A row of metal mail slots next to the front entrance were marked with the numbers one through six. Braylen looked down at his notes, now stained with sweaty handprints. Marshall lived in apartment four.
Something happen then that Braylen hadn’t anticipated, even during his episode of unchecked second-guessing. He looked up from his notes just in time to see a man stroll past the front of his car, a gaunt man with a jerky stride—a man with a face Braylen had become exceedingly familiar with thanks to all of his VHS recordings.
Braylen froze and his intestines seemed to twist.
Marshall continued past and opened the door to a small black car just two spots over from his own. Braylen still failed to act. In his head, he’d envisioned having a minute or more to gear up before carrying through with the plan . . .
This hesitation was all it took to spoil his scheme.
By the time he’d regained himself enough to bring a hand to his buckle release, Marshall’s car revved and began to reverse. Braylen thought of jumping out and flagging Marshall down, but he realized that that would introduce too many variables into an already flaky plan. Maybe Marshall would peel away before he could get a definitive read on his reaction? Maybe it would be too shaded inside the car, or Marshall wouldn’t roll his window down far enough, and Braylen wouldn’t have a clear, full view of Marshall’s face in order to see the truth momentarily warp his features?
This was no good. He needed to confront Marshall in a controlled environment.
At any rate, Marshall had already swung his car around and would be on the main road before Braylen could have gotten his attention anyway.
Should he just wait here for Marshall to return?
The answer came forcefully from within: No.
Never one to ignore such a clear gut instinct, Braylen put his car in reverse. He cursed under his breath as he eased on the gas.
While swinging his own car around, he saw Marshall pulling out onto the main road.
From having gone over Marshall’s work schedule thoroughly before departing, Braylen knew that Marshall going out at this hour in the afternoon was similar to a nine-to-fiver going out at 3AM.
Where was he going?
Despite his instincts insisting that he not let the man out of his sights, Braylen knew that the logical answer was that Marshall was out running innocent errands, nothing more. Maybe Braylen would get another chance—perhaps in an open, sunny parking lot—to meet Marshall face-to-face? Or, he could be on his way to visit a friend—if he had any friends. Which seemed like a big if, presuming Braylen’s sense of Marshall’s personality was at all accurate.
He accelerated his car out onto the main road, locating Marshall’s small black one not far ahead.
For a brief instant Braylen considered that Marshall could be on his way to meet with Timothy, but he dismissed the notion as too coincidental and improbable.
The thing to do, he figured, was to just hang back and see if an opportunity arose. He didn’t love introducing yet another element of uncertainty into his plan, but if he really was prepared to go through with this, then he couldn’t be deterred by what was, in all likelihood, an inconsequential delay.
Braylen, however, had trouble keeping from becoming a little curious as Marshall motored past the variety of convenience stores, auto shops, electronic stores, liquor stores, and fast food joints littering the center of town. His trouble in this regard did not abate as Marshall, over the next fifteen minutes, took turns onto roads that would only bring him farther into rural Vermont.
When the Entering Sutherland sign sprung into view, Braylen could no longer stifle crazed thoughts of Marshall leading him directly to Timothy that afternoon. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to ensure that it had good charge—he wanted to be able to call the police at a moment’s notice.
The first two turns Marshall took were right, if he was heading towards Timothy’s. But the third was wrong—or was it? Would Timothy really be so bold as to meet Marshall on his own property, while the whole country was looking for him? Or, for that matter, in his own hometown? That wouldn’t be bold—that would be idiotic.
The excitement in Braylen was expelled like the air out of a punctured balloon. Once again he was forced to accept the fact that Marshall meeting with Timothy, at that point in time, was just too outlandish to be true.
The question returned: where was Marshall going? Leaving thoughts of Timothy behind for now, Braylen’s attention returned to the springtime landscape passing by. He didn’t drive into Sutherland often, but thanks to the Night of Horrors he had become familiar with a few main roads. It took just a second for him to recognize where he was.
They were going down a long straight hill. At the bottom of the hill there was a bridge over a river. The same bridge from which Walter had seen Marshall floating off into the night.
Was he returning to the spot for sentimental reasons?
Evidently not. Marshall passed over the bridge as heedlessly as he had every other possible destination.
