Rust: Two

by Christopher Ruz

  He tasted blood and knew it was his own.

  "No talking." The figure's voice was a cold whisper, not a voice at all but a series of gasps drawn out across a whetstone. "Not now. There'll be time for that later."

  The finger withdrew but Peter still couldn't speak. The feeling of that scaly skin had struck him dumb. Instead he stared at Curtis, who'd rolled on to his back and was flailing at the air like an upturned turtle.

  He had to be so cold. If only Peter could reach out, press Curtis to his chest, feel his little heartbeat. If only Kimberly were with them. She'd know what to do. In the weeks after she'd returned from hospital she'd been fierce, demanding, solitary but sure of what she wanted, even if what she wanted was to lock herself away from the world. She wouldn't take this shit.

  Lord, he missed her.

  There was a squeal in the distance, like metal grinding against stone. The stranger stood. "It's time," it said. "I'll come for you."

  "Please, don't-"

  The stranger was already through the door. Peter caught a glimpse of the corridor - dirt walls, tall wooden beams, dark but for the sad glow of candles - and the door slammed closed.

  No lock fell. Nothing to stop him from leaving. If only he could stand...

  He tried twice more, but his legs wouldn't listen. It was as if they were cramped from toe to hip, seized in place. The more he struggled the more they ached, and he still hadn't managed to shift the blanket, let along get to his feet.

  "Curtis. Come here."

  Curtis was too busy grabbing his own toes to care. In a way, that was comforting. If Curtis had been crying, Peter reckoned he might have lost control. There was something about his child's tears that, even after months of sleeplessness and changed diapers and bottle-feeding, still grabbed his heart and twisted.

  He tried to reach for the baby but his arms were too heavy. It felt like the time he'd fallen from his bicycle as a child and shattered both his forearms. Almost no pain - that would come later, once the shock faded - but he'd been numb from wrist to shoulder, unable to even lift one arm for fear gravity would snap his hand off. This felt no different. "It'll be okay," he whispered. "Daddy's here. Don't worry."

  If he couldn't lift his arms, maybe he could wriggle the blanket off. He twisted back and forth as best he could, which was hardly more than a shrug. He was sure it wasn't ropes, but maybe he'd been injected with something to leave him numb. He'd seen that in a couple cop shows. Drugs, sedatives, morphine...

  Thinking of needles snapped him back to his insulin. If he didn't get his medication... His paper bag of jelly babies was on the kitchen counter, his syringes secured in the top kitchen cupboard. Maybe that was the source of the pain in his belly. His whole body was in revolt.

  He had to see.

  Peter Archer grit his teeth and bucked. The pain was immediate, a sawing agony in his guts that left him sobbing. He jerked again, and the blanket inched down from his shoulders.

  He was screaming so thinly there was almost no sound at all, like a dogwhistle rising and rising in his skull. Curtis might not've been able to hear it, but he could read his father's moods well enough. The baby screwed up his face, tiny fists beating at the air, and wailed.

  "Please don't," Peter whispered. Tears ran from his cheeks and pattered on the blanket. One more good shrug would do, but it hurt so bad. Footsteps carried in the hall outside; the stranger returning. He had to move fast, but the pain, the pain was cutting him in two, it was swallowing him whole, electricity arcing up every nerve.

  With tears on his lips, he jackknifed one last time. The door opened just as the blanket fell away.

  Peter looked down. He saw what'd been done to him, and suddenly he couldn't scream any more.

  The stranger waited in the doorway, hands folded before it. The light coming from the corridor outside caught a sliver of a smile. "So," it said. "You understand the first step. This is for the best, you understand. In the end, this is for the best."

  Peter's eyes bulged as he took in the raw red meat. The extent of the damage. Purple and yellow and the drip drip drip of blood, the hollowness, it made sense now. The layers, the slickness across his legs and chest and groin. Fat and skin and scraping bone-

  "Don't worry. We'll make you better. It's what we do."

  Finally, Peter Archer found his air.

  He screamed.

  Chapter 13

  Goodwell swore all the way back to the car.

