The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  “Do you know why your father died?” she’d said.

  “No.”

  Sophie had leaned over, and he’d smelled the alcohol on her breath, something he would never detect again on her. Rich, dark, slightly intoxicating fumes.

  “Because he got close to someone,” she whispered.

  Nat was speechless. He could only stare at her in the darkness, thinking that was a strange thing to say to a newly orphaned boy.

  Sophie had leaned back, and the sadness in her face was soon overtaken by something else. Cunning. Ferocity.

  “Never let people get close to you,” she said, getting up and walking to the door. She held the handle, then looked back at him. “They’re dangerous.”

  She’d closed the door and never mentioned the subject again. But he had to admit, the advice had stayed with him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  That Sunday morning, Chuck Godwin knelt in the dank corner beneath the stairs of his basement. He was squeezed uncomfortably between a three-legged chest of drawers and cardboard boxes of old magazines and newspapers. The smell was musty, moisture combining with the decaying remains of paper. If he dug down to the bottom of the stacks, he was sure he’d find mold growing on the waxy cardboard.

  Chuck knew he was distracting himself from the true object of his search. He’d done a lot of that lately. Telling himself stories, little pep talks, saying to himself Buck up, Chuck, all to drown out the voices that were always there now. Even when he couldn’t make out the words, he felt the hum like a small but powerful generator. Now the sound was growing louder, which is why he’d come down to the basement, to do something.

  The rope . . .

  He snapped his mind away from the thought. Or was it a voice? The two things had merged lately, his own thoughts and the whispery voice of the man from the woods.

  A box tilted thanks to his rummaging, and suddenly its contents spilled onto the floor. Ancient Better Homes & Gardens magazines, dozens of them. If he didn’t watch it, Stephanie would become a hoarder. Already she was “collecting” things like twine and papers and photo albums and other stuff that no one in their right mind really collects. The photo albums sat empty; they had no grandchildren to fill them up with pictures of outings at the beach, birthdays, graduation . . .

  It was gritty down here. It smelled primeval, like iron and water. The arch of his shoulder began to throb, the bursitis kicking in.

  . . . is in the basement.

  Was it possible to make peace with the voices? To live with them? His father had gone through affairs, alcoholism, even taken up pottery making in what Chuck figured was a likely attempt to escape from the urgings from outside. Drown them out. He’d lasted a good few years before he’d stood in the little room in the basement of this very house with the sump pump in it, and hanged himself from an exposed rafter. The smallest room in the house. Dark, claustrophobic, reeking of earth minerals. A horrible place. Chuck never went in there.

  The rope . . .

  The pressure in his brain was increasing. He was afraid of seeing the man, the one from the woods in the khaki uniform. If Chuck had to face him, he thought he would run screaming from the house. Anything but that.

  Chuck kept looking. It was here somewhere. He hefted one of the boxes—an old banana container now filled to the brim with stuff—and lowered it to the floor. JFK assassinated in Dallas, Life magazine. Everyone had one of those. Goddamn Stephanie saved the most obvious things.

  He could feel the thing sitting at the bottom of the stack.

  How does an inanimate object throw out waves of loathing and fearfulness?

  But it did. He felt the waves of fear move through his chest.

  . . . is in the BASEment.

  The voice was louder now.

  There it was, the thing he’d come to see. It lay in the half darkness, stained with oil. The rope, twenty shiny yellow feet of it. It had been his father’s, along with this house. There were probably dead skin cells ingrained in the twine from when his father hanged himself.

  Pick it up.

  God knew Chuck had enough reasons to kill himself. The anniversary of his father’s death was only three weeks away. But that he’d learned to live with. It was Billy, his only son, who’d crashed his car out on 95 South three Christmases ago, that truly haunted him. Billy being gone was the bad thing that outweighed every other bad thing in Chuck’s life put together. The only fact that gave it any competition was that he’d been a terrible dad, by turns angry and withdrawn.

