by Lee Thompson
A raven eyed me and the others with black orbs full of hate, perched high in a tree. It opened its mouth and rustled its feathers. I didn’t know if it was there to carry the dead’s souls into the afterlife, or if it only waited to tear strips of flesh free and gobble them down, driven by desire, hunger, survival. The raven and I studied each other a moment longer. And then it whispered a nursery rhyme:
A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?
I shook my head, blinked, looked back up at the branch, expecting the raven to keep repeating it, chanting, like a broken record. The bird was gone, the branch stirred in the breeze.
It’s all the shit going on. Just more hallucinations.
Frustrated, I clung to the facts. It was the same when I was working on a book, letting my imagination run free, but beneath it all there is structure and truth, even if it hurts to look it full on in the face.
You roll with what you know, it keeps you safe.
I was so naïve.
I cleared my throat. “I think I can stand on my own, Rusty. I’m just a bit dizzy.” Rusty let me go and took a swig from his flask, ran a hand down his pant leg, his eyes on the madness. I sighed, staring at these chopped up teens, part of my heart breaking for them, the other part trying to create distance, deal with the shock. “Who would do something like this?”
Pat threw his cigar on the ground. A trail of smoke climbed and curled around his knees. He didn’t even bother to stomp it out. Pat grinned at me for a second, like he wanted him to say something about it. It said a lot about him when there were these ruined lives right in front of us and he had to try and make me angry. “Show him what you found, Rusty.”
Rusty rubbed his left arm and looked at his hands like they were stained and he didn’t know how to get the sickness off.
Pat said, “We don’t have all day, we need to get these girls in the ground. Show him.”
Rusty’s shoulders drooped. He exhaled. “This looks bad for you, John.”
“What? Show me already.” I resisted the urge to look at the girls again, at Repent!, thinking that maybe someone had been on the river the day Mark drowned. Maybe someone had watched it happen, or taken pictures. Maybe someone was trying to send me a message. I blocked out the image of the ghost in the cemetery last night as it tried to force its way to the front of my mind.
A chipmunk scorned us from a fallen log just outside the path. Its chitters faded, everything did, as Rusty pulled the onyx skeleton key from a front pocket of the red backpack. The older man frowned. “We all know whose this was, right? I’ve never seen another one like it.”
Pat lit another cigar and pulled his thick leather belt up, hand near his pistol. “Explain, John. Tell us what you know and we can deal with this situation before things get out of hand.”
I stared at the skeleton key, my stomach clenching, knowing that it couldn’t be the same one. Get out of hand? Things are already out of hand.
Rusty held the key out and nodded. “Take it. Have a look.”
I closed my fingers over the key, the stone rough and cold. “It can’t be Mark’s.”
Rusty and Pat exchanged a look. The sheriff said, “Our eyes aren’t lying.”
Not everything is always as it seems though. Uncle Red used to always tell me that. I pinched the key between thumb and forefinger until my knuckles ached. I couldn’t break it. I never could, even though I wanted to because for some reason it’d always meant so much to my brother. “It was in his hand at the wake. In the coffin with him. I saw it.”
“Could be. So why’s it here?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t help you if you don’t tell us the truth,” Pat said. He smiled. I felt like hitting him.
“What are you saying?”
Rusty put a hand up. “These bodies, John. They’ve been dead a while. Over a week, since before Mark died.”
My brain kept scrambling for connections but the quick beating I’d taken the night before had made me slower than normal, the struggle I felt inside kept me on edge because I didn’t know that I could trust any of them when I didn’t even trust myself anymore. I looked at the blood drying on the leaves. “There’s no way they’ve been dead that long, their blood wouldn’t still be wet.”
Pat ran a hand over his stomach. “You an expert?”
I shook my head and looked at Rusty. “You think Mark killed them?”
Rusty shrugged and shifted his feet. Birds flew from the branches as a plane flew by overhead, a splash of quick white peeked through the tree tops. “I’m not a detective, John. But I know dead bodies. And you’re holding something that belonged to your brother, found here.”
“Where did you find it?”
Pat knelt next to the closest torso. He opened the girls left breast as if it were a door on a hinge. Darkness stared back out at us. “Her heart was taken. But someone left the key in there.”
He stood and left the door to the missing heart open. The ground shifted beneath me and I feared I’d fall straight through the soil, all the way to the burning lakes heating the planet from inside. “Mark didn’t do this.”
Rusty played with the top of his flask. “Have you been sleep walking? You used to do it quite frequently when you were a pre-adolescent. I remember your dad—”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
What are you getting at, Rusty?
Pat stood next to me, put a hand on my shoulder and pressed down a bit. “Your family has a good name here, like mine, Rusty’s, the Johnston’s. Our families built this town. We look out for one another…” his voice dropped, his eyes a fire of gray smoldering ash. “These girls mighta been runaways, nobodies, right? Maybe they don’t matter in the big scheme of things. But you have to tell us what happened.”
I slapped his hand off my shoulder. “I don’t know what happened. And they do matter.”
“Things don’t look good,” Rusty said. “No one is going to believe that you went for a walk out here in the middle of the night and stumbled across someone dropping these girls.”
