Rise the Dark

by Michael Koryta

  When he squeezed his mother’s hand, she squeezed back, but her eyes were dull again.

  Larry said, “Come back, Violet, come back.”

  She wasn’t coming back. Mark felt her grip slacken, and he was about to withdraw his hand when she spoke.

  “Don’t kill him,” she said.

  He stared into her eyes, which looked absolutely lifeless. “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t. Lauren doesn’t need that. And she doesn’t want that.”

  “You have no idea what she wants,” Mark said.

  “What the hell are you saying?” Larry asked.

  “She doesn’t know. Nobody can,” Mark said to his uncle.

  “Doesn’t know what?”

  “You heard her. Telling me that Lauren wouldn’t want me to kill him.”

  His uncle reached out and grabbed his shoulder and shook him. When he did it, Mark’s hand was pulled away from his mother’s, and there was a fragile static jolt and then stillness. Mark blinked and looked at her face—dead; she was unquestionably dead.

  “She’s gone,” Larry said. “She’s been gone. What in the hell is the matter with you?”

  Mark sat back on his heels. She was gone. He wiped at his eyes again, as if to clear something from them, and then turned to Garland Webb. He was motionless at the base of the steps.

  Mark got slowly to his feet. He’d never felt less steady. Well, in Siesta Key, maybe. After the sheriff’s deputy gave him the news. Maybe then.

  He said, “You need to get out of here, Larry.”

  “I’m taking her.”

  “No. She’ll slow you down.”

  Larry’s voice was firm. “I’m not leaving her in this place. I’ll set her somewhere clean. Not here.”

  Mark didn’t argue. Didn’t speak at all, in fact, while Larry gathered his mother’s body gently into his arms and stood. She looked so small.

  “She’s my sister, son,” Larry said. “I’ve not left her behind yet.”

  His uncle left without another word, carrying her body through the high fence and out to the world beyond. Then it was just Mark and Garland Webb.

  71

  Got him. The realization filled him with wonder rather than triumph. Pate had seemed untouchable since that first sighting in Jay’s house, his implacable calm evidence of something he’d understood from the start—he would survive. He would win.

  The train whistle shrilled, low and mournful, and Jay looked east and saw the oncoming lights and then looked south to the silhouette of his truck, to the trees where Pate had anchored all the cables for the trap.

  Jay wouldn’t have enough time to detach them from the towers. No chance. But he also didn’t need to. Not anymore, not with Pate and the gun gone. If Jay could cut the cables at their anchor point and haul them across the tracks and over to the north side, he could just watch the train roar by, the engineer oblivious to the near disaster.

  There was enough time left for that. The train was coming fast, but Jay could climb down faster. The fear was gone now and the old faith was back. He knew the steel better than most men knew their front steps.

  Sabrina was safe, Jay was alone, and Eli Pate was not going to win any part of this day.

  72

  Mark found an ancient kerosene lamp in the cabin that cast a faint, flickering circle of light where he sat waiting for Garland Webb to regain consciousness. Inside the circle, it felt as if the world had condensed—or collapsed—and this place was all there was to it. The massive western sky, blanketed with stars, hung so close it seemed to be within reach, but the mountains had vanished in the blackness and all that remained was the circle of lantern light that contained Markus Novak and Garland Webb.

  There was nothing else.

  And yet they were not alone.

  Lauren was between them. Mark understood that. She was somewhere in that light between him and this other man, and his always-receding memories of her felt closer, fresher, sharper.

  More painful.

  His mother’s last words, the imagined words, the impossible words, would also not recede.

  Lauren doesn’t need that. And she doesn’t want that.

  He knew that it was true. Lauren had seen many horrors and studied countless more, yet her opposition to capital punishment had never wavered. Not for a second.

  But still he could not leave.

  He had to know how it had come to pass. How his wife and his mother, two people who had never met and who were separated by thousands of miles and many years, had come to die at the same man’s hand.

  Mark wished he could believe in coincidence. He had never liked that notion before, but now he wanted to wrap it around himself to keep the other possibilities at bay.

  He couldn’t, though. Not here in the mountains of his youth.

  Garland Webb stirred a little and moaned. He was slumped over, held partially upright by the post Mark had tied him to, and Mark reached out and jabbed his belly with the muzzle of the rifle. Webb grunted and his eyes fluttered open. He looked directly at Mark, and then closed his eyes again. This happened several times before he registered Mark, and then he tried to rise. The knots caught him.

  Mark said, “You know who I am?”

  He was still foggy with the drugs, but he shook his head.

  “Think about it,” Mark said.

  Garland Webb blinked at him, wet his lips, then stared at the ground as comprehension returned. Mark could see a change in his face.

  “Novak.” He slurred the name.

  “Good. We were going to wait until you had it. I’m glad you’re finally there.”

  Webb looked away from Mark, scanning in other directions.

  “There’s nobody else,” Mark said. “You are alone.”

  When Webb’s attention returned to Mark, there was hate in his eyes, and Mark was pleased by that.

  “You told your cell mate that you murdered my wife. Bragged about it.” Mark had a tremor near his left eye, but his hand was steady on the rifle. “What we need to determine is whether you told that man the truth.”

