The Ascent of PJ Marshall

by Brian J. Anderson

  Hackett sputtered and turned away to watch the moth struggle against the door.

  “What about us? And everyone else out of a job?”

  Eddie took another thoughtful swallow.

  “Is that how he talked you into this? Christ. In case you haven’t noticed, Hack, our jobs ain’t that great. And unless they’re stupid, everyone in that office knows their days are numbered. This plan of his was…it’s just so fuckin’ stupid.”

  Hackett sighed.

  “Yeah. I know. He always talks about how that site’s the only thing he has left. Like it’s his kid or something. You start talking about Cheyenne and he gets all emotional about his wildcatter days and shit. But I’m not buying it anymore. He’s just a greedy old fuck, plain and simple.”

  “Exactly,” Eddie said, his breath whistling excitedly through his nose. “That’s why this will work. If he’s still bankin’ on this plan of his to pay off, and he knows this guy is dead? He’ll back off. It’s too much money. I say we go with my idea. Speaking of which…”

  Eddie tossed Hackett another beer and finished his own half-full bottle in one go. With foam running down his chin, he watched as Hackett opened his bottle and took a slow, brooding swallow. He slammed his empty on the table and took another from the cooler, counting the remaining bottles before closing the lid.

  “Step one. Get totally shitfaced.” He tapped the knife, causing it to sway. “And no one better try and stop us.”

  Hackett turned to watch the door.

  “You’re a good guy, Hack,” Eddie said, his eyelids beginning to droop. “A lot of people would be in the same spot as you right now. Probably.”

  Hackett turned back.

  “Probably?” Shaking his head, Hackett stood and pointed to the door, swaying on his feet. “While I can still think straight, I need to tell you something.”

  He looked at his hand, trying to calm its steady tremble.

  “Shit. Might be too late.”

  “That’s okay, Hack. I’d probably forget anyway.”

  “Probably? What’s with this probably shit? When did you get to be such a wishy-washy little bastard? Come on, you need to remember this. It’s important shit.”

  “Then shut your hole and tell me.”

  Hackett shot Eddie a confused glance.

  “How is that—how can I shut my hole and tell you at the same time?”

  “Just—you know, shut up and tell me. With your hole. You can open it for that. I’m drunk. Don’t listen to me.”

  Still pointing at the door, Hackett stared at his friend, slowly shaking his head as he continued.

  “In my glove box. Is a flash drive. It’s got all the shit on Cheyenne. All the reports, the memos, the phone calls, everything. It’s even got copies of the shit I planted on the guy’s computer.”

  Eddie stood up and stumbled around the table, grasping Hackett by the shoulders, his eyes wide.

  “That’s why Ward took your com—computer after you left! That’s what he was looking for. Hack, you’re brilliant! So, if our plan doesn’t work, all you gotta do is take that shit to the cops and make a deal. Ward goes down, you do some community service, and y-you’re done. It’s perfect.”

  Hackett collapsed in the chair with a sigh.

  “Right. Sounds pretty solid when you’re drunk. You know what would have been perfect?”

  Eddie replied with a questioning shrug.

  “If I would have said no.”

  “T-to what?”

  “To Ward. When he asked me to find this guy. To plant those files on his computer. When he asked me if I wanted a future at Bighorn. It’s a simple fuckin’ word to say, you know?”

  “Yeah. I guess,” Eddie said. He was beaming, watching Hackett across the table with drunken optimism. “So, are you gonna do it?”

  Hackett shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s time to shit or get off the pot.” He looked up, his eyes red and glazed. “I don’t think I’m gonna make it out of this, Ed.”

  “Screw that. You—we’re gonna be fine. You just have to—”

  Hackett held up his hand, cutting Eddie off as he turned his head to listen through the window behind him. The sound of footsteps approaching the cabin rose over the din of cricket song, the steady crunch of leaves growing more distinct. Eddie waved it off.

  “Probably a ‘possum. Woods are full of ‘em.”

  The steps grew heavier as they approached, ending with a heavy cracking of wood just outside the window. Yanking the knife from the table, Hackett set down his beer and scurried to the window, backing against the wall, his chest pounding.

