The rope split apart in the dirt. Rook snatched it in his fist and followed it to the noose around his neck.
‘We can work on getting that off once we’re well out of here,’ Joe said.
Suddenly Rook’s eyes widened, hearing something that Joe couldn’t. ‘She’s coming,’ he said placidly.
Joe grabbed his shoulder and heaved him up. Through a crack in her curtains, Joe saw the mom standing at the foot of the stairs in her nightgown. She must have spotted him for she let out a scream. Rook bolted, scrambling through the grass towards the street. Joe flung himself over the bushes, his feet catching on a branch, and he fell flat on his stomach. The porch light shattered the night, spilling over the walkway and illuminating his back. He jumped quickly to his feet and, just as the front door groaned open, he vaulted over the fence, falling onto his side.
The woman came down the path, her nightgown billowing in the wind. Her carbine hung across her arms. Joe pressed himself against the fence, watching through a crack. She stopped out in the street, looking right and left. ‘Rook!’ she screamed. ‘Come back to your mother.’ Her voice carried off into the night. ‘You belong with me, Rook!’
She went down to the curb and craned her neck towards the bridge where Rook had run, then she walked the length the fence, running the barrel of her carbine along the posts. Joe pulled back his head as the barrel clattered over the part where his eye had been. Again she stopped and screamed, her face screwing up into something grotesque: ‘Rook! Come back to me!’
Joe held his breath, his hands flattened against the fence, knees buried in grass and dirt, watching as she turned and made her way slowly back to the house, sobbing. She collapsed on the front porch and wept uncontrollably, ignited in the yellow light.
‘Roooook,’ she howled like a shewolf calling for its cub.
………
Halfway across the bridge, soaked in cold sweat, and peering through the fog, Joe heard music coming from somewhere to his right. He slowed, letting the engine’s roar turn to a growl, and looked around wildly, searching for the source of the music. As the fog cleared momentarily, he noticed a man leaning against the side of the bridge. His first instinct was to race down the bridge and get away from possible danger; instead, he slowed the bike almost to a halt.
‘Hello?’ he called into the darkness. The man he thought he’d seen a moment ago was now lost from sight. ‘Rook?’
The music stopped and everything went silent. Then an old voice crept out of the fog, as controlled as if it was speaking in a library. ‘Hullo there.’
Joe stopped the bike completely, glancing back the way he’d come, then forward along the bridge, looking for anyone else who might be there with them. When he didn’t see anyone, he shut the engine off. As the motorcycle sputtered into silence, Joe’s blood went cold, nervous that he might just have signed his death sentence. Steeling himself, he pushed the bike onwards, breaking through the fog. The floodlight from a barge flashed upward and the side of the bridge erupted with light. Joe nearly stumbled backwards as he caught sight of the man directly in front of him, propped against the railing and wrapped in filthy rags.
‘Hullo again, son. Ya finally made it.’
‘Hello,’ Joe said, coming just a little closer. ‘Was that you making music earlier?’
‘Aye. That was me.’
The man looked past him, as if staring at something a long way off. Whenever he shifted position against the railing, the mass of rags covering his body ballooned and settled as if they had a life of their own. ‘Those that call me anythin’ atall, call me the old crow.’
‘Do you live on this bridge?’
‘Aye.’
‘For how long?’
‘Fitteen years.’
Joe drew closer to him, the old crow, and leaned an elbow against the railing, trying to meet the man’s eye. A loose-fitting rag was wrapped around his skull, covering the right eye, but the other was wide and moved around, though it looked clouded with cataracts. ‘Fifteen years? How have you survived that long?’ Joe asked.
The old crow didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into the folds of his rags and brought out some rancid chewing tobacco that he slipped into his mouth. ‘Describe yourself, son,’ he demanded as he chomped hard on the chew.
‘Describe myself?’ Joe cocked his head at the man.
‘You deaf? Tell me what ya look like. I never trusted names.’
‘Ohhh-kayyy,’ Joe said. He gave a quick description of himself, from height to weight to eye color to hair color. ‘Anything else you need to know about me?’ he asked when he had finished.
