Snapdragon Book I: My Enemy

by Brandon Berntson

  “Probably thinks everyone wants to wash his frickin’ golf balls,” he said. “Two-hundred-dollar shoes, ninety-dollar polo-shirts, and fancy sunglasses. Probably never had a drink in his whole, rotten, miserable life. Probably has a Star Trek telephone, too. One that goes beep-beep like the wife when she’s backin’ up!”

  A forceful wind picked up, throwing Hailey off balance. He was able to forget everything for a second: his overbearing wife, the bureaucratic Austin McCall, and his stupid life because a ripe, overpowering odor hung in the air, something fresh and…open. Flies buzzed in the air suddenly. Wasps hung, darting in front of his face.

  Hailey stopped and looked down. A single, milky eye stared up at him, racecar pajamas wet from the rain. The skin was white, bloodless marble. The boy had been torn in half. Ropey entrails made a wide circular splash where Hailey was standing, as if something had tried to spread the boy across the meadow like jam.

  Hailey put his hand over his mouth, dropped the cigarette, and paled. His eyes went wide. The sight, combined with the smell, made his stomach churn. The alcohol was like acid in his gut.

  It was warming up now, and he could smell it.

  Adding to his horror—for reasons unnatural—large, black spiders (were they black widows, Hailey thought?) crawled over the boy’s body.

  Whiskey sloshed in Hailey’s stomach. The bottle dropped to the ground. It came up rough, raw, and violent. He turned and threw up on the mountain brome. A bitter, acidic taste filled his throat. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and risked another glance at the boy.

  It was a boy, he saw. The racecar pajamas were a dead giveaway. The single eye stared wide from a crushed and shattered skull. The hair was black, matted with blood. The kid had been torn in two. From the waist done, there was simply nothing there.

  Darkness emerged. He thought he was going to throw up again. Hailey shuddered. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say a tractor had done it, but the grass was still high in the surrounding area.

  He wiped his mouth a second time. He couldn’t look away suddenly from the kid’s exposed ribcage, like a huge skeletal hand, long white fingers imbedded in the ground.

  Hailey covered his mouth for a third time, his stomach roiling. He forgot about the bottle, his wife, everything that made life stupid, and bolted back the way he’d come, wondering if he was sober enough to call the sheriff’s office.

  ii

  For Austin McCall, the walls of the Dark World loomed high, a fortress wrapping around his heart and mind. At the same time, they seemed to collapse, and Austin cowered under their weight. This may well be the hardest thing he’d ever had to deal with. In the span of seconds, his entire world had begun to unravel, and part of him didn’t think he had the strength to endure it.

  Let it, he thought. How much more can a man take?

  Like some weak-willed people are apt to do, Austin turned inward. It was a defense mechanism. He didn’t have a family as far as he was concerned. It became insubstantial, and he was drifting through a foreign landscape of the surreal.

  Dead fingers encircled his throat, rot from a graveyard. What was he supposed to do? He was helpless. Sadie was a ghost in his thoughts, and for Austin McCall, everything felt like a very bad dream, a cruelty of the worst kind. Just yesterday, it had been dreams of baseball fever, and a beautiful summer day. In that time, with Sadie’s disappearance, his sanity had begun to hang in the balance.

  Take my boy, Austin thought. Take the Cubs hat, the baseball cards, the comic books. Nothing left but the ghost of a child, a void where his smiling face used to be.

  Austin shook his head. He had to be stronger, do what he could to mend his shattered family, especially now. But he just didn’t feel up for it. His legs had gone wobbly and cold. He could barely stand up straight.

  The walls loomed high. How could he see his family beyond the walls? He hadn’t the strength to breathe, let alone grasp responsibility, and mend his broken family. Shouldn’t he be trying to keep them from going under? Should Sadie’s disappearance tear them all apart?

  Despite the chill, it was comfortable in the Dark World. Something about the atmosphere, the bleak promises it made. He could get used to this.

