Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  Boyd tapped an index finger against his coffee mug. “Odie. You called him Old Daddy. But he was Hollowell’s age, wasn’t he? He must have been—what? Forty? Seven years ago? He wouldn’t have been that old when he and your mother got married. In his twenties?”

  Beth shrugged. “I guess. He was just one of those guys that was always old. You know? He always acted like it didn’t bother him. Lily and me. That we called him Odie. But maybe it kind of ate at him. Maybe that’s why he thought Lily ought to marry Travis. Because we owed it to him.” Looked at the table again. “I was only twelve for all that. I really don’t know.”

  “But,” Boyd hesitated, “who was your father? When your stepfather—Odie—when he was trying to force Lily to marry Hollowell. I thought your father was dead?”

  “Well, yeah, he was,” Beth said, “I mean, we never knew him. We used to talk about it, Lily and me. What he was like. Mama said he was her dream. We thought that was romantic. Like he was a dreamboat, I guess. She said Lily looked like him a little. And I wished I looked like him. But I don’t think I do.”

  “What about Hollowell?” Hallie asked. “Was he around? Could he have been your father?”

  Beth looked at her like, are you nuts? “He was around,” she said. “But no, I’m sure not. It just—no. We did see him a lot, though, and maybe that was why he wanted to marry Lily. I mean, at least at the beginning maybe he thought she liked him. Even my mother used to like him. Before Odie borrowed money from him and things got weird. Back when I was, maybe, eight or nine, my mother and Odie and Travis used to talk about things, things they’d stop talking about when we came in the room. Travis brought old books and what I think were journals and he and my mom—I asked them once if they were on a treasure hunt and Travis laughed. He said, ‘We’re trying to figure it all out.’ But I never knew what he meant.”

  “Did you ever die?” Hallie asked. Because Beth could see reapers.

  Everyone looked at her. “What?” Beth asked.

  Hallie tapped a finger on the table. “Like, had to be resuscitated. Like saw a light at the end of a long tunnel. Like that.”

  “No,” Beth said. “No! I’ve never even been to the hospital. Well,” she considered, “when I was born.”

  Boyd put his hand over Hallie’s. “Do you have a picture of your father?”

  Beth frowned. “Why? What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know,” Boyd said honestly. “But Hollowell doesn’t want just anyone. He wanted Lily. And he wants you. He came back from the dead for you. There has to be a reason.”

  There was a long stretch of tired silence. Too much had happened, and it had been too long a day to think through it all clearly. Pabby slapped her hands on her legs and stood. She said she didn’t know about anyone else, but she was going to bed. She gave Boyd a pillow, sheets, and a blanket for the couch in the living room, and she and Beth went upstairs.

  It wasn’t much past nine, and Hallie went out on the front porch. The temperature hadn’t dropped all that much after sunset. It felt as if it was still above freezing, a light breeze out of the west. The black dogs were out there, outside the hex ring. She could see their eyes glitter when they lifted their heads.

  She heard the front door open and ease softly closed as Boyd joined her, but she didn’t turn around. He stood behind her for a moment; then he put his arms around her waist. She could feel his warm breath against her neck. She wanted to stand like that forever, while the sun rose and set and they stood there, breathing. She put a hand over his.

  “I’ve been dreaming,” she began. But that wasn’t right. “I have—” She thought about turning to face him. But she would have to step back to look him in the eye and though she wanted to look him in the eye, she didn’t want to step back, so she looked across the yard at the black dogs and the prairie and the tall light over the corral. “I see a shadow sometimes,” she said, “and when it comes near me, it’s Death.”

  His hands tightened around her waist. “Like the future?” he said. “Like someone dying?”

  He didn’t say, Like you’re going to die, but she knew that’s what he was asking. “No,” she said. “Like Death, like a person, like he wants to talk to me.”

  She felt embarrassed, like she’d just confessed to reading porn off the Internet and she wasn’t sure why. Out in the toolshed, he’d said he was her type. But he wasn’t. Hallie knew he wasn’t. Except right now, in this moment, he was what she wanted.

