by Beverly Bird
She made a small, whimpering sound in her throat. She eased to her hands and knees, doing it blindly. It was so dark, so incredibly dark. Her heart roared.
She wondered again where she was and what had happened. And then she thought of Josh. "Oh, God," she moaned. "Where’s Josh?"
She began crying. She was suddenly scared in a way that robbed her of everything. It took her pride, her sense, left her with nothing. She dragged a hand under her nose, trembling, and leaned back.
There was a wall there to meet her, to take her weight. She put a hand out to it. It was smooth and cool. Stone.
Stone?
She was underground.
Claustrophobia slammed into her, a wild, frightening sense of weight pressing down on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She spent a few moments crawling about frantically in the pitch-darkness, gasping, finding too many walls, skimming her hands over them.
"Please ... let me out ... oh, God, out ... where’s Josh?"
She finally made herself be still and think. She pressed
her knuckles to her mouth, trembling uncontrollably.
Alone, underground.
When she had refused to leave willingly, Harry must have taken matters into his own hands. She remembered the careful way he had hit her. The gentle, no-harder-than-necessary blow. She laughed shrilly. Of course he wouldn’t really want to hurt her. He was her father.
Her laughter ricocheted off the walls. She flinched back from the eerie echo, her heart hammering.
Think.
Harry must have put her there, she thought. He wanted to keep her safe from ... from someone else.
Yes, she thought, her heart thudding, there had to be someone else. Because she remembered again that she hadn’t hidden in the pantry when she had fled after finding Harry in the kitchen all those years ago. And Harry said that he hadn’t killed Rick. He said Rick had already been dead. The kitten had been, too. But more, much more than that was another nagging, unanswered question. A horrible question. Her head pounded with it.
What had become of Beacher Brogan?
It didn’t matter who had killed her mother, she realized wildly, whether it had been Harry through his inciteful actions or Dierdre in her rage and jealousy and shame, because neither of them had killed Beacher Brogan.
Maddie mewled aloud and almost missed another sound, one she didn’t make herself. A thumping. Soft, shuffling movement, then muted weight hitting the solid slab of the cave floor.
She waited, holding her breath. No sound followed.
"Who’s there?" she whispered finally.
"Hello, hello."
Kenny found Hector first. Hector was driving north along the west road, and Kenny tapped at his sirens and motioned him over just before they reached Fifteenth Street. He got out of his car and jogged ahead to talk to him.
"You been in your car the whole last half hour or so?" Hector stumbled a bit over his explanation. Something about Kenny’s tone alarmed him. "Well, Sheila said to look for Joe. I was at the diner."
"You find him?" Kenny demanded.
"No, I was going to his house—"
"Think anybody could have gotten into your car while you were inside the diner?"
Hector drew himself up. "Hey, I always lock the doors." "It was him then. It must have been Joe’s truck." "What was him?"
Kenny turned around, looking down the street toward Joe’s condo. No Pathfinder there. He was really getting a bad feeling about this.
"All right," he decided. "You stay on this road. I’m going to take the Beach Road, and I’m going to call back to Sheila and have her drive up the boulevard. All three of us’ll meet at The Wick bridge."
"The Wick?" Hector bleated. "The bridge?"
"We’ve got to find Joe. I think he’s in trouble."
"On The Wick?"
"On the fucking Wick, Hector! And if you don’t want to go up there, then you’d damned well better find him on the big island before we get there. Now move!" Kenny jogged back to his own car. He peeled out from the curb, swinging around Hector’s parked vehicle. He buzzed in to Sheila. She picked up fast.
"It wasn’t Hector," he said shortly. "I found him." "Oh, God," she moaned.
"Here’s what we’re going to do." He told her his
plan. "Everybody wait at the bridge until we all get
there."
Ten minutes later, they were all gathered, and nobody had seen Joe. Hector was starting to look pale.
