《Nightfall - Volume 1 of the Nightmareland Chronicles》 Chapter One Tomorrow died on the last morning of May. There were those who saw it happen, who watched the shadow fall, who felt the chop of the guillotine as the world lost its head. Everyone else witnessed only the aftermath, for the event itself lasted no longer than a moment. They stepped outside from windowless rooms, they climbed up from crowded subways, they pulled back the blinds to let in the sun, and found the nightmare waiting for them. John Hawthorne saw it happen. He stood behind his house, down a path his feet had worn through the trees. The trees were harsh things, fossils with knobbed branches and leathered bark, and past the last of them was a small dirt clearing¡ªa piece of desert trapped up in the mountains, looking out over the brown flatlands of Phelan and the distant dry lakebed known as El Mirage, which was already giving off a hazy shimmer beneath the new sun. It was half past seven, and John had been standing in the same spot since well before dawn. This was something he had done every day, without fail, for more than twenty years. He was a tall man, lean but solid, two hundred plus pounds in a body that didn¡¯t show it. He had a face made to be framed against a severe horizon, with ashy black stubble that did nothing to hide his cheekbones or soften his jawline. His age showed only in his green-going-gray eyes. Time had acted on John the way it acts on minerals deep underground, changing them, hardening them. If asked how old he was, and if he felt inclined to answer, he would tell you he was north of fifty and south of sixty. More than that he couldn¡¯t say. He had stopped counting. Had no reason to care. John raised his mug to sip his coffee, which had long since gone cold, when he heard someone crunching up the winding gravel driveway below. A boy. The neighbor boy, to be exact. Nicholas Krauter was the only child of a single father, a man named Matthew who made his living selling motorcycles he was too scared to ride himself. John knew his type well, all suit and smile and soft belly, with just enough spine to hold a shirt up straight. The kind of guy who could get heartburn from a mean look or a stomach ache from a sharp word, so it came as no wonder that Nicholas was such a sad sight. The boy pushed at his bicycle like a galley slave at an oar, bowed over the handlebars and gasping for air. John watched him struggle along, wondering what in the hell he was doing here. It wasn¡¯t to borrow a cup of sugar, that much was certain. Nobody ever visited John, except for Mariah. And she would not be coming his way again. Not after the last time. The only time. ¡°You lost?¡± John called down. Nicholas stopped in his tracks, swaying, and squinted up at John on the rise. He waved once¡ªa surprised, limp-wristed flap of his hand¡ªbefore removing his helmet and starting up the embankment on all fours. It was tough going, thanks to the loose rocks and sticker bushes. When he finally made it to the top, he collapsed onto his back. John considered helping him up, but his hand, stuck in the pocket of his faded blue jeans, couldn¡¯t be bothered. ¡°Huh-huh-hello, Mr. Huh-Hawthorne,¡± Nicholas said as he found his feet. The sound of his breath was a stick dragging on a violin string. Foxtails clung to his striped t-shirt. His skinny white legs, poking out from a pair of cargo shorts, had caught a tremble they couldn¡¯t let go. ¡°Jeez, your hill sucks. You¡¯d think I¡¯d be used to it, considering I live on a hill too, but nope, nu-uh. You ever get nosebleeds living way up here? I do, like every night. Sometimes I wake up with my face crusted to my pillow, and I think something¡¯s grabbing onto me, like an alien or something. Hey, what¡¯s your mug say?¡± Nothing. The mug said nothing. It was a plain white mug. ¡°I don¡¯t do small talk, kid. And definitely not before the frost has had the chance to melt.¡± Nicholas was quiet for a moment. ¡°There¡¯s no frost, though. It¡¯s not cold.¡± So, the cold was inside then. Sometimes it was hard to tell. John was always cold when he stood out here. ¡°Don¡¯t you have school?¡± ¡°Yeah. School is why I¡¯m here, actually.¡± Traffic hummed on Highway 2. The sound came and went, so soft that it somehow reinforced the silence around them. ¡°There¡¯re these kids,¡± Nicholas said. ¡°Bradley Jacobs. Wesley Porter. Peter Casanova. They¡¯re a real bunch of assholes.¡± He looked guardedly at John, and from that look John understood that Nicholas did not swear around his father, that his father knew nothing of what he was about to say. ¡°When we were in third grade, Wesley pressed a stick to my throat in the library. The stick was a placeholder, you know¡ªtake a book out and put the stick in. He pressed it there like it was a knife and backed me up against the bookcase. He didn¡¯t say anything, just smiled at me until I got so scared I yelled out. The librarian came, but by then he¡¯d put the stick down and gotten out a book. Oliver Twist. The librarian knew something had happened¡ªWesley Stupid Porter reading Oliver Twist? As if! But she didn¡¯t know what was happening, and I couldn¡¯t say because he was still there, not looking at me, not looking at either of us, just smiling so only I could see. That¡¯s what grownups don¡¯t get. Like my dad. He thinks if you tell a teacher, the teacher will make it better. He doesn¡¯t understand that a smile like Wesley¡¯s is happy to wait.¡± John grunted. ¡°Now it¡¯s worse. It¡¯s every day, and if it¡¯s not Wesley, it¡¯s Bradley, and if it¡¯s not Bradley, it¡¯s Peter¡ªPeter¡¯s the biggest dick of them all. He pushed me while I was going down these stairs and I skinned my knee and my bag was so heavy it swung me around onto my back, like I was a turtle. Then last week, all three of them came into the bathroom while I was in the stall and started kicking the door, screaming at me to open up. The whole thing was shaking and I thought it was going to come down on me, and then it started to¡­ one of the walls tipped in, and Peter climbed up onto it with a wet wad of toilet paper, like he¡¯d soaked it in the sink, only he hadn¡¯t used the sink, he¡¯d pissed all over it. He shouted ¡®BOMBS AWAY, FAGGOT,¡¯ and threw it at me. It hit me right in the mouth. I could taste it.