Coldwater

by Samuel Parker

  “I think it’s time we call the police,” Frank said. “This is out of hand . . . we can’t be doing this . . .”

  “You want to call them? Really? Here . . . then do it!” Haywood said and tossed his cell phone at him. “And while you’re at it, tell them you would like extra pillows in your cell. What about you, Earl? Any requests you might have?”

  Frank and Earl stared at each other.

  “You think prison would be better than this? Don’t get me wrong, that’s where we are going if you call them up. All they will have to do is find Michael and he will tell them what we did. And who do you think they are going to believe? Kyle won’t be able to keep his mouth shut, and neither will you, Earl—you’ll start crying as soon as they start questioning you.”

  “Now come on, Haywood,” Earl shot back.

  “I’m telling you guys, we are in this to the end. Ain’t no turning back.”

  “Now, how come Michael just doesn’t go to the police himself?” Frank asked. “For all we know, we’re as good as cooked as it is.”

  “Because he’s in the same fix we are in.”

  “You still believe that?”

  “I know it.”

  Haywood knew more than any of them what was coming. He knew that Michael would destroy them all, and not with the quietness of calling the authorities. Haywood’s mind thought of every horrible way that Michael would end their lives. Seeing Kyle broken in the hospital was visible proof of what kind of future these men could look forward to.

  This could only end one way, and now Haywood knew it was either them or Michael.

  Haywood stood up, ran his hand over his forehead as if he were attempting to pull out some piece of reasoning stuck in his frontal lobe. He was tired of having this conversation with these guys. It had been a conversation that he had been repeating over and over, and no matter how hard he pushed, he knew that no one would believe him with absolute certainty. The fact that the boys went along with him the night they drugged Michael wasn’t due to their convictions in what he had told them. No. They went along because they believed in him, had known him their whole lives, had probably been beat down to the point of exhaustion by Haywood’s relentless storytelling.

  Morrison in the woods? Michael.

  And now James, Old Man Jackson? Michael.

  But Frank, Earl, Clinton, Kyle . . . maybe even Davis—they were not true believers. Haywood had been able to stoke their fear, had been able to connect enough of the dots to show them how dangerous the ex-con was. He had persuaded them, he knew, and thus he would always have to keep persuading them until the very end.

  “Okay, let’s assume that he isn’t going to the cops,” Frank said. “What makes you sure he isn’t going to just keep running? You know, get as far from here as possible?”

  “Because, he’s not a man of means. He’s going to have to come back. Where else is he going to go? I doubt he’s got a stack of money to set him up someplace else.”

  “It’s not like Coldwater is the only place he can be a bum in.”

  “No, he’ll come back,” Haywood said. He rubbed his temples again. The guys would just never understand. “Michael isn’t some innocent man running scared. He just isn’t going to leave and not look back. The sooner you all remember that, the better off we all are.”

  Frank and Earl reluctantly conceded the point.

  “Most likely he’s going to return to his house. It’s the only place he knows. I suggest you guys go up there and stake it out.”

  “Whoa now,” Earl said, “what happens if he’s there? That’s a long way from town. If he is as dangerous as you say he is, I sure don’t want to be the one to run across him, especially out in the sticks.”

  “Just drive up there and see if you notice anything, that’s all I’m asking. Give me a call if anything looks out of the ordinary.”

  “And what are you going to be doing while we’re off searching for the lunatic?”

  “I’m going to go up past Countyline Road with Clinton and Davis. Ask if anyone has seen anything. See if they’ve noticed anyone or anything out of the ordinary.”

  All three took one last look at the map and then parted ways.

  Frank and Earl climbed into their truck and headed out of town toward Michael’s cabin. Haywood, to pick up Clinton and Davis and head up to the north woods.

  twenty-nine

  IT WAS A LONG TIME before the warden discerned the pattern of sickness in Cell Block D, and when he did, he kicked himself for not seeing the pattern sooner. It was plain as day, after all—he just wasn’t expecting it.

  Michael. The boy prisoner.

  The death of the inmate in the kitchen not more than a month into the boy’s sentence was seen as coincidence. The man had had a massive heart attack, luckily for Michael, and fell dead before he could violate the boy. It was written up and dismissed as such. The prison created its own mythology, but the warden was a man of reason and was convinced by the coroner’s report.

  What followed suit for the next year was viewed in much the same way. It took the maintenance crew one visit in his office, asking the most benign of questions, to awaken his mind to the possibility.

  After the crew left, the warden spent the next week looking over past incident reports in the cell block. They all had one common denominator. Michael.

  The first incident involved the convict in the cell adjoining the boy’s. His name was Malcolm Johnson. He was in for armed robbery and arrived about three months after the boy. Malcolm was quiet for the first several weeks of his stay, apparently content to serve his time and not bother anyone. Then he kept asking to see the doctor. There were several visits recorded, all the same thing. Headaches.

  The warden looked at the time stamps of the paperwork. The visits to the doctor increased over a week’s time, the doctor giving ibuprofen and sending Malcolm back to his cell.

