"Go right ahead."

"I have no interest in turning you in."

He scoffs. "That so? Jeez, the handcuffs might not have been the best way to show that."

"I did, sure. But not anymore. All I care about now is getting to my son in time to help him. He's in trouble."

"That doesn't surprise me. Guy likes to ventilate skulls that much is bound to get his ass handed to him sooner or later. Hell, I know what that's like. I'll be lucky to live to see the Mexican border, and I'm all right with that. But what I can tell you right now is that I'm sure as shit not going to be run down in a backwater hole like this. So I'm taking your truck, Sheriff, and whether or not I leave you as a corpse in the dust all depends on what you do in the next five minutes."

"You can go. I won't stop you. I give you my word on that."

"Good."

"But you're not taking the truck."

"Say again?"

"I need it. It's the only way I can get to Kyle."

"Yeah well, that's touching as all hell but you're not going to be in much shape to do anything for the little prick if your head's no longer attached."

Our eyes meet in the mirror. Both of us are sweating, for different reasons. He's getting ready to kill me; I'm getting ready to die.

"Take the truck," I suggest then. "Just take me with you as far as Hill's house. After that you can get gone and you'll never hear from me again."

"No dice."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I don't like you." The blade pins my Adam's apple in place, biting the flesh there, drawing blood I can feel trickling down into my shirt.

"We did everything we could for your girl." I'm hoping shifting the focus of the conversation might buy me some time. That's not something I was trained to do; it's just plain old common sense.

"It wasn't enough."

"Hey, you brought her here. If you hadn't—"

"Don't feed me that bullshit. We were here tonight because we were supposed to be here. I don't much like the idea of not being in control of what I do, but that's pretty much tough titty right now, right? Whatever juju you and your friends were doing up in that bar, it was what decided where we'd be, who would die and..." He shakes his head. "I'm getting out of here now."

Trying to grab hold of a coherent thought right now is like to trying to find a licorice whip in a bucket of snakes, so I quit trying and let myself relax. He's not getting the truck; that much I'm sure of. Everything else is up in the air, so I decide I'm going to end this, right after I ask him something that's been on my mind since last night. "Did you kill Eleanor Cobb on purpose?"

"I didn't kill her at all."

"How's that?"

"She came at us. Almost as if she was sitting there around that corner, engine idling, waiting for the first sign of headlights coming in the opposite direction so she could plow into them. Into us. Crazy old bitch."

No, I think and close my eyes. Not crazy. Lost. Stuck with a husband who grew older every time he took someone else's pain away, a man afraid to love her too much because he was going to die soon, whether because of his gift, or because of his sins and Hill's regulating, it didn't matter. She was going to lose him soon, and both of them knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. So she went first, and he followed.

"I have a favor to ask."

The kid frowns. "What?"

"I want to turn on the radio."

"For what? You're getting out."

"That's the thing. I'm not getting out. I can't, so I'd appreciate you letting me have the radio on. That way I don't have to hear you breathing when you do what you have to do."

Brody scowls at me. "Are you out of your fucking tree completely, or what?"

"No, but it looks like we've reached an impasse here, and you're the one with the knife. All I want now is some music."

"Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that."

He holds the knife away from my throat, just enough for me to see that it's a big son of a bitch, thick-handled, with a curved blade on one side, a serrated one on the other. The kind of knife my father used for skinning bucks.

He's breathing quickly, sweating more. "You and Carla and the goddamn music. I don't have this kind of time to waste."

"So don't."

I reach for the stereo, leaning into the blade. Flip the switch, and sit back.

A moment passes. Wintry is a helpless shadow beyond the window.

I start to tremble all over. My guts squeeze bile into my mouth. Brody's going to assume it's because of him, because of what we both know he's about to do. But it isn't that at all. I'm not afraid of him.

It's the goddamned stereo.

I'm afraid of the radio and what's going to happen because I've turned it on, something I promised myself I'd never do again. Not in this truck. Not after the last time.

Brody curses, brings the knife back to my throat, positions the serrated side beneath my Adam's apple but doesn't start cutting. Cold metal teeth nip the skin. I figure maybe out of respect he's waiting for the music to start. So we watch the stereo.

The green CD light blinks on. The disk begins to spin with a faint whirring sound.

Then at last, after what seems like years of silence, the music starts. Patsy Cline. "Crazy".

And with a sigh that might be regret, anger, or relief, Brody begins to cut my throat.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"We're closed."

Confused and struggling to accept that somehow his mind has been playing tricks on him, Vess lingers in the doorway of a tavern memory tells him burned to the ground last night but his eyes swear is still here, untouched by fire on the outside, only slightly blackened on the inside. Near the far end of the room, by the bar, a svelte woman clad in gray tempers a carpet of soot and ash with short sharp smacks from a ragged looking broom. The air smells faintly of smoke.

"Of course you're closed, but she's looking for him," Vess explains, but moves no further into the long narrow room. A single hurricane lamp has been set up on the counter, creating a murky twilight through which the woman moves like a delicate ghost. Thin shadows twitch spasmodically around the rows of bottles behind the bar. "The Sheriff I mean, of course. That might not have been clear. I don't always say what I mean the way I mean to say it. Means I usually have to elaborate. I don't—Hassak!" Annoyed with himself, he wrenches the hat from his head and tugs at it, forgetting its contents until the bones hit the floor like pebbles and skitter away from him. "Oh." He drops to his haunches, stretches his upper body as far as he can over the threshold to avoid stepping foot into the room and therefore risking the woman's ire. A single phalange remains maddeningly out of reach.

"Not here," whispers the finger.

"What are you doin'?" the woman asks, and he jerks back. She has approached without his hearing her. He looks from the kernel of bone at her feet to her face and smiles involuntarily. She is without a doubt one of the most beautiful creatures he has ever seen, with her auburn hair and light green eyes. Often, on the endlessly lonely nights beneath the stars, he has dreamed—not of this woman—but of women like her. Maybe in his imaginings they were less severe looking, not so hard of eye or tight of mouth, but the basic model is the same. He finds his already muddled thoughts scrambling, his mind exploring fantasies he will never live to see made real, even if the same stars he sleeps under were to align and the woman decided to court a pauper.

"I asked what you were doin'?"

"Sorry," he splutters, attempting a half-bow despite his posture already being an approximation of one. It's an awkward feat that almost sends him sprawling, so he quickly steadies himself and rises, the last fragment of finger forgotten.

"I'm Kirk Vess."

"I know who you are," the woman responds icily. "I barred you from here, remember?"

He doesn't, but nods.

"What do you want?"

"A woman's finger brought me here," he says, nodding pointedly at the phalange two inches from her shoe. "To find the Sheriff."

"A finger?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Whose is it?"

"I don't know. Just...a woman. A pretty lady, I'm guessing. She...she was in a fridge."

The barmaid's gaze is penetrating. Vess feels himself growing warm from the inside out, the color rising to his cheeks.

"A fridge?"

"Yes, like a white coffin or... They put her in it as if it was a boat."

Gracie frowns. "What?"

Vess squints, fearing his thoughts are squirming free of him and desperately tries to catch them. He runs the tips of his index fingers over his eyebrows and takes a breath. "Stuck in the mud," he says slowly. "That's where she was. I thought it was the box but it was only a fridge. Poor lady." He clucks his tongue. "She wants me to find the Sheriff. I tried Doctor—"

"Understood," Gracie says, her expression softening just a little. "You found a body."

Vess nods eagerly. "Her finger brought me here."

"Not here," whispers the finger. "Not here."

"I know he isn't," Vess whispers back, eager to silence the dead woman. Immediately he feels guilty for thinking her an intrusion into this unexpected scene, and grimaces. "May I...collect them?"

Gracie nods. "The bones? Go ahead."

He does, stroking each segment by way of an apology before depositing them into his pocket.

"The Sheriff ain't here," Gracie informs him, and heads back to the bar. "But chances are he will be before long."

Vess smiles. "I'll come back. I'll bring the finger."

"You could wait."

"Yes."

"Want a drink while you do?"

Vess immediately begins to question what he thinks she said, for he has never been welcome here, or any other bar for that matter, with the exception of the kinds of places where no one with any sense would go, places where people still get killed over cheating at cards and old men in expensive suits sit in shadowy corners discussing the undoing of their enemies. Vess has never been welcome anywhere, which is why he exists to be elsewhere. With that in mind, he decides jumping at what he is not convinced was an invitation is not the wisest recourse, so he doesn't, simply stays where he is and grins uncertainly.

"Well?"

"Think I heard wrong. Sorry. My hearing of things is like my speech. Trying to explain is—"

"Come join me for a drink while you wait."

The smile almost splits his face, and certainly adds deep wrinkles where there were none before. He almost floats across the floor to the bar, so elated does he feel by this offering of kindness from so magnificent a lady. A drink in a place he should not be, in the company of a woman he should not know, stews his mind further, until it sends tremors of confused pleasure though his limbs.

"Sit." She indicates a stool, and he takes it quickly.

Gracie produces two shot glasses from beneath the bar, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Thought the place burned," Vess says. "There was a lot of light up here. Must have been imagining things. I do that sometimes, especially when my mind gets tired."

"You weren't imaginin' things." She fills the glasses to the top, slides one before him. "It burned all right."

