Sticks and Stones

by Michael Hiebert

  “I still don’t—” She was about to say the word understand when suddenly she did. She remembered scribbling Noah’s address on Tommy’s record because that was the first report she’d got to and, at the time, it really hadn’t mattered. It was only a backup address in case she needed it.

  Her mouth fell open. “So, when Abe gave Jonathon Tommy’s address, it was actually ...”

  “It was actually Noah’s address. Jonathon’s at Noah Stork’s house.”

  “Thinkin’ he’s at Tommy’s.” Her words came slow and mechanical, almost as though she were taking orders at a drive-through. “This is the worst night of my life. And that’s countin’ bein’ woken up at two A.M. to find out my husband had just been yanked from my life on account of a head-on collision. You know how bad a morning like that can be? This night’s even worse.”

  Dan didn’t respond. He just stared at the road and gently nodded his head. Leah got the feeling he really might be able to relate to something like that. Although the two of them talked a fair bit, there were certain things—more concepts than actual subjects—that, when they came out or the conversation swerved their way, Dan would back down and gently change topics. Leah never pushed it. She felt, though, on some level, Dan had wounds. He hid them well, mainly through sarcasm and what he counted for wit. He did a good job at appearing strong from the outside.

  Even dragons have soft spots, she thought, considering whether maybe Dan was more a case of muddy waters running deep.

  She wondered how deep, remembering all them empty Jim Beam bottles she’d stuffed into that garbage sack squirreled away in the kitchen closet.

  That morning of the Fourth, as they’d walked up to the station, what was it he had told her about his drinking? She tried thinking back. It was the morning of the day she’d found Samantha Hughes’s half-naked body staked on the edge of the Anikawa. That part she had no problem recalling, and she doubted she would for a long, long time.

  She remembered now. He’d said he had to drink, and that when he didn’t, the world was way too crazy. Drinking made it tolerable enough to concentrate on one horrible thing at a time. He told her it kept the monsters from all charging through his head at once.

  That morning, she’d ignored her gut reaction, which was to tell him those were just weaselly excuses and justifications so he didn’t feel bad for having a problem he didn’t want to face.

  All his points had done was make him sound like a coward.

  But now, in this hollow, harmful, dark, and deadly night of emptiness, she started to wonder what, exactly, Dan Truitt’s monsters really looked like. Maybe they were the real reason he drank, the real things he was scared of.

  Maybe he wasn’t a coward at all, just a pragmatist.

  She decided one day she would press him to answer her. To tell her all about the crazy monsters lurking in his head. A day like that could bring them closer.

  It could also change her life, possibly forever.

  CHAPTER 67

  Jonathon’s heart kicked into overdrive. The way it was pumping tonight, he almost worried it might wear out. Knowing Stork was about to pull the garage door up had him scrambling. His body tingled with adrenaline from his fight-or-flight instinct kicking in. It wasn’t much of a decision. Stork had a gun. Jonathon didn’t even have a shirt. He was going for flight.

  He quickly looked around. There was the back door, which he had closed behind him, but that would cut him off from Carry and he’d never get a second chance. Besides, he doubted he’d even have enough time to run around the table to get through the door and close it before Stork was inside.

  Thoughts whirled in his head, out of his control. Destiny played out in Jonathon’s hands, turning it over, showing a queen high bluff. He couldn’t win. On the verge of resigning to fate, his brain suddenly made a decision for him, pulling his attention to those cabinets, the short one with the cooler on top and that big, wide one that looked as though it could be as deep as the workbench above it.

  Jonathon shuffled over and pulled the door open, expecting to find it full of shelves or tools or something. What he saw surprised him.

  The cabinet was empty. A big empty box. He still wasn’t sure he’d fit, but he was going to damn well try. Squatting down, he sort of sidestepped in, feeling the lock-pick kit in his back pocket bending against the cabinet and jamming into him. He pulled it out and tried again.

  Across the garage, the handle of the garage door rattled as Stork’s hand wrapped around it.

