by Lynn Red
After what I figured was a half hour or so, I piped up: “Where are we going?”
At first, no one answered, so I decided to shout. When I raised my voice above the din of air rushing through open, spit-enabling windows, one of the two sisters said something I couldn’t understand.
“What?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
“Home,” I finally understood. “Home for us, anyways.”
Her drawl was vaguely attractive, or at least interesting, but the smell of tobacco was anything but. “Home?” I asked, wanting to start a conversation so I felt less like a prisoner, even though I didn’t know what else I could be with a bag over my head. “Where’s that?”
I felt her huge shoulders shrug next to me. “Half hour from the Creek, or so. I guess. Ain’t really sure.”
After another few moments of wailing wind and spitting sounds, I started getting a knot in my throat. “Why?” I asked.
“We live there,” she answered, simply. Afterwards, she gave a chuckle like I was an idiot. “Why else would we go home but not for livin’ there?”
“Right,” I said. “What I mean is, what are you doing with me? Why am I going home with you?”
“Oh,” she turned her head and exhaled. The sweet twang of chaw on her breath gave me a little shot of nausea, but I was fairly surprised this girl was being as nice as she was. If nothing else, I didn’t want to piss her off. For one thing, she could probably rip my head off if she wanted. For another, yeah well, that’s a good enough reason for me, thanks.
I fell into a sort of meditative trance as the road went on, and grew bumpier and more filled with potholes. I kept thinking back about Dan and about how Dax had sworn to protect me, and how for some reason, after all that, it just took some bullshit nothing exchange with him to set me running. I had to stop, I knew it. If I was going to survive this life, at least long enough to get something approaching a happy ending, I needed to come to terms with the fact that Dax actually wanted me.
On the last turn we took, the old Ford lurched and pitched until I was absolutely sure I was going to end up a sidebar story in the Hillbilly Gazette. Fear of death notwithstanding, which honestly wasn’t as strong as it probably should have been, I grabbed hold of a very meaty hand and held on for dear life.
I heard a patronizing chuckle from my left. It was the quiet girl this time, laughing at me. “What?” I shot fiercely as the truck whumped down to the ground in a way that couldn’t possibly be good for the struts. “What’s so funny?”
“You snort when you get nervous, you know,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound as pinched, and her breath didn’t reek of chew. I kept telling myself to be thankful for small things.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry for snorting when I thought we were going to roll over.”
“Pa’s a good driver,” she said. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You’re gonna be all right,” she said. “He’s as soft hearted as he is gruff-actin’. He thinks he’s going to make a play for Kendal Creek with you as a hostage, but we all know better.”
The sound of palm smacking against face caught my immediate attention. “Shut yer damn mouth, Loretta,” said the sweet-breathed girl. “We’re gonna string her up and take over that town. We’re gonna get all them houses and that money and them pies from Wilma’s restaurant. And we’re gonna eat all of it!”
“Why would you eat money?” I asked. Jackie chuffed, plainly irritated. “And it isn’t like you can just storm the town and take over, there’s a lot of people there.”
The sound of static-laden AM radio wafted back from the cab. The boys up front were listening to some kind of bizarre, weirdo call-in show about Bigfoot. For some reason, every time they mentioned him, they started laughing like they were half drunk and listening to a Richard Pryor album.
“What’s so funny?” I finally asked.
“Bigfoot,” Loretta said. “Of all the things to be afraid of in these woods, one of them big ol’ jackasses isn’t one of them.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, slightly startled at the answer.
There was no more time for idle questions though. The truck pulled – or rather, heaved – to a stop, coming to rest in the center of a semi-circle of rickety, obviously old cabins. A hand grasped my wrist, and another pressed on my shoulder until I took the hint and let them escort me out of the truck. My feet crunched on the dirt. It felt like the hardscrabble ground of a desert that hadn’t seen rain in far too long.