"Oh. Wasn't too bad then." He sips the drink, savoring it and the moment. Accustomed as he is to cheap wine, the bourbon tastes like tears from Heaven. His mouth buzzes, tongue pleasantly scalded by the liquor. He coughs. "Bit of black and burnt, but still all right."

"I was bored," Gracie says, crossing her elbows and leaning on them, her face close to his, chin hovering above their drinks. "So I started to rebuild it. I'd rather be stuck in a room, no matter how miserable it might be, than a hole full of charred wood."

He raises his glass in agreement and takes another sip.

"Not that I intend to be here for much longer." She raises her own glass, starts to drink. Vess watches her, follows the single drop of bourbon that escapes her lips, winding its way down over her chin and throat until it disappears into the opening of her blouse. A new kind of heat flourishes within him and he grins.

"I'm movin' on," she announces, with obvious excitement. "After all these years in this goddamn town, I'm gettin' out, leavin' all these wretched people with their wretched lives behind."

Vess's grin falters. He wonders if she includes him in her estimation of the townsfolk, but then reminds himself that he is an outsider, a mere visitor, and a woman as pretty and smart as the barmaid would surely know this.

"Can I see the bones?" she asks then, slamming her glass down on the counter hard enough to make Vess jump.

"Oh yes. She might even talk to you," Vess enthuses, and scoops the bones from his pocket, scattering them on the bar like a voodoo woman about to tell a fortune.

Gracie studies the bones for what seems to Vess to be a considerable amount of time, her expression unreadable until she smiles and looks up at him. The feel of her studying him is not an unpleasant one, and he is abruptly cast into those green eyes as helplessly as a man bound to an anchor tossed into the sea.

His drink no longer seems important.

He is a traveler, and in her eyes, he is seeing a place he has his whole life been forbidden from visiting. He will not, cannot blink.

"That's hers all right," Gracie says, and though she moves back a step, she does not look away, and for that Vess is grateful. "Not that I can really tell from the bones." She chuckles and the sound is magical, like pipe music to wounded ears. "I know because I put her there." His smile grows. He is not really paying attention to the words, only the lush red lips that form them and the piercing eyes that hold him in place.

"Not here, no not here!" the finger seems to wail from the surface of the bar, which is now oddly slick beneath his fingers. He ignores the cry, watches his world jar, once, twice, and believes it is his heart, which feels like it may explode.

Somehow, it starts to rain inside the bar. The shadows thicken and reach for him, attempting to steal away this delightful interlude. He resists, struggling to hold on.

"Can't always ssssay it right," he admits. "Werrdener..."

The barmaid's scent intoxicates him. He does not want this to end, and is saddened a great deal to realize, as crimson tears flow copiously down his face, his skull deflating under the weight of the long metal pipe Gracie is bringing down upon his head like a woodsman cleaving a rotten stump, that it already has.

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

 

Static shrieks from the radio.

Hands follow.

"What the fuck?" The knife is gone from my throat, tearing off a strip of my flesh as Brody propels himself away from the pale tendrils of mist that are snaking their way free of the CD slot in the car stereo. "What the fuck, man?"

I'm no less scared. While Brody's going to get hung up on the whole unnatural or supernatural angle here (maybe it reminds him of something from a horror flick he caught at the Drive-In with his high school sweetheart), this is a repeat of a moment I have been trying to avoid since the night Jessica died.

Brody claws at the door. "Unlock it for God's sake!"

It isn't locked. At least it wasn't, but maybe she locked it.

The hands spread out, push further into the car, the tips brushing against my chin, making me flinch, bringing me dangerously close to soiling myself. It's cold in here now. I can see my breath. I can see Brody's breath too, pluming over my shoulder.

"Open this goddamn door!"

The mist separates, the CD slot gapes obscenely, lit from within by white smoky light. The black plastic cradle keeping it in place begins to crack. And all the while Patsy Cline keeps singing "Crazy" at the top of her lungs, loud enough to make my eardrums vibrate with pain. I feel a hand on my shoulder and bat at it in terror, but it's Brody, trying to pull me through the seat. "What is it? What did you do?"

"It's our song," I tell him.

He starts kicking at the door.

She won't let it open.

Her face emerges sideways, slipping impossibly from the too-narrow gap, her features distorting, forming and reforming, coming apart like windblown cigarette smoke only to be whole again before the eye can track the movement. There is nothing but a rope of smoke connected to her head as it rises like a tethered balloon from the CD slot. Her face settles. The face I loved. A face I am terrified to see looming over me now.

Brody screams at the sight of it, renews his assault on the door.

"Oh shut your trap," Jessica commands and the door Brody is so desperately trying to break open is suddenly blown from its hinges with a tortured shriek of metal, clear into the trees on the other side of the road where it smacks against the trunk of a pine, falls, and is still. Brody doesn't wait to see whether she intends him to be the next object thrown at high velocity from the car. He hurries out into the road, and straight into the bruised, burned and bloody knuckles of Wintry's fist.

The kid drops and hits the ground hard.

"Can I turn this down?" I ask, desperately trying to avoid looking at that blue mask hovering three inches from my face.

"Why are you shakin'?"

"It was a close call with the kid, that's all. I guess I'm not as tough as I used to be."

"Right." Even though the expression is made up mostly of dust, smoke, and air, and, for all I know, my own memories of her, the doubt sweeping across it is all too clear. I let out a long low sigh. The kid's down for a while, thank God, and Wintry's holding on hard as he can. But in my frightened mind I can still hear a clock ticking, still feel those cold pennies in my pocket. I don't have time to hang around talking to my wife's ethereal head, no matter how sentimental that song makes me feel.

"Looks like quite a mess you've made for yourself," my wife says.

"Looks like it, yeah."

"It didn't have to be this way you know."

I smile, but it's a cold one. "Yeah, I do, but please spare me the list of reasons why. I don't have time to hear 'em."

The smoke coils in my vision. I'm tempted to close my eyes but that only leads to the dreadful thought of what she might do to open them, so I stare at the dashboard, at the undulating tendril that's keeping her tied to the mangled stereo. Somehow, it's still playing that song.

"You're still actin' the fool, Tom. Still pretendin' life will eventually work out just fine if you keep walkin' through it with blinkers on. What you can't see can't affect you, right?"

I say nothing. Have nothing to say.

"You shouldn't be in the least bit surprised that it's come to this."

"I'm not. Just didn't figure it would happen so soon is all."

"What wouldn't happen so soon? Do you even know what this is?"

I shrug, still can't look at her.

"It's not Hell," she says softly. "It's not damnation other than the one you condemn yourself to. The Hell inside yourself. Shun love and ignore hate, hurt people and dismiss those who truly need you...that's the best way to find yourself stopped at an intersection in Milestone lookin' up at a traffic light that hasn't worked in ten years, without any idea how you got there. When did you get here, Tom? Do you even remember?"

I nod slowly. Sure I remember, but I don't want to. Thankfully, it's a question that requires no answer, because she already knows it. What I can remember without fear is the woman who worked in the library in its last year of service, the woman who at first sight encompassed every adolescent fantasy I'd ever had of the quiet bookish brunette, hair tied back, spectacles perched on her nose to downplay the sultry beauty you knew in your heart was there. But Jessica was so much more than that. Within ten minutes of getting up the courage to talk to her, I realized she was way out of my league, not only with her looks, but with her frightening intellect and resolve. She was witty, clever, and iron-willed. The mating ritual was of little interest to her. No let's do dinner, then play phone tag until I trust you enough to fall into your bed. She was stuck in a small town that died a little every day. Her job was in danger. She needed a man to love her and provide for her, but railed at the slightest suggestion that it meant she would stay at home and play the good wife. No. She intended to study, paint and make enough money so she could get out of Milestone, maybe go back to school, and someday teach. A damsel in distress she certainly was not. A homemaker only under duress. Aprons would be worn not to bake cakes or apple pies, but to prevent the spatter from her paint from ruining her clothes. She was a bohemian, and if a prospective mate couldn't understand that, or considered it something that would pass once she discovered the joys of Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart, then they would be sorely disappointed.

She frightened me, she enthralled me, and I knew the day I left her company for the first time and stepped out into noon sunshine that looked a little brighter, a little cleaner than ever before, that I had to have her.

She frightened me then; she frightens me now, for the same reason: She was always right.

"I'm sorry."

The smoke clucks its tongue. "Too late for that, and I'm not the one you should be apologizin' to, unless you're goin' to play the same game with me that you're playin' with Kyle."

"I'm not—"

"Save it." Her face whorls, and reforms right in front of my face, close enough for us to kiss. It's hard to see her as my wife, so I avert my eyes once more. There's no denying where the voice comes from though.

God, I still love her.

"Why didn't you tell him?"

I shrug and it's pitiful. "There was never a good time."

"Bullshit. It would have required too much of you. It would have meant you'd have had to sit your ass down and talk to him like a man. You'd have had to face up to somethin' for the first time in your life, but like everythin' else, you turned your back on it. Just like you turned your back on me."

"I didn't—"

"What else do you need to lose before you see what you've done to yourself and the ones you love? How many more people need to die before the sun breaks through the clouds around that thick head of yours?"

