A Killer Harvest

by Paul Cleave

  “I must have picked up the knife along the way,” he says.

  “Tell me about this man. Did you recognize him?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Kind of? Do you know from where?”

  “Not really,” he says.

  “Do you remember struggling with him?” she asks.

  “I want to go home,” he says, and gets to his feet.

  “Please, Joshua, it’s important you try to remember. Did you struggle with him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  They are on the other side of the embankment from where Scott died. They begin to walk, passing the blood left behind by his uncle.

  “Have you found him?” he asks. “The man who did this.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Where was he?”

  “On the other side of the tracks.”

  He looks in that direction, but can’t see anything except the hill of stones, the tracks, and the tops of the fences beyond. “What did he say?” he asks.

  “He didn’t say anything,” she says, and she’s looking at him funny now. Like she’s examining his expressions. “He’s dead, Joshua.”

  “Oh,” he says, then he isn’t sure what else to add. Then he figures it out. “That’s why you asked if we struggled. You think I killed him and took the knife off him.”

  “Did you?”

  “No,” he says. “At least . . . at least I don’t think so. Why did any of this have to happen?” he asks, but he knows why. It’s because of the curse. “Just who was that guy?”

  “There’s a more important question,” she says. “If you didn’t do this, then who did?”

  FORTY-ONE

  The splinter comes back. It makes Joshua’s head pound, and it gets worse with every footstep. He rubs his temples, only to find that rubbing his temples doesn’t help.

  “An ambulance will check you out while you’re here,” Vega says.

  “It’s just a headache,” he says.

  “You were knocked out,” she says. “You can’t take that lightly. You’ll need treatment and observation.”

  The grasshoppers are no longer making any noise in the grass, or perhaps his ears haven’t recovered enough to hear them. The sandflies aren’t bothering him as much either, but perhaps that’s because they’re all drinking from the blood that’s been spilled. “Will I go to jail for what I did to Uncle Ben?”

  “Is everything you told me true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then no. You won’t be going to jail.”

  To his right, the graffiti on the fences changes in style, different patches representing different artists, some of it intricate, some of it swear words, the rest of it various caricatures of the human anatomy that Joshua finds hard to keep his new eyes off of.

  He pulls those eyes away. “So what will happen?”

  Instead of answering, she asks a question of her own. “Have you thought any more about how you knew the man who attacked you?”

  He remembers telling Scott to run, because he knew the man who had found them was a bad man. He was the man from his dreams, but he can’t tell Detective Vega that without sounding like a crazy person. As she did to him, he answers her question with one of his own. “Do you know who he is?”

  “His name is Vincent Archer,” she says. “Do you know the name?”

  He thinks about the name. Visualizes the man, tries to find a connection between the two things, but can’t find one. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  They come to a stop. “Tell me,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You’re holding something back, Joshua. This is not the time to do that. I knew . . . Are you okay?”

  He crouches down onto his hands and knees and vomits into the grass. His body goes from heaving to shuddering, and he feels lightheaded. Detective Vega crouches down next to him and puts a hand on his back. He finishes throwing up, then gets upright onto his knees. He tears off another flap of his shirt and uses it to wipe his mouth, then, unsure what to do with it, leaves it on the ground next to the mess he made.

  “I’m fine,” he says, and he’s still shaking.

  “You don’t look fine,” Vega says.

  “I guess I’m not. What I did to Uncle Ben, it just makes me feel so ill.”

  “I know, Joshua, I know. But the best way you can help him right now is to be honest with me. I need you to tell me what you’re not telling me. I knew your father, I worked with him, I respected him, and if he were here he’d be telling you the same thing, and that’s to be honest.”

  Joshua isn’t sure that’s true. There are tons of people stuck in jail cells right now who shouldn’t be, all because they spoke up when they shouldn’t have. The proof of that is in the news stories that cover the eventual release of the lucky ones. The rest are left to pay the price for crimes they didn’t commit. He thinks that if his dad were here, he’d be telling Joshua he needs a lawyer.

  But his dad isn’t here.

  “Whatever it is, Joshua, I would rather hear it from you than learn it from somewhere else. You need to tell me.”

  “You’ll think I’m weird,” he says, as she helps him to his feet. “That I’m a freak.”

  “I won’t, I promise. I would never do that.”

  He takes a breath and exhales slowly. He looks into her eyes and watches for a reaction. “I’ve dreamed about him.”

  The reaction is there. A flicker of disbelief. She tries to cover it. “What kind of dream?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Please, Joshua, tell me.”

  He thinks about the forest, the fishing rods, the mountain bike, and the woman. “I recognized him, the same way I recognized the man who killed my dad, and the way I recognized Uncle Ben the first time I saw him.”

  “You recognized Ben when you first saw him?”

  “Yeah, the day Erin fell from the roof. I think my dad and this guy today, somehow they knew each other. Maybe dad arrested him in the past.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying,” she says.

  “It’s called cellular memory,” Joshua says. “And I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Cellular memory?”

