by Billy Coffey
“No one likes being alone,” Kate said. “You were alone.”
Lucy took a step closer to the curb. Zach caught the tennis ball and took a step closer to them both.
“I wasn’t,” Lucy said. “Alone, I mean. How’s your brother?”
“A little banged up, but otherwise okay. Gas station will be closed for a couple days. Andy’s too.”
“You said I can’t believe everything in the paper. Did a boy really get killed?”
Kate stole a quick look at Zach. Zach was quicker and had already turned away. “Unfortunately that’s one thing Trevor got right. His name was Eric Thayer.”
Lucy took another step. Both feet on the sidewalk now, though Kate noticed Lucy’s toes were pointed away toward the street. Everything about this scene upset Kate, but nothing bothered her more than seeing those feet turned to run. It made her feel like a bully. Like a monster.
“Which one killed him?” Lucy asked.
Kate cocked her head to the side, not understanding. “Does that matter?”
“I don’t know. I guess it would make me feel better knowing the one who killed him was the one who died here last night and not the one who got away.”
“Well, in my mind they both killed Eric. They both put Andy in the hospital. They both hurt my brother. I’d say the rest of the town believes the same. One of them’s not our problem anymore. It’s the other who’s got everybody scared.” Kate pointed to the newspaper. “Also the one’s got Trevor talking like a revival preacher.”
Lucy held the paper up. “Charlie Givens died of fright. Is that true?”
“Charlie Givens died of a heart attack, nothing more,” Kate said. “Don’t let that nonsense scare you, Lucy. Jake’s got the county police all over this town. They’ll get Taylor Hathcock. Just a matter of time.”
That didn’t seem to bring as much relief to Lucy’s face as Kate expected. Zach eased a bit more to his right and tossed his ball against the bricks.
“Taylor Hathcock,” Lucy said. “Is he from around here?”
“No. Jake thinks he’s from Camden. Charlie Givens was from there.”
“So you never saw them before?”
“Me?” Kate pointed to her chest. “No, honey. Camden folk and Mattingly folk generally agree the mountain between us is there for a reason. We don’t mix well.”
“You’re sure?” Lucy asked. “You told me you help people. Maybe you helped Taylor and forgot.”
“I don’t forget the people I help,” Kate said, and she thought, If you doubt that, I have a notebook full of names to prove it. “They’re criminals. Why in the world would I know someone like that?”
Lucy seemed to consider that. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t understand.”
“I think we’re supposed to be disgusted and mad and hurt, but I don’t think we’re supposed to understand. I think if we did, we’d be less human than we are.”
Lucy stepped forward. She was so close that Kate could reach out and touch her, but she didn’t dare. Zach moved back to the steps.
Kate said, “Tell me what happened to you last night, Lucy.”
Lucy looked down to her shorts and legs. Felt her hair. “I got in a fight with my father. Guess I cut my hair to get even. He left again. He always leaves, it’s his job. I went to a party after that. Guess things got a little out of hand. I wasn’t home when everything . . . happened.”
“When’s your daddy coming home?”
“Wednesday.”
“Well, until then, if you’d feel safer staying somewhere else—”
“No,” Lucy said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Mayor Wallis is calling a town meeting tomorrow night, just to get the facts out and calm people down. It’d do you some good to come. Might put your fears to rest.”
Lucy nodded. “Maybe.”
Kate thought they were done then, at least for now. Lucy stepped off the curb and back into the street, then turned around with the newspaper in her hand. “Have you ever thought there was another world out there?” she asked. “A better one?”
“You mean like heaven?” Zach asked.
“No. Maybe.” Lucy looked at Kate. “I mean, have you ever gotten the feeling that everything’s . . . broken? Like the more you try to put the pieces back, the more you realize they won’t fit together again?”
Kate offered her a tired smile. “You have no idea, Lucy. No idea at all.”
