Widow Town (11 page)

“We’re leaving, little brother.”

Darrin’s words snapped Ryan from his trance, his eyes focusing on his brother’s face instead of the television’s blank screen across the room. Darrin and Adam stood side
by side near the kitchen doorway; both dressed in black clothes, brand new black gloves dangling from their fingertips.

“Okay,” Ryan managed, his throat raspy from not speaking for most of the day.

“Go wait for me in the van,” Darrin said to Adam without looking at him. Adam lumbered off, his large shadow following him across the floor and out of sight. Darrin waited until he heard the front door shut and then grinned. “You ready?”

Ryan tried not
to hesitate. “Yes.”

Darrin rounded the large couch and sat beside him, his eyes alight
with frenetic intensity. Ryan could only hold his gaze for a few seconds.

“I know you’re nervous, little brother, but it’s fine, this is all part of the plan. Once it’s done, you’re in the fold. He’ll come to you more often and then you’ll know the t
rue shape of what we’re doing.”

“Does Adam know?”

“He knows but I’m not sure he understands.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Darrin put a hand on his shoulder. “This is who we are, Ryan. We’re bigger than everything else, more special. We’re some of the few, maybe the only ones in the world. Doesn’t that feel good?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been too long since the balance has been tipped. We’re part of the way the world used to be. Every system has its kind, something that trims populations down, hunts, feeds. Without us, there is no order, no fear, only a blind rushing onward of life without consequence.” Darrin squeezed his shoulder once and stood, hovering over him. “Without fear there’s no beauty. We’re the consequence, little brother. We carry the fear.”

Without another word, Darrin left the room and a minute later the roar of the van rumbled away into the night. Ryan stared at the black screen across the room for a time and then stood, moving like an automaton, his motions stilted and unnatural. He paused at the kitchen sink and drew a glass of water, drinking it all down without stopping. He set the glass aside and looked at it, marveling at how different things would be when he washed it later. Just a passage of time and everything would change.

He barely made it outside before vomiting.

The water he’d just drank came up lukewarm and washed with acid. He gagged again, his stomach clenching to the point of pain before relenting. When he was able to
stand straight again his eyes immediately went upward, hooking on the sky above.

It was a cloudless night, still warm to the point of discomfort. Stars spread across the sky like the universe was nothing but a patched quilt hung over the world, pinpoin
ts glinting through its seams like gaps into something beyond.

Ryan lowered his gaze and moved away from the house, its glow no longer a comfort as a cold sweat broke out over his body. His shoes crunched in the darkness, one after another, taking him closer and closer. The silo looked down on him in the starlight, its rounded cap a brilliant white against the night sky. Soon he stopped and turned right, pushing through the weeds until his
feet scuffed against concrete.

Down the steps, his le
gs wanting to furl beneath him.

A tomb stood before him, its shadow an open mouth waiting for him to step inside. Ryan’s stomach churned and he wondered if he would be sick again. But the nausea receded leaving a tight wire of his insides. The bucket stood to his right and he found it in the dark corner of the concrete wall, his hands fumbling over handles u
ntil he found the thickest one.

He
drew out the machete, its blade singing against its brethren before sliding free. Dark pockets of rust were black boils on its steel in the faint light. He ran his fingertips against the roughness for a while, reading the story of agony in each braille-like bump.

Ryan turned and strode to the steel door, taking care not to trip and fall on the wicked edge of the machete. His hand raked the darkness until it met the small switch box. With a flip of his thumb, a thin band of light flashed on beneath the door’s bottom edge, its yellow glow painting the area around his feet gold.
He dug in his pocket for the key and pulled it out, not giving himself time to pause before sliding it into the lock.

“It will be quick,” he whispered, opening the lock and dropping it to the
ground. He hefted the machete once, wrapping its handle deep within his palm before throwing back the slide with a shriek.

The door exploded outward and sla
mmed into the side of his face.

Ryan
stumbled back, flashes of light showering his vision. His feet tangled and he fell onto his ass, the machete clanging to the concrete somewhere beside him. The steel door traveled the full range of its hinges, opening wide, cutting the ground with light as a skeleton with red hair staggered out of the root cellar.

Miles Baron’s face was shrouded in shadow but Ryan could see his mouth hung open, unhinged, air gasping in and out of his lungs in noisy hitches. His ar
ms were bent at his sides, remaining hand and stump near his chest as if waiting for a blow. Blood pattered down on the concrete from the fresh wounds on his back and buttocks where he’d ripped the hooks free.

Miles turned his head toward the place where Ryan sat and Ryan stared up at his former science teacher as his own blood
ran from the gash in his cheek.

