“Yes, you do. You understand, Corbin, you just don’t want to. I know you feel it. Probably always have,” she said, as if stealing a glimpse inside his mind. She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Her skin felt like cool, damp clay. “You feel it here.” She gestured to her chest with her other hand.
Immediately he thought about what Elhouse had said right before he struck the match and set himself ablaze. He had said something similar. He had said he could feel it everywhere… whatever it was.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Gertie. Feel what?”
She smiled at him. His poker face was terrible. “That’s the problem, I think. Everybody wants to pretend there’s nothing wrong. It’s easier that way, I suppose. People hate the truth, Corbin. Facing it means having to do something about it—trying to, anyway—even if there isn’t anything you can do. Sometimes you just gotta know when to run, I suppose. Remember that.”
“Maybe the doctor’s right. You should get some rest.”
She ignored him. “Gilchrist hasn’t ever felt right, and you know it. There’s something… special about it, I guess you’d say. Not special in a good way, either. It’s like there’s some invisible wall between this place and another terrible place, and it has grown far too thin. The town looks good on the surface. But underneath… underneath, Corbin, you know it’s far darker and meaner than most places. And I think it’s that way for a reason.”
“How much of this medicine did they give you?” Corbin forced a laugh, but she saw right through it like a spotlight piercing fog.
“It’s okay to be scared. You should be. At least that means you know it’s there,” she said, her face a grave carving of off-white marble. “There is something horrible in Gilchrist, has been since well before any us were alive. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I can feel it, like a black tide rising around my heart. It took my Elhouse and broke him. Turned him into a tool of the devil.”
Corbin thought about something Elhouse had said back in his barn: It harvests what it sows. It had struck him as odd when he’d first heard it, but at the time, he had thought they were just the words of an unsound mind. Thinking about it now, though, it almost made him feel queasy. There was a dreadful truth hidden in those words that he could not quite comprehend, yet he could feel its weight pressing down on him.
What does it sow?
“I have to get going, Gertie,” Corbin said. He could hear a little bit of shame mixed with the denial in his voice. “I hope you know how sorry I am. Regardless of what happened, Elhouse was a good man. I just wish I could make some sense of it.”
“Yes,” Gertie said, “he was. Now you go on and pray. Something tells me we all should.”
Corbin pulled his hand out from underneath hers, stood, and headed out of the room. He stopped at the doorway and turned around. “Gertie, there’s something I haven’t told you yet. But I think I ought to. It’s about how Elhouse… well, how he—”
“I’m tired, Corbin. Let me sleep now. What you have to tell me is something I don’t ever need to hear. Do you really think it matters? He’s gone.”
“No,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
2
On his way back to town, Corbin stopped on Waldingfield Road to have another look at the scene of the wreck. He needed to take his mind off his conversation with Gertie. It had left him feeling disrupted, as though someone had just taken his life, turned it upside down, and given it a violent shake. Now everything he knew and understood was out of place, and in some places, new things had been uncovered. Things he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know.
He needed to restore some order. So he parked on the shoulder, shut off his car, and stepped out. He looked in both directions. No one was coming. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the Benzedrine inhaler, taking one hit in each nostril. His focus sharpened on cue, and he quickly dialed in on the big oak where he had found the second set of markings.
He went over to it and had another look. It had been completely fresh, still slimy, when he had first discovered it. Perhaps only an hour or two old. Now where the tree flesh was marred, it was already starting to dry out. He ran his finger over one of the more well-defined imprints and thought about a time two years back, when a bad storm had knocked down the large maple in their front yard, and he had used a chain to drag the biggest pieces into the woods behind his house. Reflecting on this as he stood on the side of Waldingfield Road, he had a pretty good idea what had caused the markings. The pattern and the shape were unmistakable in daylight, identical to what he remembered seeing two years ago. What he didn’t know, however, was whether or not Danny Metzger had been the intended target. It didn’t seem likely. There would be too many variables to control. Too much uncertainty. It would be like firing a cannon into a crowd of people and hoping to hit the right person.
