by Anne Frasier
“Stop!” Brenda called.
In a blur of white, the child reached the edge of the headlights’ range and plunged into the blackness beyond.
Brenda ran after her.
Across the road, legs flying, heart hammering.
Past the headlights and into the thick grove of trees that moved into an infinity of straight rows.
Back at the car, Joe stood with a dead flashlight in his hand, trying to comprehend what was happening. He wasn’t good at making decisions without Brenda’s help.
Should he move the car? Someone might come around the corner and hit it. Should he forget the car and go after his wife?
He stepped to the side of the road. He paused and listened.
Nothing.
He walked across the shoulder, down the ditch, and back up, stopping where the thick trees began. They were all the same. Some kind of aspen, their trunks as big around as a person.
“Brenda!”
His voice bounced back as if hitting a solid wall.
His heart was beating hard now. Cold sweat crept down his spine. “Brenda! Don’t go in there! We’ll get somebody to help. We’ll call the cops!”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. No signal.
“Brenda!”
He moved forward, forcing one foot in front of the other. He stopped at the trees; he wasn’t sure why. “Brenda!”
Then he heard a scream. From deep within the trees. A bloodcurdling cry of terror followed by silence.
Chapter Two
In Tuonela, night came early and dawn came late. While the rest of the county was awash in morning sunlight, the steep valleys and ravines of Tuonela remained cloaked in thirty more minutes of darkness.
Under the glow of a street lamp, Rachel Burton carried a cardboard box containing her African violet and Christmas cactus to the U-Haul, and slid it across the front seat. Her body hummed with sudden urgency, telling her to jump in the truck and get the hell on the road even though she wanted to give her apartment one final perusal.
Should have left earlier.
She’d planned to leave last night, but she’d told herself that was foolish.
Wait until morning. Wait until light.
The sense of urgency increased.
Rather than going back inside, she hurried up the steep steps that led to the three-story Victorian and what was now the city morgue. She locked the wooden door and slipped the key through the mail slot. Without giving the building and her upstairs apartment another glance, she turned and walked away.
Free.
Almost.
She pulled herself into the cab of the short truck. Her belongings didn’t fill it, but a van hadn’t been big enough. She let the engine idle a minute, then put it in gear and turned up the hill to climb from the deep valley that stopped at the Wisconsin River.
Heading west. To California.
The vehicle groaned and creaked, laboring its way out of the dark hole, finally reaching level ground, sunlight glinting off the rearview mirror. Her heart began to hammer more seriously now.
She was leaving. For good. She was going to make it this time.
Evan didn’t even call to tell you good-bye.
To hell with him. To hell with Tuonela.
Very soon she would be a thousand miles from this place. Very soon it would no longer seem quite real, no longer seem so important. It didn’t deserve to take up so much space in her head. Soon she would remember it for what it was: a dying town. A bleak, sad, dying town where bad things had happened.
The vehicle took her through the slumbering flat-lands, where houses had been built on a grid and streets didn’t turn in on themselves. Out past the Quik Stop and Burger King, Applebee’s and Perkins.
The flatlands looked like a million other Midwestern towns, built overnight strictly for convenience.
This part of Tuonela hurt your eyes and pained your heart in a way only a true lack of beauty and individuality could. But it was better than the other part. The part that mesmerized you and tricked you and lulled you into thinking it was normal and okay.
She passed an invisible line that marked the edge of town.
She adjusted herself, settling in for the long drive. She let out a deep breath. She reached for the radio.
And heard a siren.
She checked the side mirror.
A patrol car was coming up fast behind her, lights flashing. She glanced down at the speedometer. Fifty. The road was a two-lane with no shoulder. She slowed her pace, expecting the officer to drive around. He didn’t. She slowed even more, finally reaching an intersection with room to pull aside. The car screeched to a halt behind her. Someone got out and approached her truck.
Alastair Stroud. He’d recently returned from early retirement in Florida to take the job of interim chief of police.
Rachel rolled down her window. “Come to see me off?” Her heart slammed in her chest again.
He had that look on his face. A look she’d seen on her father’s face too many times. A look that said bad shit was afoot.
“I was hoping to catch you before you left Tuonela.”
I was hoping to get out of here before you caught me. I should have left last night.
“There’s been a murder,” Alastair said. “I need your help.”
“Get somebody else.”
“There isn’t anybody else.”
Not true. The medical examiner from the adjoining county was filling in until they found a new ME and coroner. Everything was temporary. People filling in until the real person came along. That wasn’t going to happen. There were no real people here.
“Becker Thomas.”
Alastair shook his head. “Becker’s busy. A nasty accident on Highway Ten. Besides, I’m afraid Becker might not be able to handle this. I’m afraid it might be too much for him. He’s used to more normal deaths.”
Normal deaths.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you want to get out of here. I understand that. Especially after your father’s murder and everything that happened in Old Tuonela, but—”
The word but hung in the air between them.
But we could really use your help. One more time. One more for the road.
All roads led back to Tuonela. That’s what Rachel was discovering. Like a board game with paths that kept returning you to Start.