Everything was still for a moment, a frozen painting of horror and decision before
Miles’s feet skidded on the floor as he lunged toward the stairs and ran up them. He stumbled once near the top before pelting away into the night.

“No,” Ryan heard himself whisper. “No!” he yelled and reached out, his hand skittering over dirt and empty space until it closed on the machete’s handle.
Then his feet were under him, pulling him up the stairs as a caged animal struggled to release itself from his chest.

The moon
hung over the trees at the edge of the cornfield, throwing the stalks into a strange aquatic light, their tassled heads like broken hands stretching toward the silver orb. Ryan tried to calm his breathing as he wiped away the flowing blood from his cheek, feeling flayed skin beneath his fingers. The rows of corn stood motionless but over the noise of his raging heart he heard the padded falls of feet in dry soil.

The open alley between where the crops began and the brush ended
was a straight line only yards across, and it was down this that the hunched figure of Miles ran. Ryan caught sight of his gangly, naked form as he entered the softer dirt of the field. His legs, still acting on their own accord, carried him toward the fleeing figure while the thrum of adrenaline coursed through his entire body making him feel as if he were holding onto a livewire. Ryan pushed forward harder, dirt flying up behind his feet, arms pumping, the machete’s long blade sawing the air beside his head as he flew down the narrow alley. Miles didn’t pause to look over his shoulder but merely ran, his stick-thin legs and bare feet carrying him faster than Ryan assumed the man could run.

He shortened the distance between them
, but not fast enough.

The end of the field came to meet them in a tangle of overgrown weeds and low bushes, dried to the point of brittleness, before the forest began in earnest. Miles piled into the brush
without stopping, twigs snapping and breaking in a sudden rush of noise. Ryan met the boundary seconds later and plunged in after the older man, hacking once at a small sapling with the machete. The land dropped away through the scrub and opened unto the trees, mostly deciduous with wilting leaves that hung down in shadows of mourning.

Ryan followed the sound of his teacher’s progress, the moonlight flickering between outstretched branches. His eyes began to adjust and he saw a flash of red hair through the trees, the pale body
struggling beneath it. Ryan ran after him, pointing the blade off to the side in case he tripped. He ducked under low branches and leapt over a fallen tree before the ground dipped again and he slid downward into a dried streambed.

With all the water gone, the stream’s bottom was hardened mud, dotted with rocks and
uneven tables of fine sand. A corridor of moonbeams coursed through several wide openings in the trees, transforming the streambed into a stage of milky light. Ryan came to a stop and breathed through his mouth, listening over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. The trees were silent curtains on either side.

Nothing moved.

Ryan walked forward, searching the shadows of the banks, prying into their murky depths for the scarecrow form. Panic rose up then and tried to seize him. He’d lost Mr. Baron. Lost him somehow in the transition between the woods and the dead river. The teacher was hiding, waiting for him to pass by in the dark.

“Mr. Baron?” Rya
n called, as he stalked forward, head swiveling like an owl. “I was, I was coming to let you out.” His eyes combed the riverbank. Jutting roots became arms and fingers, a sloped rock became a face. Ryan moved closer, straining his eyes at the dancing shapes that wouldn’t still.

Nothing there.

“Mr. Baron, I’m sorry.” He moved farther down the streambed, his eyes beginning to water, throat closing up. His chest hitched and tears began to run down his face, mingling with the smeared blood. “I’m so sorry for everything.” Even as he spoke, he gripped the machete tighter, his fingers beginning to ache.

A short bend in the hollow came to meet him and Ryan made to move around a stand of grass when he stopped, something halting his progress. He glanced to his right, wiping away the stinging tears and sniffled. An overwhelming tingling rolled through him and he turned his head the other way, pulling
in another breath, tasting it.

The
air smelled of waste and fear.

“Mr. Baron?”

Miles exploded up from where he lay in the scrub grass.

The sudden movement so close made Ryan flinch and his hand nearly released the blade. The science teacher ran straight down the stream’s corridor, his movements jerky and painful. Without thinking, Ryan drew back his arm and
flung the machete end over end.

The blade made a strange fanning noise as it flew, cutting the air. At once Ryan knew he’d made a mistake, he’d thrown too low. But as he watched and prepared to
run, the machete stuttered once on the ground behind Miles, jumped and tangled in the man’s bare legs.

Miles fell to his stomach
gasping, as the wind shot from his lungs. Ryan ran forward, his heart beating so hard he thought he could hear it echoing off the trees. He scooped the machete from the sand it lay in, its edge scraping on a rock, a song of steel. The moon’s light sculpted the blade into blue fire and Ryan teetered on the brink of fainting, his head too heavy to hold up any longer. Miles crawled forward, two new gashes on his legs where he’d tripped over the machete, oozed blood. The teacher made an animalistic sound in the back of his throat and Ryan raised the weapon over his head, focusing on the back of the prone man’s neck.

