The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (8 page)

I noticed that the topmost blanket was the brown goat-hair throw I’d bought in Afghanistan and sent to my dad for Christmas. I’d wondered if he’d even appreciated it. I wondered if it had been on the bed already, or if my mom had put it on when she made it.

Next to a nasty ashtray full of mashed butts, there were a few books on the nightstand, some of them reference books about firearms or medieval warfare tactics, some of them novels. The windows were covered with blackout curtains that night-shifters put up to help them sleep during the day. A pewter candle-stand was also there, that seemed to be a statue of a voluptuous nude holding up a squat green candle.

There was a noticeable lack of fantasy collectibles in here. I figured Ed would’ve been the type to fill his house with plates and statuettes and figurines depicting various figures from movies and books. Ceramic wizards and dragons with pewter claws and staves, scrying the future through glass marbles meant to be crystal balls. Leggy painted faeries with child-like faces.

None of that was in here. To be honest, it could’ve been the nest of any average middle-aged man, if not for the lack of sports paraphernalia. If anything, it looked like he’d been a research nut.

His laptop sat on a white TV tray by the bed, a two-legged affair that stood on the floor or collapsed to sit across one’s lap. It was several years old, but immaculately kept. I got down and looked under the bed. There was nothing there except for a few old electronics boxes. I tapped them with the axe. They were empty.

I stood up, confused. I knew I’d heard something in here earlier.
Something
had come into the house, through the back door. I just knew it.

I turned to leave and saw the closet door on the other side of a folded-up card table and a vacuum cleaner. I picked up the vacuum and moved it, slid the table out of the way, and opened the closet door.

Jackets, sweaters, and other winter clothes hung there, reeking of years and boric acid. Tweed, thermals, leather, the thick cotton of sweatshirts, an aging quilt I remembered seeing on my parents’ bed when I was a kid. I shuffled through them, though at this point I wasn’t sure what I was looking for anymore.

Was I looking for an intruder, or something else? Was I looking for something that could connect me to my father? I shoved a heavy coat aside and caught a glimpse of a goatish horn, and snarling teeth in a pink face.

A hand took hold of my wrist, a claw wrapped in leather, with black, hook-like talons.

Terrifying yellow eyes blazed at me.

Normand stumbled across the vast Emerald Desert, his mouth a puckered, dry pit full of sticky teeth and a leather tongue. The flaky, glittering dust-sand made an epic chore of breathing. It got into his eyes a dozen times and cut his whites, irritated him beyond belief. After an hour of trying to watch where he was going, he couldn’t take it anymore. He closed his eyes, pulled his hat down over them, and walked blind.

They had double-crossed him. The sons of bitches. They’d ran with the whole take and left him for the Kingsmen. He still couldn’t believe he’d escaped with nary a scratch. It had been a nasty chase.

He stepped on a rock the size of his head and stumbled, pitching headfirst down a steep slope of shifting green sand. When he finally rolled to a stop at the bottom, Normand rested for a moment, upside-down and exhausted, his feet pointed up the hill. The first thing he did was check his droplegs to see if his father’s gun was still there.

—The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 3 “The Rope and the Riddle”

Crazy Pills

H
ALFWAY DOWN THE STAIRS, I
slipped and went head over heels, tumbling the last seven steps and sprawling in a stunned heap on the wood floor. I knew I’d be a wreck in the morning, but at the moment, my adrenaline made me invincible.

I shoved the front door open and sprinted into the front yard. When I got to the Topaz I ran around to the driver’s side and slid in the wet grass, coming down hard on my left shoulder.

I’m still amazed that I never fell on the knife.

I wrenched the door open and crammed myself into the car, cranked it, threw it into Reverse, and did a J-turn in the driveway, spinning out in the mud and flinging gravel all over the Nova and into the trees. I came out of the driveway and into the highway going sideways, and almost lost control of the car.

I pulled out my cellphone, trying to keep from doing a header into a culvert. I could hear the mud clattering against the car’s undercarriage. I was thumbing through my contacts before I realized I had no idea who to call. Who would believe me? Who would care? Who could do anything about it?

I was going seventy-eight miles an hour. I took my foot off the accelerator as my heart-rate sank toward normal. What the hell was in that closet?
What the hell grabbed me?

I shook my shirt sleeve down and turned on the dome light with a
click
to look at my wrist.

There was nothing on it—no slime, no cuts, no bruises, no burns. I glanced into the back seat, turned the light off, and continued driving.

The car slowed to an acceptable speed and I could feel my grip on the steering wheel relaxing. It occurred to me that I was no longer carrying the hatchet. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered where I’d left it. I found the carving knife in my pocket and tossed it into the passenger seat.

I came to the end of the road, a T-junction in the middle of nowhere, and slowed to a halt, my headlights illuminating a bright yellow bidirectional sign across the road.

I put the car in park and sat there for a moment, trying to calm myself and gather my thoughts. The red STOP octagon to my right wobbled in the wind. The dark forest surrounded me with ominous shadows, shivering limbs that looked like hands out of the corner of my eye. I watched the woods for unnatural movement.

Maybe it was someone trying to mess with me.

Who would do that?

Maybe it was one of the kids that had come to town for my dad’s funeral.

