Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  Dakota reached onto her father’s plate, breaking off the corner of a half-eaten pancake. She slipped it beneath the table, and it disappeared into Gus’s mouth.

  “Dakota? Are you listening to me?”

  “Mol, jeez. Cut her some slack.”

  “Really, Cole? Cut her some slack? What about me? What about—”

  “It’s fine, Mom. I heard you. Hannah and I haven’t really hung out much this summer anyway. She’s got cheerleading, and I’ve got . . .” Serial killers. “. . . other stuff.”

  Her parents put down their swords, stopped moving, speaking, bickering for a precious moment, and she seized it. “Is that it? Can I go now?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. Gus followed her up the stairs and into her room, onto her bed where she covered her face with a pillow and screamed. Her lungs ached. Though it didn’t count, inside she knew. She’d just broken the world record for holding her breath.

  ****

  Dakota listened to the sounds of her parents’ war. The clipped voices, snide remarks, muffled inside her blanket cocoon. The slam of a door, sharp as a gunshot. Then, an engine outside. Her father’s Mercedes revved, growled, and charged out the drive like a hungry beast in pursuit of its next meal. The rumble grew faint and disappeared entirely. Still, she waited for a while to be sure before she emerged into the pin-drop quiet, a droopy butterfly.

  Dakota thought of calling for her mother, but she didn’t. She’d rather see her first, so she could assess the damage. The emotional fallout.

  But Gus gave her away, bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen like an oaf.

  “Dakota? Is that you?”

  Just a skirmish then, Dakota thought, hearing her mother’s voice. Nothing serious. No casualties. But then came the clinking, the fumbling. When she reached the bottom stair, she realized she’d been fooled.

  Her mother had already downed most of a bottle of red wine. Dakota saw it on the counter, already corked and tucked away. The glass probably quickly rinsed and returned to the cabinet. Her mother too, carefully arranged at the table with three plates of soggy pancakes. As if nothing had happened. As if this wasn’t a thing she did now. Ever since . . . well, Dakota couldn’t remember exactly when the drinking started. It had crept up on her. Like puberty. One day, she’d awakened to dark hair on her legs, and her mom tossing drinks back like a frat boy.

  “Yeah. It’s me. Can I ride my bike to the library?”

  “Sit down first. Just for a minute. Talk to me.”

  Her mother patted the seat next to her, her limbs loose and wavy. But her eyes had a dangerous sheen, glinting like broken glass. Dakota had to look away.

  “Let me help with the dishes,” she said, scraping the pancakes onto one plate. Somehow, her fingers were already sticky.

  “So when did you find out?” her mother asked. “About Dad.”

  Dakota deposited the stack in the sink and ran the water, sending the mushy mess straight down the disposal. When her mother jolted at the grating noise, pressed her fingers to her temples, Dakota hid her satisfaction. “Hannah texted me last night. She sent me the link to the article.”

  “That girl has never been a good friend to you.”

  “It’s not about Hannah.” Dakota let the water get scalding hot, her hands already reddening. “She’s just sticking up for her mom. You can’t blame her for that.”

  But Dakota did begrudge Hannah one thing—she’d believed her mom’s story.

  “Do you think Dad is telling the truth?” she asked as her mother joined her at the sink with the rest of the breakfast dishes. Forks, knives. Metal on metal, they landed with a clatter in the soapy water.

  “Of course, sweetie.” Her mother put an arm around her shoulders and tugged her in close. Dakota wriggled away, her mother’s breath, sick and fruity, wafting after her. “Do you?”

  “I want to, but . . .” The stairs again, the basement below. Pale neck. Lips. The moaning. Her father’s flannel.

  “But what?”

  Dakota turned off the water and shook the suds from her hands. Her eyes kept flitting to the bottle of wine lingering in the background like an annoying party guest. “Do you really think Mrs. Montgomery would just make the whole thing up?”

  “Honestly, Dakota, I do. The woman is histrionic. She always has to be the center of attention. You know she was raped in college.”

  Dakota didn’t know, of course. The words scraped her raw. The way her mother said it. Like Mrs. Montgomery was to blame. But the alcohol was talking now, and there was no way to stop it.

