The Midnight Ground

by Eric Dontigney

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Hartworth.”

  I blinked away the intuition and met the girl’s eyes. “It’s nice to meet you too, Abby.”

  “I’ll give you two a minute,” said Patty, before she retreated to the hallway.

  Abby peered up at me, a tiny bit shy with Patty out of the room. I tried to imagine her at a normal weight, without the sickly gauntness that gave her face a somewhat skeletal quality. I decided that she probably wasn’t a beauty queen. Her nose was a bit too big and her jaw a little too square for traditional conceptions of beauty. If someone was working black magic on her, it probably wasn’t some other girl who was jealous of Abby’s looks. I supposed it was a long shot, but it happened more often than most people would have credited.

  I realized that I was doing that analysis of her features as a way to avoid an actual conversation. I had no idea what a grown man was supposed to say to a girl of, maybe, fifteen. I didn’t think I’d spoken to a girl that age who wasn’t a waitress since I’d been a teenager. I resisted the urge to ask her how she was feeling. She was still gripping my hand, with no obvious intention of letting go. I gave her bandaged arm a pointed look.

  “Your arm get burned?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t remember that happening. I wondered if you remembered.”

  I shook my head. “I remember getting your grandfather out pretty clearly. After that, it all gets hazy. I think you must have fallen out of bed. I have a dim recollection of yanking on a sheet to get your leg free. After that, it’s a blur.”

  I decided not to tell her that it was a terrifying, smoky, fiery blur. I also neglected to tell her that it was only stupid luck that I hadn’t dropped her inside the burning building while I tried to get out. I doubted it would make her feel better.

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s just weird to be hurt without remembering anything about how it happened.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Really?” She asked without any conviction in her voice that I understood at all.

  “Sure,” I said and waved my right hand at the left side of my chest. “I’ve got a bunch of scars and some tattoos all through here. I know some of what happened, because people told me the bits they knew, but I have no memory of it.”

  It wasn’t precisely true. I had one image with no context from that night. I remembered a raven-haired woman with cold eyes and a warm smile, but the rest was just emptiness. Abby was right. It was weird to know that something happened to you, but not remember it. It was more than weird, it was scary, because you didn’t know what else might have happened. That blank spot in my memory kept me up at night.

  “Can I,” Abby appeared to second-guess herself and then decided. “Can I see?”

  I thought for a second and wondered if I was about to cross some adult-child ethical boundary. I decided that I probably wasn’t. I gently shook my hand free from hers and undid a couple buttons on my shirt. I pulled the shirt over enough that some of the scars and part of one tattoo were visible. Her eyes went a little white around the edges. I redid the buttons on my shirt.

  “You really don’t remember how that happened?”

  “Not a bit,” I said.

  “I have a lot of scars. Do you ever worry that,” she paused, not looking at me, “people will think you’re ugly because of your scars?”

  I guessed that she had a very particular boy or girl in mind when she said people. I couldn’t even remember what it was like to worry that much about what anyone would think of my appearance, but I could see it meant a lot to her. What perplexed me was why she asked me that question. After a second, the answer was so obvious as to be painful. I had scars, at least as bad as hers, so I could understand. I doubted she knew many people with bad, ugly scars. I was sorely tempted to lie to her, to reassure her no one would think less of her, but that would just make it worse when she discovered the lie.

  “Some people will think that,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  I tried to gather my thoughts. Why were people assholes? Talk about one of those existential questions without a good answer.

  “A lot of reasons, I guess,” I answered with the kind of lameness befitting someone who was dodging a question.

  Come on, man, bellowed some part of my mind that felt like I should at least try to answer Abby’s question with something useful.

  I tried again. “Mostly, I think it’s because they’ve never suffered. They can’t understand what kind of pain goes with scars. I guess, most of the time, they don’t even want to try. It’s too much like work.”

  “You mean they don’t care,” she said in small, pained voice.

  “Yeah,” I said, and felt like crap. “I’d like to say it won’t hurt, because those people are shallow and not worth your time. I think you know it does hurt, though.”

  She nodded, still looking away from me. I thought hard and fast, trying to find a way to salvage something positive from the death spiral the conversation was taking. Inspiration struck.

  “Still,” I said, “not everyone in the world is a hopeless asshat.”

  The girl giggled and then covered her mouth as red blossomed in her cheeks. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that. Grandpa would freak.”

  I gave her a little shrug. “I just call it how it see it. You have to look pretty hard to find those people who are worth a damn, but they are out there.”

  I saw the gear switch before she spoke. “Thank you for saving us. For saving grandpa. He’s…”

  She faltered then, coming across an idea that was probably too painful and abstract to cope with in her state or maybe at her age. That was something I could help her avoid.

  “He’s a good man,” I said. “I found him on the stairs of your house. He was trying to get to you before the fire did.”

  She blinked a few times at that idea. I suppose she had never considered the lengths the old man would go to in order to protect her. Once the idea filtered down through the painkillers, she smiled another one of those million-watt smiles. Even as I stood in the reflected glow of that smile, I felt that disconcerting sensation that she was both under some kind of magical attack and that she wasn’t. It unnerved me, because I’d never felt such a thing before. It was always an either-or, never a yes-and-no. I forced a smile back onto my face.