Braylen, now heading up the other side of the hill—maintaining what he hoped to be an inconspicuous distance from Marshall—didn’t recognize Nigel’s house as it slipped by on the right. Nor did he know it was Doris Hane’s (or Walter and Maddies’s, currently) driveway that, moments later, snaked up the hill on his left.
When he reached the ridge at the top of the hill, however, it struck Braylen where they must be going: Kall’s Tractor Supply. He knew construction workers and laborers who swore by the place, claiming to buy all their work gloves, boots, and jackets from there. Marshall worked nights in a cold warehouse—surely he would have need for high-quality work gear.
This belief that he finally knew where they were going didn’t bring any relief to Braylen. It meant that they would be stopping soon, and then he would have to make a rushed choice as to whether or not that was the place to confront Marshall.
Except, on an open straightaway before Kall’s had even come into view, the brake lights on Marshall’s car lit up. The nose of his car diverted left, leading down a small gravel road that Braylen hadn’t previously noticed.
According to a small signpost, Brown Hill Road was its name.
Braylen pulled to a stop on the right-hand side of the road. Until now he had been trailing Marshall on fairly main roads, and with any luck he had remained clear of Marshall’s radar. Brown Hill Road, however, was a small gravel road. He needed to give Marshall a head start and allow him a much wider berth, or risk raising the man’s alarm.
Braylen deliberately counted to twenty before turning the wheel and pressing the gas. As he eased up to the road’s gentle downhill slope, the immediate area’s thinner overgrowth allowed him a clear view of the black car a safe distance ahead, before it was lost in the thickening overgrowth near the base of the hill. Braylen allowed his car to accelerate with the descent of the road.
He didn’t see Marshall right away when he reached the bottom of the hill, where the trees had reclaimed the sides of the road. Braylen used his gas pedal liberally to maintain the speed he’d gained coasting downhill, and after slipping around a few curves in the road, he caught sight of Marshall again, closer now. He eased off the gas just a little.
About a mile on, after the road had begun to angle gently uphill again, the trees on Braylen’s right vanished, overtaken by one of Sutherlands many farmlands.
He must know someone who lives out here, Braylen thought, frowning. He wasn’t even sure if this was a through road, and it had to be strictly residential.
Formed from his growing uncertainty and unease, the obvious notion finally came together as a fully-developed thought: Should he just stop now and turn around? He wasn’t about to confront Marshall in some stranger’s driveway, out in the middle of nowhere—that was the opposite of the controlled environment he’d been banking on. Maybe he should just return to Marshall’s apartment and wait for him there?
It didn’t seem like a bad idea, at this point. But some stubborn par
t of Braylen resisted—he’d come this far already . . .
His indecisiveness, coupled with the slight incline of the road, caused his car to slow.
This was lucky, because when he came around the next corner, he discovered Marshall’s small black car pulled off to the side of the road.
Braylen stomped on his brakes, tearing tracks in the gravel as he skidded to a stop about a hundred yards behind Marshall.
Straining his eyes, Braylen hastily discerned Marshall’s outline still in the driver’s seat, unmoving. He had pulled over just beyond the driveway to a large white farmhouse at the top of the cleared hill. The immediate question was, had Marshall seen his car slide to a halt behind him? Hopefully not, but there was no guarantee.
Braylen took a slow breath, trying to decide how to proceed. The sound of his idling car and the soft rhythm on the radio were all that filled the void. He realized now that he probably should’ve just continuing on and passed Marshall like a normal motorist. But it was too late for that now. If he’d been spotted he might as well confront Marshall then and there, and if not, why not see what Marshall was up to?
What was Marshall up to? He was still seated, still motionless. If he didn’t mean to get out of his car, then what was he doing on the side of the road? Had he seen something? From Braylen’s vantage point, there was nothing to see; the white farmhouse was still and quiet, as was the forest across the road.
Tense moments passed with no movement from within Marshall’s car. Braylen continued to survey their environment for clues as to what they were doing there.
A faint movement caught his eye. Far beyond the big house, near the lower boarder of the grazing lands, there was a brown barn. In front of it, someone appeared to be struggling with a stubborn young calf. By the look of the person’s slender, shapely body and long, sunny blonde hair, it had to be a young woman. Braylen doubted that a man like Marshall would have any business with a young woman with such a youthful and appealing figure, though, so his eyes passed over Madeline Wendell with only mild interest.
