by Grant, Tess
“Rollways?” Kitty rocked with the next bump. Good thing she wasn’t prone to motion sickness.
“The big drop-offs. You know, roll the logs down to the river to float them to the mills.”
“Ah,” she said. “Thanks for the review. This is going to ruin the suspension. Your dad’s going to kill you.”
“He’s showed me this road. I don’t know why he comes out here all the time.”
The trees towered above the furrowed channel Joe called a road. Shadows clustered inky and impenetrable beneath their branches. Kitty thought back to Phinney’s list of watchers and the first name on the list—Joe’s dad, Stan Zubowicz. I know why. It’s local history all right.
The darkness overhanging the track lifted with a suddenness of a curtain blowing in a breeze. A flat glade spread out before them. Car tracks grooved the hard packed earth. Sparse grass and a few beleaguered mustard plants thrust themselves defiantly upward.
Kitty barely noticed. Her eyes flew to the far side of the glade where it was all blue sky and treetops. Solid ground vanished and only a makeshift fence guarded the edge. Kitty was out of the car as soon as it stopped. She stood on the rim and stared. Far below, a steel blue ribbon of river cut a path through the fiery reds and oranges of the autumn forest. Beyond the river, the land fell away south in waves of trees and the patchwork gold of cornfields seamed with apple trees. Rusty iron steps clung to the bank and curled out of sight down the ravine. A massive boulder reared up on the edge and Kitty clambered up.
Joe climbed up next to her, laughing at her rapt expression. Pulling his sunglasses off, he looped the earpieces over the collar of his shirt. “Like it?”
“Wow,” was all she could manage. She took in the view for another long minute before asking, “So this is the long way home?”
Joe nodded once. He sat, scooted down the rock to a slight basin and wiggled his hips for a good fit. Finding it, he leaned back, hands knotted behind his head.
A lone hawk floated lazily above the river valley, and a single harsh cry reached them on the wind. The big bird drifted spiraling on the currents. Kitty envied its sun-stained freedom. She eyed Joe’s easy chair and crouched down to find her own when there was a sharp crack from the woods. Kitty dropped to her knees on the knobby rock next to Joe as she looked back at the car.
It stood forlorn on its tiny island, holding the last bastion against the encroaching trees. Beyond the small circle of sunlight, the shadows bunched in murky green clusters under the canopy. What was an autumn breeze for hawk’s play ahead of her had become ghostly whispers in the dark behind. She shivered.
“Lots of car tracks for somewhere so far out.”
“Some of the kids come here and hang out sometimes.”
Joe sounded sleepy, but the way his biceps bulged and his t-shirt wrinkled over his tightened stomach told her he was as nervous as she was. Kitty wasn’t the only one who had this conversation on the to-be-avoided list.
She eyed the dark tangle of undergrowth. She didn’t like having it at her back. A prowling evil could easily conceal itself there. The same with the gloom clinging to the undercut bluff face or under the ramshackle staircase. Hiding, watching, waiting for the best opportunity… until it was already too late for its prey.
“They don’t come at night, do they?” She tried for nonchalance, but something in her voice gave her away. He cracked an eye and squinted up at her.
“Sure they do. Lots of urban legends running around out here to scare them silly. Guys with hooks for hands, ghostly hitchhikers on the corduroy road, stuff like that.” He laughed.
Kitty didn’t join in.
He sat up, his face sobering. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Kids come out here but it’s no big deal. Jokers like my dad are always coming back here to shoo them out. He chased Jenna out of here the beginning of the summer. She was so mad, remember?” He grinned. “I swear Dad comes out here at least once a month to give people the boot.”
He scooted up the rock closer to her. “I hoped we could talk here. Nobody to hear us, nobody to get mad.”
Kitty waited silently for him to continue. If he thought he was getting this easy, he was wrong.
He flushed under her appraisal. “Did you get a chance to read that newspaper article I gave you?”
She nodded but still didn’t speak.
