Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  “I see.” The pastor straightened. “Daphne, please don’t hesitate to call if you remember anything else. And Kenneth,” he nodded at the sheriff, “you know you’re welcome back in church anytime. We’ve missed seeing you since Ellen passed.”

  “Missed me, or missed the extra coins in your collection plate?” The sheriff sniffed. “Thanks, but no thanks. With all those drifters stirring up trouble, I got no time for church these days anyhow.”

  The pastor shot him a wounded look, but Sheriff Bates had already turned back to Daphne.

  “So you were attacked, huh?” He towered over her bedside.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I just—”

  “I’ll ask the questions around here, if you don’t mind,” he interrupted. “Now, tell me everything: where it happened, what time, who was there.”

  Daphne squirmed. She knew that being at the motocross track would arouse suspicions, but that’s where the ambulance had found her. There was no point in lying, but no way to tell the truth without revealing her relationship with Owen.

  “Um.” She paused to gather her thoughts.

  “Could you maybe hurry it up?” The sheriff butted in. “I got a kid here who oughta’ve been in been in bed hours ago.”

  She glanced at Charlie, who regarded her with curious, chocolate-colored eyes.

  “Hey.” Owen straightened from his slouch against the wall. “Go easy on her. She’s still sedated.”

  The sheriff turned to him with a piggish glare. “And who are you?”

  “Your witness,” Owen said evenly. “I work with Daphne at the rig, and right before our shift ended, I noticed she was acting strange. I followed her when she left, up to the old motocross track—”

  “That place?” the sheriff burst in. “What are you, nuts? She’d be crazy to go there alone at night.”

  “I said she was acting strange,” Owen hissed. “Obviously she wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.”

  Daphne sank back into her pillow, weak with gratitude. Owen may have been stretching the truth, but he was doing so to protect her and to keep the secret of their relationship safe. He went on to recount the way he’d “followed” her through the drifter’s camp, losing her briefly but rushing to her side at the sound of her scream.

  “I didn’t see the whole thing,” he finished truthfully, “but the man who attacked her had a knife. Whatever she did to him, it was in self-defense.”

  The sheriff nodded, frowning, and jotted things in a notebook. “What she did was put him in a coma,” he said finally. “He’s just down the hall, on life support—and until he comes out of it, he ain’t talking. Now you’re sure that’s all you saw?”

  “That’s it,” Owen shrugged.

  The sheriff narrowed his eyes. “Does this corroborate your version of events?” he asked Daphne.

  “Yes,” she insisted. “All I remember is being attacked at knifepoint. And even that’s kind of a blur.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t know why you were at the track in the first place?” Suspicion hovered in his voice.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “I wish I could remember. But I can’t.”

  “Now listen here.” Floyd’s face had gone from its usual ruddy red to the mottled fury of a bruised plum. “Daphne’s had a terrible shock. According to our pastor, she was just face to face with Beelzebub himself. So if you don’t mind, I think she could use some rest.” He glowered at Sheriff Bates, rage steaming his glasses.

  “Fine.” The sheriff glared back. “I was just about done anyway. If I think of anything else, I’ll be back. C’mon, Charlie.”

  He turned and trundled out the door, the linoleum floor tiles sighing under his bulk. Charlie stood silently, appraising them all with solemn brown eyes, before scurrying after his dad, nearly tripping over his small legs in an effort to keep up.

  Gratitude surged through Daphne. The sheriff’s presence in the room had been harsh and jarring, a fluorescent light too bright in her eyes. Now that he was gone, she felt flattened against the hospital bed, limbs heavy and head stuffed with sand.

  “You should get some rest.” Karen was by her side again, patting her hand. “But don’t you worry: Between us three Peytons, we’ll keep you company tonight till you’re ready to go. Floyd and I will just run and get some coffee down the hall, won’t we? Janie, honey, can I get you anything?”

  “Coffee’s fine.” Janie sank into a chair, watching the tiles on the floor blur and drift back into focus. Exhaustion kept throwing fuzz into the evening’s events, scrambling everything her dad and Daphne and the sheriff said like a bad TV signal. She could see the emotions running between them, the way if you turned a sweater inside out you could see the mess of loose ends and scraggly knots behind the picture on the front, but she couldn’t make out the words—or why anyone even bothered to talk. From where she sat, it seemed like they all just liked the sound of their own voices.

