by J. Thorn
She didn't know the Sheriff, but now she was alone with him and he could only be here for one reason: to take her back home. She did not wait for him to turn and start toward the house. Instead, she quickly moved away from the window, her eyes watering at the smell of death that seemed to seep through her skin to get at her. In the small beam from the flashlight, she could see what looked like an ornate bed, the cast iron rusted and stained. The filthy mattress in the middle had sunken so low into the frame it was almost folded in two, springs and wires poking out here and there and coated with what looked like dried skin and coarse dark hair. Opposite the bed was a haphazard mound of clothes of every conceivable kind: T-shirts, shorts, underwear, jackets, hats, raincoats, shoes, socks. Fighting the urge to gag, she reached down and began to feel her way through the clothes.
What are you doing? This is insane!
She had thought all along that she had come here to confront her attackers, the murderers of her friends. But they weren't here and yet she wasn't leaving. Even with the means of her departure stalking toward the house, she was still ransacking through old clothing, looking for...
Looking for—what?
For them, she realized. For their clothes, for things that belonged to them and were never meant to belong to anyone else. Things that still carry their blood, the scent of their sweat, their perfume, cologne. Their private things. The things that were pieces of them. The things I need to take with me so I won't dare forget.
With her tears came a desperate, frantic search through the last few items heaped on the floor. She found wallets, purses, a soiled wig, a toothbrush, a pocket mirror and some makeup, but nothing she recognized as anything her friends had once owned.
She fell to her knees, removed her hand from her mouth.
The noxious smell invaded her. She gagged, reached for something, anything with which to cover her mouth. Dug a hand into her pocket. And found the phone.
What if he answered? The memory of that night came back to her and she tore the phone free of her pocket, hit the menu button and raised it up in front of her face. The green glow aided her in locating Danny's number. The phone was here, she thought. He was here. I want it back. I want him back.
Sobbing, hands trembling so hard she feared she might not be able to keep the phone from slipping from her grip and smashing against the floor, she dialed the number.
Time spun away from her, the bilious stench forgotten, the bedsprings groaning for a moment as if a ghost had rested its weight there to watch her. Startled, she looked up.
His phone should be dead by now. Or turned off. But even the promise of his recorded voice thrilled her. A little piece of him she could always keep. The only part of her he'd given her.
The call went through.
Danny's phone began to ring.
It was here. Afraid to believe, she slowly rose, and lowered her phone, obviating the distraction so she could use both ears to guide her toward the sound.
She stepped out of the room into a narrow corridor carpeted by dust and debris. She turned her head, closed her eyes and listened.
The phone was not in the house.
The sheds then, maybe.
She stepped back into the room she had just left and peered out through the window, straining to see through the grime. Annoyed, she scrubbed a rough circle clear with her sleeve. Looked out again. Scanned the yard, but saw nothing, not even the Sheriff.
Then finally, she located the source of the sound.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Cold filled her.
Danny's phone was out there, ringing, and now she could see it too. It was on its back, display facing up, the violet glow granting an eerie luminescence to the inside of the Sheriff's car.
-38-
"Hell of a way to go," Beau said as he lowered himself to the ground, one bloody hand pressed against his belly.
Finch was breathing, but only just. Every inhalation felt like he was drawing boiling water into his lungs; every exhalation felt like waves of ice. He couldn't move, and didn't try. The mere idea of it made him want to throw up.
Beau sat back against the tree. "Kids," he said. "Who'd have believed it."
"You would," Finch said hoarsely, and tried to smile. He was on his back, the ground cold beneath him. The shaft of the final arrow protruded from his stomach. Blood ran freely. "You could probably have told me how this was going to go right down to the last detail."
Beau said nothing, and for a moment Finch assumed he had died, but then he spoke softly. "I could, but it wasn't what you wanted to hear."
Finch's smile faded.
"Was it?" Beau asked.
"No."
"You find what you were lookin' for down here?"
"I think it found me."
"Deep," Beau said and chuckled. It quickly turned to a fit of coughing. "Shit...Any time you'd like to call 911 is fine by me. I'm not dyin' here or nothin'. Unless you want me to do the honors."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Start with: We're dyin'. They'll probably take the ball and run with it after that."
