Blood erupted from Nick’s mouth the instant the knife struck Michael. It ran down his shirt and he looked like a fighter who just said goodbye to all his front teeth. Nick wiped his face with his sleeve and stared at it.
“You see? You see this? It’s working!” Nick cackled. He was in a full-blown psychotic state of madness and ecstasy—a homicidal maniac overjoyed to finally see the electric chair.
He walked over to Michael, reached down and grabbed his hair, lifted his head, and punched him. He swung again and again. With each hit Nick’s own face started showing the effects as well. Both men were taking a beating, even though Michael was doing all he could do to shield himself from the blows. He could feel Nick grab the hilt of the knife and pull it out of his leg.
The dark tension in Michael’s soul deepened to the point that he thought he would erupt from the pressure. He could feel it build and build while the punches rained down on him. He was in the ultimate no-win situation. He was fighting himself. They both would die on this viaduct. Nick would never let him go, and the only way to stop him would be to kill him, but in so doing, the curse within his adversary would end his life too.
It was what happened to James and Kyle.
It was what happened to anyone who tried to harm him.
He was death incarnate. But so was Nick.
They were two men playing poker, each with a dead man’s hand.
The punches stopped and Nick stood and staggered back a step or two. Michael looked up and saw the toll on Nick’s face. It was as if he had been hit by a cement truck. Michael could only imagine his own visage.
The curse of reciprocity.
A demonic justice dealing out an eye for an eye.
Nick was to the point of delirium and exhaustion. He stood to his full height but was swaying back and forth, about to tumble over at any moment.
“Almost there, Michael. Almost,” he said between shallow breaths. “You have no idea how I’ve dreamed of this day. To finally be rid of this pain. To be free of this . . . weight. This burden. I don’t blame you. You don’t fully understand yet. You think there’s hope for you. For people like us. But I know. Yes. I know all too well that there isn’t.”
Michael stared at his attacker with fear and trembling but also with wonder and sadness. If by some miracle he survived this battle on the viaduct, would he someday come to the point where he was clawing at his own skin, pining away for death to release him from this life? Nick was right. He didn’t understand. For all the guilt he carried with him, for all the darkness that haunted his mind and soul and cursed his steps, he still clung to the desire to live.
“Now,” Nick said, “let’s send these beasts home and see what’s on the other side.”
Nick raised the knife and went to bring it down on Michael’s chest, but the fight had taken too much of a toll on his body. He tripped over the railroad tie and tumbled with his full momentum toward the edge of the viaduct. His knee cracked against the rail, his hands flew out in front of him to catch his fall, sending the knife down into the mist. And Nick’s momentum sent him rolling, somersaulting over the edge.
Michael instinctively reached out, grabbing onto Nick’s coat, a handful of fabric on the back and arm. But he was too spent himself.
Nick dangled over the drop and looked up. Michael was hanging on but his grip was slipping. He made an effort to pull the madman up, but it was pointless. He had no strength left. The powers that rested in them were violent and punitive. They did not come to the aid of others. Michael looked into his attacker’s black eyes. They were the eyes of a demon frantically thrashing about in the dark who becomes aware that its cell walls are closing in. And then the eyes cleared, as if the man had come back to the forefront. A sense of peace washed over Nick’s face as Michael’s grip slipped a little more every second.
“I think, my brother, we found another solution,” Nick whispered as Michael’s hold failed.
Down toward the river Nick fell, until his body was engulfed in mist. No sound could be heard above the faint roar of moving water, Nick’s body washing downstream like a warrior drifting toward Valhalla.
Michael waited for the vengeful retribution to hit him, but it never came. Nick’s own curse was gone with him. He didn’t know why he had tried to save him, why his inner rage hadn’t taken over and pushed the psychopath over the edge, but somehow his desire to do no more harm was stronger. Nick would not have stopped, and there was no way Michael could have ever stopped him without destroying himself. Now Nick was gone, free from the prison of his own making, drifting on to whatever waited for him in the next life.
Michael managed to get to his feet. The wound in his leg burned with fire and the bruises on his body started to swell and multiply with each passing second.
The mob beating, the burial, the exposure in the woods, and now the attack from Nick—Michael was a walking collection of abused muscle and tendons.
He turned south again. The tracks ran into the woods on the south side of the river and disappeared into the distance. Home could not be too far, but with the bleeding leg and slowly swelling eyes that threatened to black out his sight, home might as well have been a million miles away. As he walked the final steps over the viaduct, the earth began to take on an imbalance, the tracks in front of him started to morph and twist, and the sky turned dim as it rotated in his eyes. He made it across when it all went dark and he could feel himself fall onto the cold stones and slide down the raised rail bed, drifting on a wave of rock, dreaming the visions of damned men.
sixty-three
MICHAEL WALKED IN A CAVE carved by winds of a thousand years, swept clean of any pebble or debris. The walls dripped of water that had seeped up from the bowels of the earth and had never seen the light of day for a millennium, water that had sunk during the primordial oozing of the planet and had bathed Leviathan in the deep. He walked on, not wanting to, but forced by his dream state ever forward, his legs automatons carrying his body farther and farther into the dark. The light behind him diminished into a grayish haze of unfocused glimmer. The cave was level, but he could feel the pressure of the deep pushing on his body with every step, as if he were sinking into the depths of the ocean. He walked and walked.