"I don’t like it up here," he protested. "Ever since that day when Dave and I found that mess—"
"Cut it out. Hector," Kenny snapped. He looked at Sheila. "How sure are we that he’s not on the big island?" Her eyes went a little wild. "Kenny, it’s not that big! We couldn’t miss a whole truck'."
"Okay," he muttered. He looked over his shoulder at the bridge. "Smartest place to look up here is where all the trouble’s been lately. Where all the trouble’s ever been." Hector groaned.
"Shut up, Hector!" Sheila cried.
"We’ll check out the Brogan place, then we’ll move out from there." Kenny got back into his car.
Hector was the last one of them to go over the bridge. He saw the Pathfinder after they did, as soon as he reached the promontory. "Oh, shit," he muttered. "Oh, shit."
If there was blood this time, he was not going in. He remembered the last time, back in ’72, when Dave had told him to take the kid to Doe, and he had stepped in it and his legs had shot right out from under him and he had landed in the slop. It had taken him a week of showers before he’d finally felt like he had gotten that gore off him. And on Monday somebody else had disappeared out of the damned house. And maybe Joe was gone, too.
By the time he had parked, Kenny and Sheila were on the front deck, and both of them had already been in the house, which suited Hector just fine. Then Kenny left them suddenly and jogged down to the beach.
"I’ll check the marshes!" Sheila called out, and she came down off the deck, circling around to the back of the house.
Hector thought he would stay right about where he was and check the Pathfinder.
He went back to it. The doors were unlocked. He opened the passenger side and peered in. The handset was dangling. There was sand all over the place. He backed away from it slowly.
"Nothing," Sheila panted, coming to a stop on the drive.
Kenny ran up from the beach. "There’s blood. A big soak of it. If it’s Joe’s, he’s really in trouble."
Hector felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips, in his toes. "Well, where is he?"
"How the hell should I know?" Kenny snapped. "Christ, here we go again. We got blood, we got no gun, and no damned bodies. What the hell is going on up here? It’s like there’s a spell over this lump of land or something."
Hector swooned.
Maddie cried out in relief, then her voice was drowned out by an ungodly rumbling overhead. She shrank back instinctively, then she looked up.
It sounded like traffic going over a bridge, she thought. Almost like that, but more resounding, less rickety, and a little farther behind her.
They were underneath the promontory, she realized.
But Angus had found her. Trust him to know of a strange place like this.
There was a sputtering point of light, low, near the floor. It caught and glowed. Some kind of lamp. She started to look up into Angus’s face, then she saw Joe at his feet, and something—someone else—just behind him.
Rick. His neck lolled crazily, and there was a bullet hole between his eyes, and air filled her lungs and simply hung there. For a wild moment, the edges of her vision went black.
She looked at Joe again and fought it.
"Angus," she choked. "What’s going on?"
And then she knew. Memory clicked again, coming back too fast, pounding into her head. Finally, she remembered all of it. But she couldn’t think, couldn’t sort through it then because Rick was dead and Joe was hurt.
And Josh was nowhere to be found.
She crawled to Joe. And then she saw the blood. It was everywhere, too much of it. Angus had dropped him on his back, and it still seeped out from beneath him a little. It was streaked across the front of his shirt. It was smeared on his neck and on his face and in his hair. She put a trembling hand to his cheek. It was cold.
He was so pale, so white, and his lips were blue. She clutched at his wrist and felt for his pulse. It was faint, thready, but it was there.
She shot to her feet, staggering around to face Angus. "What have you done?" she screamed.
He looked injured. "Not me. Not me, Maddie. That lady did it. Joe’s lady."
Joe’s lady? Gina?
No, she thought, no, Gina was in the hospital. But maybe not. She found she was willing to believe almost anything at this point.
"Where’s Josh?" she asked, struggling for sanity when her mind wanted to hide behind a blank again. "Angus, what have you done with Josh?"
Angus shook his head miserably. "Couldn’t find him. I looked. I did. I knew you would want him here. But I couldn’t find him."
Maddie swayed. "Why are you doing this? Why now?"
