“Jerry, is that you? Where is my Deputy?”
“Yeah, Sheriff, it’s me. He’s gone. He’s … looking for the missing girl.”
There was no immediate response. Jerry stared at the radio, willing it to work. Finally, the Sheriff replied. “Stay where you are. When my Deputy returns, tell him I have the girl. Jill is with me and she is going to be okay.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Jerry … Don’t move.”
Jerry exhaled and released the tension in his muscles. He didn’t respond.
The girl was safe, and that was all that mattered. He wondered why he still felt like there was a piece of the puzzle missing. In his mind’s eye, he saw something posing as his father standing in the doorway of the jail cell. Jerry quickly closed his eyes. He held them so tight it almost hurt, but the image wouldn’t go away. And then there was the widow, Vanessa Barrows. He heard her story and he believed it. Of course, he did. He had lived it. That thing was real. And he believed it was in those woods, and that Trent wasn’t prepared.
Jerry opened his eyes. His mind raced as he scanned his surroundings. The road ahead and behind him was dark and empty, just like the small row of houses to the east. To his west, directly out his passenger window was Carl’s wrecked tow truck and a seemingly endless stretch of trees. If you stared at them for too long, Jerry noticed that they seemed to get closer, like they were leaning in … reaching for him.
“I have to end it,” he mumbled. His eyes shifted from the trees to the tow truck. His pulse quickened, and before he could think twice, Jerry stepped out of the vehicle and approached the truck.
Next to the locked toolbox, Jerry saw what he was looking for. A gas can. He unlatched the tie-down strap and lifted the can.
It’ll be empty, he thought.
But it wasn’t.
Not even close.
Another gust of wind raced down the ditch, stinging his face, but he didn’t feel it. The snow had begun to fall again, but he didn’t notice that, either. Jerry entered the woods with a sense of purpose he had not felt in years.
~ ~ ~ ~
He was coming for her. Jill felt it in her bones. That scream she heard wasn’t just fear. There was fear in it—but it was more than that. That scream was born in pain … and probably death.
Jill dumped the snow out of her boots and pulled them back on. She cinched up her coat and pulled the wool hat down over her ears. It was time to leave this house. She stepped outside.
The town was dead, she thought with a shudder.
The houses were dark and the street was empty. Were it not for the snow shrouded street lamps, one could almost miss the town entirely
~ ~ ~ ~
Head down, Trent moved deeper into the woods, closer to the tree house, the gun held tightly in his gloved hand. Icy cold. Sparkling darkness. Fear beating like a moth’s wings in his chest. All that faded into the background. Except the fear. There was always the fear.
He moved through another row of trees, and finally, he could see it. There was the tree house after all these years. Three more years of neglect covered under a blanket of snow. It should have looked quaint—like the picture on a postcard at a travel center—but it didn’t. No, there was something wrong with this picture. And Trent had known this from the very first time he had set foot on the property.
A strong sense of Deja-vu struck him as he faced the staircase ascending from the tree house. The heat wave of three years ago had been scorching hot, but the cold pit in his heart had been there all the same. There was death up those stairs. He had known that three years ago, and he knew it now.
With the gun gripped in one hand, flashlight in the other, Trent climbed the stairs. He could see the multiple footprints on the snowy steps, removing any doubt that Jill and the teacher had been here at some point.
Being careful not to slip, but just as eager to keep his arrival a secret, the Officer crossed the wraparound walkway, pressing his back against the tree house wall. He could feel it sway and figured that if they were still in there, they could probably feel it, too. It was quiet; the tree house and the woods. He could hear nothing. His head told him the room was empty, but his heart told him otherwise.
He slid along the wall towards the door, ducking under one window. There was still nothing but silence on the other side, but Trent could sense something. He placed his hand on the doorknob and held his breath. His heart hammered against his ribs and suddenly, desperately, he wanted to turn and run.
Instead, he turned the knob and swung the door open. His flashlight panned the room as he slowly stepped inside.