Unless it didn’t matter who was hit…
Another thought struck Corbin, this one carrying with it the full weight of what this all might mean: And if it wasn’t Elhouse who was responsible, then I have a murderer on my hands. Probably a local. Probably someone who knows the area.
There was a deliberate cruelty attached to this whole thing, an oiliness that he could feel. And it didn’t feel like Elhouse Mayer. And it didn’t feel like any kids playing a prank that had paid out more than they had bargained for. It felt cold and mean and awful. Depraved.
You feel it here, Gertie had said, and pointed to her heart less than an hour ago in her hospital bed. And Corbin thought, maybe, he understood what she had been talking about more than he cared to admit.
The last time he had felt this way was when Madison Feller turned up dead in the river. It had been ruled an accident during the inquest, but that had never sat right with him. There had been no evidence to suggest foul play, but he remembered the same bitter, oily feeling. It was like being caught downwind of a raging tire fire. The air felt corrosive and sticky at the same time.
He glanced in all directions, slowly pinching and releasing the loose skin below his chin between his thumb and forefinger.
“Then what’d you do?” he said in a low voice as he worked out the scene in his mind. “Did you watch? You must’ve watched. You took the chain down right after it happened to make it look like an accident. You had to watch. So where’s the best place?”
He turned and walked about a hundred feet up a gradually sloping hill until he was at the top and looking down at the road through the woods. They weren’t thickly settled in that area. He could see his car and the faint markings on the back of the oak tree where one end of the chain had been anchored.
Taking a wide zigzagging path, he moved slowly back down the hill, eyes scanning the ground as he went. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but was certain he would know it when he saw it.
(like a black tide rising around my heart)
He was about midway down the hill when he spotted the Double Decker MoonPie wrapper a few feet away.
(it took my Elhouse and broke him)
He picked it up, looked at it, sniffed inside.
(turned him into a tool of the devil)
The package still held the faint, lingering smell of chocolate and marshmallow. The wrapper was fresh.
(it harvests what it sows)
It seemed like an odd place for someone to be eating a snack like that. Of course, it could’ve been littered out of a car and blown up there in a gust of wind.
Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe he was blowing smoke up his own ass, bending the narrative a little too much.
Then Corbin spotted the little cleared-away spot of ground to his left, and the picture came into focus a little more. In the center of the little clearing of dirt, he counted five crushed cigarette butts. One was a little farther forward than the group and looked like it’d been stamped out under a heavy boot heel. It was still partially buried in the deep indentation. He picked them all up and studied them in his palm. Lucky Strike brand. “Luckies,” the teenagers called them.
Each one was smoked down to the filter. Nothing wasted.
Squatting on the hill, his eyes moved back and forth between the cigarette butts and the MoonPie wrapper. He could see it clearly—the what not the who. Someone had sat up on the hill, smoking and eating, and waited for a car to come along. Probably they hadn’t cared who they hurt, so long as someone did get hurt. A random act of violence. They had watched the whole thing, and it’d been fun for them. Probably this wasn’t their first time, either. When Corbin played the scene out in his mind’s eye, the person watching was a faceless figure, a perfectly black shadow that smoked Lucky Strikes, ate MoonPies, and wore boots. That didn’t offer a whole lot, but it was a start.
He spent another forty-five minutes searching the area, but came up with nothing else. He took the evidence he had found back down to his cruiser and got in. On the floor of his backseat was a lunch sack from the week before. He checked inside, and it was clean. No crumbs, no grease. He dropped the cigarette butts in, the MoonPie wrapper on top, and placed the bag on the seat beside him.
He pulled out the inhaler and stared at it. He dropped it back into his breast pocket and left. By the time he reached the end of Waldingfield Road, it was in his hand again. He tossed it out the window as he drove and heard it bounce off the asphalt. Then the sound disappeared behind him and was gone. There was something oily about that thing, too. He had always known it. He had always felt it.
