by Casey Dunn
I scramble to my feet and bolt through the front door. My feet are bare, but the ground is dry, the August sun unrelenting overhead. I do not slow down until I slide between the trees of Tarson Woods. Still, I dart from bough to bough, counting them as I pass, imagining that brick by brick I am building a wall between me and a dragon.
Cold River chatters ahead, the sound of it like tiny pieces of glass tumbling together. Father’s bridge is to the right of a towering hickory tree, half the roots exposed on the sandy bank. I cross, boards creaking underfoot, then follow the narrow trail Father takes up the hill to the factory where he works. It’s faster to walk straight from our backyard than to take the truck around to the access road and up and down the switchbacks to the valley floor on the other side of this rise. The higher I climb, the thinner the trees grow, and the ground turns from clay to stone, but my wall is built. Mother is not fast, and she will not come far into these woods. She believes the things they say about them and says she saw a witch in here once as a little girl. Between the two of them, I’d rather face a witch, so I take my chances.
I pass a hollowed-out tree I often hide in to wait for Father to come whistling through the woods. The path turns downhill, and I run, roots stabbing against the balls of my feet, strands of blackberry bramble nipping at my shins.
At last, I reach the chain-link fence. It stands twice as tall as me. Beyond it, rising from the valley floor like a gray fortress, is the factory. White trucks are parked along the wall in a tidy row. A dark gray door swings open. A man comes out, not my father, and the door hisses shut behind him. The man is staring at a box in his hand, his lips in a line. He pulls a truck door open, hops inside, and the truck roars to life. He drives away fast enough for the tires to kick up gravel. A big gate at the other end slides open, and the truck exits and disappears down the road.
I take off at a dead sprint, counting as I run. I don’t know how long the gate will stay open. My father’s voice is in my ear—Never try to slide through that gate, son—a memory from the one and only time I’ve been inside the factory. But there is a way in, and no one watching.
The gate clatters as it reaches the end of the track.
Nine. Ten. Eleven.
I round the corner. The gate begins its return journey. It is moving faster this way, but I am small. I will only need a little room.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
The metal post seems to speed up the closer it gets.
The gate is a jouster’s lance, the post a competitor’s body, and it is coming, coming, coming… I close my eyes, clench my teeth, and hurl myself through. Behind me, the gate bangs on impact as it meets the post.
I catch my hands on my knees, heaving, sweat trickling from under my hair. A group of men comes out of the door, paper lunch bags in their fists. Their voices are a storm of sounds, eyebrows knit, eyes dark. Everyone seems to speak at once, but no one looks at one another. They take turns glancing back at the building behind them. The tallest one swings his gaze ahead and catches sight of me.
“What are you doing here?” It is the voice of Mr. Bill, my father’s friend from work. He brought me a deck of cards for my last birthday, and he is the only person allowed inside our house aside from Mother’s students.
I freeze. I should have waited out the day in the woods, thrown rocks in Cold River, built another fort from fallen limbs where I could hide from Mother and sharpen twigs into something more useful. They make it easier to pry skin from something dead so I can see what’s underneath. I have rinsed bones clean in the river. I have watched slime and maggots wash downstream, revealing the lines of muscle, chewed and pocked. I have seen guts, still warm and fresh and firmer than I thought they’d be. It is easier to split a worm than an intestine.
I wish I had a stick now. Mother has warned me that a man’s rage is worse than hers, a tornado by way of comparison to a warm spring rain. I have yet to see it, but my mother has never been one to lie, save the stories she has me tell when I have a new bruise or welt. They’re to keep you safe, she says.
Otherwise they may take you from us and put you in a group home with other boys—boys bigger than you—with a dirty kitchen and slimy dishes, with reeking toilets that don’t flush, the seats covered in yellow film and streaks of brown crust, and an empty pantry, and no beds, just blankets on the floor, musty and full of holes. You think when I yell it is meanness, but it is love, Michael. You’ll see. This world is hard. You must be harder. You must be ready. I am making you ready.