“Do you believe me?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. I think Pat’s right. We need to—”
They turned their heads as Herb Miller, Division’s mayor, called out, “Jesus, this crap is going to ruin my suit.” He breathed heavy and sweat dripped from his nose as he came into the clearing. He looked from us to the dead girl’s under the trees. “Jesus.” He pulled a blue handkerchief from his suit pocket and held it over his nose. His voice came across slightly muffled. “This isn’t good.” He met Pat’s eyes. “I thought you’d have them buried by now.”
I stared at them, head and heart aching because seeing them act this way brought something else back, some memory from childhood that I wanted desperately to see clearly yet remained murky and dim.
A nightmare. All of it. I’m going to wake up any second. Or the roar in my ears is the anger of God and He’s sending a river of blood over the mountain to knock down the pines and birch and carry us all away.
The weight of the key pressed against my palm. It brought back too many memories, too many questions.
Herb tapped his foot. “What the hell happened?”
Pat said, “We don’t know.”
Herb frowned at me. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Your brother did this?”
“No.”
Rusty said, “We better take care of this before someone stumbles across it.”
Pat nodded. “I’ve got a couple shovels in the trunk of the Charger.” He waved Rusty towards the path and I watched them walk away.
Herb bit his lip. He rubbed his hands together. “Our town doesn’t need this kind of trouble. Neither does your family.”
The pain behind my eyes ebbed off to a dull throb
. “You’re going to let those guys bury these girls?”
“We’ve got to, John.”
I wanted to say, Leave me out of it, leave Mark’s key out of it, but tell someone. How are their families supposed to move on if they think there’s a chance their kids are still alive?
But a flurry of movement, pale and quick, caught my attention. I looked over Herb’s shoulder. A red-haired girl stood naked, her arms wrapped around a birch tree up by the path leading to the Wright sawmill. She kissed the bark, licked it, turned her head and smiled at me.
Then she ran away towards the busted up building.
“You listening to me, John?”
“What?” I took a step back, unsettled, feeling as if something inside me had snapped without my knowing.
I’m losing my mind, Goddamnit.
Herb turned and looked back at the overgrown trail but the girl was gone. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “Your brother was trouble, I always knew that. Just like your buddy, Michael. But you, I always thought you were a good kid.”
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“Don’t be a smart ass. This is serious.”
I watched the building through the bramble, wondering if I’d only imagined the naked redhead, part of me hoping she’d show herself again, approach me and kiss away my sorrow, tell me that anyone else would have done the same thing if they’d lived my life. But Cat’s smiling face flashed through my head and my heart sank. The desire for an illusion to bring me solace almost stronger than the reality I lived with and claimed to love.
You’re a sonofabitch sometimes, man.
“I just want to get home and get cleaned up. Cat’s probably worried sick about me.”
“She thinks you’re working. Pat called her this morning and told her he called you in early.” Herb pointed at my forehead. “You’re going to have to make up a story for the cut on your forehead.”
“Why not tell her the truth?”
“Because, the only ones who know are us, and that’s the way it needs to stay.”
“And the butcher.”
“What?”
“The only ones who know are us. And the one who chopped up these kids.”
“Right.”
I studied him for a minute, saw Pat and Rusty with shovels over their shoulders tramping through the doorway to the clearing. It still bothered me, Pat finding me so easily.
I said, “There’s some stuff you guys aren’t telling me. Why?”
Herb said, “Just keep your mouth shut. This is for the best.”
They didn’t even seem interested in finding out who assaulted me either. A quiet rage blossomed in the dark patch of my heart, the place that had made me into someone I barely knew at times. I was sick of guilt and self disgust.
“How did Pat find me?”
“He didn’t.”
“No?”
Herb flapped the lapels of his coat. An odd gesture. He looked ridiculous trying to hold himself together with death all around us. “Your friend Wylie called him.” The mayor wiped his forehead with the kerchief. “He’s always run with you, your brother and Mike, hasn’t he?”
“Wylie? Yeah. So what?”
Herb looked at the girls. “I guess you’re not in any shape to help dig the graves are you?”
I spat, which only made my mouth dryer. I walked away, left Herb standing there. Rusty put a hand up to stop me as I passed them. “Where are you going, John?”
Pat grinned.
I kept seeing the naked red head.
She danced around the corpses, around the message screaming Repent!
I kept walking, mind as numb and overburdened as my body, a thought tapping away like a leaky faucet. I thought of my sister Connie when she’d been that age. Thought of Mike’s sister too, and how families need closure.
Every step hurt.
I thought, I’m not letting you guys bury those girls out here.
Chapter 2
I climbed out of the shower and wiped steam off the mirror. I knew what I had to do and didn’t like it. Pat, Herb and Rusty had let me down. Rusty mostly. The coroner had always been one of Dad’s best friends, back before he retired and moved to Arizona—sick of the church, his flock, and God’s hand in his life. Rusty had been over a lot when I was younger—Rusty and my father sitting in the den nipping whiskey and discussing whatever it was men who dealt with physical and spiritual death talked about.
