Fairlane Road

by Cody Lakin

  “Son of a bitch!” Tyler Tracy moved to swing a fist at the strange man from behind—

  “Wait!” His own son, whose face had gone a sweaty pale and whose hands were trembling, interrupted him. “Wait, Dad. S’alright.”

  Tyler Tracy halted in his advance, stunned.

  Arnie set his eyes back on the stranger’s pitch-black goggles. “I’m sorry, all right? Me and my Pops, we were just… we didn’t mean nothin’ by it, is what I’m saying. That’s all. Boys being boys. You know…” Arnie tried to laugh. “You know how it is in a b-bar like this. Folks get all hyped up, testosterone and what not. Right? I’m s-sorry.”

  Arnie kept shaking his head, and he was holding his hands up in defense, his forehead shiny with sweat, eyes glassy with the threat of tears. And the strange man stood still, his face giving no hint at his thoughts, but then he smiled an unusually genuine smile, clapped Arnie on the shoulder, and turned toward Tyler Tracy and the rest of the bar, the entirety of which was silently focused on him.

  “To err is human, to forgive divine. Seldom in the history of our sorry human race have truer words been spoken. Farewell to you all.” He headed for the door, thick-soled shoes clacking across the hardwood floor, but he paused before exiting, and spoke without turning around. “And to you, too, Tyler and Arnie Tracy: I bid you farewell, and may the Shadows walk with you. Until we see each other again, that is.” He looked over his shoulder, showing half of his face still with that toothy smile. “I’m certain that we will, after all.” And then he was gone.

  It was several minutes before the bar regained its noise and atmosphere, but Tyler and Arnie Tracy left before it did, having lost their appetite for drinks.

  * * *

  The police station was mostly emptied out, aside from the receptionist, and it was quiet, which was exactly what James Goode wanted. At last he had found the time to relax—or at least maintain the semblance of relaxing—and the quiet was perfect. As with most of the law enforcement of Lamplight, he had been unable to sit still all day, and had gotten back from patrolling town just twenty minutes earlier. But now, having no idea what to do or even what to think, he sat at his desk, pretended to look over some paperwork from the case as if it might hold any answers, and then sat back and shut his eyes, feeling a faint tension headache in his temples.

  It just doesn’t make any sense, he thought, although he wished he could think of something—anything—else. People don’t just disappear like that. There was no possible way he could have gotten out.

  His partner, Aaron Simms, returned to his desk from the bathroom. He sat down, gave Goode a knowing look across their desks, and then smirked.

  “Hey.”

  Goode smirked back at him. “What?”

  “So a little girl is just getting picked up from school by her mom, and as they’re driving along, a giant dildo just falls across their window and then rolls off. The little girl turns to her mother: ‘Mom, what was that?’ And the mom, her cheeks all red, says, ‘Uh, well, a really big insect just hit our window, sweetie.’ And the little girl raises an eyebrow and says, ‘Really? Well damn, it sure had a big cock.”

  James Goode laughed through his nose and shook his head, but his partner threw his head back and laughed shamelessly, slapping his desk.

  “Jesus, Aaron.”

  “I know. I’ll actually have a good one one of these days.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.” Goode leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk and running his hands through his hair, sighing deeply as he did.

  “We’ll find him, Jimmy,” said Simms.

  “Yeah? We couldn’t even hold onto him, and he was fucking locked up.”

  “Lamplight isn’t that big.”

  “For all we know, he could be miles away by now.” In his mind he could see the footage they had shown to the station, and how one moment Knox had been there, the next he was gone. And it wouldn’t be long until the rest of the town knew that the man who had killed those two boys, and who had at first been reported as arrested and apprehended, had escaped custody.

  Simms sighed as if to match Goode’s mood. “You tell Andrew Jean about all this?”

  They met eyes for a moment. “I did. Figured he of all people deserved to know.”

  “You know, I’ve only met him a couple of times—like when we both went over for a drink a couple of months ago—but I’ve gotta say… it’s no wonder he was such a good detective. The guy’s got a mind like I’ve never seen.”

  James Goode smiled. “That he does. He’s always been that way, for as long as I’ve known him, too. Smarter than anyone in this little town’s got any right to be.”

  Simms chuckled. “Mhm. And his daughter… she’s the one with, you know, purple eyes, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” said Goode, his own eyes growing distant, mind spinning with distant thought. “Apparently no one really knows how that is, either.”

  “Interesting. It’s a good thing we don’t got too many hippies in this town, or she’d probably be worshipped for it.”

  They both laughed at that. Goode had grown up in a town not far from Lamplight which had been filled with all different kinds of transients, hippies, and New Agers as they were called, and could imagine too well how those kinds of people would have reacted to someone being born with naturally purple eyes, like Jezebel Jean.

  “You think we should head back out?” he asked.

