The door gave after a couple of yanks, coming open with a shriek that went through Tobias’s head like nails on a chalkboard. He was dimly aware that he should never have been able to open the door so easily, but people did impossible things all the time. His mouth was ripe with the sour taste of adrenaline; his body thrummed with tension as he leaned inside the vehicle and unfastened the seatbelt. When he turned to look at Hylas, he saw his eyes were open, his mouth full of blood that ran over his chin in a constant stream.
Something inside of Tobias twisted and violently recoiled at the sight of Hylas’s rapid, unseeing blinking as he tried to work his hideously broken jaw. He was trying to talk or make some kind of noise and it wouldn’t work and Tobias could feel him dying. It hung in the air like a black fog as he gathered up Hylas in his arms and pulled him from the wreckage. The leather seat was soaked with blood from God knew how many injuries. Splinters of broken bone stabbed Tobias’s chest and belly as he stumbled away from the car, hefting his brother up to hold him close. To let him know he was not alone. Hylas was heavy in his arms, a big man already and so far gone he was already becoming deadweight.
The moan finally found its way free of Tobias’s throat as he sat down in the road in front of the car, cradling Hylas and rocking him. It was a heavy, grotesque sound that twisted and became a scream as he bowed his head, pressing it to Hylas’s heaving chest.
“I’m right here,” Tobias said as he rocked Hylas. “I promise I won’t let go. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
It was a lie and Tobias knew it, but he had to hope Hylas could hear him. Hylas stared up at the rain, still blinking, but slower now. He tried to speak, but his words were as mangled as the car and wet with blood.
“Shh… shh… shh…” Tobias smoothed Hylas’s hair back and held on even tighter. He could feel the labored thud of Hylas’s heart pounding against his own. He felt it when it faltered and stuttered. He felt how cold Hylas was already and he screamed again, the sound a gravelly wail as it tore through the spaces in his clenched teeth.
“Hylas, please,” Tobias said, rocking them faster. “Don’t. Don’t go away. Hylas!”
Hylas’s eyes closed and his heart thudded slower. Tobias was staring at his face and jumped when he felt his hand, twisted with broken fingers, touch his arm. It laid there and Tobias stared at it and felt the last beat of his brother’s heart pound through him. It echoed inside his head and hid its memory away inside his bones. Tobias couldn’t even scream then, he could only sob as he pressed his face to Hylas’s still chest.
Tobias’s throat hurt something fierce, a scratching, scraping sensation only making the irritation of it worst. Tobias swallowed against it and felt a lump in his throat. The lump didn’t lessen; it seemed to grow, crawling its way up his throat in a painful itch that finally made Tobias cough and gag. Once he started coughing, he couldn’t stop. Finally, the lump just… popped free, like it had been stuck in his esophagus and now it was in his mouth. It twitched and fluttered against his tongue and Tobias reflexively spit to get the unpleasant thing out.
A black butterfly, singular in its perfection, landed on top of Hylas’s mangled hand where it still rested on Tobias’s arm. Tobias stared at it and knew he had lost his mind. The knowledge came and went like a swift breeze as the butterfly flapped its wings and rose from Hylas’s hand. It fluttered around Tobias’s face, lightly brushing his skin with its wings in soft caresses. Then it was gone and Tobias thought he might be screaming again, but he couldn’t be sure because at the same time the butterfly flew away, there was a nearly audible snap as something inside his mind broke.
Sometime later, the police showed up, blue and red flashing lights dancing with the red and orange of the caution light. They tried to make Tobias let Hylas go, but he wouldn’t budge and no one dared try and take Hylas away from him. Tobias told them to just wait, Hylas would wake up. He fell asleep all the time, to just give them a minute and everything would be fine.
Their father came and he wept, he yelled at the patrolmen all gathered around, useless as road cones. He wanted to know why no one had covered his boy up, why they had left both of his sons just sitting there. He said he’d have their asses in a sling for this. He started to say more, but he broke off when he choked on his own vomit and had to spit it out or strangle on it.