  He starts to explain it to her, but doesn’t get far before she interrupts him. It turns out she has heard of it—just not by that name.

  “You’re saying it’s a real thing?” she asks.

  “I don’t know what else to think,” he says.

  “Vincent Archer doesn’t have a criminal record,” she says. “Your dad never arrested him, and there’s no reason for them to know each other.”

  “You asked me to tell you,” he says, “so I told you.”

  “And now you believe you’re seeing what your dad saw.”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” he says. He resumes walking and she stays with him. “I can’t tell you anything more than that. But you haven’t said why he was coming after me.”

  She tells him they discovered Vincent Archer is the man who hurt Erin. They entered his house. They found photographs of Ben and those close to him pinned to a wall. There was a list, and Joshua’s name was on that list.

  “We couldn’t find you,” she says. “We sent police cars looking.”

  He remembers the cars racing up and down the streets.

  “We tried calling you,” she says. “But your phone was off.”

  How different things would have been if his phone had worked. Perhaps Scott had a curse of his own. He’s the one who broke the phone, and the events that played out were allowed to play out because of that. “It’s broken,” he says.

  They reach the intersection. There’s an ambulance pulling up. “Let’s get you looked at,” she says.

  “Has anybody called Mom? Does she know?”

  “What’s her number?”

  He knows his mother’s number from memory, but when he tries to recite it, he can’t.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I’ll be able to get hold of he
r.”

  The ambulance comes to a stop and the doors open. A paramedic helps him climb into the back. Joshua sits on the gurney. Because Vega’s hands are covered in blood, she gets another detective to photograph Joshua’s hands and take swabs of the blood on them before she disappears. Despite everything he’s said about the attack, he knows she’s skeptical. That’s her job.

  The paramedic has muscles that poke through his uniform, making Joshua think he’s the kind of guy the Scotts of the world would never pick on.

  “Joshua, right?” he asks, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

  “Right.”

  “I’m Sven,” he says. “I hear you were knocked out.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I want you to do something for me. I want you to repeat these words after me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Fish, tree, house, five plus five equals ten.”

  “Fish. Tree. House. Five plus five equals ten,” Joshua says, wondering what the point is.

  “Good. Now tell me what happened,” Sven says.

  Joshua tells him about getting punched, about hitting the ground and everything going dark, about coming to and passing out again a few times.

  “Do you feel sick? Nauseous?”

  “I threw up earlier, a couple of times, but I feel okay now. Just the headache.”

  “Dizzy?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “But you were,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” Sven asks, and holds up three fingers.

  “Three,” Joshua says.

  “Now how many?”

  “Still three,” Joshua says.

  “Good. What about hearing? Notice any hearing loss?”

  “A little,” Joshua says, “but that’s because a train raced past. It’s better now.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Sven says, and leans over and moves his fingertips slowly through Joshua’s hair, revealing where he was hit. “There’s some blood up here. We’re going to have to clean you up, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to need any stitches. Your hands and knees hurt?”

  “They do, but mostly my hand.”

  “Okay. Let’s get those cleaned up too.”

  The paramedic soaks some pads in a chemical out of a bottle, then wipes Joshua’s hands clean. He replaces the pads a few times, then moves on to his knees. The pads go into a plastic bag that the paramedic seals up tight. Joshua figures it’s all part of the evidence gathering. When the wounds are clean, the paramedic applies ointment and puts some bandaging on his hand. He cleans Joshua’s head wound but doesn’t bandage it.

  “They’ll take a closer look at the hospital,” he says. “Can you remember my name?”

  “It’s . . . umm . . . no,” Joshua says.

  “Can you remember how many fingers I was holding up earlier?”

  “Three.”

  “Remember the words I asked you to say earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were they?”

  “Fish, tree, umm . . . fish?”

  “You remember the numbers?”

  “Ah, yeah, five.”

  “Is that it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, Joshua.”

  The paramedic climbs out and goes and talks to Detective Vega. She’s using a bottle of water and a towel to clean the blood off her hands. His mom comes into view. She rushes up to the detective, who points in Joshua’s direction. She runs towards him, Joshua already climbing out.

  She wraps her arms around him. “I was so scared,” she says.

  Over her shoulder he can see crime scene tape being strung up. Crowds of people are gathering. An army of bystanders. His mom is hugging him so hard he’s struggling to breathe. He tries to imagine how he looks, with blood and bandaging on him, his shirt missing large sections in the front.

  “I couldn’t have lost you,” she says. “I couldn’t have.”

  “You’re going to if you don’t stop squeezing me so hard.”

  She loosens her hold. “Detective Vega explained everything on the phone. What happened to Uncle Ben wasn’t your fault.”

  It feels like his fault. After all, he was the one holding the knife.

  “What did the paramedic say? Are you okay?”

  “He said Joshua needs to go to the hospital,” Vega says, coming over. Her hands are clean, but there’s still blood on her shirt and on her cheek. “He’s going to need some tests, and he’ll need observing and may have to stay the night. We’ll also need a statement.”

