His father’s cries grew louder and Gene raced from Mason’s room, throwing open the door, to see his daddy and mama standing on the landing. His daddy swatted the air like he was under attack, and for a moment Gene thought he saw exactly what his daddy did—the black birds swarming the upstairs corridor. His mama grasped at his daddy’s arm, calling his name, trying to calm him down.
Stupid woman should have known better.
Gene saw terror fill his daddy’s eyes, like the old man was seeing Death himself riding horseback down the hallway. His daddy spun frantically and collided with his mama. She hit the banister hard, rocked for a moment, and then was gone, disappearing over the rail, screaming like a banshee until her neck snapped on the cold wooden floor below.
The house went silent, but only for a moment—a life-altering moment. Then Mason began crying in the room behind him, and his daddy’s eyes cleared. The old man saw what he’d done. Fresh cries of panic—panic for the real and not the imagined—filled the house, until the cops came to take his daddy away.
After that, Gene took control of his family situation. His aunt moved into the house, but she brought no power with her. Little Mason became his pet and his punching bag, and naïve Aunt Molly believed every story about roughhousing, falling off the jungle gym, and whatever else Gene told Mason to say to explain his endless series of contusions.
She didn’t want to know what was really happening. Her denial made Mason’s punishment all the easier.
As for his daddy, the old man was brain fried. His visions got worse in the nuthouse, so bad the doctors had him medicated 24/7. Nelson Avrett was never getting out.
Now, if Lara Pearce would show the same consideration, Gene’s problems would be lessened. Right now, though, it was still a question mark.
And Gene hated question marks.
19
Depth of Field
Humphrey Hawthorne told people he got the nickname “Lump” from his sister. One summer afternoon, they were playing in the sprinkler in the backyard to cool off when Betsy pointed at his bathing suit and said he had a lump. From that point forward she called him “Lump.” His parents followed suit, though they had no idea about the name’s origin, and the name stuck. Because the story was true, no one believed him.
It was one of the many “whatevers” in Lump’s life. He didn’t mind the name. It was certainly better than Humphrey. But folks could have called him “Bubba” or “Jack” or “Rosebud,” for all he cared.
He sat in his car outside one of the nasty shacks that dotted the area of town folks called the Bluffs. The Bluffs rose up on the east side of the river. Amid the pine and fir trees, low-rent country folks lived in homes only a few steps above cardboard boxes. Some of the folks on the Bluffs still used outhouses. Some didn’t even have electricity.
A whole lot of them seemed to have the money for meth, though. They wiped their tails with old newspapers, but they could always scrounge up enough green for a rocket ride.
Like the woman he was delivering to.
Lump left his car and walked over the dirt to her shack. He knocked on the ill-fitted door and waited.
The door swung back and Lump winced, not giving a damn if the woman noticed or not. Damn. What a nightmare.
Though not an old woman, she looked old. Her blond hair was thin and wispy, like plucked cotton. She had about three teeth left in her head. That was common enough. Like a twisted tooth fairy, meth collected teeth and slid a bit of euphoria under the pillow in exchange. A blue rag of a T-shirt draped over the woman’s belly, just touching the waist of her stained jeans. She looked like a low-rent witch with evil in her eyes.
The inside of the shack was lit by a tall metal pipe with a bare bulb at its end. Cracked two-by-sixes lined the dirt to make a rough floor. Naturally, there was a television in the middle of the room. It was the only real piece of furniture in the place. Like the woman, the shack was loosely held together and dismal in appearance. And that would have been fine with Lump—gross, but fine. Hell, he didn’t care what people did to themselves. But across the room, Lump saw the woman’s daughter, and a knot of nausea tied in his gut.
The little girl squatted in a corner, one arm over her head like she was expecting him to haul off and crack her one.
That was just messed up. Friends and family should mean something. They should mean everything. And here was this meth-head bitch letting her daughter run around filthy and scared and living like a total animal just because Mama wanted a fast ride out of reality. That wasn’t right. Not right at all.
