by Ben Farthing
Their staticky voices came from everywhere and nowhere.
“I’ll tell you the way out once we search the house.” Cessy poked Gordon with the gun. “Let’s go. Closest bedroom first.”
“You go on. I’ll wait here.”
“Ten minutes ago, you tried to shoot me. You’re staying on that side of this gun.”
They walked to the first bedroom.
In front of it, a spot of the beige carpet was discolored. A stain that had been scrubbed at until only a slight gray discoloring remained.
“What’s the stain?” Cessy asked.
Gordon shrugged. “This house has decades of spills and stains.”
He pushed the bedroom door open. The Maple Table grew louder. Inside, a teenager’s bedroom. Rock and country music posters on the wall. TV and an old video game console.
“This was Jackson’s room. Never had a reason to change it. Plenty of extra space up here.”
A boombox on the dresser. Cessy switched it off. Although the Maple Table’s discussions hadn’t been coming from the speakers, their volume lowered.
“It’s about love for your fellow man,” the grandpa said, without irony. “If you expect too little of people they’ll never grow.”
“Open the closet,” Cessy ordered.
Gordon complied.
It was mostly empty, except for graduation robes, and a Sunday suit that Jackson would have grown out of before high school ended. As gaunt as the kid was now, maybe he’d fit back into it.
“That’s why I’m so happy we true citizens of Hamlin have each other,” said the professor.
“Can we leave?” asked Gordon. “I haven’t been in here since... you know.”
Cessy again decided not to share that Jackson was still alive. She didn’t need Gordon distracted.
Satisfied that Kate wasn’t hiding anywhere in Jackson’s childhood bedroom, and there was nothing that could be a clue to the mysteries Kate was investigating, Cessy motioned for Gordon to lead the way out.
The Maple Table sounded louder in the hallway than they had before. “I’m looking forward to today’s lunch at the diner, aren’t you?” said the cheery female.
Gordon combed his beard with his fingers. He tugged at a knot. “We’re pissing them off.”
“They’re talking about a town picnic.”
“They’ve got a dark motive for everything they do. I don’t trust them wanting everyone together in one place.”
“It’s about sharing a meal, that’s all,” said the grandpa.
“Are they responding to us?” Cessy looked around for bugs or cameras. “Are they watching us? These cult leaders come into your town, and you let them set up cameras everywhere?”
Gordon looked down the hallway. “You know they’re more than that. This isn’t Jonestown. They’re doing more than preaching. You’ve seen the embracing shadow, and the loosening holes.”
“Then who are we listening to? Nobody in Hamlin knows these voices?”
“Everybody knows them now. But no, it’s nobody we knew before. That’s why we need to leave. We’ve made them angry, talking too much about them.”
Gordon Wilder was Hamlin’s wealthiest man. When he spoke, people listened. Half of Jackson’s youthful hubris had been inherited from this powerful man.
But here Gordon was, begging like a lost little boy.
It hit home with Cessy. She related to having a cold blooded reputation, but feeling defenseless inside. And she was relieved to finally have an ally in Hamlin. “I’ve got a seat for you in my truck, but I’m not leaving until I find Kate.”
“There’s no time for that. They know we’re talking about them. They’ll be watching us. We need to leave before they take us.”
“Take us?” Cessy opened another bedroom door.
It had been converted to a small armory. Gun safes lined each wall. A reloading bench in front of the window that overlooked the front yard and the valley.
“Where are they going to take us? Is that where I’ll find Kate?”
“I don’t know where Kate is. But if they took her, that’s it. There’s no getting back from that.”
“Open the safes.”
Gordon turned the clicking combination locks, one by one, until all seven safes were open. Rifles, carbines, and AR-15s filled the first six. In the last safe was a gun that belonged mounted to a tank. Boxes of ammo took up the rest of the space in the safe.
“I’d appreciate you not mentioning this last one to Sheriff Miller.”
“Not a problem,” Cessy said. “Who’ve they taken already?”