  “I guess I should go, too.” Janie felt Owen’s glacial green gaze on her, like being splashed by water from Hatchett Lake. A moment later it was gone, and he was looking back at Daphne, just like he’d been doing all night. The only times he took his eyes off of her was when he was raising his voice in her defense.

  “I guess.” Daphne sounded soft and far away. “Thanks for . . . you know. Everything.”

  “Of course.” Owen went to her bedside and dropped a hand on her shoulder. His eyes cut back to Janie, and he coughed nervously. “Happy to help.”

  Janie pretended to study the wheels at the bottom of a hospital cart. But from under the fringe of her lashes she saw the way Daphne’s hand snuck up to meet Owen’s, the brief but intimate touch as their fingers intertwined. It was only for a second, but that second was like a punch in the gut, a reminder of how it had once been to reach for someone and know he’d be there.

  “I’ll see you at the rig,” Daphne breathed.

  “See you.” Owen’s voice was heavy with meaning. Janie watched him lope out of the hospital room, leaving the faint scent of metal and earth in his wake.

  Once he was gone she leaned her head against the too-shiny white wall, thinking that the sedative would drop Daphne back under and she could finally get some rest herself. Her parents would come back and see her like that, realize she was tired, and send her home to the dull safety of her faded pink sleeping bag on the couch in the Varley manor. Maybe she’d sneak into the echoing terra-cotta chef’s kitchen first and grab a nip or two of Deirdre’s cooking brandy, just to make sleep come quicker.

  “Janie.” Daphne watched her cousin’s head loll against the wall. She’d smelled alcohol on Janie’s breath, noted the puffiness below her eyes and the sallow tone of her skin. “Are you okay?”

  Janie started, her eyes blinking slowly into focus. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”

  A laugh scratched Daphne’s throat. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she tried again.

  “Yeah, well, you made it pretty clear you didn’t want me moving in with Doug.” Janie studied the spots of mud on her boots. “Even though, y’know, we’re married. So it’s not like I expect you to come and visit.”

  Daphne opened her mouth, but words evaporated on her tongue. It was true that she’d tried to talk Janie out of moving up to the Varley mansion, had even suggested that she file for divorce. But it was crazy that her cousin had stayed with that monster after he’d threatened to sue Janie’s entire family, and it was obvious to everyone in town how miserable Doug made her. Everyone, it seemed, but Janie herself.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” Janie scuffed her boot against the floor. “You’re too busy with all that bogus prophet stuff anyway.”

  “What?” Daphne croaked. “What do you mean, bogus?”

  Even through the fog of her sedative, Daphne could see how jaded her cousin had become. Once upon a time, Janie would have been the
first to believe in Daphne’s visions from God. But it seemed like her cousin, who used to insist that everyone had a guardian angel and that prayer really could cure all that ails you, had left town for good, replaced instead by this cold stranger with dead blue eyes.

  “Oh, c’mon.” Janie weaved a little as she stood, and Daphne caught another flash of booze on her breath. “This prophet crap’s just a cover-up. You’re hiding something. Or maybe someone.”

  She glanced meaningfully in the direction of the doorway, where Owen had just left. Daphne watched her heart rate spike on the monitor next to her bed. Had Janie guessed that there was still something going on between her and Owen? She’d seen them flirting when Owen first came to town, and she'd tried to put a stop to it, but Daphne and Owen had kept their relationship private since.

  There was a flat, sick-sounding slap as the sole of one dirty pink boot hit the linoleum, then another. Janie was halfway to the door by the time Daphne located her voice. “Janie, wait!” she called.

  Janie stopped, her shoulders tensed under a sagging hoodie. She turned and regarded Daphne, her eyes narrowed to slits. “What?” she asked.