  “It should have been me,” Chuck said to the dank gray wall. His voice floated out into the basement, giving him the creeps.

  Now.

  He moved another box away, not caring when the top half of its contents went all over the floor. An old china gravy boat crashed to bits on the cement.

  What Chuck really feared was that he would see the man’s face again.

  But this time it would have changed to Billy’s.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dusk was spilling over the craggy ridge of Grant’s Hill. Nat glided down the condo stairs, looking up and down the street for his Saab. He had weekend duty all month, and he’d drawn the evening shift tonight, but unless he remembered where he’d parked the damn car, he was going to be late. As he scanned the street, shivering slightly in a bracing wind, he saw an unmarked black Crown Vic parked in front of a fire hydrant directly in front of his building. He ducked down and caught John Bailey’s profile in the front seat. Nat went up to the passenger window and knocked.

  John glanced up. A look—sadness, fear?—passed across his face, and then he gave a half smile.

  “I was just coming up to see you,” John said, rolling down the window.

  Nat narrowed his eyes. “For what?”

  “I want you to take a ride with me.”

  Nat paused, hands on his thighs, crouched down. “You’ll take me to work after? I’m on second shift tonight.”

  John gave a smile, tinged with worry, and nodded. Nat swung his shoulder bag into the backseat, then opened the passenger door and got in.

  “You look like shit, my friend,” John said, eyeing Nat as he drove toward the center of town. “What’s going on?”

  Nat rubbed his eyes. “Freaky dreams.”

  John’s perked up.

  “Not that kind of freaky,” Nat said. “Never mind. I think I need to get drunk. Frat-boy drunk. Mark Prendergrast drunk.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of John’s mouth. In high school, Mark Prendergrast had gotten loaded on peach schnapps, undressed fully, and entered an unlocked house near the party they were all attending. It had been the home of the school’s principal, the unloved Mr. Cameron. Mrs. Cameron had found him, asleep on their French love seat, the next morning. Prendergrast’s first comment—This doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?—had gone down in Northam history as about the funniest line possible in such circumstances.

  Nat watched John make a sharp turn onto State Street and gun the engine. State led straight across Bogg’s Hill to the Shan. He looked over at John.

  “So where are we going?”

  John met his eyes. “The Prescott house.”

  Nat tensed. “What happened? Is it Becca?”

  “No, she’s fine.”

  Nat breathed out, then looked up and down the street.

  “It’s the father,” John said.

  “The old man?”

  “Yeah.” John shot him a glance.

  “What happened?”

  “He hung himself.”

  Nat felt a wave—like the last pulse of a concussion from a faraway blast—pass through him.

  “Jesus,” Nat said quietly, thinking of Becca. “The whole goddamn family gone. He thought . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  Nat slammed his hand on the Vic’s dashboard.

&nbs
p; “Hey!” John said. “Easy, brother!”

  “He thought Becca would be next. I didn’t see it coming, but I should have. He was obsessed with the curse on his family, some bullshit to screen off his own depression. Damn it.”

  “How the hell could you see it coming?”

  Nat stared grimly at the gray macadam falling away as they topped Bogg’s Hill and headed down toward the Shan.

  “Did he do it in the house?”

  John shook his head. “No. Out back. In the woods.”

  “Same place you found Chase . . .”

  “Yeah,” John said softly. “Acting all crazy.”

  The road ran under the Vic. The Shan didn’t see as much city money as the rest of Northam, and Nat could feel the gritty surface of the pavement vibrating through the car into his leg muscles. The two men were silent awhile.

  “Well, FYI, that’s not all,” John said with a sigh.

  “What do you mean?”

  John stared straight ahead. “The old man’s hands were tied behind his back.”

  Suicides were something that they both knew about—that and murder were the places where their two jobs overlapped. They both meditated on the implications of that detail.