  Pretend it never happened, he thought. You’ll be safe, away from the nightmare, the toil, confusion. Oblivion, that silent comforter, like a remedy….

  He leaned his head back on the recliner. Where was Rudy? Was he still out there? Searching, combing?

  It wasn’t darkness, but limbo. Austin McCall moved through timeless space.

  One of the deputies had driven him home—Anderson, Allen, Anders? He couldn’t remember. What difference did it make?

  What time was it? After six, seven? Rudy would be home soon. Maybe they could play a—

  No more, he thought, ever again. No more baseball.

  Austin had been sitting in the same chair when Sadie discovered Sammy Sosa. The Cubs had been playing the Phillies on the WGN network.

  Sammy had hit a three-run homer to deep center field, and for some reason, Sadie had been hooked from that moment on. That had been four years ago. Sadie had asked, begged, and pleaded his dad for a baseball and glove (what father could resist?), and began pitching in the backyard almost immediately. From then on, Sadie had asked almost religiously, “Is Sammy playing today, Dad?” When the Cubs were on, Sadie sat on the couch with his new mitt, tossing the ball casually into it, his eyes glued to the television, as though imagining himself pitching against the Dominican slugger. Sadie, of course, had no desire to bat in the majors. He studied pitchers and how they approached Sosa. The ones that struck him out, he asked his dad: “What kind of pitch was that?”

  “Got ’em on a change-up.”

  In a land far away…

  Austin wanted to tear the house apart and bury his face in his hands.

  At the time, he’d thought Sadie’s fascination with baseball would fade, but after three years, Sadie was still in the backyard, pitching into cardboard boxes. How he’d learned to throw a wicked curveball was still a mystery.

  “One of these days, I’m gonna strike out Sammy Sosa,” Sadie had told him.

  Austin raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. I’m gonna strike him out at Wrigley Field.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Austin told him.

  Sadie had gone outside and began his relentless pursuit. Austin never could bring himself to tell Sadie that Sammy was at the end of his career, and that Sadie was too young to make that dream come true.

  Caught impeccably short, Austin thought. Goddamnit. He could have pitched during some honorary celebration, you know? Some dedication in Sosa’s honor. His retirement ceremony maybe. For old time’s sake. My boy’s dream was not futile.

  Or so he told himself.

  iii

  Austin raised his head, his heart skipping a beat, when the doorbell rang. Mattie hung expectantly at the bottom of the stairs, as if afraid to answer it. She clutched her hands together and looked at Austin with wide eyes.

  Again, the doorbell rang.

  Austin got up, slightly tipsy, eyes red. He’d been dozing off and on for the remainder of the evening. Maybe it was Bimsley telling him they’d called it quits for the day. They’d resume the search tomorrow. Or maybe, he thought…maybe it was Sadie ringing the bell…but why would Sadie the ring the bell to his own home?

  Austin pulled the door open. It was Sheriff Bimsley.

  “Mr. McCall,” Bimsley said, holding his Stetson in his hands, rubbing his fingers along the brim. Frank looked troubled.

  “Sheriff,” Austin said.

  Frank forced a smile, not winning any favors from Austin, who pulled the door wider, and motioned Frank to come inside. Austin closed the door. Frank nodded in Mattie’s direction. Austin saw her out of the corner of his eye.

  Bimsley looked from Mattie to Austin and took a deep breath. “We found your boy,” he said.

  Found him? Austin thought. Then why
isn’t he here? Why isn’t he with you? Where is he?

  “He was in the meadow,” Bimsley explained. He looked ashamed, embarrassed. Frank Bimsley looked very uncomfortable suddenly, as if he didn’t want to meet the eyes of either Austin or Mattie. “Behind the Patterson house. Hailey stumbled on him.” Bimsley paused. “Mr. McCall. I’m…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. He…wasn’t alive.”

  Mattie made a gasping, eke-like sound, and buried her face in her hands.

  He’d watched Sadie strike out his older brother only yesterday. He looked at Mattie, then turned to Bimsley, waiting for more.

