenched the arms of the chair. He moved deliberately. Stubbornly.
He rocked back and forth, giving rhythm to the coming storm.
forty-seven
MELISSA HAD MADE IT BACK to Coldwater without realizing most of the route back. Her eyes were fixed to the rearview mirror, from dirt road, to gravel, to paved . . . retracing the line that she had taken out to her old home. Going too fast for some of the curves and with her pulse racing, she finally saw the truck pull off on a side road. Even when she was sure they were no longer following her, she kept her foot on the gas.
She finally saw the stoplight in Coldwater on the horizon and her nerves began to relax. She was now back to civilization, though civilization would be a stretch of the term. She stopped at the red light and weighed her course.
She could turn left and go home to South Falls, chalking this up to a poor time to execute her plan. A plan to be thought out more cautiously. There was no rush. She had waited a lifetime to get her revenge, there was no harm in waiting longer.
To the right was her motel. She could stop in, regroup, and move forward.
Melissa looked in the rearview mirror. The empty road behind her stretching to the east.
There was no sign of her pursuers.
As her mind began to clear, her resolve returned.
She turned right onto Main Street and into the motor lodge parking lot. She parked the car, grabbed her things, went inside her room, and locked the door. The blinds were closed, but she dared to peek out across the parking lot onto the road, expecting to see the truck pull in. It never did.
Over the next hour she moved from the bed to the window and back again, checking the lock on the door. The day crept on.
She had come to Coldwater as the executioner. The predator. Now all of a sudden the script had been flipped and she was the one being pursued. Hunted.
Was it Michael who was behind her in the vehicle?
But there were two people in the truck. From what Lila had told her yesterday, Michael was a loner. He had no accomplices in town.
Then who were they?
Were the people in Coldwater just a brood of vipers, every last one of them?
Melissa thought of her brother.
Where was he?
Was he observing her movements like the men in the truck? The realization that she was being watched the whole time she was at Michael’s place knotted her stomach to near nausea. Now, everywhere she looked she expected to find someone’s eyes on her.
She stood and went back to the window. Cars were pulling into Gilly’s for the evening, but there was no sign of the truck that had followed her. The lights of the parking lot came on as the sun dipped below the horizon. She thought again about heading home to South Falls.
All at once it dawned on her that she might be out of her depths.
The plan had seemed solid. She had thought of herself as operating amongst predictable actors, that she was the sole character with free will, that all others were automatons. But now she realized that there were stories going on all around her. That her plan would have to slip in between the cracks of another narrative. That the means to the end had to be fluid. She would have to find Michael, all the while avoiding those who might be following her.
Another trip to the window.
She checked the lock.
She lay on the bed and watched the blinking red light of the smoke detector on the ceiling. A visible twinkling that matched her pulsating thoughts.
That’s when someone knocked on her door.
forty-eight
MELISSA CREPT TO THE DOOR, put her hand gently on the handle, and her eye to the peephole. She was expecting to see the pickup in the parking lot and the two shadows standing outside ready to break down the door. But what she saw relaxed her and she unfastened the chain lock. Lila was standing on the other side, cigarette in hand.
“Hey you,” she said, “I saw you pull in so I’d thought I’d stop over. You mind if I come in?”
“Well, I’m kinda—”
“Thanks,” Lila said as she brushed by Melissa and into the room, a stream of vapor flowing behind her.
“Yeah, please, come in,” Melissa said, annoyed at the intrusion.
Lila took the seat next to the dresser in the far corner. The room was small and getting smaller with each exhale that the waitress unleashed. Melissa stood next to the window and tried to get oxygen without appearing rude.
“So, I just got back from talking with Tami. She’s the usual waitress over at the diner I was filling in for. She was telling me about her boyfriend Kyle. He’s down at the hospital, one of the guys who got in that car accident a couple days ago that I told you about.”
Melissa tried to hide her irritation by showing a thin veil of empathy. “Is he okay?”
“No. He’s pretty messed up. The doctors think he’ll never walk again. As if that’s all Tami needed. She can barely keep her own life straight, now she’s supposed to take on an invalid?”
It was hard to gauge if Lila truly felt sorry for her friend, or if she was venting about the work that could undoubtedly fall on her lap. She was of the ilk that would get mad at a sick person because it forced her to do more chores.
“She was telling me how Kyle wishes he would have died rather than lose his legs. He was ranting and raving . . . very hysterical . . .” Lila released a slow cloud of smoke and looked for a place to put the butt.
“Lila, I’m sorry. If there is anything I can do . . . ,” Melissa said in that way people use that phrase without ever thinking they will be called to task to fulfill it.
“Well, you could start by letting me know about this accident.”
“Letting you know?” Melissa asked.