These rolling thoughts condense into a single, vibrating, squealing note.
“Are you okay, Michael? Is everything okay at home?”
“Yes, Mr. Bill. Is my father here?”
“Should be coming out any minute. They’re having us take an early lunch. You know how your dad is, though. First one in—”
“Last one out,” I finish for him. Mr. Bill eyes the factory and returns his focus to me.
“Why don’t you wait by the fence?”
I back up until I feel the chain link press against my shirt.
The door swings open again, and my father lumbers out. “We got it,” I hear him say to Mr. Bill.
Mr. Bill looks up at the sky for less than a second and points in my direction. “You have a visitor today,” he says.
My father’s gaze follows Mr. Bill’s finger. He puffs up with a breath, his hands on his hips, and walks in my direction, his strides longer and more hurried than usual. I would back up farther, but there is nowhere to go. The fence is at my back, the gate locked shut, and I wonder if this is the storm, if he will brew and blow and thrash like I have never seen before.
“Come with me,” my father says when he reaches me, his hand firm on one of my shoulders, and the sore places Mother made earlier throb with warning. He steers me away from the big gate, toward the back of the factory. A walk-through gate is cut into the fence at the back corner. Dad pushes a button. Something makes a clicking sound, and the gate pops open a sliver.
He is going to march me home, straight to Mother, and the two of them will be a hurricane.
Instead, we walk across the valley, over a mound, through a line of trees, and stop at a metal plate that reminds me of a sewer cap.
“I want to show you something,” he says. “It’s underground.” He bends down, twists the cap, and casts it aside. I peer over the ledge, but all I see is darkness.
“There’s a ladder. It’s easy to climb. I’ll go first, then you follow me,” he says, and lowers himself into the hole. I sit and swing my legs over the side, feeling for the metal with my toes before turning around.
“That’s good. Keep coming,” Father calls from below me. I move hand-hand, foot-foot, the metal slick with a thin coat of moisture, and count the rungs as I go. There are nine, then the floor, which feels like concrete on the ball of my foot, not the cold, damp earth I expect. I hear the creak of a doorknob being twisted, the flick of a switch being moved, and the dark is overtaken by a fluorescent light. Beyond the door is a little room, not even as big as my bedroom, with a tall, square table and four chairs. Most of the walls are covered in metal cabinet doors. Two of them are painted white. The rest are silver. The floor is bare concrete.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“This is kind of like our clubhouse,” Father says. “We make something powerful in the factory.”
“Like magic?”
“Sort of. Yes, actually. Like magic. Magic can be good, and magic can be bad, right?”
“Sure.” I nod.
“Sometimes, the magic goes badly. Like today, some magic snuck out, and it wasn’t supposed to. So we all have to leave for a little bit until they figure out how it’s getting loose. Mr. Bill and I made this place in case we need to be close enough to help catch the bad magic but we also need to be safe. Because magic can hurt people just as much as it helps. We’re learning how to only do good. But it takes practice, and practice means mistakes.”
My stomach turns to stone. Mother
would not agree, and I am grateful she is not here for more reasons than one.
“What happened to your face?” Father asks, cupping my chin.
“I… I fell. On the way here.”
He holds my head steady. “Why did you come? Is your mother having a bad day?”
“I made a lot of mistakes.”
He kneels in front of me so he is looking up at me, and at this moment I feel taller than the factory outside. “You don’t have to play piano if you don’t want to. There are other things. Your mother… ever since she lost the baby, music has turned into a kind of child for her. She nurtures it, protects it. Music and that damn piano mean too much to her, but there’s no convincing her of that yet. She’ll come out of it. She will. But she shouldn’t yell at you like she does, and I’ll talk to her about that.”
“Please, don’t.”
He exhales and looks me plainly in the eyes. “Okay. I tell you what. This weekend, we’ll make you a clubhouse in the woods, too. A place you can go.”
