Draw the Dark (20 page)

Why? That was the question. Was it because I was giving up on finding my mother? Searching my feelings, I decided this wasn’t quite true. I loved my mother . . . no, that’s not quite accurate. I mean, how can you love a three-year-old’s
memory
of a mother?

As I lay there trying to imagine what Dr. Rainier might say, I realized one change in me. For once, I was interested in the world. There were things
happening
out here that were fascinating and new and very, very different.

I mean, well, for one thing, I kind of had a friend. Maybe Sarah had always been there—looking back on it now, I think that’s probably true—but I either had never allowed myself to think of her that way or been so caught up in seeing through my mom’s eyes that I was blind to what was right in front of me.

For another thing, Winter’s forgotten past had a hold on me. I wanted to find out more. I mean, if you discovered that German PWs and maybe some Nazis had lived in your town and might be mixed up in a murder, wouldn’t you be a little, well, obsessed too?

Most of all, I allowed myself to think that maybe all of this was happening along the lines of some hidden design. You want to say higher power, go ahead; I don’t mind. I’m not sure where I come down on the subject of God and all that, but we were all connected in some way: me, Sarah, Uncle Hank and Dr. Rainier, and David Witek. I had always been different and had abilities I shied away from to protect the few people who cared about me—just Uncle Hank now. The guilt I lived with about Aunt Jean . . . I didn’t know how it would help Uncle Hank to know what had really happened.

Perhaps David was the catalyst. Or maybe my life had been a journey to this point in time, a road I’d been traveling without understanding the destination.

Or it could just be a bunch of crap.

As freaked out as I was about what was happening, I wanted more. I wanted to find out what had happened in that barn. David was either trying to tell me or his brain had gotten just messed up enough that he’d somehow glommed on to me or our brains had meshed their wavelengths . . . something.

But here was the undeniable fact: David Witek was going to die. His brain was crapping out.... So I should be surprised that I’m not getting as many messages in the night? What if his brain had up and quit? So what I had could be all I was going to get from David?

That completely sucked.

“I’m seventeen.” We were at the table, and I splashed more coffee into my mug. “You can’t protect me forever. I appreciate it, but I should drive myself out. You
know
where I’m going to be. Nothing’s going to happen to me while I’m there.”

Uncle Hank’s face darkened. “Accidents happen in shops all the time. Pneumatic lifts fail, cars take a tumble....”

“I won’t be in the shop. They’re not gonna want me painting the motorcycle in there.” I didn’t strictly know that, never having painted a motorcycle in my life. “It’s important I do this on my own. Soon I’ll be gone, either at college or . . . well, you know, at college. I’ll have to manage on my own, and that means fighting my own fights, and there isn’t going to
be
a fight anyway. Did your dad take you everywhere just because he was worried you’d be a target?”

“I was different.”

“You mean, not everyone thought you were weird.”

Uncle Hank held my gaze a long moment. “Damn it, you know what I’m saying. Don’t twist this around to be my fault.”

I was sorry, but I held my ground. “I’m not blaming you. I am who I am. I’ve got to live in my own skin. You can’t live my life for me. When Aunt Jean was alive, you always said that the most important thing in life was growing into being the best man I could be.” It was a cheap shot, and I knew it as soon as I saw the pain cross his face, but I pressed on: “Well, I’m trying and this is one step, and you got to let me take it, no one looking over my shoulder to make sure I don’t scrape my knees if I fall.”

The muscles in Uncle Hank’s jaw jumped, and I thought he’d say no, but then something seemed to bleed out of him like the air whooshing out of a balloon. His shoulders sagged, and he sighed. “Oh Christian, believe me, when you fall, it’s going to hurt a lot more than that.”

But he let me go to Dekker’s alone.

The shop was at the end of an old strip mall of about four stores, all of them out of business. Across the road was a combination gas station-country store that sold bait and fishing licenses. Next to that was a crummy little bar that did a pretty good business during the fishing and hunting seasons and served only the locals who live out this way the rest of the year. Actually, I heard that the bar did really well because it was one of those places you could do things you might not want other people to see. Fifteen miles is a long way from Winter.

There was a rusting pickup perched on blocks in the front of the shop and about ten other junkers scattered on dead weeds off to one side. A pile of tires was humped alongside, and I saw similar piles of just about any kind of car junk you could think of: rearviews, hubcaps. There was even a pile of door handles.