  “Or at least she claimed she was. Announced it in front of the entire PTA. When we were supposed to be talking about school safety. Who does that?”

  “If you believe Dad, why are you so upset?”

  Dakota opened the cabinet. As she suspected, a single wine glass was out of place and still wet. Water streaked down the sides as she held it out to her mother.

  “If you believe him, why are you drinking?”

  She set the glass on the counter and left her mother standing there. When she reached the door, she heard it smash against the linoleum, but she didn’t turn back.

  ****

  Dakota arrived fifteen minutes before the library’s noon opening. She circled the parking lot once, twice, three times, jumping her bike on the curb the way her dad taught her when she’d first learned to ride. He’d been different then. But she couldn’t say how or when or why he’d changed. She only knew the terrain between then and now was vast and uncharted.

  Coasting past the entrance, the bicycle picked up speed, and she lifted her hands from the bars. Her dad taught her that too. If she concentrated hard enough, she could still hear him, his voice carrying behind her, keeping her upright. Sit up in the saddle. Relax. Keep your eyes on the road. The bike will go where you’re looking.

  At the edge of her vision, a two-tone pickup truck rumbled past the lot. She knew better than to turn her head. But it happened so fast, as automatic as blinking. As unavoidable as a sneeze and just as jarring. Her front wheel skidded off the sidewalk. She braked hard, overcorrected, and rammed her tire into the curb. The bike toppled over, throwing her to the ground.

  Stunned, Dakota sat on the hard, hot cement surveying the damage. Her bike appeared intact, just a slipped chain and a scrape to the frame. Same for her own points of contact. Road rash on her elbow and knee and a serious ego bruise. When she gathered herself, she realized the truck had pulled into the empty lot. It idled in the back row of spots, as far from the door as possible. As she suspected, Grandpa Krandel hunkered down behind the wheel, peering out at her.

  Dakota stood up and brushed herself off, grateful no one but her grandpa had seen her bite it. She waved to him, righted her bike, and began to wheel it in his direction, the chain hanging loose and clunking.

  “I didn’t know you were coming.” She spoke to a closed window. “I’m sorry about last week. I hope you’re feeling better.” By better, she meant slightly less crazy.

  He held up a prescription bottle. Dakota leaned in to read the label through the grimy glass.

  Aripiprazole. 30 mg. Take one tablet one time daily.

  She jumped when he shook it wildly, a maniacal grin on his face. He cranked the window down part way, stopping when it got stuck. “Doctor Patty says this stuff will keep me safe. She calls ’em my anti-Nam pills. And hot damn, she’s right. That SOB hasn’t followed me in days.”

  Dakota tried not to look confused. Or skeptical. Certainly not afraid. He’d come all this way, presumably for her. She owed him a second chance. Maybe he’d remember something about the Shadow Man investigation. After all, he’d been right in the middle of it, handing out water to search volunteers as they combed the grass for Jessica Guzman’s remains.

  “But what about you? You took a tumble there on your bicycle.”

  “I�
��m okay,” she said. “But my bike . . .”

  “Yep. You slipped the chain. Did your mom tell you I’m a mechanic? I can fix just about anything.”

  “She said you used to build cars from parts.”

  “That’s right. I built this truck, and ain’t she a beauty?”

  Dakota averted her eyes from the dent in the door frame, the spare tire on the rear. The five in 4 SALE $500 had a white line through it. It now read 4 SALE $400. “Wow. Impressive. Any buyers?”

  “Not yet. You interested?”

  “I can’t drive yet.” She gestured to the shiny red Schwinn—with its fresh scratch—her parents had put a bow on for her thirteenth birthday. “Hence, the bike.”

  “Hell, don’t let that stop you. I had your mama drivin’ into town by the time she started junior high school.”

  Dakota covered her laugh with a cough when she realized he wasn’t kidding.

  “How did you know I would be here?” she asked.

  “Didn’t. Just figured if you’re anything like your mama, the library is your favorite place.”

  “I love the library. But I’m not like her.”

