by Brian Hodge
Glenn never lied to her; but now she had her suspicions. But why? What possible reason could he have for not being honest with her?
Most tragically, not long after the sounds had ceased, Ike Gleasman had come home from work to find his nonplused cat sitting in the front yard watching his house—just across the road from the church—burn to the ground. No one could find a trace of Mrs. Gleasman, and according to Billie Wilkins, the firemen feared she had been inside when the house went up. Because the phones weren’t working, the firefighters hadn’t even gotten there until the blaze was far beyond control.
“Debra’s all right?” she asked.
“She’s fine. I asked her to come stay with us, but you know her; she didn’t want to do the sensible thing. Stubborn girl.”
“Wonder where she gets that from?”
“Your side of the family. Your mother.”
“Okay.”
Elise had prepared only a small dinner, leftover roast beef, corn, and fried okra, but Glenn didn’t want to eat. Without paying her any mind, he went upstairs and began making noise, moving things around, and Lord knew what. When he came back down, he had his car keys in hand again.
“Where to this time?”
“I’m going by a few students’ houses. Too many of them were out today. With no phones, I want to check up on them.”
“I don’t know that that’s in your job description.”
He sighed. “Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s trouble going on in this town. I’m just looking to help as best I can, all right?”
“Seems to me there’s more to it than that.”
He gave her a long, wistful look, and she knew she had hit on something. However, nothing she could say now could drag any answers out of him. If he intended to reveal anything, he would do it on his terms, in his own good time.
“I’ll be back soon. Try not to worry.”
“If I worry, it’s your fault.”
He gave her a brief hug and kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll talk later. I promise. Right now, I have to do what I have to do. All right?”
She shook her head in frustration. “You’ve always been tightlipped, but never mysterious. You’re going to drive me out of my head like this.”
“Not for very much longer.” Then he turned and went out the back door. She heard the car start, and off he went again.
“Why don’t you just retire?” she asked the wall and sat down to eat her dinner by herself. He could have retired already, but he seemed intent on working until he was physically unable. She admired his energy, his strength of will, and his sharpness of mind, but she was getting tired of having to share him with his job after all these years. It was high time they spent their days together as they wished, without obligations that by right should have passed to the younger generation.
Outside, a loud, rattling engine briefly caught her attention. Lately, she had been hearing it frequently, and she wondered who would drive such a detestable noisemaker through their quiet neighborhood. No one had moved in, no one was having contract work done, and no one had friends or family who drove clunkers coming and going at all hours. Glenn had successfully lobbied to make it against the law for these young people to go cruising with their music so loud it shook the walls, and as far as she was concerned, the same ordinance ought to apply to trucks that needed a new muffler, if not a whole new engine.
She had just finished her sparse dinner and carried her plate to the sink when something outside caused her to stop in her tracks: a low rustling; nothing more than the sound a small animal might make moving through the bushes beneath the kitchen window. But for some reason—no doubt because of the strange goings-on of the last couple of days—the noise set her nerves on edge, and her heart began to beat a little faster than usual. She brushed the curtains aside and peered out the window into the dark back yard, but without the floodlights on, she could not see a thing. In the brightly lit window, however, she would be clearly visible to any spying eyes, human or otherwise, so she closed the curtains, uncertain whether to go through the house locking all the doors and windows or to berate herself for being silly.
Click-click-clack…click-click-clack.
It sounded like the rapping of drumsticks on sheet metal, not very loud, but very nearby.
She went straight for the kitchen door, twisted the deadbolt, and then headed quickly to the living room to lock the front. Her hand was just reaching for the knob when a sharp rapping on the door nearly stopped her heart, prompting her to draw up short with a hand at her chest. She stood there, immobile, for almost half a minute until another loud knock came. She finally found her voice, raspy though it was.
“Who is it?”
No response.
“I said who is it?”
A low, gruff voice finally replied, “Friend of your husband’s, ma’am.”
“What’s your name?”
“I just need to talk to you a minute. It’s about Glenn.”
A lump rose in her throat, again stealing her voice. At last, she managed to croak, “Has something happened to him?”
“We better talk face to face.”
She pushed herself forward, grasped the doorknob, and gave it a tentative twist, only half-certain she wanted to open it. Before she could make up her mind, the door burst open, the knob smashing into her fingers and sending a blinding jolt of pain up her arm. Stumbling, she threw out her other hand and grasped the stair railing to keep from falling.
An ugly, familiar figure stood in the doorway, small eyes glaring at her from beneath a bony brow, long greasy hair hanging in disarray over his forehead.
“You,” she spat. “What do you want? You know you’re not welcome here.”
“Don’t think that matters much, Miz Martin.”
In the kitchen, glass shattered, and she heard a heavy thump, as if something large had burst through the window and dropped to the floor. Her eyes widened with dread as Levi Barrow took a step toward her.
“What was that?”
“You’re gonna see in a just a minute.”
“What do you want, Levi? Glenn’s not here, and you and I certainly don’t have any business.”