Dekker’s father wandered out of the shop as I crunched in and parked the truck. He wore a grimy long-sleeved shirt and stained coveralls that had probably been blue but were now a splotchy steel gray. A soiled red kerchief was loosely knotted around his neck, and as I pushed out of the truck, he jerked off the kerchief and began wiping engine grease from his fingers.

“What, no escort?” He smiled through a wild growth of red beard going smudgy gray at the corners of his lips and revealed a mouthful of stained teeth going black at the gum line. “Sheriff let his little
neffyou
outta his sight?”

“Hello, Mr. Dekker.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands, and he didn’t seem to be in the mood to shake, so I stuffed them into the front pockets of my jeans. My breath fogged in the cold morning air, but that wasn’t why I shivered. Behind Mr. Dekker, I could see two other men in coveralls talking across the engine block of an old Chevrolet wagon, its hood yawning open. Then one said something to the other, and they turned to stare out at us too. I said to Mr. Dekker, “Uh, I’m here to take care of Karl’s motorcycle. Is he, uh, is he here?”

“Nope. Still waiting on him to get done with his shift at the foundry. He’ll be along soon.”

“Okay. Well, I can get started.”

“Yeah.” Mr. Dekker didn’t move, though. Just wiped his fingers and then threaded the kerchief back around his neck and knotted it in place. His hands were large as shovels. Then he jerked his head toward the shop. “Around back.”

I followed him down a gravel path overgrown with weeds. At the back of the shop was a kind of shed that reminded me of a hiker’s shelter: enclosed on three sides, open on one, with a slanting roof. Dekker’s bike was there, and I was startled to see that the body had already been painted a bright glossy black. To the right of the bike, three boards had been set up between two sawhorses. On top of the boards was an array of small cans of acrylic paint, a set of aluminum four-ounce cups, and a spray gun that looked a little like the kind you used on a hose to water your garden. A face mask, like the kind you use for spraying pesticides, sat alongside a carton of latex gloves. On the ground was a boxy black metal air compressor and a hose snaking to the spray gun.

Dekker read my confusion. “Karl decided to paint the body hisself. What he wants you to do is some nice detail work, seeing as how you’re such a good artist and all.”

“Detail work? I don’t . . .”

Mr. Dekker broke in. “Airbrushing. Don’t tell me you never heard of it.” He picked up the steel spray gun and rattled off the various parts, a dizzying array of jargon: air caps, fluid nozzles, fluid adjusting knob. Then he said, “The thing about this is it’s gravity-fed; you put the paint in one of these cups that you’ve screwed on the side, and that means you can tilt the gun sideways and do detail work underneath if you need to. But once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty much point and shoot.” He showed me how to mount the fluid cup, adjust the volume of fluid being fed into the spray gun, and how to manage the airflow. He finished by saying, “You’re a smart boy, an artist, right? You’ll get the hang of it.”

I eyed the spray gun and paints dubiously. “What does he want me to paint?”

“Well, I don’t think he knows. Flames, maybe, they’re always nice.” He laughed and up close, his breath smelled of rot and cigarette smoke. “Of course, he don’t like it, you can always come back now, can’t you?”

I stood there a couple of seconds, staring at the airbrush and paints. I thought that he might be right; I did have a knack, and I knew the theory of airbrush painting, and it couldn’t be that tough. But there was something, well,
soul-less
in a spray gun, like I was getting ready to do battle rather than create.

I cranked my head around to see if Mr. Dekker was watching. He wasn’t. This shed or lean-to or whatever was a good forty yards away from the main shop, and I guess Mr. Dekker figured I wasn’t going anywhere. Or maybe he wanted to save something for his kid to do—you know, beat the crap out of me or something.

My hand snaked around to my hip pocket, and I pulled out Mr. Witek’s canvas roll of brushes. Yeah, I’d brought them. Why? Heck if I know. But that morning, just as I left my room, I pulled open the drawer where I’d been storing them ever since the night that door reappeared on my wall, and I fished them out. I just had this feeling that I ought to bring them along. Now I knew why.

The pouch of old brushes felt natural and right in my hands, and a weird little charge shivered up my arms and brought out the hackles on my neck, like an electric current. Like I was making some kind of connection.

But what to paint? I didn’t know, and then I thought:
Draw, just think of Dekker and then draw. . . .
I picked out a size 2 flat, thinking that I would use that to sketch a quick outline in white, then maybe yellow for the undercoat to make the top coat of colors really pop—and red.... There should be a lot of red because red was the color of blood, and Dekker was all about blood and violence and the stuff of darkness and nightmares and ...