Joe glanced down the old logging road, narrowed his eyes, then shook his head in disgust. “So much for being alone.”
Kitty watched a dark sedan enter the clearing. She recognized it immediately. Her heart thudded erratically in a Pavlovian response. Melville stepped out of the car, as big as a bear in these surroundings.
Absence certainly hadn’t made her heart grow fonder.
He sauntered their way. Knowing how quickly he could move, Kitty watched his ambling approach with distrust. Don’t underestimate this one, Kit.
He pulled dark aviator glasses off as he approached the rock. “Afternoon,” he said, nodding pleasantly at them. “Nice place, isn’t it?”
Kitty was ninety-nine percent sure he wasn’t expecting an answer.
“Kind of a rough road though. Good thing the department’s on the hook for repairs for that thing.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the sedan. “Haven’t seen much of you around town the last two weeks. Senior year keeping you busy?”
Kitty nodded, gaze flicking sideways to Joe. He looked very confused.
“Let’s take a walk, Irish,” the detective rumbled. “I wanted to see if you remembered anything else about that incident we discussed the last time I saw you.”
Kitty stood up and jumped to the ground, hand on the rock for support. She didn’t look at
Joe but walked toward the two-track with the policeman.
They entered the chill green tunnel, stopping far enough inside that the sunlight and the view were nothing but a memory. When the detective had been a simple silhouette in a car outside school, she’d been able to blow it off. Here in person was a different story. Fear pooled in Kitty’s stomach, and she concentrated on keeping her hands still.
Melville spoke first. “Wondered if you remembered anything you wanted to tell me about ol’ Phinney. Nobody else is too concerned about it—demented old guy wanders off into the woods and gets lost. Just another missing person case in Oakmont County.” Melville scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “But whether it’s a promotion or a shaft, it’s still my job. I got all those other files stacked up behind me, but I like to have Phinney’s right out on my desk.”
His long fingers drummed on his leg as if they itched to hold the file right then. Kitty got a sudden mental image of the man hunched over his desk alone in a dreary station room. In the center of his spotless blotter stood a single manila folder illuminated by a spotlight from a wobbly desk light.
Kitty suddenly realized that Melville had spoken. She pulled her attention back to the conversation at hand.
“I liked that old character. I really did. That’s why I’d like to settle this, figure out where that old boy is before his name gets added to my list.”
Phinney, if you’re around, you better show up now.
Kitty gave up on her hands. They shook as if they wanted to rattle off her wrists. She shoved them deep in her pockets. Her finger hit something cold and hard in the depths, bending her nail back painfully. The sharp twinge overrode her fear. She pulled the offending item out. It was a tiny U-shaped piece of metal, the clicker Phinney had given her to carry in case they had gotten separated on full-moon nights. He’d had a matching one. The tiny noisemakers had been carried in World War II by the paratroopers behind enemy lines.
She stared at it mystified. She didn’t remember putting it in her pocket this morning but she must have. It was sitting in her palm, wasn’t it? She wrapped her fist tight around it.
Squeezing the clicker firmly, Kitty took a deep breath. “You know, Detective, my mother isn’t here either. If you come by the house when she is…”
&nbs
p; Melville’s eyes hardened, but his voice stayed calm. “You act like this is some kind of interrogation. I’m checking in with the one person who knew the old guy best.”
Kitty didn’t answer. She hung on to the clicker as if it were a lifeline thrown to a drowning woman. She knew well enough that everything she felt was flying across the big screen of her face for Melville to see.
He continued when she didn’t. “I wondered if you recalled anything about the night of that fire.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Kitty replied, twisting the little noisemaker hard into her skin as punishment for the lie.
“I do.” Joe’s voice was loud in the gloom.
Both Kitty and the policeman startled; neither of them had heard his approach. Kitty let go of the cricket in surprise, but the click was barely audible in the gloom. Melville swung toward Joe in astonishment.
He stood at the edge of the sun’s circle, backlit and nearly glowing. “Kitty was with me. We were parked right here.”
