by J. Thorn
Driven by equal parts excitement and impatience, Pete stood first, leaving his father sitting alone on the small wicker bench in the hall. "She alive?" the boy asked, searching but not finding the answer in the aged doctor's expression.
Wellman was so thin his limbs were like broom handles snapped over someone's knee, his chest a deflated accordion topped by a long face writhing with wrinkles in which small blue eyes, magnified by a pair of rimless spectacles, shone with surprising alertness. Those eyes looked troubled now as they found the boy's face. Pete had expected to be ignored, that whatever the doctor said would be directed toward his father, and so was pleasantly surprised to find the doctor addressing him directly. "Yes," he said in a quiet voice. "She is, but barely."
"Will she make it?" Pete persisted.
"I think so, though she's lost quite a bit of blood."
The boy let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Who did this to her?" Wellman asked, frowning. "I can't imagine anyone..." He trailed off, and put a hand to his mouth as if censoring a line of thought that would yield answers he preferred not to hear.
"Animals," Pete's father said again, as if he'd been programmed to give that response whenever the question was put to him.
The doctor dropped his gaze from the boy to his father. "Not unless we got animals in this state can work a knife, Jack."
Pete looked to his father to see how this news had affected him. It hadn't, or if it did, he was doing a fine job of hiding the fact. In the dull gray light through the windows in the hall, all he saw on the old man's face were shadows.
"No," Wellman said, "Wasn't animals did this. Poor girl's been cut up something terrible. Beaten too. She's got a concussion, multiple fractures, and a couple of busted ribs. Whoever took a blade to her used it to take out one of her eyes and lop off a few of her fingers and toes. If it was an animal, the wounds would be ragged, Jack. No." He sounded as if he didn't believe it was possible or didn't want to believe it, but knew there was no other explanation. "Someone real angry wanted her to die, and die slow." He shook his head and touched a pair of trembling fingers to the small silver crucifix that hung around his neck. Then he sighed and stepped away from the boy. "Either one of you called the Sheriff?"
Pete shook his head. "I guess we wanted to get her here 'fore it was too late."
"Well that was the right thing to do, but we'd best give Hal a call now. Need to tell him he's got some kind of lunatic out there running around chopping up women." He started to move down the hall, but Jack stood and put a hand on his arm. Wellman looked at it like it was a strange species of exotic spider that had just dropped from the ceiling.
With a pained expression on his face, Pete's father leaned in close to the doctor and said in a low voice, "You can't. Not 'less you want more people in that room of yours tonight."
Puzzled, Wellman slowly withdrew his arm from the man's grip. "You know something I don't?"
Jack licked his lips and nodded slowly. "I do, but might be better if you didn't hear it." His gaze, which Pete was shocked to see was one of fear, dropped to the floor. "Now if you're sayin' that girl's gonna make it, I reckon me and Pete's done about all we can and we'll just head on home and leave her to you."
Wellman studied Jack's face. "What's going on?"
"Leave it, Doc. Please. It's the best thing to do."
"The hell it is, Jack. Someone's gonna be missing that girl and I don't know where to start. That's Sheriff's work right there, and how's he gonna help if he don't know about it?" He glanced at Pete and a funny look passed over his face. "You boys didn't have anything to do with this, did you?"
Pete felt as if he'd been punched. "Hell no, Doc. We found her just like that, honest we did. She was on the road, throwin' up blood. I reckon if we hadn't come along she'd be roadkill right now, or cooked in the sun. Me and Dad loaded her up and came right here, ain't that right?"
"That's right," Jack said, his gaze still directed at the floor as if something down there was of fierce interest to him. "This wasn't our doin'."
"But you know whose doing it was?"
Jack said nothing for a moment, then raised his head and looked hard at his son. "Go on out to the truck."
"But I want—"
"Now."
Pete knew it would be unwise to argue. He'd been on the receiving end of the back of his father's hand for less. But before he obeyed, he asked Wellman, "Can I come back'n see her?"
"If it's all right with your Pa."
"We'll see," Jack said, which Pete knew was as good as a "no", and stepped aside to indicate the boy needed to get moving.