He thought he saw faces in the wall, but he could not tell if they were carved into the rock or were fossils of men cemented into the foundation of the earth. He walked up close to one and examined it. The face had no eyes, its mouth and nose protruding from the rock as if the sculptor had abandoned the project midway through. The mouth was parted and hollowed out. Michael peered closer and he could feel warmth coming from the lips. Air. Breath. From deep in the wall. A whisper.
Suddenly Michael could hear a multitude of sighing all around him as the walls exposed hundreds of faces, all in different levels of completion, exhaling and whispering. He knew he should leave, but his feet carried him deeper into the cavern. Away from the entrance. Down he went, ever deeper.
He wanted to turn back, but he couldn’t. There was something pulling him, latched on to a morbid thread buried beneath his consciousness, reeling him in like a fish on a line. Deeper into the blackness he went, with the breath of the wall faces blowing on his neck.
The cave came to a vault that was illuminated by a hidden source, the stone walls shooting up out of sight into blackness. The room glowed with a crimson hue, an image of hell fashioned by his memory of old Sunday school stories meant to scare kids into doing what was right. In the middle of the room was a man sitting in a chair, staring at him, his eyes all white, as if in a trance. The man did not notice him. At his feet lay another, contorted on the floor. The prostrate man had been cut, his blood seeped from his body and the rock floor drank him in. He was dead and the seated man was his killer. Michael knew this, though this was not a place of reason.
From the back of the cave walked a shadow as old as the rocks and the water and the air. The shadow was mist and flesh at the same time, its limbs disjointed and broken and of unequal size
, a beast that had been put together by spare parts of a variety of species. The creature walked up behind the man in the chair and put its paws on the man’s shoulders.
Michael could see the face of the shadow. It was the same as the face in the rock. Unfinished above the nose. It exhaled and poured itself like liquid over the seated man, who tensed and straightened as the shadow melted into him. His body began to writhe and shake like a man punching at an old suit that had become a size too small.
Then the eyes closed and opened, and Michael could see the man was staring at him. Looking through him, examining a part of his soul that was not Michael but something locked away beyond his knowing.
The man stood, and Michael wanted to run, but his feet had become one with the stone.
The man began to whisper, but the words were nonsense. The inaudible tones of an infant. But soon a sound began to form, and as recognition began to take hold in Michael’s mind, the ground began to shake. The walls slowly started trembling and breaking apart. And still the whisper could be heard. The quaking of the rock grew and grew and the cave was coming apart. The glow went supernova and the man whispered on. As the walls came down, Michael could hear the word finally with all its soul-shattering horror.
“Brother . . . Brother.”
Michael jolted awake to feel the thunderous roar of a train rolling by. He had fallen off the tracks and wondered just how close he came to residing in the cave forever, had he passed out in the locomotive’s path.
The cars rolled by and soon it was quiet again, save for the whisper in his head from a haunted sleep.
Brother.
sixty-four
HAYWOOD MADE HIS WAY through another morning, gearing up for one more day of searching the wilds for Michael.
A wise man once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” and Haywood was nothing if not a good man. He was utterly and thoroughly convinced that he was good, and it was his duty not to let evil triumph.
Nothing reinforced his resolve more than when Earl had called him and told him of the body in the river.
Some of the local kids had been fishing off the banks of the Coldwater River just north of town when one of them saw a man lying on the far bank. His legs were in the water and he was facedown in the dirt. The boys didn’t know if it was a corpse or a zombie, and neither of them had the guts to find out, no matter how many double-dog dares were heaped up on each other. They had run back to the road and flagged down the first passing motorist. It had been Frank and Earl on their way into town. In this coincidence, Haywood felt the gods smiling on him.
Haywood arrived to find an almost carnival atmosphere. The group of boys were toeing the water of the south bank, gawking at the sight of the comatose body. One managed the courage to whip a rock at the body and missed wide. Haywood’s booming voice caused the other kids to drop their stones and part like the Red Sea as he moved in to have a look.
Frank had crossed the river and was down on the bank, trying to snag the body, while trying not to at the same time. He wanted to look useful but didn’t want to be the one who actually had to touch the man in the river, if it turned out he was dead. Earl was holding on to Frank’s shirttails, trying his best to keep his friend from sliding into the water.
“Who is it?” Haywood yelled, his voice carrying over the river like a thundercloud.
“Don’t know,” Earl said. “We haven’t been able to get a good look at the face.”
“Is it Michael?”
Earl didn’t respond. He kept his concentration on Frank, who was just a couple inches shy of reaching the body with his hand.
“Got him!” Frank yelled from the river side. He was pulling the body onto shore, trying his best not to touch the stranger, as if he was afraid death would be transferred to him. “And he ain’t dead!”
