Fairlane Road

by Cody Lakin

  As he lay there, his arm around her, feeling the curve of her back against his stomach as she slept, the comfort he felt beside her was dwarfed by the intensity of the dread in his heart. It was a block of ice sitting deep in his diaphragm, making it hard to breathe and even harder to feel at rest or to sleep. This feeling was a precursor to the returning reality that, no matter the seriousness of the things he had witnessed in the past, no matter the traumas he had lived through, this situation with Charlie Knox was the worst case he had ever caught. The Knox family legacy had hovered over Lamplight for years, and here it was now, returning to haunt the town like a vengeful ghost.

  James Goode thought of Andrew Jean, of the conversations they’d had about Knox.

  If only I had a mind like his. What it must be like to have such an extraordinary way of seeing things, somewhere between pure intelligence and open-minded philosophy. Whether it’s simple things or big-picture stuff, Andrew’s got an amazing mind. Goode’s mind returned to the event at Tony’s Club the night before, of Officer Joel Jackson and his strange recollection of what had happened, plus the woman they had interviewed as a witness. Andrew would have something to say about that. Hypnosis, or voodoo… or just… something. Chills played along his skin. He was beginning to sense, more and more, that this case was far beyond his or anybody else’s control. It was a sense that it didn’t matter what he did or how much he understood. This case—and Charlie Knox himself—was surely beyond his comprehension.

  I need to talk to Andrew again. He’ll help me ground myself.

  Certain that he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, James Goode forced himself from the comfort of his bed to get dressed. When he kissed his fiancé, who awoke for a few seconds to kiss him back, he did so with the ineffable awareness that it was possible he might never see her again. Possible, of course, but unlikely. More a product of his fear. It was the first time he had ever truly felt that way.

  * * *

  Because it was so early, Goode stopped at the 24-Hour Cafe in town on his way to the station to pick up some food and coffee. He took his time. Weary from a lack of sleep, it was hard to believe that the air he was breathing, the sweet, crisp air of Lamplight, was shared by a psychopath who, though at large and seemingly impossible to trace, was likely within a few miles of this very cafe. That’s how it was in Lamplight. Everyone in the town was within just a few miles.

  So, in that case, can’t be too hard finding him, Goode lied to himself.

  The woman working the cafe delivered his meal—a croissant, a piece of buttered toast, and black coffee—and wished him a good day. He bid her the same, noting that she was the only person he had ever met working here, and then returned to his car.

  He was halfway through his makeshift breakfast, consumed in the front seat while still parked outside the cafe, when he got the call. It was his partner, Aaron Simms, summoning him to Lamplight Park. There had been another murder.

  * * *

  Except for the parked police cruisers with their lights flashing, and the yellow tape set up near and around the park’s bandstand, Lamplight Park was mostly empty. Officers were spread about the scene, taking notes at markers which distinguished elements of the crime scene, and Aaron Simms was waiting at the bandstand’s steps. Wrinkles lined his forehead, and he wore a squinting, troubled expression on his face. James Goode saw the reason for this once he was out of his car and close enough to the scene.

  Blood. The planks of solid, brown-painted wood which made up the raised floor of the bandstand were spattered and smeared with blood. And, though drying, it was clearly still fresh, some of it thick enough to drip down between the ruts in the wood, shining crimson in the early morning light.

  As far as James could see, the blood was smeared all over in no discernible shape or pattern. His stomach lurched at the sight of it and from the metallic smell in the air.

  “We went ahead and got started without you. Hope you don’t mind,” said Simms, dry in his humor as always, tapping the pen in his hand against the small notepad in his other.

  “Not at all.” James sipped at his coffee even though he barely tasted it. “What’ve we got?”

  “Far as I’ve been able to figure, this young couple, Dwayne King and Tess Ericson, came out here a few hours ago, before sunrise it’s looking like, probably to have sex. You know, young love or whatever, not that a bandstand’s more comfortable than the backseat of a car. I don’t fucking know. Anyway, the two of them… they got… cornered, by our suspect.”

  James’s stomach dropped even though this was what he had expected. He figured he’d never get used to this job, no matter how long he’d been in it. “Knox?”

  “She described him to a tee.”

  “The girl survived?”

  “Mhm. She’s on her way to the station right now, since her parents didn’t answer any calls. This way we can make sure she’s okay, make sure everything checks out.”

  “And the boyfriend?”

  “Well…” Aaron sighed, clapping his notepad shut and taking a step away from the bandstand. “I’m certain that’s his blood. Through all her sobbing, young Tess managed to convey that Knox had a knife, and charged them both. But he focused on the boy, leaving her alone.”

  “But you haven’t found the body.”

  “Nope.”

  “No trail? If the body’s not here, either the guy must’ve crawled out of sight, or he was carried, or dragged.”

  Simms nodded. “My thoughts exactly. That’s the thing though. No trail. There was a spot in the grass though, right on the other side of this,” he gestured to the bandstand, “where there was a clear indentation of someone sitting. I asked Tess about that before we sent her off, once she was a little more calm.” Simms’s voice became unsteady, maybe frightened. “She said that was where Knox had been the whole time, and they hadn’t noticed him. Said he was just… sitting. Quietly.”