He saw Peter Taylor’s dead body lying in a heap in the corner. Blood pooled in his eyes, making them glisten in the reflection of the flashlight. Streaks of white hair sprouted garishly from his skull.
Trent stepped back, falling into the doorjamb. He almost called out, but his mouth was too dry to produce words. He shut his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again, Peter’s corpse was gone; three years had passed in the blink of an eye.
“Jesus Christ. Honey, did you see that?” He waited for his wife to respond, but he didn’t expect it. He was right. It seemed that this time, she was gone.
Instead of the murder scene, he found only an empty room that smelled of dust and animal shit. Next to the fireplace, he spotted a pair of shoes. He moved in for a closer look. Man-sized Nike's. And in the opposite corner, where there had been stacks of wooden crates back when Trent had discovered the body of Peter Taylor, he now spotted a light brown leather jacket.
“What the hell?”
Trent stepped to the center of the room and panned the light around him, taking it all in.
Jill is not here, and that’s why I came. So, what am I doing?
It was a simple question. But the answer was hard to explain.
He picked up the jacket and checked the pockets. There was a wadded-up credit card receipt from the Texaco station. Two Rockstar brand energy drinks, but otherwise no name, only a partial credit card number. The jacket looked like something the young teacher would wear and the energy drinks matched his ridiculous persona.
I didn’t matter.
Trent carefully laid the jacket back where he found it. There was something else here, he was sure of it. He could feel it.
The steady thumping in his chest threatened to derail his train of thought. He couldn’t allow that to happen. His flashlight traced the grain of the wood on the floor and the ceiling above. Even after years of neglect, this place was something to behold. Eventually, he trained the light on the fireplace. He took a step towards it, but then hesitated. The feeling of being watched returned. Or maybe it had never left. Either way, it was much stronger now.
That’s a big fireplace, he thought. Big enough for a man to crawl into. Even big enough for an asshole teacher to hide in, one might say.
A grin spread across the Deputy’s face as he carefully and quietly stepped forward, his flashlight and service pistol pointed into the dark opening. The boards creaked under his feet and wind rocked the tree house. The Officer knelt, eye-level with the fireplace, weapon still drawn. The sound of his heartbeat continued to hammer. But it wasn’t fear; it was anticipation of busting that predatory asshole.
He moved in closer and wrinkled his nose.
Something died in there, Trent thought.
He could smell it and it seemed to be getting worse. A light trail of dust (or was it smoke?) began to waft from the fireplace. Before Trent could be certain of what he was seeing, it disappeared. The smile now gone from his face, Trent stood up and slowly backed away from the fireplace. That feeling of pre-arrest excitement floated away with the mysterious smoke.
In the distance, he heard a voice. It came from outside. From below.
He turned his back on the fireplace and walked towards the east side window.
It was Jerry. He was carrying a plastic gas can and seemed to be speaking to someone as he walked slowly towards the tree. Trent leaned in, forehead on the glas
s, trying desperately to see whom Jerry was speaking to, but it was no use. The wraparound porch made it impossible. Jerry took one last step and held the gas can out, as if he wanted to keep something between himself and whomever he was speaking with.
Suddenly, Trent’s phone vibrated from his chest pocket. His heart nearly leapt from his chest.
It was Sheriff Virgil. Trent holstered his weapon, swiped the answer button on his phone, and placed it to his ear.
“Trent? This is Virgil. I’ve got the girl. She’s okay. Shaken up, but okay. The teacher is dead.”
Trent heard the words, but they didn’t make sense.
How could the teacher be hiding in the fireplace if he’s dead?
He looked over his shoulder, stared into the fireplace’s black hole, and nearly lost himself. Would have if Virgil hadn’t spoken again.
“Officer York? Do you read me?”
“Yes, Sheriff, I read you. What do you mean, the teacher is dead?”
The line went silent for a long moment.
Trent looked away from the fireplace and glanced back out the window. Jerry was still there, madly shaking his head. He wore a terrible grimace on his face.
