That one word seemed loud out there on that old road with just us and that car, alone, and the rest of the world a world away.
4.
“Nothing there, huh?” Mr. Connolly asked when Jim and I arrived back at the car yard.
We’d decided that Tara and Fat Bobby would go on home instead of coming back with us. Between the four of us we’d decided that they were the weakest liars. For Fat Bobby it was a unanimous decision. I guess we all felt that because of his all-around nervous and awkward presence, he wouldn’t be able to tell a lie convincingly. He protested, almost whining. But we didn’t give, and eventually he agreed to go home and let me and Jim talk to Mr. Connolly. Tara outright told us she sucked at lying, had problems even telling her mom dinner was good if she thought it really blew the big one. So she went home as well.
We agreed to get together again the following day, at noon, on Lookout Mountain, to talk about what we were going to do next.
“No, sir,” Jim said in response to his dad’s question. I gave something of a noncommittal shake of my head, like I was showing how disappointed I was that that was the case.
We stood in the doorway to one of the side rooms in the garage that served as Mr. Connolly’s office. He had a phone clasped to his ear between his shoulder and cheek, one hand over the mouthpiece. It was the first time I’d seen this room, and I took a moment to look around, mildly surprised at what I saw.
A high-end-looking computer sat on the big oak desk in the center of the room, with a printer and fax and big speakers and a widescreen monitor. Bookshelves filled with automotive volumes lined the walls end to end. Filing cabinets tall and wide sat in two corners. It was all really sophisticated and professional-like. Not what I’d expected from seeing the orderly mess of the car yard itself and the garage.
“Nothing at all?” Mr. Connolly said, as if genuinely interested. When we shook our heads again he said: “Bummer”, and went back to his phone call.
“That was easy,” I said to Jim when we closed the door to his dad’s office.
“Yeah,” Jim said, but his tone didn’t seem as upbeat as mine.
* * *
I lay in bed early that evening, Bandit draped across my feet warming them for me, arms behind my head, worried, restless, and excited. Part of me was thinking about all that money, an amount, a number, that was almost beyond my comprehension. I thought about all the comics and books and other stuff I could buy with it.
The other part of me was thinking of that long dead person, nothing but bones now, and that hole in its head. I was young, and the idea of all that money to spend was exciting and fun to think about. But I was old enough that I knew about death, had seen some violence, and knew that what had happened to that person stuffed in the trunk was real, and could happen to me.
I was thinking how I should probably tell my parents, and they’d call the police. How maybe despite our agreement to meet tomorrow and talk about it, one of my friends had possibly already told their parents, and then the money would be gone. Probably forever. I was smart enough to know we had probably been looking at drug money, or a big bank heist, or maybe something altogether different and infinitely worse. Cars full of money didn’t just happen by accident.
Neither did dead people in trunks.
I didn’t know what to do, and the minutes crawled by like I was in some sort of temporal anomaly.
The bedroom door opened and something white sailed through the air to land on my face. I took it off and held it up. A pair of my jockey shorts.
“Your stupid underwear was in my laundry again,” Sarah said from the doorway, a laundry basket cradled under one arm. “So many skid marks, maybe we should put you back in diapers. If you’re not going to wash your stuff, at least keep it out of mine.”
She reached into the basket again and came out with a pair of my socks also. She threw those too. They landed on Bandit’s head and hung there like rabbit ears. He opened his eyes, yawned, seemed bored, and went back to sleep.
“Stop trying my clothes on then, perv,” I said. “Cross-dressing went out of style with Silence of the Lambs.”
She flipped me off.
I flipped her off back, raised her a double.
“You’re so mature,” she said with this haughty tone, as if she’d already forgotten she’d thrown dirty underwear and socks at me and my dog.
“You’re so ugly,” I said, and shielded my face with a forearm, as if hiding from Medusa.
She gave me this scowl and a sigh like I was such a headache and bore to deal with. She started to turn around to leave, but then I thought of something and called her back. Sarah gave this long-suffering sigh again and at first I didn’t think she’d stay, but she turned around and put her free fist to her hip, like she was a queen entertaining a court jester more idiotic than entertaining.
“What?” she said. The look in her eyes told me noogies and a proper wedgie were in my future if I said the wrong thing.
“You still thinking of taking those journalism electives next year?”
She stood there silent for a moment, eyes squinty, suspicious, like she was waiting for the punch line. When I didn’t follow with anything smart, she said: “Yeah. Why?”
“You think you got what it takes to investigate something?” I tried to throw in a little note of challenge, like maybe I didn’t think she was.
“What do you mean?” she said, and though she still held that high and mighty queen look, she set her laundry basket down and took a step into the room.
“Close the door first,” I said, and she did. “And you got to swear not to tell anyone else what I tell you.”
“Oh, give me a break—”
I sat up and cut her off.
“I’m serious. This might be something big.”
You could tell she was still doubtful, but her interest was piqued. Probably imagining herself as a future Lois Lane going for a Pulitzer. Seeing that I wasn’t going to say anything else until she swore, she raised her hand and, in a melodramatic voice, like a bad actor, said: “I swear upon my heart and soul and the love of baby Jesus.”
