“It’s like you said, I don’t know you,” I continued, “and it’s making me screw up. One minute I think I get it, and then the next I’m pissed off because I’m wondering why you’re pissed off at me. Every time I think I understand, I find out I’m wrong.
All I’ve been trying to do tonight is protect you. That and finding Stella are my only two reasons for breathing right now. And I swear, I’m not doing it because I think you’re weak, or helpless, or stupid. Hell, you’ve been amazing tonight. But somehow I keep hurting you instead, and I don’t understand. Somehow, what I’m intending and the way you are taking it are short circuiting.”
Now she stared at the ground again, and I could see her grip tighten on the lantern and her hatchet.
“The point is Casey, no matter what my intentions are I keep running into something that triggers a bad reaction out of you…and because I don’t know you, I don’t know what that something is. I ran into it after covering your retreat from Ed’s garage, I ran into it after I went chasing you and the flower zombie lady, and I just ran into it again in a big way after pulling that asinine stunt a little earlier.”
“Well yeah…” she breathed, although without conviction. I could tell she knew what I really meant, and we now walked in unhappy territory.
“Oh, you had every right to be furious,” I continued, “but there’s where you caught me off guard again. You weren’t pissed off, you were hurt. While what I did would have made anybody mad, I somehow managed to stick my stupid foot right into the middle of a no-go zone of yours, and make it a whole lot worse.”
“Mark, forget it,” she whispered in a cracked voice. “It’s not all your fault. Sometimes I can be a little unreasonable and overreact to things, okay?”
I’m surprised the rest of Texas didn’t hear my jaw hit the asphalt.
Not only because of what she said, but because of the obvious lie it was. Sure, she could be unreasonable at times, but I knew damn well she didn’t see it that way.
So what on earth was going on here? What could cause a girl with the courage to face an entire circle full of ghouls to suddenly shy away? Once again she looked near tears, and I saw a hint of desperation in her eyes. For a brief second I thought she might even bolt, and carefully took one of her hands.
In hindsight, I realized it was the first time I had ever done something like that.
“No,” I shook my head. “That’s not what’s going on here, Casey. Please help me out with this.”
“You wouldn’t…understand,” she choked out.
“Then help me understand,” I urged. “Our survival depends on us working together tonight and I need to know how to do my part.”
“Mark…”
“But just as important, help me get this right so I stop hurting you. There’s been too much of that already. Please, Casey. I want to be on your side…but I need you to help me understand where that is.”
I had done my best, now it was up to her.
She looked off into the darkness again, then back at me with eyes ragged with doubt. I could see she teetered right on the point of indecision. Uncertainty warred across her features, and I knew this battle could go either way.
And when she spoke again, I realized I had been holding my breath awaiting her answer.
“Can I trust you?” she asked in a quiet voice.
I gave a silent exhale of relief. At the same time I realized I needed to be very careful here and leave no room for mistakes.
“How do you mean that, Casey? I want to make sure I understand you exactly right so I don’t screw up again.”
“I mean, if I tell you this then you can never tell Mom. Not Uncle Ed either, but especially Mom.”
That caught me slightly by surprise. While Stella and Casey were different in a lot of ways, I always thought they had a tight relationship as mothers and daughters went. I tried to imagine what she could be hiding from Stella that would also be causing our fireworks with each other tonight.
The usual panoply of undisclosed boyfriends, unwanted pregnancies, and other secrets generally associated with the teenage female did a brief run through my mind, but I dismissed those immediately. They didn’t make sense under the circumstances, and really didn’t seem Casey’s style anyway. No, this had to be something different.
The problem was, she was asking me to keep a secret from Stella.
I initially balked at the thought. I didn’t like the idea of hiding something from Stella…especially something regarding her own daughter.
But as I met her tortured gaze, I realized that was exactly what needed to be done. Trust is the cement of familial bonds, and sometimes that trust is founded on secrets. And no matter what she had told Ashlyn earlier, this was Casey’s invitation to join the family. It may have been done with reluctance and uncertainty, but she had decided to take a chance and trust me one more time.
And I would be cheerfully damned before I ever made her regret that again.
“So be it,” I replied, looking her firmly in the eye. “Whatever this is, it stays between you and me.”
She studied me for a few seconds more before nodding and taking a deep breath. Then she gazed back out into the darkness as she spoke.
“You know where Webley Park is, right?”
Uh-oh.
“Yes,” I answered with caution, suddenly finding myself on treacherous ground again.
Webley Park lay about five miles away, on the other side of the interstate. It measured only half a residential block in size, and contained little more than a pavilion, a couple of swing sets, and a lot of open grass for people to have picnics or enjoy other outdoor activities.
It also featured a bronze statue of a certain firefighter who had rescued thirteen people before dying in an effort to save one more.
A year after the fire, the fire department had raised the money to commission the statue, and the city had donated the spot in the park. They unveiled it at a small ceremony with all the families involved attending. It was truly an inspired piece of work. Stella said the artist had captured his likeness to perfection.