  Simms groaned for comedic effect and moved as if to stand up, but then gave up, even putting his feet up on his desk. “Five more minutes.”

  Goode nodded, meaning it in good humor but feeling somber, scared. He didn’t know what came next now, once word was out in town. There was always the hope, the possibility, that they would catch Charlie Knox before the day was out, but the feeling in his stomach told him that wouldn’t happen.

  * * *

  Evening seemed a long time coming that day, and when it finally came, it brought none of the solace or comfort some had hoped for. Lamplight’s local police knew they could only keep the secret for so much longer that Charlie Knox had escaped their custody, and even worse was that they had no idea where they could start searching for him, or if he was still in Lamplight at all. So they prepared to release a statement to the public, which would be confirmed by the end of the day.

  Arnie Tracy returned home with his father after the bar incident, and decided to make it an early night and go to bed not long after sunset. But as soon as he was beneath the covers, wearing only boxers, sleep seemed impossibly far away, so he stayed awake, staring blankly at the ceiling, trying not to think about the strange man in the bar and the things he had said. Arnie could see him too clearly in his mind’s eye: pitch black goggles making his eyes look like holes; toothy grin; melodic voice.

  He knew our names, Arnie thought, and his skin ran with chills. And he knew where we live, what kind of flag we fly—he knew all of that. He’s been here. He’s seen this place. Maybe he’s even seen us.

  Edgar Forgael, whose house sat just around a curve from the beginning of Fairlane Road, sat on his porch as was his most frequent habit, and smoked from a wooden pipe, watching with idle interest as the smoke curled upward toward the graying sky. He had always enjoyed the quiet of twilight, how the trees obtained a thick darkness as the light faded from the air. He decided that, in light of recent events, he might soon leave Lamplight for a time. It had been too long since he had strolled down Fairlane Road, and there was always business for him to attend to there.

  Jezebel sat on her front lawn, arms wrapped around her knees, eyes aimed at the sky as blue faded to black and stars became visible in its vastness. She had grown distant from most of her friends across the years of adolescenc
e, favoring a certain thoughtful stillness and reflective quiet over the loudness that accompanied most of their activities. Even at twenty-one, she had only ever been to a single party—which she also hoped would be her last—and had turned down so many invitations of nights out on the town that the people who had once been her friends had eventually stopped inviting her. And she was okay with that. She preferred her solitude if it meant getting to do what she wanted to do, and on clear nights like this, all she wanted to do was watch as the day died its slow, beautiful, twilit death. Tonight, however, she felt restive even under the evening’s slow regard.

  She had realized something disturbing about the conversation she had had with her father, and although it was something that was hard to admit to herself, it was also undeniable.

  She had already known who Charlie Knox was, even before all of this. She had even known about Thomas and Susan Knox. Her father would never know this, but she had encountered all three of them when she had been just thirteen years old.

  Jezebel could remember, in dreamy clarity, the first time she had walked down Fairlane Road. It had been terrifying for her, thanks to all of the local stories reeling through her impressionable young mind, and the road’s strange energies radiating from the forest, daring her to turn back. But she had gone on anyway, comforting herself with a mantra of assurance she had trusted in: that there were no monsters in this world, not for real; that nothing could hurt her if she faced her fears. But deeper out there in the forest, where the borders of the world she knew ended and everything began to change, she had encountered a man and a woman named Tom and Sue Knox, and their bizarre, quiet, and subtly intelligent son, Charlie.

  They had been curious about her presence there and polite to her, and had told her things she hadn’t understood at the time: something about the invisible voices behind reality, and the shining world behind our world. Then they had spoken of the high invisible ones, and things had only gotten stranger to thirteen-year-old Jezebel.

  Jezebel shivered where she sat, frightened even of the memory of the Knox family: their wide, watchful eyes; the abandon in their voices and the grace of their movements. She had been thirteen, and the encounter had been brief before Edgar Forgael had appeared and taken her away from them and back to the real world, but it had been an enlightening few minutes, enough for her to feel afraid, intrigued, and to have left Fairlane Road with the impression that the Knoxes, whoever they were, were insane. She scoffed at her youthful ignorance now. Of course they had been crazy, but they hadn’t been lying about the things they’d said.

  Jezebel had seen the shining world, had heard the invisible voices. It was all out there, all a most frequent part of her life—out there down Fairlane Road.

  Jezebel knew she could never tell her father any of this, no matter how she hated to keep such a considerable secret. The Knox family had been his burden, and he had done his best, over the years, to try and shield her from it, and as far as he knew, he had done fairly well. He didn’t need to know the things she knew. He didn’t need to know that she had once met the Knox family, even Charlie himself. He didn’t need to know that she often visited the higher world beyond Fairlane Road when he thought she was simply hiking in the forest, exploring and enjoying her spare time in nature. And he didn’t need to know that the Knox family, though crazy, hadn’t been worshipping or preaching false ideas. It all had to do with that higher world, the same one she went to so often, the same one she loved more than this world.