  It was a Tuesday when the guards saw Malcolm on his bed, his body seizing uncontrollably, blood pouring from his nose and ears.

  The medical staff removed him and carted him to the hospital.

  There was no diagnosis from the hospital in the file.

  Malcolm returned to the jail but to a different cell, eventually transferred to another prison downstate. The warden got on the phone and called the prison that Malcolm was sent to.

  “What can I help you with?” his colleague asked.

  “Malcolm Johnson, can you look up your records of him?”

  “Sure. What are you looking for?”

  “I’m wondering if he’s had any medical problems you’re treating him for.”

  After a short wait, the other voice returned on the line.

  “Nothing here. Clean bill of health. No problems.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That all?”

  “Yes.”

  Six months later, another inmate had started vomiting uncontrollably. He was screaming of visions and panic attacks. The warden attributed it to a nervous breakdown and had the inmate moved to the infirmary and eventually moved to Cell Block B. He looked at the record and saw that he too had been in the cell next to the boy, moving in after Malcolm had been transferred. The warden looked at the rest of the inmate’s file. The man had been released on parole last year, no further medical or conduct incidents in his history.

  There were many such stories. When the guards started getting ill a while back, the warden had called in a crew to check for environmental hazards such as mold or rodents. Their analysis came up clean. Laying out the reports, illness spread out through the cell block in concentric circles of severity. Michael’s cell was the epicenter.

  And he was as healthy as any boy could be.

  The maintenance crew had been doing work outside when they noticed that the grass spreading out from the wall of the cell block was dead. Not just yellowing from the sun, but dead as dead could be. The dead patch went from the wall under a fence topped with razor wire, a location of the grounds not used for anything. How long it had b
een dead was anyone’s guess, but the maintenance team wanted to know how the warden wanted it fixed before the weather started to wash the soil away and compromise the fence.

  When the warden walked out to investigate, he saw a sign that opened his mind to the unimaginable. The dead earth sprouted from the wall right under Michael’s cell.

  The boy was slowing killing Cell Block D.

  thirty

  IT WAS AS IF A POISON RAIN had fallen through the night, blanketing the world in a creeping fog of mourning. Michael awoke to sunlight filtering through the tarp at the dugout’s entrance. He felt damp from the moisture in the air, and his joints felt the arthritic ache of an uncomfortable night’s sleep, his third now. And though the earthen hideout was damp, it was drier than the open hillside he had slept on the previous night, and just a little more spacious than the pine box he had been buried in.

  His head pounded and his skin felt constricted against his frame. Running his fingers through his greasy hair, he could feel the particles of grave dirt dance beneath his hand. Michael smelled of earth and wilderness. He moved the tarp to crawl outside and stretch his legs.

  Outside the forest was wilting. The green brush and undergrowth that had met his arrival on the western ridge had started to fade to brown, the plants bowing prostrate in a weeping gesture. They were dying. The mere presence of the man in the cave had sucked their desire to live. Keeping low off the ridge, Michael walked down and away from the shelter and into the green.

  The past days seemed like a dream. A cycle of dying, waking, and then dying again.

  He had always been alone. It was his lot. His just reward. He knew that in the very fiber of his being.

  He emptied his bladder by a tree and then headed back to the camp. The morning air hung heavy and the creatures of the forest were welcoming the early light that drifted through the canopy and onto the forest floor. The air was cooler than natural, like the basement of the world opened up in summer. Michael walked up past the dugout to the top of the ridge, the air warming on his ascent.

  The backbone of the ridge wandered east and west in a meandering course, disappearing on both ends into the forest. He could have been hundreds of miles from Coldwater or right next door, it was impossible to see through the overgrowth. The path of the ridge was little more than trampled weeds and foliage, the kind of path made in equal parts by weather and the feet of a small boy and his dog. This was wild land.

  Michael looked down from his perch to where he had spent the night. It was invisible from this point of view except for the slowly browning circle in the valley. Soon the small area in front of the dugout would die out, exposing a curiosity in the woods that would attract the attention of anyone who passed by.

  The dying off always pointed him out.

  He made his way back down the hill and into the cave.

  He couldn’t stay here long, but he wanted to, all the same. The boy made him want to halt his running. It had been a long time since someone had talked to him, had come upon him and not seen the baggage that he carried with him, but had instead seen something of value. Something worth engaging with.

  Will was young and naive. He had not experienced the world enough to know that he should avoid some people, people the world had written off and consigned to oblivion, people he shouldn’t even talk to. He hadn’t learned this yet, but he would, and his boyish curiosity would fade and die like the ever-enlarging circle of death surrounding the cave that Michael lay down in.

  It pained Michael to think about that as it brought him back to his own childhood, wasted and dead before it had even started. In Will he saw the same potential that he had thrown away so carelessly. He wanted to latch onto it, to observe it, to participate in it as if by some method of osmosis he could experience the adventure of naive youth one more time, now that he knew how precious it was.