Seconds later, the bag was pulled off my head, and I blinked in the darkness. The moon shone, a pure silver globe, high in the sky. I realized that not only were these cabins of very dubious construction – they were in the middle of a clearing. “Where are we?” I asked, still blinking. “And why did you put a bag on my head? You know I could sorta see through it.”
The old man, who called himself Jack, slapped one of his male children on the side of the head. “You goddam idjit,” he said. “I told ya get a bag she couldn’t see through.”
“Gee pa,” the younger one whined, “it were either that or a garbage sack.”
The older one sighed, exhaling slowly. “Well I s’pose it wouldn’t do to kill her. Daxon’s already gonna be cranked up at us, don’t need him with a dead mate to avenge.”
I closed my eyes slowly, tightly, and wished that I could pinch the bridge of my nose to stave off the stress headache I already felt building behind my eyes.
“So where are we?” I asked again, relatively certain I wasn’t going to get any very clear answers, at least not yet.
“Home,” Loretta said. “For whatever it is, we’re home.”
I felt the air escape my lungs in a rush. I knew, right then and there, that one way or another I wasn’t gonna be the same when this was all over with. I just hoped, somewhere in the back of my head, that I hadn’t pissed Dax off enough that he wouldn’t bother looking for me. Somehow, I doubted that was an issue.
I wasn’t sure of anything, not at all, as I voluntarily sat down in a very old rocking chair, and had my legs bound first together, and then to the legs of the chair. My hands were looped behind my body and secured. I didn’t know what the hell I’d gotten myself into, but I knew one thing was for sure: whatever did happen, at least it was more interesting than spending another second of my life locked up in Dan’s suburban, middle-class prison. I guess that’s why I had the smile on my face that made those Creightons think I was completely whacko.
Although, if there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that neighbors will talk about their crazy neighbor, and maybe make fun of them. The way the circling bears were watching me cautiously and regarding me with a certain amount of worry made me realize this might be my ticket out of here.
Because if you act crazy enough? Nobody, but nobody, fucks with the crazy neighbor.
-13-
Definitely The Bad Side of the Tracks
Hold me, I whispered fitfully, restlessly, throwing my head from side to side. Please, Dax, don’t let me go. Don’t let anything happen to me, I—
“Hey! Wake up!”
My eyes shot open well before I had anything resembling consciousness. The first sensation I had was a tight, pulling, pinching feeling in the base of my neck. I’d been asleep, apparently, and had managed to flop my neck over to the side and keep it there for long enough to get the king of all cricks in it. I let out a long, groaning sound of ache, pain and protest. It took a few seconds before I remembered I was tied into a chair. “What time is it?” I asked weakly.
“Time?” A soft, old voice, that had obviously seen a whole lot of years, asked. “Time don’t much matter out here, sweets.”
“Uh,” I blinked hard. “Yeah it does, especially since I haven’t used the bathroom in however long I’ve been here plus four hours, and I’d prefer not to rupture all over the place.”
What can I say? Easy to embarrass I am absolutely not. Especially when the issue at hand is bladder pain because God almighty does that hurt.
&
nbsp; The old man laughed softly, with the faintest whisper of a wheeze at the end of his laugh. “About six hours,” he said. “Need to stretch your legs?”
Before I could answer, I heard the slick squeaking sound of a knife blade cutting through nylon rope. Instantly, disabling prickles flared through my fingers and toes as blood flooded back into them. At first it was crippling pain and then as he helped me to my feet, my ginger steps gave me awful shocks the likes of which I’d never felt. My knees were weak and my feet ached at least as bad as my neck.
“Why are you letting me up?”
“You think I should keep you tied down for a day or two? You have any idea how bad that is for your circulation? They say you shouldn’t sit down for more than a couple of hours without stretchin’ yer legs and all. Like on an airplane?”
I nodded dumbly. “Right, I just mean, well it’s not every day you have kidnappers willing to just let you go.”