  “Death talks to you?” Boyd said, not like he didn’t believe her, more like he didn’t know how to respond. And she didn’t blame him. Because this was new territory. Even for them.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He does.”

  “What does he say?”

  “That the reapers are out of control.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If this shadow comes again, can you tell me?” he asked.

  “It won’t come while we’re in the hex ring,” Hallie said, not that she knew she was right about that, but she was pretty sure.

  “We’re not staying in this ring,” Boyd said.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. “Okay.” By which she meant she wasn’t.

  24

  The temperature dropped. Hallie could hear the horses moving in the paddock by the barn. She didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to break this moment, like a step out of time. Like reapers weren’t chasing them, like Death wasn’t lurking, like Hallie could stay here with Boyd forever and go anywhere in the world she wanted, both of them at the same time.

  When her phone rang, it was like an electric shock, as if the sound of it shattered the air around them. Hallie stepped away like she’d been stung. Boyd stepped back too, fetched up hard against the house, like he’d forgotten where they were.

  “Hello?”

  “Boyd there?”

  It was Teedt.

  “How did you get my number?”

  “Boyd gave it to me.” Like he was explaining to a slow child. “Is he there?”

  Hallie handed the phone to Boyd.

  He listened for a minute without saying anything. “I know it’s a problem,” he said, “but I won’t be in tomorrow.”

  Hallie tapped him on the hand and when he looked at her, she indicated the barn. Boyd frowned and she held up a hand—five minutes—not asking his permission, telling him she was going. She left him to his conversation and trotted across the yard to the work shed. The shed was just at the edge of the yard light and even leaving the shed door open, everything was black with a few streaks of grainy, overexposed gray. She felt her way along the wall to the cabinets and then over to the workbench she’d been sitting at. She gathered up the shotgun shells she’d loaded and the steel-jacketed bullets she’d smeared with blood and recited the only real prayer she remembered. She stuffed the shells in an outer jacket pocket and the bullets in another pocket and headed back across the yard.

  Next time reapers and screaming women came, she—and Boyd—would be prepared.

  She found Boyd in the living room making up the couch. The only light was from a sconce on the wall by the dining room doorway. He was tucking the corners of the sheet under the couch cushions—square corners and everything. Hallie wanted to laugh and then she didn’t because it was so … Boyd and normal. And in that moment she wanted normal so bad, she could taste it. There were no ghosts here, no reapers. Tonight, just for once, nothing could touch them.

  “How’s Ole?” she asked.

  Boyd didn’t turn, kept smoothing the sheet so there would be no wrinkles. “He’s going to be fine. Teedt says he’s planning to be back at work tomorrow. And he probably will be. Teedt said when he came around, he talked about death marches and invisible dogs and they thought they might need a psych eval. After he was awake, he told them they must have heard him wrong, that he was talking about gas explosions and saving the dog. I don’t think anyone has the nerve to ask him, ‘What dog?’

  “Something else,
” he said as he shook out the blanket. “Teedt says that Jake Javinovich is back.”

  “Back? Like alive? Like okay?”

  Though Boyd’s back was to her, Hallie could see his shoulders rise and fall. “Apparently. Turned up in Frank and Sarah Jeter’s backyard. He was surprised to find he was missing days. He says he doesn’t remember anything.”

  “But he’s alive.” Which was the best thing Hallie had heard all day.

  “He’s alive,” Boyd agreed.

  “Son of a bitch.” By which, she meant good.

  Boyd put the blanket over the sheet on the couch, tucked in the corners, and smoothed it as carefully as he’d smoothed the sheet.

  “I have something,” Hallie said after a minute. Boyd straightened and looked at her.

  When she first met him, she’d been unable to get over how pretty he was, not handsome, pretty like the boys who starred in Hollywood teen movies—smooth skin and fine features—and saved only by that short, precise haircut and quiet stubbornness. He wasn’t her type. Seriously wasn’t. But when he turned and looked at her and a slant of light highlighted the planes and angles of his face, she didn’t care.