“What?”
“Lockler, the Maple Table. They must have taken people, if you’re afraid of it.”
A small radio sat on the reloading bench. Gordon unplugged it. Inside the room, the voices of the Maple Table grew quieter.
“They take the vermin.”
“Like Jackson?”
Gordon nodded.
“Jackson died when a sinkhole swallowed the house,” said Cessy. “Is that what you mean by ‘taken?’ That they’ll kill us?”
“Nobody found Jackson’s body.” Gordon walked back out to the hallway.
Cessy followed. The radio broadcast was even louder than before. “It’s the only reasonable choice. Work together with your fellow citizens. Don’t abandon them.”
“Who else?” Cessy had to raise her voice over the Maple Table. “Who else did they kill?”
“Jackson’s dealers. Another cook.” Gordon opened the remaining three doors, one after the other. All spare bedrooms.
“The cook up on Rag Hill?”
Gordon nodded.
“I didn’t see any sinkholes up there. Just a lot of empty campers and tents.”
Gordon raised an eyebrow. “Nobody was up there? Not even Clyde Peterson? Skinny guy with a white beard? Lives in a camper and drives a red F-150?”
“I saw his truck. It’d been sitting long enough that a tire was flat. The camper was empty.”
Gordon managed to look even more dejected. He rubbed his eyes. “Clyde washed cars at my dealerships before his back gave out. Clyde wasn’t vermin.”
“There weren’t any sinkholes. Are you sure Lockler and the Maple Table-”
“Of course it was. Sinkholes was just the first way. So there’d be a natural reason for the folks who’d be too freaked out at first. After they got their foothold in, they didn’t have to play games like that anymore.”
“They kept taking people after the meth dealers?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“A handful? Dozens? Hundreds?” Cessy thought of the empty roads she’d driven, the dark houses, the shuttered businesses. Hamlin was a ghost town.
“I don’t know,” Gordon repeated.
Once Cessy got Kate to safety, she’d have to send the state troopers. Maybe the national guard. How many people were dead? She could wonder about that after she found Kate. “Does this house have an attic?”
“You’re not listening. We need to go. I answered your questions and put my own life at risk. Now you get me out of here.”
Cessy inspected the ceiling for an attic door, stuck her head back in each of the rooms. “Desperate people will offer you anything. Maybe you’re desperate because you’re afraid of these radio hosts, and whatever hypnotizing, hallucinating bullshit they’ve thrown at this town. Or maybe you’re desperate because my sister’s corpse is in your attic.”
Gordon’s face turned red as he stumbled over his words. “I’d never... I didn’t... the fact that you... fine! Look in the attic.”
He led her to the bathroom. Outside the door, another gray stain in the carpet, this one darker, almost black.
“Did you drop a cigarette?” asked Cessy.
“I don’t smoke. Could be old, Nora’s mascara before she left me.”
“I thought you divorced when Jackson was in middle school.”
Gordon tugged at his beard. “I mean
the most recent time. We took another shot at it a few times.”
That didn’t explain why there’d still be a stain in carpet that looked new. Although it was possible the upstairs was so rarely used that the new-looking carpet was actually old.
Cessy trusted her gut. Gordon was holding something back.
The attic pulldown ladder was in the bathroom ceiling. An odd location, but in this huge house, the bathroom was big enough to accommodate it.
Cessy made Gordon pull open the door and set up the ladder. It creaked and dust fell. The hosts of the Maple Table grew louder, as if their voices had been coming down through the ceiling this whole time. “Jesus says he wants us hot or cold, never lukewarm. Small town living is the same way. You gotta embrace it 100%, or things will go badly for you.”
Gordon cursed under his breath, looking up at the dark rectangle in the bathroom ceiling.
“Go on up,” Cessy ordered.
Gordon climbed. The steel ladder creaked under his weight. He mumbled curses. He looked down the ladder at her. “We should go.”
