by Joe Hart
He stood from the bed and crossed to the window, his own formless shadow appearing as a reflection in the glass. A thin wall of clouds moved across the sky, already broken in some places, their mass filtering through to the stars beyond. He watched the rain fall, trying to believe that it would make a difference, that tomorrow’s heat would be lessened, the drying riverbeds quenched.
He went to the adjoining bathroom and drank straight from the tap, sucking down mouthfuls of water to wash away the stale taste of beer. He paused at the foot of the bed as he walked back into the room, looking at the sheets as if they might wrap around him, constrict his breathing until he struggled no more. Changing directions, he moved into the hall overlooking the rest of the house, feet silent on the wood floor, patters of rain above him. The door appeared to his left and he finally looked at it. Normally he hurried past it in the mornings and looked the opposite way at night when he went to bed, choosing to not see it.
He stood before it now, taking in the decorative oak panels. His fingers traced the flared grooves of trim and settled on the two screw holes, their edges small but sharp, always catching his skin. Gray reached down and held the doorknob for a moment, waiting for what had moved him here to turn him away again, back to bed to dream of the crushing mountain falling down upon him. He opened the door.
Cool light filtered in through the one window taking up most of the east wall. The carpet beneath his feet shushed with each step until he stood in the center of the room. His hands found the edge of the crib, the wood so smooth. It creaked a little, it was the only thing he hadn’t made in the room, his work schedule over a year ago too heavy to allow him the time to do one justice. A toy box stood beside the crib, the colorful letters he’d carved and painted were indefinable dark shapes. The little changing table was after that and he found himself standing over it. The smell of baby powder, faint but there, hung above it. The sign with two screws backed out of its front lay on its surface, catching what little light came in through the rain-slicked window.
Gray traced the name with a finger, ran in the grooves created by his tools, made to hang on the outside of the door proclaiming someone who would never sleep in the room again.
He pulled his hand back, let it fall to his side before turning away. Without a look, he walked from the room, pulling the door shut behind him with a sound like that of a baby’s breath.
Chapter 8
Ryan was in a boat, half full of water, barely floating.
The lake lapped against its sides, its iron-gray surface trying to get in, to pull the boat down, and he wished that it would float. He wished it would glide on, somehow draining itself of the weight of all the gallons. He had an idea that he could feel the water sloshing within his own stomach, too much to hold and still be alive, but there it was. The edge of the lake was a silver border cutting against rocks and sand alike. He knew if he took one step forward he’d fall, fall and drown beneath the waves, his insides already full of water, he wouldn’t have to go much farther to inhale a bit more. He would sink into the blackened depths and reach toward the surface of a place he didn’t know anymore, didn’t care to know.
But the boat, the boat was sad how it barely floated and he wished it would sit higher in the water. He wanted to bail it out, but that wouldn’t do since he was full of water himself. And now the water was in his nose, coming out of his mouth, he choked on it, spluttered, sat up—
—and awoke to someone standing over his bed.
He didn’t cry out, not because he didn’t want to, but because he recognized the shape; the humped shoulders, the rounded head looking down at him. Only a sliver of light fell into the room from the hall but it was enough to see the grin on Adam’s face.
“I just had a dream and had to tell you about it,” Adam said, the smile never leaving.
“Okay,” Ryan said, his voice clogged with sleep, his own nightmare flattening out into a gray sheet of memory, the water flowing away into nothing.
“There was a spider the size of a cat eating me,” Adam said, rubbing his stomach. “Right here. She was huge and black and had really sharp teeth. She tore into me so deep I thought she would going to eat right through me and the pain was so nice, like right after you come, like that.”
Ryan sat up a little, tried not to slide away from his brother. “You should go back to your room, Adam.”
“Not done yet. Then she quit eating and came out of my stomach and looked at me and I felt warm but I was sad that she was leaving.” Adam leaned down a little and Ryan braced himself. “But she wasn’t leaving at all, Ryan, the warmth was her giving her babies to me in my belly and I knew she loved me then and so would her babies.”
Ryan’s lower lip trembled but he nodded. “That’s a good dream.”
“Uh huh.” Adam didn’t move, his expression the same, still smiling.
Ryan was about to try to get past him, get out from under the glazed stare when the slat of light from the hall grew, the door opening more.
Darrin stood there, an outline, not moving. “The fuck are you two doing?”
Adam leaned back and Ryan managed to sit up all the way. “Just tellin’ him a dream,” Adam said.
“Yeah, I got that. What if Dad had heard you? What would he think?”
Adam shrugged. “Nothin’.”
Darrin moved into the room, smooth, without sound. “Not ‘nothin’,’ dumbshit, hearing you talk like that he would’ve had you locked up and on meds before the sun rose.”
Adam slumped a little. “Sorry.”
Darrin stopped and sat in a chair beside Ryan’s bed, his face half shrouded in shadow. “You have to be careful, never know who’s listening.” Adam nodded and looked at his feet, shuffling them a little. “What?”
“I went back there,” Adam said.
Darrin’s head tilted, an eagle watching a mouse. “You what?”