  Daphne ached to confess the truth: not only to get her secret off her chest, but to rekindle the closeness she and Janie had lost. But how much could she risk telling? Janie didn’t approve of Owen any more than her parents did. What if she passed Daphne’s secret on to Floyd and Karen? They were vulnerable enough that it seemed like the news could break them.

  But maybe she just needed to bite the bullet and tell. Janie would understand—she’d been in love once, or maybe she still was. And even though they’d drifted further apart since Janie had lost her baby and slipped into her depression, Daphne still considered her cousin her closest friend.

  Her silence stretched on as she tried to formulate the words, and then the moment was gone.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Janie sighed. She turned back to the door, her feet falling into a slow, sad shuffle, hair trailing down her back like the tattered trim of a cheap, grubby blanket.

  “Tell my folks I had to go,” she said woodenly.

  Before Daphne could respond, Janie was a silhouette, then a shadow, then a watery reflection in the hospital window as she hurried down the hall.

  6

  HEATHER ANDERSON SQUINTED INTO THE sunset. She’d been wearing her sunglasses for most of the drive west, to protect her striking green eyes from a sun that felt like it was growing closer and brighter with every mile she put between her and the leafy passageways of her hometown in rural New York state. But even polarized lenses were no match for the glare of the sunset, pricked by the peaks of Wyoming’s Medicine Bow mountain range so that it spilled like the runny yolk of a soft-boiled egg across the sky.

  The west, and her future, felt wide open, full of possibilities. She’d spent most of the drive picturing the University of Arizona’s sunbaked quad, weekend Wildcats games and field trips to buttes and faults and canyons, the cool slosh of beer in a Saturday night Solo cup and the ring of study-break laughter with her first-ever roommate. There would be midnight Lucky Charms from the cafeteria and toothy kisses with tall, tanned boys, pickup soccer and, best of all, weeks on end without snow, clouds, or rain.

  Arizona’s endless sunlight and crisp, dry air would evaporate the darkness that sometimes permeated her nights, the dreams that woke her gasping and drenched in sweat. She blamed northern New York’s upstate gloom and long winters for her moodiness—because it wasn’t her, she knew that. Heather Anderson was as solid and sensible as the rocks she planned to study, a declared geology major who’d chosen her college as much for its Earth Sciences Department as for the warm winters. She was student council secretary and captain of the Oneonta varsity girls’ soccer team, doting big sister to Matt and Jessica, beloved daughter of Mira and Frank. She wasn’t the dark figure chanting and dancing around bonfires in her dreams, goaded and cajoled and strangely, horrifyingly attracted to the gravelly voice urging her to “find the vein.”

  Her stomach rumbled, and she checked the GPS on her dashboard. Six hours to Moab, a long and lonely hump until she could check into the motel she’d booked online the week before. She’d decided to take the scenic route to Tucson, planning her trip around a handful of geological oddities: the Tripod Rock in New Jersey, Missouri’s Ozark caves, the cannonball concretions in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, Arches National Park in Utah, and then finally down to the University of Arizona and her brand-new college life. Her mom had wanted to come, but Heather talked her out of it: There would be a lot of driving and a lot of rocks, and her mother would start fidgeting in that distracted way she had. It was better for her to go alone.

  Another, more forceful groan rumbled her gut, and the sun slanted sideways through her windshield, temporarily blinding her.

  “Okay, okay, fine,” she said to the Jeep Cherokee’s interior, slowing to a crawl and squinting into the horizon. “We’ll get off at the next exit and find a diner, wait for the sun to go down. But then on to Moab.”

  A sign loomed ahead, its stark white letters barely visible in the glare. “Looks like we’re going to Carbon County,” she said to the voice warbling pop songs on the radio. “And, note to self, stop thinking out loud. Your new roommate’s going to think you’re a freak!”

  The talking-out-loud-to-nobody thing was new, and she blamed the solo cross-country road trip. All that time to herself, the hours where the cliffs along the side of the highway started to develop personalities in her mind, the nights alone in chain motel rooms that smelled of mold and disinfectant and hard, sad little soaps, the sleep streaked by yellow parking-lot lights and broken by recurring dreams—all of it was starting to get to her, and in a way she regretted refusing her mom’s offer to come along.