  They made the right onto Endicott, and Nat watched the houses begin to space out, the circular driveways, even a few colonnades of elms heading back to houses you couldn’t even see from the street.

  “Did she see it?” Nat asked.

  “Who, Becca?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No idea.”

  Nat was getting that feeling in the pit of his stomach—­roiling, electric, and black—that he remembered from the last time he’d been to 96 Endicott.

  John pulled into the driveway. They could see the neon-like reflections of the police lights shining off the trunks of the dark woods in the backyard. Red and blue flashes. Nat looked up at the house as they passed in front. The bare branches of nearby trees dipped and whirled to invisible currents, and the sound of torqueing, breaking wood filled the air. The gusts of wind whipped the dead leaves across the porch and a few had stuck to the panes of the first-floor windows, but everything about the house itself was completely still. It neither emitted light nor revealed the slightest motion. The curtains on the windows were closed, and the light by the front door was dark.

  As they pulled past the front of the house and down the driveway, Nat felt a wave of repulsion come over him, and he reached up and wiped his lips with the sleeve of his jacket.

  It was as if the house knew what had happened, but had sealed itself up to the public, damping its secrets, its malevolence, in darkness. The thought that Becca was up there, sealed within, made him want to go at it with an axe.

  John pulled up to the bumper of the single patrol car and killed the engine. Nat got out and felt the wildness of the air. It was tossing back and forth, fitful and strong. He smoothed his hair down and looked down the length of driveway at the backyard. There was a flashlight shining deep in the trees.

  He led the way back. The ground was slick with dead leaves, and he had to catch himself twice after tripping on exposed roots. Nat weaved through the dark trunks and heard the gales tossing the tops of the oaks high above. When he got to the patrolman, the officer—tall and lanky—was facing away, the flashlight held down by his left side, the light illuminating a pair of gray wool slacks with a black stripe and a pair of black shoes.

  “Officer.”

  The man swung around, his right hand reaching to his side. His face was startled, the cheek muscles tight. “Oh, it’s you guys,” he said, straightening up.

  “Were you expecting someone else?” Nat said, looking at the gun gleaming evilly by the cop’s right hip.

  “Uh, no, it’s just a little spooky out here.”

  John’s flashlight fixed the young cop in a cone of light. Nat saw that he was pale as a sheet of paper, the line of his stubble visible beneath shocked blue eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “Nat, this is Officer Pendleton. Pendleton, this is Nat Thayer.”

  They nodded at each other.

  “Nice way to get shot,” John muttered as he went by.

  Nat heard something in the wind back here that was different, something added to the grand sweep of the trees dancing above. He knew it was the sound of a rope with something heavy on it.

  “Who called it in?” John said.

  “The neighbor,” the young cop said.

  They were three blue-black silhouettes lit up nightmarishly now and then by the flashlights. John shone his toward where the sound was coming from.

  Walter Prescott’s face suddenly loomed out of the darkness.

  “Jesus,” John said.

  “Yeah,” Pendleton said. “That’s what I said.”

  Prescott’s eyes were bulging wetly from the sockets. The mouth was open as if in midscream. The purplish tongue was visible behind the yellowing teeth. He was hatless, and the flashlight shone off his bald pate.

  The body was facing away from the house, out into the deeper woods.

  Nat had seen five suicides in his life: one cutter, one pill overdose drowned in a bathtub for good measure, a self-inflicted gunshot, and two hangers. He’d been struck by the expression on their faces, all except for the shooter, who’d apparently flinched at the last moment and turned the gun so that he’d lost the front part of his skull above the eyes. The others had looked exhausted. Not peaceful, but just finished with whatever had goaded them to get out the razor blade or the rope. Fucking done.

  But Walter Prescott, swaying here slightly a foot above Nat’s head, didn’t look like that at all. Prescott had the appearance of being caught. If Protestants had put gargoyles on their churches, they would look like this.