She loved the thing, and I’m sure she has visited it several times without telling me. I have never begrudged her that.
The statue depicted Casey’s father in his fireman’s gear, holding a small girl aloft. The girl, obviously the one who died with him in the fire, now smiled happily with her arms spread wide as if flying like a bird. The little plaque beneath was titled, “Soaring” and bore its dedication to Doug Stafford and the child he had perished trying to save.
Even I couldn’t help but be impressed…despite the fact it left me in the unenviable position of trying to fill the shoes of a man they built statues to.
“And you know what’s there, right?”
“Yeah.”
She took a shaky breath and continued.
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes, I have.”
In truth I had seen it three times. Once early in my relationship with Stella when we were getting to know each other, once the night before we got married when I tried to assure myself I was ready for what I was getting into, and once about four months later when I stood before the same statue and begged Doug Stafford for any hint of how to get along with his infuriating little orc of a daughter.
“Tell me something,” asked that very daughter, only with all traces of orcishness now gone, “what do you see when you look at that statue?”
“I see a hell of a man,” I answered simply. “I see a guy who any girl would be proud to call her father. I see a hero.”
“Really?” She sniffled. “You want to know what I see?”
Her voice cracked at the end, making “see” almost come out as a squeak.
“Absolutely,” I answered carefully. “What do you see, Casey?”
Whatever it was, I sensed we were now at the crux of the matter.
“I see…” she swallowed, started again, and now the tears truly started to flow, “I see my Dad…up in Heaven…giving some ot
her little girl a goddamned airplane ride! I HATE that fucking thing, Mark! And I especially hate the little bitch they put in with him!!”
I stared at her in dismay, completely taken aback. This was the last thing I expected. But it only took one look at her for me to see she meant every word of it. I never knew one face could contain so much grief, anger, and pain.
“That’s supposed to be me he does things like that with!”
I wanted to say something comforting, anything, but didn’t because I had no idea where to begin.
“But he can’t, and you know why? Because he had to be a hero and go back in there again. All because some stupid little shit couldn’t do something as simple as follow him and her family down a goddamned hallway!”
“Casey…”
“I know,” she gulped. “I know…she was just a little girl, and she panicked, and it wasn’t her fault…but she took my dad away, Mark! He went back in there after her, and now I’ll never see him again!”
And that’s when she finally started to dissolve.
For once in my life I actually thought fast and shifted to kneeling on one knee so she could sit on the other when I pulled her to me. Then I held her tight as sobs wracked her frame.
“I know it’s crazy,” she cried. “I know it’s not fair to her, but I still hate her. I hate her more than anything in this world. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it. I still do, and I always will. I will never forgive her for that.”
“It’s okay,” I hugged her for all I was worth, “That’s perfectly okay. You have every right.”
She gave in to the tears and cried without speaking. And as I held her, it began to sink in how much this must have torn at her the past few years.
Whoever designed that statue, as inspired as it was, had been an idiot. How many times had she seen the thing? How many times had she seen her place in his arms usurped by the girl she blamed for his death? Hell, how many times had her mother taken her to the park to ‘see Dad?’ And she had borne it all in silence because she knew how much it meant to Stella.
Christ, no wonder she was so surly and standoffish. Carrying a burden like that could make somebody insane…and she was just a kid.
But as I pondered that, I felt her recollect herself and she pushed herself back up to her feet.
“But here’s what you have to understand,” she sniffled again, and then set her jaw. “That’s what you’ve been ‘running into’ tonight. I can’t be her, Mark. I can’t have any heroes, get it? I can’t have that. I can never, ever, allow myself to be her or it would kill me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t have somebody throwing themselves between me and trouble, okay? If you want to stand by me and face this crap with me, I can live with that…seriously, I’ll welcome it right now because I’m scared shitless…but no hero stuff, okay? Don’t turn me into her, because that’s the one thing I can’t live with. Does that make any sense? Can you understand?”
As I gazed up at her tearful face, I really didn’t want to understand. Every instinct I had wanted me to do exactly what I had been trying to do all night, especially with her as hurt and vulnerable as she was right then.
But at the same time, knowing what I knew now, I could see how it had made our earlier showdown inevitable. And it would have happened the same way every time. Whether I liked it or not, it really came down to one unavoidable bottom line…
…however Casey came to be this way, this was simply who she was. And nothing could change it.
I could either accept and work with that reality, or deny it and lose every last shred of her trust. And that pretty much narrowed my options down to one.
“I understand,” I sighed. “We’ll do this thing your way.”
The look of relief on her face almost broke my heart.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I conceded with a grimace. “It’s not going to be easy for me, because sometimes us guys want to dive in and save the day, but I promise to remember who I’m dealing with and try to curb that instinct. And at least knowing what I know now, I would never even consider pulling a stunt like I did back up the jogging path again. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, albeit with caution. “And you won’t tell Mom or Uncle Ed, right?”
“Right. This is only between us.”
Casey nodded, then looked away again. I could see she still struggled to pull herself together, and I felt slightly guilty for putting her through this…especially in a situation like tonight.