  “And, you’re welcome. I’m glad I could be there to help. Still, you should get some rest or they’ll never release you.”

  Her smile vanished. “I’m never getting out of here. Stupid chemo wrecked my immune system. They won’t let me go until they’re sure this,” she waggled her bandaged arm, “won’t get infected.”

  The intensity of her pessimism caught me off guard. Then again, I didn’t spend God knew how many weeks or months having doctors poison me in the name of curing me. It was a miserable enough experience to make most people pessimistic.

  “All the more reason to let you get your rest,” I said.

  I reached out and took her left hand in mine. I gave it a little squeeze.

  “You’re going to be alright, kid.”

  She looked up at me, pessimism and youthful hope at war in her eyes. “You really think so?”

  I squeezed her hand again. “I do.”

  I turned and walked toward the door. My hand was on the knob when she called after me.

  “Will you come back and see me?”

  I was gone already. I knew it. The road was calling to me. Marcy’s warning was pushing me. That freaky yes-and-no vibe around the teen was enough to tell me that I wanted no part of whatever was happening to her. It was best to be honest and give her short-term disappointment, rather than big, ugly disappointment later. I glanced over my shoulder at Abby and steeled myself to deliver the bad news.

  “You bet,” said my mouth, in direct contradiction to all reason. “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 8

  The proclamation of my intention to visit Abby the next day left me in a st
ate of bleary disbelief. By the time normalcy and something akin to abject horror at my decision reasserted itself, I was in Patty’s cruiser. I looked over at her and wondered if my disbelieving state was obvious to her. She glanced over at me and smirked.

  “Well now, sunshine, I see you’ve rejoined us.”

  “Looks like.”

  “You ready to flee the state?”

  I wanted to slap the back of my own head, but I controlled the impulse. “I thought I was. Looks like I’ll be sticking around for a day.”

  “Oh?”

  I sighed, loudly. “Apparently, I told Abby I’d visit her tomorrow.”

  “Apparently?”

  “My mouth agreed before checking in with my brain.”

  Patty nodded. “Kids have a way of doing that to you.”

  “You have any kids?”

  “Not me. Got a brood of nieces and nephews, though. I figured that was close enough. You?”

  I wondered what it would be like to actually talk to my sister’s kids. They all seemed like they were smart and happy.

  “No,” I said, remembering to stay in character, “no family to speak of. Is there another hotel around here? Not that my former accommodations weren’t just lovely, but I’d like to keep a little under the radar.”

  “There isn’t another hotel, per se, but there are some cabins you can rent by the night. Out near where Paul and Abby’s house is,” Patty jerked a little. “Well, where it was, I guess.”

  That didn’t sound good. “House beyond repair?”

  Patty shook her head. “Guess that’s up to the insurance company, but it looked pretty bad from where I stood.”

  “They wrap up the arson investigation yet?”

  Patty gave me a knowing look. “You seem to know an awful lot about how crime gets dealt with Mr. Hartworth. Anything you’d care to share?”

  “You should call me Adrian. Where are we going anyway?”

  “Figured you’d want your car. It’s still up at Paul’s place.”

  I nodded. I was going to have to go back there anyways. That thought shocked me a little. I’d already been planning a strategy, even though I wasn’t sure there was anything to do.

  “You didn’t answer the question, Adrian,” said Patty.

  I snuck a peek and I saw the twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Tell you what, Patty. I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

  “Careful Adrian. I’m told these bosoms can stun a man into submission at thirty paces.”

  “Did you just say bosoms?”

  “I most certainly did.”

  “You’re a treasure, you know that?”

  “I do,” said Patty. “In answer to your question, yes, the arson investigation is done. As far as they’re concerned, it was an accident. No signs of accelerants or tampering anywhere. Just one of those freak things.”

  “Awful lot of accidents and freak things happening to that family,” I muttered.

  “I noticed that myself. Okay, Sonny Jim, your turn.”

  “I worked for an insurance investigator on and off for a couple years. It was in a strictly unofficial capacity, of course, but I picked some things up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I’ll give you her name. If you call in a strictly off-the-record and unofficial capacity, she’ll confirm it.”

  “That where you picked up those tattoos and scars? Unofficial insurance investigating?”

  I kept my face neutral. “Nope.”

  “You play it awful close to the chest,” said Patty.

  “Some things are best left unvisited.”

  “True enough.”

  “You see them? The scars, I mean.”

  “No. Heard the nurses talking about it.”

  Patty pulled into the driveway and parked behind my newly acquired Neon. We got out and she tossed me the keys to the car. I caught them and slipped them into my pocket.

  “Where are those cabins?”

  Patty pointed west up the road. “You go about a mile up that way. You’ll see a blue building on the right with Alan’s Cabins painted on the side in big white letters. Tell them Patty sent you.”

  “Will that get me a discount?”

  “No, but it will get you a cabin with working water and electricity.”