“I’m so sorry,” Ry
an whispered, tensing his arms.

Miles rolled over and sat up, whipping
his arm around in a quick arc.

Ryan saw
the heavy rock leave the teacher’s hand and tried to step sideways but a burning agony detonated in his left kneecap. His leg held him for a moment and then folded. He fell to his side, a breathless moan escaping him as the pain ratcheted up into something he’d never known before.

He rolled on the ground in agony, trying to bring his knee up to check that the rest of his leg was still there, but it would barely bend.
Through bleary eyes, he watched Miles scramble to his feet and limp away, up the streambed’s bank, and into the blanketing dark of the forest. Ryan tried to push himself up but his knee was a pulsing bowling ball, growing each second with poisonous swelling.

“No,”
he whispered through the pain. He searched the darkness but the teacher was gone, swallowed by the night. “No, no, no, no.”

Ryan rolled onto his side and vomited a string of bile, hacking up what tasted like acidic soil as he listened to the fading sounds of his life
running away through the woods.

Darrin watched their long driveway unwind before the van’s headlights.

He dug slowly beneath his right thumbnail with the tip of his knife, gouging out the specks of dirt there, pushing deeper, deeper, until the
thrill of pain became too much.

“She’s pretty,” Ad
am said from the driver’s seat.

“Got
your eye on this one, brother?”

Adam looked almos
t embarrassed. “If he lets me.”

Darrin smiled. “He’ll let you,
that’s what all this is about.”

“Yeah.”

“But you can’t do what you did to the other ones, you know that, right? That’s not what she’s for.”

“I know.” Adam frowned at the windshiel
d. “When can we do that again?”

“We’ll have to wait awhile
, let things settle down some.”

“Okay.”

“I need you to promise you won’t hurt them, Adam,” Darrin said, glancing over at his brother. “He’ll be very upset if you do.”

“I promise.”

“Good.” Darrin went back to digging beneath his nails. A bump in the road shoved the blade in deep and he hissed with pleasure. The van moved up a small grade and he knew they were back in the yard but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the blood that welled from beneath his thumbnail.

“What’s Ryan got in his mouth?”

Darrin looked up, squinting into the bright outdoor lights mounted above the house’s entry. Ryan sat on the steps, one leg straight out and the other bent, his heels resting on the ground. He held their father’s antique revolver in both hands, the barrel propped in his open mouth pointing up past his teeth.

“Fuck,” Darrin s
aid.

“What’s he got that gun for?”

“Listen to me, I want you to drop me off by the door and then you go around back to the storage shed and put all her stuff inside it, we’ll bury it tomorrow, then bring them in, okay?”

Adam nodded as the van neared the house, his eyes never leaving Ryan on the steps. Adam stopped the van
near the attached garage and Darrin climbed out, slamming the door behind him.

“
Whatcha doing, little brother?”

Ryan’s eyes watered above the stainless-steel gun barrel.
They followed the progress of the van as Adam pulled away and then jumped back to Darrin as he approached. Darrin was like a piece of the night, still dressed in his black clothes, his new gloves now gone. Ryan watched him approach and then cocked the hammer of the pistol back with a forefinger, the clicking sound loud in the empty yard.

“Hey, hey, hey, let’s talk about this, you don’t need to panic. I felt a little scared after my first time too, it’s natural.” Darrin stopped several feet from the steps, his handsome features
sharpened by the bright light.

Ryan sobbed around the gun barrel, the steel
chattering against his teeth.

“I’m gonna sit, okay?” Darrin said
, lowering himself to the ground. “By the way, what happened to your face?”

Ryan closed his eyes and re-gripped the gun, placed his thumb against the trigger.

“Whoa, just relax, little brother, calm down. Why don’t you take that old thunderclunker out of your mouth and talk to me. Then, if you really want to you can blow your brains out, I won’t stop you. It’s not my right to keep you from your business.”

Ryan opened his eyes and stared at Darrin, his breath fogging the steel in his mouth. Gradually he withdrew the barrel, the sight hooking on his front teeth before it came free. He didn’t lower the gun but instead placed it under his chin, k
eeping a finger on the trigger.

They sat that way for long minutes, Darrin waiting, blinking lazily. Ryan’s breath began to hitch in his chest and new tears streamed down his face.

“He’s gone,” Ryan finally managed to choke out.

Darrin nodded. “So you did it?”

Ryan strained to breathe through the panic that gripped him. “No, he got away.”

Darrin’s face froze. H
is gaze as sharp as the knife he carried. “What do you mean?”

