Gilchrist: A Novel

by Christian Galacar

  “Duh-Dooley,” he said with a thin sniffle. Then, as if repeating something he had practiced before, he followed it up with: “I live at three-three-three Mishell Road in Gilchrist, Massachooketts.”

  “Okay, sweetie, that’s good. Do you live with your mommy there?”

  Kevin, scratching the corner of his eye with a finger, nodded.

  “I’m sure she’s worried sick about you. Do you think you can—?”

  A squirrel scurried up a tree in the woods beside them. Kevin whipped his head around, terror seizing his body. Peter, hands still on his shoulders, felt every muscle in the boy stiffen. He looked at Sylvia, concerned. Her face returned the worry. What the hell had scared this kid so thoroughly? What had he been running from?

  “Hey, look at me. It’s okay. It’s just a little squirrel. It can’t hurt you,” Sylvia said, bringing Kevin’s attention back to her. “What are you scared of? There’s nothing out here that can hurt you. You’re safe.”

  Peter, seeing that his wife had the situation well under control, took his hands off the boy and stood. “The number for the police is back at the house. Let’s head back there. I’ll give them a call. It’s a small town. I’m sure they know his parents.”

  Kevin looked at Peter curiously, then to Sylvia as if checking with her.

  “You’ll be okay,” she said. “Want me to carry you? You look tired.”

  Kevin nodded. “My feet hurt. I didn’t want it to get me.”

  “That was very brave of you,” she said, leaning down and picking him up.

  He wrapped his arms and legs around her, resting his head on her shoulder.

  “All right, let’s go. We’ll go call your mommy.” She sniffed the boy’s hair. “Are you camping with your family?”

  “N-No.”

  “You smell like smoke. Was there a fire somewhere in the woods?”

  He nodded. “It was a cold fire.”

  “A cold fire? Okay.”

  “Maybe someone is burning brush,” Peter said. “I’ve been smelling smoke since we got here.”

  “I know, me too.”

  They were about to head back to Shady Cove when Peter saw the bottom of the kid’s feet. “Jesus, Syl, look at his feet.”

  “I can’t see. What’s the matter with them?” she said.

  “I didn’t want it to get me,” Kevin repeated again, his voice a tired whisper.

  “He’s bleeding,” Peter said. “I think he must’ve stepped on something.”

  But it was more than that. They were bloody and raw. And they weren’t cut. They looked blistered and worn—as if the boy had been running for a very long time.

  Chapter Seven

  FIRE

  1

  When Corbin arrived at the Mayers’ farm, Elhouse was walking toward his barn. The old man was carrying a gas can in each hand, headed toward his house. He was moving along at a healthy pace for his age, too. Corbin shut off the engine and stepped out. In the distance, Elhouse’s wisps of white hair looked like a nest of smoke settling atop his head. When he spotted the police cruiser, he stopped and put down the cans, using his hand as a visor to get a better look.

  Corbin stretched, hitched up his holster, and waved at Elhouse. He didn’t wave back. He just stood there and stared, one arm hanging at his side. That tickled Corbin the wrong way. The two knew each other well enough. They weren’t close friends or anything like that, but they weren’t strangers, either. They had shared more than a few beers down at Dale’s, talking about this and that.

  “How goes it? Hot enough for ya?” Corbin said, a low shout across the hundred feet or so of field that separated them. “Sorry to just drop in on you like this. I wanted to ask you a couple questions, if I could. Had a car accident a couple miles up the road last night. Any chance you heard something…” He realized Elhouse probably couldn’t hear him anyway.

  Elhouse just stood there, hand curved over his eyes. Corbin wasn’t sure why he thought so, but he had the idea Elhouse was agitated. He was standing still, yet somehow the old man seemed to be twitching all over, almost as if he were emitting some kind of dark radiation—fine black filaments that floated on the air, expanding endlessly outward, an extension of his body. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them and knew they were there. A cold dread tightened his chest.

  Corbin started toward him, but then the radio in his car hissed, and Dave Blatten’s voice came through panicked and fuzzy: “Chief, you on yet? I got a real mess over here at the Saltzman house.”