Mitch Dunwalton came back, pallid and shivering, but he crouched down in front of Tobias who looked back at him blankly. “You need to let him go, son,” Mitch said. “You can’t do anything more for him.”
“No.” Tobias’s voice was a sandblasted rusty growl. “He’s only sleeping. You know how he is, Father. He’s only sleeping.”
“He’s not ever going to wake up, Tobias,” Mitch said. He looked like he wanted to throw up again. “You know that. Just let him go.”
“No!” Tobias roared at him. “He’ll wake up! Just give him time. He’s really tired. You don’t understand.”
“Tobias.” Mitch bowed his head and his shoulders shook lightly. “Tobias, you—”
“You’ll see,” Tobias said as he went back to rocking Hylas. The rain still fell, but in a soft patter; a soothing drizzle that kept the sweat and blood from sticking to him and Hylas.
His father kept talking, but his voice faded away as Tobias’s mind drifted to some distant place where all he had to do was wait. Lenore came to sit on his shoulder and the cops all gathered ‘round muttered under their breath about it and looked even more wary than before. Someone did bring a sheet—Tobias thought it was their dad—and he snatched it away and covered Hylas up himself because he didn’t want anyone touching him.
“It’ll be okay,” he kept saying to Hylas. “Just you wait and see.”
“Toby.” Soft fingers brushed through his wet, matted hair.
He looked up to see Dawn Marie standing there, hastily dressed, shirt on backwards and inside out, hair even more of a mess than usual. She was crying, he could see the tears through the mist of the rain.
“He won’t wake up,” Tobias said. His voice was small, still raw and rusty, but shaking. Lost. “I keep waiting and he won’t wake up.”
“I know, honey,” she said as she crouched down beside them. “He’s dead, Toby. You have to let him go.”
“How?” he asked. “How can I ever do that?”
Dawn Marie’s chest jerked with a sob and she shook her head as she plopped down on the pavement beside Tobias. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you have to try. You can’t stay here forever, Toby. Neither can he. Let someone else take care of him for a while.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” Tobias said. The world wobbled all around him and then it began to shake. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t the earth breaking apart at the seams. It was him. He was crying again, horrible, railing sounds that tore at his diaphragm as the reality hit him like a meteor. “I tried so hard to keep him safe. I tried and I still couldn’t. How could I… How could I let him down so badly?”
“You didn’t,” Dawn Marie said. “You are the best brother anyone could have ever wanted. Hylas loved you so much.”
Tobias could say nothing, only shake and Dawn Marie rubbed his naked back, stroked her hand over his quaking muscles.
“Come on, Toby, let these men take him for now,” she said. “You know they have to.”
“I can’t bury him,” he managed to say.
“Yes, you can,” Dawn Marie said. “It’ll be hard, so hard, but you can do this. You can make sure he’s taken care of even then. Toby, please.”
He sat there for another few minutes, listening to the ringing in his ears and the hushed mutter of the cops and EMTs gathered around. His father stood nearby, head down and looking old out of his sheriff’s uniform. They must have gotten him out of bed to come try and deal with his crazy, creepy kid.
“How’d you get here?” Tobias asked Dawn Marie.
“Your dad came by the house,”
she said. “You woke me up when you tore ass down the hall, but I didn’t know where you went. I was freaking out and was about to call Mrs. Callie when Mr. Mitch showed up. He asked me to come talk to you.”
Tobias nodded then looked around for the first time; really looked, and saw that Kenneth’s body had already been removed. There were two wreckers nearby and cops flagging early morning traffic around the mess in the road. The sun was rising, the dawn ashen and grey, nothing beautiful about it at all, which was as it should be because it was an ugly goddamn day.
“Okay,” Tobias said at last.
“Okay?” Dawn Marie asked, but he was already standing, his brother’s body still cradled in his arms. He staggered under the weight, his legs numb from sitting so long.
“Son, you don’t—”
“I do,” Tobias said, cutting his father off. He wouldn’t let Hylas go until he absolutely had to.