Just then, the man in the water opened his eyes. Frank shot back, and it was all he and Earl could do to keep from tumbling head over heels into the Coldwater. The man’s eyes focused and then he pushed himself up and over until he was sitting on the bank. There was a wound on his leg that started to seep as soon as it was above the waterline.
Haywood strained his eyes and recognized the man. It was the man from the cabin. Nick fixed Haywood with a strong glare. It was a stare that pierced to the bone, even across the flowing water. Haywood could feel pressure building in the base of his skull like a thumb pressed to the top of his spine. He watched as Nick got to his feet and took a couple steps up the embankment, then sat down again.
“You want to tell us what happened?” Haywood shouted.
“Ain’t your concern,” Nick said.
“Something tells me that’s not the case. You look like you could use some help.”
Nick took his shirt off and wrapped it around his damaged leg. He cinched it tight and then stood upright. There were bruises over his body, and he looked like he’d played chicken with a train and came up on the losing side.
“I know who did that to you,” Haywood said, doing his best to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. “I knew he was probably out your way too. You should have let us know the other night.”
Nick stood motionless. His body language gave no indication that he felt like talking to Haywood, which riled Haywood up even more. The man turned and walked north into the woods, one leg dragging behind him, and disappeared from sight.
“I don’t know why you’d be protecting him. We’re on the same side!” Haywood yelled, his voice echoing back to him from the other shore.
Frank and Earl made their way back to the south shore to join Haywood. Most of the kids had run off now that the excitement was over, and the three men stood on the riverbank.
In the distance a siren could be heard approaching their location.
“You called the cops?” Haywood asked with more irritation than he had intended.
“Of course we did. There was a possible dead body floating into town. What did you think we were going to do?” Earl said, exasperation tainting his voice.
“Alright. Alright. Calm down.”
“No, I will not calm down!” Earl responded, summoning the strength to talk back to Haywood for the first time in his life. Glancing around at a few kids still lingering around him, he reduced the volume but spoke in a strong whisper. “I will not calm down. This is completely out of control. This is beyond anyone’s control. We have dead men in stores, on roads, and now we got people floating in the river. It’s like the whole area has turned into a slaughterhouse. And it all started with you.”
“Me?” Haywood said.
“You got us all worked up, telling us some story about how Michael was a danger to us all, and now all this is happening.”
“What more proof do you need that I was right?”
“Right? No, no no. You are dead wrong,” Earl said. “We were all doing fine until you got us caught up in your . . . your . . . insanity.”
“Insanity? You better watch yourself, Earl. You just better—”
“Or what? Huh? You going to put me six feet under too? If you haven’t noticed, there’s not going to be too much of us left to help you do that. And for the life of me, I ain’t going to go quiet.”
Haywood looked at Earl. The man was scared out of his mind. He couldn’t fault him for that, but his patience with Earl’s inability to see Michael as the real root of all evil was starting to drive him to the brink of hysteria. He grabbed Earl’s arm and shook him with an iron grip.
“Don’t threaten me, Earl. Don’t you dare. Just because you’re blind to the real threat that is hanging over our heads. Has been hanging over our heads since that cretin moved back here. The only guilt you should feel is the guilt of not having the courage to wipe Michael out of existence. And we share in that. You, me, Frank . . . all of us.”
A steely silence filled the space between the three men. The siren in the distance was getting closer. Haywood turned and walked back up toward the road, readying himself to send th
e policemen back to South Falls again. Frank and Earl caught up to him.
“What do you think happened to that guy?” Frank asked, trying to defuse the already tense situation.
“Don’t know, but we’d be foolish to think it wasn’t Michael.”
“How long you think he was lying in the river?” Frank said.
“Not long,” said Haywood. “A couple hours, a day maybe.”
“If it’s Michael, then that means . . . ,” Earl whispered.
Frank and Earl looked at each other.
“It means . . . Michael’s coming back toward town,” Haywood said. “First, we have to get rid of these cops you called. After that, I’m going to make sure he’s got nothing to come back to.”
sixty-five
THERE WAS ALWAYS A SADNESS that accompanied any thought Melissa had of her twin brother. It was a darkness that pressed down on the pit of her stomach and gave the faint feeling of nausea. This sadness, this empathy of pain, was slowly becoming more and more pronounced the longer she stayed in Coldwater. She could feel the isolation following her like a shadow, barely perceptible until she quieted herself. The loneliness always took the form of Marcus standing as a little child on the porch of their family home. Now, old memories and new memories intermixed and blended into one. In her mind’s eyes she could see Michael standing on the steps, the broken and battered door behind him, and the barren ground encircling the cabin.
It was anger that brought her back to Coldwater, but it was sadness that was the foundation of the rage.
She had tried throughout her life not to think about Marcus. Sometimes it had come naturally; the years as a teenager, off to college, the self-absorbed times. She would feel guilty when things went especially well for her, as if she had an obligation to perpetually mourn her lost brother.
As she grew older, though, her thoughts turned more and more to that childhood scene and the desire to go back. A longing to go home. To put to rest that image of the boy on the steps with his hand outstretched.
Coldwater Page 18