“Dunno if I’d say that,” Barrow said with a dangerous-looking smirk. “The major’ll be back soon, I reckon, and then we’ll see what business we have.”
Click-click-clack…
The sound she had heard from outside, in the house now, in the kitchen, coming this way. What in God’s name?
CLICK-CLICK-CLACK…CLICK-CLICK-CLACK…
Barrow’s mouth widened to reveal his stained, crooked teeth. “Have a look around there, why don’t you, Miz Martin.”
She could feel the other presence in the room. Something was moving behind her; a soft, sliding, scraping sound, slowly drawing nearer. And the smell…acrid, sour. God! Unable to stop herself, she turned around and saw the hot golden glow on the hardwood floor, something moving toward her, the size of a good-sized child, but nothing like a child.
Before the scream could burst from her lungs, consciousness began to flee, and she hit the floor like a sawn branch, barely feeling the crack of her skull against the stairway railing. The last thing she heard was Levi Barrow’s jubilant giggling; then a warm, welcome silence rushed in to replace the loathsome noise, and the world went blessedly dark.
Chapter 12
“Mom? Dad?”
Debra’s voice echoed eerily through the dead stillness of the Martin house. The moment Copeland had seen the door hanging partway open, he could only fear the worst.
“Major Martin?” he called. “Anyone here?”
“Dad’s car is gone. Maybe they’re just out somewhere,” she said, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice.
Copeland glanced into the living room, the dining room, and then started back toward the kitchen. Debra rushed upstairs. The hideous sense of déjà-vu nearly made him swoon.
The moment he stepped through the door, he stopped in his tracks, and hi
s gorge rose.
“Jesus,” he whispered. He heard Debra’s footsteps on the stairs, and though knowing it was futile, he forced himself to say, “Debra, don’t come in here. Please.”.
Her sharp intake of breath broke his heart.
“No,” she whispered. “Not them. Please not them.”
Glass from the shattered window glittered like jewels on the kitchen floor, on the countertops, on the table. Whatever had come inside had done so with terrific force.
The sharp, acid smell was the same as at Lynette’s house.
“There’s no blood,” she whispered. “They weren’t here. They just weren’t here.”
He wished he could share her hope, but his heart told him otherwise. He saw one dirty dinner dish in the sink and several food containers still on the countertop. If one or both of her parents had escaped, it would be a miracle, he thought. Better to let her keep hoping.
But he saw that, as Debra scanned the room, her own hope fled. Her lower lip began to quiver, and before he knew it, she had fallen into his arms, weeping bitterly, her back arching with every wracking sob. He crushed her body to his and felt his own tears beginning to well as his grief for Lynette boiled to the surface again.
He was barely aware of finally taking her by the hand and all but dragging her to the car. His breath came out in ragged gasps as the Lexus sprang to life, reversed out of the driveway, and screamed into the night, the streetlamps and the lights from the houses blending into a swirling, brilliant blur outside the windows.
When time seemed to return to normal, the headlights were cutting a ghostly path through the darkness, and gnarled, gray trees on either side of the narrow road were bending down to peer curiously, menacingly, into the windows as they sped past.
“What are we going to do, Russ? What are we going to do?”
His hands throttled the steering wheel as his foot pinned the accelerator to the floor. “I’m thinking murder, perhaps.”
Debra dug her nails into his right thigh. In a flat, artificially calm voice, she said, “Russ, you don’t know that Levi Barrow—or any of them—is responsible. Not for certain.”
“Certain enough. Everything goes back to them, doesn’t it? Rodney and Zack Baird—up by Barrows. What you saw on their land yesterday. Levi stalking you, and going after your father—just a little while ago.”
“It’s all circumstantial, at best. What happened tonight wasn’t on their land. And that thing you saw on the highway—that wasn’t on their land either.”
“What—are you defending them? There’s nothing circumstantial about Levi being after you. Your father told you as much. You’ve seen him for yourself.”
“Do you have a gun?”
Copeland shook his head. “Not on me. I came here for a funeral.”
“A knife? A slingshot?”
He took a deep breath, trying to suppress his rising ire, but the attempt failed. So for a full minute, he refused to speak for fear of losing his last vestige of restraint. He knew she was in shock, trying to cling to reason, but her parents’ unknown fate had sent her emotions over a cliff. That much he understood. Finally, he said, “You want to just hand this over to the sheriff?”
She swallowed hard and shook her head. “No. He’s too close to…those people.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She said nothing for a while, but watched the trees flash past the windows. “Your mind’s made up, isn’t it?”
“You know it would be best for me to do this alone.”
“Like hell. If you think I’d go home, or anywhere else alone, you’re out of your mind.”
“Then don’t try to stop me.”
“I’m just trying to think rationally. Not that it’s really working.” Her breath caught in her throat.
“I know, I know. But we’re running out of alternatives.”
“What Lynette had in mind—to get people together. At the church, or maybe the school. Hell, get the mayor involved. He’s a friend of Dad’s.”