She closed her arms around Zach and thought of the night before. She thought of the tears she spilled at Phillip’s grave and how the dark had closed in around her. She thought of her notebook. They were pieces, both. Fragments Kate had spent twenty years trying to fasten together in the hope those two broken halves could make a whole. For a moment as brief and silent as heat lightning, she thought back to that day behind the high school bleachers. She remembered Phillip’s face and how his eyes had sparkled as she’d taken his hand. And there on a quiet street with Lucy and Zach, Kate felt the veil between worlds begin to thin.
It was only for a moment, nothing more. Just long enough to feel breath upon her shoulder and hear the soft whisper of her name uttered by a voice she’d never forgotten.
8
Taylor had remained near the rusty gate all this time, hiding in a thick copse of pine and writing in his book. He didn’t want to remain there, so close to the world. Yet he’d been reluctant to go back to the cabin too, afraid for Lucy to make the long walk back alone.
The sun had been high when he watched her pull away and head to town. Now the moon took its place. Taylor’s body had not run free in those long hours between, but his mind had. As the day wore on, his thoughts followed a meandering trail that dipped and turned through the thorny places inside him, casting doubt where a slim hope had been until Taylor became convinced that Lucy Seekins would not return. She’d been caught, maybe. Or she was lost. Either seemed likely. The one remaining explanation (and try as he might, Taylor could not help but consider this the most likely of all) was that she had simply fled. Dwelling on that thought was like toppling the first in a long line of carefully laid dominoes and being unable to prevent the consequences—Lucy had run, which fell into Lucy finding the sheriff, which fell into her telling the town of the dream and the Hole, on down the line, one after the other, until the last domino had been struck and Taylor was left with only the certainty that the whole town of Mattingly was on its way to usurp his kingdom. A panic as black as the night flooded him. That feeling only increased when the wind carried the steady whine of Lucy’s engine. Taylor saw headlights like demon eyes coming down the narrow way. The car stopped at the gate. The headlights stayed on. A door opened. Shut.
Then, “Taylor?”
Lucy stared into the dark. Taylor crept close, easing himself from the pines near the gate.
“Who’s with you, lady?” he asked. “You mean to betray me?”
“No. Nobody’s with me. Where are you?”
“Where I am don’t matter. Where you been does. Sent you away hours ago.”
“I went by my house,” Lucy said. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to pinpoint his whispers. “Then I went to town like you asked. Come out, Taylor. You’re scaring me.”
Taylor did, though only after a long pause that was meant to show the lady who was in charge. He rose just outside the gate, scaring her in the process, and peered at the car’s empty seats.
“You’re alone,” he said. “You found no one bearing shoes?”
“Everybody wears shoes, Taylor, and none of them leave footprints in concrete. Whatever you’re looking for, I doubt we’ll find it. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe you’re not supposed to find whatever it is. Maybe it’s supposed to find you.”
Taylor hadn’t thought of that, though he’d never admit it. This lady was a smart one. “Charlie?”
“He got arrested,” Lucy said. Her eyes caught the moonlight and flickered. She looked at her feet. “I don’t know what happened after that, but he’s dead.”
&nb
sp; “What say?”
She couldn’t look at him. Instead, Lucy reached out and laced her fingers through Taylor’s own. “I’m so sorry, Taylor.”
“Charlie’s dead?”
She nodded and flinched as though bracing herself for the sadness that would come. But it was more bewilderment that crossed Taylor’s aged and cracked face. Because Charlie couldn’t die. No one died in the dream. They either woke up or they kept right on dreaming, and Charlie couldn’t be awake at all because Taylor was the only one who could do that and he hadn’t and so what happened and why was everything suddenly so hard to figure?
“Taylor?” Lucy asked. She squeezed his hand and leaned in, laying her head on his chest. Taylor’s long beard rubbed against her cheek. “What are you going to do? They’re after you. There’s county police everywhere. They know your name.”
“Let them look all they want,” Taylor said. “Won’t nobody come to this Holler. You sure Charlie’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“But you saw no proof?”
“No. I guess they’d already taken him away.”
Taylor smiled. No proof.
“What about Kate Griffith? Did you find her?”
