"You come home."
CHAPTER THREE
Despite the half dozen or so Dumpsters in the alley that ran behind Bridget's and the other businesses on Nelson Street, the dark, narrow little passage never really smelled like garbage. Or, at least, it never reeked like Jack always imagined it should given the sheer volume of trash back there, including the refuse from hundreds of meals a day. There was just something about the set of the buildings, these old, half-crumbling edifices that were laid stone upon stone when Boston was young. Somehow the angle of the alley caught the wind off the harbor perfectly and the breeze caught most of the smells and whisked them away.
Yet on that fine Saturday morning, with the sky a rich shade of blue that seemed to exist only in October in New England, Jack stood outside the open door of his Jeep and he could clearly smell wood burning in a fireplace somewhere nearby. It seemed odd to him, almost impossible, that the wind could take the bitter, rotten smell of garbage and leave behind that warm, comforting fireside aroma. A tiny little miracle, in a way.
Why isn't life ever really like that? he thought. Sweeping away the ugly, nasty stuff and leaving behind just the good?
But that was a bit of fantasy, and he knew it. There were good things to be had, perfect, beautiful things, in his life. Jack understood that life was a balance, that light and darkness could only exist together. What he had, the people in his life he loved so much, were things worth braving the darkness for. So he would take the evil with the good. He would fight the monsters.
Even on a beautiful autumn day with the sun shining and the breeze blowing in all the scents of fall. Even then. Because that was the price he had to pay.
Molly sat inside the battered old Jeep with a map spread out on her lap. In the back was a wooden trunk with a heavy iron lock on it. The key to the lock was hidden inside the Jeep on the off chance that they might be pulled over for speeding. A quick search of the vehicle would reveal nothing out of the ordinary, but police would have to break the lock on the trunk to open it, and Jack figured most of them wouldn't go that far unless he and Molly gave them a reason, which he didn't plan on doing.
"I hate leaving you here alone," he said, running a hand through his spiky, close-cropped brown hair.
Courtney put her weight on her cane and stood a bit taller as she scowled at him. "I can take care of myself, little brother."
Their eyes met in silent communication. Both of them understood the reason for Jack's reluctance. It was not simply that he would be leaving her behind, or leaving the pub in her hands. There had been a great many conversations about such things over the previous months as the four of them had determined that they were going to pursue this crusade against the Prowlers in earnest. The staff at Bridget's could handle the additional responsibility and workload. Courtney would manage.
It wasn't about that. The wordless understanding between them now had to do with Bill. Courtney's eyes revealed the truth: she was terrified for him. A sudden departure the night before, a midnight rendezvous with Lao, and a trip down to Manhattan to try to find Olivia, knowing that Jasmine was lurking about somewhere, starting up a brand new pack there. None of it boded well. They had no way of knowing when Bill would be back.
But he had promised to call her every morning, and had already done so today. That was something, at least. Jack gazed at his sister, saw the fear and uncertainty there, and he felt it within himself as well.
"He'll come back," Jack told her.
"Today?" Courtney asked.
Jack smiled. "Probably not today."
"Look, you take care of herself. Check in regularly," she said as she stepped forward and gave him a quick hug. "But don't use that cell phone number unless it's an emergency, right?"
"Got it. You keep an eye out, too."
Courtney glanced around as though someone might be listening, but they were alone in the alley. "I'm not all that concerned. I know we can never be sure, and we've had enough of them try to get at us here, but Bill told me he asked a couple of his friends to play guardian angel."
Jack frowned. Friends meant Prowlers. It was difficult enough for him, now that he understood what the underground was, to accept that there were dozens, maybe hundreds of Prowlers in Boston that he had not known about. But the idea that some of them were supposed to be babysitting Courtney just did not sit well with him.
"Listen. If you have any trouble, call me, we'll come right home."
She promised she would and they embraced once more before Jack climbed up into the Jeep. Courtney made Molly promise to bring him back in one piece. The girls had a good laugh with that one. A few moments later he drove down to the end of the alley, turned right, and left the pub behind. Again.
In the rearview mirror, he saw his sister watching after them until they had turned out of sight.
As he navigated through the circuitous streets of Boston toward the highway, Jack reached out to take Molly's hand. She slipped her fingers into his without hesitation. Warmth, comfort.
"On the road again," Molly said.
"On the road," Jack echoed solemnly. "On the hunt."
The novelty of being away from home wore off for Jack pretty quick. The drive had taken them west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, deeper and deeper into the most rural parts of the state, until at last they simply ran out of Massachusetts and found themselves crossing the border into New York state. But in spite of Molly's company, Jack had grown impatient with the trip long before that. Boston radio stations had accompanied them through most of the drive on the Pike, but they reached a certain point around exit eight or so when even the strongest of the familiar radio signals fizzled out.
It was as though some tether keeping him tied to home had snapped. A small thing, really, and yet it unnerved him in a way it never had before.