"Then what?"
"Then wh—? Shit, now I get why people in movies tell dyin' folks not to talk. They talk shit is why. They'll send someone to patch us up."
"So we'll be in full health in prison. Two dead kids lying out here, Beau."
Beau started to respond, then thought better of it.
"I'm sorry," Finch said. "I fucked this all right to hell."
"It was pretty much the only way it could go, right?"
"Guess so. But I'm sorry for bringing you down here."
"Hey," Beau told him. "You don't owe me no apologies. I knew what I was doin'."
"I didn't," Finch said and smiled.
"Yeah, no shit. So now what?"
"I think," Finch told him. "I'm just going to lay real still and rest for a while."
Beau shifted and moaned in pain. "You always was a lazy sonofabitch. I'm gonna try and get my ass to that cabin. Maybe they got a first aid kit or somethin' so I can sew my stuffin' back in. Hell, maybe they even got a phone."
They hadn't seen any telephone poles on the way in, but Finch didn't bother pointing that out. Beau already knew, but talking and thinking was better than dying any day of the week.
"Maybe they've got a mini-bar," he continued. "And a Jacuzzi. Hell, I bet these boys got their own game room. Didn't see any, but that don't mean they ain't there."
"Turntables and a karaoke machine," Finch added.
"Yeah, and a waterbed, with pink cushions and silk sheets."
Finch laughed despite the pain. "Heart-shaped."
Beau snorted. It looked like it hurt. "Barry White on Dolby surround."
Though the pain was unbearable, Finch couldn't stem the mirth that rippled through him. "I can't feel my legs."
"Why would you want to?" Beau asked. "They're not much to look at."
"Aw shit," Finch said, and his voice cracked. "We failed, man."
"We thinned the herd," Beau told him. "It's all we've ever done. Tried to reduce the threat, just like in the desert. Certain things just are, you know. Bad things. And nothin' will ever stop them. Even if we'd wiped these fuckers off the planet, there are a million others just like them out there, preyin' on people whenever the mood takes them. We weren't gonna make a difference down here, Finch. No matter what we did."
"It might have made a difference to us."
"To you," Beau said. "Not me. This was never my fight. It's like that friend you have when you're in high school whose younger brother gets jumped. The friend organizes a lynch mob and without a second thought you agree to go kick the livin' shit out of a bunch of strangers. You do it because it's important to someone, and because maybe the violence appeals to you on some level you prefer to keep hidden, even from yourself."
"That why you're here?"
"I'm here because I'm the cheerful type."
"The hell does that mean?"
"Means everythin'
about me's bullshit. A front. I saw what you did in the desert, and I fed you…some speech about it being par for the course in wartime. Well, that may be so but it don't make it right. And I wasn't lecturin' you. I was tryin' to make myself…believe it."
With great effort, Finch turned his head to look at him. Pine needles pricked his cheek. Beau's eyes were closed.
"What did you do over there?"
Beau might have shrugged, or it might have been the shadows around him deepening as the moon slid behind a cloud. "Tried to stay alive. Same as everyone else."
"You know what's funny?"
"Do tell."
"For as long as I can remember I've been pissed off. Only time it got even a little better was when I was with Kara. And still, I pushed her away, let some of that anger rub off on her. Then she broke up with me and I accused her of being cold."
"That's not funny," Beau said. "Gotta work on your comic timin'."
"Yeah."
"I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig," Beau told him. "If I'm gonna get us help, I'd better get my ass up."
Finch pondered this, and when next he spoke, to tell Beau that for a guy in a hurry, he sure wasn't getting very far, he didn't receive an answer, only the insects in the brush and the birds high in the trees. He listened to them for what seemed like eternity, before he let his eyes drift shut. Peace washed over him, alien and new and he embraced it.
Kara's face materialized in the dark. He thought about calling her, but realized he didn't have the breath left to power the words, and maybe that was for the best. He had nothing to tell her that she didn't already know.