Lucy buried her head deeper into him. She said nothing. Taylor was about to ask her again when she finally spoke.
“I didn’t find her. I haven’t been in Mattingly long, Taylor. I don’t know a lot of people, and nobody was out for me to ask. Everybody’s scared. It’s all in the paper. I know what happened last night. A boy got killed. Did you do that?”
“You assume it was me?” Taylor asked. “Charlie was there too. Don’t go thinking you know a story because you’ve been told a chapter.”
He had not lied with that answer, but nor did Taylor believe he had told the truth. And he understood Lucy felt much the same when she pulled herself away from him.
“I don’t know if you did it or Charlie,” she said, “but I want you to know I didn’t come back because of you. I came back for what you showed me in the woods.”
Those words should have riled him, but Taylor accepted what Lucy said without a word. Charlie was gone. Taylor didn’t care why Lucy came back, only that she had.
He kept her close and said, “’Twas me that Woke that boy.”
Lucy stepped away. Taylor tried to hold on to her but couldn’t. She shook her hand from his.
“It was you?” she asked. “You killed him?”
“I Woke him.”
“By killing him.”
“By Waking him.”
“Fine, then,” Lucy said. “You woke him by stabbing him.”
Taylor took a step toward her. “How you get out of a dream, lady? You wake up. You wake up, and you ain’t there no more. That boy, he’s gone now. I saw his heart and couldn’t stomach it. That old man wanted to keep him right on suffering, but I couldn’t abide by it. You see?”
Lucy looked as though she didn’t see at all. “Everybody’s saying you’re the devil.”
“Devil ain’t a man,” Taylor said, “the devil’s in a man. Like he’s in you right now, tempting you to doubt despite the wonder I showed you. He was in that old man. In Charlie too. Charlie just wanted that money, and I had to back his play. That’s what friends do for friends. As I’d do for you.”
Lucy blinked. Her eyes softened. Taylor thought he’d just said something magical, but he didn’t know what.
“You’d do for me?” she asked.
“I would. You take that as you like. I won’t make you stay if leaving’s in your mind, and I cain’t make you believe. It takes time for a mind to sway to the unthinkable. But if you doubt me, you think on that Hole. That Hole’s all you need to know I speak the truth. Get back in that car if you want, lady. Go home to what life you lived. But know you will not cross this gate again if you do. The few who tried found themselves wishing they hadn’t, and on that I’ll swear. Or you can come with me and help me find what came up outta this Holler. He’ll tell us where Kate Griffith is. Then you’ll see fine.”
Taylor stepped aside, clearing the way to Lucy’s car. He swept his arm out, almost shooing her way, and waited for her decision.
“She’s not a Griffith anymore,” Lucy said. “I know that much. She’s married.”
Taylor lowered his arm. “Who’d she wed?”
“The sheriff. His name’s Jake Barnett.”
Taylor’s flesh came alive in a series of quivering gooseflesh. He could almost feel his arteries widening, the blood rushing through his body in violent pumps, swooning him. Jake Barnett, he thought. Jake had wed Kate. And now the meaning behind everything that had happened in the last day came so pure and bright that Taylor attached a kind of beauty to it. He saw it as the hand of God, the very hand that had built Taylor’s cabin and breathed magic into Taylor’s binoculars and felled the tree that became the perch from which Taylor looked down on the town that had robbed him of all.
“I know why I had to wake that boy.” His voice was quiet, a whispered awe that barely reached Lucy’s ears. “It’s because of Jake. Jake and Kate both. To . . . draw them.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucy said.
“There’s things you know and things you don’t, lady, but those things will come. I’ll see to it. But you have to help me. You have to go back to town and find me Jake’s phone number. Charlie had a little phone he put in his pocket. I’ll need one of those too. But you have to do it right now.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever came up outta this Holler means to put an end to something, and he needs me to do it.”
“Are you going to hurt them?” Lucy asked.
Taylor said no. Lucy believed him. Much like Taylor had believed her when she’d said she couldn’t find Kate.
