by Hixon, Wayne
He put the now mostly empty mug of coffee on the end table, crushing out the cigarette in the teeming ashtray.
“Who the hell did that to you?” he asked from across the couch, already walking around it, coming toward Rachel.
She sighed. He couldn’t see any of the fear he thought he should have seen in her eyes.
“Well, that’s a long story.”
Jacob couldn’t begin to ask her all the questions shooting around inside him. Was it one of the Devils? Had everything come back? Are they still after you? How did you escape? Who is this person you’re with? How bad was it this time? What do we need to do to find some shred of safety?
Instead, he said nothing. He approached Rachel and took her in his arms, smelling smoke and outside and blood and grass and dirt.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I think so.”
He released her and held her at arm’s length, sizing up her wounds. It was mostly dirt and some sizable red blotches that would probably turn into bruises. Her face was the worst, covered in dried blood. Her feet and legs looked like they had been switched. She favored her left foot, the right barely touching the floor.
“This is Rain...” Rachel said, motioning to the girl beside her, searching her mind for her last name, wondering if the girl had ever given it to her.
“Rain Hanson,” the girl said, holding her hand out to Jacob.
Rachel felt a very brief flicker of jealousy.
Jacob took her hand in a gentle shake and said, “Jacob Riley.” He normally avoided eye contact but searched Rain’s for some clue as to why she was there. He got nothing. Like many people he had come into contact with she had learned to mask her emotions, hide her past.
“Nice to meet you. You have a really great girlfriend.”
“I know,” he said. “The best.”
He hugged Rachel close and said, “So are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Of course I will but there’re some things I need to do first.”
“Anything.”
“Well, I think we’d both like to take a shower. And if, through some divine intervention, you don’t have any coffee made, you could put some on. I think we have a lot of talking we need to do.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go, shower, get clean. You can get some of my clothes out of the dresser in the bedroom. You probably have some stuff in there.” Jacob could never figure out how so many of Rachel’s clothes ended up in his apartment. She had never officially moved in, bringing over her wardrobe and all that but, to the best of his knowledge, she had never gone home naked either.
“Come on,” she said to Rain, pulling the girl behind her.
He watched them retreat into the bathroom and went into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee, amazed at how much more comfortable women seemed to be around each other. While in the kitchen, he found a dish towel and swabbed off some of the wetter areas of his clothes. Lighting another cigarette, he sat on the couch and listened to a Leonard Cohen song and the soft murmur of the shower from the bathroom. Of all the things he could have thought about, he found himself wondering if they would have enough hot water to last them an entire shower. He figured Rachel must have had a rough night. She didn’t even notice the state of his apartment. Namely, the TV that was piled up against the wall across from the couch.
He would wait until Rachel came out, then they could exchange their nightmares as they had on so many other evenings.
The terror had come back. He could feel it beating a tattoo against the back of his brain. Curiously, he felt more alive than he had in over a year.
Maybe this feeling of aliveness was coupled with the fact that he knew Rachel was all right. Knowing that seemed to remove at least one major burden from his psyche, never mind that her current state opened up a whole new level of questions. He sat on the couch, his back to the bathroom door, staring out the windows at the dark night. Birds chirped from out on the balcony. Dawn would be coming on soon. A chronic insomniac, he had seen more than his share of dawns.
First there were the birds. These were followed by the occasional car door slamming, the engine humming to life as its owner warmed it for the drive to work. And then there was the first light of dawn and this seemed to wake everything up. The birds went crazy, screeching and flapping. A steady stream of traffic poured beneath his window. The voices of kids walking to school. The squeal of school bus brakes. He thought of all of these as signals. They were signals telling him he wasn’t alone and that there were other people out there. People who did not want to kill him or kidnap him. Kind people. Everyday people. Alive people.
Yes. There were alive people out there. He knew it. He heard them every day and he wondered why it seemed that every day, he was just one step closer to death, one step closer to joining the worms in the moist ground.
But those were lonely thoughts and he wasn’t alone now. Rachel was in the other room and she had brought a friend and soon the whole town would be awake and swarming on the street below him. That still seemed like an eternity away. He knew it was only then that he would be able to lie down and finally get some rest. So often, the sounds of the town waking up had sung him to sleep.
The gentle gurgling slush of the shower water stopped and the bathroom door opened. He turned to see the girls, wrapped in towels, head into the bedroom. A moment later they came out, each of them wearing a combination of his and Rachel’s clothing. Rachel wore a pair of her baggy cargo shorts with one of his t-shirts that looked huge on her. Rain wore a smaller pair of Rachel’s khaki shorts and one of Jacob’s t-shirts. The girls’ legs were pale and bruised. Rachel looked better now that she had washed the blood off but there were still blotches of red on her face and a series of cuts along her legs. She had a gauze bandage around her right foot.
She sat down on the floor in front of Jacob and said, “Give me a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke,” he reminded her.