  The road dipped into a valley sprinkled with lights, and she passed a sign so new she could see the mounds of fresh dirt where it had been planted. Welcome to Carbon County: Home of Miracles! it declared cheerfully, next to a seal that appeared to contain an oil derrick and something that looked like the Ten Commandments.

  “It’ll be a miracle if I can find something to eat besides McDonald’s,” Heather joked, tapping the brakes and falling in line behind a slow-moving water truck with Global Oil logos on its mud flaps. She followed the truck at a glacial cruise past a flashing sign advertising Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery and onto a bustling main street lined with shops just closing up for the day. Idling at a traffic light, Heather noted the parking spaces packed with mud-splattered pickups and a sign in a real estate office advertising one-bedroom apartments starting at $1,800. She saw throngs of scruffy, tired-looking men waiting for tables in the well-lit windows of restaurants with names like Pat’s Steakhouse and Manic Manicotti.

  The businesses along Main Street thinned out, replaced by a vast trailer park packed with mobile homes that were squat and uniform as headstones. A sign at the gate informed her that it was the Lucky Strike Community—Prospectors Welcome! Hookups start @ $200/wk!

  “I should turn around,” Heather declared. The sun had disappeared behind the mountain range, leaving only a rusty stain in the sky, and the spaces between the trailer homes were thick with shadows. Yet she kept driving, telling herself she’d hit the next turnaround and maybe just grab a slice of pizza somewhere, eat it in the car, and hustle down to Moab. As the sky darkened and the water truck turned off onto a dirt road and her stomach gave another long, low moan, Heather kept driving. She had an inkling now that there would be more up ahead, felt promise in the way the road curved up into the foothills. None of the restaurants along Main Street had been quite what she was looking for, she reasoned, but soon she’d find the perfect spot for a bite.

  As the last greasy trails of sunset smeared across the sky, she noticed a sign glowing red in the distance, its molten glare fire-bright in the quickening dark. Her stomach clenched—not with hunger, she realized, but with a
nticipation. Even though the sign was still far off, she knew from the strong twist in her gut that it was the place.

  Her body seemed to pick up speed even as the Jeep slowed. She felt the racing patter of her pulse and her blood flowing faster in her veins. The sign was closer, almost close enough to read, and her turn signal was already on. She was halfway into the parking lot, pulling up in front of a long, low building with a peaked roof and blacked-out windows, when the words on the sign registered, and she slammed on the brakes and cut the engine, shuddering along with the Jeep as its power ticked away.

  The words on the sign sat black and somber against smooth plastic that glowed scarlet from within, as if lit by fire. They were words she felt she’d known forever, words whispered to her night after night in a voice like tumbled pebbles, broken and granite-hard and flecked with shavings of glimmering mica, words that filled her with darkness and dread and longing.

  The Vein.

  She sat for a moment, hands useless in her lap, unable to unbuckle her seatbelt.

  “It has to be a coincidence,” she whispered. “It just . . . there’s no way . . .”

  She knew she should turn back, turn around, get out of that parking lot and as far away from Carbon County, Wyoming, as possible. She knew, somehow, that once she stepped foot inside the Vein, everything would change. She thought about her life, her future down in Tucson, the mirage of college life shimmering in the distance. But she was already unbuckling her seatbelt, stepping out into the early evening chill. Dry mountain air caught in her lungs, and her heartbeat was a drum marching her to the door, matching the pulse of music thudding faintly through the walls.

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside, into a room glowing with the dim intensity of an underground cavern.

  “Sorry, we’re not open yet.” A guy with a chiseled chin and massive shoulders stopped her with a gentle tap on the arm. He had a long, dark ponytail and a serious mouth, but his eyes were all Heather saw.

  His eyes. Gazing into them she forgot where she was, forgot where she’d been or where she was going, almost forgot her name. His eyes were green in a way that had seemed, for all of her life, impossible to duplicate, green in a way that made strangers on the street stop and stare and her friends ask, in hushed and giggling tones at countless slumber parties, if she wore colored contacts. It was like staring into a trick mirror, like her eyes had been transplanted into the bouncer’s face.