“Dear God,” Mitch said. He reached to put his hand on Tobias’s shoulder, but stopped shy of actually touching him.
Tobias took Hylas to the waiting gurney, the EMTs standing a respectful distance away. As he laid Hylas down at long last, Dawn Marie came up behind him and pressed her face to his back, lending comfort and support as Lenore rubbed her head against Tobias’s cheek in much the same way. He brushed Hylas’s hair back and refused to say goodbye to him. The world swam with more tears as Tobias pulled the sheet over his still face then staggered back.
The EMTs loaded Hylas into the ambulance and drove away—took Hylas away—and Tobias watched them go, numb all over. Then his legs buckled and his father caught him around the waist to keep him from hitting the ground.
“Help me get him to the car,” Mitch said to someone.
“Now, you fucker!” Dawn Marie snapped at that same someone.
Tobias let his head tip back and he stared up at the endless grey of the sky and thought he was already starting to forget just how blue Hylas’s eyes were. Something about that made him start weeping again, quieter now, but just as lost. When they got him into the backseat of his father’s car, Dawn Marie crawled in beside him and he folded himself around her as best he could. She kissed his temple and held him until he was quiet again.
12
Jeremy sat at a stop sign watching a fat woman and what he felt qualified as a herd of small children cross the road. He was transfixed by the jiggle of her flabby ass cheeks which were barely concealed by the cut off legs of her short-shorts. Fat hung in rolls from the sides of her bandanna top. Her hair was greasy bleach-blond. There was only one word for what he was looking at and that word was Classy. He snorted and bore down on the brake pedal a bit harder; the itch to let off it and stomp the gas, plowing through the herd of children and the copious anatomy of their mother was almost too hard to ignore. Why were they moving so slowly?
The best cure for that was to look away from them, turn up the radio to tune out the squalling of at least three of the children. I want a snow ball! shrieked one lost in the midst of grand old tantrum. A cheerful cry of, I pooped! competed with little Snow Ball. One of the youngest of the lot wailed away like his throat was a trombone. Another had stopped right in front of the car, grubby finger lodged firmly in her nose, the thumb of her other hand in her mouth. She was staring. Jeremy hated staring. At wit’s end, Jeremy laid on the horn to at least get the lard ass breeder’s attention. The little girl jumped, her thumb popped out of her mouth and she, too, began to bawl.
Mooncricket sat beside him, eating a large order of fast food fries, taking it all in and seeming unbothered. Jeremy kind of wanted to smack him upside the head and snarl, Don’t you see how annoying these people are? He didn’t do it though and contented himself with envying Mooncricket’s blissful unawareness of his surroundings. He stole a fry from him instead and chewed it with more force than necessary.
Jeremy turned the radio up a little louder and tapped his fingers on the wheel as the mother came to retrieve her distressed fuck trophy. He smiled at her, baring his teeth and cocking his head. She turned her head and walked away, dragging Nose Picker along with her. Bemused, he noted that the crying brat stuck her booger finger in her mouth, swirling it around all the slobber as she continued to squall.
At last, they were out of his fucking way and he stomped on the gas, the car jerking through the intersection. He traveled one block more and had to stop again, that time at a red light.
“Fuck my life,” Jeremy muttered. He missed the days of horse and cart very much right then. He’d had himself a nice set-up a few lives back until he’d gotten stuck in the snow going through a pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He ended up eating his horses and noshing on a few of his fellow travelers as well. Human meat really did taste a bit like pork.
Across the way was Greene’s Funeral Home and the sight of its full parking lot distracted him. The cars of mourners filled the lot and spilled out onto the shoulder of the road. The parking lots on either side of Greene’s were both half full and there was a large crowd of people standing outside smoking and talking.
“Are they having a funeral?” Mooncricket asked, finally noticing something. He leaned forward in his seat a little, still absently eating his fries.
“No, they turn it into an all-you-can-eat buffet on Wednesdays,” Jeremy said.
“Seriously?” Mooncricket turned to look at him. “Can we go there?”