“All that will take time. And I don’t think we have time. I don’t think we have time at all.”
They had reached the crest of Yew Line Ridge, and now as they started down the long, curving incline that led through a long, tunnel-like passage of black pines, the reality of where he was going and what he was doing began to temper the heat of his emotions. Beneath the thick boughs, the darkness gathered like an enclave of malevolent ghosts, swallowing his headlights, and Copeland felt as if he were driving into one of his most terrifying juvenile nightmares.
Ahead, he could see a break in the trees, beyond which the Barrow property lay in wait. Not a fleck of light marred the solid black landscape, and anyone watching from the house would soon see his headlights. He slowed down, pulled to the left side of the road, into a half-obscured opening in the trees, and shut off the lights. His hand hovered on the key as a little voice in his ear begged him to reconsider and turn back.
Turn back to what?
He switched off the engine and watched the darkness beyond the windshield for a few seconds to allow his eyes to adjust. When he finally turned to Debra, he saw only the vaguest impression of her face, her features unreadable. But her hand came to rest in his, and he squeezed it with what he hoped was more than empty reassurance. Then he reached into the glove compartment, withdrew his flashlight, and opened the car door. The inside lights blazed like captured daylight; he quickly slid out of his seat, pulled himself to his feet, and closed the door, immediately restoring the darkness, which he hoped would favor him should any searching eyes turn his way. The night air licked at him like a cool, questing tongue, and the profound, unnatural absence of sound set the hair at the back of his scalp to prickling. A few seconds later, with a sharp click, the passenger door opened, and again, briefly, light burst in the abyss like a fireball. Then Debra was at his side, the night again as black as the depths of outer space, their breathing and their own heartbeats the only intruders in the endless well of silence.
His one concession to his fear was to open the trunk, dig into the spare tire well, and grab the tire iron, which he slipped into his belt. Hardly the weapon of choice when marching into the enemy’s keep, but it beat going empty-handed.
He pushed his way through the low-hanging boughs and stepped onto asphalt, now feeling exposed and vulnerable beneath the glaring onyx sky. No stars, no moon, no clouds—no reflected light. Debra fell in close at his side, and they started walking slowly along the side of the road, his eyes on the coal-black pavement ahead, hers darting back and forth among the trees, their senses almost preternaturally alert for any sign that they were not alone. As they advanced, the trees soon ended, and now they could see a broad, black expanse, which Copeland took to be the grassy meadow that girded the Barrow property. Beyond this dark gulf, an angular silhouette gradually took form, a shade paler than its surroundings; as they drew nearer, he could see that Levi Barrow’s truck was gone, and not a glimmer of light shone from any of the windows.
“Russ,” Debra whispered pleadingly, “we do not want to go down there.”
He nodded, but they walked on, and as they approached the pitted gravel driveway, he led them into the tall grass, picking his steps carefully to avoid any hidden obstacles. Now on Barrow land, he felt cold, nauseating worms squirming in his stomach, and his legs turned more rubbery with every step nearer to the house. He half-expected some lurking guardian to accost them at any second—and he had no doubt that if they were caught they would be promptly murdered. Yet even that dreadful prospect could not deter him from creeping close to the house, finding the nearest window, and pausing beside it to listen for any hint of movement inside. A faint, repulsive odor wafted from the old wooden structure, a noisome mélange of mothballs, mold, and raw sewage. Moving toward the back of the house, he found all manner of trash and unidentifiable debris in the grass, and his foot dislodged something that clattered noisily as it rolled away. Debra hissed in fright, and he halted until he was certain no one was
coming to investigate.
A rickety staircase led to the half-rotted back door, and as he mounted it, his mind zoomed out of his body to view the scene from some distance above. His hand reached out and closed on the rusty doorknob, which rattled hideously, but the door did not budge. Locked, of course. Again he froze, waiting for telltale footfalls inside the structure; none came, and he began to breathe a little easier. Unwilling to be thwarted, he sharply thrust an elbow against one of the dingy glass panes, which popped whole from its frame and splashed into fragments somewhere on the other side. He heard Debra whimper, but he reached in through the new portal, found the handle, and wrestled with the lock. The door sang like a grieving whale as it opened, and as Copeland stepped into the dark entryway, he thought, you pathetic, arrogant bastards, you would never expect anyone to actually break into your little castle, would you?
The fact that anyone could actually inhabit such a fetid rat hole only inflamed his contempt for them. He took a few halting steps into the void and then decided to chance his flashlight. He flicked it on for a second—just long enough to get his bearings. He stood in the family’s kitchen: a tiny, cluttered room with a wooden table and chairs to his right, the refrigerator, sink, and cabinets to his left. In that moment of illumination, he had glimpsed a number of filthy dishes piled in the sink and on the countertop next to it, and he quickly realized that the sewer-like taint of the air originated in here. Pocketing his flashlight, he reached back and took Debra’s hand as she tiptoed in and pressed close to him; then he started walking again, toward the open door he had seen a short distance ahead.