“Then I don’t have to go to town.” Lucy dug into her front pockets. A cell phone appeared from one, a slip of paper from the other. “I have Jake’s number right here.”
9
Despite everything that had happened—or maybe because of it—I was determined to make that night as peaceful and predictable as all the nights once were. I tucked Zach into bed as always, still said, “I love you, and I’m proud of you,” still smiled when Zach answered the same.
Yet it seemed even as I did and said those things that nothing had continued on as it once was. Zach may have peered back at me through the same eyes (one bright and healthy, the other black and swollen) as he had Friday night, but now there was a fear behind them. And he may have laid his head upon the same pillow as he had all those nights before, but this time I spied the orange tip of his cap gun poking out from the edge. Put there, I knew, in case the bad man came. Even the toy town on his bedroom floor had been altered with a handful of yellow twist ties wrapped around the Lego BP and Texaco. That sight broke my heart in a way nothing else did. I understood then that I couldn’t keep the world from my boy forever. There were dark things he’d have to encounter, secrets he would have to know. I could try to hide those things from him, could build up thick doors around him and lock them tight, but still the truth of the world he lived in and the blood coursing through him would seep through the cracks like a heavy rain.
I supposed much the same had happened to Eric Thayer’s brother. Jabber, he called himself. He’d been waiting at the BP when I arrived. It was a short meeting punctuated by long silences, an “I’m sorry” from me and a “Thank you” from him, there being little else that seemed proper to say. He’d wanted a box from under the counter inside, something he said would make Andy feel better. It was beyond me how a person could lose someone so close and still have room enough to mourn someone else, but I asked no questions. I simply went inside and fetched an old wooden box I’d never seen before, stepping around the red snow angels on the floor that had been scrubbed a dull pink by the county’s cleanup crew. I didn’t know if getting that box was the right thing to do. I didn’t much care.
I waited until bedtime to tell Kate all of this, hoping talk would keep me awake. Bu
t that well of exhaustion bubbled up in me again when I left Zach’s room, and Kate was already asleep. I crawled into bed and shook her, gently at first and then harder. Wanting Kate to wake up, wanting to tell her of Jabber and Andy’s box, willing even to speak of Justus. She mumbled and stretched out her hand. I reach down for another stone and turn, meaning to place it on the pile. On Phillip’s shattered leg, perhaps, or to hide his bloody chest. But he isn’t lying at my feet, nor is he looking up to me from the riverbank. He sits instead atop the rockpile, a king surveying his realm. His sneakers rest upon the rocks, his hands on his bloody knees. The hood of Phillip’s sweatshirt is pulled tight. Only his broken glasses peer out.
You need to stop, Jake.
The sweat on my face glistens in the setting sun. My back cracks and pops as I straighten. Even here in the dream, I’m tired.
“Because I’m dead,” I tell him.
Yes.
“Because you’re coming back.”
Yes.
“I can’t,” I tell him. I bend again and lay the stone over Phillip’s shoes.
“I can’t stop,” and I think—I’ll have to bury Charlie next, because I killed him too.
You didn’t kill Charlie, Phillip says. And neither did I. Charlie killed Charlie. Can’t live like he did and expect to go on forever, can you?
I bend for the next stone and realize it’s the one I just laid. I look at Phillip’s shoes. He wriggles his toes and smiles. The worn canvas ripples with the movement.
See? he says. Do you know what hell is, Jake?
I don’t answer. I raise the stone in front of myself and hold it there as though covering my nakedness.
Repetition, Jake. Hell is repetition. It’s doing the same thing over and over and never changing anything. You cover me with rocks, I’m still here. You scream, no help comes. You run, but only back to this place. Do you see what your sins have wrought?
Phillip stands and steps down. I shudder when his shadow falls over me and drop the stone. There is a crunching sound as the rock topples down—twenty feet, as I judge it—and lands at the river’s edge. I feel Phillip’s icy hand slip into my own and the primal scream that touch kindles inside me.