  Saying it out loud didn’t make it true. But Grandpa Krandel played along. He held up his hands, his palms as grimy as the window. “Alright, alright. I gotcha. You two couldn’t be more different. The pink hair gave that away.”

  Dakota smiled, grateful for his lip service. “So . . . can you help me fix my bike?”

  “I’ll do ya one better.” The door squeaked as he forced it open. He stepped out of the truck and into her universe. A gangly giant. He tossed the bike into the truck bed, surprising Dakota with his strength. “You take the driver’s seat.”

  ****

  “There you go! Now shift down to first. Atta girl!” Grandpa Krandel pumped his fist as Dakota piloted the old truck around the outskirts of the library parking lot. “It took your mama a whole week to learn how to drive a stick. Look at you, an hour later and you’re a natural.”

  Dakota braked, and the truck juddered to a standstill, sending Grandpa Krandel’s dash collection of papers and candy wrappers tumbling. Not the smoothest landing, but good enough. As stuffy as it was in that beat-up cab, the dust thick on the floorboard, the air felt light. She could breathe in here. Best of all, she hadn’t thought of her parents once. Not the basement incident. Not the humiliating headline. Not even her mother and the shattered wine glass that was probably long swept up and gone by now.

  “What is this?” Dakota asked, stretching her hand down to gather a trinket that had fallen at her feet.

  “Don’t touch that.” Hard as armor, that voice. “It’s a talisman. Lucky, ya know? Keeps me safe.”

  He snatched it up and held it in his fist, breathing hard. Sucking up all the air she’d relished. Eyes wild, his fingers trembled.

  “Safe from what?”

  He opened his hand one finger at a time, revealing the tiny soapstone four-leaf clover. “Doc Patty gave it to me. I had one in Nam just like it. Found it in the MASH tent after the ole punji pit gobbled me up. And my luck turned around. Four days later I hopped a Freedom Bird and headed back stateside. But somehow, somewhere, some way, I’d lost the damn thing. That’s why my whole life went to shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. I didn’t mean to snap like that, to scare ya. Sometimes I forget I’m not over there anymore huntin’ Charlie. Being hunted myself. I’m safe now.”

  He said it again. “I’m safe now.”

  And again. “I’m safe now.”

  Until she finally understood how to help, realized she wanted to. “You’re safe now, Grandpa.”

  ****

  Dakota pedaled for home, her bike freshly oiled from a leaky can in the back of the pickup. The chain zipped along the sprocket without effort. An easy fix for Grandpa Krandel.

  She leaned her bike against Gus’s favorite oak tree, relieved to see the Mercedes still gone.

  As she climbed the front steps, her knee ached a little. The scrape had already started to scab over. Around it, the skin a deep purple. After her grandpa’s story about the punji pit, she couldn’t complain, though. He’d rendered her injury small potatoes when he’d shown her the scar on his foot where the bamboo went straight through. But that hadn’t been the worst of it.

  “We studied Vietnam in my U.S. history class,” she’d said later, after he’d removed the bike from the bed of the truck and dropped to his knee to examine the chain.

  He’d chuckled, seemingly calm again. “That’s your first mistake. Can’t learn about Nam from a book.”

  “What was it like?” As she’d spoken the question aloud, her mouth had dried. Her stomach twisted. Maybe it was wrong to ask. She didn’t want to set him off again.

  “Those books of yours say anything about My Lai?”

  “You mean the massacre?”

  He’d nodded, lifting the bike chain and slipping it back on the ring. He’d coated it with oil and turned the pedals with his hand, the noise filling the uneasy silence.

  “The whole damn war was a massacre. That’s what them books don’t tell ya. What constant fear will do to a man who’s really still a boy. Fear and rage and testosterone. Young men shouldn’t be soldiers.”

  “Mom told me you were eighteen when you got drafted.”

  “Sure was. Too young to drink but not too young for killin’, apparently. I ain’t to blame for what I did over there. Doc Patty told me that. She says I was right to set the record straight. Tell the truth and let the chips fall. Even if it means I got to keep lookin’ over my shoulder.”