  Knowing sleep would be a long way off for her, Jezebel considered going out to Fairlane Road tonight, as she had often done in the recent past. She remembered her conversation with Edgar Forgael earlier today, how she had been nearly driven to tears merely by expressing the truth about how she felt: that it was getting harder and harder coming back. Her father and Edgar himself were among the only ties she felt she had left here, in this world.

  She resolved not to go tonight, sighing as she brought her eyes from the sky to the grass. For once there was something happening here, in this town, and it was terrible and threatening. Charlie Knox had been her age when she had seen him for the first time. She didn’t dare try to imagine him now. And she feared in her heart that the time would come when she would meet him again.

  * * *

  The announcement went out over the police radio multiple times that night, even after the meeting at the station, and the statement had been issued to the public, too: the murderer of the two boys on Forest Street had escaped police custody and was at large in or around the area of Lamplight. Everyone in town would know by morning, and the newspapers would be posting it on their websites and printing it as soon as possible. Anyone who saw him was to call 9-1-1. And if an officer saw him, they were supposed to call for backup and wait, instead of engaging him alone.

  Officer Joel Jackson was patrolling his usual route through the main streets of downtown Lamplight when he saw Charlie Knox, and immediately made the decision not to call for backup. He had been expecting this entire situation to blow over the way most did. The local police, himself included, would stay on the lookout for a few days, and then the escaped suspect would end up being arrested in another town, somewhere, on the run. That was how it had always gone, usually with sex-offenders or kidnappers, and it was something of a bore to middle-aged Joel Jackson, who had only ever fired his gun once on duty, in the air, to scare a group of thuggish teenagers into dispersing before they could beat up another officer, who was protecting a young woman. Lamplight was slow, and the only consistent action for an officer like him was drunk drivers (mostly teens), bar fights, and troublesome families, like the Tracys.

  It was almost midnight, and Lamplight Boulevard was lit up. The sidewalk was full of people getting fresh air and smoking cigarettes outside of Tony’s Club, which had always been more of a hot spot late at night than Lawry’s Pub. Joel Jackson was coasting along in his cruiser when he noticed a strange man strolling along toward the bar—dressed in a long dark coat—and Joel recognized him from the pictures shown at the station meeting earlier that day. It was Charles Knox, the man who had killed those two boys way out on Forest Street, near Fairlane Road.

  And, Joel Jackson assured himself, Charles Knox was just a man. One man. Not the boogeyman, like the detectives had tried to make everyone believe.

  Jackson turned the cruiser’s lights on, let the siren wail for three seconds, and swung the car around against the sidewalk. He drew his gun, flicking the safety off as he did, and exited the car, standing behind the open door. He pointed the gun at Knox, who wore pitch-black goggles over his eyes despite it being the middle of the night.

  “Hands on your head, motherfucker!” Joel said. His voice was stern and loud, and he even impressed himself with his own calmness. This is too easy, he thought, and could already imagine the things they would say to him at the station for catching the escaped murderer singlehandedly.

  Barely five seconds passed, and the excitement over the near future, on top of the tension of this moment, reeled all through Joel Jackson’s mind. All that was left was getting this freak on the ground and handcuffing him.

  Charlie Knox did not raise his hands to his head. He instead let out a long sigh and turned his whole body so that he was fully facing the officer, his knee-length coat twitching in the slight breeze. Officer Jackson couldn’t see Knox’s eyes through the solid black goggles, but could still feel Knox’s stare on him like a searchlight.

  “I said, hands to your head, motherfucker! Now!”

  Charlie Knox remained just as he was, not at all phased by Jackson’s gunpoint demand.

  “Ask me nicely,” Charlie Knox said, voice steady, focused.

  Jackson breathed deep through his nose and tightened his grip on his gun. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I know what you did, and I swear to God, I ain�
��t afraid of pulling this trigger on you if you don’t put your hands to your head and drop to the ground right… now!”

  Everyone on the sidewalk outside Tony’s Club had gone silent and were watching with their breaths held, joined by maybe a dozen others who had come out of the bar to see what was happening, drawn by Joel Jackson’s cruiser and its flashing red and blue lights. And Charlie Knox stood still, unafraid even with Jackson’s gun aimed straight at him.

  “We seem to be at an impasse, officer,” said Knox, calmly. His tone suggested that this could have been a regular conversation. “You see, I am not in the habit of catering to someone’s request when they speak to me with disrespect.”

  “I’m not requesting anything, and you can drop the goddamned attitude. I’m ordering you as an officer of the law. You are under arrest, and I’m gonna count to ten—”

  “You fool,” Knox silenced him. “I wonder: Would you still speak to me in such a way if you weren’t acting under the assumption that you are the powerful one in this situation? Pointing your gun, thinking you have any sort of advantage or any right over me.”