“Yeah. Don’t act surprised. You show up in town all of a sudden the same time that all this stuff is happening. You a reporter?”
“No,” Melissa said.
“A cop? A PI?”
“No. How could I possibly know anything about this?”
“Why were you asking so many questions about Michael Sullivan?” Lila prodded as she lit up another cigarette.
Melissa sucked her bottom lip, thinking of the next words that would come out of her mouth. She walked away from the window and sat down on the bed.
“I don’t understand how my questions yesterday have anything to do with a car accident. It was just small talk, nothing more.”
“Because James and Kyle were out looking for Michael when they wiped out.”
Lila proceeded to tell Melissa the story as it was told to her by Tami, who in turn had heard it from Kyle. She told of how Haywood had gone to the guys and explained to them how much of a threat Michael was to all those in Coldwater, how the boys had taken him out in the woods, how he got away from them. She told Melissa about Old Man Jackson being found dead at his convenience store and how they were out looking for Michael on the back roads and bridges. She told her how James and Kyle came across Michael on a northern road, the truck crash, James dying, and Kyle ending up paralyzed.
“I told you he was bad news. According to Kyle, Michael caused the accident that killed James and near killed him.”
Melissa’s head began to swim, not only from the nicotine fog that was filling her room, but also from the realization that she apparently had competition in the retribution game.
Melissa came out of her contemplation when Lila spoke again.
“You know something. I can tell.” Lila released another cloud of vapor. She looked intently at Melissa. “I can read people. Call it a gift, and I can tell that your being here in Coldwater isn’t a coincidence. You know something, don’t you?”
Melissa stood and paced the room. Lila sat toking on her cigarette and watched her carefully. Melissa admired the steeliness of this woman. She was no-nonsense backwoods-country strong. She was also someone Melissa felt like she could let in. She stopped her pacing and looked at Lila.
“He’s my brother.”
“Michael?” Lila asked, her eyebrows racing to her hairline.
Melissa nodded and sat back down.
“Oh really? You just happen to show up when all this is happening? Do you know where he is? Did he call you to come here and pick him up?”
“No, not at all. I haven’t seen him since we were kids.”
Lila blew more smoke into the room. The haze drifted through the air like the haze floating through Melissa’s mind. Why was she here, at this particular time? Perhaps Lila was right, perhaps Michael was calling her back to Coldwater. But how ridiculous was that notion? Melissa was a realist, but somewhere in the pit of her soul, she could feel this pull back to the broken home of her youth.
Silence stood between them. It was as if both women were processing the story at the same time. Melissa spoke first.
“So what did they do with him? To Michael? You said that Kyle and some others took him out to the woods?”
“I know what Tami told me, but I don’t half believe her.”
“What?”
“She said that Kyle was doped up on morphine when he talked to her—”
“What did they do?”
Lila took a slow toke for encouragement, and then told Melissa what she had heard.
“Alive? They buried him alive?”
“I told you, he was doped up,” Lila said. “I can’t imagine they actually did that. Not Kyle. He’s too scared of his own shadow to be involved with something as crazy as that.”
Melissa’s stomach dropped to the floor. She was here to do the same thing to Michael as this posse had attempted, but her reaction to the news was subconscious and reflexive. Shock, defensiveness, empathy . . . the same empathy that had tried to find a way into her heart when she was at Michael’s house, her house. Just like all siblings who fight each other without mercy suddenly come to each other’s defense, Melissa felt the encroachment of such sentiments. The method they had used seemed bent on barbarism. Animalistic.
But how was she any different? Was her rage, her quest for punishment, somehow more holy than theirs? Michael was hers—hers to punish, to defend, hers to decide what to do with.
“Who is this Haywood guy?” Melissa asked.
“Local prince of everything. Most of the boys follow his lead, seeing as he is the only one of the group who made it through college. He thinks he’s the smartest and they all fall in line.”
“Even Kyle?” Melissa asked, still trying to gauge the credibility of the injured man’s story.
“Especially Kyle,” Lila said.
“Even if Haywood told him to help bury a body?”
Lila sat in silence, pondering the question but not offering an answer.
Melissa straightened in her seat. “How can I meet this Haywood?”
forty-nine
TOWARD MIDNIGHT, Haywood and his men stopped at a dirt drive that led to a farmhouse, tucked away on its own plot of ground miles away from civilization. They had come upon it by chance on their way back south to Coldwater.
The afternoon had been spent in silence, each man contemplating in their own way the image of the burnt corpse at the drug trailer. Each left alone in his own thoughts. There was a collective, unspoken agreement that it was time to turn home. The woods would not produce their prey. It was a fool’s errand, but one they were all willing to play out.
Clinton got on the next north-south two-track, turned on the headlights, and drove. The beams projecting a small world in front of them as blackness crept in on the edges, trees standing like skeletal guardians on each side of the passing vehicle.