  The chain had kept spinning and spinning, louder and louder. Like a helicopter, she’d thought. His Freedom Bird. When her phone had buzzed in her pocket, Grandpa Krandel’s hand stopped on a dime.

  “What’s that?” he’d asked. “Are you recording me? Did he put you up to this?” Then he’d smacked his own head, hard, and Dakota felt her eyes well. “Get a grip, PFC Krandel. Get a goddamned grip.”

  Dakota couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said. How she’d soothed him. Only her grandpa’s dark eyes glaring at her like she was the enemy.

  AFTER

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  (Friday, October 5, 2018)

  I drive to Mol’s Junkyard with the mid-afternoon sun blaring through my windshield, as indisputable and painful as the truth. Whatever it is, it always hurts. I park the Jeep at a truck stop in Allendale and douse my nerves with stale coffee and heavy metal while I wait for the dark. When the sun sinks below the horizon and the truckers pull in and bed down for the night, I hit the road. Dad is sure to be passed out drunk by now. Or well on his way.

  In the glow of my flashlight, Mol’s is straight out of a cheesy horror flick. The kind where you know what’s coming, but you jump and clutch your chest anyway, heart racing. A soft light streams from the trailer, muted by the years-old grime on the windows. The only sounds come from the woods. The hypnotic buzz of the crickets. The animals, darting unseen through the brush. The soft rustle of the wind.

  I walk past the old pickup, down the fence line, covering my mouth to block the smell and counting squirrel pelts as I go. I can’t help it. The breeze blows their tails, makes them twitch at the edge of my vision. At least counting gives my mind something to do. By the time I reach the tattered American flag at the perimeter, I’m at thirty.

  I skirt under the fence and scan the ground, sweeping my flashlight left to right, until I find a good walking stick. Without it, I’m as vulnerable as a soldier in the thickest thick of the jungle, lost and alone. Because where I’m going—my father’s hunting shed in the forbidden grove of sycamores—there are bound to be traps.

  My pace is turtle-slow, cautious. I lead with a tap of the stick, making my way through the knee-high grass, across the field that reminds me of Wendall’s
mindscape, toward the tree line. I pass one sycamore, then another. It grows impossibly dark; the space beyond my flashlight, a black hole of nothingness. In that inky stillness, finally, the memory breaks free, casting off its chains like silly string and bowling me over with its strength. Its vividness.

  I hadn’t meant to break my father’s rules, the last time I’d come out here, to the sycamore grove. But Roscoe had been missing for two days. At first, I’d only stood at the boundary, whistling and calling into the wind. Then I’d heard something—a dog’s whimper?—and I’d followed it without thinking, the trees complicit in my betrayal. Or had they been against me all along? Soldiers of the wandering ghosts my father warned me about, trapped in limbo between this life and the next. Hapless victims of a bad death.

  The trees haven’t changed. They swallow me in their cover, shielding me with their pale bodies as I move. I still remember the way, though the path is grown over. My father had built the shed himself. Before he’d lost his mind, we’d come here together to scout for deer or rabbits, laughing and eating marshmallows straight from the bag.

  I duck under a spindly branch, my shoulder brushing against tree bark. The first sign of Crazy Krandel is nailed to the trunk, long dead. I shine my light on the snake, its skin dried out like a raisin. Only the rattle at the end of its tail gives it away. Knowing my father and his traps, it had most certainly been alive and very, very angry when he’d staked it here. Another sweep of the flashlight reveals a large nail in the low-hanging limb up ahead. No sign of a snake though. It had probably rotted and dropped to the ground where it turned to dust like all dead things.

  Fifty yards away, I spot the shed. Its silvery gray wood and sheet-metal roof the color of Wendall’s tombstones. It’s leaning a bit but otherwise intact. I feel inexplicable relief and dread, both.

  I’d been nearly this close when my father had caught me last time. One hand had whipped me around by the shoulder, the other struck my cheek hard. My father’s eyes, wild as I’d ever seen them. He’d dragged me behind him, inside, muttering about Charlie and how he’d finally realized exactly what I was.