The old crow didn’t answer. A black tear curved along the grimy creases in his wrinkled skin. He brought a gloved hand to his face and swiped it across his eyes, then laid his forehead on the back of his hand. ‘Fitteen years I been lookin’ and you ain’t him.’
‘I’m not who?’
Suddenly the old crow shot his hand out, grabbed Joe by the hair, and dragged him closer, peering at him with his good eye. After jerking Joe’s head from side to side, taking in all he could, he released him and shuffled round to face the river, laying his arms heavily on the railing. ‘Him. The one I been lookin’ fer fer so long. Like a fool I gave ’im up when he was a youngster.’
‘Is he still in Slushland?’
‘I don’t know. I dumped ’im off at the stepsa the orphanage. But that got burnt down. I know I ain’t never gonna find him again. Even if I did, he ain’t gonna forgive me fer what I done. Only God forgives fer things like that, and God left these parts a long time ago.’
‘Is there something I can do?’
‘Nay. There ain’t nothin’ ta be done. Not by us leastways. My boy’s gone.’
Joe left the old man standing at the side of the bridge. As he made his way back to his motorcycle, the man called out in a wheezing voice. ‘You ever meeta boy who dun know his father, you tell ’im the old crow’s still lookin.’
Joe raised his hand in a wave as the fog congealed between them and the old man disappeared. Me and that boy will have something in common, if I ever do meet him, Joe thought. Then the music began again, a sad tune, played on some strange instrument by a strange, sad old man.
18
Only when Joe shut off the water in the shower did he hear the ringing of his cellphone fill the apartment he now squatted in.
‘I’m coming,’ he called out to nobody. ‘Hold your horses.’
Without drying off, he slung a shirt over his back, dug through his bag and pulled out his phone, expecting the call to be from his mom. Not many people had his number, and he hadn’t heard from her since he’d left. The caller had blocked their number. Joe hesitated, staring at the vibrating screen, trying to decide whether or not to answer.
What the hell, he thought, and slid a thumb across the phone. His blood went cold when Terrance’s bright red face appeared on the screen. ‘’Bout damn time you answered the damn phone. I’ve called ten times.’
‘I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. What do you want, Terrance?’
‘Look, kid’—Terrance brushed a hand through his hair and put on the most concerned expression he could muster—‘You gotta come home. Sarah is all torn up about you vanishing like that. I know we got our differences, but what d’ya say we work that shit out. For the sake of your mom, y’know?’
‘Is she there? Why didn’t she call me about this?’
‘You know how emotional she gets. The woman tears up just at the thought of speaking to you again. Hate to say it, Joe, but you’re her rock. Me, I mean, she loves me and all that shit. What we got is great, but I don’t hold her together like you do.’
Joe expected this from his mom, but never, not in a million years, from Terrance—not after that fight the night he left home. They were two men cut from a different cloth.
‘I’m not coming back to Hell Paso,’ Joe said, shaking his head. He began pacing around the room. ‘I’ve got a new life here. A job, a new apartment, the who
le thing.’
‘Where are you?’ Terrance asked, causing Joe to pause midstride and look down at his phone where Terrance’s sharp eyes stared up at him.
‘I’m not gonna tell you that.’
Terrance put his hand to his forehead and started massaging the wrinkles, his eyes focused on the ground. ‘Joe, I’m tryin’ to be nice here. I been tryin’ to level with you. All I want is to do right by your mom.’
‘I’ll visit Hell Paso once I’ve been here for a couple months. I had to leave. It was time. She knows that just as much as you and I. It’ll be easier on her the longer I’m away. She needs to get used to it is all. Leaving was no easy thing for me to do either.’
Terrance chuckled under his breath. He checked his surroundings to ensure that he was alone. Then his whole demeanor changed. ‘You better get your fuckin’ ass back home, boy. You have any idea, any fucking clue what you’re putting your mom through. You get your skinny ass back to this town and you get down on your knees and apologize to her. You get me you fuckin’ twerp?’