  Garland Webb smiled.

  Mark’s hand moved toward the trigger of the AR-15 almost involuntarily. He considered things for a moment, then set the rifle aside entirely and took the revolver from his jacket pocket.

  “This is a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. I think you’re familiar with them.”

  Webb didn’t say anything. He kept smiling.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you told the other man, Garland.”

  Webb did not slur when he said, “Go ahead and use the gun.”

  Mark shook his head. “I don’t intend to use the gun. I would like you to talk.”

  “You think that will help you? Why? How would it help you?”

  “I need to know if you killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  Holding off on the kill shot was incredibly hard. Mark gripped the .38 so tightly his hand ached.

  “You’ve been told the truth all along,” Webb said. “You’re just missing one thing. Why she wanted to go to Cassadaga. You don’t understand that, do you?”

  Mark cocked his head. The reason had been clear. Dixie Witte was the reason. The case had been bound for Mark’s desk when Lauren intercepted it and told Jeff London she’d take it because Mark wouldn’t believe the psychic was credible.

  “Why was she in Cassadaga?”

  “Looking for your family.”

  Mark stared at him for a few seconds and then shook his head. “No. She wasn’t, and she wouldn’t have been. Try again.”

  “She was,” Webb said simply. “You can deny it if you’d like, but I’ve never feared truth. I embrace it.”

  “Not in the courtroom.”

  “The courtroom is not my truth.”

  “Lauren knew nothing about my family other than that I wanted no part of them,” Mark said. “And she sure as hell wouldn’t have consulted a psychic to find them.”

  “Correct. She didn’t want a psychic. She w
anted a town.”

  Mark felt cold, remembering that house in Cassadaga, the fevered sickness of the place, its dark allure.

  “Why would she want a town?”

  “Because your mother had written her a letter about it.” Webb was enjoying himself now. Enjoying Mark’s face, whatever reactions he was seeing there. “Your mother is the reason any of us went to Cassadaga.” His laugh ended in a cough. “Maybe that’s not right. Maybe your father is the reason. He convinced her it was a special place. She convinced Eli. It suited him. He liked the energy there. For a while, that was going to be Wardenclyffe. Until your wife came, with the letter from your mother.”

  “She came for a case. I know that. I was part of it.”

  But he could see the possibility of truth here. A wider truth than what he’d known before. Fuller, like a sunrise revealing a world that was different than the one you’d imagined in the night.

  Garland Webb spoke with mocking patience, as if talking to a dullard. “That case was the excuse. She really had questions about your family. Didn’t you wonder why she stayed in town after she was done with Dixie Witte?”

  Everyone had wondered. The car being on Kicklighter Road never made sense. Unless she had a second goal in town. A secret goal.

  “Are you ready to laugh?” Garland Webb said. “Here’s the best joke you’ll ever hear, Novak. Your mother told your wife that when the dark rose, you two should go to Cassadaga for protection. I took that letter. It was the only thing I took. Feel better now? All the answers—do they help?”

  His laughter was rich and delighted. Mark slapped the side of his face with the gun barrel. As soon as he’d done it, he felt rage thundering in his blood and he wanted to swing again and again, until Webb’s face was nothing but a memory, the remains nothing but blood and bone fragments. He stilled himself with an effort. Webb grinned, forcing blood from his lacerated lips.

  “It’s about trust. You and your wife kept so many secrets from each other.” He made a tsking sound. The blood bubbled on his lips when he did it. “No trust.”

  Lauren had knocked on the wrong door, and she had given her name. Mark’s name. The one that she’d taken as her own, along with all that came with it. She had been killed for this. Because she had joined her name with his, and his past had infected her like a cancer.

  Mark shook his head. “No. That is not why she died. That is not enough.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Why kill her?” Mark said.

  Webb’s indifference vanished and his face turned graveyard serious, almost innocent.

  “Eli told me to.”

  Garland had done what he’d been told. How would that play in court? What deals would he be offered for testimony about Pate?

  “If you’re going to kill me,” Garland Webb said, “let’s move it along. I don’t fear it. I welcome it. Death for a cause isn’t death at all.”

  “You’ll be a martyr, that’s what you think?”

  “I’ll have died for a purpose. Not like your wife.”

  Mark grazed the trigger. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertip where it touched the metal. A pulse like thunder, telling him to just end it. Lauren’s memory urged him otherwise.

  Evidence. Find the evidence that shows the truth. A bad detective builds a case, his wife would say, a good one finds the truth.

  “How did you get her out of the car?” he said.

  Webb seemed to consider not answering or perhaps telling a lie, but in the end he smiled again and said, “I called for help. I waved at her and shouted for help. She stopped right away. Got out of the car. Didn’t even close the door. And I pointed into the woods and I said, ‘She’s drowning.’ That’s all I said, just those two words. I just needed to get her away from the road, but she ran away from it.”

  Lauren had stopped her car because of either trust or threat, the police had surmised, detectives torn between opposite theories. For the first time, Mark had heard an explanation that fit Lauren’s character: she had been trying to help.