  “Weird. Think he was waiting for them?”

  “I have no clue.”

  “Right.” Goode put his hands on his hips, trying to picture the scene. He was silent for a few moments, his eyes distant and thoughtful. Just sitting in the grass. Doing what? “Huh. Well… you think he… Jesus, I don’t know. Do you think he could’ve been… meditating or something?”

  “Meditating? Never occurred to me. What makes you say that?”

  “Don’t know. Just a hunch, I guess. What else would he be doing, just sitting there?”

  “Beats me, pal.”

  “And, if you think about it,” Goode went on, “it’s not like he followed the kids here, if they said they didn’t notice him at first. They just happened upon him. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Mmm. Hard to argue that. Plus, Knox doesn’t strike me as the type to sit and enjoy a park for the sights. Could’ve been he was just sleeping, leaning against the bandstand. But then again, maybe you’re right.”

  “Maybe. Now we gotta find him, and that boy’s body.” Goode paced away from the bandstand and the lingering metallic smell of the drying blood, which stained the morning air even from feet away. He surveyed the empty park, the surrounding trees and distant white noise of the creek nearby.

  My god, he thought, his mind for the moment slipping away from the scene. It’s like what Andrew and I were talking about. Those little details that break down the differences between good and evil, tear them down until you can’t tell the difference between them anymore. The world is indifferent to all this. There’s a psychopath on the loose, a boy with his whole life ahead of him was just killed, and the world just keeps spinning, everything keeps on, like it didn’t even notice.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said aloud. “Three murders in, what, three days? This is crazy.�
�

  “It’s fucking nuts is what it is.” Aaron Simms moved beside him, and they both stood there a few feet from the crime scene, surveying the park.

  “Yeah. So now what? We wait for the kid’s body to turn up? Or for somebody else to die?”

  “What else can we do, James? We’ve got every cop, hell, every person in this whole county looking for this guy. And now we know he’s still here, in this little goddamn town, and it’s like he vanishes. Disappears into thin air.”

  “I know.” James shook his head and looked down at the grass. “Damn it, I know.”

  The world, he thought, had never looked so bleak.

  Chapter 6:

  The Higher World

  The moment she crossed into the higher world, all the weight that Jezebel normally carried on herself—her worries, her stress, her restive thoughts—melted away and was replaced by a soft, penultimate warmth. It started on her skin, not unlike how the sun’s embrace felt on a day of perfect temperature, and that lovely warmth trilled down through her pores, loosening the knots of tension in her muscles, removing aches and throbs and points of discomfort from her joints, bones, and organs. Walking down Fairlane Road was like bathing, cleansing her body and mind of life’s usual setbacks, rewiring her mood away from its discontent. She stopped where the asphalt of Fairlane Road became a dirt road, still under cover of trees, and let the contentment of the higher world’s air fill her up. That was how it felt for her. Simply being in this enchanted world filled up the empty spaces inside of her, spaces which normally seemed to hurt, as if she was missing something, a key component of herself.

  This world was where she belonged. And this world, she knew because of Edgar Forgael’s words, was very likely where her soul had been born.

  A full smile lit up her face as she looked at the sky through the trees and spread her arms out as the world’s warmth settled inside her with nearly orgasmic waves of both intense pleasure and calming comfort.

  Home again, she thought, still smiling. She continued walking ahead.

  It was here, where the asphalt road became dirt under the trees, that everything began to change. Edgar called this part of the road the gateway, and she had come to think of it as such. This was as far as she had come on her first journey down Fairlane Road when she was thirteen; this was where she had encountered the Knox family, on that first journey.

  As she walked onward, taking her time, stepping gracefully over the soft dirt, the first physical changes in the world around her occurred.

  It started, like it always did, with the leaves. They twitched and shimmered in a phantom breeze, their shades of green deepened to emerald, and they shined and glittered like gems. Among them Jezebel noticed shades of brilliant yellow and even topaz orange—signs that autumn was near its beginning. Autumn was sublime in the Fairlane World.

  The light from the sun became remarkably golden, richer, and it lost its usual intensity in favor of a much more soothing, friendly lighting. Jezebel felt how different it was when it warmed her skin, and she laughed with delight.

  Welcome home, that light seemed to say. With the sun on her face and contentment coursing through her veins, she found it impossible to believe that this enchanted place could contain darkness, even for the likes of Charlie Knox.

  She walked on for several minutes, immersing herself in the atmosphere as she drew deeper into the higher world, but for her it was all normal. She had spent so much time here that its changes from the regular world were no longer surprising nor unusual, though they were still spectacles to behold and treasure. The leaves of the trees were like shimmering gems, the blades of grass and the plants which covered the ground seemed to caress her feet as she walked, and, from out among the many hundreds of trees in all directions, she could hear the distant songs of fairies. The sounds were chimes on the wind, sweet whispering voices which carried for miles with all the serenity of lullabies, and she found those songs alluring and more beautiful than any earthly music. She could not understand the words nor distinguish any single, prominent melodies, but they filled her heart up nonetheless, making her feel complete and understood, as if the music of the fairies could fill the many emptinesses in her heart and alleviate her constant loneliness.

