“What about what you deserve?”
He turned back to the sheriff, whose accusation was as much in his eyes as his voice. Toby shifted uncomfortably and coughed. He supposed cornered animals couldn’t hide their wounds forever. If it came down to it, he’d just bare his teeth. “Does it matter now? I mean, to your investigation—does it matter whether I deserve it, or for that matter, what form those things are going to take to come get me? Fact is, they’re coming, and it doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot we can do to stop them.”
“What did you ask the Door for, Toby?” the sheriff asked. His voice was uncharacteristically soft and somewhat disappointed.
Toby took a deep breath and looked the sheriff in the eye. “I asked that the feelings that made me want to hurt little girls be taken away, so that I never hurt anyone again.”
The sheriff and Bill both must have seen something, some darkening or disconnect in Toby’s gaze, because they both leaned back. Maybe they weren’t expecting such a level of honesty, but Toby had to admit, it felt…good. It was a weight lifted, not to have to hide what he was or pretend to be part of the herd that he preyed on. The fear of repercussions had suddenly diminished to little more than a dull ache. When he thought about it, the terrible specters of perversion and the shame of giving into them, and worrying about what men like Bill and Sheriff Cole would do if they knew, had haunted him his whole life. Those things couldn’t do any more damage than they had already done. At least dying like a dog in a ditch would stop the madness.
Bill leaned forward. “Look, Toby. As much as I don’t like it, Kathy had a point about us keeping our anger in check. And out of respect to her, professionally and personally, it’s something I aim to abide by. We need to put our collective heads together to fight this thing. Everyone has secrets. I just have one more question for you.” He leaned in closer, uncomfortably close, and said, “That little girl over there….”
He tipped his chin toward a little blond girl of maybe nine or ten. Toby had seen her at the town meeting with her mother. The kid clutched her doll and fidgeted in the folding chair next to her mother. She looked bored and tired more than anything.
“I don’t need to worry about her safety, do I?” Bill asked.
A number of things ran through Toby’s head, but he thought better of all of them and bit his tongue. Instead, he said, “Of course not. She’s safe from me.”
Bill looked him in the eye and this time, his look was as hard and cold as anything in Toby’s arsenal. “I don’t want to have this conversation again. I don’t even want to have to spend precious thinking time in this head space again. You get me? I don’t have to worry about that girl. If I have to even think about what I’m seeing or hearing…. Don’t make me kill you, Toby Vernon. We might need you.”
Toby sublimated his shame and frustration and said, “On whatever’s left of my life, I swear I won’t hurt that girl.”
Bill studied him a minute, nodded, got up, and walked away. Sheriff Cole sat for a minute. He didn’t look like he was in any hurry to exit the interview, which made Toby somewhat wary. Then the sheriff said, “I have four little girls at home.”
Toby answered, “I’m sure you love them very much.”
“Of course I do. They’re my whole world. I’d tear apart anyone who tried to hurt them.”
“I imagine you would.”
“It’s taking every ounce of willpower not to hit you just on principle, you know.”
“I know,” Toby replied.
There was a pause, and then the sheriff asked, “Why did you ask the Door to stop you?”
Toby considered how to answer for a minute, trying to read the other man’s face. He thought the sheriff was on the verge of snapping at him, Kathy’s warning be damned, and that the slightest wrong answer, the tiniest waver in tone, might push him over the edge. It had been Toby’s experience, though, that if someone was going to punch you, there was little you could really say or do to stop it. So Toby chose to answer honestly. “Because I hate that part of me, and I was scared that no matter what else I did, it would get worse. Because I can’t undo what I’ve done, but I thought I could prevent myself from ever doing it again. And because I envy people like you, who have the kind of pure, decent, honest, normal relationships you have with your daughters.”
The sheriff said nothing. That same unreadable expression held the features of his face fixed in place.
Toby said, “You asked me before if I thought I deserve what I get for using the Door. I guess I do, and then some. I’m usually too much of a coward to really think very long or hard about that. But I do believe wholeheartedly that a lot of little girls deserve better than to have to worry about a monster like me. I thought my letter would keep them safe. It’s a sad, scary thing, though, to have to rely on something, anything other than yourself, to do the right thing. Now it’s on me, where I guess it ought to be. I deserve that, but I hope I’m man enough to carry it.”
“I hope you are too, Toby Vernon,” Sheriff Cole said, and stood. He paused a moment and then said, “Good on ya for trying, though,” and before Toby could answer, he walked away.
* * * *
Outside the Heritage Center, the moon slipped on diaphanous clouds as it moved across the sky. Neither it nor the surrounding stars were enough to pierce the gathering darkness that was swarming over Zarephath like spilled ink. The streets from the woods out by Ed Richter’s house to the town center, though empty, were coated in pregnant shadow that devoured sound and left behind a faint hum.
Four of the officers from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department had found that between their two cruisers’ high beams, they gained little visibility back, and it left them anxious.