“No, we can’t go,” Jeremy said. He thought, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. “I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh,” Mooncricket said. “That sucks.” Then he shrugged it off. “I wonder who died.”
“Hylas Dunwalton,” Jeremy said. “It was in the paper. He got killed in a car wreck over the weekend.”
“Hylas… Hylas… Shit,” Mooncricket said. “He’s Tobias’s brother.”
“He was anyway, yeah,” Jeremy said. “The undertaker’s narcoleptic pretty boy brother. Hylas pretty much was The Era Leader. It’ll probably go straight back to hell again now that he’s dead.”
Jeremy moved through the light when it finally turned green and took a left to cruise by the funeral home. He was almost tempted to stop and go inside to offer his condolences, but he didn’t really see the point except that even he had liked Hylas Dunwalton. Jeremy had only met him a handful of times, but the man had been pleasant to be around, friendly without being overbearing and genuinely interested in what Jeremy (or anyone) said to him. He was the kind of person that Jeremy usually hated, but Hylas had been some kind of freak in that regard.
“So you, like, knew him?” Mooncricket asked.
“No,” Jeremy said. “I met him a few times, but we weren’t that well acquainted.”
“I was supposed to meet him, that’s what people told me anyways,” Mooncricket said. “They told me he was cool people.”
“He was,” Jeremy said honestly. “I actually kind of liked him.”
“That is weird,” Mooncricket said. Then he flinched and walled his eyes to the side to gauge Jeremy’s reaction. When he flipped on the blinker to turn and make the block by the funeral home, Mooncricket relaxed again. “I just meant you don’t seem like the kinda dude to like many people.”
“You know me too well,” Jeremy said.
“Are you being sarcastic again?”
A faint smile tugged the corners of Jeremy’s mouth. “Actually, I’m not.”
Mooncricket smiled, pleased at what almost passed as a compliment. He ate a few more fries then asked, “Have you ever met Tobias?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him,” Jeremy said. He’d heard about Tobias Dunwalton, everyone in Sparrow Falls probably had heard his name and about how odd the man was, but other than that, Jeremy had no idea who he was. The things he had heard about Tobias left him with images in his head of some hunch-backed, cycloptic mutant who could curdle blood with a smile.
“You guys are all about the same age, huh?” Mooncricket said. “I woulda thought y’all would have gone to school together or something.”
“What happened in seventh grade?”
“I tried to beat a classmate’s head in with my science book,” Jeremy said mildly as he began one last circuit of the funeral home. He couldn’t stop looking at all of the crows in the trees surrounding the building. There were so many the branches appeared clothed in shadows.
Mooncricket was silent for a long time, holding some of his fries pinched in his fingers that jutted from the end of his cast. Then he nodded.
“Brutal,” he said.
“It was frowned upon,” Jeremy said. “I managed to get out of going to juvie because the guy’s parents dropped the charges, but the school wouldn’t take me back and I didn’t want to go back anyway. It was either home-school or I was going to be a seventh grade dropout.” He’d always suspected his uncle had paid off the kid’s family with some of Jeremy’s trust fund, but he didn’t care; it had kept him from being locked up for assault.
“Why’d you do it?”
“He made fun of me for sewing,” Jeremy said. “He called me a faggoty little mama’s boy and then he laughed at me. So I hit him. And I kept hitting him.”
“Brutal,” Mooncricket reconfirmed. He stuffed his fries in his mouth and nodded along with the music. “You’re like, a badass.”
“Sure,” Jeremy said as he drove away from the funeral home. He’d noticed a few of the smoking mourners watching him and well, it did look suspicious and weird to keep driving laps around the funeral home. But there were so many damn crows; it was unreal.
“Can we go to the park?”
“For a while,” Jeremy said, dreading all of the sunshine and heat.
“Yay!” Mooncricket said. He smiled to himself and leaned over to lay his head on Jeremy’s shoulder. “This has been a good day.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Mooncricket turned his head to kiss Jeremy’s shoulder through his shirt. “I’m glad you finally decided to come out with me.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 16
