So Mr. Treadwell would need help, which meant tying up two people. But even if somebody else took the child, how long could he really carry a grown adult? Mrs Treadwell was not a tiny woman. And what if we needed to run? We had already encountered situations where that had been required.
Damn.
I looked over at Ed to see him mulling over the situation, and from the look on his face he didn’t like it either. We had a real dilemma here, and I could tell several people were already settling on the idea of staying put as the solution. I suppose from their point of view it simply made sense.
But I had a major problem with that.
“If you stay here, you will all die. In truth, you will all most likely die anyway…but here, that fate is guaranteed.”
The words from the man in white rose in my mind.
Yes, I knew nobody else had seen him. And yes, I knew I had been unconscious when I saw him myself. I had absolutely no reason to believe he was anything but a hallucination brought on by a severe blow to the head. To tell the truth, I couldn’t think of single other plausible explanation for the experience.
But it didn’t matter.
The simple fact was…real or not…I still believed him.
If we stayed there, we would all die.
Chapter Eight: Conflict and Preparation
I looked from one face to the next, all glowing pale in the lantern’s small circle of light, and as I did a wave of futility washed through me.
This wasn’t going to work.
Fear vibrated through the dim patio like a silent hum in the air. Fear, and worse yet…denial.
Things like this simply didn’t happen in Coventry Woods. Nothing bad happened in Coventry Woods. And if it did, you sat down and waited for the appropriate party to take care of it. A police officer would arrive and make the noisy teenagers quieten down, the lawn crew would show up and collect the branches knocked down in the latest storm, and the Neighborhood Association would tell the obnoxious neighbor to remove the derelict boat from his driveway.
So I not only faced fear, but fear reinforced by habit. Even Ashlyn had stopped and hid in her friend’s backyard until the neighborhood psycho-kid had come along to lead her farther.
Sitting tight until the proper authorities arrived was simply their instinct.
And that meant I couldn’t help these people. I needed to get Casey out of here and find Stella.
“Forget it,” I sighed as I braced myself and hardened my resolve. “I’m really sorry about how this turned out, and wish all of you luck. But we can’t stay here. Ed, Casey, let’s go. Ashlyn, you’re welcome to come with us.”
This went over about as well as I expected.
“That’s it?!” Darla’s voice rose. “You’re just going to…”
“Whoa there,” Ed interrupted, waving Mrs. Dower off although he directed his words at me. “Slow down for a minute.”
“No, Ed. We need to…”
“I know, and we’ll get to that. But I want to take care of a couple of things before we decide what to do next.”
“Ed…”
“What do you mean, ‘decide what to do next?’ Darla demanded. “We’ve already decided…”
“What?” Ashlyn began. “But…”
“Oh we did?” Casey jumped in. “And what exactly did ‘we’ decide, Darla?”
The older woman gave an exasperated snort in the girl’s direction. I’m not sure what Ashlyn and Casey had done to get in her doghouse, but any input from their quarter definitely rubbed her the wrong way.
“Well for one thing, I thought we decided the kiddy gallery would remain seen and not heard,” she fired back. “Why don’t you and your friend go make yourselves useful and watch out the gate while we work this out.”
“Useful?” Casey stared at her in frank amazement.
“Yes. It means, ‘to be of use.’ Look it up. Another pair of eyes watching out there wouldn’t hurt and it would keep you out of our way.”
I saw Casey’s grip tighten around the hatchet she had fought with, and what remained of the bandage roll she’d been using to assist Ed, and decided to step back into this.
“Mrs. Dower, they’re not being a problem here,” I interjected.
She favored the pair with a contemptuous glance before settling her glare back on me.
“Whatever,” she snapped. “Just do me a favor and keep Thing One and Thing Two out of this. Okay? We’re trying to settle something important here.”
Oh Christ...
I risked a peek back at Casey to see her now handing the hatchet and bandage roll to Ashlyn…which did not bode well at all.
“Okay, Darla,” she replied in a strangely sweet voice. “You want to settle something?”
Which was exactly the response I feared.
I caught her around the waist just as she lunged for the other woman.
“Casey, no!”
“Let me go, Mark!” she snarled while struggling to get at her target. “I’m gonna wipe that…”
“Oh god…really?” Darla rolled her eyes while exhaling another stream of smoke. She put on a great show of exasperated boredom, although I noticed she had also positioned herself where she could pull Sid between them if circumstances demanded.
“Lady, what the hell is your malfunction?” I grunted while straining to keep myself between her and a near-homicidal redhead. The girl fought hard to get free and I feared she might bite my arm at any second. “Dammit, Casey, stop it!”
And then things escalated.
“Her malfunction?” Sid spoke up now, while at the same time putting himself in a more defensive position of Darla. “I don’t think she’s the one with a problem here. It looks to me like she’s the one trying to be reasonable.”
“Sure, Sid,” I shot back, “she’s all sunshine and lollipops. Maybe if she’d stop picking fights she wouldn’t have to hide behind the first gallant pizza boy she sees ogling her ass.”