"I have to go."

"No."

"I have to help him."

"Why?"

"Because he's...because I have to."

"It's too late."

I slam a fist on the steering wheel. "It isn't, and don't you say that." Panic courses through me. Like I've said, she's always right, and right now, more than ever, I don't want her to be.

Again her face falls an inch or two, trying to stay level with mine. "Why do you care? Why now is it so important that you race to his rescue?"

"I don't have to explain it." Because I can't, and I don't want to have to think about it. "He's my son."

"He doesn't think of himself as your son. I don't think of him as your son, and on any other day you wouldn't either. Do you think this will save you?"

I give a bitter chuckle at that. "Save me? From what? Myself? This town? That old bastard with his coins? There's no salvation here and you know that as well as I do."

"Then why fight it?"

"I don't know. For Chrissakes I don't know, all right? Why does there have to be a reason? Would you prefer I just sit here listening to you while whatever happens to our son happens?"

"Why not? It's what you've been doin' your whole life."

"I don't need to listen to this."

"Then why did you turn on the stereo?"

I scowl and reach for the keys. "To get rid of the kid."

"You're lyin'."

"You think so? Take a look around. The kid's out there on the road, not here with a goddamn Rambo knife to my throat. That's why I turned you on..."

I feel her smile and the urge to share it is almost overwhelming, but I kill the compulsion by reminding myself that for whatever reason, she's trying to keep me here.

"I'm going, and I'm switching this thing off."

"Why?"

"Because I don't have time to talk anymore, that's why."

A sad sigh. "Nothin' ever changes in your world, does it Tom? The whole town could wake up buried under a hundred feet of ice and you'd still plod along with that badge pinned to your chest, swearin' to protect while watchin' them all freeze. And an hour later, it'd be forgotten, locked away for good in that holdin' pen in your skull."

I start the ignition. The truck rumbles to life. Wintry's shadow eclipses the light through the passenger side window, where he stands, and waits, aware that the business in here is not something he wants, or has any right, to be a part of.

Finally, I look at her face, into her eyes. Death has made her one of her own sketches, a pale imprint on blue paper. Only the eyes look alive, miniature galaxies swirling in pockets of deep space.

"I don't know any other way," I confess, and quickly look away.

"There's always another way, Tom, but you've never been interested or tuned in enough to seek it out. Your way suits you fine, and that's why you're here now, waitin', maybe secretly hopin' it is too late when you reach Kyle so you won't have to shoulder the burden of what follows. You're your own puppet, Tom, even if today, someone else is pullin' your strings."

"The hells' that supposed to mean? No one's pullin' my strings but me."

"There are two pennies in your pocket that say different. Sometimes, givin' selfish people what they want is enough to bring a town to its knees, as it will bring you to your knees."

"Wintry, come on," I yell out at him, disgusted by the quaver in my voice. I lunge forward, through the smoke, through her, and gasp. She feels like winter mist on my skin. I kill the stereo.

"You should have told him you didn't kill me," she says sadly.

"I know. There's a lot I should have done."

"That you didn't know how isn't good enough. Apathy is sometimes worse than murder." She starts to fade, dissipating like the Cheshire cat, only it isn't her smile that remains clear while she dissolves, but her eyes. "You should have told him the truth."

 

"Wintry..."

He half-raises a hand in acknowledgment, and opens the door, then slowly, painfully, eases himself into the seat. "We goan leave the kid?"

"Yeah."

Wisps of smoke curl from the broken stereo. I sense him looking at it, then at me, and I put the car into gear to get us moving. I roll down my window. The fresh air cures the nausea.

"They ain't always right, you know," Wintry says.

"I know. But she was."

We head for Hill's house, Brody a dark dwindling shape in the rearview.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Illusion of Free Will

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

Reverend Hill's house sits by itself on a grassy slope, segregated from the rest of the community by a short stretch of woodland on one side, and the river on the other. Hill's predecessor, the benevolent and much lamented Reverend Lewis, was never comfortable being so far from his flock, and was busy finalizing plans for the purchase of a smaller, more modest place in the town center when for reasons known only to him, he decided to string himself up. When Hill came to Milestone, he sneered at the idea of what he called an "odious hovel", and quickly made his home out here, in the tall narrow house he deemed just big enough to contain a man of his importance. "You'll know where I am if you need me," he advised his parishioners, "But know too that I have little time to waste on trivial matters that you yourselves have the power to cure."

The only time he would take an interest in the people was when one of them came to him with a blemished soul, but even those misguided few quickly realized that whatever god it was that Hill claimed to worship, it wasn't one they recognized, or wanted to have their lives governed by. But fear kept them—kept us—within his power.

From the get-go he was an asshole, and everyone knew it. A fire-and-brimstone man they didn't need, or want, but they were stuck with him, and as Cobb once said, "In troubled times, you can't be choosy about which preacher's voice you end up listenin' to."

Gracie's right. We should have killed him three years ago, as soon as it became clear what we'd been saddled with, but despite everything we'd seen and heard, and despite instinct telling us what the wise thing to do was, we did nothing. For three years we kept going back to that tavern, kept drinking ourselves numb and waiting for the keys to be jingled, waiting for Hill to tell us which sinners we were going to erase from the world as repentance for our own transgressions.

And every Saturday night, one of us would. Take the keys, get in the car, drive, and kill. Pretend the screams and the horrible thud against our hoods were deer, then come back, drink some more and wonder when that spiritual cleansing would kick in.

Never did of course, and never will.

He never wanted to save us from Hell. He brought Hell to us. But even he can't be blamed, not entirely, for what's happening in Milestone, tempting as it is to pin this nightmare on him.

No.

This town is dying because we're killing it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"You want to wait here?" I ask Wintry, and watch his eyes slide slowly past me, to the house with its stained and buckled siding, leaf-choked gutters, unpainted frames.

He licks his lips, grunts with pain, and closes his eyes. "You might need my help."

"What is it you think you're going to be able to help me with in your condition?"

His shrug is slight. "Never know."

"Wintry, look. I appreciate the backup, but I'm not sure I have the time to wait for you. My boy's in trouble. I got to get to him, so do me a favor, all right? Wait here. If the ground cracks open and imps come flying out, or if the house takes off and starts spinning, then you come help me. I'm sure I'll be glad of it. All right?"

He smiles weakly, but I know he's not happy.

"See you soon," I tell him, and shut the door.

A long gravel path twists its way around a large granite boulder that bears the names of all the clergymen who have presided over matters of the spirit in Milestone, going back as far as 1820, when the town's soul was the charge of a Protestant minister by the name of Edgar Saxton. Seventeen men succeeded him. Sixteen of their names are etched there forever in the face of that boulder. Only Hill's name is missing, and I reckon it'll stay missing, unless his replacement decides he deserves the acknowledgment, if a replacement ever comes.

Though I'm running on fumes now and my head is threatening to split in the middle, I jog my way up the path, my pulse racing the closer I get to the house, and the red Chevy parked outside the main door. In a way I'm relieved to see it. It means Kyle's still here. But another part of me seems to have been betting on the fact that he wouldn't be, that either I'd make it here too late, or find that Kyle went home. Or back to Iris.

On the dashboard, there's a worn deck of playing cards wrapped in a rubber band. Next to them is a pack of Camel Lights, one cigarette poking from the foil. Maybe they belong to Iris, or someone Kyle gave a ride to. Maybe they're Kyle's. That I don't know is just another one of those things I'll have to sit down and chastise myself about later. No time for it now, even though I've just wasted five minutes staring at the damn Chevy.

As I skirt around the car and make my way to the door, the gravel crunches under my boots loud enough to give me away. No harm in that. I'm not here to surprise anyone.

As it turns out, the front door's shut, but not locked. It's got one of those fancy brass handles with the little button on the top you have to press down to open the latch. With a cursory check of the curtained windows for faces that aren't there, I depress the button and the door swings open without a sound.

I'm greeted by the smell of furniture polish, which isn't what I expected. Not even sure why. Maybe it's because the exterior has fallen into disrepair, or because the man who lived here up until some hours ago made everyone he encountered feel dirty so I naturally assumed his home would smell like filth. It doesn't though, nor does it look filthy. Just the opposite. I step into a hallway with dark varnished floorboards and a wide colorful rug which depicts the Virgin Mary in a typically beatific pose, her hands clasped in prayer, doves circling her head, her eyes rolled up so far to look at the Heavens she looks like she might be having a seizure. There's a bare coat rack to my left, the wood the same dark shade as the floor, and a few feet further in, a little ways past the rug, there's a small table with two drawers, the surface of which is completely free of dust and reflects the light from the quaint chandelier suspended from a small brass dome in the high ceiling.

I wonder if Hill had a maid.

The hall is short and opens at the end, where to the left, an arched doorway leads to the heart of the house. To my right, a set of stairs—as dust-free as every other surface I've seen so far—rises up and around behind me, running past the oval stained glass window above the door, and on to the second floor, the landing of which is overhead, and manned only by shadows.

It occurs to me that the sharp smell of polish and the immaculate cleanliness of the place don't make the place seem homely, but preserved. The kind of smell you get in a museum, or anywhere else you go to look and admire, but not touch.