"Thanks for patchin' her up," Pete said to the doctor.
The old man nodded. "Wouldn't have been a whole lot I could've done if you boys hadn't picked her up. You saved her life, I reckon."
"Will you tell her we was the ones brought her in?"
"Sure, son."
Reluctantly, the boy did as he was told, passing between the men and through an invisible cloud of their intermingled scents: sweat, tobacco, and disinfectant. Once clear of them, however, he took his time making his way to the door, pretending to admire the sparsely furnished interior of the doctor's house, hoping to hear just what it was his father knew, but they said nothing, obviously aware he was still within earshot. Aggravated by questions unanswered, he opened the front door and stepped out into the rain.
*
"You know I've got to report this, Jack."
"I know."
"Then you'd best give me a hell of a good reason why I shouldn't or that's exactly what I'm gonna do."
Jack was afraid. Good sense had abandoned him over the past few hours and all because he'd had the boy in the truck with him. If he'd just left Pete at home, he could have done what reason and common goddamn sense had suggested and just kept driving when he saw the girl in the road. Sure, the guilt would have weighed heavily on him later, but that was what whiskey was for, and it wouldn't be the first round of it he'd had to deal with. After sixty-one years of hard living, he'd gotten pretty good at sweeping things under the rug and stomping them down until they were easier to walk over than study. But he knew the boy wouldn't have let it go. He was too simple, too unaware that there was a great big gray area between right and wrong, especially when it meant putting yourself in harm's way. He had not yet been educated on the kind of monsters who preyed on Samaritans.
Jack had spotted the girl before Pete, but had kept his mouth shut, even tried to distract the boy so he might miss it, told him it looked like a storm if those thunderheads coming over the hills to the left of them were anything to go by. He should have known the boy would catch on. He rarely said two words to his son unless he had to— in all his years he'd never truly learned how—and certainly wasn't given to idle banter, so instead of looking out his window at the clouds, and away from the girl, Pete frowned and looked at his father instead. And from there, his eyes had drifted to the crumpled form at the side of the road. Even so, even when Pete had grabbed Jack's arm hard and pointed at the girl, he'd considered just stepping on the gas and telling the boy what he was telling the doctor now.
"It's just...trouble, Doc."
"What kind of trouble?"
Jack searched for a way to say what he wanted without saying too much, but his mind was a jumble of unfinished thoughts and burgeoning panic. It needed numbing. He ran a hand through his hair and looked beseechingly at Wellman. "You got somethin' to drink?"
The doctor nodded. "Come on into the kitchen."
-4-
In the strained light of the ageing day, Pete inspected the rust-colored stains on his fingers, then held them out to the rain. It was strange to have her blood on his skin, something she would not have shared with him had the choice been hers. A secret she was not yet aware he'd been let in on, a part of her she might not yet know was missing. When they were wet enough, he withdrew his hands and rubbed them together, then wiped them on his jeans. It made him feel a little sad, a
lmost disrespectful, as if her blood was of little consequence to him, like dirt he was anxious to be rid of. Nothing could be further from the truth. As he lingered before Doctor Wellman's door, still hoping to overhear something of the discussion inside, but thus far unable to make out much over the grumbling of distant thunder and the hiss of the rain, he wished he were inside. Not with the men and their whispering, but in the girl's room, if only so she would have someone there when she woke up. He hated the thought of her being alone, as she had been alone when they'd come upon her, as she must have felt when her attacker had done those horrible things to her. Alone, helpless, lost. It made his heart hurt to think of her that way.
Stepping out from the shelter of the porch, he narrowed his eyes against the rain and looked at the truck. It stared back, headlights dull, chrome fender long past gleaming.
Pete dug his hands into his pockets. You don't even know her. He exhaled through his nose. He wondered how long his father would be inside. He was a man of few words, so Pete guessed it wouldn't be long. Then again the way he'd looked in the hall, all wrapped up in himself, made it seem as if he had plenty to tell.
He glanced to his left, at the two windows at the front of the doctor's house. The window to the girl's room would be somewhere around back.
Leave her be.