  “I’m sorry,” Bimsley said.

  Walls? What was that about walls?

  Mattie was hyperventilating. He should go and comfort his wife, he knew, but his feet were dead weight. He couldn’t move. Where was that blackness coming from, this thick entity of night?

  “He was in his pajamas,” Bimsley said. His voice sounded like it was coming down a very long corridor. “Little race cars, right?”

  Austin made a barely perceptible nod.

  “I’m sorry, Austin,” Bimsley said. “Mattie.” Even Bimsley looked on the verge of tears, not the finer aspects of his job, certainly. Frank had been voted into office five years ago, and he’d never had a missing person’s case. “I hate to…I mean…I’ll have to have you come down.”

  Austin nodded again. He felt like a robot, moving and reacting on mechanical gears. He was numb from the inside out. He did not glance at Mattie. She was still sitting on the stairs, making strange noises in her throat. He wanted to look at her, to say something, but nothing came to mind. He wanted to say, I’ll be back soon, but it seemed pointless. Everything seemed so pointless suddenly.

  He followed Bimsley outside, feeling like a man propelled by some other, more malicious force. Austin nodded again. He didn’t know why. Had he heard everything right?

  He wasn’t…alive—

  Little racecars, right?

  The walls around Austin McCall finally collapsed, and he didn’t move at all when they did.

  CHAPTER VI

  Ellishome lay along the base of the Rocky Mountains just before the foothills began. Founded in 1873 for its coal mining by Ellis Heath Hendershot and his brother Tardiball, it had slowly begun to prosper. Settlers pitched their tents, laying claim to the land. Streets were paved, houses were built, and merchants began to settle into—what was soon—a growing community. With a view of the Rockies to the west and plenty of waterways and canals, Ellishome was surrounded by vast open lands and vaster meadows…just one of its many alluring qualities. It had been considered one of the top ten places to live in America by the National Census, and—until the events of that summer in 2004—it might very well have stayed that way.

  When Ellis and his brother began to make a profitable business from coal mining, Tardiball was said to put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and say, “Looks like you found home, Ellis.” Someone had overheard and said something like, “Ellis’ home,” and thus the name was born. Tardiball had moved on, leaving his brother to continue his coal mining operation on his own. The man was happy. Tardiball ventured to California to pursue a trade in wine. The vineyards were calling, he’d said. It tasted better and also didn’t leave you nearly as dirty. The brothers had parted amicably.

  Ellishome had become the final resting place for Ellis Hendershot, and when the coal mining business began to taper off around 1918, he continued to make it his home. He built his own mercantile shop, Hendershot’s, which still stands between E’s Market and the Public Library to this day. He had no desire to leave and never had. The coal mining economy might’ve diminished, but the economy otherwise, was doing just fine. He loved the land and the view of the Rockies. Sunsets came earlier in Ellishome, but it was the open lands, rolling hills, and vast meadows of mountain brome that made Ellis dig in a little deeper. It was like another world, he’d said.

  On summer nights, he could be seen sitting on his back porch drinking lemonade, watching the colors fade from daylight to dusk. A small bust and a plaque with his name on it in the middle of town read: Founder of Ellishome: Ellis Heath Hendershot.

  He had made a name for himself.

  As time moved by, more and more people began to move in building houses, businesses, and the first school. Roads were paved, lampposts erected, and soon, there was even a local law enforcement.

  Ellis had never married. He left everything to the town itself, dying of heart failure at the age of 83. His gravestone was a white, weathered, marble headpiece at the local cemetery (where Sadie was now being buried). Ellishome had become a spot, albeit, a very small one on a very large map. It was quaint. It was idyllic, and in a land of other quaint, idyllic towns across Midwestern America, it was not so different. It hadn’t a whole lot to its history, and that was fine with the residents who lived there.

