Poison Tongue (11 page)

Monroe caught me staring at Billy and said, “My aunt was right—the devil lives inside my soul.”

I began to shake. The blood, the snake, the look in his eyes—it was all too close to the swamp, to the feeling I had when its purple haze swirled around me and threatened to strangle the air from my lungs.

Monroe snatched his hands back, wiped them on his jeans. He looked over his shoulder at Billy, who continued to roll around on the floor.

The sheriff and two other uniformed officers showed up. All the lights in the bar were immediately turned on, and everyone was hustled outside. Monroe helped me to stand up, carefully, acting as though I was as breakable as an eggshell. I wanted to ask him if he was all right, but he was torn away from me in the small crowd.

The night was still hot, but the air felt cold against my shivering body.

“You okay, kid?” the sheriff asked.

I sat on the small porch attached to the front of the bar. My arms were crossed over my chest, my gaze focused intently on a trampled weed on the ground.

When I looked up at him, he gave me an uneasy smile. The sheriff’s hat cast a shadow across his face, but I still recognized him. We’d gone to the same school, the only school in the area. Everyone called him Dawson, but I thought I heard from someone once that it was his last name.

The khaki fabric of his uniform strained across his broad shoulders. His clean-shaven jawline was chiseled and angular, emphasized by the dramatic shadows cast from the bright streetlights. A few loose strands of sandy brown hair peaked out from beneath the brim of his hat. He kept his hands on his belt buckle as he looked at me—such a traditional
cop
way of standing—which made him look even taller than he already was.

I remembered the day he became sheriff of our little town of Malcome. Sheriff Wilson retired and had his pick of four other men, three of whom he liked but publicly always deemed incompetent. I’d served them a few times at the diner, and Sheriff Wilson seemed to like razzing all of them. When Dawson had been named Malcome’s new sheriff, a few people muttered about him being too green behind the ears. As far as I knew, and that wasn’t very far, he seemed like he was doing a fine job, not that there were too many rowdy people in Malcome. Until now.

“I’m all right, Sheriff.” My gaze fell back down to a pebble covered in dried mud.

“Wanna tell me what happened here?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him put his hands on his hips.

“There was a fight,” I said simply.

He barked out a laugh. It rang through the quiet night air like the snapping of a bone. “Yeah, I could see that. The place looks like an animal was slaughtered in there.”

“Maybe one was.”

“Well that’s a nasty thing to say.” Sheriff Dawson paused for a beat. “You mean that Poirier kid?”

I almost smiled. Something about cops calling everyone
kid
even when he and Monroe were likely close in age. “No, it ain’t his fault. He didn’t start it.”

“Well, he sure as hell finished it. Billy’s gonna be eating out of a straw for the next month. That’s not to say he probably doesn’t deserve it.”

Sheriff Dawson gave me an awkward, lopsided smile. His slate gray eyes crinkled at the corners, and you’d have to be a blind man or a straight man not to notice. I was neither.

But, because my heart was treacherous and beat only for things deep, dark, and mean, my thoughts focused on Monroe. “Is he all right?” I asked. “Monroe?”

“Yeah, he’s all right. Barely a scratch on him. It’s a miracle he’s walking out of that bar in one piece, let alone lookin’ like he just took a nice little stroll through a park.” Sheriff Dawson flicked the brim of his hat as he turned to look toward Monroe. Monroe’s arms were pulled behind his back, his legs spread wide, his chest flat against the hood of the sheriff’s car. He looked natural there, as if he’d been in that exact position a million times before. He probably had.

Two uniformed officers stood right behind him, one with their eye on Monroe’s back, the other turned toward the owner of the hardware store, jotting down notes on a pad of paper. Billy and one of the other men Monroe had been in the fight with leaned against the brick side of the bar, near the front door.

“So, what set ’em off?” the sheriff asked. “The mob of wild animals, I mean. Besides all the liquor in their systems.”

I shrugged. “You know, Sheriff. Rumors. Prejudice.”

He sighed. “The amount of folks I’ve had down at the station complaining about Poirier is unjust. I don’t want him in Malcome any more than the next man, simply because of the amount of paperwork I’ve had to do filing complaints about him.”