“Just like this one?”
A faint smile touches his mouth. “This one took a lot of time, a lot of money, two grown men, and a year. It’s bigger than it looks. There’s a door behind the ladder we came down that goes to the basement of the factory. The white cabinet doors open to a tunnel that leads to an old mine shaft. If you follow it all the way down, you’ll pass a well I dug, and then you’ll come out right at Cold River.”
“Can I play here?”
“No, son. Now, this is important. No one else knows this is here. Just Mr. Bill and me. And now you. It’s a secret. We’re going to cover the top soon, so you’ll have to dig it out. Memorize where it is, okay?”
I nod, then ask, “Why does it have to be a secret?”
He looks at me for a solid three seconds. “Because most bad guys have no idea they’re bad,” he says. “This factory is doing good for the town and for us. But that magic we’re making… sometimes it’s more like a dragon. Sometimes I worry it’ll burn this whole town to the ground.”
AMA Chapter 12 | 6:45 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
JONATHON’S CHILDHOOD STORY FILLED THE cave made by the stack of trees, painting the black of night with darkness of a different kind.
“The big explosion happened a month later. I can still hear the sirens.” Jonathon closed his eyes. “Just as loud in my mind as they were that day. I was at school. Fifth grade. Ms. Terry’s class. She dropped the piece of chalk, and we all looked out the classroom window like we might see something. I don’t know what we expected. Smoke or flames. I remember every cloud in the sky looked like it had wings and a tail.”
“Was your dad there?” Ama asked. She’d heard mention of the Evansbrite plant during her brief tenure in Tarson, seen files slide across senior partners’ desks and into the shredder. In her lap, her fingertips fluttered against the ends of the cables, but it was no use. Every move pulled them tighter. Still, she couldn’t stop trying.
“He was a mechanic there to start, but he was the kind of person everyone turned to in a room. Bit by bit, he had a hand in most things that happened in the factory.” Jonathon’s eyes opened, but they were fixated on something far away. He blinked, and they cleared. “Ms. Terry had us hide under our desks for a few minutes. Then the principal came room to room and told us all to go home. The buses came early, but I walked past my bus, down the road, and into Tarson Woods.”
“You went to the factory.” Ama abandoned her wrists, shifted her position onto one hip, drawing her knees up to block Jonathon’s view of her hands, and felt along the ground for anything sharp. Her fingers lit upon a skinny stick, but the wood was soft with moisture and rot.
“Everyone was standing outside the fence, looking at the building. There were a few people in those big hazmat-type suits. At the time I wondered if they were some kind of armor, like they were going in to slay the magic gone wrong.” He looked Ama square in the face. “But no one else went in that day.”
“And your dad?” She had to keep him talking, keep him distracted, hoping it would be enough to throw off whatever plan he was on just enough to make him reconsider.
“You never met him or you’d know. My dad was never one to run from a monster.”
“He was still inside?”
“The explosion had destroyed the elevator that went to the basement, and there were no stairs. He was inside the processor. He had gone inside to try to disconnect everything because the control panel shorted out. They didn’t get him out until the next morning.”
“Was he still alive?”
“Technically. They cleared an entire floor of the hospital. We weren’t allowed to see him, and the doctors who went in wore lead aprons. My mother and I sat in the hallway in plastic chairs and slept on gurneys in the maternity ward that night. Mother would hear newborn babies cry, and she would sob and scream. They sedated her more than once, but even then, tears would leak out of her eyes.”
Jonathon cleared his throat, and the boyish roundness of recollection evaporated from his face, replaced with edges and shadows. “A doctor and a man in a black suit came up to us to tell us there would be no saving him. That they had no idea how he was still alive. His vitals were erratic and off the charts. They wanted to run tests, not to keep him alive but to research. My mother was horrified. She slapped the man in the suit across the face and meant to strike him again, but he caught her by the wrist and said, ‘This is all going to be very, very expensive for someone. If you let us test him, we will cover his medical bills. If you don’t, I am afraid the costs of all his care will fall on you.’ ”
“That can’t be legal,” Ama said.