“You got something for me?” the woman asked, the words soft and mushy.
“Let’s see the money,” Lump said.
The low-rent witch dug into her jeans pockets and produced a wad of wrinkled bills. Lump counted them. Satisfied, he held out a tiny Ziploc bag, which she lunged at.
“See ya,” Lump said, turning away with disgust. As he spun, he caught a last glimpse of the frightened child across the room. Someone ought to take that kid out of here, he thought. Then they ought to beat the hell out of her mother. It wasn’t right to treat a kid that way—not your own flesh and blood.
It made him think about Tara Mae. She wouldn’t give up the booze and smokes the way he told her to. He made damn sure she stayed away from the chemicals, but he’d had no luck at all keeping her off the other stuff. She was taking a lot of chances with Lump’s kid, and he didn’t like it.
Some things were just too important to screw around with. Family was one of them. Lump would do anything for his family. He’d do anything for his friends. He’d kill for them. He damn near had.
He started his car and backed out of the weed-choked path. He wanted to be away from the broken shack and its human litter. Hopefully, Dusty would get his act together and get back on his route soon. Where is that guy? Lump hated dealing with the Bluffers and the outer-parish dregs. He knew his chosen profession wasn’t likely to bring him up close to movie stars, but damn…
On the main road he tried to put the grim house out of his mind, but the little girl wouldn’t leave his thoughts. Lump had a philosophy about such things. A philosophy of friends and family—a philosophy of fences.
He’d carried the philosophy for quite some time, and it served him well when the big, old world turned shades of gray. It was like the thing that went down at the Hollow. He didn’t have anything against the Denton girl. In fact, he liked her quite a bit. She was hot, and she was smart. He might have liked to slide on up close with her, but he wasn’t close to her. She fell outside his fences. Lump’s sister and his mama and daddy were in the fences. Tara Mae was in his fences. Hunter and Ricky were in the fences. Everyone else was outside, and no one on the outside better think about hurting what Lump kept fenced up. It was about loyalty. You had to be loyal or you weren’t worth a good Goddamn.
So Hunter tells him Denton is going to be causing some trouble. Major trouble. Bull-in-a-china-shop trouble. Lump doesn’t need to ask any questions.
Ricky wanted to know why all the time, but Lump didn’t need an explanation, not from a dude in his fences.
He navigated around the corner at the peak of the Bluffs, his headlights cutting chunks out of the darkness. Trees rose up on both sides of him, hurried by as he took the steep hill down.
Now, Lump didn’t cotton to the idea of beating up on a girl. Not one bit. That was some cowardly crap if you just went around doing it for grins. But this was business. Hunter’s business. Lump’s business. And sometimes business got ugly.
There might still be some beating left to do.
That didn’t matter. Hunter had been his friend since they were both dirtying diapers. They used to fish the river together, shoot targets in Hunter’s backyard with his daddy’s .22. For the last two years, they’d been in business together, and both of them did good with it.
You didn’t let anything get in the way of that.
He took the next curve, and the lights of Marchand slid from behind the black sheet of
forest. Lump liked the way it looked, as if somebody scooped out a big ol’ chunk of star-filled sky and dropped it into a bowl next to the river.
As the lights of the city captured his attention, a chill stream ran over his head. It felt like someone was dripping ice water into his skull, and it trickled along the crease in his brain toward his spine. His shoulders shook hard.
He looked back at the road. The sight of the girl on the dirt shoulder ahead startled him more than the sudden, uncomfortable sensation had. She wore a white dress and walked slowly up the hill. He nudged the wheel to the left to give her more room, and he thought the girl was nuts for walking on a dark road so late at night. He slowed the car and cast a quick glance through the windshield as he drove up beside her.
Lump’s breath caught in his throat, and his pulse beat like a drum in his ear.
Even as he recognized Rene Denton’s wounded face, he told himself, It can’t be her.