I laughed and he smiled.

“Your bark is worse than your bite, I see,” he said.

My gaze flickered back over to Monroe. He was looking at us now, Sheriff Dawson and me. The black snake was wrapped around his throat, its long tail trailing down his back inside his shirt.

“Is that it?” I stood.

His eyes focused on the small cuts along my arms. “You need to go see the doctor?”

I dropped my arms down to my sides. “No. It ain’t that bad.”

“Then you can go. We’re finishing up here, just getting a few statements. Most folks say Poirier wasn’t the one to start the fight. A few others say you tried to break it up.”

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Yeah, well, some of the folks think otherwise. When people think you’re the devil, they think you’re doing something wrong just by breathing.”

“Do you think he’s the devil?”

“To tell you the truth, I ain’t really sure what he is. All I know is that he must’ve lost his mind on Billy. I’ve never seen one man take down three grown men in a fight. And I sure as hell have never seen a person snap the way folks say he did. They said it was like a light switch.”

“There was a lot of blood,” I said quietly, absently.

“Wonder what would make a man snap like that.”

“Don’t think he’s had an easy life, Sheriff.” For some reason I found myself defending Monroe’s actions. “Especially not since moving back to Malcome. Most folks would’ve done the same thing in his place. He’s just lucky he could hold his own.”

“His own and then some, I’d say.”

Sheriff Dawson stared at the hood of the car Monroe was plastered against. He had a soul that was different from others I’d seen. It was calm, fresh, stable. It reminded me of the mountains, their tops covered in snow. Frosty, but tolerant. Immoveable. I wondered what it would take to make a man like the sheriff snap—if that was even possible.

“Do you need a statement from me?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Nah. If we do, I’ll stop by tomorrow. We’re gonna take these boys down to the station and get their statements and then send ’em on their way. I don’t think anyone is going to be pressing charges, though.”

One of the officers opened the back door of the police cruiser and shoved Monroe inside, slamming it behind him. He climbed into the front seat and started the engine.

Dawson sighed. “It’s gonna be a long night. You should go home and get some sleep.”

I hesitated for a moment, my gaze locked on the police car housing Monroe.

“Really,” Dawson pressed. “Nothin’ else you can do tonight. He’ll be home by the morning.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“Take care of yourself, Levi.”

I walked home slowly, my head and heart lost in thought. The darkness I’d seen in Monroe was growing, expanding quickly, consuming him. He had snapped. He’d snapped completely and totally, turning into the beast people claimed him to be.

I closed my eyes that night wondering if Monroe Poirier even had a soul worth saving.

Chapter 7

A WEEK
later I dreamed of flames.

I stood in the middle of a dark space. I could see nothing around me but the flames crawling up the wooden walls, their yellow and orange and red hues flickering and dancing. They lit the small space. The smell of bristle and old, wet wood burning pressed against my senses. A taste on my tongue of fire and cedar. And the air was smoky, like the soot from a fireplace had been tossed up into the air and left to settle there.

The flames crawled closer and closer, reaching for me. It hadn’t struck me that I should be afraid of them—that they could burn me and drown me in their hot depths.

I reached toward the flame as they danced and twirled in front of my eyes. Just as my fingers were about to touch the heat, something thick and black and freezing cold wrapped around my neck. Two black eyes stared at me as the black mass slithered and crept closer. Its scales cut my soft flesh beneath them. Its body was so cold, it hurt to touch.

“You don’t belong here,” I said to the snake calmly, mindlessly.

It hissed.

The black snake had no place in my dream of warm fires and consuming flames. I wanted to keep them separate from one another, far apart so that the two should never meet. And yet here it was, invading my dream, my most private moments, staring at me like there was something I should know.

Intending to pull it off my arm, I wrapped my other hand around its body. Useless. It acted as though I hadn’t even touched it, as though my hand was made of clouds and dust.

The flames on the floorboards pulled themselves closer. The heat beat against my lightly clothed legs. The light from the fire only seemed to make the snake impossibly darker, casting shadows on it that couldn’t be real.

