Shades of Simon Gray

by Joyce McDonald

  “You think she knows about the project?”

  Kyle shook his head. “She probably isn’t even sure about Simon. I think she’s just grasping at straws.”

  “What if they’ve found something on his computer?”

  “Then they’ll have to talk to Simon about that.” Kyle snickered and skipped another rock.

  Danny stood up and walked over to the edge of the river. He watched the water beating against the muddy bank. “Who knows what Simon’s going to do when he comes out of this coma? Maybe this whole accident thing will have him all freaked and ready to confess damn near anything.”

  “Who says he’s coming out of the coma?”

  Danny looked down at Kyle’s upturned, expressionless face. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “From what I saw of that accident, man … He was really messed up. Even if he lives, which I sort of doubt, his brain might not function the same.”

  “You mean, like a permanent veg-out?”

  “Something like that.”

  Except for those first few panicky minutes after Kyle had called to tell him about the accident, Danny had fully expected Simon to pull through. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that Simon might not recover from the coma, or if he did, that he could end up a vegetable. Danny had never known anyone his own age who had died. Simon was a kid, for god’s sake. A year younger than he was. He had his whole life ahead of him.

  “He could still make it,” Danny said, surprised by the level of defiance in his voice.

  Kyle got to his feet and came to stand by Danny. He had his hands in his pockets; he looked thoughtful. “That’s not exactly in our best interest, you know.”

  Danny looked away. This wasn’t something he wanted to think about. “Well, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.”

  Kyle nodded and looked out at the river. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Danny felt a chill run along his spine. There was something about the matter-of-fact tone in Kyle’s voice that disturbed him. Danny looked up at the branches overhead, limbs bent to the breaking point with the weight of hundreds of crows. He tried to think of what he would do if Simon recovered and decided to spill his guts, but he came up empty-handed. He turned to Kyle. “So what do we do?”

  Kyle shrugged. “The way the system works, as far as I can see, is you can do just about anything you want. The trick is, you have to make sure no one ever finds out.”

  “And if they do?”

  “You lie like hell.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They think Simon’s their man. We just need to make sure all the evidence points to their prime suspect and no one else. Being good Bellehaven citizens, it’s our civic duty to help the police in any way we can, right?”

  Danny couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was Kyle suggesting they frame Simon?

  Kyle turned to leave, then stopped a few feet away and looked back at Danny, who stood gaping at him in disbelief. “Face it, man. It’ll be a lot easier for all of us if he just stays in a coma.”

  Simon was surprised to find himself standing on the bank of the Delaware in broad daylight, watching the churning brown water, water so muddy it resembled a pot of boiling hot chocolate. The water gouged the riverbank, carving out chunks of mud as it charged along, pulling at low branches, exposing roots.

  He wasn’t sure why he’d come here instead of the Liberty Tree. He’d sensed unfinished business there, in that other place.

  The sound of rocks hitting water drew his attention. Simon turned to see Danny sitting beneath a pine tree. Kyle sat a few feet away, tossing stones into the water. The spot where they sat, even the tree Danny leaned against, was familiar. Simon himself had come to this place many times, when he wanted to get his head straight. But something was different about it that day. Maybe it was the thousands of crows lurking in the bare branches, along the river’s edge. Black feathers in place of leaves. Or maybe it was the muted, almost mournful caws they murmured, so unlike their usual barking cackles. The sound cut right through him. He felt a tingling in his fingers and on the back of his neck. This place had begun to remind him of something disturbing, although he couldn’t remember what.

  Kyle and Danny were leaving. Kyle was already several yards ahead of Danny, heading toward the parking lot by the boat ramp. Simon called to them. He reached out to grab Danny’s arm as he passed within a foot of him. But Danny kept right on walking. He didn’t see Simon.

  Right then Simon would have given anything to be able to talk to him. To anyone, for that matter. Especially Liz. He had started to follow Danny when a crow suddenly landed on his shoulder. Simon was so startled he let out a yell. The crow threw back its head and cackled, a strange kind of bird laughter. That was when Simon realized that the bird not only saw him, but heard him. As Stanley Isaacson had; as Jessup Wildemere had. He wondered if the bird, like him, was invisible. Surely people fishing along the river would find it odd to see a bird perched so securely in midair, its talons curled around nothing.

  All about him, thousands of crows called from the branches overhead, a chorus of replies to the bird on his shoulder. The bird cawed back and raised its wings. Black feathers brushed the side of Simon’s face.

  The crow lifted its wings, circled Simon, then swooped into the tall grass by the muddy bank, disappeared, and shot back into the air, a black rocket with something wriggling in its mouth.

  When the crow came to roost again on Simon’s shoulder, Simon saw it had a small frog in its beak. The frog’s legs twitched in all directions at once in a frantic effort to swim from the crow’s mouth.

  Simon tried to help the frog, but his hand froze in midmotion each time he reached for the crow. And there was something else: his own arms and legs had begun to flail in frantic desperation. Hundreds of frogs were suddenly all over him. They crawled up his bare legs, sprang onto his arms, tangled their webbed feet in his hair. Searing pain coursed through his body. He had to escape. His heart beat so wildly it made him dizzy. He was sickened at the sight of the frogs. No. More than that, he was terrified. The frogs reminded him of something, something he couldn’t run away from.