She understood what had happened before, all those years ago. In a pathetic way, that had made sense. But not this. Never this.
Angus’s lantern jaw jutted. She watched him warily and knelt to feel for Joe’s pulse again, trembling, keeping one wary eye on the big man.
"You could come back to The Wick," Angus said. "You did come back. Joe lied when he said they wouldn’t let you. But I’ll take care of you. I always took care of you. We’re buddies."
They had been, she thought, feeling sick. Yes, they had. Suddenly he was lumbering past her, to the back of the cave. "I even saved this for you. I saved it all this time. I was going to give it to you before, but he took you away. Joe took you to his house."
Maddie recoiled as he moved close by her. As he disappeared into the lingering pools of darkness in the back, she leaned over Joe again.
"Hang on, just ... hang on. Josh is out there, somewhere. And I can get away. I know I can get out of here, if I just don’t fall apart."
She thought wildly of the one thing they hadn’t asked Angus that afternoon when he’d come to Joe’s house. Did you kill Rick?
Yes, she thought, shaking inside. Yes, he must have. To protect her. The kitten, too. For her. To take care of her. It was his job.
Oh, God.
He came back into the light. "What, Angus?" Her voice was too thin and sharp. She softened it deliberately. "What have you got there?"
He handed her a scrap of pink.
The smell that came off it was partially his own—fish and excrement and dirt. And mold, and age. She took it, saw what it was, cried out, and dropped it again.
Her T-shirt. The T-shirt that she had been wearing that day. Pink, with fake, white lace at the collar. Stained with old, flaking blood.
"I had to use your jeans," he said solemnly. "I’m sorry. I had to use them. To pull him down. To get him in here. Over the rocks. I tied them around his ankles and pulled. He was heavy, and I couldn’t carry him over the rocks. It was too hard."
Him. Her father. No, not her father. Beacher. Harry was her father.
Her head swam. She was losing connections again. She had to get out of there, she realized, had to find Josh and get help for Joe.
"That’s okay, Angus," she managed. "I understand." He smiled beatifically.
"You’re going to take care of me here?" she asked, then she took a breath and steadied herself when her voice began cracking. "Is that it?"
"I always took care of you," he repeated. "During the week. That was my job. You remember our song."
Baby ... buddy ... caper... crow. "Yes." Her voice was strangled. She still couldn’t figure out how the words were wrong, but at least she finally knew where she had learned it.
"It was our song," Angus said proudly. "Your mama gave it to me, and I gave it to you, so you’d sleep when you couldn’t go back there to your house. Because of him."
And that, she suddenly understood, was why she’d remembered so little of the house. Because she really hadn’t spent a whole lot of time there. Not as she had gotten older. She’d stayed with Angus. In the shack. Every time Beacher would drink, yell, start throwing his fists, she’d go to Angus. Her mother had made her go.
"Run, Maddie, go into the reeds. "
Now she could hear her mother’s voice as clearly as though she were standing beside her.
"Stay with Angus. He’ll take care of you. He’ll know when it’s safe to bring you back. "
But it had never been safe, not really. Whenever he saw her, Beacher would go into a rage, especially if he was drunk.
The belt, she recalled, with that big, raised buckle, and sweet God, his fists. She remembered and cringed unconsciously all over again. Angus had hardly ever brought her back to the house. She hadn’t wanted to be in the house. She’d go to school, then home, then run into the reeds and the dunes at the first opportunity, to the shack she’d remembered so easily on Monday night, as soon as she’d seen it.
"Can’t go there now," Angus said as though reading her mind. "Too dirty. Too dirty for you and your boy. But this is good."
"It’s not good, Angus," she managed.
His face fell. "Why?"
"Well, it’s fine for me, and for you and Josh, if we can find him, but Joe needs help."
He was keeping her for his own, she realized, still and always, even though there was nothing left to protect her against. But Joe ... dear God, why, she wondered, had he brought Joe?