  Corbin stopped, held up a finger to Elhouse, then doubled back to his car.

  He reached in through the window and answered the call. “Yeah, Dave, I’m here. Any chance this can wait? I’m smack in the middle of something.”

  “Leo Saltzman ain’t no longer with us, Chief.”

  “Jesus,” he said, his finger off the call button. He looked around for a moment, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, then responded. “He’s dead?”

  “As a doornail.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah… yeah, I’m sure, boss.”

  “Well, what the hell happened?”

  “Had himself a bit of an accident in his garage, I guess.”

  “You gotta give me more than that,” Corbin said, irritated. “What kind of accident we talkin?”

  “The goddamn idiot…” Dave must’ve heard himself or remembered he was addressing a superior. He started again. “Poor fella went face-first into his lathe. Not much left of his face. I figure he tripped… or maybe his tie got caught. I don’t know. He used to make them pens, remember?”

  “Is his wife there?”

  “Who do you think found him?”

  “Christ. All right, I’ll be there shortly. Find something to cover the body. There’s gotta be a tarp around there some… where…” He took his finger off the call button. “Holy hell.” It was a whisper of horror and shock.

  In the distance, Elhouse raised a gas can over his head and doused himself. Corbin saw it happen, but he didn’t understand it right away. For a moment he thought maybe they were cans of water, not gasoline, and that the old man was hot and trying to cool off. But even that didn’t make sense; it was just his brain trying to align with some sane explanation. Corbin felt the blood in his face drain away as what he was witnessing registered.

  Elhouse dropped the can, then turned and walked across his yard and into the barn. Corbin caught a whiff of the gasoline as it carried upwind.

  “Oh my God.” He started after him, dropping the radio.

  When Corbin reached the barn, Elhouse was standing in front of his hay baler, holding a box of matches. He had one pinched between his thumb and forefinger, poised on the strike strip.

  “Get out of here, Corbin,” he said.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” The gas fumes in the barn were so strong, they made Corbin’s nose burn.

  “I know why we’re all here,” Elhouse said, his lower lip trembling, eyes unblinking. “It’s worse than you can imagine.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean, Elhouse. You’re makin me awfully nervous with them matches. Why don’t you put em down? Think you can do that for me?”

  “It made me hurt my Gertie,” Elhouse said. “God forgive me.” He clenched his jaw and groaned, and for a split second Corbin could’ve sworn the old man’s eyes shifted from blue to green and then back again. If he was imagining this, it was one hell of a vivid hallucination.

  “What happened to Gertie?” Corbin said. “Where is she? Is she in the house? Dammit, Elhouse, what’s going on? Talk to me. I don’t understand.”

  “You will understand. Everyone will. It harvests what it sows. Can’t you feel it everywhere… watching? Right around you, all the time? It’s been here all along.”

  Corbin took another step forward, hands up, showing his palms. “Please, Elhouse, you don’t have to do this. Where’s your wife? You say you hurt her?”

  “It wasn’t me—you have to believe that. I woul
dn’t hurt her.” Elhouse finally closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m not strong enough. It wants more.” Two giant tears gathered along the seams of his eyelids and broke free, streaking down his cheeks.

  Corbin took another step closer to Elhouse, hand creeping back toward his gun. He was ten paces away. If he could get a shot off and hit Elhouse’s arm, he would take it. “Now just wait a—”

  Elhouse struck the match. There was a small spark, then a soft whoomp, and he went up in flames and began to scream.

  “Elhouse, you goddamn lunatic!” Corbin looked around frantically, searching for something—anything. Behind him, parked outside the barn doors, was Elhouse’s pickup. The tailgate was down. In the back, he spotted a heavy canvas tarp. He ran and grabbed it.

  He spread the tarp open as he charged toward Elhouse, catching him in it like a net and wrapping him up. Flames licked up from his back and shoulders. The sour smell of burnt hair and flesh was overwhelming. An awful smell. His arms burned. He wrestled Elhouse up against a wall of stacked hay bales. They caught fire in an instant. Then, together, Corbin and Elhouse fell to the ground, Corbin on top of Elhouse. He started beating out the flames, tucking the tarp tightly around Elhouse to choke off the fire. Thick yellowish smoke billowed up, stinging his eyes. The smell and the taste made him want to throw up.

