Bad Things

by Michael Marshall

  “You sound pretty calm about it.” She didn’t say anything, so I went on. “They’ve got Carol and Tyler, and the sheriff’s department hung up on me half an hour ago. I cannot see anyone except the Robertsons being behind this, and I am done being fucked with by that family.”

  “John . . .”

  "What?”

  “You’d do better to walk away.”

  “Are you listening, Kristina? Someone shot me. They’ve got Carol and my kid and I don’t know what’s going to happen to them.”

  “They’re going to die.”

  I was speechless. Then suddenly I remembered what Kristina had said, when I told her what happened to Scott. I’m so sorry. It had struck me at the time but I hadn’t known why. I’d chosen to believe that she’d selected that particular form of words because she was feeling close to me.

  Perhaps instead it had been because. . .

  “Did you know about this?”

  “I do now.”

  “About what happened to Scott?”

  “Not when you told me.”

  “But what do you know about it now?”

  “John, I think you’re too late.”

  “Is there anything you can do to help me?”

  “What’s going to happen is going to happen. It was started a long time ago. I can’t—”

  “Then good-bye.”

  “Joh—”

  I put the phone down. Tried to catch up with what Kristina had just said but couldn’t get near understanding any of it and so closed the door on it in my head.

  Instead I looked at Bill, who was leaning against the table with his arms folded. I felt dry and wired and like everything was getting away from me.

  “We’ve got additional numbers coming.”

  “I gather. Who?”

  “Couple of gangbangers who were supposed to be whacking someone I know.”

  “Great. They sound nice. Then what?”

  “We’re going to go find Carol and Tyler,” I said, putting my head in my hands. Most of all I felt exhausted, as if the earth was trying to pull my body and soul down into it to lie still forever. “And if anyone gets in our way, we’re going to fuck up their shit.”

  “That the whole plan?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay," I said, ten minutes later. “So when were you actually planning on taking the government by force?”

  He’d laid out what he had in the guest bedroom. A Glock, a couple of Beretta 92s, a shotgun, and a serious hunting rifle, plus enough bullets to make a lot of big holes in many things.

  Bill shrugged. “You complaining?”

  I took one of the Berettas because it was what we’d had back in the day and I was used to holding one, plus the shotgun, and went downstairs to load up on the kitchen table. Both guns were good and clean. I tried not to imagine Bill sitting here at some point in the last few months, gun in his hand and thinking about me and Jenny, and largely succeeded.

  When that was done I finally took my shirt off and grabbed a towel.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Bill quickly reappeared down the staircase, looked at me with a question mark. I pointed toward the front door, grabbed the handgun off the table, and slipped through into the living room, where I could get an angle on the hallway.

  After a moment I heard Bill open the door.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Looking for John. He here?”

  “You Little D?”

  “Switch.”

  “Yeah, he’s here.”

  I heard feet go down the steps outside, and then a group returning back up them. I stepped out into the corridor as four people entered in line.

  The two black guys, with Becki and Kyle between them. I’d known Kristina wouldn’t be with them but for some reason it still hurt.

  Becki ran straight over and hugged me. Over her shoulder I saw Kyle. He looked pale and wrung out and kept his eyes steadfastly on the floor, and he reminded me of the way Tyler had looked when I first saw him in my old house—as if he was keeping a low profile to avoid catching the attention of darkness.

  Becki meanwhile had leaned back and was staring at me. I realized I had a gun in my hand and my shirt off and was liberally blood-spattered and bruised.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “The fuck. What the hell happened to you?”

  “No big deal.”

  Switch glanced at the wound with a professional eye. “Could have gone bad, where that shit hit.”

  “Yeah. But it didn’t. Let’s move on.”

  He nodded, with something that looked like mild respect. “What up?”

  I took out my wallet and threw it to him. “Best I can do right now.”

  “Not what I’m asking.”

  “People who did this to me have my ex-wife and kid. I don’t know how many there are, or what they want.”

  “You know where they at, at least?”

  “Not for sure. But I have a good idea where to start looking.”

  He threw my wallet back to me. “You serious, I can see that.” Ignored by everyone, Kyle had wandered over to a chair at the kitchen table and sat perched on the edge. His arms were wrapped around his body, and he was moving gently back and forth.

  “Are you hurting?” I asked. “If so, you’re out of luck, because I don’t have your drugs anymore.”

  “It’s this place,” he muttered. “It’s not right.”

  “True that,” said Little D. “Town is like a morgue, yo. Like everybody go indoors and lock in. What’s with that shit?”

  “Don’t know and I don’t care,” I said, grabbing my guns off the table. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 43

  I’d been for leaving Becki and Kyle at Bill’s, obviously, but Kyle wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t have cared less but Becki was scared, too, and very freaked out. I took her to one side in the hallway. I knew she’d had a rough day, rough week, but this was not shaping up as an evening with room for passengers.

  “Becki,” I started.

  “Forget it, John. No way are you leaving me here,” she said. “Kyle’s right. There’s something dead wrong about this place. Even those scary-ass guys feel it.”

