The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  Ava suddenly realized that it had been almost three days since she’d eaten, and for the first time since hearing the name Four Houses she was hungry—starving, actually. “Yes, please,” she said. “Anything is good. I don’t have much cash, but I got my debit card and I—”

  “First meal is always on the house,” Barb said. “We don’t have any ATMs here, and no phone lines for credit cards, so it’s mostly a barter system with us, but we keep the menu cheap, just like Buddy did.”

  A man appeared in the doorway behind the bar. Ava assumed it led to the kitchen. He was burly, with a barrel chest and wide shoulders. He wore a black turtleneck and a gray driver’s cap on his shaved head. He had intense dark eyes and a kind smile. The man kissed Barb on the cheek and leaned against the bar, beside her. “And the food is at least as good as when Buddy ran the joint,” the man said. “Hi, I’m Carl Kesner—welcome to town. How about I get you a burger and fries?”

  Ava smiled and nodded. “That sounds great. Thank you!” Carl disappeared back into the kitchen, and soon Ava smelled the burger cooking. She finished her Coke, and Barb poured her another.

  “You haven’t seen any other new people come by in the last few days, have you?” Ava asked. “Lexi, Cole?”

  Barb shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Ava, but no,” she said.

  Ava was quiet for a time, nursing her drink. The man at the table with the woman kept stealing glances at her, and Ava tried not to notice. He had long, stringy gray hair that fell below his shoulders and an acne-scarred face that resembled the lunar surface. His gray handlebar mustache failed to hide his cruel, scowling mouth. The woman looked as if she was Native American, with long black hair, eyes like slate, a slender build, and a hawklike nose. She didn’t seem to mind her companion looking Ava over.

  Barb leaned across the bar to speak softly to Ava. “Don’t mind Ricky,” she said. “He’s kind of a creep, but we’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”

  Ava shook her head. “You’ll make sure?” she said. “Why don’t you guys have cops around here? My friends and I have been missing for over two days, and there are no state police, no searches, nothing on the TV or radio—do you guys even have TV and radio here?” Her voice was starting to rise, but Barb remained calm, placid, nodding slightly. “No ATMs, no phones, no cell service … those shadow things! Please, Barb, tell me what’s going on here, and why do I seem to be the only person who thinks everything here is—”

  “Insane?” Barb said. The wide smile was back. “Because you’re new, sweetie, and you haven’t gotten used to the madness yet.”

  Carl came out with a platter of fries and a huge cheeseburger. He set them down in front of Ava. “Let me guess,” he said to Ava. “‘What the hell is wrong with this place and these people,’ right?”

  Ava couldn’t help laughing. She plucked a hot fry off the plate and nibbled it. “Yeah,” she said. “Exactly.”

  “Barb and I came here in 1999,” Carl said. “That big old Winnebago out back was ours. We were caravanners, out exploring the open road. We never expected to end up running a restaurant at the end of the world. And we were just as scared and confused when we found ourselves in Four Houses as you are now, Ava. We were lucky. Buddy had been here for a long time before us and he knew the score. He protected us, mentored us, and gave us … well, hope.”

  “We’ll try to answer your questions as best we can,” Barb said, refilling Ava’s drink. “Sometimes the answers in this place don’t make much sense when you hear them. You have to live them yourself. If we had told you about the shadow people before the other night, you would have thought we were crazy. Now you’ve seen, and you believe.”

  “What are they?” Ava asked.

  “Everything bad in us,” Carl said quietly, the gentle demeanor of his face giving way to his stern eyes. Ava knew that he was reliving his own horrible night of running and screaming, of darkness and death. “The Egyptians thought that when you died the soul split into its component parts and wandered, lost, angry, confused, and often hungry. The shadow was called the Sheut, and it was said to carry part of the person it had belonged to with it—the bestial, amoral, animal side. It was also supposed to serve the jackal god—the lord of the dead.”

  “The shadow people are … born,” Barb said, “out of a transformation, a horrible transformation. There is nothing good in them anymore, nothing that can ever be redeemed. Light kills them, hurts them. But in darkness, Ava, you do exactly what you did to survive the other night—you run. You run and don’t look back.”