Immediately I felt a creepy sort of comfort with Jack Creighton. He was ancient, and had a fairly odd smell of something I could only identify as a mixture of a rodeo and a mountain man. But I’ll be damned if Loretta Jr. hadn’t called him exactly right.
As I slowly walked to the open air toilet to which he led me, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so damn funny?” he asked, trying his best to be gruff and frightening.
“Oh nothing. It’s just that when we were in the truck and I was coming back here, Loretta told me you were too softhearted to ever be much of a kidnapper. Although I’m pretty irritated at all this, and I still have no clue at all why I’m here.”
I sighed with relief as I had maybe the longest single pee of my life. Outside, Jack was alternating between whistling and sucking on his teeth. He didn’t’ answer me, not at first, so I figured he was either hard of hearing, or didn’t have an actual answer.
“You’re here,” he said slowly, as though he was coming up with the words one at a time, “because I feel like it’s something I have to do.”
“Now you’ve said just about the only thing I didn’t anticipate,” I said sighing and stretching my knees with a few deep knee bends. “What’s all that supposed to mean?”
“Daxon has enemies, sweets,” Jack said. “And one of them is meaning to move on him tonight. Or if not tonight, tomorrow. He’s done me enough good turns that I couldn’t let you get mixed up in things.”
“Okay, wait,” I said, taking stock. “You kidnapped me because someone is planning to attack Dax? I don’t have any idea how that’s supposed to make any sense.”
“It ain’t,” Jack Creighton said. “And I can’t really tell you much without breaking a whole bunch of rules that are so old that not even I remember where they’re from.” After a few seconds of thick anticipation, he added, “That’s an old joke.”
“Right,” I said, laughing despite myself. “So I guess I’m not going to get any answers?”
He shook his head, which I got a good look at for the first time. He had a liver-spotted head, bald on the crown with a wild fringe of white around it, like Ben Franklin. His eyes were watery, tired and deep-set, but he looked alert – surprisingly so. As though he took in every single detail around him without any effort at all. He had a hawkish nose with wiry hairs protruding from his nostrils. His thin lips were framed with a thick mustache that all but hid that he was missing at least a couple of teeth.
From behind us, in the direction of the semicircle of cabins, was a flickering electric lamp that hummed evenly, spurting with shocks. “Bugs,” Jack said. I turned to look at him, a question marking my arched eyebrows.
“It’s a bug zapper. The mosquitoes, they fly in, they hit the blue thing, and—“
On cue, an unfortunate pest buzzed into the swinging lantern looking thing, popped and sizzled.
As though it were some kind of intense foreshadowing, Jack looked at me with an arched eyebrow of his own. “Things are comin’ to these parts that ain’t what we’re used to,” he said. “And I think you’re the first of them that might be any good.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think of it this way. We got this secret little world, with all these magical rules and shadowy councils taking care of everything. Two months ago, the sheriff in Kendal Creek turned up dead, and no one knows what killed him.”
“That’s awful,” I said, picking at my hair. “But what does this have to do with me?”
He shrugged. “We need some new blood in these parts. Have for a long time. A real long time. And I can’t risk that – can’t risk you – getting caught up in one of the council’s bullshit moves.”
He led me back to the cabin.
Thunder roiled outside as we settled down into a pair of comfortable, but very old and shockingly ugly floral-patterned easy chairs. They sat on the front porch of the largest of the cabins, which was also the most stable looking of them. It was made of knobby, age-worn logs and shake wood shingles. Whoever built this thing – and I suspected I was sitting next to him – had known just how to do it. Everything was precisely fitted, and incredibly strong looking, and from what I could tell there weren’t any bolts or screws holding it together.
“Did you make this?” I asked.
“Yup. Whole damn thing. Well, at least the part of it that don’t look like a mess. Them cabins are all my boys’ doing.”
For a while we just sat and rocked as lightning flashed overhead, long streaks of blue-white gashes cutting violently through the black of the midnight sky. “What’s going to happen to me?” I finally asked. I had the feeling he wasn’t going to hurt me, but it never hurt to get some reassurance. “I’m not going to die, right?”