Yeah, that helped…
In hindsight I suppose I could have phrased things a little more diplomatically. But by that time I was pissed. Pissed at Darla for her attitude, pissed at Casey who now tried stomping on my foot, pissed at Sid for being such an easily manipulated dumbass, and now pretty much pissed in general.
I saw Sid’s face go white and his jaw harden, having been both called out and humiliated at the same time. He clenched his good fist, took a step in my direction, and it occurred to me I might have very well started a fight of my own.
Which suited me just fine.
As Sid looked prepared to throw down, I realized with some surprise I liked the idea. Come to think of it, I liked the idea a whole lot. Unlike Casey, he represented an opponent I could happily hit back.
A lot.
With gusto.
“You got something to say, Sid?” I inquired while releasing an astonished looking Casey who had suddenly ceased struggling. “Don’t be shy, step right up. I am all ears.”
Sid looked like he had plenty to say, and if I had been thinking straight it would have alarmed me how happy that made me. I hadn’t thrown a punch since high school, but here I stood over a quarter century later about to cheerfully mix it up with a guy I had never met. And it didn’t bother me at all. Nosiree, not one bit. At the moment I only wanted to see if he would lead with his uninjured hand, or try and use the heavily bandaged one as a club. Either way worked for me.
But as it turned out, I never got to find out what he would have done…because that’s when Ed picked up the lantern and switched it off.
And that ended that.
He couldn’t have stopped the impending fracas more effectively if he had turned a fire hose on us.
Darkness fell like a smothering blanket, bringing a healthy dose of our new reality back with it. The blackness hung so thick I couldn’t see six inches in front of me…and that blackness was alive. With us shocked into silence, the sounds of the alien night reasserted themselves.
The song of something sounding no
thing like crickets provided a soft background chirrrr to the assorted other noises filtering in. A distant staccato of gunfire rattled from the east, while another gargantuan grunt echoed from somewhere else far too close. A brief ululating howl issued from the south and also raised my hackles. It sounded vaguely canine, although I never wanted to meet any animal capable of such a cry…it somehow managed to mix madness, hunger, and pissed off all at the same time.
Even in the short period we had spent here, things had continued to get worse.
The darkness practically seethed with death.
“How are we doing, folks?” Ed’s voice asked in a surprisingly genial tone. “I’m not really trying to scare anybody here, but I thought it might be a good idea to give us a minute to refocus on the problem at hand.”
It was a slightly crappy thing to do, but I suppose he made his point. I think we were all refocused.
I couldn’t see him, although my eyes had now adjusted where I could make out Ashlyn’s face in the dim light of the yellow glowstick. She looked both frightened and somewhat embarrassed. I’m not sure what she had to be embarrassed about. Except maybe the company she kept.
At the same time I also noticed a faint red glow from the corner of the roof, and squinted up there to see the outline of the boy with the bow now looking back over his shoulder at us. What with all the drama, I had completely forgotten about him. He must have had a red glow stick on the roof between his feet. It probably made just enough light for him to see and notch his next arrow. Otherwise it didn’t reveal much, merely the side of a pale face watching us without expression.
No malice, no hostility…and yet something in that motionless regard bothered me.
“Okay, Ed,” I murmured, while keeping my attention on the young archer, “I think we’re all past it now. A little light would be nice.”
“How about you, Sid?” Ed inquired. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Dodger?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay then,” he continued, and his lighter flared as he started relighting the lantern, “in that case let’s start directing our energies toward other matters. We’ve managed to recover from this last encounter as best we could, now let’s see if we can’t improve our situation a little.”
That caused several people to perk up, although I didn’t number among them.
I didn’t know what he meant by improving our situation, and I also didn’t know if I liked the sound of it. It made me worry he might be considering some way of fortifying our current location. My argument with Darla might have ended for the moment but my position hadn’t changed. Staying here did not count as an option.
I started to ask him to clarify but he had already turned back to Darla and gestured to one of the flag draped forms against the wall of the house.
“Mrs. Dower, you said this man was a plumber? Was he a neighbor of yours?”
“Yeah.” She grimaced. “Tony Gallagher, of Gallagher Brothers Plumbing and Supply. He lived next door.”
“I wondered about that.” Ed nodded, obviously deep in thought. “Although I had my hands full when we were coming up here, I seem to remember seeing a large white vehicle in the driveway next to here.”
“You probably did. When he brought his work van home he always parked it in the driveway because he said it wouldn’t fit in his garage.”
I got the definite impression Darla would have preferred he parked it elsewhere. Judging from Ed’s response, he must have gotten the same vibe.
“Well, in this case that’s a stroke of luck for our side,” he replied as he moved over to the flag draped figure. “There should be some things in his van I can use to make this situation a lot better. And since I remember Mr. Gallagher being fully dressed…”
He raised the flag at about waist level and inserted his hand. His lack of discomfort around the corpse wasn’t lost on me. It served as a reminder that while I only knew him as the decent old guy who lived over the fence behind me, he had also been on the scene of any number of tragedies and seen his share of death.