  But to stay would be selfish.

  His time to dream had passed.

  And in staying he would bring harm to a boy who still saw the world with endless fascination.

  Michael had already done that once before. He would do everything in his power to never let it happen again.

  thirty-one

  MELISSA DROVE EAST out of Coldwater. Her thoughts drifted through the winding wooded roads. It had been forever since she had lived here, but her hands directed the car, instinctively guiding her to a dark destination. The area looked familiar but strange. The passage of time altering her childhood memory into a distorted present. She drove on until she came to a dirt road that branched north. She slowed and turned onto it.

  The trees hung over in a blanketed canopy, a leafy tunnel extending out before her. When she was young, there was but one house on this access road. Now several two-tracks jetted off on either side every so often—hunting trails.

  And then she arrived.

  The woods dropped away, revealing a plot of ground that was scorched of everything save for a few weeds struggling against the dirt. Nestled back several hundred feet was a house. Her house. Her childhood home.

  She sat in her car on the road for a while. Purpose had driven her out here, but now she was stopped with a sense of dread that left her feeling nauseated and doubtful. Was she ready to do this? Was she ready to put a bullet in Michael?

  Melissa turned the wheel and pulled into the yard. She stopped the car, reached under the seat and grabbed the Glock, opened the door, and stepped out.

  Looking around, she saw the hard-packed earth circling the house in concentric rings of decay until the woods slowly found their starting point. At the epicenter of the circle was the house. The remains of the house she remembered.

  Motes drifted in sunlight as she stepped up to the porch. The front door was slightly open and hanging off one of the hinges. It looked half rotten, the handle and lock long since disappeared. She looked in, and a small animal, squirrel or something similar, scurried farther into the house and out of sight.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice echoing in the vacant building.

  Melissa placed a foot across the threshold, cautiously, as if unsure of the strength of the floor beneath her feet. The silence was overwhelming. She observed the scene behind outstretched arms, the gun before her.

  The room she’d entered was in shambles. What little adornment the house once had now lay scattered on the floor. A wall sconce, a mirror now broken in several large pieces. The table was pushed over toward the sink in an impossible-to-be-useful position, its sole chair knocked off its legs. The years had taken a bat to the abode and wracked its bones.

  She walked deeper into the house, her own faded memories racing before her. The living area was simple. A worn couch sat next to the wall under the window but now looked to be used as a rat’s nest rather than a seat. A coffee table with a chewed leg and rain-stained surface sat before it.

  Melissa turned and walked into the hall that led to the bedrooms, the Glock held in trembling hands. She tried the first door, but it wouldn’t open. It was her old room, a room that she had shared with her brother, the memory of it circulating in her mind in single-frame snapshots. She more felt than visualized the memory of the house.

  She put some weight behind her effort, but it wouldn’t budge. The handle of the door was new, its pristine brass coating standing out like a beacon in a trash pile. The handle had a keyhole suited for an exterior door. It was locked. She searched the top of the frame for a key, but found none.

  Turning down the hall, Melissa walked to the back bedrooms. In one of them there was just a bed with more tattered books stacked up along the far wall. The roof above the bed had fallen away, and the weather had done its work to rot the gypsum on the walls.

  Across the hall, behind a panel door that leaned against the doorframe, was her parents’ old room.

  Melissa returned to the living area. She slowly took a last look around. Her eyes passed over the grimy window, and she paused, then dismissed a stray thought of scrubbing off the grunge to look outside.

  If s
he had done so, she would have noticed a truck parked out on the road, its occupants watching, waiting for her to come out.

  “Haywood, that woman Lila was talking about, I think she’s at the house,” Frank said into his cell phone.

  A voice on the other end responded.

  “And another thing,” he said, “when was the last time you were out here at Michael’s?”

  More chatter.

  “Has this place always looked like this . . . like, dead? It’s like someone let off napalm or something. It’s just—”

  “Odd?” Earl piped in.

  “Yeah, odd,” Frank said into the phone.

  Frank looked at Earl as he received his instructions.

  “Okay,” Frank said, then hung up the phone and placed it in his visor.

  “What he say?” Earl asked.

  “He said to sit tight, see what she does.”

  “Sit tight? What, we stalking her now too? Jeez, man, this just keeps getting worse. What happens if she sees us?”

  “Nothing. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re on a public road. Every right to be here.”

  “Oh, okay.” Earl scowled. “Just two dudes sitting in a truck watching a woman walk around . . . ain’t nothing weird about that, Your Honor.”

  “Would you stop it! Haywood is right. We need to know who she is. We don’t know where Michael is, and suddenly she shows up looking through his things? It can’t be a coincidence. Chances are she’s here to help him. And if that’s the case, where she is, he could be also.”

  “Which means best to stay away from her,” Earl said.

  “Wrong. You know where she is, you know where he is. Better than finding him in your house in the middle of the night, am I right?” Frank asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “Right. So just relax.”

  “Okay, genius, what if he’s in there with her right now?” Earl asked.