Cessy felt like a mother ordering a timid child upstairs to bed. “After I finish searching the house. Get up there.”
Gordon climbed another few steps. His head and shoulders disappeared into the attic’s darkness. “There’s a light up here somewhere.” He coughed. “It’s dusty. Haven’t been up here for years.”
He coughed harder. His gut and legs shook.
Cessy fumbled with her freehand to turn on the flashlight on her phone.
“It’s in my eyes,” Gordon groaned. “I’m coming down.”
He stepped down, missed a rung, fell the eight feet to the bathroom floor. His feet hit first, followed by his behind.
Tile cracked under the impact. “Shit. My back.” Gordon rolled to his side.
His face was coated in black and brown dust. It clung to his hair and beard. He reared back, focusing away the pain, revealing dust caked inside his nostrils.
Cessy pinched some dust off his shoulder. It was grainy coal dust, mixed with soft sawdust. Nothing that belonged in a middle aged man’s attic.
Any dust cloud thick enough to cover Gordon so quickly should have been heavy enough to sink down through the open attic door. But it stayed up there. It formed a barrier over the attic door.
Cessy didn’t know if she was hallucinating, or seeing something that she had no explanation for. This was harder to explain away than the things she’d seen on her own. Group hallucinations were rare.
But the black dust hung in the attic, refusing to drift down.
Gordon was right. She hadn’t stumbled into a Jonestown or Manson situation where people had been brainwashed by a charismatic, psychopathic conman. She hadn’t been slipped a hallucinogen. Lockler and the Maple Table were something harder to explain.
This dust that ignored physics was further evidence.
And now it clung to Gordon’s skin.
Cessy yanked him to his feet.
He shouted. “I did something to my back!”
“Get in the shower.” Cessy shoved him under the showerhead and turned on the water.
If tiny holes could sting, and rocks could swallow you, Cessy didn’t want to know what this dust could do.
She sighed relief as it washed off him, caught in muddy slurs on his t-shirt, then rinsed down to the shower floor and down the drain.
Gordon watched the slurry disappear into his plumbing. He turned off the water. “That’s coal dust, isn’t it?”
“Mixed with sawdust, looks like,” said Cessy. “Was this the bathroom where you saw the coal vein?”
He shook his head, winced at the movement. “That was downstairs.” He looked up at the attic door. “Let’s close that.”
“No,” said Cessy.
Panic appeared in Gordon’s eyes. “Why not?”
“What are you hiding up there?” It was a wild shot. Cessy was leaning towards Gordon being honestly ignorant.
He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t been up there in months. I told you.”
He wiped coal dust from his t-shirt, then onto a beige towel. It left a dark gray smear.
“Those stains in the carpet and on the stairs,” realized Cessy. “You’ve been up there recently.”
“It’s my attic,” breathed Gordon, but his wide eyes and slack jaw admitted his guilt. “Sometimes I go up there. Good place to get rid of stuff.”
“Getting rid of what?” Cessy took a step back. She aimed the shotgun at his leg. “You just jumped up the suspect list. You so much as flinch in my direction, and I’ll fill your knee with buckshot and bone shards. Then we’ll go out to your woodshop to see if any of your fancy saws can jog your memory about what happened to my sister.”
Gordon tried to cover his face with his hands. He twitched at a pain in his back. “I didn’t do nothing to Kate. That’s Rusty’s baby girl. I just lost my Jackson--how could I possibly make my best friend feel that same hurt? What kind of man would I be?”
Cessy didn’t buy it. “I’ve been a cop for fifteen years. I’m not moved by grown men crying. Get up that ladder. I’ll be right behind you. Step out of line, and you lose a knee.”
“We need to run. Get out of Hamlin!”
“You’re showing me what you were trying to ‘get rid of’ up there. And if it’s my sister’s body, I’ll hurt you in every way possible that will leave you capable of standing trial.”
Gordon cried. Fear, frustration, pain. He hunched over to keep his back from hurting. But he climbed the ladder. He held his shirt over his mouth as he disappeared into the coal dust.