Alligator swamp, go back ten squares. Quicksand, go back to Start. Sucking chest wound, go back to Start. Nutcases who think they’re vampires, go back to Start.
It was crazy to think a place could control you. That the ground was somehow more than just soil and plants. More than just a place for vegetation and burying the dead.
She could see that Alastair could see the resignation in her eyes. He took advantage of it. “There’s an abandoned farmhouse up the road about a half mile. Pull in there and I’ll pick you up. I’ll take you to the crime scene.”
Rachel put the truck in gear and moved forward.
She should just keep driving, but that wasn’t who she was. Instead, she spotted the narrow gravel drive, overgrown with weeds, and pulled in. She locked the truck, hoping her plants wouldn’t get too hot, then walked to where Alastair was waiting.
Aspen Grove.
Rachel recognized the place. Part of the state forest bordered by the highway and Evan Stroud’s land, which included Old Tuonela. Several acres of aspen trees planted in carefully checked rows. It was relatively easy to plant straight rows of anything, but checking them meant they lined up perfectly no matter where you stood. It was an old technique, done with string. One that had been abandoned once people started planting by machine.
Unlike the heart of Tuonela, the ground here had been worn flat. The soil was black and as fine as sand, and if you looked down the rows of trees from any angle you would swear they went into infinity.
“Are those quaking aspens?” Rachel asked.
The sun had risen completely, and the leaves against the white trunks were a
lmost blinding in their brilliance and contrast to the gray sky.
“Big tooth,” Alastair said.
Side by side they waded through dry, knee-deep weeds at the edge of the road. Alastair bent and picked up a soft yellow leaf and handed it to her. “Like the quaking aspen, except for the teeth.”
The leaf was heart-shaped, edged with scalloped points. It didn’t seem right, like suddenly finding out butterflies had fangs.
Stepping into the grove was like diving underwater. The temperature plunged, and Rachel’s ears felt plugged. Sounds she’d been unaware of until that moment were cut off.
“A guy shows up in town just before dawn,” Alastair told her. “Hysterical. Said his wife had vanished.”
Rachel was aware of the strength and life and vitality of the trees. They absorbed sound, sucking the resonance from Alastair’s voice, making it fall flat.
The husband may have killed the wife and dumped her. Trees that bordered old highways were popular spots for the uninitiated. A first kill. Panic. Dump it the first place you find just to get rid of it. It was common. But if this was so common, why hadn’t Alastair waited for Becker?
“So he brought me out here.” Alastair was a little breathless, walking and talking, plus carrying the additional weight of his belt and gun. Her dad used to complain about the equipment adding forty pounds, giving cops bad backs and bad knees.
They walked for so long that Rachel began to think they should have reached the other side. Her head began to feel funny, and she had the strange notion that they were caught in some kind of loop. Things got weird when she hadn’t had her morning coffee, she tried to tell herself. But she knew better.
This wasn’t Peoria.
Rachel was about to ask the age-old question, “Are we there yet?” when the visual repetition of trees changed.
As they moved closer, she made out a patch of solid beige that ended up being a police uniform worn by a young officer who looked familiar but whose name she couldn’t place. He was jittery. Some of the tension drained from his body, and his shoulders visibly relaxed when Rachel and Alastair got close enough to be recognized as the good guys.
The grove would have been disquieting under normal circumstances, but to be left there alone to guard a dead body . . . Well, no wonder he was anxious.
She spotted something on the ground, near the base of a tree. At first glance it looked like a hundred-pound skinned squirrel, but then she realized it was human.
She had to turn away, a hand to her mouth.
“We came out here and searched the entire area,” Alastair said. “This is all we found. No skin.” When she didn’t reply, he continued: “I’ve never seen anything like it, but I thought maybe you had. Since you used to live in L.A.”
L.A. got a bad rap. L.A. had nothing on Tuonela and Old Tuonela. But Tuonelians had to always think there were worse places out there. It gave the residents something to feel good about.
You think it’s bad here? Pshaw. You should live in California. Crazy shit happens there. Crazy shit, lemme tell ya.
The young cop shifted in his beige uniform, hands resting on his belt, elbows out. “This is some crazy shit.”
Rachel frowned. Had she spoken her thoughts out loud? Was he just agreeing? She looked at Alastair. He was staring down at the remains.
Rachel had been a coroner a long time. She’d seen a lot of awful things; she’d seen a lot of weird, crazy shit. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Selfishly, she thought about the U-Haul truck with the African violet and Christmas cactus waiting to resume their journey to California. And she knew that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.
Chapter Three
We were a few miles from Tuonela when we spotted the flashing emergency lights just as our rented minivan crested the hill. I leaned forward from the backseat to get a better view and saw a cluster of vehicles and dark dots of people against a rural backdrop of dead grass, yellow leaves, and blue sky. Cop cars and an ambulance were parked in the ditch alongside the road.
“Slow down,” I said.
“It’s almost noon.” Stewart didn’t let up on the gas. “We’re gonna be late for the museum opening.”
“Really late if you get us killed or run over somebody.” Did I need to point out the obvious?