At this point, I should call out for Kyle, just in case he hasn't heard me coming and does something rash because I've startled him, but there's a noise now, coming from somewhere beyond the arch; a shuffling sound, barely noticeable over the thumping of my own heart in my ears. Papers, I'm guessing. That's what it sounds like. The same sound the newspaper used to make when my father rustled it at the supper table. His way of telling us to shut up. For a few years I thought he was human only from the waist down, his upper half made of paper and black print.

I make my way into the darkness of the arch and on, into another short hallway, this one just as pristine as the last. There are windows to my right, and though the glass is regular, not stained, and clean, the morning sun seems to be straining to get through. On the opposite wall there are three doors, the middle one open. I cross to that side and poke my head in. It's a bathroom: sink, toilet, bath, no shower, and it's deserted.

The sound comes again, as if it's meant to draw my attention, to direct me, and it's coming from the room I've passed to get to the bathroom, the first door in the row from the arch.

My pulse quickens. Blunt pain taps at my right temple like an icepick. I go to the door, open it, half-expecting to feel a bullet rip through me before I get the chance to see who's holding the weapon.

But no bullet comes, and there's no weapon.

I'm in what I guess is the living room, and there's a man sitting on a brown leather couch across from two matching armchairs. I guessed right, he's reading a newspaper, but I don't have to wait for him to lower it to know it isn't my son.

"Took your time, Tom," Cadaver says in a hoarse whisper, as he closes the newspaper, folds it in half and sets it on the arm of the couch. He looks at me, expression grim, and motions for me to sit in the armchair opposite him. For a moment I don't comply, just watch as he retrieves his little microphone and jams it to his throat.

"Where's my son?"

"Sit," he commands. "This is how it's supposed to go. So do what I say." A sympathetic look crosses his ancient face. "Please."

Oddly enough, there is no mockery in his tone. The plea is a sincere one, so I take the seat, feel myself sink into it. Might be comfortable if I wasn't wired to the moon right now. "Where is he?"

Cadaver sits forward, one hand on his knee, the other holding the mike to his throat. "Upstairs," he tells me.

I start to move.

"Wait."

"What?" I'm already on my feet, impatient to be gone from this room.

"You ain't ready to see him."

"The hell I'm not."

He gestures at the seat again. "Please. I ain't fixin' to keep you from seein' him, but now's not the right time. You need to listen first."

"I'm not sure I want to hear what you have to say."

"Maybe so, but it will help you."

"And why would you want to help me?"

"I ain't your enemy."

"I seem to recall Hill said the same thing."

"Hill was an idiot."

"Can't argue with that."

"Please...sit."

I don't move. Can't. The door's not that far away and I'm standing.

"Kyle ain't goin' nowhere, Tom. He's restin'."

Resting? Here? Of all the ways I imagined finding Kyle when I got here, taking a load off sure isn't one of them. I can't tell if Cadaver's being straight with me. He managed to fool me for three years into thinking he was a harmless old man, and there's not much hope I'll be able to figure it out just by looking at him, so I do as he asks.

"Why is he here?"

"We made a bargain."

"I know: a one-way ticket out of here, right?"

Can't fault the kid for that. I don't think I've met anyone in this town who didn't dream of leaving it far behind them. But if that was what he got for his efforts, then why is he still here?

"That's right."

"In exchange for what?"

"I think you already know."

I do, but I want him to say it, to bring the gavel down on what I've been told, and what I feel deep down in my gut.

"Tell me."

"In exchange for you."

There's a glass-fronted bookcase behind the couch. In it I can see my reflection, but the gaunt overweight creature staring back at me with hollow eyes isn't someone I recognize. I bring my gaze back to Cadaver. "My life for his escape?"

"I offered to bring back the woman he loved. I offered to bring back Flo and grant him safe passage from this town."

"That's quite an offer. I'm flattered you thought it would take so much for him to sell me out. He'd probably have done it for a six-pack." I can't keep the ugly tone from my voice.

"You don't know your son very well, Sheriff."

"Either do you, apparently." I draw my fingers down my face. "So if he made the deal, how come I'm still breathing?"

"It interests me that you assume he did."

"What?"

"Situations reversed, would you have accepted the terms?"

"This isn't about me."

"You couldn't be more wrong about that."

"I want to see him."

"I understand, but let me have a few more moments of your time."

I also want a drink, but even though there's a fancy decanter in view on one of the bookshelves, I'm not going for it. I don't want to be drunk for whatever's coming, and I don't want anything Hill might have touched. So I wait, and listen, and picture Kyle in a room somewhere above my head, sleeping, unaware that his father's downstairs, chatting with the devil.

Or whatever he is.

"Is this what you do for fun?" I ask.

He looks surprised, maybe even a little insulted. "Fun?" He scoffs. "Hell...I wish that were the case, Tom."

"Then why?"

He scoots forward a little, an intense look on his face, one eye like a white marble, the other in shadow. "I don't enjoy what I do anymore than you enjoy livin' in your own skin when your spirit's already shriveled up and died inside it. I do this because I have to, not because I want to." He sits back, drums his fingers on the arm of the couch. "You want to know what I am. I can't tell you that, and not because I ain't allowed to, but because no one's ever explained it to me. What I can tell you is what I used to be. It may surprise you."

I shrug as if I couldn't care less, but I'm interested. "A preacher?"

He grins and his cheeks vanish. "A salesman."

"Let me guess—bibles."

"You need to abandon the religious angle, Tom. I was a door-to-door carpet products salesman. Damned good one too. In my spare time I liked to paint. Still life's mostly."

I frown at him. He laughs and it sounds like a gust of winter wind through the eaves. "I know. Hard to picture, ain't it?"

"No shit. And when was this?"

His smile fades. "Can't remember."

I'm appalled to find myself feeling sorry for him. I have to remind myself why I'm here, and whose fault it is. But that's not so clear, no more than it's ever been. I can't be sure Cadaver wasn't toying with me by planting the seed of doubt in my brain. He hasn't said Kyle took the bargain he was offered. He hasn't said he didn't either. The fact that I'm alive is about the only thing keeping me from being convinced the latter holds true.

"Had a wife, and two children too," he continues, as wistfully as his artificial voice will allow. "Can't recall their names, or their faces. I know I cared about them a great deal though."

"So how did you get demoted to this position?" I'm hoping to get a rise out of him, simply so I won't have to feel sympathy for the old bastard anymore.

It's his turn to shrug. "Can't rightfully recall that either, but I'm sure it began with the scandal. See, I mentioned I was good at my job. Turns out I was maybe a little too good. I could talk the talk like no one else in the company. Had a ninety-six percent success rate you see, which means almost everyone who opened the door to me bought whatever I was sellin'. Which is good, unless it's discovered that what you're sellin' emits toxic fumes, which when inhaled, causes seizures, and eventually a very painful death." He shakes his head. "Sold an awful lot before the company recalled it, Tom. That's an awful lot of dead folk."

"And that's why you're—"

"No idea. You could say the death of all those people wasn't my fault, but we might have to argue about that. I've had plenty of time to think it through, and I suppose there could be any number of reasons why I ended up doin' what I do now. Could be because I shot my father to keep him from beatin' my Momma to death with a shovel, or because I shot a few bluejays with my BB gun when I was a kid. At the end of the day, don't really matter why. I still am what I am and always was: a salesman sellin' death to whoever opens their door to me."

"And that's what we've done? Opened our doors to you because we fucked up our lives?"

"Because you fucked up the lives of others. Why do you think you're involved here? We both know you didn't murder your wife, but you keep tellin' yourself you did. Why?"

"I figured you'd already know."

"Humor me."

"Why should I?"

I search for words, but like the answer he's seeking, I can't wrench it free of the dark that's coiling inside me like oil in a spinning barrel.

"Who's the victim of your sins, Tom? Kyle?"

"Maybe."

"No." The word is flat, dead, delivered like a hand slammed down on a table. "It's you. You're the victim. You've let yourself drift on a tide of bad judgment, let this town suck the marrow from your bones and the ambition from your heart because it was easier'n puttin' up a fight. You're a quitter, Tom."

I'm a little stunned at the vehemence in his artificial voice. Whatever the motive behind his little rant, I'm inclined to believe he's just accused me of an unforgivable crime, not on some malignant whim, but because he desperately wants me to know. Because I have to know.

I've heard some people say that when they were faced with extreme danger their lives flashed before their eyes. That's who Cadaver is, or at least a part of what he is. He's a reminder of all you've done, and should have done. He's an accountant who keeps track of how much you've squandered and how much you owe. He's a debt collector of the most ruthless kind because he deals in the currency of souls.

"You're a failure."

I'm getting angry, and that's about par for the course. I can't walk away from this like I've walked away from everything else, and with no distance to put between me and the man judging me, and no gun to shove between his eyes to force him to reevaluate, I have no choice but to defend myself with words.

"Is this supposed to make me see the light? Change my ways? Am I supposed to leave here with an arm around my boy, both of us skipping to the tune of The Andy Griffith Show, all because I was fortunate enough to heed the wisdom of a mass-murdering parasite? Fuck you old man. You brought Hell to this town just as much as Hill did. You infected it, infected us, and then have the gall to sit there like God himself judging everyone you've set out to destroy. Why not just wave a magic wand and blow the fucking place off the earth and be done with it. Why drag it out like this unless you like the suffering, unless it's how your limp dick gets to twitching?"