Jack spent nearly every day with Molly, and every night with her sleeping in a room just down the hall. He had no idea what would become of their feelings for one another, but he knew he loved her. Not in that desperate-to-see-her-naked way that guys back in high school had always equated with love — sometimes without words and sometimes with too many — but in the sense that he could not imagine his life without her. The touch of her hand, the lilt of her laugh, the tumble of her hair across her face, each of those things had a kind of sorcerous hold upon his heart.
Which was not to say he did not want to see her naked. Quite the contrary. But it meant that he was content to let their intimacy follow its own course with the lazy turns and rushing torrents of a mountain river.
The hours on the road passed slowly. They talked about the pub, and about Bill's search for his missing niece. In a hesitant bit of conversation where each pretended it was no big deal, they talked about taking an actual vacation some time, just the two of them. As a couple. The Jeep's tires hummed on the highway and the vehicle rattled a bit if Jack edged it up much past seventy.
As they drove north toward Albany, Molly played with the radio and found a station she liked. A lot of Sting, Shawn Colvin, matchbox twenty, and not a single track from the viral epidemic of boy bands sweeping the Earth in the early twenty-first century.
The further north they drove, the less traffic there was, though he had a feeling that had more to do with it being Saturday afternoon than anything else. Nobody commuting today, and most of the people headed off for a trip were already well on their way to their destinations. When the traffic thinned, Jack twined his fingers in Molly's and for long periods they were just quiet, listening to the radio and the rattle of the Jeep, the rumbling of the road.
Trucks roared past them every few minutes, tractor trailers with no business traveling at that speed. The terrain rose and fell in long slopes, hills and valleys, but the big rigs barely slowed, and often passed in the fast lane. Jack said nothing to Molly, but it occurred to him more than once as the Jeep shuddered in the wake of a passing eighteen-wheeler that this might not be Prowlers at all. Industry had its demands. He was wise enough to know that in busi
ness, competition often demanded compromise. But Jack was also stubborn enough to believe that safety should never be compromised, no matter what the competitor was doing.
Lulled by the journey, by the music and momentum, Jack suddenly felt as though he were waking from a kind of trance behind the wheel. He shook his head and glanced at the sign announcing that the exit half a mile ahead was for Hollingsworth. The name jarred him.
"Jack? Are you all right?" He blinked, glanced sidelong at Molly. The Jeep swerved a little, but there was no one in the next lane. "Sorry. Just half-asleep I guess."
"As long as you're only half," she replied with a nervous laugh. "There'd be some seriously cruel irony in you rolling us into a ditch."
A thin smile spread across his features, but it felt pasted on. The exit for Hollingsworth came and went. Molly stared at the sign as they drove past and then glanced at him again.
"So this is supposed to be Prowler-country? I have to say, it doesn't look any different from the rest of the highway we've been looking at all day."
Jack nodded. "I know. But it feels different."
"Does it? I don't . . . well, maybe it's you. I don't mean maybe it's in your head. I mean, you can see into the Ghostlands, so I suppose it's possible you're picking up some kind of . . . vibe or whatever that other people would never notice. Have you seen any?"
Ghosts. That was the word she neglected to use at the end of the sentence. Though they had frequently spoken about his talent, the ghost-sight, as he had jokingly called it several times, ever since Molly had learned that Artie's spirit still wandered the world of the living, she was sometimes tentative when the subject came up.
Static hissed on the radio as they lost the station Molly had enjoyed so much on the drive north.
"Nothing. But I haven't really tried to see, either. Figured it was kind of dangerous while driving. If they appear or whatever, that's one thing. But you know what I find really interesting?"
"What?"
"We've been on the road all day. Not once has either of us mentioned the Prowlers."
Silence descended upon the confines of the Jeep, save for the static on the radio and the roar of the engine. Jack had both hands on the wheel, but now he reached over to slip his fingers into Molly's yet again. A semi pulling a double trailer thundered by them with a squeal of metal that made Jack think of freight trains.
Molly leaned forward and used her free hand to switch off the radio. "I guess we've been postponing the inevitable."
"No more postponing."
Up ahead was another sign, this one for a rest area. They had passed a lot of them, on both sides of the road, but now that they were nearing Hollingsworth, they had entered the thirty mile stretch of highway that Courtney had identified as a kind of blacktop Bermuda Triangle, where people kept disappearing and far too many accidents seemed to happen.
The rest area ahead, just over the border into the town of Hollingsworth, was their first stop. The first of many. But it was already late in the day.
"We'll look around here, then figure out where the motel is. Tomorrow we can start hitting all the rest stops and roadhouses and whatever up and down this stretch."
Molly agreed and Jack put the directional on to indicate that he was going to turn into the rest area. As he slowed the Jeep, he glanced over at her again, and he was saddened to see the apprehension on her face.
"We'll be all right," he said quickly.
"Yeah," Molly replied softly. "I was just thinking that the reason we haven't talked about them? The reason we're feeling what we're feeling? It's that we both know that we're going to find something here. As much as I wish I could brush it off, Courtney found way too many stories about this area. I'm going to hope that it's just because this is some sort of migratory route for them. That's possible, by the way. We know some of the packs move frequently. Some are even nomadic.
"But I think we'll find them. And then we'll have to do something about it. Don't get me wrong, I want to destroy them. But I'm afraid, Jack. No matter how many times we fight one of these things and live through it, I think I'm always going to be afraid."