  She crossed the room, took his hand, and put the steel-jacketed bullets into his palm. “I got you silver bullets,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, not really,” she said. “But I—” For some reason, right then, she didn’t want to say, “coated them in my own blood,” so she said, “—I primed them. They should actually work on Hollowell.”

  Boyd held a bullet up to the dim light. “Really?”

  “Well, I haven’t tested them, but in theory, yeah.” She turned away; Boyd grabbed her by the wrist. She turned back, an eyebrow raised, and smiled.

  “Hallie, you know—”

  “Shut up,” she said, and kissed him.

  He kissed her back with an intensity that might have frightened her, except she’d known, she had always known that there was a part of him that could kiss like that, like fire and lightning and open prairie. She shoved her hands up under his shirt. Then there was unbuttoning and shirts coming off and fevered like the first time or in a long time and— “Wait,” she said.

  He paused with a hand on her hip. “I’ve done desperate,” she said. “I’ve done ‘we could die tomorrow.’ I don’t want to do that. We don’t have to be desperate. We’re not going to die tomorrow.”

  He smiled and it was neither the quicksilver smile nor that grin when he’d told her he was her type. It was slow and deep and she didn’t even care if it was just for her, because it was just for this moment. And that was enough.

  Later, Hallie woke, startled and not sure what had startled her. Boyd was beside her, but he was sitting straight up, staring at—well, Hallie didn’t know what he was staring at, because she couldn’t see anything herself.

  “Boyd,” she said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t look at her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Hallie sat up. She put a hand on his knee. “Is it a dream?” she asked.

  “I—” Boyd laid his hand over hers. It almost felt to Hallie as if it was shaking. “He wants something, Hallie. Don’t give him anything.”

  “Hollowell?” Hallie asked. “He’s not getting anything from me.”

  “Death.” Boyd turned away from whatever nothing he’d been staring at and looked at Hallie. “Look,” he said. “Maybe—I’m not saying this because I want to protect you or save you.” Though Hallie knew before he’d even finished the sentence that he was and he did. “But maybe you should stay here. Inside the circle. Until everything’s finished. I mean, until we figure out how to handle Hollowell. I just—I can’t explain it, but we could make that work. Couldn’t we?”

  “We can make it work,” Hallie said, by which she meant, no. But she didn’t say no. Because he’d asked her in the middle of the night, because it clearly was important to him, and because he already knew the real answer before he’d even asked the question.

  She pulled him back down beside her, but it was a long time before either of them fell asleep again.

  Hallie woke again much later, warm for once and comfortable even though she was lying on the floor and it took her a minute to figure out where she was. Then she remembered. Pabby. And Boyd.

  She opened her eyes. She was alone, though she could still feel the warmth from his body, like he’d just gotten up a moment before. She sat up, raised her knees to her chest, and listened. She didn’t hear sounds from the bathroom or the kitchen, didn’t smell coffee. She pulled on her jeans and padded barefoot to the kitchen. No one there.

  It was just after six by the kitchen clock, the sky outside predawn gray. Her feet were cold on the old linoleum floor. Boyd’s jacket was gone from the row of hooks by the back door. Hallie abandoned her initial idea of making coffee, grabbed her own jacket, and went back in the living room for her boots. A moment later she stepped out onto the front porch. Breath puffed out in front of her like crystal smoke, the morning temperature brisk enough to frost the tips of the grass and sharpen the air as she breathed.

  She saw Boyd up by the corral feeding grain to the horses. He looked up at the sound of the front door closing. Hallie lifted a hand and he raised his hand back. She headed over to her pickup truck for the cell phone she’d left in there last night and the steel prybar. She didn’t need it here unless she went outside the ring, but it was good to have, more useful outside the truck than in.

  Look out!