Knowing he was probably making a mistake, and one that might get him in a world of hurt and trouble, he nevertheless ducked low and moved away from the truck, toward the corner of the house.
*
They sat facing each other at a small square table, which had once worn a lacy tablecloth, but was bare and scarred now. Since his wife's death, Wellman hadn't seen the need for those little touches that made ordinary things look pretty, not when the only thing he had ever considered pretty was buried in cold, uncaring earth. He offered Jack the bottle of Scotch and watched the man pour himself a half glass.
"Do you know who did this to her?" He accepted the bottle but did not take his eyes from Jack's face as he filled his cup.
"Not for sure, no," the other man said, before taking a draw from his glass that almost emptied it. "I mean...I didn't see 'em do it, or nothin', but..."
"Go on," Wellman urged when it seemed the man had snagged on his own thoughts.
Rain pattered at the window. The single bulb above them, hooded by a floral glass shade that was the room's sole concession to decorativeness only because the doctor couldn't for the life of him figure out how to remove it without breaking it, made their shadows long and blurry. It was not yet night, but plenty dark, almost as if Jack Lowell and his boy had brought it with them.
"You remember those kids that went missin' years back?"
Wellman nodded. "Backpackers. Couple of guys and their girls. I remember."
"Yeah. You remember the big fuss around here at that time. Kids were rich. Once their folks found out that Elkwood's where they'd last been seen alive, they came down here like an army, put the screws on the Sheriff pretty bad. Newsfolk and everythin'."
"That's right."
"I saw those kids." He joined his hands around the glass. There was dirt caked beneath his nails, his grubby fingertips touching.
Wellman sat back. "When?"
"Gave 'em a lift that day. Saw 'em all out there on the road, in that heat, sweatin' like a buncha hogs. Felt kinda bad for 'em, even though no one in their right mind should be out walkin' in that kinda heat. So I told 'em to pile in. Took 'em as far as the General Store, though it were closed. Even offered to take 'em farther if they wanted. They didn't. Heard one of 'em say the truck smelt like cowshit. 'Nother one said I was like somethin' outta Deliverance, whatever the hell that is."
"A movie," Wellman told him. "'About a bunch of hillbillies who hunt some city folk."
Jack considered this for a moment, then smiled, but only briefly. "Yeah. Anyways, I left 'em there, and they went missin' soon after."
"So you didn't see what happened?"
"No, but my place's only about twenty miles from the store. Only other house 'tween here and there is the Merrill's. Out there in the woods past the river." At the blank look on the doctor's face he said, "They don't come into town much. Keep to themselves. They have a junkyard. Hunt their own food. Buncha brothers, far's I know. Heard there used to be a sister too, but for all I know that might be just talk. Only one I ever seen in town is their old man, and he's a scary lookin' sumbitch. Has a way'a lookin' at you...like he's lookin' inside your skull or somethin'...readin' your thoughts or..." He trailed off, and drained the glass.
Wellman refilled it. "So you think they had something to do with those kids going astray?"
"I do."
"But...why? They could've gone anywhere. Might even have passed your place that day and you just didn't see them."
Jack raised his glass a little, tipped it in gratitude, and took a sip. Then he smacked his lips and stifled a belch. "I called the Sheriff a few weeks later when I heard those kids' folks was in town askin' questions. Told 'im what I thought, even though there weren't no good reason for thinkin' it other than a bad feelin' I got every time I passed that damn place. So McKindrey comes over, tells me he'll go out there and ask some questions. See if the Merrills know anythin'."
"And did they?"
"Dunno. He never went out there, or if he did, he pretended he didn't. But the night after I called him tellin' him what I knew, or thought I knew, I woke up to find Old Man Merrill standin' in my room with a big rusty lawnmower blade to my throat." He finished the drink, set the glass before the doctor, who filled it without hesitation and slid it back.
"Thought I was dreamin' 'bout Death itself, I swear. He was wearin' dark clothes: long coat, and one of them hats like the preachers used to wear." He raised his hand and made a twirling motion with one upraised finger in front of his face. "Big hat. Couldn't see his face. And he were tall. Least I think he was, but I guess anyone standin' in your room at night with a blade to your throat with only the moonlight showin' you he's there's gonna look tall, right?"