I thought her acting voice sucked, thought about saying so, that she should stick to journalism, plus the added benefit that the audience wouldn’t go blind from looking at her hideous mug, but thought better of it and gestured for her to sit down at my desk. She did, scooting the chair a little closer to my bed and, in the moonlight coming through my window, I told her about the car and the money and the body. Again there was that sense of things moving, gears turning, of events rolling forward and gaining momentum.
When I was done, I could see she doubted me some, but maybe not enough that she thought I was completely off my gourd, maybe just exaggerating a bit. She tapped the armrest of the chair with one hand, twirled a strand of hair with the other.
“Show me,” she finally said. “Then I’ll see what I think we should do.”
“Fine,” I said and told her how tomorrow I was meeting Tara, Jim, and Bobby at noon.
“No. Show me tonight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
Down the hall, my parents’ bedroom door closed at ten o’clock, the creaks and squeaks as they settled for the night carried softly through the walls of the house. Sarah had told me to be ready at midnight, and I lay beneath my covers already in my shirt, jacket, and jeans, watching the minutes on the nightstand clock pass.
Struggling to keep my eyes open, the lids fluttered shut like lazy butterfly wings. A couple times they snapped open, my mind screaming that I’d missed the appointed time and my sister had left without me, only to see but a few minutes had passed. Then came the gentlest of knocks on my door, and it swept inward slowly. With the fedora-wearing man still in the back of my mind, I thought of a crypt door opening, and I half expected a fanged monster to come leaping in at me.
No fangs, but a monster in her own right, my sister walked in and over to my bed. She leaned over and shook me. I slapped her hands away. She reache
d down and grasped my face, shook it. I slapped her away again.
“I’m up, I’m up,” I whispered. As I struggled out of the sheets she continued to poke and prod at me, just for the hell of it, so that I got up in a funny spastic dance.
Bandit was up, too, his eyes alight in the shadows of my room.
“Let’s get going,” Sarah said and gave me one last hard pinch on the upper arm, punctuating it with, “This better be worth it.”
“It is,” I said.
We crept out of the room like burglars, me shutting the door reluctantly on Bandit, afraid of the clacking of his nails on the hall floor waking my parents.
* * *
The dirt path made a pale stripe through the dark abyss of the night, and it seemed we walked a trail suspended in nothingness to either side and just the road at our feet. We had flashlights we’d filched from the foyer closet and the bright beams like lasers slicing the night proceeded ahead of us. Up the hill we trudged, pausing at the top where I’d first seen the light of the abandoned car, then down the other side. The woods stretched out before us and the trees reached hungrily for stragglers.
“Hope there aren’t any wolves or bears or anything,” Sarah said as we drew nearer.
“As a Sasquatch, you shouldn’t be too worried.”
She turned and shoved me.
At the edge of the woods we halted for a moment like we’d reached a barrier, some borderland whose crossing marked a certain passage. With a shared look and synchronized deep breath, we pushed through the trees and into the woods.
The bright, pale coin of the moon hanging above in the purple sky showed itself only intermittently between the roof of the branches above, like a child playing peek-a-boo. There were hoots and chirps and other sounds, and occasionally a bush or branch would rustle. We swung our flashlight beams in the direction we thought the noises came from. Sometimes a limb shook a bit as if something had just occupied it, or the quick flash of reflective eyes winked from the deep shadow. Subconsciously, we moved closer to each other: who was protecting who I can’t say.
We came to the stream and in the night it looked like a river of oil. Slick and black, the whispers of it running over stone was a constant white noise, like some fanatical survivalist had left a television with bad reception on somewhere deep in the forest. Leaves and twigs sailed the surface like tiny vessels.
Sarah looked up and down the stream, searching for large stones for footholds to cross the water without getting wet.
“Got to wade through it,” I said.
“Damn,” she said. “Probably cold this time of night.”
“It’s not the cold you have to worry about. It’s the piranha.”
“Har har,” she said, giving me a look colder than the night. “Very funny.”
“Don’t worry though. Since it’s only your feet in the water, I’m sure you’ll be safe. The smell should be a natural repellent.”
She punched me on the shoulder and, though I smiled, what I really wanted to do was rub my arm. My sister didn’t punch like a girl.
“If you could bottle the odor and sell it to deep sea divers, you’d be a billionaire,” I said, and she hit me again on the same spot. The throbbing there ached to the bone, and I shut up.
We took off our shoes and started across the water. The stream was indeed cold, and trying just my toes first didn’t do me much good, rather made me want to turn back, so I just took a deep breath and dunked them in and started walking. My sister was close behind, and I heard her gasp at the first feel of the water over her feet. I made melodramatic stomps through the water that sent up splashes, and her gasps went a few octaves higher.
“You ass!” she hissed.
I felt a shove at my back between the shoulders and I went stumbling forward, fell to my knees. The water splashed up to my face and each trickle of it hitting the bare skin of my hands and arms and neck and face was like a dagger poking. My knees and shins landed painfully on stones in the water, and between those aches and the cold I grimaced and clenched my teeth.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “We’re even. Help me up, please.”