  A hand fell on Ava’s shoulder, and she jumped on her stool. The sneering gray-haired man, Ricky, was leaning over her shoulder to whisper in her ear. He smelled of sour beer and stale tobacco smoke.

  “Heard you talk, darlin’,” Ricky said with a voice like oil, pouring. “Those shadows, they serve him, do his fucking bidding. Pretty little piece of ass like you, you’re gonna need someone to look after you here, keep you warm and safe—”

  “Give it a rest, Ricky,” Carl said. “Time to call it a day. You can only cram so much asshole into twenty-four hours. Take a break.”

  Ricky ignored him and kept whispering into Ava’s ear. “The Scodes know the score,” he said. “A few others, too. They serve him, bring sacrifices to the town, like you and your friends the other night. Sometimes he lets poor fuckers just drive on into town, like fucking tourists, bringing in fresh meat, new blood, trucks with food, supplies. It keeps things—” He reached over and took her burger, ripping a big bite off with his teeth and replacing it on her plate. “Juicy,” he said.

  Carl reached for something under the bar and began to move around the counter toward Ricky. His face was red and his eyes were stormy.

  “Agnes,” Ava said. “Agnes protects me.”

  Ricky snorted. “Well, shit,” he said. “If that crazy old witch opened her door for you, then you’re already fucked, angel tits. You think she opened up for you out of the goodness of her heart. You got something she wants; she schemes just as fucking much as he does. The two of them been fighting a war for this town for as long as anyone can remember, baby.”

  Ricky stepped away as Carl, brandishing a short aluminum baseball bat, moved between him and Ava. “Time to go,” Carl said curtly. “Get out, Ricky. See you again soon. You can even up for the beer and food next time.”

  Ricky’s companion, the Indian woman, took him by the arm and began to tug him in the direction of the door. Ricky raised his arms and backed away from Carl, still talking to Ava as he went. “You just remember, you need protection, you can always call on old Ricky!” he said. “I’ll take good care of you, like I do all my girls.” The door was open and sunlight was spilling in. Ricky looked even worse in direct sunlight. “Don’t you forget, now, darlin’,” he said. The door slammed behind him and his woman. The jukebox was playing another old scratchy single—the Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carl said to Ava. The men at the back table had risen to come to Carl and Ava’s aid. Carl waved them back to their table. “Show’s over, guys,” he said. “Just Ricky being his usual sensitive self.” Carl walked back to their table to talk to them.

  Ava looked at Barb and ripped a piece of the burger off on the side opposite Ricky’s bite. She chewed it with no expression on her face. “Juicy,” she said. She looked up at Barb. “Do you trust Agnes? Does Carl?”

  Barb was silent for a moment, looking at her reflection in the polished wood of the bar. “I do,” she said. “We do. I don’t know what she’s up to sometimes, and she does have her own, I don’t know, agenda, but I’ve seen her save lives many, many times. Yes, I trust her, and I think you should, too.”

  “That’s assuming I trust you, too,” Ava said with a smile, and took another bite of burger.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Barb said, the grin returning, full strength. “I’d trust me!”

  * * *

  Over the next few hours, Ava sat on her barstool a
t Buddy’s and tried to learn the way this strange place worked by observation. Her professors would have described this process in regard to programming as “binding”—making an abstraction more concrete by associating it with other properties, building a model. So Ava tried to build a model in her head of how the program called Four Houses actually ran and what the hell its function was. She saw locals drift in and out. Most were like the lumberjack guys at the back table. They eventually left, and they all welcomed her to town as they headed out the door.

  A few townies were more like Ricky—creepy assholes. Actually, that wasn’t completely fair, Ava thought. Some were creepy, and assholes, but others were … damaged, maybe mentally ill. They reminded her a little of Lexi when she forgot to take her meds. She really didn’t care much for Lexi and never really had, but she hoped now, prayed, even—in that vague way you can pray when you haven’t done it since you were a kid—that Lexi was out there and alive, and, hell, she even hoped she was fucking Cole’s brains out, as Ava knew she had always wanted to do. She didn’t care, she just wanted them alive and okay.