  After about twenty seconds or so, Corbin pulled the tarp back. The flames had gone out, but the damage had been done. Elhouse’s white hair was singed down to a bald and blistered pink scalp. His head was moving from side to side, eyes wide open. But that might’ve been because his eyelids had melted off. His ears certainly had. Where they had once been were two waxy lumps with small holes in them. His arms looked like two pieces of raw rolled beef. His chest pumped up and down in small, rapid breaths. He wasn’t dead yet, but he would be soon if he didn’t get to a hospital.

  Corbin looked up. The stacks of hay were burning steadily. The flames had already reached the barn’s crossbeams. He tried to slide his arms underneath Elhouse to pick him up, but he was hot to the touch and too slick with loose, burnt flesh that wanted to slide away like cooked chicken skin. Instead, he took Elhouse by the ankles, where the fire had hardly touched him, and dragged him out of the barn. The old man moaned incoherently the whole way out, gaped eyes rolling around like wild doll eyes.

  Corbin dragged him until they were thirty feet clear of the barn. Then he hurried back to the car radio to call for help.

  The whole time he ran, the old man’s voice repeated in his head. The words flashed red and white, shrieking and blaring like a warning siren: It made me hurt my Gertie… It made me hurt my Gertie.

  Corbin was afraid to know what Elhouse had done to her.

  2

  He had seen dead bodies before, but he had never seen someone die. Later he would think that death happens fast. He would come to believe that this was one of the most terrifying things to understand about being alive.

  Elhouse’s breathing had slowed to a shallow whine by the time Corbin returned. The old man’s burned hands were resting on his stomach, trembling. His fingernails were the cracked yellowish-brown of burnt biscuits.

  “Just hold still,” Corbin said. “We’ll get you some help. Hang on. Can you still hear me? Nod if you can. Don’t try to speak.”

  Elhouse’s body radiated heat, like a hot hearthstone. Patches of cartilage were exposed on his nose. And the smell. God, that smell. It was the scent of something that shouldn’t burn.

  Elhouse’s eyes seemed to search the air until they found Corbin’s. Something like a dry croak tried to make its way out of his throat. All the while, the siren kept screaming in his head: It made me hurt my Gertie… It made me hurt my Gertie.

  “It’s okay. Don’t speak. Just hang on now,” Corbin said.

  It looked like Elhouse tried to blink, but without eyelids his brow simply furrowed, and he swallowed with a loud, thick gulp. Corbin kept thinking that those sick green eyes were going to return at any moment and somehow swallow him up, but they never did. Elhouse reached up and wrapped his blistered hand around Corbin’s wrist. It was a hot grip. He attempted to pull him down close, then said something unintelligible.

  “Don’t try to speak. Help is coming, you crazy bastard.”

  Swimming eyes stared up at him like giant tide pools. They were pleading. Elhouse pulled harder, his lips moving wordlessly as he tried to speak.

  Corbin bent down.

  “Please… help… her,” Elhouse said in a pained whisper. Then he let go and started coughing. After a few high, dry wheezes, what looked like a small lungful of black smoke came out of him. The smoke seemed to shimmer, as if its edges were crawling with fine blue webs of electricity. It drifted up, then broke apart in the air and disappeared.

  Elhouse dropped his head back against the grass and lost consciousness. Corbin pressed his fingers to the man’s neck to search for a pulse, but he couldn’t find one. It was hard to tell through the thickness of burned flesh, but he knew Elhouse was gone. He knelt there a moment in shock.

  It didn’t last long. Things were happening fast around him. His gaze shifted to the front door of the house.

  It made me hurt my Gertie.

  He rose to his feet and ran toward the house. A slow jog was the best his knees would allow. When he reached the front porch, he pulled his gun. He didn’t know what he would find in there, but given what he had just witnessed, it couldn’t be anything good. There was a dangerous edge in the air. The entire place felt sick with it.