“I went back there, to the house we were at the other night.”
“Why?”
“I was missing a screw from clackers. I think it fell out in the house somewhere.”
Darrin dropped his forehead into his hand, rubbed it. “And what happened?”
“The sheriff was there.”
Darrin froze. He looked like The Thinker statue Ryan had seen in a textbook once.
“Did he see you?”
Adam shook his head.
“I can’t hear you shaking your head,” Darrin said, his face fully coming into view in the cold light. His features were sharp stone, eyes cutting.
“No, he didn’t.”
“You’re sure? I don’t really trust your judgment after you went back there.”
Adam’s head shook harder. “No, I was standing behind a tree in the brush, he didn’t see me.”
Darrin nodded. “If you ever do something like that again without talking to me first, you’ll wake up being gutted, understand?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure you lost the screw there, not in the van or somewhere here?”
“Not sure but I think so.”
Darrin stood and moved closer to them. “We allow ourselves these little pleasures because it’s what makes it fun, it’s the whole purpose to what we do, who we are.” He shifted his gaze between the two of them. “But if we mess up, one step out of line, everything comes down.”
“What do we do if they find the screw?” Adam asked.
“We don’t do anything. That screw could’ve come from anywhere, plus we were all wearing gloves.”
“What about the sheriff?” Ryan asked.
Darrin’s eyes found him in the semi-dark. “Are you scared of him, Ry?”
“I’m scared he’ll figure it out.”
Darrin leaned closer, the same smell coming off of him as the night before. “He’s not going to figure anything out, he’s a dumbfuck county sheriff, he’ll think the same as everyone else.”
“He used to be an investigator in Minneapolis, he’s not stupid.”
Darrin sneered, pulli
ng up the sleeve of his T-shirt to expose the line of dots running down his shoulder. “This means we’re safe, little brother, and we have the medical records to back it up.”
“But the house didn’t burn,” Ryan said, his voice quavering a little.
Darrin looked like he might strike him. Ryan waited, wondering where the blow would land that their father wouldn’t see. “That doesn’t matter, they’ll think it was someone robbing the place, just like we set it up to look like,” Darrin said finally. He smiled and it was like a knife blade in the darkness. “We’re fine, boys, don’t worry and don’t do anything stupid.” He looked back and forth again until they both nodded. “Good.”
Darrin moved toward the door, stopping before he entered the hallway. His head turned over his shoulder and he stared at them with an eye they couldn’t see. “He came tonight.”
There was a drawn out silence taut as a high wire.
“Already?” Ryan asked, the incredulous sound of his voice making him wince.
Darrin turned back to them, now a silhouette again. “You don’t sound excited, Ry-Ry.”
“It’s not that, it’s just so soon.”
“You’re right, it is.”
“Why didn’t you come get us?” Adam asked.
“Because I didn’t expect him this quickly either.”
“What’d he say?” Adam asked, stepping closer to Darrin, a hushed awe to his voice.
Darrin smiled again. Ryan could see the way it crinkled his face in wicked lines that belied all humor. “He’s got big things planned for us, boys, very big things.”
Chapter 9
Gray ran through the morning sunlight that cut between the trees in flashing blades.
His breathing came easy, a normal rhythm in time with the crunch of his shoes on the dirt drive. After a mile he crested a rise that overlooked a pasture, once housing a small herd of cattle long since departed. The sun was beginning to peek over the trees, its orange head angry at the moisture dotting leaves and blades of grass alike. It rose higher, leaching the ground of the night’s rain. Drying. Dry.
Gray turned and ran back the way he’d come, not seeing anything on the jog home but the road before him, long and dusty. A layer of grimy sweat covered his body when he stopped before the door to the house. He took a deep breath in, held it, let it out. The scent of smoke hung in the air, but not smoke, it was the frying of the land giving up any and all water that it tried to hide from the burning orb in the sky.
He ate a light breakfast, showered, and poured a travel mug full of steaming coffee before leaving the house. He sat in the cruiser, watched the door to the garage close in front of his bumper and called the station.
“Morning, Sheriff,” Mary Jo answered.
“Hey, Mary Jo, any calls last night?”
“A few came in with concerns to the automated system but the service didn’t hear any distress in the caller’s voices so none woke me up.”
“Restful night.”
“Not really.”
“Anything new on the radar?”
“Nothing yet, Thueson and Monty didn’t have anything this morning. Monty said he patrolled past the Jacobses’ farm several times and scoped the place but there was nothing.”
“All right.”
“You coming in this morning?”
“Not right away. Tell Joseph to do his usual patrols and I’ll call him when I’m in.”
“Will do, Sheriff.”
Gray ended the call and tapped his thigh once, noting the little bulge where the screw sat, still encased in its plastic bag. After taking a long swallow of coffee, he put the cruiser into gear and drove down the road slowly as to not raise too much dust.
Two hours later he slowed the vehicle to a crawl along the baking tar road heading north out of Shillings. The wind came in gasps and sputters that rocked the cruiser on its springs, the open field of bleached weeds rolling like a brown tide on his left. To the right a dense patch of forest swayed in time. The very ends of the leaves turning an alarming yellow, the roots without even a taste of the night’s rain.