  Mrs Archer... Miss Archer, he supposed... was up to her neck in quicksand and too stupid to realise it. Driving around in a stolen car was bad enough, but an Audi? If he hadn't been in his office to take the call, Doctor Keller would've left a message with the main desk. They would've followed up on that lead double-time and then where would she be? Locked in the back of the local courthouse, charged with GTA, hoping her husband would post bail while all manner of slick black things made their way into her cell through the slits in the windows and the food and the toilet U-bend...

  That was, if Peter Archer even wanted to post bail. Goodwell hadn't heard from him in a couple days. Maybe he'd finally gotten the message: Kimberly Archer wasn't coming home, no way, no how. Not for any number of footrubs.

  His master wouldn't be pleased. They'd have to change tactics. No chance of keeping her in the house now, convincing her that it was safer to wall herself off from the darker parts of town. She was mobile, she was wilful, and she was a danger to herself and others.

  Detective Chan must've seen the fury in his eyes as he returned to the car. "Any trouble?"

  "Sorry?"

  "Your parking fines," Detective Chan said. "They let you pay, or do we have to detour to the municipal court?"

  Goodwell blinked. Then the lie tumbled out, smooth as butter. "Said they waive fines for police. Maybe the lady just likes a man in uniform."

  "Not in that shitty suit she doesn't," Chan snorted, and pulled away from the curb.

  He'd been feeling ill most of the morning, but the rotten clenching in his gut only got worse as they wound up through the mountains. The pines closed around them, shrouding them, cutting off what thin sunlight had managed to leak through the clouds, then opened again as they reached the peak. He could see clear down into the valley on the west end of Rustwood and pick out the grey concrete cube of the Ryan Roberts complex - the PoMo Prison, as they'd called it when it was being built - where the theft had been reported the night before. Two figures dressed in dark coats, carrying a flashlight, driving a new-model something-or-other according to the night watchman. But that was a job for someone else - even Snow wouldn't be so cruel as to make Goodwell split his time between theft and homicide.

  Before Chan had picked him up that morning, Goodwell had considered the case as good as closed. Candidates to take the blame for the three missing teens were popping up like weeds. Seemed every second kid in Rustwood had been beaten by their parents, chased by strangers, molested or narrowly avoided something similar.

  Something in the water, Goodwell thought, and shivered.

  There were lots of assholes he'd be happy to cuff for the murders of Dylan Cobber, Taram Traore and Martin Goldfarb, but one in particular was so perfect that Goodwell suspected the influence of hands beyond his limited, ground-level understanding. Alvin Spratt: convicted of the sexual assault and attempted murder of a young teen, sentence downgraded thanks to good lawyerin' and a dubious interpretation of reduced culpability. Five years spent under intense observation until psych eval determined him safe. Another dubious interpretation. Now living with his mother on the northern edge of Rustwood, less than two miles from the bridge where Taram and Martin had been abducted. He drove a dark sedan, he spent his days at home alone, and shit, his arrest photo even looked like Goodwell if you squinted.

  Five years wasn't nearly enough. Goodwell wouldn't be kept up nights if he put the bastard away for triple homicide.

  He'd spent so long staring at Spratt's arrest record that he'd fallen asleep at his desk. Chan had been the one t
o drag him out of another series of terrible dreams - always the eyes, those gleaming silver eyes deep in the pit of the well, shining despite the utter lack of moonlight - and browbeaten him into following the thinnest of tipoffs.

  By luck, he'd been at his desk long enough to take Keller's call. By luck, he'd convinced Chan to let him take the wheel, and so had been sitting at the base of O'Malley Drive when Mrs Archer drove past, following her neatly all the way to the Department of Records. By luck, he'd lied his way out of the detour.

  Luck only went so far in Rustwood. Now, as they wound down the hill towards Chan's tipoff, Goodwell figured he was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  The Hill family farm.

  It hadn't changed since he'd visited it two weeks before. Still the same faded barn, red-painted weatherboards chipped and bent soggily by the weather, the same haystacks abandoned and rotting, the same tractor rusting gently in the tall grass like the skull of some colossal, primordial creature left to watch over the fields.