  “That’s important, too,” I said. “So, officially speaking, the house isn’t a crime scene?”

  “That’s right,” said Patty, curiosity writ large across her face. “Why?”

  “I thought I might take a look around. Scratch an itch, so to speak.”

  “Mind if I tag along? See how unofficial insurance investigators do it?”

  I did mind. Not so much because I believed that she thought I was up to no good, but because I was pretty sure she was too firmly grounded in the practical. Patty’s world, I was quite sure, was populated by ordinary evils carried out by ordinary people with bad intentions. I wasn’t really in a mood to shatter her expectations and then try to explain the way things really worked. Then again, it was her town. I had a feeling that the sheriff had been phoning it in for a while and that Patty was going to be the law around those parts before many more moons came and went. I shrugged at her.

  “If you like,” I said.

  I opened my trunk and spun the little combination lock built into the latch on the hard case to the right sequence. I flipped the case open and pulled out what I figured I’d need. I pocketed those items and then closed the case, latching it firmly. I reached up and closed the trunk. The realization of my mistake hit about the same time as the pain. I stood there taking shallow breaths as nausea competed with pain for supremacy. To her credit, Patty didn’t comment beyond offering a sympathetic look.

  “Can you show me where the fire started?” I asked when the pain and nausea receded.

  “Sure.”

  Patty led me around to the back of the house. The whole building stank of wet, charred wood and incinerated chemicals. There were huge pieces missing from the back wall of the house, exposing blackened pipes and something that used to be a kitchen. Linoleum squares had peeled and cracked unevenly, some browned and some blackened. I tried not to notice the wreckage of something I was pretty sure was another antique table. Patty pointed to a spot just beneath one of the holes that exposed the interior of burned kitchen cabinets and melted pots.

  “That’s where they think it started, though no one is sure exactly why or how.”

  “You might want to stand back a little,” I suggested.

  Patty gave me a dubious look, but she backed off about five feet, fire-roasted grass crackling and snapping under her feet. I took one of the test tubes out of my pocket and pulled out the rubber stopper. I took an extra step back and then flung the contents of the test tube at the spot Patty pointed out. The liquid landed with a quiet splash.

  “The fire’s already out,” said Patty with a grin.

  I waited, counting in my head. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Nothing happened. I felt a surge of relief and an undercurrent of disappointment.

  “I guess that settles—” I started.

  Light the color and intensity of burning magnesium ignited where the liquid in the test tube had landed. I shielded my eyes and turned my head away, worried that the light might actually damage my vision. In the background, I heard Patty give off a brief scream of fright, before she descended briefly into some of the most inventive cursing I’d heard in years. The light burned out after a few seconds and a slight sulfur smell wafted over me.

  “Damn it, Hartworth! What in the hell did you throw on there?”

  I was still mostly blinded from the light, but I turned my face in the general direction of Patty’s yelling.

  “It was just water,” I said.

  “Water does not do that!”

  “Holy water does. Sometimes.”

  The silence that followed that statement went on for long enough that my vision was mostly cleared by the time Patty spoke again.

  “Holy water,�
� she said.

  “Yes.”

  “That was holy water you tossed at the house?”

  “It was.”

  “You just happened to be carrying around holy water in your trunk?”

  “More or less.”

  “Just in case you needed to do what, exactly?”

  “Throw it at a house?”

  Up until then, Patty was responding on instinct and leftover fright. The simple absurdity of my answer snapped her back to reality. All the usual excuses for the inexplicable took hold of her. I saw it on her face, the frantic rationalizations, the self-deception, and the assumption that I had pulled a fast one or, more likely, some kind of poor taste joke. It always shocked me how fast the desire for normalcy reasserted itself. It took Patty about three seconds.

  “I get it,” she said, as she forced a smile. “You played a little joke on local law enforcement. Spin a yarn to spook the rube cop. Well, it worked. You tricked me.”

  I didn’t smile back at her. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t move. She eyed me, seeming to weigh whether I was carrying the joke too far.

  “Seriously, Hartworth, what was that stuff? Something you picked up in a magic shop?”

  “It was exactly what I said it was. It was holy water.”

  I walked over to the house and wiped my hand across the wet wall. I held it up for her to see. It looked like grimy water on my hand. She kept the smile in place, but it looked painful. I shook my head and held the test tube out to her. She looked at it like it might hold nitro glycerin or the Ebola virus. She didn’t meet my eyes when she took the test tube from my hand. Patty lifted it to her nose, not too close, in case this was some kind of gag, and sniffed at it. She looked up at me in surprise and sniffed again. She gave me an angry look and shoved the test tube in my direction.

  “Doesn’t prove anything,” she almost yelled.

  I lifted the test tube to my lips, poured the little bit of holy water that remained into my mouth and swallowed it. Patty went three shades of white and took a step back. I doubted she realized it, but her hand was on the grip of her service weapon.

  “No tricks, Patty. No jokes or games. You just saw what happens when holy water comes in contact with the remnants of black magic. Pretty potent black magic,” I said, and then a thought struck me.