“He was ready when I went out there,” Ryan cried, the dam inside him crumbling. “He pulled the hooks free and was waiting when I opened the door. He knocked me down and ran away and I chased him into the streambed past the field. I tripped him up with the machete but he hit me in the knee with a rock and I couldn’t chase hi
m anymore, Darrin, I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Darrin, I’m sorry.”

Darrin waited, watching
him blubber. He didn’t blink. “He went east?”

Ryan sniffled. “Yes.”

“That land runs over two miles before it hits even a dirt road. The only other place close by is crazy Hudson’s, and he won’t find any help there. He’s bleeding, disoriented, and hasn’t had any food or water in two days, he won’t make it anywhere. We’ll go out and look for him in a while.”

Ryan pushed the barrel harder underneath his chin and bleated out
another sob, shaking his head.

“What?” Darrin asked.

“I fed him this morning.”

“This morning?”

“Yes, I didn’t think he’d last much longer, Darrin, he was getting so thin. So I brought him a sandwich and a bottle of water.”

“Did I tell you to feed him?”

“N-n-no.”

Darrin sighed, dropping his face toward his lap. “Well, that makes thi
ngs a little more complicated.”

Darrin moved like a cobra, springing forward in one smooth motion. His hand snatched the revolver away from Ryan’s chin and spun it around. Ryan cried out and leaned away but Darrin kept coming, his free hand finding the gash on
his brother’s cheek. He forced his thumbnail into the clotted wound. Ryan squawked and tried to roll to the side but his swollen knee and the grip Darrin had on his face held him like stone.

“You little fuck,” Darrin breathed into his face. “You soft little follo
wer. I should end you right now. Open your mouth.” Darrin pressed the barrel against Ryan’s lips, pushing them hard against his teeth. Ryan tried to squirm again but Darrin applied more pressure to the cut on his face. Ryan opened his mouth with a moan and Darrin jammed the barrel inside.

“Taste that oil, it’s sweet, isn’t it? Tastes like forever. I’ve had it on my tongue before and let me tell
you, it stayed there for days.”

Darrin pressed the barrel
farther into his brother’s mouth and felt it touch the back of his throat. Ryan gagged.

“Don’t you be sick now, Ry-Ry. You’d choke
on your own vomit.” Ryan convulsed, froth beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. “I thought you wanted this, little brother? I thought you wanted out? Funny, now it doesn’t seem the case. What a change in a matter of seconds. Everyone wants to live, Ry, even the ones that think they want to die really don’t. See, I’m free that way, I love life but if I go, I go. No regrets, no worries, just a little hop-skip into the nether.”

Ryan spasmed, coughing against the gun barrel. Darrin pressed harder, his finger tightening on the trigger, and then pulled the gun away, letting Ryan roll onto his side, sp
luttering and choking.

Darrin
pivoted and sat beside him, putting a hand on his back. “Don’t worry, Ry, we’ll fix this. Things always have a way of working out.”

Ryan tried to sit up and Darrin helped him. Gradually his coughing ceased and he sat there silent, rubbin
g at his throat.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said. He sounded as if he were speak
ing through a layer of garbage.

“Quit saying that. J
ust listen to me. You’re going to make this right. We’re going to find Mr. Baron and bring him back here and you’re going to do what you should’ve done tonight.”

Ryan nodded, still mass
aging his Adam’s apple. “Okay.”

Darrin looked up at the flawless sky sprinkled with stars. “And Ryan? If you ever disobey me or put everyone in jeopardy again, I’ll peel off your skin, one layer at a time.
I’ll use my knife and a pair of pliers. It’ll take days to do it, to make sure I get it right.” He glanced at his brother, starlight glinting in eyes colder than space.

“Okay,” Ryan said.

Darrin smiled, his face cracking. “Good. Let’s get you inside, get some of Dad’s cooling gel on that knee, it looks like shit.”

He
helped Ryan to his feet and supported him until they made it inside. As Ryan settled himself into a chair at the kitchen table, wincing at the flaring pain in his knee, sounds came from the rear of the house and a moment later two figures appeared in the dining room.

One was Adam, carrying what looked like a sleeping chi
ld over his shoulder. The baby boy’s dark hair shone in the light, his eyes closed, fist near his mouth. The other was a woman, waif thin with blond hair. She was pretty but Ryan could see tear tracks tracing lines on her pale face. Her forearms were locked in a set of steel binders, clamping her elbows together before her so that she stood like some sallow mantis. Her eyes shot around the room, looking, searching, until they lit on Ryan’s face and jumped to Darrin as he returned to the kitchen with a bottle of cooling gel.

“Oh good, our guests have arrived,” Darrin said, his smile climbing on his face again like a spider. “Ryan I’d like you to meet these two, they’ll be staying with us for a while. T
his is Rachel and her son Ken.”