  Nat was staring so hard that he missed what John said next.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said, ‘What’d he step off of?’ ” said John.

  Pendleton shone his light on something near the foot of the tree. It was a cooler, bright blue with a white top, and for a moment Nat flashed on Walter and young Chase Prescott going down to cast their fishing lines from the shore, and Walter sitting on the chest, which contained sandwiches, with beer for him and root beer for the boy.

  Maybe it had happened. A long time ago.

  “Coroner coming?” John said.

  “Yeah. Said ten minutes,” Pendleton noted.

  “Let’s look at his hands,” Nat said.

  John glanced over with an expression that might have meant, I don’t recall deputizing you, asshole. But from John, it was just surprise. Nat supposed he’d brought him to the scene to help in interviewing the girl; he didn’t want to overstep his boundaries, but he wanted to know how Prescott had died.

  John shone the light down on the old man’s wrists.

  Nat, relieved that Prescott’s face was no longer a beacon of death in the dark forest, came closer to the body and around the back, his shoes shuffling through the mustard-colored leaves that glowed dimly on the ground from John’s flashlight. The flesh on the wrists was swollen and puffy just above the rope, which was light tan and dirty. It was tied in a simple double knot, pulled tight.

  “That’s an old rope,” said Pendleton.

  “Mm-hmm,” John said.

  Nat took a half step toward the body and peered at the knot.

  “Now how do you do that yourself?” he said.

  “Doesn’t need to be too tight,” John replied. “Once you start struggling, you’re your own worst enemy. With the right knot, it takes care of itself.”

  “I realize that,” Nat said. “But could you tie that knot on yourself?”

  John played the light over the tie, tilting his head. “Probably not.”

  Pendleton looked uncertainly from Nat to John.

  “You think someon
e else . . .”

  Nat frowned and replied: “I’m not saying anything, but it’s a detail.”

  “Jesus Christ,” John said softly.

  Nat followed his eyes and swiveled. Through the tree trunks, he could see a window lit up on the second floor of the house. Through the muslin curtains, Nat thought he saw the outline of a body.

  “Did you tell the girl?” Nat barked at Pendleton.

  “What girl?” Pendleton said. “I knocked on the door but no one—”

  John looked at Nat. “Would she talk to me?” he said.

  “I’m not sure. I think I’d have better luck, at least to start.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Nat hurried off through the elms.

  He ran through the dark trunks, dodging the trees. The cold seeped through his clothes and he began to shiver. Above him he could see the brightly lit window flashing into view for a second here and there.

  Nat made it to the side door. He pulled open the screen door and grabbed the brass knob. It screeched as he turned it. He found himself in a small entranceway, with a coatrack to his left and a narrow stairway to his right, lit by a single fixture high up on the wall.

  “Becca?” he called.

  Something stirred above him.

  He began climbing the stairs, the wood of the railing chilled under his hand. He ascended slowly, listening. There was a small landing, then stairs to his left, even darker than the lower section. He continued upward. As he got closer to Becca’s floor, he could no longer see the stairs in front of him, only a matte blackness. He felt ahead instead.

  He sensed something breathing on the stairs, someone pressed back into the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  It could be a breeze moving past. Is there a window open up here?

  A board creaked.

  “Damn it, who’s there?”

  He advanced toward the sound, feeling along the wall. His hand flinched, but it was just a stuffed animal head. The house was probably lousy with them. He couldn’t make out the features, so he reached up to feel its thick tufts of hair. He had to know what the damn thing was, to visualize it. He slid his hand down, and his fingertips felt something hard under the fur. The jawbone, he thought. He saw the animal’s face as his hand explored: a long snout; thick, bristly fur as coarse as any he’d touched; a small glass marble where the eye had been; and, finally, two large, curved tusks extending on either side of the snout that the taxidermist had left as sharp as small knives. At any moment he expected to feel the pulse of blood under his fingertip, to hear the jaw snap shut over his hand.