  What history there was was hardly worth talking about…

  Until now.

  ii

  The denizens of Ellishome wanted answers. For Frank Allen Bimsley, of course, answers were hard to come by. His station, his deputies, even his dispatcher, received the brunt of it. There were angry citizens aplenty, and with Sadie’s death (a boy from an upright, well-adjusted home), parents had turned over-protective. Curfews were enforced. Locked windows and doors resounded throughout the streets, and Frank’s deputies went from door to door, asking questions, looking for any suspicious characters they could find, anything that would help them track a killer, or give them cause to understand why Sadie had ventured off in the middle of the night to begin with. Had he been coerced, or had he gone willingly? The latter seemed a more plausible explanation because there had been no sign of forced entry. Still, after several days, Frank was just as much in the dark as when this nightmare began. He had no leads, no clues, and not a single shred of evidence had turned up. Sadie McCall had been taken from his home, or lured from it. He had been butchered, and the killer was still at large.

  Plenty of residents had showed up to the funeral. The McCalls stood together in a state of numb disbelief: Austin with a perplexed, furrowed brow, Mattie—a dazed look in her eye, and Rudy with a mixture of loss and anger.

  Frank Allen Bimsley presided over all this, as if waiting for some clue to present itself. But of course, none ever did. He looked at each face in turn, feeling more helpless by the minute. Maybe he shared a bit of Rudy’s anger. And with good cause. Frank felt responsible. After all, wasn’t it his job to keep the peace, to instill order, and provide answers? The town had turned to him and expected or at last hoped for him to find Sadie’s killer. When he hadn’t, when he answered questions for the Ellishome Gazette, he had nothing new to provide, making him feel absolutely useless in a community that needed him. All in all, he felt like an incompetent fool, like a ripe horse’s ass. No leads, no suspects, no nothing.

  “What are we paying you for?” one citizen remarked on the phone. “After three days, and you’re gonna sit there and tell me you don’t know nothing?”

  When the services were over, Frank had lingered near the grave, as though waiting for something to miraculously appear.

  But it never did.

  This wasn’t just a death to him. This was a boy taken from his home and butchered beyond recognition. The McCall’s had insisted on a closed casket, Mattie being unable to bring herself to have her son cremated.

  What the hell happened, Frank wondered? His gut instinct came with a niggling sense of fear, like battery acid in his gut. He was already exhausted. He’d used every possible angle he could think of, and he had nothing. But the thing that bothered him most of all was…who could do that to a child?

  What had Sadie been doing outside to begin with? He hadn’t a history of sleepwalking, not according to his family.

  Bimsley shook his head.

  Racecar pajamas…

  Had someone forced him into the meadow? Was the murderer still walking these streets?

  The wind carried a hint of au
tumn. His elbow was on the door. He’d been sitting in the patrol car for almost an hour. A cigarette sounded good, he thought. He hadn’t had one in seven months or more, but now seemed like as good a time to take up the habit again.

  He’d talked to the coroner, Dr. Jessie Chase from Boulder, but all the man did was shake his head, tapping a pen against his lips. “This is like something a wild animal would do,” he’d said. “That’s the only thing I can think of, Sheriff. A mountain lion, maybe, or a bear.”

  Frank looked at him steadily. “You mean to tell me a bear came all the way down from the goddamn Rockies while Sadie just happened to go sleepwalking into the meadow and tore him apart?”

  Jessie Chase tapped his pen against his lips and shrugged. If Frank had a better explanation, he was all ears, he’d said.

  Frank didn’t have a better explanation. Instead, he was getting one hell of a headache.

  He didn’t even know why he was out here anyway. He couldn’t sleep. He was restless, and he needed to get away from the calls, which were still pouring in. It was funny how a small community banded together after the death of one of its own.

  Why did you leave the house in the middle of the night, Sadie? Did someone take you while you were sleeping?

  The front door had been unlocked, left ajar even, as if Sadie had ambled off into the night on his own. Something told Frank he had. But sleepwalking?

  Like an animal had done it.

  There were no footprints around the boy’s body. If it had been an animal, it would have left tracks. But there was nothing, just a field, the wet grass, and a dead boy.