  Even so, Goodwell felt a strange chill settle around his shoulders as they descended the mountain pass. Like there were pairs of eyes watching from below, peering from every shadowed window of the barn. Little hands clenched into fists. Dead lungs taking slow, patient breaths.

  And, of course, the well. Barely visible from the road, no more than a shadow in the field behind the barn. A tiny tumour spreading roots beneath the soil.

  He wondered how much was left of those three boys. It'd been years since he studied decomposition rates. Wet weather, deep well, worms in the soil... But after only a week there'd be more than enough left to identify the trio. And if they dug his bullets out of their bodies... If they asked for his pistol and made the match...

  "Spratt's the one," he said "Record, motive, opportunity and his car matches."

  "So what?" Chan reeled off the description given by the man who'd seen Dylan getting into the stranger's vehicle. "Black sedan with big tail-lights. Shit, can't wait to put out an APB on every third car in the state. Even you'd be on the list."

  "Ha." Goodwell forced laughter but it sounded false even to his ears. "We'd be remiss if we didn't check him out."

  "Or we could get written up for harassment."

  "He abducted a fifteen year old boy from a public park. You think he's going to cry to the cops when he feels oppressed by the system? While we're dicking around with this petting-zoo bullshit, Spratt's either packing his bags or picking another target."

  "He's on the list, Goodwell. One thing at a time."

  He gripped the doorhandle tight enough to snap it off at the root. "I don't like this."

  Detective Chan shrugged and reached into the greasy paper bag on her lap to snatch another chicken drumstick. They'd passed a bakery along the way and Chan had almost spat at Goodwell's offer of croissants. Deep fried or nothing, you hear? "You know I hate anonymous tips as much as you."

  "Ninety-nine percent wastes of time."

  "And one percent gold. He sounded sincere. "

  He? Goodwell filed that away. No idea who the false Queen was employing these days now that he'd polished off the trio of teenage propaganda artists, but if it was seeding its spores through the rain then there'd be hundreds of candidates. Thousands. More than he had time or bullets for.

  "What exactly did this mystery caller say?"

  "Three boys, yadda yadda, grabbed by some sicko, etcetera, buried at the Hill's old farm."

  "He witnessed it?"

  "Friend of a friend."

  "My favourite confidential informant. Fucker gets around."

  Chan grinned. "If I didn't know you, I'd think you didn't want to be here."

  The rain had eased by the time they reached the farmhouse. Goodwell shivered as he pulled his rainslicker over his suit jacket. Of all the places to be, of all the burial grounds to retread...

  Chan was taking in the surroundings, the slumping barn, the pig pens now overgrown with dandelions and bindweed. He took a deep breath. He'd pulled off bigger deceptions. No need to overplay it. Hustle her through the farmhouse, poke the stinking haystacks and get her back in the car. They'd arrest Spratt, he'd claim innocence, and Goodwell would work him over until every word off his sick lips would be a confession. Everything A-OK.

  "Goodwell?"

  Detective Chan had arrowed in on the barn. Bad start. He jogged to catch up as she cast a trained eye across the double doors, cast wide open to allow the rain and wind inside. Soft earth sucked at his loafers. "Yeah?"

  She pointed. "Bullet hole."

  A black tear the size of a pinkie nail in the weatherboard beams, at the height of Goodwell's throat... or a teenager's skull. Fibers pluming outward, soaked soft in the rain.

  Goodwell's stomach dropped. "Looks like someone fucking around with a drill to me."

  "Forensics can figure it out." She ducked inside the barn, made a satisfied noise, and came back out. "Clean through. Irregular exit. Definitely a bullet."

  "Farmers and guns. Can't keep them apart."

  "Maybe." Chan peered at the faded red boards. "Can't see any blood, but..."

  "Casings?" Goodwell volunteered, glad he'd collected them before leaving and burned them in his basement bowl. Funny how copper melted so quickly in hot blood.

  "Maybe if you got off your ass and helped me look?"

  They picked through the grass together but there was nothing to find but mud and small black bugs that crawled over Goodwell's knuckles. Chan swore, shaking the insects from her sleeves. "Ugh. Hate these things. We need a whole crew out here to sweep the fields. Could've happened anywhere."