*
Claire considered hiding, or running, or seeking a back exit, but indecision kept her rooted to the spot. She stood in the room with the monstrous bed, her back to the window, watching as the Sheriff stepped into the hall and made his way toward her. Opposite the window was a door leading outside and she could easily have taken this route while the Sheriff was looking for her, but a chain had been looped around the simple bolt, and a rusted padlock hung from the links. She had already tested it, and it had opened barely enough for her to get her arm through.
"There you are, Missy," the Sheriff said cheerfully. So cheerfully in fact, that she was struck with sudden doubt. Maybe he found the phone on the road, or at Pete's house, or the Doctor's place? There were any number of ways in which he could have come by it, so why had she immediately assumed the most malevolent one? Still, she refused to let herself relax too much. The last time she'd seen that phone, it had been in Danny's shirt pocket. Now Danny was dead, and the phone was in a Sheriff's car when there was no reason for him to have it. He should have returned it to Danny's mother. And what about the call? The sense she'd had of someone listening?
Hidden behind her back was a length of wire she had snapped off the bed. It was coiled, but ended in a kinked, three-inch piece that would serve as an adequate weapon with which to buy her time, if it became necessary for her to do so.
The Sheriff was limping, she noted. This too might give her an advantage if it came to a chase. The gun in his holster, however, kept the odds firmly in his favor, and abruptly, she wished Pete hadn't abandoned her. Not that she blamed him. She had hardly given him a reason to stay.
"My name's Sheriff McKindrey. I assume you're Claire?"
"You assume right."
McKindrey continued to pick his way along the debris-filled hallway, occasionally glancing with distaste at something on the floor. The flickering cruiser lights made his shadow large and jittery on the hallway wall.
"Your sister sent me to fetch you," he told her. "She's awful worried."
"I'll bet she is."
Back in the car, Danny's phone stopped ringing as she snapped her own cell phone shut and slid it into her pocket.
"Why do you have my boyfriend's phone?" she asked him as he cleared the hall and with visible relief, stepped into the gloomy room.
"What?"
"My boyfriend. The people who lived here killed him. I was looking for his phone so I called it. It rang in your car."
"Of course it did," McKindrey said, with a wide smile, which showed a slight gap between his front teeth. "Papa-In-Gray gave it to me."
Claire frowned. "Who?"
"Papa-In-Gray." He nodded his understanding. "Of course, you probably don't even know their names."
Claire felt her chest tighten. "Names?"
"The names of the people who hurt you and killed your friends." He stepped closer, but it took work, as he gingerly set the bandaged foot down to gauge how much it was going to hurt to put his weight on it. "Papa-In-Gray's the daddy. Momma-In-Bed's the Momma," he said, indicating the bed. "She's dead now, good riddance to the 'ol bitch. Gave me more than a few nightmares. And of course you met the kids, Isaac and Joshua and Aaron. Matt's the one you killed. Luke's the oldest. They've had a bit of trouble with him. Said he's got notions. Seems more like good sense to me."
"So you know what they did?"
"Of course. Papa gave me your wallets and jewelry and phones and such after it was all done."
Claire couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Why?"
"Call it a tip for keepin' my big 'ol mouth shut." He grinned. "Hell, the one question folks keep puttin' to me is why I stick around here when there ain't nothin' to stick around for. Usually I just shrug and say 'everyplace needs the law' but that's bullshit. Truth is, and this is between you and me, I stay for the watches, rings, billfolds, gold teeth, radios, all of which is pretty easy to offload if you know who's buyin'. But the best money comes from cars. Oh yeah. They give me a bunch of those. I send them to my stepbrother Willard in Arkansas. He's a bit slow, you understand, but he can move a vehicle in record time. I give him a percentage and enjoy the rest. Makes workin' here quite a treat when you know all those goddamn suits are lookin' at you like you ain't got nothin' when in fact you could buy and sell 'em if you was of a mind to. Been buildin' up quite a nest egg, and while I hadn't figured on retirin' for another few years yet, you getting' away has forced me to rethink things. Kinda annoyed about that to tell the truth, but I know it ain't your fault."
"Jesus Christ…they kill people," Claire said, backing further into the room.
"Exactly. They kill people. I don't."
"But you're gonna kill me."