Cadaver seems unaffected by my outburst, but right now I want to wring his scrawny neck, or at the very least rip that goddamn box out of it so he'll stop talking.

"I've done nothin' in this town the people didn't ask for, Tom. I'm as cursed as everyone else, maybe even more than they are. I don't get to make choices. I just get to grant power to people who make them too freely, and without thinkin' them through. And I don't get to change them." He frowns. "So no, I don't expect you to see the light. That star burned out a long time ago. But whether or not you choose to understand what I'm tryin' to tell you, you'll learn to appreciate the message when the choice is taken away."

"Riddles." I stand, muscles trembling, hands clenched into fists I want so badly to use but know I won't. I can't. "You're speaking in goddamn riddles. What do you want from me? From Kyle? How do we end this? Do we have to die, to burn? Is that it? Tell me!"

Cadaver rises, a skeleton beneath plastic skin. The smell of his cologne will from this moment on remind me of death. "How these things turn out depends on the choices that are made. Sometimes it happens that everythin' turns out fine. But not often. It ain't in our nature to consider others when we're sufferin' ourselves. And unfortunately for Milestone, everyone gets to bargain if they want it, even the monster hidin' among you."

I'm standing as close to him as I am willing to get. His one good eye holds me as sure as if it were a loaded gun. "Tom, you were a good man once. You lost your way. Tonight you're goin' to lose everythin' else, and for that I'm truly sorry."

He's trying to scare me. It's working.

"What about the coins, the loan? What about—" Frantic, I dig in my pocket until I have those two cold discs grasped in my hand, then I hold them out for his inspection. "—these?"

"What about them?"

"You said they were a loan."

"I did."

"What if I give mine to you? What if...?" Unsure what I'm doing, but praying it achieves the desired result, I shove one of the pennies under his nose. He backs away, looking slightly annoyed. "What if I let you have mine, me, right now, whether or not Kyle took the bargain? What then?"

"You misunderstood, Tom."

That's not what I want to hear.

"Just listen—"

He puts a hand on my wrist, forcing me to lower the coin from his face. "It was a loan for you. The coins ain't some kind of barter for your soul and Kyle's. They don't represent souls at all."

"Then what the hell are they?"

"Time. I let you borrow time."

I feel something being yanked away from me, the knot in the tug o' war rope vanishing into the darkness in the corners of a room that smells of death/cologne and furniture polish. The man looking at me from the glass over Cadaver's shoulder is a monster. His eyes are gone. My eyes are gone, but I'm not blind enough to miss seeing the picture this old man has drawn for me.

"He couldn't sell you out. I knew he wouldn't, no matter what I offered him. He's one of the few good ones, Tom, so I broke the rules for him. I gave you the pennies. Both were his. I gave you time to save him."

Sweat trickles down my neck even as a chill dances across my back. "How much time?"

From the room directly overhead, something crashes to the floor. The light sways slightly. Grains of plaster float down between us like sand from a cracked hourglass.

I feel a vibration in my bones, terror twisting my gut.

Helpless, I look at Cadaver.

"That much," he whispers.

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

 

I run, taking the steps two by two though the sweeping angle of them seems designed to slow me down. As my feet make sounds like gunshots on the steps, I feel a part of me rip away, a part of me that wants to go in the other direction, back downstairs to Cadaver, to kill him, so there'll be nothing left to face when I return. In the split-second instances when my mind cuts away from the sight of my own filthy boots pounding polished wood on this fucking endless staircase, I can almost feel his body come apart beneath my hands, blood and bone, or maybe just dust and oil spattering the walls, wet and satisfying beneath my shaking hands. I'm ripping that box from his throat, taking no care with it, just yanking it free and delighting in the sight of the gaping void it leaves behind as his head lolls atop withered shoulders. I'm hurting him. I'm showing him agony. I'm showing him how I feel, how I felt long before I first stepped foot in that goddamn tavern.

I'm tearing him apart. Returning the favor.

But then the steps run out and the landing isn't nearly long enough for me to get my thoughts in order, to force myself to be calm. Three strides and I'm at the door I'm guessing is the one from which that thumping sound came. I don't wait a second longer.

I throw open the door.

It's a bedroom.

Bed, neatly made.

Sink in the corner, dripping.

Sunlight making shadows that lay flat upon the floor.

Window overlooking the yard.

There's no one here.

Cursing, I head for the next door, the echo of that sliding thumping sound bouncing around my brain. I know what that sound was, but I'm going to dismiss the certainty and tell myself I'm letting terror mislead me. But deep down inside where reality is a small dark plot of land under an indifferent sky, I know the truth. I feel it. Right now, there is no tiny dirt road I can sidle down to avoid that big sprawling highway that runs only one way—straight into the mushy black heart of truth, the true nightmare of this situation. I can't get away. Never could. But I could have gotten Kyle out of this and didn't.

Still, Be there; be alive. I won't let you down. Not again, I repeat in a mantra inside my head, a head that feels as if it's become a porcelain vase dropped from a height.

My hand finds the door knob.

Please. Just a little more time. One more chance. One more penny.

I open the door.

The hinges shriek.

There's light coming in the window.

My mouth's dry.

There's light coming in the window.

I can't see for the tears.

There's light coming in the window.

And there's a long thin shadow swinging in front of it, touching my own feet, which I let drop me to the floor. They've held me enough, held me longer than that creaking rope is going to hold my boy.

I can't look at him. Won't.

Then I do.

Help him down, goddamn it. He's still alive.

I'm back on my feet in an instant, hugging my boy's legs, my arms tight, lifting, lifting. Trying to unbreak his neck; trying to unchoke him. He rises, but doesn't make a sound. Christ...he doesn't make a sound.

No words, no breath. No life.

He's dead and gone.

Slowly, so slowly, and gently, I let him go until the rope is tight once again and his body twists in a breeze that isn't here.

Another man, another father, might persist, try to free him, try to save him, wailing and moaning all the while, crying out to God, promising retribution for this heinous injustice.

But I'm not another father.

And God isn't listening.

I find myself looking at my son's shoes, note that they are cleaner than mine, though we've walked the same paths tonight. Guess that probably means something. All I take from it is the fact that they're cleaner, and that the laces are untied, same way they always were when he got done with a day's work. He never could tie laces right, but he sure did a hell of a job with that noose.

His belt buckle is silver, a rearing horse locked inside an oval, and it glints in the sunlight, until the body swings around to the shadows again, then that silver mare turns black.

The floor hurts my knees as I let it draw me down again. Bare wood. I want to claw it to splinters, but I'll wait. I have to wait to see if I choke to death like my boy because the feeling in my chest makes me believe that's what's going to happen. Someone has their hands around my throat, but there's nobody here but us.

Just me.

Just me, and my boy, who's wearing a brown noose pulled so tight it's sawed almost clear through the skin.

Just me and my boy, who's sticking his tongue out at me like he did when I teased him about the girl he used to walk home when they were in second grade. How many years ago was that? What was her name? Nancy something. Ellis, maybe. Damn it. Pretty girl too, but she moved on. She didn't want to, and I guess Kyle didn't want her to either. But wish in one hand...

"Shit in the other," I say aloud, wondering if my voice is enough to make Kyle swing some more, because aside from that creaking rope, the room is deathly quiet, deathly still, which I suppose is only appropriate.

On the floor, there's a chair, lying on its back, one its runners broken. I wonder if Kyle changed his mind as he stood atop that chair until the chair decided for him. Sorry, son. Too late now. Your old man hasn't spent your time wisely.

I won't look at his face, though it begs me to.

I won't.

I've taken the blame for my wife's death though I wasn't even in the car. I got out, she drove away, and two hours later we pulled my Lexus out of the Milestone River. I never told Kyle that. Never told him that we found Alfie Tomlin, the banker, in the passenger seat either. No, I kept that stuff to myself because once she was gone, I was all he had left. I was what he needed. A target. Someone to blame, to hate, and I let him.

I let him.

You're the victim, Cadaver said. Not Kyle.

He lied, of course. For all his sympathy and confessions, he lied to me. I'm not the victim. I'm not the one swinging from the rafters or burned to death.

I'm alive, and though I'm about to make myself a promise that I'll rectify that before the sun goes down, I'm going to forget about Hell and devils and men with no voices and miraculous resurrections and ghostly spouses, and the cosmic or celestial balance that has made us all its slaves. I'm going to put out of my mind all thoughts of betrayal and lies and sin and hate and love.

Fuck all that.

Right now I'm going to restore the only balance that matters a goddamn right at this very second in my life.

And I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I expect to find him gone, fled like the yellow son of a bitch I know him to be, and when I storm into the parlor, he's nowhere in sight. Rage is making me shake harder than a man in an electric chair, but when I turn, there he is, the front door open, poised, waiting, as if for me to accompany him. Like we're about to take a nice pleasant walk of the grounds. The daylight doesn't reach far into the hall. Maybe he's holding it back. Maybe it doesn't know how to penetrate the sickness, death and misery he wears for a coat.

"You killed him."

He clucks his tongue, and I've just decided that's the first thing I'm going to rip from him.