Melville seemed to grow an inch or two as he stalked toward Joe. Looming over him, he asked, “That so?”
Joe didn’t flinch but shrugged apologetically. “That’s so.”
Melville didn’t reply, waiting for any crack in Joe’s façade.
“Maybe you could, like, not tell my dad?” Joe requested, kicking at the ground. “He hates it when kids come out here.”
He pulled off bashful pretty well.
The detective nodded curtly. His gaze traveled from one to the other. “I suggest you two move out. Dark is coming. Oakmont can be a pretty unfriendly place and I don’t have room for any more files on my desk.”
Melville stalked around Joe and into the clearing. Kitty stared at Joe stunned. He returned the look briefly and followed Melville toward the cars.
She moved when she was able. She had to step into the brambles to avoid the sedan as the detective drove out. Coming into the glade, she walked up to the Escort.
Joe leaned back against the hood of the car, arms crossed over his chest. The dark curls at his neck tossed in the wind. Kitty couldn’t read the questions in his eyes because he had replaced his sunglasses. A muscle throbbed repeatedly at his jaw line. That probably was a bad sign.
“Now,” he said. “How about telling me what I got myself into?”
Kitty gave herself ten heartbeats to calm down. Blowing out a breath, she said, “We might as well sit down. It’s kind of a long story.”
Joe didn’t reply. Tick, tick—his jaw muscle pulsed.
Kitty fought the urge to babble. I don’t need to make this right. I didn’t ask him to stick his neck out in front of Melville. On the other hand, she could see no way around telling him at least some of the truth. Any chance she had of keeping it hidden had been OBE, or overcome by events, as her dad would say in military speak. “We’re sitting. Pick your spot.”
Still no answer.
She turned away and walked toward the rock. She guessed he was following but refused to give him the leverage of checking. Scrambling up the rock, she checked her seating options.
First up, first choice. She chose Joe’s spot. Tucking herself into the bowl, she sat down. “Haul your butt up here. I told you it’s a long story.”
As he hoisted himself up, she debated her opening line. You’re going to think I’m nuts poised on the tip of her tongue. But then she thought of Phinney. He never apologized.
Neither would she.
“Remember last spring at the end of school when we ran into Phinney at the ice cream shop and I said I didn’t know him?” She sat cross-legged, facing Joe on the big rock. “I met him that night. I was out in the woods chasing Maddie and he was there.” The grainy crystals bit into her ankles. Joe shifted on the granite, but his eyes stayed hidden behind the dark sunglasses, and his lips never strayed from a thin compressed line.
She told about the trees and how they seemed festooned with moonlight ribbons. She tried to explain the feeling of that stillness—that overpowering waiting stillness. As she was telling, she nearly forgot about her listener. Kitty relived sliding into the nest of spears next to Phinney. Her hands began to tremble as she described the wolf and Maddie’s frantic shaking in her arms. She picked at the threads of her jeans in a futile attempt to hide it. She couldn’t look at Joe, embarrassed by her own terror and the hysteria that had threatened to spill out as the carcass shriveled up and blew away.
The words flowed out faster and faster by the time she reached enlisting in Phinney’s one-man army and her search to make sure it was true. “And then we drove to the university so that I could pretend to look up my grandmother’s obituary. I was really looking for people who had been killed by werewolves. Remember you collected all those pamphlets so that I could pretend we were touring?”
Joe nodded once in answer then studied the void at the bluff’s edge as if the story bored him.
Kitty blew her breath out slowly. He certainly wasn’t giving her much encouragement. She wanted to pinch him just to see some reaction. Maybe she should be grateful. At least his jaw had stopped ticking.
She slogged on. “The other night wasn’t the first time I saw your uncle’s obituary.”
His head swiveled toward her at that. She was certain behind his glasses he was watching her now.
“I found it when I was at the Special Collections Building. His was the last one I looked at. The one that convinced me to join Phinney.”
He didn’t answer but he didn’t turn away either. Wanting to wrap it up, she ran swiftly down the training program the veteran had put her through and the hunts they had been on.
