The Midnight Ground

by Eric Dontigney

  I tried to decide what to do with that information. On the surface, it was good news. Of course, Oppenheimer confirming the feasibility of a fission bomb was probably also met as good news. I supposed it was all a question of context.

  “Adrian,” said Helena, “you seem less pleased by this than you should be.”

  “I’m just trying to see the angles. As long as she’s in that hospital room, I think she’s…”

  Helena saw it. “She’s protected. Once she leaves, she’s fair game again.”

  “I could be wrong about that part, but,” I thought of the smoke over Mary’s grave, “I don’t think I’d put money on it. Would you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “No matter which way you cut it, the only way I can see to protect Abby is to keep her isolated to one location.”

  Helena looked pensive. “That’s fine for now, but it’s not a solution. You can’t keep this up indefinitely, and that kind of isolation kills as surely as cancer.”

  “I know. This goes back to Abby’s mother somehow. That horror at the cemetery proves as much. I’m going to have to ask Paul some questions.”

  “Like where Randall and Mary met? How long they lived here? Those kinds of questions?”

  I nodded.

  “I can handle that part. Still, what good will that do you?”

  “No idea, but until we learn something we can act on, we’re at a standstill here.”

  Helena offered me an uncertain look, and then pressed forward with her thought. “That business in the graveyard, with the smoke, you should dig into that.”

  “I already said I didn’t know what it was.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you don’t know what it is, but you know people who might.”

  I knew who she was talking about. I shook my head.

  “Adrian,” she pressed, “we need information. They don’t do business with me, but they’ll talk to you. You should call The Twins.”

  “There was this thing a while back. It went sour. It wasn’t my fault, but they blame me for it. I doubt they’d even take the call.”

  “You won’t know until you try.”

  I sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  Chapter 17

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I took Lil to the vet. As long as I was in the room, she endured the vet’s poking and prodding with surly disdain. All freaking hell broke loose the minute I left the room. So it was that I found myself standing in an examination room, feeling very superfluous, and watching the vet do mysterious vet things. What I knew about small animals and their care could fit into a pixie’s thimble. After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time and a couple of injections, the vet addressed me.

  “Well, Mr. Hartworth, I have to give you credit. I never thought this cat would ever wind up in my office.”

  The vet was a genial man, with pale blue eyes and long, sandy hair that he needed to push out of his face every few minutes. His small badge identified him as Dr. Heath. He smiled a lot, even at the hijinks of “my” cat.

  “Not sure I can take much credit. She sort of adopted me.”

  Dr. Heath nodded as though this made perfect sense. “Cats are funny like that. They pick people. It’s the reason a lot of them wind up abandoned or in shelters.”

  That was news to me. “Really?”

  “Sure. Maybe a kid picks out the cutest little kitten to be their very own, and the only person the cat likes is the dad. The dad isn’t much for pets, the kid is angry, so the cat gets turned loose on some back road or taken to a shelter to keep the peace in the house.”

  I wondered if the vet was just pulling my leg. That sounded an awful lot like wanton cruelty. I said as much.

  “It is,” said Heath. “A lot of people think picking out a cat or dog should work like picking furniture. You get one that you like the look of and it should fit into the house.”

  Even my limited experience in dealing with Lil told me what an asinine notion that was. “No real consideration of personality?”

  “A-plus for the new student.”

  Lil had settled on the table in a sphinx-like pose and her head tracked back and forth between me and Heath as we spoke. I reached out and scratched behind her ears. I hoped it would encourage continued docility. It also gave me a minute to figure out what to say.

  “So, doc, I never really had pets as a kid. What do I need to know about taking care of Lil here?”

  “Well, there are really two levels of care. Your essential care consists of making sure she gets food every day and has ready access to water. She’ll also need a litter-box. I recommend clumping litter. It costs a little more, but it’s easier to clean up.”

  “I’m all for easier. What kind of food?”

  “Your basic adult cat dry food should be fine. You can mix in some wet food, occasionally, which I recommend. Helps to make sure she’s getting the right combination of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. She’s not a big cat, so half a cup, maybe three-quarters of a cup a day of dry food should do the trick. Cats will self-regulate their eating, all things being equal, so you can usually just throw the food down once a day.”

  “Okay, I think I can handle that. What’s the other level of care?”

  “Attention and affection. I can’t help you out much there. Some cats seem to require a lot of love, pet me for hours and hours kind of love. Other cats only seem to need a little bit of intermittent affection to get by. I suspect Lil is in the latter category.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She’s been living more or less wild the last couple years. Wouldn’t let anyone near her. If she needed sustained attention, she’d have found a place to call home by now.”

  “Speaking of living wild, do I need to worry about fleas or ticks? She’s been riding around in my car all day.”

  Heath frowned at that. “You should have to, but you don’t. There isn’t one on her. I have no earthly idea how that can possibly be the case, but it is the case. I put a flea and tick repellant on her neck, just to be safe, so you should be pest free for the next month.”

  I picked Lil up and she settled in the crook of my arm. “I don’t suppose there’s a pet store in town?”