“I do now. Don’t hoard. Give.” She extended her hand.
He proffered the pack to her. She shook one out and lit it up, looking awkward. Rain pulled her battered pack of cigarettes from her jacket and lit up. Feeling left out, Jacob decided to have another cigarette himself.
“We’re going to make it smell like a bar in here.” He went into the kitchen to get them some coffee.
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “Except bars have TVs.”
So she had noticed.
“Yeah. That…” He handed mugs to the girls.
“You didn’t like what was on? Maybe you’re a rageaholic.”
“Something like that. It’s been a strange fucking night.”
“Tell me about it.” Rachel looked knowingly at Rain.
“So you’ve made a new friend,” Jacob said.
“More like an ally.”
Rain nodded.
“To fight the good fight?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“Not that I know of. So, you want to tell me what happened to you first?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I guess we should think about things for just a second. Are we safe here? Do we need to disappear? Are you still being followed? Someone did do this to you, didn’t they? It wasn’t like a freak bicycle accident or something, was it?”
“Yes, someone did this to us and, are we really going to feel safe anywhere? Do we have anywhere else to go?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I guess this is as good a place as any, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, I guess I would say.”
“I thought I was safe in my house too but I was wrong.” Rachel turned slightly toward Rain. “That was something we didn’t talk about. Just how the hell did you and that fuckhead get into my house?”
“I’m a little confused,” Jacob said.
“Okay, well, this is how I spent my evening. I went outside because I thought I heard a sound and there was a mangled cat that I fixed up and then when I went back into my hou
se, I was attacked and dragged into my closet. I haven’t stopped to think about that yet. How did you know my closet had that... what was it, a trapdoor or something?”
Rain looked guiltily at the floor, taking a hesitant puff of her cigarette.
“Bones said the people told him that would be there. He said these people knew this town better than they knew any other place because they had been here so long. Apparently, they have been making people disappear for quite some time. He said their power and influence is not as far reaching as it once was. Anyway, most of the houses were built by the same builder in this town, over the span of about ten years. The builder was drawn into this thing, this fucking cult or whatever the hell it is. So he built all of the houses with this hidden door in the back of the closet. Essentially it isn’t there. It is just a piece of loose drywall that is caulked a little bit and then painted over so, from the outside, you have no real idea that it’s there. But all it takes is like a sharp blow to knock this panel off. And that led to kind of a tunnel. There are tunnels running under just about all of these houses. They come out in the river. I’m really quite surprised someone hasn’t found out about them. I guess people don’t really want to believe evil truly does exist below the surface of their town.
“Probably try and pass them off as historical or something. But really, they were made so the people involved in this cult or religion or whatever could sneak out without being seen. The cult could go out into that field and have a service that involved half the town and the other half would think they were tucked away safe and sound in their homes.”
“Wait,” Jacob said. “You helped kidnap Rachel?”
She took a final drag from her cigarette and crushed it out.
“Yeah,” she said, meeting Jacob’s accusatory stare. He could see a bit of the rebellious child she undoubtedly had been. “I guess I did.”
Rachel interjected. “But I’ve forgiven her that. In the end, she helped save my life.”
Rachel proceeded to tell Jacob about her evening. She didn’t like the way his face dropped as she told him more and more. Every word out of her mouth was just further confirmation of their unified suspicions.
As Rachel spoke, she went into the kitchen and poured cups of coffee for each of them, never breaking stride in her narrative. She seemed to have a natural storytelling quality and Jacob found it difficult to look over her objective manner and see the reality in any of this. It was like listening to someone talk about a dream or read a book. Once she was finished relaying her adventure of the night, Jacob immediately set about grilling Rain.
“So you know a lot more about this than we do, at this point?”
“Well, I don’t really know how much I know.”
“Please tell us what you do know.”
“Okay. I don’t even know their names. I’ve already told Rachel some of this but I think she was pretty thorough in her account. I know we started in California. But Lynchville seems to be some kind of final destination. Apparently, it holds a lot of meaning for them. For nearly the past year, they have demanded that Bones bring them sacrifices, nearly every night. Not exactly every night. I couldn’t really find any kind of pattern to this. I was messed up for a large part of the time and some of the days seemed to run together and sometimes I think two weeks must have felt like a day and vice versa. When I asked him why he was doing it, he said it was because he had to. Because they demanded it of him.”
“Did you see these people he took the victims to at all?”
“No, but like Rachel said, there is a man and a woman.”
“So, if most of your boyfriend’s attacks had been of random people, why did he choose Rachel? I mean, of all the closets to crawl through, it seems like sort of a coincidence you guys chose hers.”
“Oh, well, she was the exception. Bones didn’t choose her. He said the people were very specific and he couldn’t fuck this up. See, this whole thing started because he wanted to be whatever it is they are and he thought that bringing them Rachel was going to be the thing that would, hell, I don’t know, get him into the fold or something like that.”
