The Winslow Incident (23 page)

But he didn’t want to think about
that. Really, he didn’t want to think about anything. Not even Hazel. Because
they’d had that fight.

Was that today?
he marveled.

No, yesterday.

It’d been a long two days.

Freakishly long.
And freakishly hot.

Where have I been?
he wondered. He’d taken off his shirt somewhere and lost
it, but managed to hold onto the shades he’d swiped from Clemshaw Mercantile.

Now he could
hear
the sun
beating down on their heads where they stood on the sidewalk in front of the
Mercantile. And Tanner was saying something about a bucket full of bull guts in
the barn and cows eating marigolds and jimsonweed.

Sean couldn’t remember the last
time he’d eaten. It didn’t matter—he wasn’t hungry. Maybe he’d never eat
again.
That’d be interesting.

He tried to focus back on Tanner
but the picture kept shifting.
Hold still
, he thought.

Then Sean heard himself talking:
“I tried to tell him. I tried and Melanie knew I was trying, not making time
with her—even if she is pretty—while he was on the pot and I was
already late with deliveries. But he wouldn’t listen. You are
way
behind
schedule, mister! Violet and Daisy eat your eggs! Screw.
Him!
” He felt
as though his brain had just barfed.

“Tell him what?” Tanner’s mouth
seemed gigantic, like he could swallow Sean’s head whole if he wanted to.

So Sean stepped back from him.

The mouth opened wide again. “Tell
him what?”

Sean searched his mind for what
that question could possibly mean. “What?”

“
What
, you dumbfuck?”

“It smelled good.”

“What did?”

“The bacon.”

Tanner gave him a strange look.

“Don’t say anything to anybody he
said.”

Tanner looked even more perplexed.

“I should’ve tried harder?” Sean
didn’t actually want the answer.

“Let’s split, man.”

“Can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“People are sick.”

“So?”

“It’s worse than food poisoning.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Worse than mayo got left out too
long in the sun.”

“All the more reason to split.”

“Gonna get sicker.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Gray and sticky. Tasted okay but
it wasn’t okay. Don’t say anything to anybody.”

“You are completely fucked up, Adair.
What about you, juicy fruit? Wanna go for a ride?”

Suddenly Patience was right there.
Has she been here the whole time?
Sean had no idea. Her hair was piled
up on top of her head and she was wearing practically nothing; her collarbone
looked exposed and fragile.
Like little bird bones
, he thought.

She stared at him with dark eyes, stared
at him as though she knew what he was thinking.

You
are
beautiful, Sean
thought. Or maybe he said it out loud; he wasn’t sure.

He leaned closer to Patience, to
get a better look because the picture of her kept shifting too. But then Tanner’s
sudden laughter was so high pitched and loud in Sean’s ear that he became
annoyed and pulled back.

“I’m going ghost hunting,” he
informed Patience. “See you at the merry-go-round.” And above the calamitous
sound he created pounding away from them down the wood plank sidewalk, he
called back to her, “Don’t eat all the candy!”

What seemed like a lot later (but
who really knew?) he sat against a wrought iron fence inside the church
cemetery. His head hung down to his chest like a man defeated. He couldn’t
remember whose headstone he was looking for. And if he couldn’t remember, he
would lose the ghost hunt. And if he lost the ghost hunt, then he could never
go back to the park. And then he’d never see Hazel again.

But something else was bothering
him.

There are a lot of things
bothering me
, he thought.

Deciding it best to concentrate on
one thing at a time, he rose and trudged back up the hill to look over the
grave markers once more. He started with the oldest headstone first: Sadie
Mathers’ grave, shaded beneath the canopy of an enormous oak.

Not
her
, Sean thought and moved to the next
granite marker.

Sterling
Mathers ~ 1892

Tears gather
upon the grave

of one sent young to slumber

Not him.

Sean stood for a moment, hanging
onto a low, scraggly oak branch.
Who am I looking for?

At last it came to him.

Hawkin Rhone.

So this wasn’t the right place at
all. Where was that?

Sean probed his memory but it was
slow going because his head still felt thick. It would come to him. It had to.

Hustling out of the church
cemetery, he tried to remember all the places in Winslow that were good for
ghost hunting.

Because he needed to talk to
Hawkin Rhone right away.

About poison.

Z
achary Rhone wandered between rows of trees, realizing
that their branches had grown skinny and mean. Nobody wanted to tend the
orchard.
Look at it.
Zachary swallowed in disgust. Deep down, he knew he
shouldn’t be hanging around out here.

The orchard makes people do
things.
A shudder snaked along his spine.

Out of the corner of his eye, he
caught movement down by his house. Tendrils of dread wrapped around his heart.
The
wolf is back
, he decided, and the tendrils tightened their grip.

He needed to get down there. He
needed to protect his wife.

But leaving the orchard proved
difficult; the trees were lonely and loath to let him go.

When at last he broke free, he
sprinted downhill, half-blinded by sunlight, wholly mad he had begun to
suspect, running and tripping and falling his way to her.

In the backyard next to the
clothesline, Melanie writhed and thrashed in dandelion-infested grass. Zachary
raced toward his wife only to skid to a dead stop five feet away.

She wore her favorite sundress,
the blue one that matched her eyes.

Snakes slithered in and out of her
mouth.

Revulsion poured through Zachary.
“Melanie—don’t look at them,” was all he could manage, as if the godless
creatures would leave his sight if only
she
would close
her
eyes
.

Yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away
either and he watched as she convulsed, bluest eyes rolling back into her head,
red hair drenched in sweat, soft hands clutching her throat.

Then he understood:
She can’t
breathe.

On the heels of horror arrived
panic.
They’re choking her!

He dashed to the chopping block
next to the bakery, hesitating only a moment before he wrested the ax from the
stump and rushed back to where his sweet Melanie lay.

She reached up toward him, pale
fingers splayed. “Help me,” he thought he heard her say.

Panting hard, he stood spellbound
while his lungs constricted until he felt as though he were suffocating too. He
wanted to look away, the snakes were that obscene, but he could not—he
had to save his wife.

When he raised the ax above his
head, her eyes went wide, favoring him with oceans of blue.

I
f she hadn’t had to walk back into town, Hazel
would have never found her father. But her right elbow was shattered and the
Yamaha’s front forks were bent, so riding the bike was no longer an option. Had
it been, she wouldn’t have taken this shortcut and run into her dad’s Jeep
parked in the middle of the fire road. Nowhere to be seen, she figured he must
be in the forest.

Usually the woods were inviting
this time of morning, the sun lighting the pines on high, leaving the trails in
shade. Only now things felt spooky and she was hesitant to leave the bright,
open fire road for the dark of the trees. After all, there’d been those
snapping sounds in the woods around Three Fools Creek Sunday afternoon. Loud
snapping sounds.

Stop being so stupid.
She forced herself to plunge into the woods.

As she plodded along the trail,
the pain in her arm forced her to relive the impossible things that had
happened at Doc Simmons’ place. After she had come to on Loop-Loop Road, the
first thing she wondered was how long she’d been unconscious. The second was
whether Simmons would come over and shoot her as she lay in the dirt watching
the sun finally rise above the ridgeline.

Now she was frightened to even
consider how severely she might be injured. Nothing had ever hurt this much. Her
face was wet so she knew she was crying, her nose running, though she was
barely aware. For it was all she could do to keep moving forward rather than
curl up into a tight little ball and surrender to a bed of cool ferns.

She came upon her dad patrolling
beside Ruby Creek. He didn’t look surprised to see her, nor did he seem
concerned about the blood on the shredded elbow she cradled against her side.
Instead, he asked her, “Can you smell that smoke?”

“You can see it.” She turned and
pointed west to where a black cloud diffused into the clear sky.

“Coming from Holloway Ranch. That’s
what I thought.”

Hazel’s heart leapt with sudden
hope. During the summer months, Sparks Brady manned the forest service fire
lookout deep in the woods south of Winslow. Her dad took her once to see the seventy-foot
tall wooden tower with its 360-degree view of the forest and its brass Osborne
Firefinder instrument in the center of the cab. “Do you think Sparks will
respond?” she asked.

“Pard’s men gave me a heads-up.”
He peered southward. “So I’m sure they notified Sparks as well. You know your
uncle—no loose ends.”

Of course not
, Hazel thought, while her heart sank in disappointment.

When her father looked back at her,
he frowned. “Were you out all night, young lady?”

“Dad!” She shook her head at him
as if to say,
Let’s start over, here.
“We need to figure out what’s
going on. The phones are dead and so the Internet’s down too. And Rose and Owen
and Honey and a whole bunch of others are acting sick and weird at The Winslow
and they asked after you and when I went to get Simmons he—”

“I haven’t seen them for some time
now.” He looked over first one shoulder toward Dead Horse Point, then the other
in the direction of the bridge. “All night in fact.”

“
Dad.
What’s wrong with
you?”

“But they’re here, Hazel.” His
eyes searched a stand of bristlecone pine across the creek. “Waiting for me to
let my guard down.”

“Dad,” she whimpered, “I’m hurt.”

He stared at her with a blank
expression, not seeming to comprehend. “Doc Simmons can fix you up.”

“No he can’t!” Cold panic stabbed
her. “I think he’s hurt because he wrecked his truck. He has a dark crusty
bandage on his forehead and he’s acting totally insane.”

Her father grimaced as if he found
that image distasteful. “A head injury is nothing to fool around with.”

“I know, Dad! Now listen to me, we
need to get help up here.”

“Can’t do that now,” despair
suffused his voice. “Isn’t any way to do that now.”

“Why not?”

“We need to take care of our own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can’t let anybody in. They’ll
only stir up trouble for us.”

“Then let’s get in the Jeep and
go!” She’d never been more frustrated or in greater pain.

“I can’t leave.” Confusion washed
over his face. “What will happen if I leave?”

“Then
I’ll
go,” she told
him, and suddenly felt very alone.

“You’re just like your mother.”

She felt as if she’d been gut
punched. “How can you say that to me?” She would have
rather
been gut
punched. “She left me too, Dad.”

He placed his hand on her
shoulder, sending bright new spikes of pain up and down her arm. “You won’t
leave me, will you?” He sounded so afraid.

She looked at her father standing in his rumpled
uniform, shaking head to toe in the early morning sunshine, and promised, “No,
Dad, I won’t leave you.”

H
azel followed Ruby Creek up toward The Winslow,
the scent of pinesap growing with the warmth of the day, the ache in her elbow
deepening with the exertion of hiking, the strength of the promise she just
made to her dad weakening in the face of her nagging desire to flee and never
look back.