She stared into the night a few seconds longer then turned back to face me. She looked exhausted, but the anger…and some of the pain…was gone.
“Thanks, Mark.”
“You are most welcome.”
She sighed and gave me a tired half smile.
“Wow, I guess you’re not so bad after all.”
“Thanks,” I grinned back. “Back at you.”
Her smile widened ever so slightly, but then it vanished and she grew solemn again.
“Just one more thing,” she added. “I know I’ve asked for a lot, but can I ask you for one teeny little favor more? It’s important, and it would really mean a lot.”
At this point I would have probably agreed to giving her my car.
“Sure. Name it.”
As it turned out, my car was safe.
“Mark, pleeeease stand up?” she groaned. “It looks like you’re proposing to me or something, and it’s really starting to creep me out.”
Chapter Eleven: The Tower
“It’s them!” Ashlyn’s voice sounded from ahead as we pushed through the brushy trail.
A few seconds later the trail widened and we found ourselves at a tall chain-link fence. I could see we had emerged at the rear of a square enclosure. Apparently my trust in Ed to get past the locked gate had been well placed. As a matter of fact, it looked like he’d found a way to actually get it open since I spotted the Treadwells’ wheelbarrow parked next to the little shed inside.
They had gathered brush and dead wood, and Ed had managed to start a small fire in a paint can he must have found nearby. Probably not a bad idea, although I once again felt a twinge of worry about giving away our position to every monster nearby. At least the fire was small, and the enclosure surrounded by trees and brush. The only direction the campfire would really be visible would be from the south where a short gravel driveway led to Deer Ridge.
“Thank God, you guys made it,” Ashlyn kept pace with us on the other side of the chain-link fence as we started to circle around to the gate. “We saw your light approaching through the trees, but when you guys stopped up at the end of the path and didn’t move for a while, we started to worry it wasn’t you. What were y’all doing?”
“Umm…just making sure we weren’t being followed,” I answered, thinking fast. “How did you guys get the gate open?”
“Ed and Mr. Treadwell used the pipe wrench from the plumber’s van to twist the lock off. Ed said it’s a trick they use out in the oil fields.”
Score another one for Ed. The old guy was apparently an encyclopedia of practical tricks like that. I also noticed he had already become “Ed” to Ashlyn, while Allen remained “Mr. Treadwell.”
We wasted no time in getting around to the gate ourselves, and the relative safety of the enclosure. The place didn’t amount to much, merely a flat gravel expanse dominated by a towering structure of steel beams, alongside a small shed where I assumed Darla and the Treadwells had taken shelter.
Casey gave a repressed yelp and cursed as we entered, grabbing her foot as she balanced on the other. Being barefoot on the gravel would not be comfortable in here.
“Which reminds me,” Ed spoke from where he sat at the fire near one of the cell towers legs, “you’ve been lucky as hell tonight, Dodger. If you had stepped on a pebble when running from the flower lady earlier it could have been real bad. It’s time to stop taking chances with that. Tommy, there’s a couple of cardboard boxes in the s
hack with Darla and the Treadwells. Take the lantern to them and bring those back, please. I can use the cardboard and duct tape to fashion her some foot protection.”
Tommy did as instructed as Casey gave Ed a doubtful look.
“You’re going to put my feet in boxes?”
“No,” he chuckled, “I’ll simply use the cardboard to make the soles. Don’t worry, they’ll fit just like a tennis shoe. You’ll see. Ashlyn, you could probably use a pair as well.”
It wasn’t exactly the most appropriate time to notice something like this, but at that moment our current group’s attire brought home one of the oddest gender differences I had never really thought of before. Every guy here wore shoes, even Allen Treadwell in his pajamas. On the other hand, Darla was the only woman wearing them—house slippers, of course—and only because she had been sneaking out of the house to rendezvous with Sid. Ashlyn’s pajama’s had feet, but I doubted the thin plastic soles counted as much for protection.
My writer’s side of the brain made a mental note for future reference that when it comes to getting home and putting your feet up…women appear to take that a lot more seriously than men.
“Thanks, Ed,” Ashlyn replied, “but go ahead and do Casey’s first. I’ll wait until after I get back down from the tower. These footie pajamas will probably work better for climbing anyway.”
I had been watching Tommy, followed by Darla, emerge from the shed with the cardboard when those words sunk in.
“Wait a minute,” I turned back to Ashlyn, holding up a cautionary hand, “you’re intending on climbing the tower?”
“Sure! I’m the logical choice.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked, gazing up at the metal framework looming above us.
I could see about twenty feet up before the skeletal structure vanished into the darkness overhead.
“I have the best sense of balance, I’m in the best shape, and heights don’t bother me.”
“Well, yeahhhhhh,” I admitted, still not liking this very much.
“Besides,” she smiled, “I know you mean well, Mr. Garrett, but remember you’re talking to somebody who can do a standing back flip on a raised balance beam.”
Nightwalk Page 20