“Did he say why?”
“The only thing he said was that she was a very special person to them and they needed her.”
“Do you have any idea what these things are?”
“I haven’t really thought about them too much because it scares me. I’ve seen enough of what they can do, like with their control over Bones and everything, that I’ve been really really scared. I think fear was one of the reasons I didn’t split with Bones sooner. It was like once I knew I was involved in it, I felt like I kind of had to stay.”
“But you went with Bones when he dropped his victims off to these people, right?”
“Sometimes. I mean I was never allowed to go in or anything like that.”
“Go in where?”
“Where the people stay.”
“And what kind of place did these people stay in?”
“I don’t know. I never saw it. He would just take the van out to a secluded place and say he was going to take them to the house. I never wanted to tell him I didn’t see a fucking house because if you disagree with him then he has a tendency to get really violent so I just pretended I saw a house.”
“Do you think that he saw this house? Did he ever describe it to you?”
“No, I never had him describe it to me but I’m pretty sure that, if he didn’t see it, then at least he thought he saw it.”
“Didn’t you ever watch him go into the house?”
“No. I was usually in tears at that point.”
“Why were you in tears?”
“Because I wanted him to stop. He was okay back in California but now he was just a creepy serial killer. A serial killer who can never be caught because he doesn’t really operate in this reality and I was having a hard time just looking him in the eye. I didn’t want to watch him do this thing he apparently loved to do. Every night he left with one of his victims, it felt like he was leaving me and I guess it just made me kind of mad. I didn’t want any part in it.”
“Now I think you have some talking to do, TV-buster,” Rachel said, disrupting his assault.
“Wait, wait, I’m not finished just yet. Now’s the part where we talk about her like she isn’t even here, okay?” He looked at Rain and said, “So... pretend you’re not here.”
“Am I allowed to defend myself?”
“Could you defend yourself if you weren’t here?”
Rain shook her head.
“Then no,” Jacob said, turning to where his back was nearly to her, even though she sat right next to him on the couch. “Okay,” Jacob asked Rachel. “What do you know about this Rain character?”
Rachel slipped into her mock serious tone. Anyone else would have thought she was humoring Jacob but he knew this was how she sounded when she was being completely honest. “Well, Jake, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t really know that much about her at all.”
“She tried to kill you.”
“I don’t think she really tried to kill me. She was just, you know, in love.”
“Then what was she trying to do?”
“She was helping her boyfriend.”
“Do you think she still has feelings for him? I mean, how do you know it wasn’t just some kind of ruse so she could, ultimately, get to the both of us? You know how much they would like to get to the both of us.”
“You heard her say she was hammered half the time. Once the magic of the drugs wore off she saw him for what he really was and, believe me, it wasn’t pretty. So I don’t think it’s just that she fell out of love with him. I think she was very smart. Biding her time. It’s all about self-preservation. In the end, if we bring those fucks down, then a lot more people will end up safe than would have if Rain had been killed when she wanted to first get away from him.”
Jacob continued haranguing Rachel in this fashion, staring at her all the while.
Rachel stared at Rain.
Rain stared at the floor.
“Jesus, Jacob, you’re starting to sound paranoid,” Rachel finally blurted.
“I’ve been paranoid my whole life. You know that. There isn’t a reason to change now.”
“To answer your main concern—once again: No. I don’t think she just came along because she has grand dreams of finishing what he started.”
“But how do you know this?”
“She tried to stab him.”
“Sometimes we hurt the ones we love the most.”
“Now you’re just being facetious.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Neither do I.”
“So,” Jacob said, letting the word hang in the brightness of the room. “The real question is this: Can we trust her?”
Rachel paused for a moment, looking hard at Rain, who sat on the couch with the grave look of a defendant awaiting a jury decision.
It was actually a pretty good question. Rain had not painted the most flattering portrait of herself. She ran away from home. She got hooked on drugs. She fucked other guys while she was with Bones. Sometimes for drugs. She had initially gone along with the murders. Could she be trusted to focus on the task at hand? Could she be trusted not to sneak into Jacob’s bed and fuck his brains out at night? The real question, she guessed, was: Could Rain be rehabilitated? Could she actually be among a minority of people who had actually decided to make a change in their lives?
“Yes,” Rachel said. “I think we can trust her. She has pluck.”
“We need pluck.”
“God knows you don’t have any.”
“I mask my pluck in a deep layer of sloth.”
“You mask it in a deep layer of shit.”
“Such language.”
“The TV. It’s broken. You were still awake when we got here. Look like you haven’t slept much at all. Explain.”
“It’s not pretty, subject-changer.”
“I need to hear.”
“And you will. You’ll hear everything. I think maybe we should rest first though.” He gestured over toward Rain, now reclined against the arm of the couch, taking one very slow blink. “I think our guest might be tired.”