"You know that ain't true." It's hard to hear him over the sound of my own blood roaring through me. "Maybe not in your head where the fury's flowin' from, but deep down you—"

Fists clenched tight and held by my sides, I start toward him. "I'm through listening to you telling me how I am, what I am, and what I'm supposed to do. And you're all done messing with folk's lives. You're going in the ground today, Cadaver, right next to Eddie and the whore and the only choice I'm giving you is whether or not you want to be dead or alive when I do it."

I need him to be unsettled, to look shaken. I need him to be afraid, but he isn't. Nothing about him has changed much, except maybe for his shoulders, which have drawn in a little as if he's waiting for the first blow. But there's no fear in him. Nothing. He just looks sad, like none of this is a surprise, as if he saw the whole damn thing in some fucking crystal ball.

"You know somethin'?" he asks, when I reach him. "I would very much like if you could do that. But you can't, and you ain't the first to offer. Not by a long shot. And every time I hear it, I feel somethin' I'm not allowed to feel, somethin' I've all but forgotten how to feel. The very thing you and everyone else in this town squanders with every breath you take: Hope. So by all means, Tom, do your worst. Make your last stand in a town that has nothin' left in it for you to protect even if you continue to pretend it does. Put me in the ground for a spell to teach me a lesson you still, despite all you've lived through, haven't learned yourself."

Words. That's all they are. More words.

I close the space between us with one lunge, and insane animal sounds fill the hall, like there's a pack of crazed starving jackals pouring down the stairs. Takes me a moment, but as soon as my hands find Cadaver's coat, and then his neck, I realize that sound is coming from me. Spit flies from my lips into the old man's face, flecks of foam stippling his sallow cheeks, and still, still he doesn't look threatened, and that refusal to be afraid, to at least pretend I have a hope of ending all of this by ending him, is going to drain the fight from me if I don't do what I need to do and fast.

"Bring him back," I snarl, grunting with the effort of trying to strangle a man whose throat is mostly metal. He shakes when I throttle him, but his eyes, one living, one dead, stare at me with aggravating calm, his hands by his sides.

"Bring him back."

"And what will you do for me?" he whispers.

"Just bring back my son."

He mouths the words, "I can't," and then the bastard smiles, adds a silent, "I won't" to it and my hands fly from his throat to his face, to those eyes. He jerks back, and somewhere inside me I'm celebrating the first reaction I've gotten from him, but I'm too focused, to driven to rejoice for long. His skin is cold—but not cold enough to indicate he's already dead and therefore can't be killed—and my hands brace his face, thumbs finding his eyes.

"If you won't fix it," I growl at him. "You won't ever again see what you've done to people." And as if I'm pressing them into fruit to test for ripeness, I let my thumbs sink into his wrinkled sockets, into the too dry but soft orbs of his eyes.

He doesn't make a sound, but he's beginning to sag. The feeling of victory increases, filling me with cold fire, igniting some part of me that's been buried for far too long, the part of me that knew once upon a time how to make others pay for their sins.

And goddamn it, I'm not stopping until someone has paid.

Cadaver's legs buckle beneath him. He's kneeling, arms still by his sides, face still cradled in my hands, a queer hissing noise coming from the box in his throat. That little microphone clatters to the floor.

"Fight me," I command him, because I want him to. I want him to fight for his life like everyone in Milestone has had to do because they were too blind to see it when it deserted them.

He gasps as his eyes give way beneath my thumbs. I increase my grip, letting them sink farther, drilling toward his brain, or whatever ugliness fills his rotten skull. Even without his eyes, he could be dangerous.

Sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades.

Cadaver mouths something as watery blood streams down his face, but I can only feel his lips move against the heel of my palm now. Dry and dusty, like the wings of a moth. I lean close. "Fix it." It can't be this easy. But it seems it is. Three years being governed by an old man and a lunatic priest and they were both made of flesh and blood at the back of it all. What utter fools we've been.

Cadaver, who hasn't struggled from the beginning of this, gasps one more time and I feel his weight pulling away from me, his body headed for a resting place in the corner by the door.

Milky fluid squirts and reflexively, my grip loosens. There's a gruesome squelch as my thumbs slide free of the man's eye sockets. He falls back, legs folded beneath him, his skull thudding against the hall wall.

He's still smiling.

I wipe my hands on my pants, and stand over him. The fresh air drifting through the open door cools the sweat on my brow but I'm shaking so hard I'm afraid it will shake me to pieces. My guts seem about to escape through my throat. They're headed off by desperation. "How do I make this stop? How do I get him back?"

He gives the smallest little shake of his head.

"Goddamn it, tell me or I'll carry you out of here in a basket."

He does, but I have to bend low to hear the words. "It wouldn't interest you," he says.

"What wouldn't?"

The fist he brings up is trembling, and for a moment he looks like an old man about to waggle it at some pesky kids who've left a flaming bag full of dog turds on his stoop. But then a twig-like finger springs free and bends toward him, indicating he wants me to come closer.

I hesitate, and in that hallway where the light is hesitating too, time passes unmeasured by the fall of the old bastard's coins. I hunker down, knees crackling, my gut straining against my belt.

"Tell me what to do."

With that maddening smile still mangling his lips, he brings his head close and whispers in my ear. "You have to give me what I want."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Wintry's been near-death since the fire, but in Milestone, even if you don't have an old man's pennies in your pocket, you can draw the time out just enough to get your business done. I've been doing it for too many years to count, and Wintry's doing it now.

With his last reserves of strength, he leans against the doorjamb, awaiting my word. He says nothing, offers no condolences, asks no questions, just stands there, eyes narrowed against the gnawing pain, watching as I return from the kitchen, a bread knife clutched in one hand. When I ask for his help in cutting Kyle down, he dutifully steps over the threshold where Cadaver is playing possum, and accompanies me upstairs.

My boy is as I found him, though he's stopped swinging, his shadow like a painted thing on the polished floor. The wounds mask the emotion on Wintry's face as he supports Kyle's legs while I drag the bed away from the wall and far enough into the middle of the room to allow me to mount it and reach the noose. There is little give in the mattress, though I can feel the hard springs pressing through. The rope has been looped three times around one of the rafters. It won't be hard to cut and the blade is sure.

"Lift him," I instruct. Wintry does. The sound of his breathing is like a steam train leaving the station.

Kyle is turned away from me, and I'm thankful for that. All I can see is the back of his head, the dark unruly hair. I can't remember the last time I touched it, but I won't touch it now. Later, maybe, when Wintry's gone.

I begin to saw at the rope, tears or sweat running down my face, I can't tell which.

The first loop snaps with a labored groan.

Then the second. When the third gives way the boy is free, and falling, but this time it is not a noose that catches him, but Wintry, whose eyes now seem to contain an emotion I have never seen in them before. It's the same look he once drew from me whenever Flo lavished attention on him.

Envy.

And it's directed at the boy cradled in his arms.

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

Wintry carries the boy downstairs. He goes slowly because of the pain, and because he doesn't want to drop the boy. Doesn't want the Sheriff to have to try to hide his mourning any more than he's already doing.

So he takes the steps easy. Kyle isn't heavy. It's like carrying a baby, and right now Wintry wishes he knew magic, or had the power of healing, because he'd bring that kid back for the Sheriff lickety-split. But he doesn't know magic, and he doesn't have Cobb's power to heal. If he did, he'd surely use it on himself, and make the awful burning go away.

Though the stairs seems to go on forever, it has an end, and when Wintry reaches it, it feels like he's just come down off the mountain he calls home—used to call home—into the valley.

He stands there for a moment, ignoring the raging fire in his arms and the terrible pain from the muscles beneath, and he pictures Flo, who might walk in that door any second, smiling, delighting in his surprise. Just like the night he asked if he could walk her home and she agreed, except it was his home he walked her to. Just like she surprised him by refusing a drink, or anything but the short walk to the cot in the corner. Just like she surprised him by weeping all the way through their lovemaking, then asking him to marry her afterward. And sure, Wintry was no fool, he'd heard the stories, heard that she'd killed her husband, but at that moment it didn't matter. He'd said yes, and in the morning, when he watched her leave, watched her until she had descended the mountain and was little more than a speck, he decided that if she did kill her man, he must have deserved it. And maybe he would too, but he could think of worse ways to die than at the hands of the woman he loved.

Burning, for example.

Grimacing, he turns to look at the Sheriff, whose face is almost the same shade as his son's, and nods. For a moment it doesn't seem as if the man understands what Wintry's trying to tell him, so he adds, "Take him."

The Sheriff reaches out with the kind of look a man not used to holding babies might have when presented with one. But he takes his son in his arms, anguish rippling across his face, and brings the boy close to his chest.

"Let's go," he says, as firmly as a voice broken by tears will allow him.

But Wintry doesn't move. Instead he glances down into the corner by the door, where the man he wants to see, the man he came here to see is still sitting.

"Just a sec," he says to Tom, and leans over the man with no eyes.

"He's gone," the Sheriff says quietly, and there's a certainty to his voice that only the man who killed him can have.

"He welshed then," Wintry murmurs. "Didn't do what he promised he'd do."

"If I were you I wouldn't be surprised. The devil doesn't keep his promises."