Suddenly there was a burst of light. The flames spread wildly, covering everything, the darkness, illuminating all around me. The heat tickled first, and then began to sear.

I screamed.

Huge hands grabbed my arms. I was being pulled up, out of the flames, as though I’d been seated in a deep pit filled with gasoline.

“Levi!”

Ward stood in front of me, his hands on my arms, his grip painfully tight.

“Levi,” Ward’s voice was raw. “Are you all right? You were screaming about a fire.”

I could still feel the heat lingering on my skin.

I looked around, disoriented. My room was deeply shadowed, moonlight pouring in from the window next to my bed.

“There’s a fire,” I croaked. I began coughing. My throat was raw, as though I’d breathed in real smoke.

“Where?” Ward stood up and looked around the room. “I do not see a fire.”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes. “But I dreamed that there was a fire. It was so real. And that dark creature from the swamp was there, coiling around me.”

“What happened?” my mother asked. We both turned to look at her standing in the doorway. She wore a long, white nightgown, with a shorter blue dressing gown on top. Her eyes focused up on the ceiling.

“Mama.” I stood. I went to her, took her hands in my own. “I’m sorry, Mama. Just a nightmare.”

The frown on her face deepened. “Nightmares are as real to you as the earth, Levi. What did you see?”

“A fire. It was consuming me. I felt it. It was so hot, I could feel it as it began to burn my skin.”

Mama covered her mouth and I immediately felt terrible for telling her. She wasn’t a delicate woman by any means, but she’d become more fragile and more worried since her… accident. And maybe it wasn’t only her that had changed. Maybe I’d changed too. I kept some things from her I never would have before, and constantly worried that I’d say or do something to upset her.

“There is no fire in here, Levi,” Ward said.

A moment of silence passed between us.

But that moment was shattered quickly by the unmistakable sound of a dog barking. The hound barked and howled wildly, its cries seeming to echo through my tiny room.

I strode to the window next to my bed. Below, running frantically back and forth, stirred Monroe’s dog, Coin. He whined as he paced back and forth, looking right up into my bedroom window.

“The dog?” Ward asked.

“Something’s wrong.” My hands gripping the curtains tightly. “I need to go to the Poirier house.”

I hadn’t seen Monroe since the night of the brawl at Whiskey’s, but he’d still been the leading role in most of my thoughts throughout the week. The day after the fight, I’d called into the police station to make sure Monroe had got out safely. Sheriff Dawson told me Monroe had left the police station early that morning with little more than a few scratches on him.

“I will come with you.” Ward had already turned and was making his way to the door.

My mama stood in the doorway. It was evident by her hesitation to move out of the doorway that she didn’t want me to leave. Gently I took her hand in mine and squeezed. This was one of the times when I truly wished my mama could see my face. Then she’d know that I had to leave, that this wasn’t a want, but a need.

“Mama,” I pleaded. “I have to go.”

After a brief pause, she nodded, then moved aside as Ward passed her. “Be careful, Levi. I can tell something ain’t right.”

“I always am, Mama. And I’ll have Ward with me.”

She nodded, looking uncertain, but turned and left.

I pulled off my pajama bottoms, yanked on a pair of jeans, and darted out of my room. Ward waited for me at the bottom of the staircase.

The metal frame of the front door clanked and rattled as I shoved it open. The night air was warm and thick. A big yellow moon sat in the sky, watching. Chirping birds were barely heard over the sound of small feet pattering toward us.

Coin stopped, eyeing Ward uneasily. But, seemingly deciding he was the lesser of two evils, Coin barked once, spun, and darted off into the distance. I didn’t have to watch him run to know he was headed back home to the Poirier house.

The Poirier house rose as a dark beacon in the night, the center of a pool of quicksand, the sun in the sky that kept all the planets dancing around it. It stood like a tall tower that could be seen over the tops of trees and hills and mountains.

I took off behind Coin, Ward dashing close beside me. We traveled along the dirt around the edge of the town. My sneakers dug into the hard dirt and gravel. Tall weeds brushed against my ankles. There were no houses around this side of the town, just fields and dirt and plants that wished there was enough rain to grow.