  Dog’s voice inside her head and Hallie was dropping and rolling and something arched past her, so close, she could feel the breath of its passing on the back of her neck. She scrambled to her feet, the prybar in her hand. What looked like a steel dart, though it couldn’t be steel, protruded from the ground just in front of her. As she watched, it disintegrated in a nasty-smelling puff of smoke leaving nothing but a charred circle where it had been.

  Magic. Couldn’t survive in the ring, but it had gotten in somehow.

  There had to be a gap.

  “Boyd!” she shouted. She heard snarling, the sound of bodies thumping together and teeth snapping as she came around the side of the truck and saw three of the black dogs attacking a fourth. Too many against one, harrying it back until the one was against the edge of the hex ring and had nowhere to go. Hallie didn’t think; she hurled the prybar. It landed in the middle of the fight, and all four dogs disappeared.

  She hoped it would be okay, the black dog, wherever she’d just sent it, but didn’t have time for any more thought than that.

  “What’s wrong?” Boyd looked from Hallie to the thrown prybar outside the fluttering hex ring markers.

  “Not that,” Hallie said. “There’s a gap in the ring. Someone shot a dart at me. Or it looked like a dart,” she added. “It disappeared.”

  Boyd didn’t swear or ask if she was sure. He said, “Did you see where it came from?”

  Hallie shook her head. “It can’t be big—the gap—or they’d be through.”

  “Look out!”

  Boyd grabbed her and pushed her to the ground as another dart flew past. This one burst into flames and disappeared before it even hit the ground.

  “I saw that,” Boyd said, incredulous, because, Hallie figured, he didn’t see black dogs or reapers or—

  “Because it was inside the ring?” she speculated, but Boyd wasn’t listening, already headed across the lawn, where Hallie didn’t see anything except a couple of ring markers, but where Boyd must have seen the trajectory of the dart as it arced across the yard.

  Hallie dived for Boyd’s rental SUV, wrenched open the front door, then the back door, found the fireplace poker on the floor of the backseat, grabbed it, and followed Boyd.

  Pabby came out on the porch with her rifle.

  “Stay there!” Hallie shouted.

  Then she saw it, something on the ground, sliding through a gap no more than an inch, not black like the shadow, gray like mist. It began to burn as soon as
it passed the hex ring, already disintegrating, but moving so fast, it didn’t matter.

  “Look out!” Hallie shouted at Boyd.

  It hit him low on the leg, then flamed into ash. Something even Hallie couldn’t see howled, and Boyd dropped to the ground.

  Past the barn, at the edge of the pasture, a wall of black began to rise, like the black Hallie’d seen at Uku-Weber, darker than the predawn sky, higher than the roof of the barn. Hollowell appeared out of nowhere, like he’d been outside the hex ring the entire time, waiting. He turned away from Hallie and Boyd, toward the black, raised his hands, and said, in a voice that resonated through the chill morning air, “My power now.” His voice was quite calm. He made a broad gesture with his hand, like he was throwing something, and the black dissipated in a rush of cold wind.

  Hallie reached Boyd and hauled him up. Boyd was still steadying himself on his feet, reaching for his gun, when a half dozen of the darts shot through the gap in the hex ring.

  “Hallie!” Boyd dived for her at the same time she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him sideways. Both of them hit the ground and rolled. Hallie was back on her feet, scrambling for the fireplace poker, when she realized that Boyd, getting to his feet more slowly, was outside the ring.

  “Give me your hand!” she shouted. But it was too late.

  Hollowell had already grabbed him.

  Boyd collapsed in his hands like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and for a stark unreal moment, Hallie thought that Hollowell had killed him. Then she saw Boyd shift like he was trying to wake up and stopped her wild plunge forward, though not before she thrust the fireplace poker into the ground, closing the gap with a snap that was actually audible.

  Hollowell looked at her. He grinned. “Well,” he said. “Shall I kill him?”

  Hallie’s hands clenched into fists so tight, they numbed her fingers.

  “No,” Hollowell went on, smug and confident, not waiting for her to answer. “This is the deal. The deal that I wanted two days ago, if you had just cooperated,” he said. “You bring me Beth Hannah and I give him back. You have three days.”