  When Devin and her mother walked through the back door early that evening, their arms loaded with buckets of chicken from KFC, they found Kyle sitting at the kitchen table playing gin rummy with the twins, Michael and Noah. Devin couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d discovered an elephant washing dishes at the kitchen sink. In the four years they’d been together Kyle had showed up at her front door only to pick her up for special events, like the junior prom. Otherwise, they met someplace else. Never once, in all that time, had he simply dropped by. Things were usually too chaotic at her house for Kyle’s taste.

  Her mother seemed as surprised as Devin. She set the tubs of chicken on the counter and stared at them. She looked doubtful. Devin knew her mother was wondering if she had enough to feed another mouth.

  “Woo hoo!” Noah shrieked. He fanned out his cards and laid them on the table. “I’m out. Count ’em and weep.”

  Michael slapped his cards down in a rage. “You cheated. I saw you. You picked up two cards together last time.”

  Kyle gave Noah a light punch on the arm. “Never let them see your sleight of hand, Noah my man.”

  “That’s your advice to a nine-year-old?” Devin said. “Don’t get caught?”

  “That’s my advice to anyone.”

  Devin, who hadn’t bothered to take off her fleece jacket, was out the back door in a flash. She had no idea where she was going. But she knew she couldn’t stay in the house for another minute. It wasn’t until she was halfway down Meadowlark Drive, walking so fast she was practically jogging, and had turned onto Spencer Avenue, heading toward the Delaware, that she realized it wasn’t the house or her family she was running from this time. It was Kyle.

  And within seconds of this discovery, she heard his sneakers slapping the sidewalk behind her.

  “Where’re you headed in such an all-fired hurry?” h
e said. He jogged along beside her.

  Devin knew there was no way to outrun him now, so she slowed her pace. “I need to be alone, that’s all.”

  “Right this minute?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyle stepped in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About what happened this morning, for one thing. About that Lieutenant Santino. Son-of-a—it was like some inquisition.”

  “For you, maybe,” Devin said. “She asked me about Simon, that’s all.”

  “Think about it. You, me, and Danny. As far as I can tell, we’re the only ones she questioned. Now, how did she know to talk to us? Just us. No one else in the school talked with her.”

  “Someone probably told her we were Simon’s closest friends, except maybe for Liz. Everyone at school knows he hangs out with us.” For all her attempts to find a reasonable explanation, Devin was growing uneasy. Maybe Kyle had a point. But right now he seemed to be backing off. His expression was thoughtful.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” he said. His voice softened. He sounded almost hesitant.

  “So talk.”

  Kyle sighed and looked around. “Not here.”

  “Fine. The park, then.” Devin shifted course and headed down Locust Street toward the park.

  Kyle fell into step, protesting. “It’s too public. We need to be alone.”

  Devin smiled in spite of herself. She knew what was coming. If they were alone he probably thought he could maneuver out of whatever the problem was with a few kisses. But Devin knew that wouldn’t work anymore, even if Kyle hadn’t figured it out yet. “It’s dinnertime. No one will be in the park this time of night.” She zipped up her jacket. The chill spring air was cooler than she had expected now that the sun had dropped behind the trees.

  When they reached the park, Devin sat on one of the benches. As she had predicted, they were alone. Kyle stood in front of her. He didn’t bother to sit down.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” he said. He looked over her head at the houses across the street.

  This was not what Devin had been expecting. Never once had she said anything about breaking up. Until that moment, she hadn’t even let herself think about how she would go about it if she did break it off. Now, it seemed, she would have to make a choice, would have to tell him she didn’t like what they’d become, that she didn’t think she could continue seeing him. She was going to have to tell him this, and without any mental rehearsal. The palms of her hands grew damp. She rubbed them on her jeans. What could she say that wouldn’t sound stupid or clichéd? They had been together four years.

  Kyle was waiting for her response. He was looking straight at her now. Devin stared down at the ground.

  The tears on her lashes spilled onto her cheeks. There was nothing to say. Somehow they both knew this. In the end, Kyle simply turned around and walked down the dirt path toward the other side of the park.

  Devin watched his receding back, poker straight, hands stuffed in the pockets of his J.Crew cargo pants. She couldn’t believe she’d actually broken up with him, hadn’t even tried to work things out.

  Long after Kyle had disappeared from sight Devin continued to sit on the bench, watching the sky deepen from violet to midnight blue, watching the lights come on and shades being drawn in the homes surrounding the park. She was still reeling from the rush of silence that had, without warning, swept Kyle right out of her life.

  She thought of the day she and Liz had gone to the Gap, how she had sought refuge in the dressing room only to find herself face to face with a stranger when she looked in the mirror. But until now there had been Kyle. When she was with him, she could almost make herself believe she was still the same person. Now that thin veil of self-deception was gone. Kyle had taken it with him, leaving her with only a numb emptiness.