  Joshua sees Olillia standing in the crowd. He fights the urge to run over and hug her. Her face is pale and she looks like she’s been crying. She waves at him. He waves back. His mom and Vega look into the crowd. “Can I go and see my friend?”

  “Who is she?” Vega asks.

  “Olillia.”

  “Olillia?”

  “From school. She walked some of the way home with me.”

  “She was with you? On the tracks?” Vega asks.

  “Not all the way. She left at the previous intersection.”

  “I’m going to have to interview her,” Vega says, “which means you can’t talk to her now. Perhaps later. Right now we need to get you to the hospital.”

  “I think . . . under the circumstances, I want Joshua to have a lawyer before giving a statement,” his mom says.

  “Joshua isn’t in trouble,” Vega says.

  “Even so, I think it’s for the best.”

  Vega nods. “Okay.”

  “And Ben?” his mom asks. “Have you heard anything?”

  “They’re still working on him,” Vega says. “At this stage it could go either way.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Vega watches the ambulance drive off with both Joshua and his mom in it. The crime scene is filling with people. The train that came through earlier will have destroyed some of the evidence on the lines, but she’s confident there’ll be enough here to either support or betray Joshua’s version of events. At the moment, officers are canvassing the houses that back onto the train tracks, as well as ones located on the streets the train tracks cross. Somebody must have seen something.

  She walks to the barricade and to the girl who waved earlier. The girl has dark hair tied into a ponytail and a pretty face and big blue eyes. She reminds Vega of her kid sister. “You’re Olivia?” she asks.

  The girl looks concerned. She nods. “Olillia,” she says.

  “I want you to come with me,” Vega says.

  “Okay.”

  Vega leads her to a patrol car away from the crowd. She places Olillia with her back to it, so she is facing away from the spectators. “Wait here for me,” she says, then heads to her car. From the back she grabs her backpack and the fresh blouse she keeps inside it for moments like this. Ben has a backpack just like it in the trunk too. There’s another ambulance here, and she goes into the back of it and peels off her bloody blouse. She uses the towel she cleaned her hands with earlier to wipe herself down, and pulls on the fresh top, then throws her stuff back into her car just as the medical examiner pulls up. They exchange a small wave just before the medical examiner starts getting briefed by one of the detectives. Vega heads back to Olillia. “You walked home with Joshua?”

  “Yes. I mean, kind of. Not all the way. Is it true somebody died?”

  “Whose idea was it to take the train tracks?”

  “Oh no,” Olillia says, and raises her hand to her mouth. “Is that what happened? Did somebody attack Joshua? I thought . . . I thought he’d be okay. I mean, I always take the tracks, but never this far, and . . . I . . . I don’t know what happened. Is this . . . Did this happen because of me? Josh was going to take the roads, but I convinced him . . . I talked him into taking the tracks.”

  The girl is on the verge of losing it. Her big blue eyes look even bigger as the tears shimmer on the edges of them. Vega puts her hand on her shoulder. “Please, tell me what you know,” she says.


  Olillia confirms she and Joshua parted ways at the previous intersection. She got home and saw on social media a few minutes later that somebody had died. There were photographs of a dead boy in uniform taken from people poking cameras over their fences, but she couldn’t tell who it was, and she didn’t know if it was real.

  “I was sure it was going to be Joshua,” she says. She borrowed her brother’s car and drove here, parking as close as she could, then running the rest of the way. “If it’s not Joshua who was killed, then who?” Olillia asks.

  It’s only a matter of time before the dead boy’s name is released anyway—perhaps by somebody who gets a better look at one of the photographs that these sightseeing neighbors have taken. Vega figures she may as well tell the girl. It might also give her a better idea of what happened.

  “The victim is Scott Adams,” she says, and she watches Olillia for a reaction and gets one. A huge one. The girl’s hands fly to her mouth and her eyes go even wider. “You knew him?”

  She nods.

  “How well?”

  “Not well,” she says, wiping at the tears. “But we’ve gone through school together. He lives . . . He lives on my street.”

  “Do you know why Scott wouldn’t have turned off at the same road, then?”

  Olillia shakes her head. Then slowly she nods. “Maybe,” she says, and looks down at her feet.

  “Olillia?”

  “Scott . . . Scott was being mean to Joshua all day. He . . . soaked him with a can of soda, and ruined his cell phone by pouring the rest into his bag. Later, in woodshop, Scott blew sawdust into his eyes. I told Joshua not to say anything, because . . . because I’ve seen it where that makes it worse. But then . . .” She raises her hands to her mouth again.

  “What is it?”

  “Later in class I told our teacher what Scott had done. I had to . . . because . . . well, I just had to. She made Scott wait back after school. I think she told him off. Maybe Scott thinks that Joshua told on him? Maybe he was following him to . . . to beat him up. Is that what happened? Was there a fight? Joshua . . . I only met him today, but he couldn’t have . . . he wouldn’t have done this, and if I hadn’t said anything to Mrs. Thompson, then Scott wouldn’t have followed him. None of this would have happened.”