  Jonathon squeezed as hard as he could, managing to get his head in with his neck bent painfully forward.

  The garage door squeaked. Any minute it would rise.

  Jonathon was in the cabinet, but the door was still wide open. There was no pull on the inside. He looked over at Carry, now almost out of view because of the solid side of the narrow table she’d wiggled around when Jonathon entered.

  He had to close the door.

  The garage door started to rise, just as Jonathon pulled out one of the sharp-hooked tools from his pick collection. Throwing his bent-up arm out, he jammed the pick into the door’s back, plunging it a half inch into the soft pine. He began pulling the door closed, slowly and gently so the pick stayed in the wood.

  He had it halfway closed as the garage door began rolling up.

  That was when Jonathon saw it. Stork’s ax, lying on its side on the concrete floor inches from the rope binding Carry’s arms and legs. There was no possible way Stork wasn’t going to see it.

  Jonathon’s mind screamed at him to close the door.

  But the ax . . .

  There was no time for the ax. Jonathon continued pulling the door gently closed even as the garage door clanked all the way open and he heard Stork step inside. “Miss me?” he asked Carry, his words echoing in the unfinished interior, bouncing off those bloodstained walls.

  Jonathon got the cabinet door completely closed as he heard Stork’s footsteps come closer. He made it. Just. His heart sounded loud, so loud he hoped Stork wouldn’t hear it, hoped he was only hearing it from inside his body. He took some deep breaths and worked the lock-pick tool out of the wood and placed it back in its container, having to feel around in the dark.

  The temperature in the pitch-black cupboard already had risen since Jonathon got inside. Sweat streamed down his naked chest and abdominals. His hair was soon soaked, and sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. He couldn’t wipe it. He was in a position where he couldn’t move a muscle. He just hoped to Jesus nothing would cramp up.

  “What’s this?” Stork asked, sounding glib. “You moved.” There was a pause and then, “You weren’t thinking of trying for the door, were you? You realize you wouldn’t even get over the footing tied up the way you are.”

  After a few seconds, Stork spoke again.

  “Here,” Stork said. Jonathon wished he knew what was going on. “Now you’re spillin’,” Stork said. “Just slow down. All right, that’s better.” Jonathon figured it was the water he’d been fetching for her. “Okay,” Stork said finally. “That’s it. Now, no more whining.”

  Stork’s heavy footfalls sounded as though he was walking away again, and then Jonathon heard why as the heavy garage door rolled back down its metal tracks and slammed shut when it got to the bottom.

  The footfalls came back. Jonathon had a good idea what was coming next. That ax was just lying there for all the world to see. And just as he expected, all the world that mattered saw it now.

  “What’s this?” Stork asked, his voice changing to a clipped whisper. It was as though Jonathon heard the devil himself speaking beyond the walls and door of the cabinet.

  There was more silence, and then Jonathon jumped, banging his head on the top of the cabinet as Stork’s voice went into a scream. “How did you get this!”

  Carry stayed silent.

  “I asked you . . .” And Jonathon assumed he’d grabbed her by her hair, lifting her face from the concrete because of the painful yelp she let out. “Where.
Did. You. Get. This?”

  Carry continued her painful shrieks, and Jonathon’s muscles tightened. It was his fault she was in pain. He’d left the ax on the floor. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The sweat and the heat of the cabinet were becoming too much. He wondered how airtight the space was. He felt dizzy. That could be from a lot of things, though.

  “I asked you a question!” Stork barked again. But Carry said nothing.

  Jonathon guessed Stork’s next move was to look at the rope tying her ankles and wrists together, since he then asked her, “Who did this? You couldn’t have! There’s no way! Who helped you?”

  Carry still said nothing. Then she yelled out even louder in pain. It took every ounce of energy Jonathon had to try to stay calm and not come out of the cabinet too early.

  “Who? Who got this ax and tried cutting you free? Where is he?” Stork’s voice was still loud, commanding.