‘Piss off, Terrance. I’m done.’
Terrance pointed at the screen and roared: ‘I’m gonna find you, and I’ll drag your ass back if I got to! I want that bike back too, you fucking bast—’
Joe hurled his phone so hard against the wall that it shattered into three pieces. The blank, reflective screen flipped across the room, landing near his foot. Terrance was gone. Joe huffed, kicking it away, and went back to the bathroom to dry off.
What bothered him was that this was the first time since he’d arrived in Slushland when he’d really stopped to think about how his actions might have affected his mother. He’d busied himself with work at the shop, exploring Slushland, and going to the sandwich shop to see Amanda at least twice a week, never stopping to think about home or his one remaining relative. Could she really be hurting that badly? Surely she understood that it was time for him to fly the coop. He was grown, fully feathered, and there was nothing left for him there. Except her. But that wasn’t reason enough to stay.
Dropping onto the edge of the bed, he yanked on his jeans and boots, trying to calm down. Raising these questions in his mind had been the whole objective of Terrance’s call. He was trying to get to him. No, no, no. Joe shook his head. He wouldn’t let that druggie bastard win. He played the scenes from the night he left once more through his mind. If given the chance, he knew he would do it all over again.
A noise outside tugged his attention towards the window. He went over and peeled apart the blinds, searching the street. Unlike the Starlight Motel room, this new apartment didn’t give Joe a very clear view of the parking lot. He stood on his tip toes and craned his neck painfully to the side. His eyes fell on a figure hunched over his bike digging through the side satchels. ‘Damn Slummers,’ he muttered, and grabbing his gun off the bed he ran out of the room.
Joe burst out of the apartment building, waving the gun around, hoping the sight of it might be enough to stop the thief. The Slummer locked eyes with Joe, then darted across the street clutching Joe’s comic books.
‘You picked the wrong bike, buddy,’ Joe yelled, chasing him across the street.
The Slummer looked over his shoulder and sprinted even faster, before skidding left into an alleyway.
Joe stopped at its entrance, recalling the first time Zeb had shown him the Slummers in their unnatural habitat. He advanced into the darkened alleyway, puddles of water splashing underfoot, the air cool and moist.
He stepped over trash bags and old food wrappers; broken glass crunched under his boots. A dumpster overflowing with garbage stood open against the wall like a gigantic mouth. And then he was at the end of the alley. Where was the Slummer? Joe touched the wall and looked up. There weren’t any fire escapes he could have scrambled up. Both visible doors were boarded and without doorknobs. ‘Where’d you go?’ Joe whispered to the silent alley walls.
Then he noticed an almost invisible gutter set into the lower wall. A surge of adrenaline shot through him like a bullet. All the articles he’d read about the unsolved mystery of the Guttermen rushed back to him. Nobody had met one, and if they had they didn’t live to tell about it. Nobody knew where they lived—obviously somewhere in the gutters, many joked, but there was a whole lot of gutter in Slushland, and it was far too expansive for even a search party of fifty to properly explore.
Joe crouched down at the mouth of the gutter and noticed there wasn’t much of a stench creeping up from its cement lips. It also looked as if the opening had been chiseled bigger to accommodate a body. Carefully Joe reached a hand inside and groped around until he came across something that felt like a rope ladder. This had to be the entrance to the Guttermen’s hideaway. He stuffed the pistol into his waistband and prepared to climb down the ladder. But with one foot inside the gutter, he stopped abruptly, recalling the rumors he’d heard lately at the Queen Bean. It was said that the Guttermen were mutated due to fallout from the war, that they had boils covering their skin, and that their minds had warped so much they had taken to cannibalism. Apparently, there were hundreds of them in the sewers, feasting on rats or each other when they couldn’t find suitable human flesh above ground.