McKindrey stopped in the middle of the room. He looked genuinely offended. "Look here, Missy. I ain't never killed nobody and I don't aim to neither." He brightened as he took another small step in her direction. "Take a look at this…" He rolled up his sleeve and held out his right wrist. "What do you make of that?"
It was Stu's wristwatch, a Rolex his father bought him for his graduation. Claire clearly recalled him showing it off, turning the back of it up to the light so they could read the inscription on the back: To my boy. There's no stopping you now, kiddo. Love Dad.
"That isn't yours," she said, choked with sorrow.
"Hell, the owner don't need it. Better on my wrist here than in a hole or stuck on some dusty shelf somewhere."
"You have no right to do this."
"Probably, but that's the way the world turns, ain't it? No such thing as fair anymore. But hell, you're actin' like I did the killin' myself and I ain't no killer," he said around a smile. "I'm a collector."
Claire moved back until she was pressed against the wall, her shirt stuck to her skin with sweat. Dust rained down around her, turned to fireflies in the beam from her flashlight. "You're a fucking psycho, just like the rest of them. You might as well be the one cutting people up."
McKindrey raised his hands in a gesture of placation. "Look, all I'm goin' to do is take you for a ride that's all."
"A ride where?"
"Into Mason City, to the state police. They'll make sure you get home."
"You expect me to believe that you're going to hand me over to the police after just telling me you've been profiting from the murders of all these people over the years?"
McKindrey shrugged, his smile wide.
"If you touch me," Claire said. "I'll kill you."
"Oh c'mon, Missy. I'm the one with the gun." As he spoke he unclipped his holster, pulled out his weapon and drew back the hammer. "Now it's been an unpleasant enough day for me already. Don't make it worse. My foot's killin' me, my nose feels like it's full of fire ants, and all I want is to get home and get drunk, all right? So you'll be doin' me a nice favor if you just come along."
There was less than six feet between them.
She didn't move.
He leveled the gun at her.
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Well, if you don't, someone else's just gonna come by and be a lot less pleasant about it."
"Like your friends, those killing fucks you're working for?"
"Honey," he said sweetly, and closed the distance between them. "I'm done talkin'. Now you're gonna move, and that's all there is to it."
"What did they do with them?"
"With who?"
"My friends."
"You know that well as I do. Scattered 'em around the doctor's place."
"What did they do with the rest of them?"
McKindrey sighed. "Buried 'em."
"Where?"
"Different places. Some parts here, some in the woods, some out in that field with the dead tree."
That gave Claire pause and for the briefest of moments she experienced a blissful absence of any kind of feeling at all. Sound itself seemed muted, the room blurring as an image of the field with the wisps of cotton floating upward in the breeze superimposed itself over the present.
Everything isn't dead, she thought then. Only gone.
-39-
Finch was dead.
Beau knew it as soon as he woke and put a hand on his friend's shoulder. The man's skin was icy cold to the touch, and a search for a pulse yielded nothing. Beau shook his head and expelled a ragged breath. He had let Finch down, though of course Finch would never have seen it that way. To a man like that, culpability would always be directed inward and everything that happened in his life would be a result of his own failings. Finch had existed to suffer, driven by a burning rage he had never understood, a cold engine that drove him toward his own inexorable death without ever revealing its motives. It was like this for some people, but not for Beau, though he considered himself equally directionless. Born into a poor but nurturing family, he had depended on his instincts to survive on the cruel streets, and his fists had seen him through. He was a walking cliché—kid born in the ghetto made strong by necessary violence, and yet he shared none of the characteristics of his brothers, who walked with an attitude, their shoulders low, eyes frosty and darting from face to face as if searching for one that required punishment. Anger had never been a driving force in Beau's life, only sorrow, but the origin of that sorrow was as much a mystery as Finch's rage. It had felt as if he were grieving for people who had died long before he'd come into the world, and had found himself forever unfulfilled, as if he'd been born without some vital component necessary for total happiness. He'd drifted, seeking people more emotionally deficient than himself, for in them he found a kinship. The shared unhappiness did not cancel either out, but neither did it exacerbate it, and this was how he lived. In Finch he found a carnival mirror, a distorted reflection of himself that bound him to the man.