I held out my hand, and my sister splashed up beside me and grabbed it.
“Serves you right, dork,” she said and started to pull me up.
I pulled back, fast and hard, and she fell into the water beside me. As she fell, I was already up and striding towards the shore. Both of us had had the presence of mind to keep our flashlights held high and out of the water, and as Sarah got to her feet she targeted my face with her beam so that I had to hold a forearm up to shield against the light.
“You’re so dead.”
Her jeans were soaked and her shirt and jacket up to the ribs.
“Have to catch me,” I said and started to jog, fast but not too fast so that we’d lose each other. I found the ruts of the access road soon enough, and my sister’s light chasing me I saw well enough to pick up my speed. That was the way it went for a bit: my sister cursing me, telling me she’d kill me, me laughing and running by moon and flashlight. Until we came to it, the old Buick, paint-flaked and rusted. A giant dead thing of metal there in the middle of the rutted road.
But something was different, and I stopped in my tracks.
Sarah skidded to a halt beside me, started to grab my forearm with both hands, began to twist the skin in opposing directions for one hell of an Indian burn. When she saw I wasn’t reacting, that something else had my attention, she stopped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I pointed at the old car.
Its doors were all open, like the wings of a gigantic insect. We—me, Tara, Jim, and Fat Bobby—had closed the door we’d popped before we left. The trunk as well.
Slowly, I moved closer. Walking wide around the car, I shone my flashlight into it. The money was gone. All of it. Something else nagged at my mind then, something more terrible than missing money.
I took long sideways strides around to the rear of the vehicle. The trunk was open too. I stepped closer, peered over the lip of the trunk to see inside.
The body was gone.
“Look out!” Sarah yelled, still standing where she’d skidded to a stop behind me, several yards away.
The rustle of leaves was all I heard. A whisper of movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. Something black moving. Something billowing like a curtain in an open window. I started to turn, caught a glimpse of a figure moving like liquid. Atop the figure, atop its head, a wide-brimmed fedora, like those hats detectives wore in old black-and-white movies.
Then I couldn’t turn any further because there was an arm around my throat. Another arm wrapped around me like a tentacle, pinning my own against my sides. I tried to struggle but it was like fighting iron. Flaps of cloth slapped my sides and legs, and I peered down, saw corners of the long coat flapping into view like little flags snapping in a high wind.
I remembered the figure from a few nights prior, walking the road in front of our house, looking up to my window like he expected me there. Strolling away like a passerby in the park.
“Let him go!”
Sarah, rushing forward.
A cool, sharp, and familiar pressure at my throat. My sister stopped, which I thought was wise. I didn’t much want a second mouth carved into my throat, to watch that new orifice spew blood like scarlet vomit.
“Where is it?”
A conversational tone, as if nothing was amiss.
“What?” I croaked, feeling the kiss of the blade at my throat.
“This is the night,” the voice said, and the words baffled me. “Great things can happen at night.” He spoke calmly but with a passion, as if he were reciting poetry. “This is the night. These are the times.”
Obviously, to this man these words meant something. To me it sounded like the ravings of a whack job. I thought of telling him so for just a fraction of a second, then realized a whack job who recited whack job poetry probably wouldn’t be too hesitant about relievin
g me of my head. I kind of liked my head right where it was. I looked at it every morning in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t anything special, but it was mine and I kind of had an attachment to it.
“I … don’t understand …” I said, relying on honesty, or at least a semblance of it. I understood his first words—Where is it?—assuming that he was probably referring to the money. My declaration of ignorance was in response to his whack job-beatnik-spoken-word crap. The stuff about the night and the times.
“There was a sum of money,” he said, almost whispering into my ear like we were friends sharing a secret. His breath was sweet and minty, like he’d been sucking on candy preparing for a long awaited kiss. “It was in this automobile. Now it isn’t.”
“What do you want?” Sarah said, taking a daring step forward.
I felt the man’s head shift behind me as he fixed his gaze on her. Sarah stopped her approach immediately, as if she’d heard the command in a game of Red Rover.
“You may call me the Collector,” the man said. His sweet and minty breath and his snapping flag coat touched me delicately in different places. “I collect things that are owed, and at times I collect things for myself.”
The iron tentacle-like arm around my body suddenly loosened and fell away, but I didn’t move. That intimate touch of the blade was still there at my throat, and that held me rooted more than his arms ever could.
The ruffle of cloth on cloth as I felt and heard him go into one of his coat pockets was loud to my panic-heightened ears. He pulled the hand out a moment later and held something out for Sarah to see. I couldn’t see it, his arm too low and me not daring to lower my chin even a fraction of an inch, lest I stir the knife to action.
“Here is something I collected recently.”
He made a swift flicking gesture like he was tossing a coin. Something indeed was tossed, but it wasn’t a coin.
I followed it through the air as it rose into view in a wide arc, and Sarah’s light rose to trace its path. Pale and crooked like a large, dry noodle, one end red and raw, the finger sailed through the space between us and my sister, then dropped out of my view. It hit the ground with a faint sound like pebbles being idly and gently jostled by a foot.
If You Go Down to the Woods Page 13