  Jezebel came to a place where the tunnel of trees opened up, and the tree-line receded away from the trail, presenting her with an ultimate view of the higher world and its distant majesties. The forest stretched onward in all directions, endless as an ocean, and ahead—countless miles ahead, on the horizon—were the mountains. Towering, ancient, shrouded with clouds and mist and snow. They were almost surreal, the way the sun bounced off of their slopes and faces, casting gigantic, dramatic shadows. Beneath and within the corridors of those mountains were where the songs of the fairies echoed from. Jezebel breathed in the open air, smiled, and continued walking.

  The dirt road had become a barely trodden trail, though still called Fairlane Road, and after a few minutes of walking down it into the open, Jezebel turned off the trail and walked to the tree-line, the edge of the higher world’s forest.

  Between the trees here, she could see glittering pools scattered, like holes in the earth reflecting the sky. They were as small as duck-ponds, but there were many of them, and she always took the opportunity to visit the glittering waters and pools of the higher world when she could. The invisible ones, tall, enigmatic, immortal Shadows sometimes walked among the pools, dancing around them or tending to them, speaking in unknown tongues with invisible voices in intimate whispers. They tended to the well-being of sacred places, Jezebel knew. The Shadows were what ancient people had once worshipped as gods, what some feared as ghosts. They walked behind the worlds, tending to them, monitoring. Some tended to the land or the water; some tended to animals and people, guiding them and influencing them by whispering to their souls, feeding and watering their spirits like plants; some escorted old souls to and from the material world in the forms of births and deaths. These Shadows, Jezebel knew, were the keepers of the fabric of the world behind all worlds, and on the rarest, most special of occasions, she could see them walking among the glittering waters of the higher world.

  She smiled at the memory to come to her then, of the first time Edgar Forgael had come with her to the glittering pools. He had explained what the Shadows were, and how he had spent most of his life studying them and learning about them. She had been fifteen, but she remembered that day, and the things he had told her, in near perfect clarity. It had been just like today, just like it was now—

  * * *

  —with the golden sun casting its pleasant light, the trees shining emerald leaves, and the glittering pools visible through the forest.

  Edgar Forgael had guided Jezebel off of the trail and they had stood together at the edges of the forest, overlooking the glittering pools through the trees.

  “You see those?” He pointed, a grin on his face, his voice high and pleasant as always. Except today he sounded more excited than usual.

  “Mhm.” Jezebel, fifteen years old, nodded. She was holding his hand the way she used to hold her father’s hand when she had been a little girl.

  “See how they sparkle and glitter like that? They’re called the glittering pools. Or ponds. Whichever you prefer.”

  She smiled, her eyes alight, skin tingling. “They’re beautiful. Can we go to them? Or drink from them?”

  “Not now, but yes, of course. Another time,” he said.

  “Why not now?”

  An eager grin curled over Edgar’s face. “I’ll tell you, but you may want to sit. I’ve got quite the story about the pools.”

  Normally, when an elderly person said they had a story to tell, Jezebel knew from experience that it was rarely worth listening to, mostly because she was
fifteen, and long stories about the past tended to drag on for her and her fast-moving mind. But even so, Fairlane Road and its strange, serene, beautiful world was of infinite interest to her, and Edgar Forgael was what the fairies called a world-walker. It was his duty to keep watch over his part of Fairlane Road, to walk between the worlds, tend to the passage, and even know some of its history. The glittering pools, even glimpsed through trees, were possibly the most beautiful and enchanting things she had ever seen, and she wanted to know as much about them as she could.

  They sat down on a patch of soft grass there at the edge of the forest, both with their legs crossed.

  “Get comfy. It’s a bit of a story, though something tells me you’ll find it rather interesting.”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile.

  “All right. Now… where to start?” He cleared his throat, adjusted the collar of his shirt for effect. “The glittering pools of Fairlane Road. I guess I’ll start with the first thing I ever learned about them. So… all right.

  “We call them pools, of course, because that’s what they look like to us,” he said. “Ponds, pools. And if you keep walking that way for miles and miles, closer to those mountains over there, you’ll discover that the pools keep going, and some are more like lakes. Some are even under waterfalls from the melting snow in the mountains. The prettiest sights you’ll ever see, I can promise you that. Perhaps I’ll show you one day.”

  “I’d love that,” said Jezebel.

  Edgar smiled. “Good. Now, we call them pools, but they’re… well, they’re more than that. A whole lot more than that. There is more to them than any of us may ever know, but what I’ve managed to learn is that the water they’re made of is the same fabric, the same stuff that the whole universe is made of. Behind the surface of the world, behind the surface of every world, keeping it all together, is an infinite ocean made of the same… stuff, like water, as those pools are made of.”