He punched down on the gas pedal and sped away. The first thing he thought was that he’d lost his mind. He didn’t believe in ghosts. His crazy aunt Gladys used to tell him all kinds of stories about lost souls and haunts, and Lump thought it was all crap. So if he wasn’t seeing a spirit, he was seeing a hallucination.
The idea didn’t comfort him much.
He raced around the next curve and kept the gas pedal down.
Then he saw someone else he recognized.
What the hell is he doing out here? Lump wondered.
Mason Avrett sat on a rock halfway up the hillside rolling in on the left of Lump’s car. The big goof had his head down like he was sleeping. He didn’t even look up when the headlights of Lump’s car fell on him.
Maybe it was another hallucination.
He never came to a conclusion on this point. He didn’t have the time.
The crows dove out of the sky as thick as a cloud. They had eyes that looked like tiny flames and beaks like wrought iron. All of the birds were wounded. They should have been dead. Even before the first one hit the windshield, Lump could see the insides hanging out of their breasts. Several of them had heads that flopped uselessly from their thick, black bodies.
Hundreds of the birds filled the night, obscuring Lump’s view of the road ahead. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and in the moment before the murder of crows hit the glass, Lump took his hands from the wheel and used them to cover his face. He was still screaming and shielding his eyes when the car flew through the guardrail and sailed into the night.
Mason raised his head in time to see the taillights of Lump Hawthorne’s car disappear over the edge. Remnants of the mind picture of crows still flitted around the vehicle as it vanished.
A moment later he heard the crash. Metal crumpled and glass shattered. The sounds kept coming as Lump’s car rolled down the cliffside.
Mason waited for the explosion. In movies there was always an explosion when a car got wrecked.
But no ball of flame or cloud of smoke rose. Eventually there was just silence.
Mason pulled the wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket. He also pulled out the black pencil he kept there. Pressing the sheet on his thigh, Mason drew over the face of Lump Hawthorne. He made loops and scratched lines, gently so he didn’t rip through the paper. In a handful of minutes, Lump’s face was blended into the dark forest. His cheek became the trunk of another snake-wrapped tree and his eye was covered with the black body of a wounded bird.
Once the picture was altered, Mason folded it, stood up, and shoved the paper and pencil back in his pocket.
Then he walked home, feeling sleepy and little else.
20
Animation
Mason slept late that morning. Before going to bed the night before, Aunt Molly told him that school was closed because of Rene and Lara Pearce and Lump Hawthorne. That was okay. Mason didn’t want to go to school anyhow. He was so tired he didn’t think he could get out of bed if he wanted to.
Instead he spent most of the morning sliding in and out of dreams. When a bad dream woke him up, he stared at the ceiling until his eyes grew heavy again. Before drifting off to sleep, he tried to picture something nice, tried to feed his dreams with sunshine and picnics and clean, beautiful places, but he didn’t have the strength to hold on to such good pictures; they turned scary and grim behind his eyes.
His last dream on that long morning began with Mason sitting in Rene’s hospital room. She was awake and smiling, and her face wasn’t hurt anymore. This was the mind picture he gave himself. He wanted it to follow him into sleep, to last. Rene looked nice and happy, and she told him all about the hospital and said she was going home soon.
Though Mason created this picture with bright sunshine pouring through the window to land on Rene’s pretty face, the weather outside soon turned dark. Rain poured down, rapping the glass like the claws of a monster wanting to get in. Soon the glum atmosphere crept into the hospital room, dimming the lights. Rene stopped talking and fell back on her pillow. Her wounds returned. Purple bruises. Cuts nearly black for their deepness. Skin swollen and bumpy on her cheeks and forehead. Mason stood from the chair and backed away from the bed until he hit the wall. His arms lifted up above his head like he was waiting for Aunt Molly to take off his T-shirt. Then the room was full of the thunderstorm. Black clouds rolled in, covering Rene and the bed and the ceiling and the walls. Mason tried to leave, wanted to get away from the hospital, but he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Sharp pains shot up and down them when he tried. The clouds pulled away from the center of the room and coated the walls like ugly paint. The floor was no longer clean linoleum, but dirt. Mason was no longer standing. He sat on the dirt floor, his arms still restrained above him.