In the first car, Deputy George Franks was watching that encroaching darkness with a wary eye. He’d been with the sheriff’s department a long time, back when Bill Grainger had been sheriff, and he knew all about Zarephath’s history of disturbances outside the norm. He’d seen some shit, he was fond of telling the younger officers—shit to tell the grandkids. And of course, there’d been some shit that no one ever had to know. That was the nature of police work in Zarephath. Sometimes upholding justice meant walking away, and sometimes it meant keeping one’s mouth shut. Sometimes it meant burying the bodies, more often figuratively than literally, thank God.
God…He was a funny concept in Zarephath. It had never been lost on Franks that there was only one church in that town, a loose sort of nondenominational congregation as opposed to the socially encompassing Protestant, almost Puritan churches scattered heavily all over Monroe County. Outside of Zarephath, those folks were God-fearing folks, with their highway signs about Jesus and their country-music stations with catchy tunes about salvation. Such was not the case in Zarephath. Sure, there were devout families like the Robinsons and the Verbanas, the Edmundsons and the Smiths, but by and large, Franks thought the people in Zarephath didn’t put too much stock in God anymore. Prayers never worked quite as fast as the Door, and God never seemed quite as present in their daily lives as the gods behind that pile of cursed planks in the woods.
Officer Kyle Edmundson—of the devout Zarephath Edmundsons—was driving, and injected nervous chatter along the way. The boy’s hands were still shaking, though he was trying hard to hide that by gripping the steering wheel. Edmundson had heard about the monsters overrunning Zarephath from Sheriff Cole, but he admitted to not having fully believed it all until tonight. They had been carrying out the sheriff’s orders to notify people in fear for their safety to meet at the Heritage Center. After a public announcement at the Once More Tavern, they had come across Edmundson’s first monster in the parking lot. It was perched on top of the dumpster, while beneath it was a pile of bones. They fired on the thing, but their bullets had no effect until the creature opened one of its many mouths. The bullet spiraled down its gullet, and the rest of it followed in an astonishing feat
of impossible physics.
The bones were small and Franks assumed they were animal until he and Edmundson got close enough to see the skull. It wasn’t quite the skull of a child, not with those horns and bony protrusions, but Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been a child once.
It had touched the thing they shot. That was the only answer Franks could come up with.
They left the bones there and got back in the patrol car, Franks radioing to Deputy Morgan and his rookie and well as Sheriff Cole about possible mutation from physical contact with one of those creatures.
It was hard for Franks to tell if Edmundson was okay. He suspected their encounter had shaken the boy’s faith in the God of his parents, as evidenced either by a beast that no good God in heaven would ever have had a hand in making, or the deformed bones, which no good God would have let happen to a child. He felt for the boy; it was a hell of a night to be indoctrinated into the weirdness of Zarephath. In a way, though, Edmundson was, in Franks’s opinion, lucky.
The boy had never used the Door. The same could not be said of George Franks. His marriage was over because of what the Door had flung back in his face, and he was facing the real possibility he might never see his daughter again. He didn’t think it would lead to his being cut loose from the force, but he was nearing retirement himself, and a career was a hell of a thing, if it was the only thing, to have to keep one warm in his golden years.
In the other cruiser, Deputy Morgan and his rookie, McCoy, were following closely behind Edmundson’s vehicle. McCoy was pretty sure, though he couldn’t have said how, that with just enough space or a single turn of the head or even a blink just a second longer than normal, that the suffocating darkness outside would swallow up one car or the other and the police force under Sheriff Timothy Cole would simply disappear. Another eerie story about Zarephath: the missing cops who just vanished one night, right out from under the watchful eye of another police cruiser. McCoy shivered.
“You believe Franks?” he asked, more to fill the silence inside the car. Morgan had been sullen, even more so than usual, and it had occurred to McCoy in a moment of semi-awe that the powerful, gruff man he’d been shadowing for weeks was actually scared. He didn’t say so; Morgan was not a man to accuse of such things, but the idea made his mentor a little more human.
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “And you better too.”
McCoy tried to chuckle lightly, but the sound got lost in his throat. “Come on, though…monsters? Really?”
Morgan gave him a brief glance and then went back to watching the car ahead of them. “Remember that call we got last week? The wellness check on Agnes Warner?”
“Yeah, the old lady on Douglas Street, right?”
“That’s her. Remember what we found?”
McCoy did—it had been hard to forget. His first dead body, the prone form of Agnes Warner had been there on her kitchen floor for days. It was a sad possibility with the elderly who lived alone, that they could pass away and have no one in their lives who would think to check on them. There was an odd aspect to the death that Morgan, at the time, had said McCoy would understand better with experience. The woman had been surrounded by the carcasses of chickens. Their rotting bodies had created a collective stink that had been too much for McCoy, and in fact, had to be cleared away before any significant investigation could be done regarding Agnes herself.
“I remember the chickens,” McCoy said.
“And Ms. Edna? Remember her?”
“Of course. Can’t forget it. I still see her stomach, all bloated with those bite marks, like that deformed thing inside her had chewed its way out….” McCoy cleared his throat. “What about them?”
“They’re two casualties of the Door. You stick around this town long enough, you’ll see dozens, maybe hundreds more cases like that. This town is and has always been fucked, and it’s because of that Door.”
“I kinda thought the Door was just a ghost story, you know? Something kids tell each other to scare themselves silly.”