  Eddie ran to the door, throwing an uneasy glance out the window, the gun held low against his leg. Hackett caught his attention and tossed him the flashlight from his pocket, glancing at the light above. The cabin was plunged into darkness as Eddie hit the switch.

  “Sit tight, bud,” Eddie said, pushing the screen door open with a deafening creak. “It’s prob—probably nothin’.”

  Tightening his grip on the knife, Hackett shut his eyes as Eddie stepped outside.

  Probably. Shit.

  He opened his eyes to a flicker of light over his head and a series of thumps on the grass outside the window.

  “Hack! Check it out!”

  He rose and looked outside, recoiling with a gasp and nearly toppling over the back of the chair. The profile of a whitetail buck in full velvet was framed in the window, staring over its shoulder at the light. It twitched as Eddie yelled from the front porch.

  “Yahhhh! Beat it!”

  The light flashed across the deer’s face, causing it to turn and bound into the woods with a heavy snapping of wood. Hackett returned to his chair, squinting as Eddie turned on the cabin light and went to the couch, stuffing the gun back between the cushions as he sat.

  “You’re p-pretty spooked, Hack.”

  Hackett set the knife on the table and took the cigarettes and lighter from his pocket and held them up.

  “This all right?”

  Eddie scolded him with a wave of his finger.

  “Y-you shouldn’t do—that, Hack. Hackett…” His slurred speech was becoming nearly incomprehensible. “Doncha know those things will…”

  Eddie trailed off, his head and eyelids drooping as he stared at the pack of cigarettes in Hackett’s hand. With monumental effort, he looked up with a shrug.

  “Fuck it. Lemme have one too.”

  Hackett lit two cigarettes and passed one across. He picked up his beer.

  “You probably won’t remember,” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke over his head. “But I’ll say it anyway. If something happens to me, you take that shit to the cops. Take that motherfucker down. He—”

  “God damn it, Hack! Take it yourself! You—”

  Bolting up from the couch, Eddie grabbed an empty bottle from the table and threw it, sending it humming just wide of Hackett’s right ear. Hackett turned stiffly in the chair, watching behind him as the window screen—frame and all—buckled and clattered to the ground outside. He turned back, finding Eddie leaning back with an enormous grin, his arms spread across the back of the couch.

  “That deer was eyeballin’ us again,” he said, waving his cigarette at the empty bottles littering the table. “Don’t worry. Got plenty of ammo if he comes back.”

  Hackett settled back into the chair, his stunned gaze locked on his friend.

  “You’re dangerous.”

  Eddie chuckled and shook his head.

  “Yeah. I’m dangerous.”

  “What’s the hell’s that mean?”

  Eddie waved this off and got to his feet and finished his beer, dropping his half-finished cigarette into the bottle as he set it down.

  “Nothing. Remember? I’m drunk.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he shuffled around the couch. “I’m gonna go throw up now. But when I come b-back, we’re not gonna talk about Bighorn or Ward or what we’re—whatever. We’re gonna talk about gettin’ some pussy
tonight. All—all right?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Holding tight to the wall for support, Eddie stumbled down the hall and collapsed outside the bathroom door. He got to his knees and crawled out of sight. Hackett chuckled and glanced at the door as he finished his beer.

  As he pulled another from the cooler, a shadow passed over the couch and Hackett made a full turn, scanning the room. Empty. A second shadow crossed the table and he reared back, again checking the room with a frantic swing of his head.

  “What the hell?”

  In a drunken stumble, he fell backwards into the chair, his head lolling over its back side. Above him, a moth was attacking the light fixture, its wings smacking audibly against the hot glass, throwing shadows around the room. Squinting his vision into focus, Hackett began to register hordes of other insects entering the cabin through the window behind him.

  “Ah, shit.”

  He rose and stumbled around the chair, stopping short with a gasp. A head was framed in the window, floating in a black void, vague and motionless. With a reluctant smile, Hackett waved his arms and approached.

  “Yahhhh! Beat it!”