“The factory representative said that they’d ordered an evacuation but my father refused to leave and disobeyed direct orders to try to stop the leak. Apparently, that decision alleviated the company of all responsibility for his care. That’s what you’d say if it were your case, isn’t it? That’s what you do. You find loopholes in laws and agreements and slide a guilty person right through it.” His eyes darkened under the hood of his brow.
“I…” Ama paused and clamped her mouth shut, reconsidering. Lying to this man would not serve her well. “I am good at what I do, yes. I can twist technicalities and mine doubt from a thousand-foot cave of evidence, yes. But I honed my craft. I sharpened my tools so I would be ready to defend a wrongly accused defendant.”
Jonathon leaned back, watching her. “Tell me,” he said. “Have you ever met one of those?”
MARTIN Chapter 13 | 6:50 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MARTIN’S DIRECT PHONE LINE RANG, startling him and bringing his thoughts back inside the station walls. His mind had been attempting to turn what few pieces he had into pieces that fit into something… anything. He hadn’t noticed how dark it’d become outside. He glanced at his watch before reaching for the phone. It was a quarter to seven.
“Tarson PD, Detective Locklear speaking,” Martin said.
“It’s Briggs. Captain wants you to come to the trailhead parking lot,” Briggs said, his voice serious. “And to bring more flashlights and batteries.”
Martin dropped the phone in its cradle and stood. Reluctance spread through him as he peered out the window. Fog surrounded the building, and what trees were still visible glistened with clinging rainwater. Searching for this woman wasn’t going to be easy. She was probably lost, and lost wasn’t a crime scene. Maybe he should call the captain and remind him. He was close to something in the Hazel Rae Stevens case. He could feel it. Although maybe it was the anniversary more so than an actual break.
He shook the remnants of her case from his brain, shouldered on his coat, gathered flashlights and batteries, and headed for his car.
White fog curtained anything beyond the hood of his car from sight, and the drive to the trailhead took twice as long as it should have. The blue lights from the other officers’ cars finally appeared, acting like a beacon. He relaxed, releasing his grip on the steering wheel, and rolled
into the parking lot. The captain headed for his car the moment he pulled in.
“What do we know?” Martin asked as he opened his door.
“We don’t know shit,” Captain replied.
“Okay.” Martin paused. “So where should I start?”
“Did you bring the flashlights?” Captain held out his hand.
“In a box in the back seat.” Martin pointed behind him.
“Well, congrats on a job well done. Go home. We’ll see you in the morning,” Captain said, retrieving the box from Martin’s car.
Martin opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head. He didn’t know what irritated him more: one, that they’d come to search for a woman in the woods with no flashlights, or two, that the only reason they asked him to come was to bring the flashlights they forgot.
“What are you going to do?” Martin asked.
“Have a good ol’ game of flashlight tag. What do you think I’m going to do?” Captain said, glaring at Martin.
“I can help look for her. I came. I’m here. Let me do something.”
“You don’t know these woods,” Captain responded. “They’re tricky enough in the daylight. We’d just end up looking for both of you.”
“Can I at least look at her vehicle?” Martin pressed.
“Be my guest. We don’t have a warrant, and I already have a headache. So don’t do anything stupid,” he said.
“Noted,” Martin answered, and headed for the city girl’s car before Captain could change his mind.
He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shone the beam through the driver’s-side window. A pair of jeans and a black sweater were folded on the passenger seat, black leather heels tossed on the floorboard. An unopened bottle of Smartwater rested against the chair back. She hadn’t taken water on the trail with her. Martin’s ex-wife had been a big runner. He always knew when she planned a run longer than an hour because she’d take water with her in one of those fanny packs she’d swear wasn’t a fanny pack. If the run was going to be an hour or less, she’d fill a thermos with ice and leave it in the car.