  Dr. Heath shook his head. “Not to speak of, but you can get everything you need at Connor’s.”

  “Connor’s?”

  “It’s kind of a general store. Our version of a Walmart or Target.”

  The vet glanced down at Lil and then up at me. He chuckled a little.

  “What?”

  “It’s just the damndest thing. That cat really does hate everybody.”

  I shook my head. “So everyone keeps telling me.”

  “You should get her a collar too, to put the rabies tag on.”

  “Collar, right.”

  I went out and settled up with the woman at the front desk to the tune of several hundred dollars. My supply of ready cash was dwindling faster than I liked. I wasn’t exactly broke, and I had money stashed with other identities, but I was loathe to go down that road. If things continued as they had, it might come to that before too long. The woman at the front desk gave me directions to Connor’s that were surprisingly succinct and specific. According to her, the store was located on the eastern edge of town.

  I’d probably driven past it when I first arrived. Of course, I’d been all but sleep-driving, so it’s no mystery why I didn’t notice it. It wasn’t until I was in the car, Lil curled up on the passenger seat again, and halfway there before I wondered why the go-to store wasn’t more centrally located. When I pulled into the lot, that tiny mystery was solved. Connors was set back from the road to accommodate a sizeable parking lot and looked more like a medium-sized warehouse than a store.

  I left Lil in the car again, because I was sure they wouldn’t like me hauling an ill-tempered cat through the store. I left the windows cracked and resolved to make the trip as short as humanly possible. The interior of the store reminded me of a warehouse too. The floor was sm
ooth concrete and everything was set out on plain metal shelves. A teen with bags under his eyes, the kind that teens get when they’re working too hard, rather than when they’re doing drugs, gave me a strained smile.

  “Welcome to Connor’s, sir. Can I help you find anything?”

  I looked at his nametag. “Sure, Tim. Pet food and supplies?”

  His eyes went blank and I watched the gears grind. Then I got it. He probably spent most evenings and weekends asking that question and being told, “No thanks,” by people who shopped there all the time. Between that and apparent exhaustion, my request for assistance was a non sequitur. It took a second, but he got it together.

  “Aisle seven,” said Tim.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Tim smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  I wandered past rows of dried goods and canned vegetables. I ignored the crap meant to encourage impulse buys that filled the shelves on the end of every aisle. I’d given up on rank-and-file junk food long ago, courtesy of Marcy’s health obsession, and there was no room in my life for bric-a-brac. After a few years of that, you stop even thinking of chips and candy as food and you grow almost superstitiously wary of increasing your belongings. I turned down aisle seven and soon found myself frozen in indecision.

  There were shelves and shelves of cat food in a dozen brands and each intended for a different kind of cat. There was food for outdoor cats, indoor cats, mature indoor cats, indoor kittens, outdoor kittens, food to prevent hairballs, food to improve the sheen of coats and so many more. There was wet food and dry food. There were soft treats that tasted like fish or turkey. There were dry, crunchy treats that tasted like beef. Part of me half expected to see a variety of food that tasted like New York strip steak and would sublimate into pure nutrition that entered directly into a cat’s bloodstream from his or her mouth.

  “Christ,” I muttered. “How the hell do people decide about this crap?”

  I shook my head and found a moderately priced bag of something calling itself “Kitty Yumtastic” that claimed to be for adult, indoor cats. I grabbed a few cans of wet cat food at random and went looking for non-edible things. The collar proved simple enough. By the time I had the litter box and the litter itself, I found myself fighting with gravity as things threatened to leap from my overfull hands and arms. I wondered why I hadn’t gotten a cart.

  Ignorance, I thought. It was simple ignorance. Until that moment, I had no sense of the size of things like litter boxes and bags of cat food and the enormous, twenty-pound tub of litter. I made my haphazard way toward the counter, stopping every five steps or so to readjust the things in my arm. That was why I didn’t see him before he spoke.

  “If it isn’t the badass,” said someone, trying to cover fear with anger.

  I looked up and sighed. The man who blocked my path had two black eyes, a bandage across his nose, and a huge purple bruise across the side of his face. It was sort of impressive. I didn’t usually hang around long enough to see the end result of my handiwork. I didn’t feel any sympathy for him, though. Pull a hunting knife on a guy and you get what you get. I tried to remember what Patty had said his name was. I knew his name started with a T and it was more than one syllable. Tony? Tommy? Terrance? I couldn’t pull it up. Too many other things were in play, much more important things than the waste of space in my path.

  “I don’t have time to deal with your bruised pride or machismo bullshit,” I said in a tired voice.

  “What the fuck did you say to me?” he demanded, taking a step closer.

  “You heard me. We’re done here. Stand aside.”

  “I decide when we’re done here,” he barked, jerking a thumb at himself and drawing stares.

  I cocked my head a little to one side and just looked at him. I kept just looking at him, way beyond the point when silence grows uncomfortable and becomes oppressive. I saw him decide to break the silence, but I beat him to it. When I spoke, it was very soft and very gentle. I’m told that is disconcerting when someone wants to rile you up.