  “They’re just not used to small mountain towns. Winter comes, and it’s like humans were never here.”

  “Bullshit. It’s more than that. You think these are the kind of people who normally make deals? Those dudes beat me up, John. They came in my apartment and hit me. A lot. A girl. And the small one was digging it, believe me. But you know what? On the way over here, the other one actually says sorry. And even before that, when I’m on the street freaking at Kristina and they jump out of the car, she takes one look at the small one and he just stops talking. I mean, she’s got a real scary energy about her, no doubt, but with these guys? Ten minutes later we’re sitting in the bar, waiting for you to call like we’re a bunch of jerks ready to party and waiting on our ride. What’s that about?”

  “Money,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not. You ask them. You ask them if they’re feeling—”

  “That’s the last thing I’m going to do. You ever met any male humans, Becki?”

  She sort of smiled. “Yeah, funny. But you’re not leaving me here. Build a bridge and get over it, work on Plan B.”

  Plan B turned out to be them coming in the SUV with Bill and me, while the other guys followed in their own vehicle. I put Bill’s sweatshirt on, picked up the guns, and looked around at the other people holding weapons.

  “You up for this?”

  The two black guys nodded.

  Bill shook his head. “Never a dull moment with you, Henderson.”

  He waited until we were outside and in the car before asking the obvious question. “What happens if we’re going in the wrong direction?”

  “We . . .” I realized he had a point. “Get me a number for the Robertson house, then hand me the phone.”

  He dialed and then handed
his phone to me. “Signal’s not great,” he said.

  There was no answer for a long time. Then it was picked up, to silence. I could hear someone breathing.

  “Brooke?”

  “No,” a female voice said, rich and strangely sexual. “I’m afraid she’s not at home.”

  “I know that’s you.”

  “You’re mistaken. This is the Seattle Public Library. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Brooke, listen to me. If anything happens to Carol or my son, then yours will be the last generation of Robertsons to walk the earth. Do you understand me?”

  She laughed, so suddenly and so loudly it was painful over the phone.

  “You’re a funny guy,” she said, and hung up.

  I started the car.

  “We’re going in the right direction.”

  The rain had slackened a little, but only because it was heading fast toward sleet. I wanted to jam my foot down and drive hard, but I knew these roads well enough to understand that dropping ten miles off your speed in this weather made it half as likely you’d end up spinning off the road. It also made it easier for the other guys to follow.

  The car was very quiet. Bill stared straight ahead out of the windshield. I have no idea what he was thinking. I wanted to thank him for being there, for coming, but didn’t know how to start. In the rearview mirror I could see Becki and Kyle sitting well apart. Becki was also staring into space. Kyle appeared to be watching the forest as we passed.

  “It’s cold,” he said suddenly.

  “Always there with the weather report,” I said.

  “I mean, really cold. And . . . it smells weird.”

  I was about to dismiss this just as flippantly but realized he was right. The heater had been left on in the SUV when I took it from Collins’s driveway, and I hadn’t changed it, but the hot air it was blowing didn’t seem to make any difference. And there definitely was an odor, too. Sweet, spicy, but a little sickly, something like cinnamon. I looked around for evidence of an air freshener in the car, but there wasn’t one, and so I cracked the window open an inch. The car didn’t seem to get any colder, but the smell lifted a notch.

  “Is that coming from the woods?” Becki asked.

  “No idea,” I said, but I knew I’d smelled it, or something like it, more than once since being in Black Ridge.

  We drove in silence for another five minutes, before Kyle spoke again.

  “Something’s out there,” he said.

  “Shut up,” Becki snapped.

  “You actually see something?” Bill asked.

  Kyle was silent for a moment, his face pressed up close to his window. “No,” he said eventually.

  “So there’s probably nothing to worry about,” Bill said. And maybe he was right, but the farther we drove the more a low nausea in my stomach seemed to warn me otherwise. Partly it was simple fear, or anticipation. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, when you’re in the company of weapons you know you’re stepping closer to the veil between being alive and dead. I had been in that situation before, strapped on a gun as a matter of course for years of my adult life. It’s never a trivial matter.

  I was afraid for Carol, too, and for Tyler, but the feeling I had wasn’t merely these things. There was something else. I didn’t know whether it was out there, or inside me, but there was something else.

  A sense of bad things close at hand, and getting closer.

  From fifty yards down the road we could see that the gates to the Robertson compound had been left open.

  “Not sure that’s a great sign,” Bill said.

  “They snatched me for a reason,” I said, tapping on the brakes to indicate to the car behind that we were stopping. “I got away. They let me in, they get me back.”

  “And how is that a good thing?” Becki asked.

  I pulled over, got out, and walked back to the other car. Little D rolled down his window. His face looked gray and pinched.

  “This is it,” I said. “You okay?”

  “Just cold, yo.”

  He looked convincing, but something told me he was feeling what I had as we got closer to this place: a strong impression that turning around and heading in the opposite direction would be a safer idea.