"Right," Wellman agreed, and noted the other man's hands had started to tremble.
"He says to me, and I'll never forget it: 'I don't want to kill a good, Godfearin' man like you even if you is just an old dirty nigger with a big mouth, but I won't hesitate to cut out your tongue if you keep spreadin' lies about my family.' He told me his boys never did nothin' they weren't forced to do to protect themselves and the family, and never would. Said they respected our boundaries and we should respect theirs."
Jack swallowed, eyes cloudy with the memory. He took a long drink of his whiskey, and it could have been water for all the effect it had on him. "I dunno what came over me, but I sat right up, despite that big ol' blade at my throat, and I told him to get the hell out of my house. He stepped away, and raised an arm that looked like it belonged to a scarecrow, and pointed at my bedroom door. I looked, saw a boy standin' there holding hands with Pete, who weren't more than a little kid himself at the time. He looked sleepy, standin' there in his underpants, wonderin' what was goin' on, and who this kid holdin' his hand was. And I couldn't tell him, couldn't say nothin' because that other kid, the Merrill kid, was holdin' a huntin' knife in his other hand and lookin' at me like he knew exactly how to use it, like he wanted to use it."
"Jesus..." Wellman said, and removed his spectacles so he could wipe a hand over his face. "Jesus."
"Merrill asked me if we had ourselves an understandin'." He shook his head slowly, and finished his drink. "I told him we did, and he left. Mussed up my boy's hair on the way out as if he were nothin' more than some 'ol kind uncle come to visit. I didn't sleep for weeks after that. Sat up with my shotgun and moved Pete's bed into the livin' room where I could watch over him."
"You tell the boy any of this?"
"Told him it were a dream. Didn't see the sense in scarin' 'im any worse."
"They shouldn't have gotten away with that, you know. No one should get away with that kind of thing. Not in this day and age."
/> Jack looked up from his drink. "I ain't never told no one what I just told you, Doc, but I'm tellin' it now because you wanted to know why I didn't want you callin' the Sheriff. Even if you do, he'll tell you he'll take a look, but he won't, 'cuz I reckon he's just as scared of 'em as I am. Maybe they paid him a visit one night, told him what they told me. But if they find out, it might be you they come see. You understand now?"
Wellman nodded slowly. He wasn't sure how much of Jack's story he should believe. It was madness what he'd been told, but then hadn't he witnessed firsthand the very worst kind of madness and desperation the world had to offer three years before when he'd been summoned to operate on Alice Niles, a fifteen-year-old girl who'd tried to burn her unborn baby out of herself with a blowtorch, believing it to be the spawn of Satan itself? That particularly frightening conviction had come courtesy of the girl's mother, Lynn, after she discovered her own husband was the baby's father.
What Jack had said scared him, even worse than the realization that had he not refused Alice Niles' anguished request to aid in the abortion, she might not have felt compelled to take the torch to it. This scared him more, because something had occurred to him that he wasn't sure he should say aloud for fear of terrifying Jack more than he already was. Assuming it hadn't already dawned on him.
What if they saw you, Jack? What if they saw you taking the girl?
*
She was sleeping, but it was not a peaceful sleep. Even over the rain that sizzled around him and the wind that had risen, even through the thick glass, Pete could hear her moaning low in her throat. One hand was flung over her brow; the other twitched spasmodically every few minutes. Doctor Wellman had washed her cuts and bandaged her eye, or rather the hole where her eye had once been, and put icepacks on her cheeks to help ease the swelling. She looked a little better now, but not much. She was still naked—he could tell by the shape of her, and the raised points of her nipples beneath the material, the sight of which caused something within him to stir—but the sheets were pulled up to her chin, as if she was cold. There were bloodstained cloths, swabs, and a kidney-shaped metal dish full of dark red water on a stand by the bed. Next to these, laid out on a blood-spotted white towel, a variety of steel instruments gleamed like shiny letters surrounded by wild crimson periods.