  "One bullet-hole doth not a crime scene make," Goodwell said. "Let's head back. I'm turning soggy out here." That, and he was growing keenly aware of the voices on the wind. Maybe his imagination, maybe something meant just for him - the enemy had lots of tricks. Either way, it set his teeth on edge.

  It was only a whisper, but as clear to him as if they'd been standing by his ear. A child's voice. The well...

  Chan frowned. She wiped the water from her eyes and turned to peer out over the field of grey, waving grass.

  "Doesn't this farm have a well?"

  There was no stopping her. Whatever the voice was, wherever it'd come from - the beast, or one of its servants, watching from the shadows - it'd given Chan the shove she needed. All Goodwell could do was stumble behind her, making his excuses as he tripped in the tall grass.

  It was only a well. Rough stone waist-high, the wooden cover sitting exactly where he'd left it, moss spotting the mortar, and...

  The heavy rocks he'd left atop the cover were gone.

  Chan tried to lift the well cover but couldn't fit her fingers into the gap. "Help me with this, would you?"

  Goodwell grabbed at her arm. "I don't think you should do that."

  "You want to do the honours?"

  "No, I mean-"

  "Then lay off." She tugged free and, before Goodwell could stop her, shoved the well cover away. Wood ground against stone as it tumbled into the grass.

  Chan recoiled, one arm thrown up over her face. "You smell that? Think we might have something here." She fumbled the flashlight from her belt and leaned over the lip of the well, peering into the black. "Shit, this is deep. Might have to get divers. I can't see-"

  "So it goes," Goodwell whispered, and unclipped the leather strap on his holster as quietly as he could manage. The pop of the buckle seemed as loud in that moment as the pistol shots that had killed the three boys, but Chan didn't notice. She was bent almost double, head and shoulders inside the well, barely able to keep her feet on the ground.

  So simple, Goodwell thought. One bullet to the back of the head. Then he'd just lift her legs and she'd topple in. Another body to keep the boys company.

  But not her. Anyone but her. There were real monsters in Rustwood and enough of them wearing human skin to count on both hands, but not Chan. Precious few real people left walking the streets and if he had to kill her then he'd do it without hesitating bu
t there was already a hole inside him so large it threatened to swallow him completely and if he had to draw that well cover over Detective Chan's face, leave her down there in the dark for the worms then that hole would expand and he wouldn't be able to fight it any more.

  The pistol was in his hand. He clicked the safety off.

  "Looks like..." Chan leaned over further, going all the way up on her toes, until one of her feet was off the ground. "Get the umbrella, will you? Can't see shit through the rain."

  Goodwell inched closer. His footfalls were slick on the dewy grass. He raised the pistol, the steel warm to the touch, and sighted down the barrel. No way to miss, not this close. He'd have to scrub down afterward, disinfect every inch of skin, scrub and scrub and scrub until he'd gotten rid of the stain. High-school drama classes swam up out of long-buried memory. Out, damned spot! Out, I say! Yet who would have thought Chan to have had so much blood in her?

  "I think I see..."

  He tensed. The trigger creaked.

  "Forget it."

  Goodwell's finger was frozen on the trigger. His breath came out in a long, shuddering gasp. "What?"

  "Nothing down there," Chan said. Her voice echoed back up from the well, fluttering in the evening air. "Besides water and pig shit, that is. Oh, yuck!"

  She pulled her head out of the well and shook her hands furiously, flinging cockroaches from the ends of her fingers. "Screw this!" Behind her, Goodwell stuffed his pistol back into the holster and buttoned it down, letting his shirt fall over the butt. His fingers were trembling so badly it took two tries to click the clasp into place, and as he finished Chan whirled around, fixing him with that steely glare he'd come to avoid during their few days together.

  "You okay, Goodwell? You look like you're coming down with something."

  "I'm not the one crying over a couple bugs." He tried to look nonchalant as he traipsed back to the barn. "Still want to get forensics out here to look at these 'bullet holes'? Or can we get back to the station before we drown? I swear, it's getting heavier."