  She looked at one of the locals, a woman with frizzy red hair and bulging wide eyes, who Barb said was named Lacy. Ava wondered if it was living here long enough that made Lacy scratch uncontrollably and mutter to herself at her lonely table near the bathrooms. If it was, Ava was getting the hell out of here, now.

  Carl and Barb told Ava to stay clear of the southern end of the town—the junkyard, Scode’s Garage, and, especially, the deep woods.

  “Why don’t you guys just pack up and leave? Why doesn’t Agnes get Dennis the hell out of here?” Ava asked as she placed a crumpled wad of money on the bar. “Why stay? And who the hell is ‘he,’ or ‘him’ or what-the-hell-ever it is that everyone is so afraid of?”

  “You know, we’ve been here seventeen years,” Barb said, “and I don’t know if either of us could explain what ‘he’ is.”

  “The reason we stay is because … we have to, Ava,” Carl said, as he handed her back the money, “and so do you. I’m sorry. All you can do, all that any of us can do, is try to make the best of this damn place, try to keep from going nuts, and help one another.”

  “Thank you, guys,” Ava said with a wave as she headed out the door.

  “Where you headed, hon?” Barb asked.

  “Taking a hike,” Ava said. “I’m going to get help—cops, troopers, an ambulance, something.” Both Carl and Barb looked so … sad, as if what she said was the most awful thing either of them had ever heard.

  “Keep your cool,” Carl said. “Keep your head about you.”

  “Good luck, sweetie,” Barb said. Ava stepped out into the warm bright afternoon and started walking north up the main road.

  * * *

  Once she was gone, Carl sighed and ran his hand over his smooth head. “Damn it,” he said. “I hope she can handle what she finds out there. Remember that one kid? He couldn’t stop running. He ran until something literally burst in his head. They found him dead on the road.”

  Barb nodded. “She’s strong,” she said. “I don’t think she’ll lose it too much, no more than you or I did.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Carl said. “We could sure use the help. Whatever he’s up to, it’s making that thing in the woods stronger. There are more of the children showing up in town, more hounds howling every night, more shadows. I don’t think we have much time, sweetheart. Should we have told her about her friends, where they are?”

  “No,” Barb said, sadly. “She’d have gone after them, and then she’d be dead, or worse than dead. Her mind needs to ease into this place. She’s strong, Carl, I can feel it. Whatever Agnes is about to counter him, that girl plays a part in it. Until then, we do what we’ve been doing—hold the line, try to keep hope and order alive. Wait for backup.”

  “The wheel turns,” Carl said, hugging his wife and kissing her.

  Barb laughed. “You haven’t said that in a long time,” she said.

  “Feeling hopeful,” Carl said. “At least, right this second I am.”

  Barb hugged him tight and rested her head against his chest. “The wheel turns,” she said.

  * * *

  Ava walked briskly past another mile or so of homes in Four Houses, made up of rusted old campers, motor homes, and house trailers splayed like corpses in a sea of overgrown weeds and grass.

  “No cops, no hospital, no phones, and, apparently, no damn lawn mowers,” Ava muttered. She dug out her phone and her earbuds to listen to music, but the phone was dead. She tried to focus on the nature sounds—birdsong, the blustery wind. Out past the fringes of the town was low-growing grass, what looked like Kansas farmland. It was unattended, as far as she could tell, but it seemed more what she had seen on the ride out to the party: farmland, field for crops. No scary, thick, dark woods. It hadn’t occurred to her until then, but Four Houses didn’t even seem to belong in northern Kansas. The botany seemed wrong for the surroundings. Of course, that could just be her being paranoid.

  She didn’t have a clock or a pedometer, since her phone was dead, but it seemed the sun had sunk a bit in the sky before she saw the last of the dense forest off to her right, what she assumed from the position of the sun was east. Her guess was that she had walked about three or four miles at this point. There were still no mile markers and no signposts. She was thirsty and wished for another cold soda from Barb’s bar.