Morgan shook his head. “It ain’t. Look, in other towns, you worry about gangs and meth heads and getting shot when you pull over some nutcase. In Zarephath, you worry about anyone who’s ever gotten too close to that Door. Trust me. If nothing else I say ever sticks in that big-haired head of yours, for Chrissakes, remember that. Now pay attention to the road.”
“Yessir.”
“Cole wants us on guard duty. Folks at the Heritage Center are scared.”
“Morg, what exactly are we guarding them from?”
Morgan snorted. “Themselves.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see soon enough, son.”
* * * *
“Toby,” Kari Martin said. Her face was streaked with tears. Toby turned in his seat to see Kari Martin, opener of the Door, and Cicely Robinson staring at him.
“Yes?”
“We couldn’t help overhearing what you told Sheriff Cole and Bill Grainger,” Cicely said. “We didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but….” she gestured, indicating the fairly small basement.
Toby nodded.
“Is it true?” Kari blurted. “Do you really…you know?”
Toby tried very hard not to let his expression change. He thought he’d overheard that Kari was a mother who lost a daughter, and he didn’t want to inadvertently add to her pain.
“Not in a long while,” he replied. “I don’t want to keep hurting them.”
“How could you?” she whispered. “How fucking could you?”
Toby struggled to find words, but couldn’t.
“You’re sick,” she hissed.
“I know,” he answered.
“How old?”
“Excuse me?”
“How old were the girls?” Kari asked, loud enough to draw a few glances and raised eyebrows.
He settled back uncomfortably. “Eleven, twelve. Is this something you really need to know? Don’t you think—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t even begin to suggest to me what I should think. I—I have to go.” She got up and fled toward the ladies’ room. Toby watched after her.
“Her daughter committed suicide,” Cicely said. “She was twelve. It was what prompted Kari to move here in the first place.”
“I’m sorry,” Toby said, and genuinely meant it. “What was her daughter’s name?”
“Jessica,” Cicely said.
A wave of nausea washed through him. Jessica. That had been the girl’s name, the one that made him want to stop. “Wh—where did she move from?”
“Dingmans Ferry, I believe.”
It was sheer will that kept Toby together, his face stolid, his expression and body language betraying nothing. Inside, every part of him was soaked in guilt and self-hate. It was…oh God, it was his fault. That woman had lost her beautiful little girl and it was his fault. How could it not be? What else could have driven a twelve-year-old to such an extreme act? “I’m so sorry to hear that. I suppose she wishes I were dead.”
“I…uh, I don’t think she has that kind of hate in her heart.”
“I would. Hell, in her shoes, I’d do what I could to make it happen.”
“I don’t think you would.”
Toby wasn’t quite sure how to take that. He said, “Would it surprise you, what I’ve done for little girls?”
“Tobias, I don’t think—”
“If I had a daughter, you’re damn right I’d do horrible things to a man who…to a man like me.”
“Surely you don’t mean that, Tobias,” Cicely said.
“You seem to want to find some good in me,” he said, not sure whether to be amused or suspicious.
“I need to,” she replied.
“Why?”
“I’m not doing it for your sake,” she said, her face and neck flushing. “I find it very difficult,
if you must know, to muster up anything like human compassion for people…like you. But that goes against what the good Lord told us about judging others, and I need to believe in the good in me,” she gestured to herself, “which means reconciling the almost instinctive loathing I have for those who do… uh, what you do to children with the notion of loving the sinner and not the sin.”
He considered that for a moment before saying, “Okay, then. If it helps, I’m kind to animals and pay my taxes on time.”
She stood. “I should check on Kari.” She turned to go, the disgust evident in the look on her face, when he spoke her name. She turned, barely concealed impatience in her eyes.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Ms. Cicely. No, really, I mean that. Not many people would take the time to think of me as a human being at all. I know it probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but for what it’s worth, I think that makes you a pretty darn good Christian woman.”
The tiniest smile fluttered across her lips, and the look in her eyes softened. In the next moment, though, her primness took over and with a curt nod, she left the room.
Chapter 16
Kathy was having no luck with the inscription. A headache was beginning behind her eye just above her scar, and the small of her back complained loudly when she finally sat up straight in the office chair. She needed a break.
She figured the words were some kind of an incantation, partly because after poring through her notes, she believed even more strongly that the contents of the box were as malleable as they were mercurial, and much like the contents of various people’s letters, the substance of that other world could very much be shaped by the thoughts and feelings of the one handling the object. She wanted the inscription to be an incantation that would send everything from that other world back where it came from, and so she thought that was exactly what it was trying to be.
Of course, it wasn’t going to make things too easy. Most of the characters didn’t match the known runes at all. There was a vague familiarity there and even some of the same lines and circles, but there was some obstacle there, some crucial piece of the puzzle her mind couldn’t quite wrap around yet. She went to her purse and pulled out a flask, opened it, took a swig, then sealed and replaced it. She couldn’t keep drinking until the barriers in her mind came down. That was how she usually worked, but she felt confident it would undermine these people’s confidence in her. Still, she needed to step away for a second, so she quietly opened the office door.
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