Wintry straightens, a hard black knot of bitterness caught in his throat. With a sigh, he leads the way out into the sunshine, still taking it slow out of respect for Sheriff Tom's grief. It ain't fair. Ain't fair at all. He's real sorry for Tom, that's for sure, but he's sorry for himself too and impatient to be done with it all.

It feels like hours before they reach the end of the path, and here they stop.

"Thanks," the Sheriff says. "For..." He shakes his head, brings the boy's head close to his chest with one grubby, bloodstained hand. His eyes are filled with the kind of agony Wintry knows all too well.

Sheriff Tom blinks, as if to dismiss further conversation, or acknowledgment of his gratitude, and moves around the front of the truck, to where the sun through the overhanging leaves makes dancing patterns on the road, and he motions for Wintry to open the side door. Kyle's head begins to turn, as if he wants to see what Wintry's up to, or where he's going to be stowed, and the Sheriff gently puts a hand on the boy's chin, directs his gaze back to the gold star on his father's uniform. The light breeze ruffles the boy's hair, making him seem alive. But anyone who might come along this road need only look at Sheriff Tom's face to know the truth about the situation.

And then the sound of an engine getting closer tells Wintry that someone is coming along. He hopes, for the Sheriff's sake, that whoever it is doesn't stop to offer help, or ask questions. But then, this is Milestone, and people rarely do. Can't rightly be afraid of death if you've never had to look at it, which is why most folks in this town don't look anywhere but inside themselves.

"Wintry..."

It's Wintry's turn to apologize for being distracted by the car. "Car comin'," he says, and sets about opening the door for Tom. "We best hurry ourselves outta the road."

He feels a cold lance in his side at the thought that maybe the kid—Brody—managed to get his hands on a car and is racing to put them out of their misery once and for all. Wintry wouldn't mind, but he figures that's more than the Sheriff deserves.

"Best hurry," he says again.

The sound of the car grows louder. Should be just past the bend now, and it's coming real fast. Wintry's hand is on the door, on the handle, and has it cracked, just a little, when the engine roars, making him turn to look once more.

It's a red Buick. He recognizes it as Doctor Hendricks car, and as it gets closer, still going way too fast, sunlight flashing across the windshield, Wintry sees that he was right. There, hunched behind the wheel, is the doctor himself.

"It's the Doc," he tells Tom. "But I don't think—"

Even from back here, Wintry realizes two things: Hendricks either doesn't see them, or doesn't care. Whatever the case, he's not stopping. And in a matter of seconds, the men standing in the way are going to be road kill.

He has time for one thought only: This is where it ends, and it is not a frightening thought. He has never feared death, and that's just as well because here it comes now, bearing down on him, the Buick's silver grille like grinning teeth about to yawn open and swallow them all wide, the headlights wide like the terrified eyes of the pale man behind the wheel.

The sound of the engine fills the world.

The Sheriff cries out a warning. There is a hand on Wintry's arm. He ignores the pain it causes, grabs hold of the Sheriff's wrist, turns and thrusts the man, still cradling his boy, clear across the road, where the lawman staggers and falls flat on his ass on the verge of the slight embankment leading down into the woods. Kyle tumbles away from him, lands sprawled on his back in the grass, shoes pointing straight up at the sky.

"Wintry!"

There is nothing but red in his vision.

See you soon baby.

Wintry bends low, as if he's going in for a football tackle, head lowered, eyes forward, shoulders angled forward. He does not wait to die. With his last breath rushing from his mouth in a strangled cry, he rushes to meet it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Didn't used to be this hard," Cadaver says, easing himself onto a stool. "Didn't used to be like this at all. Guess I'm either losin' my touch or people are gettin' smarter."

"The hell happened to you?" Gracie asks, her hands flat on the counter, eyes cold.

"The boy is dead."

"Shame."

Cadaver raises his head, and smiles at her, though the absence of eyes and the raw bloody holes where they should be negate any semblance of humor from it. "You almost sound like you mean it."

"Who says I don't?"

"I don't know, but if you're lookin' for character witnesses, you're runnin' kind of low. 'Specially with you killin' 'em an all."

"Vess would have told them."

"Could be they already know."

Gracie leans in, teeth clenched, red-veined eyes wide. "The only way they'd know is if you told them."

"Yeah." He nods slowly, picks a speck of soot from the counter and inspects it, which, considering he's blind, or at least should be, would seem amusing to Gracie under different circumstances. But she's far from amused. In fact, she'd love nothing more than to rip the old guy's head clean off his shoulders and preserve it in a pickle jar as a warning to future customers not to fuck with her. But of course, there won't be any future customers. She's getting gone and Cadaver's her ticket, so for now at least, she has no choice but to let him keep that rotten head of his, and to bide her time.

Gracie's hands become claws on the polished mahogany. "You dirty son of a bitch. Why?"

"Because you ain't the only one who wants out, and I've been plyin' my wares an awful lot longer than you have. Comes a time when it has to end, you see, when you start goin' to bed at night and instead of seein' nothin' you start seein' the faces of people you used to care about—"

"I don't believe I'm hearing this."

Cadaver ignores the interruption. "—Then you realize, one mornin' while your busy materializin' in people's livin' rooms right when they're desperate enough to say yes to Hell itself if it means they get more time, that there might be salvation for you after all, an escape route you never believed existed. And then you start to want it, start plannin', until at last the time comes when you have no more faith in what you do, only in what you can do to be done with it all."

"You've got to be kiddin' me."

"For me that time is now."

Gracie brings her face close to the old man's, stares hard into his dead eye sockets. "Not before you get me out it isn't."

"I'm not a welsher. You'll get what I promised if your side of the bargain is met. All of 'em, you said, correct?"

She nods, struggling to restrain herself from raking his sallow face with her nails.

"Well then," Cadaver says, rising from the chair with a tip of an imaginary hat. "Let's hope the Sheriff doesn't live to see another sunset." He turns and walks toward the door. "Or you'll be watching a million of them from behind these windows."

 

 

* * *

 

 

I'm winded, and not altogether sure what I'm seeing is actually happening. Could be I'm dreaming it all. Since finding Kyle strung up in Hill's house, everything seems just the slightest bit off kilter. When I move my eyes, the world takes its time following.

But the sound, the earth-shattering explosion as steel meets flesh meets steel is enough to let me know there can be no mistaking this as reality. I saw Hendricks as the car approached, hunched over the wheel, shoulders raised as if he was manning a jackhammer. He was talking to himself, the sun making the tears in his eyes sparkle, face contorted in agony, the roots of which I'll never know. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that he was about to kill someone.

And that look stayed on his face until Wintry let out a roar, fists held at his sides, and rushed forward like a bull, head and shoulders ramming into the car as if he hoped to stop it. I swear he almost did. The car seemed to stagger a little. There was smoke from the wheels, a horrible sharp screech before the car slammed into the wounded giant, crushing him against the front of my truck, his upper body snapping back like a jack-in-the-box. Blood flew. Flesh was torn away. But that wasn't the end of it. The speed and the interruption Wintry presented to its passage didn't stop the car. It's front wheels reared up as if it was going to simply drive on over my truck. It didn't make it. Gravity intervened. Hendricks' car stalled and rolled back down on all four tires, the Buick bouncing on its chassis, but in doing so, crushed whatever was left of the big man beneath it.

The impact was so severe, I expected to see it had ejected the doctor from his car, but though the windshield was obliterated, he's still in the driver seat, though what's sitting there isn't recognizable as anything human.

Can I call this an accident or assume it's the result of another of Cadaver's little bargains? Guess it doesn't matter. The only thing that does is lying three feet away from me, spread-eagled, head cocked at an unnatural angle.

I have to leave here, but my truck isn't going to move. There's steam gushing out from beneath the crumpled hood and oil pissing from beneath it. It's done, as is Hendricks' Buick, so I guess I'm walking, unless someone comes along who doesn't feel compelled to use their car as a weapon. And in Milestone, at least over the past few hours, such people are rare.

I stand up, check on Kyle to make sure he's as comfortable as he needs to be, that he's not just lying there like a buck waiting to be skinned, then I look at the road, at the twisted metal, the blood, the chaos.

Wintry's gone, and though I know I should mourn him, I reckon he's exactly where he wanted to be. At least his suffering's over.

I step out onto the asphalt.

Though my truck's a wreck, the front end doesn't look all that bad.

There's a slim chance the stereo still works.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Blue smoke, sad eyes. The smell of fresh blood and motor oil.

"Did you know?" I ask her.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I tried. You wouldn't listen."

Silence but for a faint dripping from somewhere behind me. Then, somewhere in the trees behind Kyle, a catbird does its impression of a hungry infant. I look toward the sound and see a flicker of dark gray, then nothing but green trapping the sunlight.

"What I'm going to do...will it be enough?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Can't or won't."

"Can't. And even if I could, I wouldn't."

"Why?"

"Knowin' what lies ahead can't change you, or make anythin' better no more than dwellin' on the past will. You've always done what your gut's told you to. You've never been a great listener to the voice of your heart, not because you're a bad man, but because you're not wired that way. It doesn't speak to you in words you understand, and that's just how it is."

I respond with a soft, bitter laugh. "So I can blame this voice for driving my son to kill himself? Jesus, that's a relief."