Cessy kept the shotgun trained upward. She followed him up.
34
The attic was a black fog.
The coal grit and sawdust felt gritty on her exposed skin. She blinked it away as it assaulted her eyes. Exhaled forcefully to clear her nostrils.
The Maple Table’s voices were drawn out in the shadows. Sharp static--electrical interference--interrupted them. “Love your neighbor, even those who hate. Be patient with those who handle the vermin you’re not willing to handle.” The slathered-on compassion in their tones devolved into baby talk, a mockery of itself, then a burst of static and they were speaking normally again.
Her phone’s flashlight did little more than illuminate a patch of floating particles. Like high beams in a black blizzard.
With the phone in one hand and the shotgun in the other, she couldn’t hold her shirt over her mouth. She didn’t think you could get black lung from a few minutes of breathing coal dust, but this wasn’t a coal mine.
“Gordon?”
Stupid to let the man out of her sight, but what else could she have done with a climb into darkness?
“We’ll talk this afternoon at the diner about how we can make our town great again. And there’s no space for Negative Nancies.”
“Over here,” Gordon said loudly, to be heard over the Maple Table. “There’s a light with a cord somewhere.”
Cessy followed his voice.
“Found it.”
Cessy had a brief vision of the lightbulb exploding, the coal dust catching fire and incinerating them both in a flash.
She heard a metallic click, and a string of bare lightbulbs turned on, across the center of the attic.
The dust was so thick that the lights only revealed five feet in any direction. She saw the underside of the roof, but the floor of the attic was still in gritty shadow.
Gordon hunched to the side, hand on his back. His other hand kept his shirt over his mouth. “I thought I would’ve stumbled over them on the way over here.” He walked back towards the door, scraping his feet on the plywood floor. “When I left them up here, I didn’t walk two steps before I dropped them and got the hell out.”
“What are we looking for?” asked Cessy.
“Wires,” said Gordon.
“Are you joking?” she motioned to the fog enveloping them.
“Short lengths of cable.”
“Why would
you have that? Why are you looking for it now?”
“Because if you’re right about your sister breaking in here, and she’d actually figured out what’s what, then that’s what she was looking for.”
Cessy crouched into the darkness. She ran her hands along the plywood floor. Near the ladder, the floor was an empty walkway. Off to either side, disorganized boxes. “Where’d you leave them?”
Gordon’s voice came from a different location now. Somewhere to the left of the closest glow in the fog. “I was a little beside myself, I don’t remember the details. But I can tell you it was dark, and Lockler was screaming, so I didn’t take more than a step or two before dropping the wires, heading back downstairs, and then staying on the ground floor until you showed up.”
Cessy searched the floor around the door. “Did they roll away?”
“I’m telling you, if Kate broke in, she probably took them.”
Cessy’s throat started to itch. She didn’t fully buy his story, but it was too bizarre to have invented. Still, she needed to search the whole attic. “Stay by the door.”
“What? Where are you going?”
She walked from one lightbulb’s glow to the next. Coal dust swallowed her only to be banished by the next light. The boxes to either side ran up against the underside of the sloped roof. Cessy just wanted to check the ends of the attic, to make sure that Kate wasn’t hidden away up here.
Although, it’d been several days since when she came up here, according to Jackson. If her body was up here, even this fog couldn’t keep down the smell of decay.
Ahead, a lightbulb flickered. How many had she passed? Four? Five? This was a big house, but not that big.
The voices of the Maple Table slowed, stretched.
Cessy wiped dust from her jeans and spider webs from her hair. She felt like she was back in her parents’ crawlspace. If she walked another twenty feet forward, she’d know for sure that she’d gone farther in this attic than the size of the house should allow.
The crawlspace extended into the hill, though. Down there, she could tell herself it was a nonsensical excavation. If this attic kept going, there was no rational explanation.
Cessy stopped. She reached her flashlight forward.