  Ava had walked long enough to sing all the Katy Perry songs she knew when she heard the engine. She stepped to the side of the road, uncertain of exactly where it was coming from. The echo of the engine got louder, and Ava suddenly knew. She knew it was from behind her, from Four Houses, and she knew that it was a motorcycle. Before she could try to find a place to hide, the black bike rolled into view, banking into the curve, then straightening to run down the center of the road. It was the same old World War II–looking bike that had driven Gerry off the road, the same rider, clad in black, head to toe, who had stopped after the wreck and looked at them as if they were insects. The rider slowed as he saw Ava on the side of the road and came to a stop, seemingly with no care for oncoming traffic. He looked at Ava through his mirrored black helmet visor.

  “You!” Ava shouted, suddenly more angry than fearful. “You caused all this! Are you from Four Houses? Why did you run us off the road? Who are you?”

  The rider said nothing. Off in the distance, Ava heard a dog howl as if it was in pain. Another dog took up the cry, then another, and another. There was a crunching sound, like dry sticks snapping. From the biker’s black helmet, antlers began to sprout on either side of the visor, thick, heavy, and intricate. The antlers branched and grew faster, stretching out like the branches of a bone tree. When they stopped, they extended a good three feet out and up from the driver’s head, made of dark bone, as if they were stained with old blood.

  Ava felt a slight warm trickle as she began to lose control of her bladder at the sight of the rider, but she controlled herself and held the fear at bay, barely. Her legs were shaking—her whole body was. The rider looked at her and began to rev his motorcycle. Dogs were screaming, howling, above the sound of the angry engine. He pointed a leather gloved finger at her. Ava felt as if her heart were being gripped, stilled, by a leather glove full of ice. The rider knew her, had marked her.

  The rider accelerated, and the rear tire screeched as it spun against the asphalt. The rider raised his leg to the peg and aimed the bike down the road south—back the way he had come, swerving, straightening. He rode away, his grisly crown steady, as he topped the next hill on the road, and then disappeared from view. The dogs’ howling faded away. The sound of the bike’s engine diminished and then was gone.

  Ava ran. She ran for all she had in her, as if the Devil was behind her, as if he was going to come back and devour her. Running north, in the opposite direction he had sped off toward, into the unknown frightened her, but not finding help, staying in Four Houses with whatever that … thing was—that frightened her
more.

  She ran, her satchel slapping against her hip, the purple high-tops rising and falling, their rubber soles slapping against the warm pavement of the road. Her arms flew back and forth as she sprinted; tears burned her eyes. She knew she was running for her life. She knew he, it, whatever it was, would come back for her, claim her, and end her. She had no choice now—she had to run, to escape, or die. Ava thought she had run as fast as she was capable of running the other night, with the shadow people chasing her. She was wrong.

  She finally stopped when her body refused to run anymore. Her lungs were full of acid, and she gasped at ragged mouthfuls of air. Her legs twitched with cramps and strained muscles; she staggered and doubled over, losing her glasses and finally clutching them in her hand as she staggered forward. She vomited—the cheeseburger, the fries, the Cokes. She cried and screamed, hugging herself, as she stumbled forward. This wasn’t real, none of this was real. She couldn’t be here, no. There were no monsters. Her mind found no haven in her desperate clutching at reason; she trusted her senses too much. The disconnection of her mind and body, divorced by numbing fear, didn’t keep her legs from moving forward, toward help, some kind of help. She was a robot now, walking, because it was all she could do.

  Ahead she saw dark, heavy forests appear on either side of the road, but far off, half a mile or more away, easy. The sun dimmed. She guessed it was about four; the sun was starting to crawl lower, and a panic returned to her exhausted body. Be home before dark.…

  Time passed, miles. She was beginning to calm down again. Ahead, on the left, was a gravel road, a private drive. She began to walk toward the road to find the house, the farm it joined to. To beg to use their phone to call the police, to call her mom and dad. She noticed that there was no mailbox, and then she saw it and she stopped. Beside the beginning of the gravel road was a tree, and nailed to it were a set of large deer antlers. At the base of the antler tree were baskets of bread and fruit, butcher-paper packages dark-stained with blood, and small, lit candles, guttering in the cold wind. If she could have vomited again, she would have. Instead, she began to limp-walk faster as the sun began to drown at the terminator of the forest’s canopy.