3
Dave Blatten was sitting on the cedar sweater chest—the one Sarah had bought on a Sunday last summer over at Todd Farm flea market in Rowley—and tying his boots when he spotted the gum stuck behind the bedpost.
“The hell is this?” he said under his breath and crept toward it suspiciously. He reached behind the post and picked off the little white-pink wad. It was still tacky. He sniffed it. It smelled faintly of those Wint-O-Green Lifesavers he liked to suck on.
He examined the artifact. It didn’t belong. It wasn’t his, that’s for sure. He didn’t like the stuff; it hurt his teeth. Too many cavities, according to his last dentist appointment. Maybe it was Sarah’s.
She was thoughtless sometimes, sure. Like the time she’d bleached his favorite shirt and ruined it. Or the time she had taken his truck to see that bitch mother of hers and left him with an empty tank. He had been forced to teach her a little lesson that time. As he saw it, she’d left him no choice in the matter. Her little oversight had made him late for his hunting trip, when he had been forced to stop off for gas on the way. He couldn’t have that. He hadn’t done anything mean to her, just a light slap upside the head like his daddy used to do for him when he didn’t think. So yeah, maybe she didn’t use her head from time to time, but she wouldn’t do something so intentionally stupid and crass as stick a wad of chewing gum on their furniture.
And it was on his side of the bed.
His mind immediately entertained the blackest of thoughts, and a blade of panic sliced his gut, almost causing him to physically wince. Instead he clenched his jaw as his face bent into a scowl.
Would she…? Could she have…? Nahhh, not my Sarah, she wouldn’t do that to me. That fucking slut! That dumb little whore!
Until death do us part…
“Sarah, can you come in here a minute?” he said, keeping his voice calm. Same as with the dog, he didn’t want his tone to give him away. When trying to trap an animal, the last thing a person ought to do is make a bunch of sudden, aggressive movements. He subscribed to Field & Stream, and he knew those kinds of things from reading the articles.
“What is it?” She was in the kitchen, making lunch for him to take to work. “Can’t it wait a minute?”
He looked at his wedding ring. “Listen, just come in here a sec. There’s something I need to show you. It won’t take but a minute. Then you can get back to makin my lunch.”
When I’m done with her, she ain’t gonna be able to make spit, let alone those stale Wonder Bread and bologna sandwiches she calls lunch.
There was the sound of a knife being dropped on the butcher block, then a pause as she hung up her apron, the one her grandmother had given her. God, she never shut up about that. Footfalls came up the hall. He could see it all. This was his house, and he knew all the sounds and routines that lived in it.
All, except, maybe one. This new one with its threatening little head peeking out.
He was rolling the gum into a perfectly round ball between his fingers when Sarah came into the bedroom. The petulant look on her face pissed him right the fuck off. Some wife she was to look at him that way when all he’d done was ask her to do a simple thing and come talk to him.
“I was making your lunch. Just what you asked, baby,” she said, and ran her hair behind her ears.
Dave laughed, but it was a mean laugh. “A wife obeying her husband… well. Isn’t that just so considerate of you, darling.” He accentuated the last word in such a way that made him sound like he was speaking through chewed stone. A vein throbbed in his forehead, sending a dull ache to the core of his brain.
Sarah’s face twitched a little at the sight of him. “What’s wrong?”
“Here I was, gettin ready for work, when I spotted something I just can’t make any sense of. I thought maybe you could help me to work it out.” Dave moved toward her with slow, deliberate motion. He was still eyeing the piece of gum between his fingers, rolling it in small circles. He held it up and closed one eye as if inspecting it. “You know what this is?”
His boots tromped on the floor as he crossed the room. It was a dreadful sound. The sound of impending doom.
“No. What is it?” Sarah swallowed hard.