The electronically degraded words, barely rising above the low rumble of his engine, jumped out at Braylen like the blaring of a siren.
“. . . Timothy Glass is dead . . .”
Braylen reached for the volume knob on his car radio so fast that he bumped the tuning knob, bringing heavy static to his ears. For a frantic moment he adjusted both knobs simultaneously before the radio DJ’s voice filled the car.
“. . . Found dead about an hour ago by the police. Apparently, he was found with that young man, Walter Boyd, who some were guessing that note was meant for, the one Timothy had left at the camp.” Braylen’s face went ghostly white. “Word is that it was an attempted murder-suicide, but it sounds like Walter is alive and okay. In fact, I believe the report said that Walter was the one who called in the police. Sorry to cut the tunes short—we just caught wind of this. Hate to celebrate anyone’s death . . . but that man, Timothy Glass, had no place on this earth. Anyhow, we’ll be taking a short break, then we’ll bring back the music.”
Braylen hadn’t drawn a breath since the news report came on, and he didn’t now, not for another silent second.
Timothy is dead. Walter is alive.
He inhaled and exhaled, turning the radio back down.
His moment to ingest the staggering news was cut short. Marshall’s reverse lights had come on, and he was now backing up into the farmhouse’s driveway. Thinking fast, Braylen put his own car in gear and began to accelerate. By the time Marshall was pulling forwards, Braylen was motoring towards him at a reasonable speed. With any luck, Marshall hadn’t seen him skid to a stop, and would just think he was an anonymous passing motorist.
As the green and black cars gave each other a courteous buffer while crossing paths on the narrow road, Braylen glanced into Marshall’s car. Their eyes met. While they met for no longer than a second, and while Braylen’s view was compromised by slight windshield glare, the clear sense of staring into the eyes of an unstable, suicidal man that he’d felt when watching the interview was gone.
Continuing past Marshall’s car, Braylen tried to shake the impression off as unfounded and therefore meaningless, having come from such a fleeting moment of connection. But he couldn’t.
Maybe Marshall had been tuned in to the same radio station, and the news report had affected him deeply? Or maybe he’d merely taken a wrong turn down a back road and had pulled over to inspect a map? Or maybe Braylen would never fully know?
Timothy Glass was dead. It was done.
After a frantic day-and-a-half, a strong sense of finality now came washing over Braylen.
As he drove on, he noticed that the young lady he’d seen wrestling with the calf moments ago had returned to the farmhouse, covered in mud and sweat.
They didn’t know each other, but she smiled and waved as he drove past. Braylen returned the gesture.
• • •
Marshall McDowell put a foot to his brakes as he approached the base of the valley. He checked his rearview mirror one more time. There was no sign of the unknown green Subaru behind him, nor anyone else. Paranoia was all it was, he told himself.
As he closed in on the bridge, he rolled his window down all the way. Then he pulled the small vial of blue liquid out of his pocket.
He couldn’t believe he’d almost gone through with it. He needed to seek professional help before he hurt himself or anyone else; that much was clear to him now.
Cruising at little more than a snail’s pace, Marshall was well aware of the symbolism of what he was about to do.
He reached back and flung the blue vial out of the window. It sailed high over the side of the bridge and splashed into the water below.
Marshall watched as it got carried off in the high springtime current.
• • •
Walter had been right about one thing: he had driven his new car along Brown Hill Road many times since the day of his and Maddie’s first date. That evening, as he rumbled down the gravel road, he had no sense that this could be the end of it. He had finally reached Maddie over the phone about an hour ago. She had sounded wonderfully, beautifully pissed off at him. His mind plummeted back to earth upon hearing her voice, and he knew then that he’d just worked himself into an irrational panic, having invented all of the deeper implications underlining Timothy’s final rant. No one was out to kill Maddie, and Timothy was nothing more than a dead madman.
The Wendell farmlands opened up to his right, and beyond them a deep purple band of light was settling along the horizon. Walter slowed, marveling at the sunset.
At the top of the cleared hill, out in front of the sprawling farmhouse, Madeline Wendell was ankle deep in cow poop, spreading fresh manure over one of their family’s many organic gardens, preparing for a busy spring season.
She jabbed her pitchfork into the earth and ran her wrist along her sweaty forehead when she saw Walter’s yellow car pull into the driveway.
She met Walter at the opening to the wooden fence surrounding the garden.
She was smiling.
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