Finally, Virgil replied. “I mean exactly what I said. I am now currently staring at a dead man. It’s the new teacher, that young fella from Denver. Found him at the edge of the woods next to the old Taylor house. He’s frozen blue like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Oh, and he’s missing an eye. Looks like he poked it out on a low hanging branch. Bad luck, aye?”
“Yeah,” Trent replied, hollowly.
“I need you to come in. All hands-on-deck.”
“Right.”
Trent stood motionless at the window. On the ground below, Jerry was trying desperately to unscrew the cap on the gas can.
And he was screaming.
“Good lord, what is that racket?” the Sheriff asked.
Trent didn’t respond. He didn’t even hear the question. Instead, he watched the old drunk attempt to burn down the tree house he was currently standing in.
“Trent? You there? Trent?”
The Deputy still didn’t answer. Instead, he watched Jerry unscrewed the cap from the gas can, but before he could soak the bark in fuel, the gas can disappeared from his grasp. It skipped off the snowy forest floor and lodged itself into a bush. Trent’s eyes went wide. Jerry didn’t throw the can. Nor did he drop it. It looked like somebody had ripped it from his hands via some invisible zip line.
Trent could see it was a surprise to Jerry as well, who could only stare at his empty, upturned palms, which were most definitely not empty seconds ago. Before either man could contemplate it further, Jerry’s feet rose off the ground. Trent could hear Virgil talking on the phone, which he still had plastered to his ear, but his words were only incoherent white noise, like a distant echo.
Jerry hovered above the trampled snow.
I’m not seeing this, Trent thought. I can’t be seeing this.
Trent saw the man hang in midair, but he couldn’t understand what it meant—how it could be. Before his mind could process it further, Jerry suddenly disappeared. His body flying towards the same bush like a discarded rag doll.
Trent felt his grip on reality loosen, like a tent spike coming loose in a storm. And the other spikes were loosening. Sheriff Virgil’s voice began to cut through the swirling madness in Trent’s head.
“Trent? Are you there? Shit!”
“I’m here,” Trent said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“I heard something in the woods. If you’re on your way, that’s where I’ll be.”
“No,” Trent said, “don’t come here. Stay with the girl.”
“She’s fine. Wait … is that where you are? Are you in the woods right now?”
“Don’t come here, Sheriff. Please.”
“Trent …”
“Jerry’s hurt. I have to help him.”
Suddenly, a blast of warm air buffeted him from the fireplace. Trent’s muscles tensed and loosened to the point that he wasn’t sure they would be able to hold him upright. The smell of rotten meat. Dying flesh. His stomach somersaulted, and he could feel eyes on him, crawling over him like creeping vines.
“Stay where you are. I’m coming,” Virgil said into the phone.
“Don’t come,” Trent managed. The phone slipped from his fingers. It bounced off the wooden planks of the floor. The home screen flashed at him; a picture of his dead wife frolicking on the beach from the vacation just before her death. He stared at it, until it timed out and went black.
From the fireplace behind him, he could feel something moving towards him. Each second, it came closer. It was breathing. He could feel it. Or hear it. He wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
Don’t talk. Please. I couldn’t handle that.
Trent, unable to do anything else, waited.
HERE I AM.
The words weren’t spoken, but Trent could hear them all the same—inside of his head; behind his eyelids.
YOU CAME HERE TO STOP ME, DID YOU NOT? TURN AROUND AND STOP ME. I AM RIGHT HERE. JUST OVER YOUR SHOULDER.
Each unspoken word scurried about Trent’s body and into his ear like a roach in the dark.
SAVE THE DAY, LAWMAN. FACE ME. FACE ME. FACE ME FACEMEFACEME!
Trent drew a shaky breath and reached for his weapon. He hesitated. What would be the point? The gun at his hip had never felt so foreign and useless. A gun would not stop whatever was behind him, and at this moment, Trent couldn’t imagine it being stopped at all. At least not by him. And not like this.
A countdown flashed in his head. The number three flashed to his right then burned away. The number two flashed to his left.
“One,” came a voice just over his shoulder.
Trent stiffened and began to turn, intending to stare into the void.
YES! FUCKING YES!