  “Do you really believe that,” his name came back to me, “Tucker Smith?”

  He responded to his own name coming out of my mouth with the kind of jerking twitch you usually saw when someone cracked a whip. Maybe he thought that I didn’t know his name and that anonymity would give him some kind of edge in a confrontation. It was ridiculous to think that the police wouldn’t have told me his name, but Tucker didn’t strike me as an especially sharp guy. The confrontation was futile and had next to nothing to do with me. He wanted to prove something to himself. I’d seen it before. He needed to convince himself he wasn’t frightened of me.

  The problem with that plan was that it hinged on legitimate lack of fear, and he was deeply afraid of me. Most of his fights probably ended when he pulled that hunting knife. Knives scared most people, as well they should. While not as overtly threatening as a gun, knives could kill you just as dead and it usually took a lot longer. His knife hadn’t frightened me. It hadn’t even slowed me down. I’d taken his power and we both knew it.

  With a flash of self-hatred on his face, Smith stepped aside. I walked past him. I felt his eyes on my back, felt his hate and fear, and remembered why I stayed on the move. If I hung around too long, his wounded pride would force another fight and one of us would likely die. In all likelihood, the man bleeding out on the ground would be Tucker Smith.

  Chapter 18

  I didn’t know what, if any, pet policy the cabin company maintained. So, I took discretion as the better part of valor and snuck Lil in after dark. I put down some dry food and water for her. She drank a lot of water and nibbled at the food. She batted a piece of the food around on the floor while I set up the litter box in a corner. She leapt, pounced, and generally treated the piece of Kitty Yumtastic like a tiny hockey puck. I wasn’t sure if she was commenting on the quality of the food or just felt like play-killing something.

  After she got bored with that, Lil came over and observed me with an unwholesome degree of solemnity as I tried to figure out how much litter should go in the box. I put in the inch the container suggested, but it looked woefully inadequate to me. I dumped some more in and pushed it around with the slotted shovel that came with the litter box. It reminded me of a Zen sand garden, except for the inevitable future poop. That idea took a lot of the romance out of the thought. I declared it good enough and walked away. Lil spent several minutes giving the litter box a thorough sniffing before she climbed in to do her business.

  I averted my eyes out of some vague, hard-to-define sense of propriety. I wouldn’t want an audience watching me poop, so it seemed appropriate to give her a little privacy. I settled onto the bed and turned the on TV for background noise. I set the volume so all I heard was a dull, inarticulate murmur. My back ached, throbbed, and did its level best to make sure I knew it was still hurt. Even so, I had the impression that I was starting to mend.

  I’d switched over to the regular painkillers you can buy off the shelf anywhere. They didn’t dull out the pain the same way the doctor’s prescription pills had, but they made the injury livable without turning me into a drooling narcoleptic. The tradeoff was worth it. I prized being able to reason in straight lines more than I prized not hurting.

  I dozed a little and then felt a telltale thump on the bed. A quick look showed Lil exploring the top of the bed with the same intense, almost zealous thoroughness she employed with the litter box. She regarded my sprawled body for a moment. Then she unceremoniously walked over my stomach to get to the other side. Once she’d decided that the bed was indeed safe and was not food, she sat down next to my hand.

  “Mrew,” she offered.

  I lifted my hand, another random guess, and she rubbed her face and ears against my palm. It occurred to me that my participation in the process was minimal. So long as I held my hand there, she was content. I stroked her head and found myself surprised by the softness of her fur. She purred at me, kneaded at the blanket for a moment, and curled up again
st my side. I drifted off to the low murmur of a sitcom and Lil’s almost imperceptible breathing.

  I stood in a clearing, surrounded by forest for as far as I could see. It seemed like there was sufficient light for a moment, but it was the false light that comes immediately after sunset. A phantom light that concealed more than it revealed. There was unnatural silence. No birds chirped. No leaves rustled. It was as if the forest held its breath.

  I’m dreaming, I thought.

  Only, I didn’t believe myself. It felt like a dream, where the edges of all things blurred and bled into one another like an impressionist painting, but it was a lie. It was a dream in form, but not in substance or function. There was an underlying reality to it, a solidity that did not belong to the world of dreams and fantasy. I also realized something else. I was an interloper. No, I was not an interloper precisely. I was an unexpected presence in a place that had gone unchanged for eons.

  If I die here, I will not wake up, I thought. If I die here, I simply die.

  I felt the weight of eyes on me. With that weight came the certain knowledge that I was no longer alone. I spun in a slow circle. I peered into the false light and sought my silent observer. Nothing gave away its presence. Just as surely, though, I felt it drawing closer. I didn’t remember a decision, but I ran into the woods. The weight of observation grew closer and closer, like an anchor that slowed my movements. I ran harder.

  The observer paced me for a time, sometimes off to the left, sometimes off to the right, sometimes behind me. Then, an explosion of speed and something huge, silent, and black slammed into me. I went down hard, tumbled and rolled in the underbrush. Old branches snapped beneath my weight with sounds like gunfire in that silent forest. I came to rest staring up into the sky. I saw constellations hurtle by at impossible speeds.