  The head was unmoved. Placing his hands on the sill, Hackett ducked below the upper pane and leaned outside, squinting into the darkness.

  A man stood before him, ghostly in the cabin’s weak ambient light—hovering and breathing in a steady hiss. Hackett froze, his chest thumping against the window sill, his legs weak. His throat tightened, squeezing his voice into a whisper.

  “Wh-who’s there?”

  The man grabbed Hackett by the hair and lifted his head. Hackett moaned as the man leaned in and spoke.

  “Surprise.”

  The man tightened his grip and slammed Hackett’s head against the window jamb. Grunting at the immense pressure in his head, Hackett slumped over the window sill, the world spinning in a dark, violent haze. Then, nothing.

  chapter twenty-one

  PJ

  The woods were quiet once again. The incessant, drunken chatter in the cabin hushed. Hackett was slumped on the sill, his head and arms hanging out the window, and there was neither sign nor sound from Eddie in the bathroom.

  The deer emerged from the woods behind the cabin with a soft rustle of undergrowth, drawing PJ from a thoughtful daze. He went to the front door and flung the screen open against the wall with a bang. Unfazed by the lingering stench of decay, he stepped to the window and pulled Hackett inside, letting him drop to the floor in a heap. Cringing as he crouched at Hackett’s side, PJ shifted his dislocated arm—immobilized against his body by the rags of his torn and bloody shirt—and checked Hackett’s pulse. He took the knife from the table on his way to the bathroom, leading with it as he rounded the doorway and went inside. Eddie was hunched over the toilet, unconscious.

  With the roll of duct tape clenched in his teeth, he tore off a strip and secured Eddie’s hands around the back of the bowl, struggling with the awkward, one-handed operation. He searched Eddie’s pockets and returned to the main room of the cabin, spearing the knife into the armrest of the chair and binding Hackett’s hands in front of him with more tape. After a search of Hackett’s pockets, he muscled him into a sit against the wall and turned the chair to face him and sat. Panting and exhausted, he stared at Hackett through a haze of grief and hatred. The tape, tight around Hackett’s wrists, was beginning to turn his hands an unsightly shade of purple.

  PJ allowed a brief smile and then shook it off, dragging his sleeve across his eyes. With an open hand, he smacked Hackett across the face. Nothing. Closing his fist, he hit him harder.

  “Wake up!”

  He got to his feet and cocked his arm, falling to his knees as he threw his weight into a blow to Hackett’s temple. His head twisted with a crunch and Hackett’s limp body slid against the wall and down to the floor. PJ grimaced, his hand throbbing as he sat on his heels, breathing in deep, erratic gasps. Clenching his fist, he tipped his head back and screamed, the exertion causing the injuries on his back to burn and stick to his shirt. Fresh blood oozed through the gauze wrapped around his forearms as he turned and sat against the wall, sobbing. His phone vibrated unanswered in his pocket. His strength left him and he slumped to the floor, writhing in wild emotion, oblivious to the pain as he rolled to his back, covering his face with his hand. Above, a pitiless swarm of insects rotated calmly around the light fixture.

  In fits and starts, PJ’s hysterics calmed and he sat up, leaning over Hackett’s twisted form. A plum-sized welt had appeared on the side of his head, making the hairs of his sideburn march at attention over its surface. Sniffling, PJ probed Hackett’s neck, finding his pulse weaker than before. He stretched him out onto his back and rose to his feet.

  He took a beer from the cooler, wedging it between his legs and twisting off the cap. Glancing at the bulge in his shirt pocket, he yanked the knife from the armrest and held it together with the bottle as he went outside, visually sweeping the room on his way out. His phone vibrated as he sat on the steps, and PJ set down the beer and knife to take it from his back pocket and read the display. Anna again.

  Christ. Leave me alone.