The roaches again. Crawling.
Trent stopped. He didn’t even know he was doing it, but once he stopped, he knew he would never have the courage to continue.
YOU COWARD …
With his back to the Thing That Should Not Be, the Deputy walked slowly to the door. Without hesitating, he turned the knob, and walked into the night, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Still not turning around, Trent raced down the staircase and knelt in the snow at Jerry’s side. The old man was breathing. Trent thanked a God he no longer believed in. The smell of gas overwhelmed him. After a quick check of Jerry’s pockets, Trent pulled out the man’s Zippo lighter. The gas can was nearly empty, but Trent thought it might do. He carried it towards the tree, careful not to look up, and doused the base of the tree and the spiral staircase. After shaking out the last drop, Trent sparked the ancient Zippo and tossed it into the fumes.
Flames roared at the base of the tree and began to climb.
“Let’s get outta here.”
Trent turned and saw Jerry trying to climb to his feet.
“I got you, Jerry. Take it easy.” He shuffled to the man’s side and helped him up. From the west, more voices. It was Sheriff Virgil and Deputy Kelly.
“Jesus Christ,” Virgil said, looking from the growing flames to the visibly shaken Jerry. “Help me get him out of here,” Trent groaned.
Virgil nodded and hustled to Jerry’s side, placing the man’s arm over his shoulders so he could help prop him up. They shambled away from the growing fire, in the direction they had arrived. Deputy Kelly stood watching the magnificent tree house go up in flames.
“Should I call the fire department?”
Virgil shot him a glance. “No. Let it burn.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Part Three: Afterward
Trent packed only what he needed, which incidentally fit in a single suitcase. The rest of it didn’t matter. He raised the hatch of his SUV and tossed the bag inside, before jumping behind the wheel. The sun was out, and the temperature had climbed more than he had thought was possible. There were times during the previous Long
Night where he would have thought that he could never be warm again. He thought of Virgil fighting in the Korean winter.
The engine rumbled below him, and he stared at the only home his family had ever known. He pulled away from the curb for the last time. Chuck Kelly’s cruiser sat outside of Sheriff Virgil’s house. Trent drove by without slowing. There was nothing left to say. Both men understood it.
Four blocks over, young Kevin Harper’s house looked empty. At his hospital bedside, most likely. That was good. Maybe Jill would be there when he woke up. Trent liked to think so.
Chaplin Hills seemed so peaceful and serene buried under all this snow. But Trent knew the snow would melt, and he had seen what lay underneath. He’d felt it, and he knew there was no end to it. You couldn’t strap a set of handcuffs to it, and you couldn’t shoot it dead. Knowing that evil walks among us is a lot of weight to bear. Knowing it was no longer his duty to track it down, to stop it, was little consolation.
Trent followed Main Street past Mom’s Café on his left, and Daylight Donuts on his right. Old man Taggard’s movie Theatre sat empty and hollow, like something left over from an old Hollywood set. Officer Kelly had placed the barricade at the entrance to the overpass due to the storm, so he continued to Vincent Street. It would lead to the highway, which would lead to anywhere but here.
He turned south on Vincent. The town was still sleeping. It would wake soon, and Trent was glad he wouldn’t be here when it did. Too much had happened. And too much of it would be staring him in the face every day if he stayed. Trent passed First Street, the last street in town, and approached the railroad crossing. Fittingly, the lights began to flash and the cross-arms dropped across the road. Trent saw the train coming and considered driving around the cross-arms, but it wasn’t in his nature. He had been a lawman too long and old habits die hard. The train blared its horn as it approached. Trent looked west down the tracks, but couldn’t see the end. It was a long one.
Just my luck, he thought, and smirked humorlessly.
The train rumbled by. Each railway car bleeding together, with only the graffiti differentiating one from the next. A constant blur of cold steel, flashing lights, rumbling tracks, all combining to form a hypnotic mix. A sentient wall of steel and fire. If you stared at it long enough, you could swear it wasn’t moving at all.
The Complete Bleaker Trilogy Box-set Page 34