From the passenger seat, Claire glared to remind me that she was in charge.
I’ve always had a problem with authority, especially if that authority comes from somebody close to my own age. I’m also paranoid about dying. None of the other three in the van knew I’d already died twice, once from electrocution, and once when I fell through the ice and was underwater for almost an hour.
Sometimes it felt like death was chasing me, and now I was going to be spending two weeks in a town that meant “land of the dead.” So wrong. But they were paying me a hundred bucks a day. An unemployed, starving artist couldn’t turn her back on that kind of money. Not to mention that this could be a chance to unfuck my life.
Stewart slowed the minivan.
Ian and I had been in the backseat for several hours, and even though we were all close to the same age, it was a flashback to childhood. It felt like he and I were the kids, Claire and Stewart the parents. Too weird. Especially strange since I’d met Ian and Stewart only that morning.
I was surprised when they’d accepted my application to be part of the documentary crew, but I’m cheap. Cheaper than anybody else in Minneapolis. And I have most of my own equipment, plus I can shoot both video and film. Some people can’t. But it’s still pretty funny that a group of journalism majors would hire a college dropout to shoot their documentary.
Now that we were closer I saw a white van with the words COUNTY CORONER painted on the side in black lettering. A somber group of people emerged from a stand of trees. They were carrying a gurney. On top of the gurney was a black body bag.
Welcome to Tuonela.
Never one to miss a photo op, I dug out my camera. “Pull over.”
Stewart shot Claire a question. Should I? Claire shrugged. “Might be something for the documentary. I’ll wait here.”
Stewart stopped the minivan and I jumped out.
The camera was a small handheld. I kept it down, hoping nobody would notice. It’s my job to be invisible. Most of the time people don’t even acknowledge my existence.
Watching the viewfinder, I made the shot long and low, capturing the foreground and keeping the lens wide open for maximum depth of field.
Stewart came up behind me. “I don’t see any wreck.”
I zoomed in on a policeman. His face registered shock and horror. Other faces held the same emotion.
“I don’t think it’s a wreck.”
I panned, then paused on a woman who seemed to be in charge. She stood off by herself, legs braced, arms crossed, watching the body being loaded into the van. The wind blew, and dry prairie grass rustled. Distantly I knew the capture would be nice in review.
The breeze lifted the woman’s short, dark hair and created waves in her navy blue jacket, molding the fabric across an obviously pregnant belly. She didn’t look shocked like the others. Instead she appeared worried and maybe even resigned.
“Kristin.” Stewart tapped my arm and pointed to a guy who was doubled over, hands on his knees. “That cop is puking. Wouldn’t you like to know what he just saw?”
“Not really.”
“Hey!”
We’d been spotted.
A policeman strode toward us, arms pumping. “What are you doing? You can’t film here.” He waved his hands, shooing us away.
I lowered the camera but didn’t shut it off. “Sorry.” I expected him to demand the videotape, but he didn’t.
Stewart was already scrambling for the vehicle. Before the cop realized he might want to confiscate the footage, I turned and ran. The minivan wheels rolled as I slammed the door.
“What the hell do you think that was all about?” Stewart’s voice trembled.
&nbs
p; On the seat beside me, Ian stirred and came awake, looking about groggily. “What?”
“Must have found a nasty dead body, that’s for sure,” I said. “We haven’t even reached Tuonela, and weird things are already happening.”
“What’s so weird about a dead body and people getting sick?” Claire looked over the seat. “I mean, it’s unusual, but not weird.”
This was going to be a tough gig. Claire was already bugging the hell out of me. And it wasn’t just her attitude. I don’t like to judge people on outward appearances, but it was almost impossible for me to ignore her expensive blond hairdo and upscale business clothes. Right now she was wearing a cashmere sweater, black skirt, and black knee boots that were probably equivalent to two months’ rent.
“I always miss everything,” Ian muttered.
“We should ask about it when we get to town,” Stewart said. “See if anybody knows what was going on.”
A few more miles and we hit the outskirts of Tuonela.
I was disappointed to find that it looked as nondescript as any other Midwestern town, with a bunch of flat, boring buildings. But that ended up being the new area. The same street finally narrowed to a two-lane that dipped toward the river. We hit steep hills that pitched us forward and dropped us into Tuonela, the real Tuonela.
The road was suddenly lined with Victorian houses perched precariously as they struggled to cling to their foundations. Buildings were stone or dark brick, several stories tall, some with jagged peaks, some flat. At the bottom of the valley, a decay enveloped us. The sky darkened, and I found myself looking up to make sure the sun was still there.
A dying town.
There were thousands of them scattered throughout the United States, where you could feel the hope and vibrancy of the past, and the desolation of the future.
“Hey—karaoke.” Claire pointed to a two-story bar with gray clapboard siding and a neon OPEN sign.
“Tomorrow night,” Ian added. He laughed in delight. “I’m definitely going to check that out.”
They were here to make fun of people. To expose ignorance and put it on the big screen. Let’s go to this little town in the Midwest. People say a vampire used to live there.