  PJ tossed the phone down the steps, its pulsing hum still audible in the grass as he picked up the bottle and drank. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, PJ set down the bottle and picked up the knife as he got to his feet. He went to Hackett’s car and peered through the windshield as he dragged the blade over the front quarter panel with a squeal of grinding metal. Opening the passenger door, he shouldered it past the limits of its hinge, his heels digging and tossing gravel as he rocked it back and forth to the rhythmic croak of stressed metal. It gave with a pop, and PJ stepped back, wiggling the jammed door. He got in the car and speared the knife into the driver’s seat back and rifled the glove box, finding the flash drive. His vision blurring with tears, he read Hackett’s writing on the drive’s housing, ‘Cheyenne Shit’.

  He put the drive in his pocket and slashed the upholstery as he got out of the car and went back to the cabin, his expression crumpling. Scooping his phone up from the grass, he tossed the knife on the porch and turned on his headlamp, aiming its dying beam at the line of buck thorn concealing the shed. He dialed Anna’s number, his legs growing weak and unsteady as he stepped onto the grassy lane, where the shed’s half-open door was resolving into view.

  “PJ, what the hell’s going on? Why aren’t you—?”

  “God, would you just—?” PJ stopped short and stood before the door, his eyes shut with impatience, breathing heavily through his nose. Anna was silent. Slowly, he opened his eyes. “He’s dead. Hackett killed him with a fucking tire iron.”

  Anna gasped.

  “Oh my god—”

  She broke down into soft, uncontrolled sobbing.

  The light from his headlamp dimmed and PJ tapped it with the phone, bringing it back to life. He pulled the door to and stepped inside, sweeping the light over the shed’s scattered contents as Anna cried quietly in his ear.

  “He put him in here.”

  “W-what?” Anna asked, her voice frail. “Where are you?”

  PJ didn’t answer. He knelt before the center post and set the phone on the floor, picking up his father’s camouflage cap. Dust swirled in the light as he shook it by the brim, his breath coming in gasps.

  “His favorite—Jesus, Hackett. Why didn’t you…?”

  He pressed the cap into his face, wheezing pitifully as he picked up his father’s faded, musky scent out of the dust.

  “Oh god. Oh god, no…”

  He fell back on his heels, pulling the cap down his neck and against his chest, where he crumpled it tight in his shaking hand. His light flickered, drawing PJ’s attention to the black stain running down the post. Starting as a large, defined spot at the top end, it tapered and split into streaks as it ran down the timber, disappearing into the dirt at its base. His nose dripping, PJ looked down at the phone, by now covered in dust and buzzing with Anna’s voice. He put on Bu
tch’s cap and picked up the phone, stumbling to his feet and outside.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “What’s going on PJ?”

  “Nothing.”

  As he walked to the cabin, cricket song rose and fell along his path in a wave.

  “What do you mean, nothing? Is Hackett there with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing. Yet.”

  An audible sigh.

  “We need to do this right, PJ. We can’t just—”

  “Don’t tell me what to do! You’ve got no right. I’ll do whatever the fuck—”

  “God damn it, PJ! Listen to me!”

  Anna’s tone stopped PJ short, and he stood frozen at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “Please, PJ. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, just—you’re going to get yourself hurt. You need to calm down.”

  Turning away from the cabin, PJ went to Hackett’s car and knelt on the ground, ducking to look under the rear bumper.

  “Okay, what? We call Porter so he can make it all better?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just a second.”

  PJ set down the phone and reached under the car, pulling the GPS tracker off the bumper with a heavy tearing of duct tape. Holding it in his hand, he removed the strips of tape with his teeth and dropped them onto the ground, spitting flakes of rust from his lips. He threw the tracker up onto the porch and picked up his phone.

  “That’s not a bad idea, PJ.”

  “What?”

  “Calling Porter.”

  Back on the porch, PJ checked on Hackett through the screen door.

  “Fuck Porter. Where the hell was he when dad was bleeding to death in a goddamned shed? I’ll tell you. He was asking me about his bank account, for chrissake. He can kiss my ass.”

  PJ picked up his beer and drank.

  “PJ, there’s no way he could have known. I know you’re pissed. So am I, but think about it.”

  Finishing his beer, PJ tossed the bottle on the floor. It clattered and rolled to a stop against the cabin wall.

  “Like I said. Fuck him. He can have Hackett and Bighorn when I’m done.”