After fishing around a few seconds in what I figured to be a pocket, he withdrew a set of keys.
“And we’re in business,” he announced. “Hey, Dodger? You still remember how to drain the oil on a vehicle?”
“Sure,” she replied with a puzzled frown.
“Good. You’re about to get a chance to show your stuff.” He picked up the lantern and carried it to the front and secured it in the archway window. “There. That leaves the people here with the lantern, but should give us enough light to see what we need to do over at the van.”
“Who is ‘we’, Uncle Ed?”
“Pretty much everybody but Mrs. Dower and the Treadwells,” he answered, then raised a warding hand as Darla started to object. “Mrs. Dower, I need somebody to stay with the Treadwells, and I got the feeling you would prefer to stay here anyway. We will not be far, and from here at the window you’ll be able to see us right next door.”
Darla stilled her objection but folded her arms across her chest and looked a whole lot less than happy.
“I could drain the oil if you want,” Sid spoke up in a surprisingly conciliatory tone. “But why?”
“Actually, I have something else for you to do,” Ed clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder. “But thanks for offering. And what we’re going to do is use the oil to make torches or fire pots. I think everybody could stand to have a little more light on things, don’t you? It also occurs to me a lot of animals don’t like fire. Not to mention there should be a couple of other things in the van I can use as well.”
Judging from how the entire assembly livened up, I think it’s safe to say Ed now had everybody’s attention in a whole new way. The words “torches” and “more light” caused a dramatic lightening of the mood. The new sense of excitement hovered like a physical presence on the little patio.
I only realized later how he had effectively taken charge of the group at that very moment. I will always wonder if it was another clever ploy by a savvy old man, or simply a matter of his experience leading him to the next logical move.
Either way, it had been a stroke of genius.
In that darkest of all nights, he had offered us fire. And it didn’t matter whether we came from the suburbs, the ghettos, or the penthouses of the super-rich…when shit gets real, us humans are all about fire.
So that’s how less than five minutes after we had been about to go at each other’s throats in an absolutely idiotic brawl, Ed had Sid, Casey, and me…along with Ashlyn…gathered at the gate and ready to follow him out into the darkness.
###
I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my pants and clutched my impromptu spear.
Since Sid’s previous weapon had apparently been a brick, I gave him the tire iron I used before switching to the flag pole. Casey still had her hatchet tool while Ashlyn carried the glow stick and a steak knife she must have grabbed from the Kell house before fleeing into their backyard. The plumber’s shotgun had one shell left in it, but Darla had demanded it stay with Mr. Treadwell.
That left Ed with nothing but his cane and an empty gun. He didn’t seem worried about it though, and said he would try to find himself and Ashlyn something better in the van. It didn’t really bother me much since we would only be going about forty or fifty feet. From my vantage point at the gate, I could see the van dimly visible at the edge of the lantern’s light.
Then, right as I prepared to open the gate, Ed motioned for me to wait. He turned to face the silent figure squatting on the corner of the roof.
“Excuse me,” he raised his voice a trifle. “You’re name is Tommy Murchison, right?”
The young man turned his expressionless gaze toward us. He studied Ed a second, then gave a slow nod.
Since Ed called him by name, I could only assume he must have known the boy’s history due to him living here at the time, or the girls had filled him in. Either way, he had to have known. Bu
t if the kid creeped him out as much as he did me, he showed no sign of it.
“Right,” Ed confirmed. “Tommy, I would really appreciate it if you joined us for this. Your presence would free me up to come back and splint Mrs. Treadwell if the van has what I need, and also assign tasks for the others in a safer division of labor. Do you mind?”
Tommy stared at him a second longer before nodding again. He picked up the red glow stick and slid it into his pocket before pivoting and slipping off the roof and onto the patio wall. I followed his progress with wary curiosity as he walked down the top of the wall toward us.
He reached the gate arch and stooped as if he intended to lower himself down onto the large ashtray urn…then abruptly straightened up again.
“Just a moment,” he said in a soft voice.
Then he stepped up onto the top of the arch over the gate, and from there hopped to the roof on our side of the patio. I heard his footsteps on the shingles above us. They retreated, stopped, then grew louder as he returned. A second later he stepped back onto the wall, before lowering himself down into the patio to stand right beside me.
Now that he had finally come down into the lantern light with me, I got my first good look at Tommy Murchison.
And it still left me not knowing what to make of him.
He might have been a “kid” but he stood at least as tall as me, and wherever he had been staying the past few years had definitely included a gym. This kid was chiseled. Not only that, he looked like the type of clean cut, blond haired, blue-eyed honor student most moms would love to see their daughters bring home.
And yet…not.
Despite his appearance, he had a stillness about him I found very off-putting. He didn’t seem to blink or exhibit any of the other little twitches or mannerisms common to people.
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