"Would Kyle have been happy if he'd sold you out, and got out of Milestone? Would you, in his shoes? Neither of us can see what would have become of him. He wanted out; he got it. He listened to the voice of his heart and it showed him the way."

"And what is my voice telling me to do now? Can you hear it?"

"No. But it doesn't matter if I tell you it's the wrong or right way, you won't listen. All that's left is to see this through."

"Hey," I say, clearing my throat and scratching at my scalp—my way of letting her know I can't discuss this anymore.

"I know."

I wave away her mindreading and scowl. "Well for Chrissakes just let me say it anyway."

"You don't know how."

"Then can I say I love you?"

The smoke curls into a smile. "Yes."

"Will you buy it if I do?"

"Maybe."

"I love you."

"What about Iris?"

"Don't start."

"Get goin' Tom. Do what needs to be done."

"Wait." I haven't turned off the radio, haven't told her to leave me alone, but when I search for her face, she's gone, curlicues of blue smoke drifting on the breeze from the open car door. I watch it fade until only the memory of her is left, and the sad fact that when I told her I loved her, she didn't respond in kind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sun's high in the sky and glaring like the eye of a dragon by the time someone comes. We haven't moved, Kyle and me. We're still just sitting, and catching up on old times, though of course I'm doing all the talking, and I figure I must have been staring right back at that big old sun because there are white orbs wherever I look, even when I shut my eyes.

This car is a familiar one. It's going too slow to present much of a threat, but in this town, who knows? There are no miracles in Milestone. Plenty of murderers, though.

The car stops a few feet away, and it's a woman that gets out.

"Tom?"

"Iris." I'm glad to see her, but I'm guessing she won't know that by the look on my face, so maybe I'd better tell her. "Guess your magical power of screwing up electricity doesn't extend to car batteries, huh?"

"Or telephones, or hairdryers. What happened?" She's blocking the light now, her shadow cool and welcome across my sunburned face. It gives her a red halo.

I fill her in on the details, laughing my way through some of it, blubbering my way through more, and listening to the rest as if it isn't coming from my mouth at all.

In the end it comes down to a litany of who's dead, an out-loud reading of tomorrow's obituaries. Iris is quiet through it all, and if she's upset as I reckon she should be seeing Kyle lying here lifeless at the side of the road, I can't hear it in her voice.

"C'mon," she says. "We gotta get you home."

"I'm not going home."

"Where then?"

"Your place. Just for a little while. I need to rest."

I expect her to ask questions, and there are certainly plenty of them, but we both know my son's body's got to be loaded into her car, so we say nothing more until the job is done and we're on our way back to town.

"What are you goin' to do?" she asks me, her voice laced with concern.

My eyes are closed; exhaustion's taking me away from all this to a cool dark place where there's only me, no one else, no angels with red hair or devils with no eyes. Just me. But I have energy enough to satisfy her curiosity as Cadaver satisfied mine, even though the dark wings of sleep have wrapped themselves around me and are already spiriting me away.

"Kill Gracie."

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

 

Brody closes his eyes. His jaw aches something terrible, and he suspects his nose is broken. His breath whistles through the coagulating blood. Still, all things considered he reckons he could be a lot worse off. He's still free, after all. There aren't any sirens sundering the air, no thundering cavalcade he could never outrun on foot. The maddening chorus of birdsong drills into his eardrums and he kicks at the high grass, roars at the source of the noise, but that only makes his head hurt more, so he shuts them out, massages his jaw, and keeps walking. He's heading out of town, tired, and sore, and on foot, but sooner or later a goddamn car has to pass this way and give him a ride.

He wipes his sleeve across his nose, winces and grunts with pain.

"Goddamn sonofabitch." The guy got him good, there's no denying that. In his haste to be away from the whatever-the-hell-it-was that came crawling out of the Sheriff's car radio, he hadn't thought of the big black guy, hadn't considered that there might still be enough strength left in him to get in his way. But there was, and he did, and the fist Brody ran into was like a brick wall.

Worse than being knocked out by a burned-up giant he hadn't had the sense to look out for though, is the fact that they tricked him. The Sheriff should be dead and Brody three states away by now, but the Sheriff knew what he was doing when he turned on that stereo, and all Wintry had to do was step up to the plate. Now they're gone, and though he knows where to find them, and vengeance demands he do that very thing, he's letting it go. There isn't time; he's wasted enough of that on these hicks.

He needs a car, and fast, and it's only when he stops looking over his shoulder at the quiet road a mile and a half later that he realizes he's been looking in the wrong place. To his right, through the trees surrounding a narrow overgrown path, is a small quaint little cabin. Smoke drifts from the chimney. There's some kind of a wooden figure standing on the rickety looking porch, and what might be a totem in the small overgrown yard.

Parked out front is a beat-up old Dodge.

Well I'll be damned.

Brody smiles and steps off the road onto the path.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The cabin is painted gray with crimson shutters. Dreamcatchers and wind chimes dangle from the eaves, tinkling away like tin-eared men trying to play a tune. A six-foot cigar store Indian either presides over the porch, complete with headdress, war paint, and battle scars. He's stationed right next to the small bungalow's warped and scarred front door, sharp-boned face upraised, ocean blue eyes staring reverently upward. There's a quiver of arrows on his back, a bow slung over one shoulder, and a curved wooden blade strapped to one muscular thigh.

Brody stoops to pick up a dusty rock, half-expecting to find a door key hidden underneath, but is disappointed. Nothing but a few earwigs and earthworms, and after a second, even those are gone. He sighs, but keeps the rock in his hand, nods at the chief respectfully as he mounts the creaky porch steps. Now there's a guy who'd have taken no shit from cowboys, he thinks as he raps a knuckle on the door. Immediately there comes a shuffling sound from inside the house. "Who's that?"

"Yeah, hi," Brody says, in as cheerful a tone as he can summon out of his aching head. "My car broke down a ways down the road there. I was wondering if maybe you had some jumper cables or something."

"I ain't got nothin' like that. Be on your way."

"Well, how about a phone so I can call someone?"

A dry chuckle. "You know where you are, boy?"

Brody groans silently. This is all he needs. Of course the option to just jump the car is still available to him, but if it turns out there's a real life Geronimo behind that door, he'd rather not end up with a couple of arrows in his back. Better to just make sure the guy's incapacitated one way or another.

"I need a ride is all. Doesn't seem to be much traffic out here this time of the day. Thought folks would be coming home from work at least."

"There's no work in Milestone, boy, least not the kind you'd understand."

"That so? Well, if you could help me out—"

"I know who you are."

Brody stops, sentence unfinished, and straightens. "That so?"

"Yep."

"Well I don't see how you'd know."

"I heard."

Brody puts his hands to the sides of his head, massages his temple. Jesus on a cornstalk. This is all he needs. Obviously the guy is watching him through a peephole or something, though Brody doesn't see one, and has recognized him. Could be his mug shot is showing on the guy's TV right at this moment, or on the front page of a newspaper spread across the kitchen table. But just as he's about to concede defeat, the guy mumbles something that gives Brody pause. "What did you say?"

Clearer: "I said the wind told me about you."

"The wind?" Brody rolls his eyes. Another loon. "And what did the wind say?"

"Said not to trust you. Said you murdered some folks, one of 'em a drifter who looked like Dean Martin, your girl's favorite singer. Said you tried to kill the Sheriff when he was just tryin' to get to his son. That sound about right?"

Brody grits his teeth. "Wow, that's quite a wind. Better than the main evening news."

"You best get out of here now. I have nothin' you need."

Brody glances over his shoulder. The Dodge is a rustbucket, but the tires aren't flat and he can see through the dirty window a set of keys in the ignition. With a smile he turns back to the door. "I need your car."

"Take it."

Brody stares at the door for a moment. Then: "Take it? Just like that?"

"Sure. I ain't got no use for it anymore."

"Why's that? You a cripple or something?"

"Nope. I just don't leave the house."

Brody smirks, already starting to feel better about things, even if his head still hurts like hell. "Town like this, can't say I blame you." Eager to be gone, he slaps a palm on the door. "Much obliged to you for the car. Can't say as it's ever likely you're going to see it again."

"Don't expect to."

"Right. You take care now."

Grinning, Brody turns, but halts so abruptly on the top step he almost falls. "The fuck?"

From behind him, the old man's panicked voice: "What is it? What do you see?"

Brody opens his mouth, but quickly closes it again, smiles uncertainly. "It's nothing," he says.

But it isn't.

No birds are singing, and the breeze has died.

There's no sound at all, even from the hundreds of deer that have somehow gathered in the old man's yard and are now standing motionless, heads lowered slightly, their dark eyes fixed on the house.

On Brody.

"It's nothing," he says again. "Just a bunch of dumb old deer."

"I'm afraid," the old man whispers. "They're a little more than that."

 

 

* * *

 

 

It's time to go. I've only slept a few hours, but it'll do. Iris's hand is cool against my bare chest, and though we're both naked and in her bed, we've done nothing except lie together. I didn't ask for anything more, and she didn't offer, and that sits just fine with me. It's not why I came here.

The breeze through the window has the candles snapping at shadows. In the kitchen a sink is dripping water with the sound of a clock ticking in an empty room.