  BY WEDNESDAY NINE CASES OF WEST NILE VIRUS HAD been diagnosed among the residents of Bellehaven. In a town of fewer than two thousand, this was considered an epidemic. No one, least of all the people at the county health department, could figure out why the virus seemed, for the moment anyway, to be isolated in this tiny out-of-the-way town on the bank of the Delaware. The last town in New Jersey—as one reporter from The Star-Ledger had recently discovered while researching his story—to give up its crank phones back in the late 1950s. In his article, the reporter had called the town an anachronism, with its square park surrounded by stately Victorian homes, a park with dirt paths crisscrossing to opposite corners. X marked the spot. No one in town knew whether to be insulted or pleased by the reference. But they had little time to ponder such trivialities. They were far too worried about what was happening to them.

  If the disease had been the only issue, they would have probably shrugged it off. But a few of the more astute citizens, like Clyde Zukowski, the custodian at the high school, and Marge Woodley, who ran the Laundromat on Main Street, and dozens of other concerned residents, had pieced together, from shreds of recent events, a tapestry of terror. Floods of frogs, black clouds of crows, tornadoes of mosquitoes, blistering heat waves followed by blizzards dumping more than a half foot of snow in early spring, killing new buds. It wasn’t natural, they said. And most of Bellehaven’s citizens had begun to agree.

  The same ambitious young reporter who had called the town an anachronism had also stumbled upon the legend of Jessup Wildemere. Seeing the possibilities for an intriguing feature story, maybe something that might be picked up by the Associated Press and published nationwide, he set out to reveal the infamous past of Bellehaven, suggesting it might be the only town in the county, perhaps in the entire state, to have hanged a man the day after he’d been arrested. Maybe that sort of thing happened in the Old West, the reporter wrote, but New Jersey was one of the original thirteen colonies, one of the first states. The law was the very foundation of our new nation. Law-abiding citizens were supposed to lock their alleged criminals in jail until they could be tried before an appointed judge with the benefit of counsel. The reporter had almost gleefully referred to the hanging of Jessup Wildemere as a vigilante brouhaha.

  The residents of Bellehaven were in an uproar. They were God-fearing people and Jessup Wildemere was a cold-blooded murderer. Plain and simple. And besides, the incident had taken place more than two hundred years before. It had nothing to do with them.

  Still, some people whispered the town had been cursed. A few even believed black magic might be behind the recent chaos. People began to avert their eyes when they passed each other on Main Street or in the aisles of the A&P. Surely someone was to blame for these bizarre events. And it certainly wasn’t a man who’d been dead since 1798. For all anyone knew, the source might well be a neighbor, or someone living right under their very own roof. No one knew whom to trust.

  They might have tried to explain away the frogs, the crows, and mosquitoes. But this many cases of West Nile virus in one small town had them sick with fear. That was why a team from the National Institutes of Health had recently set up camp in the Riverstone Bed and Breakfast beside the Delaware. That was why nervous news teams made sure to douse themselves with insect repellant before they set foot outside their vans.

  People who never turned on the nightly news now sat religiously in front of their TVs every evening at six o’clock, clicking their remotes, hopping back and forth between the major networks, attempting to catch a glimpse of themselves or their neighbors being interviewed. Bellehaven and its West Nile virus “epidemic” were big news on all the stations.

  The NIH tried to calm fears by explaining that most people wouldn’t get sick from a mosquito carrying the virus. Some might experience flulike symptoms. Only a rare few might become extremely ill. Right now, the mosquito population was minimal. The blizzard had brought them under control. Since the disease showed up five to fifteen days after the person had been bitten, the people from NIH deduced that the residents who were currently suffering from symptoms had
probably received bites during the four-day heat wave.

  Despite the assurances of public health officials, residents began to panic. People who discovered even a single mosquito bite lined up outside Dr. Braddock’s office across the street from the south side of the park, making a line that extended halfway around the block.

  The town council held an emergency meeting and voted to begin spraying earlier than usual. For two nights in a row, people were instructed to close windows and to bring pets and lawn furniture indoors while trucks drove through neighborhoods spraying thick clouds of insecticide.

  The more fainthearted residents even went so far as to pack up their vans and SUVs with their children, pets, and a few basic necessities and head out of town until the whole thing blew over.

  The next morning the headline in the Bellehaven Press read “West Nile Virus Claims Its First Bellehaven Victim.” The unfortunate casualty was an eighty-seven-year-old man who had lived alone in a small trailer near the river. Devin’s hands were shaking as she scanned the article while she stirred a pot of oatmeal for her brothers and sisters. By now the doctors had determined that her grandmother had also been stricken with the virus. They were concerned that it might develop into the sometimes deadly encephalitis.

  Like everyone else in town, Devin had begun to think the residents of Bellehaven had been singled out. Cursed for reasons no one understood. With the count of cases rising daily, more people began to leave town. They took their children out of school, apparently not caring one whit whether their kids would have to spend July and August in summer school to make up the work. Some of the McCaffertys’ neighbors on Meadowlark Drive had gone to stay with relatives in nearby towns; others had taken rooms in motels outside the county.

  As soon as school was out, Devin headed for the bus stop. She was meeting her mother at the hospital. Since she and Kyle had split, Devin didn’t dare ask him to give her a ride. And Danny had track.