  His mouth was dry and his head ached. He could picture the pearl-white Infiniti on the side of the road, door standing open. Could picture the way Lauren would have run. Without hesitation, without questioning.

  She’s drowning.

  Yes, she would have run fast. She would have run right down that dark path.

  His hands were shaking. Webb saw it and his smiled widened.

  “Look at you,” he said. “Just look at you.”

  Shoot him, Mark thought. Kneecaps first, then testicles. Then find a knife and cut the flesh from him in strips. Skin him alive and leave him for the wolves.

  He worked saliva back into his mouth and said, “I will have to prove this, you understand? I don’t think this confession will hold up in court. Not under your current circumstances. I suspect a judge would consider this unfair duress.”

  “You can’t prove it,” Webb said. “So you’ll have to use that gun.”

  Mark shook his head. “Not an option.”

  “You are a very weak man.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Weaker than your wife.”

  “Absolutely. I always knew that.”

  Webb laughed again. His face looked bright in the lantern light. The sound of his laugh traveled through Mark’s nerves like an electric charge. You’re making the wrong choice, he thought. It’s like you told Jeff—who’s to say what she thought in the last seconds of her life? Who’s to know that her heart didn’t change then?

  “You don’t get to keep taking things from her,” Mark said. “Lauren was so much more than I deserved. And she wanted to keep me clean. She died trying to do that.” His voice had the sound of a wood rasp. “You don’t get to take that from her. This would be an execution, and she did not believe in execution. She believed in hope. Lived for it. You live for fear. You don’t get to beat her. You don’t get to win.”

  “I’ve already won.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re going to prison. And who knows, maybe Innocence Incorporated will take your case. But I’ll be working on the other side of it. You’re going to stay in prison this time, Garland. God help me, I will see to that.”

  “She would have been ashamed of you. You’re nothing like her. She had the kind of fight I enjoy. I wish I’d had more time with her. It just wasn’t the right day for that. But when she saw the gun, her eyes, oh, they were wonderful.”

  Mark’s finger slipped back onto the trigger. The gun shook in his hand.

  “Most times, I see fear,” Garland Webb said. “But with your wife? She was angry. When she understood what was about to happen? She wasn’t afraid of me, she was angry with me, and she looked beautiful. You know the look I’m talking about. The two of you would have had fights, arguments. Then you made up, I’m sure. I bet that was fun. How could it not have been with her?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You wanted talk! So I’m talking. And, yes, you know the look I’m describing. How the anger can actually be sexy. She radiated sex in that last moment.”

  “Shut the—”

  “No, it’s important for you to know the way she looked at the end! I want to complete the picture for you. All those hours you must have imagined it! What you’re probably missing is the anger, and the sex. You imagined fear, imagined terror, but you were wrong. Trust me, after she saw the gun, she was something beyond gorgeous. I had to shoot her in a hurry, because time was an issue. I think she felt my hands on her, though. Yes, I would say the last thing she ever felt was my hands on—”

  The bullet split the center of his forehead. His eyes went wide and his jaw slackened and his tongue fell forward a half a second before his head did. Bright blood streamed from his skull.

  Mark looked at his own hand and back at Webb, and for a moment he was truly and deeply confused. Then he heard footsteps and turned to see his uncle.

  Larry walked up beside him and came to a stop. He was crying without making a sound. He looked at Webb
and spit on him, and then opened the cylinder of the revolver in his hand, shook the used cartridge out, and offered it to Mark.

  “I couldn’t let you listen to any more of that,” Larry said hoarsely. “I know what you were trying to do, and it was the right thing. But I couldn’t let it go on.”

  Mark turned the bullet casing over in his fingers and watched Garland Webb’s blood soak into the earth.

  Larry said, “I didn’t know your wife, Markus. I wish I had. But what you said, about how she died trying to keep you clean? I believe that. It’s far too late in this life for me to ever get clean, but I can still help her with you. I just did.”

  Mark got slowly to his feet. He stepped over to Garland Webb’s body and used the toe of his boot to roll the dead man’s head to the side. The lifeless, empty eyes stared back. Mark spent a long time looking into them. Memorizing them. He knew that he would need the memory for many days to come.

  For the rest of his life.

  “She wouldn’t have wanted it,” he said. “But it should have been me who did it. It had to be me.”

  “Nothing has to be,” Larry said.

  “She wouldn’t have wanted it,” Mark said again.

  “I’m sure I would’ve loved your wife. But I don’t think I would’ve agreed with her on some of the finer points.” Larry studied Garland Webb’s corpse. “There may come a day, I suppose, when we’ll know. If there’s a God, Markus, I’ll be curious what he thinks of this one.”

  Mark watched Garland Webb bleed out and half of him wished he’d fired the shot and another half wished it hadn’t been fired at all. When he turned from the corpse and looked away from the circle of light, he was aware of the vastness of the night as if it were a new player in the scene. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, rustling the pines below them. Far off down the mountain, the blackness was broken by flashers.

  Police en route.

  “They’re coming,” Mark said.

  “Yes.”

  Mark knelt and untied Garland Webb’s hands, then slid the AR-15 over with his foot until the rifle and the body rested together. Larry watched in silence, understanding.