Rusty always treated us good, the whole family. He wasn’t blood, but I had always thought of him as my “favorite non-related uncle.” Most of the boys in Division had ’em. Eight hundred people trapped by mountains, hot thick summers and cold pounding winters. Everyone was your family in the end. Everyone turned to ash. Despite the secrets and the random chaos, it seemed like everyone grieved for each other when the chips were down. Everyone scratched your back and expected you to do the same. But this here bullshit with the dead girls was different. I didn’t give a fuck about my family name or Mark’s reputation if it meant their ghosts would always haunt me, if it only added to the guilt I already carried. I took a long look in the mirror and hated how selfish I’d become. So many things happen in such small increments we barely notice them. Divorce and broken hearts. Jobs lost to overseas competitors. Bills that seemed at least slightly manageable so thick now that we can’t see daylight. And we pass the buck, we blame our problems on someone else.
I wiped my eyes, sick of myself.
I grabbed my pants from the closet and pulled them on. Looking in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door, I rubbed my fingers over the lump on the center of my forehead, winced, and let my fingers trail over the lines in my chest, the slanted scrawl, clean now. I pulled at the skin and the lines widened. Meat showed between the gaps. My stomach turned. I’d never liked the sight of anything gruesome, especially when it pertained to my body or that of someone I loved. After I released the damaged skin, I stared at the cuts for a moment. Looking down, it resembled chicken scratch in the sand. The mirror turned it into something more, showed it for what it was.
Repent.
My pulse sped, chest thick with unease. I looked out the bedroom windows and wondered if someone was out there now, watching me. If a naked red-head danced among the trees, at peace with herself, ready to give me the answers I needed to stay on course and do something right for once, things I doubted I could face on my own.
I shrugged into a polo shirt and grabbed my socks. I took a deep breath and finished getting ready for what lay ahead, at the time not knowing things were going to get so much worse.
* * *
Pat said over the phone, “You think that’s wise?”
“I’m fine.” I rubbed my chest and shifted my feet on the side porch of the doublewide. “I want to start today.”
“Doesn’t seem you’re in the shape to.”
“I’ve had worse experiences. We’ll need the money. Cat’s hours have been cut back at the hospital because of the budget.”
Pat laughed. “What about those romance novels you were writing? Got some writer’s block?”
“No.” I’d never had writer’s block. But the industry was in a rough place and everything seemed fragile. I realized that Cat’s insistence that I get a regular job wasn’t a lack of faith in me, but a safety net, and a good one. Her common sense was sharp, and something else I sometimes took for granted. I looked up the hill at All Saints and the Johnston Estate. A shiver broke loose and scuttled across my skin as I climbed in the Jeep. “Did you get those girls buried?”
“You care about that all the sudden?”
“Yeah.” I had to work at it to keep myself calm.
“You didn’t act like it out there by the Devil’s Garden.”
“None of it feels real. Ever since Mark died I’ve felt like I’m walking through fog.” The truth. I didn’t mean to say it, but there it was. “Now with this, it’s made it ten times worse. I just want to forget everything,” I lied. “And move on.”
“You can’t be walking through a fog with a gun on your hip and a badge on your chest.”
“The job will help me clear my head.”
“Catherine tell you that?”
“Listen, Pat. I understand what you guys were saying in the woods, about my family, the girls, all of it. I felt shook up, but I want you to know that I appreciate it, what you’re doing to look out for my family name.”
The line went silent for a moment. I started the Jeep. Pat’s voice came across softer than I’d ever heard it. “You feel up to it, come on up to the station. It’s not like your job is going to be hard, shit, mine isn’t either. Not much happens here.”
Other than last night.
I nodded and realized he couldn’t see it. “I’ll be up there in an hour or so.”
“Sounds good.”
I wanted to mention Wylie finding me out in the woods, but held my tongue. Wanted to mention the naked redhead too, and the man in the graveyard. All of it unsettled me.
“Thanks, Pat.”
“No trouble. See you in a while.”
I hung up and looked in the rearview mirror, ready to back out onto the road and do what I had to do even if it made me a traitor to everyone I’d ever known, but something flickered like light exploding from the core of an impossibly black shadow in the backseat.
Then it was gone just as fast and there was only the road I’d always known, since my parents first house stood there and my father yelled his sermon’s late at night, me just five years old and frightened to death by his volume and conviction, listening and shivering as he built himself up to wow and scare the congregation to repentance, proud of himself and unaware maybe that God didn’t view him the way he viewed himself.
I took a deep breath and sat there a moment before I slid the Jeep into gear with an unsteady hand.
* * *
Wylie’s old Ford pickup sat in front of the post office, black paint peeling. I parked next to it and looked down the street, at the place I’d grown up; a town surrounded by mountains and offering simple pleasures. At thirty, I didn’t feel like I’d accomplished much and I wondered if anyone else around here felt the same about their lives. I let my creative urges get the better of me, believing it set me apart, or made me weird because everyone else was happily miserable just working and watching TV. When you looked at everyday life too long it could make you want to put a gun in your mouth.