She stopped and only wild song filled the void. The hawk had long ago moved on, but other birds called their evening song. The woods cast ever-lengthening shadows across the glade. A sudden chill ran down Kitty’s back, and she shivered. It’s not long until the full moon.
Joe dropped his head back onto his shoulders and expelled a great huff of air. “That’s a good one, Kit. Very inventive. Nice with the acting too—ooh, I was so scared,” he mimicked in a high quavering voice. He shook his head. “Did you come up with that right now or have you been cooking it up since this morning?”
The shock of it traveled down to her toes. It never occurred to her that Joe wouldn’t believe her. “Hey, you asked me, remember? I wasn’t Miss Let’s Take the Long Way Home.”
Joe stood up, dusting at his jeans.
Anger shot through Kitty, pushing a stream of words in front of it. “You gave me that obituary. You said you wanted to know and I’m telling you.” Her voice rose in volume and pitch. “Your uncle got killed by a werewolf.”
Joe dug around in his pocket and pulled out his keys. “Let’s go, Kit. I don’t need to listen to any more of this bull.”
“If you don’t believe me, what do you think happened?”
Joe’s laugh was short and hard. “Not some urban legend, that’s for sure. You were supposed to hurl yourself into my arms when I told you that not turn it back on me.” He jumped off the rock giving it an extra slap with his outstretched hand. “You got me good. I’ll give you that.”
He started walking toward the car.
In her anger, Kitty jumped off the rock, stumbling and landing on her knees. Her hand scraped the ground painfully. Turning her palm over, she saw tiny droplets of blood oozing through the abraded sandy skin. The sting ramped the fury up another notch, and she grabbed the nearest grape-sized stone and threw it at Joe. It bounced off his back, but he kept moving.
She shouted, voice shaking, “Why do you think they keep you locked up so tight?”
She knew that hit home. Joe’s shoulders stiffened and he stopped, rounding back to face her. She climbed to her feet and ran to him. “Why do you think your dad kicks people out of here once a month? It’s around the full moon, isn’t it? He knows! He used to scout kills for Phinney.”
Joe’s mouth flew open and his words spewed out. “I am so sick of people feeding me a line. Bring up Uncle Joe and everybody starts tap
dancing. I thought you at least would tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth, Joe. I wouldn’t—” The word ‘lie’ died on her lips. She had been doing that a lot lately. She tried another tack. “Do you really think I would make this stuff up?”
Joe leaned in close, index finger close to her face. “And Phinney? What happened to him? Why am I covering for you with Melville?”
“I didn’t ask you to cover for me.” Kitty slapped at his hand, thrusting his finger away from her face. “Phinney died trying to save people. Everybody thinks he was a nut job. He was the only sane one here.” She tried to stop the tears but it was too late. A hot torrent gushed down her face.
Joe’s mouth opened then shut again. Something close to a sigh escaped and he reached out and pulled Kitty against him. His arms encircled her shoulders protectively.
Kitty leaned against him, face buried against his hard muscled shoulder. Then she pushed back, sniffing and rubbing roughly at her cheeks. “He got bitten. It was supposed to be the last one and he got bitten.”
Fresh tears came. Joe reached for her again but she swatted at him like an irritating fly.
She needed to get at least some of it out. It had festered long enough. “I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I told him I was done. I didn’t go…I was late and he got bitten. I was supposed to be his partner, and I didn’t go.” She didn’t recognize her own voice, a whispered scream. She could barely get a breath past the lump in her throat. It made her whole chest ache, and she half coughed, half gagged with the suffocation of it. “By the next moon he was infected.”
Joe pulled his sunglasses off, and finally she could see his eyes. She had been afraid to see them—afraid of the accusation—but it was only Joe after all. Calm blue eyes, wide and accepting.
Her words flew out on her breath, a bleak judgment, “I screwed it all up.”
“Oh Kitty,” he muttered, long fingers encircling her wrist pulling her closer. “What happened to him?”