Gray inched along the deserted road, heat mirages swirling before and behind the car. The drive he looked for was so well hidden, he sometimes still rolled by it on accident, only seeing the sign after he’d passed. A bit of interlaced brush opened on the right and a small sign, suspended over a narrow trail, swung in the gusts. The M in metallurgist was almost worn away, he’d have to tell Danzig that it wouldn’t do to have a steel sign proclaiming his own profession fading with time.
Gray spun the wheel and drove through a tunnel of trees, their branches interlocked so well only fleeting shafts of light fell on the trail. The road rose and fell before curving past and over a streambed holding nothing but stones and dried sticks abandoned by the water that carried them there. A bit of grass hissed against the undercarriage and then the car rose out of a dip and rolled past a three story house set in an enormous clearing. The house had a haunted look with rounded windows and a turret gracing one corner that rose a story higher than the rest of the roof and ended in an observatory. Three steel buildings stood in a line past the home, their sides a stale green. A stack of steel billets sat beneath the first building’s long overhang where the nonexistent rain couldn’t reach. The lawn looked recently mowed.
Nothing moved.
Gray parked the cruiser between the first steel building and the house before climbing out into the rising heat of the day. The clack of dry branches and hush of dying leaves were the only sounds. As he approached the building a wide man-door opened and a shadow filled the other side, blocking the glow of high-powered lights.
“Did you bring any booze with you?” The shadow said.
Gray stopped, cocked his head toward the tree line where the sun still hid. “Did I somehow lose about six hours of time, or is it still before noon?”
Danzig Sheppard stepped out of the building, instinctually ducking his head even though the door had been cut to fit his bulk.
The man was a mountain of muscle.
His shoulders were barely concealed beneath a sweat-stained T-shirt, holes gaping where a hot spark had landed. A leather apron hung down his front, its length doing nothing to hide the massive twin pectorals beneath it. He wore a pair of faded cargo shorts on his lower half, stained with grease and burn marks above black, steel-toed boots. His face was clean shaven save a trimmed goatee the same color as his dark, tightly cropped hair. A pair of welding goggles were pushed up onto his forehead, an outline of grime around his eyes where they’d sat.
“The only time you show up here before nine in the morning is when some terrible shit has happened, and I don’t want to hear about it unless you have something to drink.”
Gray sighed and looked down at his feet. Kicked a rock.
“Shit, it is bad, isn’t it?” Danzig said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, guess we’ll have to do without the booze. Come on in.”
Danzig disappeared into the building, moving with a grace not normally found in a man so large. Gray followed him inside and shut the door.
The air stank of oxide and grease within the workshop. Its walls were lined with shelves and pegs hung with tools of all shapes and sizes. A steel mallet, its head the size of a car tire, rested on a workbench, pitted and gouged but clean of any debris. The concrete floor looked cool, and for a moment Gray had to restrain himself from just sitting down to soak it in. Danzig crossed to a nearby desk and returned holding an iron chair. He set it down with a clank and then jumped to a sitting position on the top of the worktable, casually shoving aside the immense hammer with one hand.
“Let’s hear it,” Danzig said.
Gray began to speak, pausing only to take a breath or watch Danzig for his reaction. He left nothing out except his theory, and when he was done he sat and stared at the far wall, a slow drip of water filling the silence where his voice had been.
Danzig’s head had dropped and his eyes were closed. He was motion
less for a long time. “I fixed a beater bar on Stan’s combine two weeks ago. He paid me more than I asked.”
Gray nodded. “He was a good man.”
“His wife was just as kind as he was and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a girl prettier that their daughter.” Danzig raised his head and now there was a watery film that covered the huge man’s eyes. “Who in their right mind would do that to them?”
“No one.”
Danzig met Gray’s gaze and then looked away. “So you think it’s finally happened.”
“Yeah.”
“And the Olsons were the first?”
“Nope, I can’t get myself to believe that they were. I think something has been going on for a long time and no one’s caught wind of it until now.”
“But no one has caught wind of it, have they?”
“No one but me.”
“And what did our good friend Bitchel have to say?”
Gray huffed a small laugh at Danzig’s refusal to call the neighboring county’s sheriff by anything other than his high-school nickname. “Oh, you know him, always a team player.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, bullshit is right.”
Danzig studied Gray in the harsh light. “They’re going to crucify you, you know that, right?”
Gray sat forward in his chair and rubbed one of his boots across the rough floor. “They may.”
“If you can’t prove it you’ll be out of a job at the very least.”
“Oh yeah, more like run out of town.”
“You could come live with me.”
“Fuck that, you snore too loud.”
Danzig burst out laughing and Gray chuckled a little until the big man began to cough. The harsh racking filled the building as Danzig doubled over, steadying himself on the table as he slid off onto the floor. Gray stood and stepped forward to try and brace him, but Danzig waved him off, reaching for an immunizer containing a glass vial in its compressed chamber.