  Jonathon wished he could see anything that was going on, because a huge pocket of silence followed. He once again heard Stork’s footsteps on the concrete, and Carry’s quiet sobs returned.

  He wished he knew what Stork was doing. Whatever it was, Jonathon really hoped it didn’t involve his gun.

  CHAPTER 68

  Leah and Dan reached Noah Stork’s house before Chris and Ethan got there in the squad car. Leah figured that was how it would work out. She’d had at least some experience of getting through Blue Jay Maples recently. Chris hadn’t. And from her experience, Chris wasn’t a confident driver. He’d never take those turns as fast as she had.

  “Where’s the bastard’s house?” Dan asked. They’d been bumping down Woodpecker Wind for two or three miles. She’d already told him it would be coming up on their left.

  “You can’t see it until you’re almost on top of it,” she said, slowing down after hearing her own words. “It’s just sort of dug out of the woods.” She slowed down.

  “What’re you doin’?” Dan asked.

  “I think we’re almost there.”

  “You think or you know?”

  “This sort of looks familiar, and the woods seem to be thinning as they go around the corner.”

  “I don’t see Jonathon’s car,” Dan said.

  “Maybe he couldn’t find it.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dan said, sarcastically.

  “I barely found it the first time I came here.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. So, what do we do now?”

  Leah pulled over to a stop just before she could see where the trees broke for Noah Stork’s property line. The two exited the vehicle and crossed the road to where the side of the woods lined the deep ditch of Woodpecker Wind.

  The culvert followed the road like a pit of some giant eel. From outside her car, it even looked bigger and the night here, strangled off by all the trees, gave so little light, when Leah looked down she couldn’t trust she was even seeing the bottom.

  “Who the hell designed this roadwork?” Dan asked. “The Marquis de Sade?”

  “It is strange, isn’t it?” Leah looked across the ditch to the narrow edge of land, a mix of short weeds and witchgrass that followed along between the culvert and the thick wall of the woods. “We need to get over there. If we stay on this side, we’ll open ourselves up too much by the time we reach his house.”

  “Great,” Dan said. “How close are we to Stork’s property line?”

  “I don’t know. A hundred yards?”

  “A hundred yards?” Dan asked. “Why didn’t you pull closer? Do you have any idea how far a hundred yards is?”

  “Not really,” Leah answered. “I’m not good with measurements.”

  “A hundred yards is a goddamn football field.”

  “Okay, then more like thirty? Maybe? Twenty? Fifty?” She shook her head. This was just wasting time. “Look, I have no idea. We just need to get over this gaping hole.”

  “I’m wondering if it gets narrower in places.”

  Leah shook her head. “It doesn’t. I’ve been down here a lot recently.”

  Dan licked his lips, the area around them probably feeling stubbly, a move Leah had witnessed him making before, usually when he was thinking hard on something.

  “How far across you reckon that is?” he asked Leah, and then immediately added, “Never mind. I forgot who I was asking.” He let out a little laugh. “A hundred yards.”

  “Thirty sounds more reasonable. I’m pretty sure it’s thirty.”

  “Well, from this edge of the trench to the other’s gotta be three, I’m guessing. How deep is this thing? I’m not certain I can even see the bottom. You’ve been here during the day, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t look in the ditches.”

  Dan backed up a few paces. “Well, we gotta do what we gotta do.”

  “Wait,” Leah said. “Can you actually jump three meters? That’s, like, nine feet.”

  “Truthfully?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not a chance. But I’m hoping to get far enough that I can grab something on the other side of the channel. Just in case the thing is like a ravine and goes down thirty feet or something.”

  “What if it does and you don’t?”

  “Then my advice? Take your chances with his driveway instead of following me to my death.”

  That wasn’t a very comforting thought.

  “See you on the other side,” Dan said with a smile and a salute. Then he ran for the edge of the culvert, taking wide strides and growing quickly in speed. Leah heard his pants shuffle as he left their edge and sailed for the next. Quickly, she went closer as she saw him coming down.