  A loud crash exploded from the barn, startling Corbin. He glanced back over his shoulder. A section of roof had collapsed. The thing must’ve been as dry as a bone to go up that quickly. A gust of smoke and sparks burst out of the double barn doors, curling upward once they cleared the doorway.

  He went up the steps. The front door was open a crack. There was fresh blood on the jamb and the latch. A smudged handprint. A long smear on the porch, too.

  “Gertie, you in there?”

  No answer.

  Louder, he called out, “Gertie, it’s Chief Delancey… it’s Corbin. I’m coming in, is that okay?”

  The only sound was the crack and pop of the flames behind him. Then in the distance, he could make out the fire-truck sirens approaching.

  He opened the door with his foot and stepped inside. The house was cool and dark. The shades were all drawn. Curtains closed.

  His eyes adjusted quickly. He picked up a trail of blood on the carpet and followed it upstairs to the second floor, gun leading the way. He didn’t know what he should be cautious of exactly, but he had a sense that there was reason not to charge ahead carelessly.

  More blood had smeared the second-story hallway floor. Corbin could smell it in the stuffy upstairs air. Metallic. Sharp.

  There were five doors in the long hallway. All were open except for the one at the back left. That’s where he was heading; it was the one with blood on it.

  His heart was starting to thump harder, faster. He didn’t know what was waiting for him. Between the nearly decapitated body of Danny Metzger and watching someone he had known his whole life set himself on fire for God knew what reason, he couldn’t be sure what to expect next. Whatever it was, the idea of it turned his stomach.

  Bad things come in threes, he thought. First the car accident last night, then Elhouse, now whatever this is about to be.

  He found a little morbid hope when he recalled the radio call he had taken from Dave Blatten about Leo Saltzman. Maybe that was the third thing. Maybe he would get lucky and open that door at the end of the hallway, and there Gertie would be, sleeping. Taking a nap. The blood? Oh right, that. Well maybe Elhouse had cut himself.

  None of these hopeless ideas really counted for much. He didn’t even begin to believe any of them. Because bad things didn’t just come in threes; they came in ones, twos, threes, fours, and all the way up to infinity.

  Corbin stopped outside the closed door and tried the knob. It was locked. He was about to call
Gertie’s name again when he heard an unmistakable sound come from behind the door. It reminded him of when he used to go hunting with his father. Two soft clicks.

  A deafening blast ripped through the door, leaving a hole the size of a grapefruit. Corbin dropped into a crouch. The wall opposite the doorway was pocked with buckshot.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Corbin backed away from the door, but kept his gun trained on it. “Gertie, that you in there? It’s Chief Delancey. What’s going on?”

  There was a short pause. Then a weak voice: “Corbin?”

  “Yeah, it’s me, Gert. Any chance I can convince you to drop that gun and step out into the hall?”

  There was a thud followed by a strained groan. “I… I don’t think I can. I’m hurt.”

  Corbin looked at the hole in the door, then at the holes in the opposite wall. “Help’s already on its way. Now, are you planning on taking my head off if I come in there? I gotta tell you, I don’t feel like a load of buckshot to the face today.”

  “No,” Gertie replied meekly. She didn’t sound so good.

  “All right, I’m gonna hold you to that.”

  Corbin spotted a small mirror hanging on the wall beside him. He lifted it off the hanger and went back to the door. He held it in front of the hole to see into the room.

  Gertie was sitting on the floor, leaning against a radiator, one hand pressed against her belly. A double-barrel shotgun was lying on the floor next to her. The front of her white shirt was dark maroon with blood.

  Corbin decided to take his chances. “Okay, I’m coming in. Hold tight.”

  He reached his arm through the hole in the door, found the lock latch, and opened the door.

  Gertie’s head was bent back against the radiator, eyes looking down her nose at him. She tried to offer a smile but winced instead. “Hi, Chief. Hope you aren’t mad. I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were… I thought… well…” She flattened her lips, eyes closing for a long blink.

  “Let’s have a look at you, okay?” Corbin dropped to one knee beside her. “Where’re you hurt? There?” He gestured to her stomach.