Dave could smell that she was hiding something. Liars produced a scent, and the scent was bullshit. The room reeked of it. That and the other thing.
“Is it yours?” he asked, stopping right in front of his wife. He held up the suspicious artifact a few inches from her face. Her eyes even crossed a little, and he thought it made her look dumb.
“I don’t even know what it is, so how could it be mine?” she said, backing away. She startled when her butt hit the windowsill and she realized she was cornered between the dresser and the wall.
“You don’t know what it is? I mean, you really don’t know what… it… is? Why don’t you take a real good look, then.”
“I am,” she said. “It looks like Silly Putty. I don’t know, Dave. What’s the matter?”
“It’s gum!” Dave yelled, his eyes deepening in their sockets. “It’s fucking gum!”
“Okay, so it’s gum,” Sarah said, confused. “Why are you showing me gum?” She laughed nervously. “I don’t understand, that’s all. That’s all. Don’t be mad. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“Well, it ain’t mine,” Dave said. “So why was it stuck behind the bedpost?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t put it there, if that’s what you think. Is that what you’re upset about? Do you think I put it…”
For a second Dave could see the jackpot lights flashing behind her eyes. As she began to understand, her face bleached white.
He reached over slowly and shut the door to their bedroom. “That’s exactly the fuckin problem, ain’t it? It’s not yours, it’s not mine… so whose is it, then?”
“I swear I don’t know.” Tears were gathering in her eyes.
The girl can’t cook, Dave thought. And she sure as shit can’t lie worth a damn.
“Oh, sweetheart—yes, you do,” he said in a kind voice, and clicked his tongue at her. “And you’re gonna tell me. You know why?”
She put her hands on his chest. He was a big man compared to her. “Dave, please—”
He grabbed both her wrists in one hand and pushed them away. “Because if you don’t tell me who was up here chewing my”—he reached down and cupped her crotch hard—“gum, then I got no choice but to snap your little whore neck.”
Sarah Blatten started to cry.
“No… no, please.” She tried helplessly to go around him, but he shove
d her back against the wall. Her elbow struck the dresser and knocked a bottle of her cheap Woolworth’s perfume onto the floor. It smashed and splashed his boots. Now the place reeked of bullshit and roses. And the other thing.
“You take me for an idiot? You think you’re gonna let another guy sample what’s mine, in the bed we share, and I won’t find out? How dumb are you?” His head tilted to the side, and his eyes stared into blank space for a second before finding hers again. “Or did you want me to find out? Is that it? Because I think maybe you did, and ain’t that just a fine howdy fuckin do.”
“It’s not what—”
“Who is he, Sarah? Last chance before I gotta whoop it outta you. And I promise you it won’t be a whoopin you’ll soon forget. No sir.” The false kindness had gone from his voice. His face was pulsing with wild anger. “How ’bout it? You gonna open up that mouth of yours and spill it, or you saving that tongue for your mystery man?”
“There is no one,” she whimpered. “I swear, baby. Please, you have to believe—”
He grabbed her by the throat. “Well, okay. The hard way it is. Here, bite down on this. You’re gonna need it. Open up now… come on. Don’t worry, it’s still fresh.” He forced the gum into her mouth. First with his thumb, then with the heel of his palm.
Then he removed his belt, wrapped it twice around his hand, and kept his promise.
4
“The way I see it, someone set a trap,” Corbin said to Billy as they ate their lunches in the back room of the police station. “He strung a chain across the road—like a tripwire, you follow?—and sat up there in the woods, smoking cigarettes and eating MoonPies like it was a goddamn Saturday-afternoon matinee. He watched the whole time.”
“A trap?” Billy washed down his mouthful of ham and cheese with a sip of Coke, then wiped a hand across his mouth, missing some mustard on the edge of his lip. “You s’pose they knew Danny would be coming that way? Seems as though that’d be awful hard to get right.”
Gilchrist Page 25