  Switch killed the engine, pulled a nine out from under his seat. “How’s this going to be?”

  “Follow me.”

  I went back to the SUV and stuck my head in the open door. “You two are staying here,” I said. Becki started to protest but I talked straight over her. “I mean it this time.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  “I’d like you to get in front, though. Lock the doors. Anyone approaches who you don’t recognize, drive away and drive fast, okay?” Bill got out the other side, holding the shotgun. He looked up as thunder broke, somewhere over the mountains. The rain/sleet gusted harder, chilling cold.

  “Harsh fucking night.”

  “Better cover for us.”

  “Never figured you for an optimist.”

  We shut our doors and walked toward the gates, the two other guys in step behind, their guns already out and in their hands. Bill held them back as we approached the bottom of the drive, and I crouched low and trotted through the gates and up toward a soft white glow up ahead.

  When I crested the rise I saw the lights in both houses were on, as if someone was trying to attract the attention of overflying aliens. I kept close to the right side of the drive, staying among the small trees and bushes, looking for signs of movement. Couldn’t see anything, so I crept back and waved the other guys forward. We collected at the left side of the drive.

  “Bill and I will take the main house,” I said, having to lift my voice against the rain. “You check that other one.”

  Switch looked across at the building where Ellen had once lived. “And what if?”

  “You find a woman and a boy, get them out and come find us right away. Once we’ve got them we’re out of here, right away, nothing else to do. You see anyone else, be very suspicious. And if anyone draws down on you, just shoot. We hear noise, we’ll come running.”

  A single upward nod, and he and Little D loped off into the rain. Bill and I got our handguns out.

  “Never seen something that looked more like a setup,” he said cheerfully as we ran toward the house. The closer we got the better lit we were. “You got someone with a rifle and a sight a hundred yards away, we’re toast.”

  Half the lights in the house flicked off at once, then, before coming straight back on again.

  Nothing else happened before we ran up the steps onto the porch, however. We went low and cased the front of the building, peering in windows. Each room appeared deserted. We returned to the front door and took a side each. I reached around with my hand and turned the knob. It was unlocked.

  The door opened. We gave it twenty seconds, then Bill nodded at me and we turned and kicked it in together, guns in front.

  Inside, a clock was ticking.

  We turned in slow half circles in the hallway, hearing nothing else. Bill winced. You got it as soon as you stepped in the building. The heating was up full blast in here, and the air smelled bad. Like we’d noticed on the way, but more curdled, sickly-rich, as if cloves had been boiled in fat for many hours over a smoky fire, in the company of ingredients normal people are not supposed to eat.

  I gestured Bill toward the right-hand side of the house, and took the left, quickly moving through areas that Cory had shown me during a visit that felt like it had taken place weeks before.

  The big sitting room with the kind of straight-backed chairs that are meant to be looked at rather than sat on. Magazines spread across glass-topped coffee tables. A fireplace that had burned at some point during the day, but had been let run down. Every single ceiling light, lamp, and wall sconce was turned on.

  I went through the door at the back that gave onto the library, the major addition on this property, and then through the door on the side that led through to the
breakfast room. Clean, silent, empty. A window at the back, but it was too dark to see much beyond glass smeared and pattered with driving rain.

  The clock was on a mantelpiece in here. It was the loudest clock I’d ever heard, unless something was going wrong with my hearing. I didn’t remember it being anything like this loud the previous time I’d been here—didn’t even recall noticing it at all.

  A door at the other end of the breakfast room led to the large kitchen. It felt mothballed, like everything else in this house, as if the occupants never did more than stand in a corner of each room, in suffocating silence: as if it was a monument to a family rather than anywhere people might actually live.

  I emerged into the hallway at the same time Bill arrived back from the other side. He shook his head—pointed at the staircase with a questioning look. I nodded, and he went up first.

  We took the sweeping curve slowly, guns ready, but reached the top in silence. The lights flickered again, twice, but then steadied. We searched the right side together first, Cory’s side. Nothing and no one in there, though when I passed the photos of him with his hunting buddies, this time I knew I’d seen at least one of them since.

  I picked up one of the frames and looked closer, and I got it. Got them, in fact.

  Richard Collins, on the far left.

  And right next to Cory, arm slung around his shoulders, was Deputy Greene.

  We went back out across the hallway and toward the door that led to Brooke’s half, the first uncharted territory in the house. Bill put up his hand to hold me back for a second, and leaned toward the window to look down over the front lawns.

  He turned back at me and shrugged—evidently no sign of the other two guys.

  I reached out and carefully undid the door.

  Beyond was a mirror image of Cory’s half, at least at first. A short corridor on the left, leading to a master suite. The bedroom beyond was immaculate, done up in neutral colors and muted shades. It looked like a hotel room designed for someone who needed everything just so. There was no one in there or in the bathroom off the side.

  I rejoined Bill and let him turn the handle of the door at the other end of the hallway. It was locked—the first barrier we’d encountered the entire time we’d been in the house.