"If the others start looking for him, they’ll probably find your place here," she went on, fishing. "It’s secret, isn’t it?"
His expression cleared. He smiled happily. "Nobody knows about it."
Her heart sank. Maybe, she thought. Maybe not.
She swallowed. Her mouth was like sandpaper. "What... what if Joe dies?"
"Dies?"
Damn you, Angus, think! For once in your life, think! But he couldn’t, of course he couldn’t. Maddie bit back on a howl of frustration.
"He’s hurt really bad, Angus. He needs help." Then she had a brainstorm. "Why don’t you just take him back up to the road where someone can find him? Then you can look for josh again, too, and we can all stay here together."
His jaw hardened. "No."
She fought to keep the rage from her voice. "Why not?" "You’ll go. When I’m gone, you’ll go away again. Back to his house. You shouldn’t have gone there, Maddie. You’re mine."
Her head pounded. "No, Angus, no," she managed. "I promise. I won’t go anywhere. I just want my boy."
He seemed to think about it, scrunching up his face in that way he had. as though the process was physically painful. "Later," he decided. "After the water goes. I’ll take Joe out. Too late now. It’s coming."
"The water? What water?"
He pointed behind her, at the cave opening. There was a thin shaft of sunlight there. Horror dawned on her, enough to make her heart and her breath go still again.
"Angus, if the tide comes in here, we’ll all die. We won’t be able to breathe."
He scowled. "We’ll breathe."
"Angus, please! We won’t! Have you ever been in here when the water was in?"
He hesitated, then he shook his head. "But I know it only comes halfway because it only gets wet up to here." He moved and pointed to the floor.
Even as he spoke, Maddie thought she could hear water rushing outside.
It was her imagination. Paranoia. It had to be.
"Angus, we’ve got to leave here. I’ll stay with you. I’ll always stay with you. You protect me. But we have to leave this place. We have to put Joe somewhere where somebody can find him. Then we can go to your shack. Or we can stay forever in my house. I can buy it, Angus. I can buy it back from Tony Macari. I have money now. I can buy it for us. You could live in a real house. With me and Josh." She w
as babbling, rambling. She forced herself to drag in breath. "We can go anywhere, but we can’t stay here. And we have to find Josh."
Angus’s mind wandered off again. She wanted to scream as he looked sadly at Joe.
"He’ll take you back. He loves you. I know it. And you love him. When he came, you stopped making sandwiches. Just like your daddy. When he came home, your mama stopped making me sandwiches."
She remembered that, too, Maddie thought dizzily. She remembered eating at the table in the kitchen, and then Beacher would come home and her mother would chase them out the back way.
"Go on, now, play. Bring her back after he goes to sleep, Angus."
But he hadn’t always brought her back. Sometimes he had just kept her there. In his shack. For his own, like a pet, or a teddy bear. And her mother? Maddie shuddered. Her mother had surely believed that that was better than having her husband break her arm again in one of his drunken rages.
"So you killed him," she said hollowly, thinking aloud.
Angus looked legitimately startled. "No, Maddie. No!"
Her head was spinning. "I saw you, Angus! After I left Harry, I ran to find you." Her buddy, she thought wildly. Her always-protector. She had fled to find him, to tell him what she had seen. "I found you, and I took you back to the house, and you saw, then he came in and you grabbed him from behind and ... and hurt him, somehow." He fell, she remembered. Beacher had fallen, sliding limply out of Angus’s grasp. And then Angus had taken everybody away, her mother and the man she’d always thought was her father. But he hadn’t cleaned up the blood. She’d slipped in the blood. She’d gotten it all over her, so he’d taken her clothes. He’d saved her shirt, and had used her jeans to drag Beacher into the cave.
The tide must have carried him out. As it would carry Rick, sooner or later.
But Angus was shaking his head. "Not because of the sandwiches, Maddie! I didn’t hurt him because of the sandwiches. It was because he killed your mama."
Maddie’s jaw went slack. "You killed Beacher because you thought he killed my mother?"