But how had they gotten into the house?

They’d waited until I’d unlocked the doors to sneak in.

How did they know I was coming?

They didn’t.

Maybe they were looking for a way in when I got there, and waited until the door was open. Then it hit me that I’d left all the doors unlocked. Dammit!

I looked into the rearview mirror, then peered over my shoulder. I could see the road behind me and the dead grass around the asphalt, limned in the red of my tail lights. There was no devil chasing down the car, no cloven-hoofed demon pursuing me. I wondered if it were safe to go back to the house.

To hell with that.

I pulled up the contact list on my phone again and rang Sawyer Winton. I got his voice mail. “Hey. This is Ross. I need to talk to you. Please call me back.”

_______

I was sitting in the parking lot of a gas station drinking a beer when Sawyer called me back. As he picked up, I could hear uproarious laughter in the background. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Was that you at my father’s house?” I asked, skipping any pretense.

“Huh?” Sawyer said. “I was up there a couple days ago with Noreen and Judith, helping your mom clean. Is that what you mean?”

“Helping my mom clean?”

“Yeah. We’d went to Mrs. Brigham looking for you—to ask you about the petition—but she told us you weren’t in town yet. Then she told us that she had to go, that she had work to do, and when we asked about it, she told us she was going to your dad’s house to clean, so we offered to help.”

“Oh. Anyway, I was just up there. I went up there to get something. Something...“ I paused to put the next part together in my head. “Something happened. I saw something. I don’t know what it was. I thought it might have been you or maybe one of the others.”

“Not sure I understand, Chief.”

“There was...I was out back in the woodshed and saw someone go into the house. I went inside to look and found something hiding in one of the bedroom closets. I don’t know what the hell it was. I thought it might have been one of you in some kind of costume. It scared the hell out of me. I swear on...I swear it looked like a—like a
demon
.”

I struggled to illustrate my point, shaking my other fist, pressing the phone to my temple. “Like Satan or something. I ran right out of there and jumped in the car and hauled ass.”

Sawyer sounded either unimpressed or as if he were talking to a mental patient. “A...demon?”

“Please don’t patronize me,” I said. “It touched me,
nnnngh!
It reached out of the closet and grabbed my wrist! It had these—claws, like a goddamned hawk. Black talons. Skin, raw pink, like a nasty sunburn. It had short little horns, and when I saw it, it was looking at me, with these bright yellow eyes, like a cat’s eyes!”

“Hey, calm down, man,” said the voice on the phone. “Nobody’s talkin’ white jackets just yet, okay? We’re on the same side, here.”

“I need to know, and I need to know right now. Was that you or somebody you might know, Sawyer? Because if it was, I swear on a stack of Bibles that if it was one of you, I’m going to my motel room right now and I’m going to burn every box of my dad’s notes in there. You will not see—”

“Woah!” Sawyer interrupted, “Let’s not get crazy here. It wasn’t me, Mr. Brigham.”

“Don’t call me Mr. Brigham, Sawyer,” I reminded him, my voice exasperated, “We’re almost the same age.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Look, Ross. Are you sure you saw what you think you saw? Maybe some kind of animal got into the house and you mistook it for something else. It was dark, I’m sure, and I’ll bet you’ve had a long day. And maybe—maybe your dad’s death is finally hitting you. I know when my grandmother died a couple years ago I didn’t cry at all. I thought something was wrong with me.

“All I could do was wander around at the funeral making sure my family was okay. I thought I was some kind of robot, but I guess death hits everybody differently. I was screwed up for a couple weeks after that. I thought I actually saw her ghost at one point.”

“Maybe you’re right about my emotions, or whatever,
but I know what I saw.
I know what
reached out of the closet
and
grabbed me
.”

“I believe you, just don’t hurt me.”

I snorted at that one. “So I guess we’re both in agreement that I’m crazy.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Okay. Look. Uhhh—all right, so I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything, man.”

“I ran off and left all the doors unlocked. If I’m going back to that house to rectify that, I need backup. I need a wingman.”

“Whatever you saw really scared you, didn’t it? Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. Sawyer, I was holding an axe and I had a knife in my pocket when I opened that closet door. I’m sitting at the Kangaroo down the road, and I have no idea where the axe is, and I’m sitting here drinking a beer. I hate beer.”

“I like beer. Beer is good. Especially craft beer. There’s this place near where my brother lives that has
peanut butter beer.
Ain’t that righteous?”

“Totally tubular. Can you come out here or not?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be down there in a minute. The convenience store down the road from your dad’s house, right?”

“Yep. And bring a weapon if you have one.”

_______

The glass bottle banged into the inside of the dumpster as I trashed it, Sawyer’s headlights washing across me like surf-crash. He was driving a red 1988 Toyota 4-Runner with the hardtop shell off, and it was meticulously clean. As he got close, he turned down the heavy metal he’d been listening to at rocket-engine volume.

“We’ll take the Yota,” he said as I got in. “It’s got a little more power if we need to make a quick getaway. That Ford you’re driving looks a little...depressed. And that leopard-print furry steering wheel. Woof.”

“Hey, don’t talk about Agnes like that,” I said, glancing at my boxy, cream-colored Mercury Topaz.