Joe tugged his leg out of the gutter. He peered inside in the hope of getting a better view. The idea of going unprepared into a sewer of cannibals wasn’t one he relished. He only had five bullets, which wouldn’t do much good if they surrounded him. And without a flashlight or a way to mark his route, chances were he would lose his way and wander the sewers until… No, this was not the night to investigate the Guttermen, Joe thought, as he backed away from the sewer. He turned and walked back to his apartment, all thoughts of Terrance wiped from his mind.
19
The morning’s sticky dew clung to Joe’s face, which twitched away the flies that whisked and buzzed around his eyes. Dozens of boats floated along Slushland’s river coated in a pasty fog. Joe stopped what he was doing to watch the anglers cast their nets into the water. One sailor called out to another, his voice carrying across the water, and they began heaving up a net brimming with fish, some slipping free and splashing back beneath the rippling surface.
Joe slumped onto the back deck of the auto shop and picked up his steaming mug of coffee. Since working at the shop, he had forced himself to enjoy it black. Zeb refused to splurge on sugar and cream, claiming that they ruined the bean’s natural flavor. Joe wholeheartedly disagreed, but wasn’t about to waste money on something unnecessary. After drinking half the mug, he went back to work filling a cardboard box with tools, figuring that Zeb had a mind to ship it somewhere. Joe still wasn’t entirely sure why Zeb had hired him—there wasn’t that much to do around the place—but he definitely seemed to be preparing for something.
Joe picked up the cardboard box, determined to ask Zeb the truth about why he’d brought him on board. As he nudged open the back door with his knee, he heard the front door bell jingle, signaling new customers. Zeb greeted them with his throaty, ‘Hello fellas, what can I do ya for?’ Joe went into the side room and lifted the box onto a rack next to two others. Zeb’s personal safe, covered in dust, squatted in the corner.
‘We run into some car trouble onna way here,’ one of the patrons said to Zeb, while the other asked, ‘You got some water, partner?’
In his mind’s eye, Joe pictured Zeb pointing out the jug in the corner; then he heard the glug glug of the water churning.
‘What happened to your knee?’ Zeb asked bluntly.
Joe’s hand stopped short of the knob and he froze.
‘Some shit-dick jumped us onna way to town. Been eating painkillers for weeks just to stay standin’.’ The jug glugged again as the man helped himself to some more water.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Zeb countered. ‘So you got some car trouble. Where’s the car in question?’
‘Right outside.’
The bell jingled as the three men filtered out of the shop into the morning air.
Joe lingered in the sid
e room for a moment, listening to make sure they had all gone, before walking carefully, nervously, into the foyer. He lifted the blinds just a fraction. Parked outside against the curb was the red truck. Zeb and one of the rapists were bent over the truck’s hood, examining something. ‘Hell,’ Joe breathed. ‘Oh, hell.’
The rapist with the knee brace threw something into his mouth and swallowed, chasing it with a sip of water. He looked around dangerously, watching some Slummers at the end of the street. Seeing the red truck brought a swarm of memories buzzing into Joe’s mind, images of the dead girl wrapped in her cocoon, the rapist’s white butt thrusting up and down noiselessly, the bloody bone jutting from his knee.
Joe scrambled back to the side room, shutting the door silently just as the three men came back into the shop again. Joe put his back to the door, not listening to a word being said but merely trying to control his breathing. If those men were to stumble upon him, they’d kill him without a second thought. He tried to think. Had they got a good look at his face back at the rest stop? He remembered one of the rapist’s faces vividly. But he had sneaked up behind them and the rest of the time they’d been unconscious. Joe could hardly believe that the one who’d been on the girl was still alive—he’d smacked him real hard. It’s an unfair universe, he mused, when rapists who are beaten with a tire iron live, but their victim dies and lies buried in a car.
The front door jingled.
‘Joe!’ Zeb called out. ‘Joe, they’re gone.’
He hesitated, even with Zeb’s reassurance.
‘Joe, damn it, get your ass out here.’
Joe left the safety of the side room and found Zeb locking up the front door and shutting the blinds. ‘Were those the guys you told me about—those guys from the rest stop? I knew right when I noticed that knee brace.’
Our Home is Nowhere (The Borrowed Land, Book 1) Page 10