"That's good, Molly," he told her, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. "That's how it should be."
"Afraid all the time? That's how it should be?" She sounded almost angry.
"When they're concerned, yes. Not every minute of every day, but when you know there might be Prowlers around? Absolutely. Stay afraid. They're monsters, Molly. When we stop being afraid of them, that's when they'll get us for sure."
Jack drove into the wide rest area, a football field's worth of parking lot with a short row of portable bathrooms on the far side. Trashcans and a pair of rusting iron grills rounded out the list of amenities available to the truckers who passed through, slept the night or day away in their rigs in that rest stop. There were three tractor-trailers there now, one whose engine was running. A card table and folding chairs were set up between two of the trucks and a fortyish woman with weathered features sat with a cold beer in her hand, one foot on a plastic cooler, talking to a trio of tired-looking men all of whom needed a shave.
"Anything?" Molly asked.
He parked alongside the nearest truck, as though the Jeep were just another metal dinosaur. Jack took a breath and focused, and his perception was instantly altered. He peered into the afterlife, the spirit world. The trucks and the parking lot and the trees beyond, even Molly there on the seat behind him, were drained of color and substance. It was as though he sat in the midst of a dense fog and everything around him was just shadow, a world of brittle grays like faded antique photographs. Where the world of flesh and blood seemed on fire with vivid life, this place was nothing but ash.
The Ghostlands.
"Nothing here," he told Molly, though it felt very much as though he were talking to himself. "If anyone was ever killed here, they've wandered off or they're just not lost anymore. They've moved on."
He felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment as he closed his eyes and frowned. There had been times when he had looked into the Ghostlands and had some difficulty snapping his vision back to normal. When he opened his eyes now, though, his stomach did a little nauseous flip and the world was back to normal.
Jack killed the engine, then looked at Molly again. She took a deep breath and smiled.
"So, how exactly are we going to casually get into a conversation with a bunch of truckers about mysterious highway deaths?" Molly asked, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "What excuse do we give for even saying hello to them, for stopping here longer than it takes to pee in the bushes?"
Jack rolled that one over in his head. He ducked forward and kissed her, briefly, his lips barely grazing hers. Then he popped open the door and climbed out.
"Screw excuses," he said, voice low.
Before he slammed his door, he heard Molly's response: "This should be interesting."
Together they strode straight over to the truck drivers at their card table. Jack made no move to cover it with a quick trip to the bushes, and Molly did not mention it again.
As they got closer, Jack took a quick appraisal of the four people at that table. All four wore blue jeans in various stages of cleanliness and wear. At first glance it would be easy to assume that the woman was traveling with one of the men, but as Jack studied them, he decided that was not the case. The two men closest to him had beards and blue eyes and both wore tan work boots. They had enough similarity to their facial structure that he pegged them as brothers, likely traveling together, sharing the driving. That meant the woman in the white cable knit sweater was driving her own rig, and the third man, a jarhead ex-military man by the look of his drastic crewcut and the tattoo on his right forearm, drove the other two.
"You two lost?" asked one of the brothers.
"Not yet," Jack replied.
The brothers looked at him quizzically. The jarhead narrowed his gaze and sat up a bit straighter. No sense of humor, Jack thought. But the woman, whose tangle o
f dirty blond hair softened her looks up close, smiled at him.
"Can we help you folks with something?" she asked.
The other brother, bigger and broader than the first, popped the top of a can of Budweiser and brandished at them as though it were some kind of ward against strange travelers. "Don't even think about asking us to buy you beer."
"Hank," the woman said, a warning in her voice.
"Don't talk to me like I'm your husband, Suzanne," Hank replied dismissively.
Molly arched an eyebrow and seemed about to interject when Jack shot her a look that silenced her. He knew the way her mind worked. Why this smelly, half-drunk oaf would think anyone would trawl rest stops looking for someone to buy beer was beyond him, but he did not want Molly to make the man feel stupid. Hank's brother, though, the one who had first spoken to them, looked intelligent enough. When Jack spoke again, his words were directed at the woman.
"We're not looking for directions," he said. "Last summer, my cousin took off from home. Left Buffalo and tried hitched rides all across the state. I'm guessing he was planning to come to Boston to look me up. His name was Jared Wilkes. Blond kid, fifteen years old, big smile. Somewhere along the road he ran into the wrong people. Somebody killed Jared and tore him up like an animal."
The jarhead flinched and his nostrils flared in revulsion. Jack thought that was a good sign. The two brothers just gazed at him with blank expressions, clearly doing their best to be patient with the interruption until he and Molly left.
The woman was kind, though. "Aw, Jesus," she said. "That's awful. What are you doing up here?" A sudden understanding rippled across her face and she gave a tiny shake of her head. "But you kids can't think you're gonna find anything up here yourselves. Especially not after all this time."
"Trail's colder'n a polar bear's ass," Hank muttered.
Jack stiffened. The younger brother fidgeted as though he had the good sense to be made uncomfortable by his brother's behavior.
Prowlers: Wild Things Page 5