  He was right, he didn’t make it to the edge, but he did land on the sloped bank on the other side. And he did manage to stop himself from continuing on down the slope.

  “You okay?” Leah asked.

  “Little winded. Good news, though.” The dirt beneath his shoes broke and he began sliding down with it. In a blur his left arm came up and around, his fingers grabbing around some vines and shrubs hanging over from where they grew up on the edge of the trench.

  “Shit!” Dan said.

  “What?”

  “Goddamn prickles. Can’t any part of this just be easy? I had to go and grab a thunderwood vine?”

  “Is it really thunderwood?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Too goddamn dark to make out any details, but I’m pretty sure.”

  “It’s poisonous.”

  “I know! Don’t you think I know?”

  “You’ll swell up and get pustules. Eventually they’ll erupt with pus.”

  “You don’t know how big a goddamn football field is, but you know every fucking fact about the plant sending painful throbs down my arm? Will you just jump in here! I’m not letting go. I can use it to get us both up. You won’t have to touch it!”

  “I thought you had good news?”

  “I did before I grabbed this goddamn plant and felt its thorns embed themselves in my hand. The good news is, the ditch isn’t that deep. Maybe fifteen feet. You’ll be fine as long as you make this side somewhere. Dirt’s nice and soft.” He winced and Leah knew the pain in his arm was getting worse.

  She went back on the street a little farther than he had, then made a run for the ditch.

  “Make sure you land left of me. There’s more of this goddamn plant to the right.”

  She came down almost on top of him. He managed to do a spin-turn enough so most of her body landed in the loamy dirt beside him.

  “Nice jump,” he said, his teeth clenched.

  “Okay, what now?”

  “Climb onto me. Climb onto my shoulders and then pull yourself up onto the edge.”

  “You’ll be able to hold us both? Won’t the vine break?”

  He shook his head. “It’s thunderwood. It’s thick and the plant’s roots are like anchors. Hurry up, I can’t hold myself and you all day.”

  She did as he said, first pulling herself up his arm and then putting her boot against his side while leveraging w
ith his head. All very awkward, especially since she had to keep a watchful eye on the thunderwood. That was the last thing she needed.

  For her final act of indiscretion, she had to put one foot on Dan’s head in order to get high enough to pull up to the edge. When she finally scrambled up onto the narrow strip of land between the woods and the ditch, she was so winded she could hardly breathe. She lay down on her back inhaling deeply, staring at the stars.

  “Look, don’t relax yet,” Dan said, his voice coming over the edge of the trench. “I need you to pull me up.”

  She turned over and crawled back toward him. Keeping most of her body on the path, she bent down, her breasts crushing against the top inside of the culvert. Reaching down, her right hand grabbed his.

  “Okay, pull,” he said, his other hand still gripping the thunderwood.

  She managed to get him up about two feet higher. “Now what?” she asked.

  “Just hold me for one minute. You’re goin’ to feel all my weight. Ready?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Flexing his arm, Dan pulled hard on the thunderwood. Leah couldn’t even imagine the pain he must’ve been in. Then he jerked himself up, letting go of the vine. Leah tightened her grip, hoping he wouldn’t pull her right in with him.

  At the top of his pull, his left hand once again wrapped around the thorny vine and she heard him grunt. But he was higher now. Only two feet from the edge.

  She could hear him breathing. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Never been better,” he said, out of breath. “Okay, we have to do that one more time.”

  And they did. This time Dan re-grasped the vine almost at its base, well over the edge. From there, he dug his feet into the sloping dirt on the edge of the culvert and leveraged himself up and over the top.

  They both lay on their backs, breathing heavily. Dan kept bringing his right hand over to scratch his left.

  “You shouldn’t scratch it,” Leah said.

  “Don’t,” Dan said. “Don’t even start.” He scratched some more.

  “You’ll only make it worse,” she said.

  Finally, they both stood up. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Dan said.