The two-track slowly morphed into a dirt one-lane drive that widened with each passing minute, and eventually Clinton was able to get the truck up to speed. They spotted the house in the woods simply by chance. They stopped and stared at it.
“You know who lives there?” Haywood asked.
“No,” Davis said, a crimson ember illuminating his face from the back seat.
Haywood unfolded the map from the glove box and turned on the dome light.
He had marked the spot of the sick boy’s home with a black circle. Another mark indicated where the trailer and burned bodies were found. His finger searched for where the possible unmarked road they were on might be until he stopped, grabbed his pen, and X’d a location.
“Pretty sure this is where we are. If so, it’s almost a straight course,” Haywood said. “Pull in.”
Clinton did as he was told, and turned into the drive and brought the SUV up to the house. It was still, as if all sound had been sucked from the earth. The boys looked around from the safety of their seats.
“You see what I’m seeing?” Clinton asked.
“I believe I am,” Haywood said.
In the wash of the headlights, circling the house in a concentric circle was nothing but dead earth. Just like the sick boy’s dugout, just like Michael’s house back in Coldwater.
As they stared, the porch light flickered on and a man came out the screen door and stopped at the top of the steps. He didn’t motion to the truck, just stood there watching, like a statue content to watch the ages pass before its granite eyes.
Haywood opened his door and stepped out.
“You guys stay here,” he said. “And Clinton, keep your gun handy.”
Clinton nodded as he watched Haywood walk forward.
Michael heard the slam of a car door, the sound echoing through the dark like a rifle shot. He sat up from the mattress and pressed his face against the slats of the barn. Across the dead space, by the house, an SUV idled with its headlights piercing into the dark woods south of the barn.
He could see Nick standing on the porch as another man walked from the vehicle up to him. They were two gunslingers facing off at high noon, Nick commanding the higher ground of the porch, the other man looking up at him from twenty paces away.
Michael strained his eyes until they felt as if they would pop out of his skull. The gait of the stranger, the way he held himself, the way he walked from the SUV with the air of owning every footstep he took. He knew him. He knew who now stood before Nick.
It was Haywood.
They had found him.
Michael gathered his things and looked for another way out of the barn, but it was already too dark to see. He inched his way to the back wall and groped for a door, a loose board, anything that would allow him to escape into the woods behind the cover of the building. Nothing.
In his blind searching, he tripped over the mutant chicken and fell to the dirt floor. He held his tongue, but the deranged beast cawed at him and then disappeared into the shadows. The only way out was through the front, in perfect view of the house and the waiting vehicle.
He was hopelessly and utterly trapped. The wooden barn a more grandiose version of the coffin box Haywood and his men had put him in just days before.
Michael made his way back to the bed and pressed up against the wall to see what would happen.
“Howdy,” Haywood said to the man on the porch as his eyes scanned the house, the property, the shrouded barn on the edge of the encroaching forest.
“Can I help you with something?” the man asked.
“Name’s Haywood.”
“Nick.”
“I was wondering if you happened to notice any odd characters in the area lately,” Haywood said.
“You mean, other than right now?” Nick said.
Haywood smirked. “Yes, other
than right now.”
“That seems to be the only type of people I see up here.”
“Today. Did you see anyone today?” Haywood’s patience was already running thin from the long day in the car, the endless crisscrossing of the north woods. He didn’t need lip from a backwoods hick.
The man stood silent, just staring at him.
“We’re looking for someone,” Haywood added.
“One reason people come up here, they usually don’t want to be found,” Nick said.
“This one broke out of South Falls jail. Cops said he was sighted up this way. We’ve been trailing him for hours now.”
“And you boys are just doing your civic duty?”
Haywood set his jaw. It was in him to walk up to the porch and punch Nick in the head, but the way the man stood lent an air of toughness to him. The man had a grizzled streak in his manner that made Haywood question his own ability to intimidate him.
He relaxed his shoulders a bit and tried a different course of action. “There was an explosion not too far from here earlier today.”
“I heard it.”
“Know anything about it?”
“No.”
“Didn’t make you curious at all?”
“The way I see it, ain’t none of my business what others do. Probably just one of the things we differ on from what I can tell,” Nick said.
Haywood was not used to being blocked at every move he made. He was the boss in the circle he ran in, had always been. Now this man was thwarting him, but for what reason? He was either just a misanthrope living out in the sticks, or he was hiding something.
“You mind if I take a look around?”
“I would mind.”
“Well, maybe me and my guys might just look around anyways,” Haywood said, pointing to Clinton and Davis sitting in the SUV like the shadows of mob hit men waiting for the cue to practice their trade.
“Then you and your guys would be making a bad mistake.” Nick seemed to grow in stature as he spoke.
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