Then the hospital room was gone completely. Mason sat in a dark place with only the glow of a kerosene lamp that sat on a small wooden table.
He was in Gene’s shack.
A dozen crows, their wings affixed to the boards with nails, decorated the walls on either side of him. Mason knew that he too was kept in place with nails, driven deep into his forearms. Across the room stood a woman. It was his aunt Molly. He could tell by her hair and her dress. She faced the wall, arms at her sides. To her right, in a corner where the lantern’s light couldn’t reach, something moved. Feet shuffled through the dirt. The sound of heavy breathing, like whatever it was had just finished a long run, came in quick gasps.
“I’d like to leave, please,” Mason said. He was looking at his aunt. She didn’t move. Maybe she didn’t hear him at all. “Aunt Molly, can you get me down, please? I want to go inside now.”
But his aunt didn’t move. She kept staring at the wall. Her shoulders shook like she was crying, but Mason didn’t hear her cry. He heard the feet and the breaths in the dark corner, but Aunt Molly didn’t make a sound.
Really afraid now, Mason tried to pull his arms free, but it just hurt too badly. He began to cry himself, even though he knew only babies cried.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t like it here.”
The sounds in the corner grew louder. The dark seemed to move, like it was breathing in time with whatever it hid.
“It hurts,” Mason cried. “Please.”
Gene stepped out of the pulsing darkness. Though the monster didn’t look like his brother, Mason knew it was. That happened in dreams sometimes.
Gene wore the face of an angry dog with eyes the color of pennies. Thick brown fur swept back from the snout to cover his head. Spit dripped from Gene’s sharp teeth.
“The trouble is keeping my pets alive,” Gene said, nodding his muzzle at the wall beside Mason.
Mason turned his head, seeing the tortured bodies of the dead crows.
“You’ve lasted longer than any of the others,” the Gene-dog said. “How’s it feel to actually be good at something, doorknob?”
“It hurts,” Mason whimpered.
“Dear little brother,” the Gene-dog said, creeping closer. “Pain is the only thing we have left to feel.”
; Mason woke covered in sweat and trembling. He jerked his arms up, searching for the holes he believed the nails had left in them, but the skin there was unbroken.
He felt terribly alone as he let his head fall back on the pillow. He wished Rene was better so they could get ice cream. Maybe if he saw her again, he wouldn’t feel so bad.
She might even be awake now!
But Mason didn’t think so. She was still hurt. It wasn’t fair. Those bad kids shouldn’t-a hit Rene like they did. They shouldn’t-a, but they did.
And they were gonna step up. Someone had to step up.
At the hospital again, Mason stood in the hallway outside Rene’s room. He wasn’t as afraid this time. Other people were in the room with Rene. She was still asleep, so nobody really said anything. Her friend Cassie was there with a tall boy Mason didn’t know. He’d seen the boy at school and he seemed nice, but Mason couldn’t remember his name. Rene’s mama was there and she was crying again, so Mason waited in the hall. Men and women in white coats walked past him, and he kept his head down.
When Rene’s mama came into the hall and saw him, her face twisted up and she hurried to where he stood. “Mason,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t know,” Mason said. “Wanted to see Rene, I s’pose.”
“Well you have to behave,” Mrs. Denton said. “Last time you scared a lot of people the way you ran out of here.”
“Sorry,” he said. You always had to say sorry and please and thank you.
Mrs. Denton patted his shoulder and sniffled a little. “I know it’s scary here.”
“Rene’s still asleep,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He knew she was. He also knew that it wasn’t a good sleep. He’d seen her dreams and nobody should have to sleep with those kinds of haunts.
“Yes, she is. But the doctors say she’s better. It just may take some time for her to wake up.”
Mason Page 11