Jack Creighton laughed until his old jowls were wobbling. “If you think I’m going to kill you, then you read me all wrong.”
“Well you did surround me in my car and kidnap me.” I couldn’t help but crack a smile. It’s the damndest thing: I have no idea how or why, but for some reason, I just couldn’t be mad at this guy. Concerned, yes, of course. A little irritated, for sure. But I mean, it wasn’t like I had any idea where I was going, and if it was adventure I was looking for when I came on this idiot trip, I had certainly found it.
“Sorry about all that. But like I was sayin’ I don’t want Dax or you in any danger. He’s a good kid, real good kid. Sorta hot headed and growly and alpha-like, but I s’pose that’s fine considering what he is.”
“What is he, anyway?” I still wasn’t sure, although I knew that whatever he was, I really liked it. “I saw something, uh... kinda crazy back at the Creek. We were out front of the courthouse and someone – er I mean a bear, I guess, wandered up to the front door of the courthouse and turned into a big, naked guy.”
More whistle-tailed laughter. I was starting to get sick of how funny everything I said apparently was. It was like I kept saying everything that was the most obvious shit in the world.
“Well,” he drawled, “you expect a bear to be wearin’ pants? Only a few of them do that, and most of us see those ones as the weirdos.”
I snorted a laugh so hard that I had to in-laugh a little afterward. Trust me, this isn’t one of my favorite personal features. “So I wasn’t hallucinating?”
It was Jack’s turn to cackle. “It’s been so damn long since I met someone who wasn’t one of us that it strikes me as kinda funny when it’s surprising. The usual course is for a bell to clang, or a siren or something of that sort, I can’t remember exactly. Out here we don’t much worry about it, but over in the Creek, they care more. Anyways, when a hiker or some such comes on into town, they turn that thing on, and everyone knows not to do any shiftin’.”
My eyes were glassed over, in the sort of way people get when they’re told something they know is true, but that seems so completely ridiculous that belief is harder than trying to fool themselves into thinking they didn’t see what they saw. As though to prove his point, Jack Creighton stuck his hand up in front of his face, and showed me that he could change
himself a finger at a time, into a bear.
The fur on his paw was gray and wiry, his claws thick and brown. “See?” he asked with a smile. “This sort of control only comes with age, you understand. Young’uns have a much tougher time not going whole hog, so to speak. The other trick is that we get a little rowdy. That’s why you’ll see ‘em turn when they fight or when they fu—uh, make love.”
“How old are you?”
“Why? You think I don’t have any lead in my pencil on account of my age?”
I blushed deeply and laughed from my gut. “Uh, well no, not exactly that. I just haven’t even heard my grandparents say ‘make love.’”
“I was bein’ polite,” Jack said. “It ain’t like to speak gruffly with a lady about.”
I nodded in an exaggerated, slightly sarcastic way. “Right, then, I stand corrected.”
“Hundred and forty-six,” he said flatly. “I expect I’ll keel over in five or ten years. We bears tend not to get so worked up over things like that.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You’re almost a hundred a fifty years old?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it. You think you get a stiff hip when you sleep wrong. Add, what, a hundred and ten to that?”
I turned the corners of my mouth down. “You’re pretty good at that. Yeah, I’m thirty-two. I don’t know the last time someone told me I was a young’un, but I sorta like it.”
“Same age as Dax,” he said. “I remember when he growed up and took over. Best thing that’s happened to the territory in ages. Almost overnight the fighting was cut in half. Few months later, almost no crime. But now, with the sheriff dead, things have turned a bit to shit.”
“I thought you didn’t swear in front of ladies.”
He looked at me with an expression of genuine confusion. “I ain’t swore. Wait, you mean shit? That ain’t a swear. Is it?”
“It’s sort of a half-swear, I guess. I think they can say it on TV now. Or,” I took a breath, “actually I don’t know. I haven’t had cable in a long, long time.”