¡± ¡°What¡¯s this got to do with me?¡± ¡°My dad says to stay away from you. He says everyone in town stays away from you, but he won¡¯t say why.¡± John stroked his coffee mug with a callused thumb and said nothing. ¡°What would you do?¡± Nicholas asked. ¡°You can tell me that at least, can¡¯t you? What would you do if somebody pushed you?¡± ¡°Kid. I did the pushing.¡± Nicholas nodded. It was a defeated motion, a pathetic little dip of the head, and it made one corner of John¡¯s mouth curl down in distaste. ¡°You think there¡¯s an easy fix,¡± John said. ¡°That¡¯s your problem. You had an idea you¡¯d come up here and I¡¯d say a few words that would make everything better. But there¡¯s no such thing as an easy fix, not in this life. You say these kids are assholes. Well, the world breeds assholes. The world¡¯s dark inside and it smells like shit, and it¡¯s not going to change for you. You¡¯re the one that needs to change. You. Look at you. One puny hill had its way with you. You¡¯re twelve years old¡ª¡± Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Eleven.¡± ¡°When I¡¯m talking, you¡¯re as old as I want you to be, and your lips are shut. Got it? It doesn¡¯t matter if you¡¯re eleven or twelve or twenty-five. What matters is what you¡¯re made of and how much you¡¯ve got of it, and frankly, kid, it¡¯s a surprise your skin has anything to stick to. Still, you have some nerve coming up here, so I¡¯ll do you a favor. I¡¯ll tell you how I see it.¡± A wind had begun to rise, much stronger and sharper than the wind blowing from the valley and the desert beyond. ¡°Your old man let you down. Somewhere along the way he forgot to be a father to you and he became your wet nurse instead. He built a warm cozy nest for you out of his love . . . only you can¡¯t trust love. Love is a liar. It¡¯ll tell you you¡¯re safe, that everything¡¯s okay, and all the while the wolves are outside clawing at your door. And when they get in, your love will leave you. It¡¯ll blow out like a candle and leave you in the dark, for the wolves and their teeth.¡± It was quiet. And cold. John Hawthorne hadn¡¯t felt this kind of cold in a long time. It prickled his skin into tiny bumps, lifted the tiny hairs on the back of his neck. ¡°Mister?¡± John looked down between his feet, at the rough piece of slate pressed into the dirt. He had forgotten what he was going to say. Something about the woods. About going out into the woods, and learning them. Or letting them learn you. Something about giving up what made you feel good, and getting used to hurt, so you wouldn¡¯t be soft when the wolves came. But the wolves weren¡¯t always outside. Sometimes they were inside, too. Sometimes the wolves were inside, too. ¡°Your dad was right, kid. You should have stayed away from here.¡± ¡°But¡ª¡± ¡°Go home.¡± Nicholas followed John¡¯s gaze down to the dusty stone embedded in the ground. ¡°Theo? Who was Theo?¡± ¡°Now.¡± John¡¯s voice had changed, and whatever Nicholas heard in it sent him running¡ªfalling¡ªdown the embankment. He mounted his bike, sped off without a backwards glance, and was gone. John Hawthorne remained standing on the rise. That was the fact of him, perhaps more than anything else: he remained. He stared down at the marker between his feet, at the name scratched crudely into its iron-gray surface. Theo had been a good dog. They had gotten on well, mostly. But in the end, Theo had been his son¡¯s. Every bone in Theo¡¯s body, and bones were all that was left now, had belonged without question to a sixteen-year old boy named Trevor Hawthorne. John closed his eyes. He could not call up the memory of that night twenty years ago. The memory was gone, had never been. And yet he could feel it all the same. Woods moaning in a howling wind. Branches creaking under a frosted white moon. There are things the brain forgets, but the blood remembers. Oh, the blood remembers. He raised his head, opened his eyes to the day, and the winter he carried inside settled back into his marrow. The sun laid a warm hand on his cheeks, his brow. It was the last time the sun would touch him. He stood there, looking east from his high place in the San Gabriels, breathing in a wind that smelled of last year¡¯s wildfires, of smoke and cinder and destruction. He stood there, at 7:47 a.m., on the precipice of a great and terrible journey that would take him across a hollowed, gutted America, a nightmareland born on the grave of a sane world. He stood there in the light. And then he stood there in the dark. ??? The shadow did not sweep across the desert. It did not come as a wave rolls over the ocean, or as a dust storm gusts over the plains. It was immediate, like standing in a room and switching off the light . . . only this room reached as far as the eye could see. It was the blue-backed mountains that creased the horizon. It was El Mirage and the town of Adelanto, and sprawling, scattered Victorville, with its chaotic blacktop arteries clogged by rush-hour traffic. It was flat Phelan and rolling Pinon Hills, chain link fences raised around empty yards, lonely brown space where the wind never stopped blowing and Joshua trees stood like forgotten scarecrows. Land and sky and everything in between¡ªall of it vanished in an instant. Stars glimmered overhead. A pathetic sprinkle of lights shined across the desert. John Hawthorne stood on his shadowed rise, the sun¡¯s afterimage fading from his vision, like the last hot coal in a dying campfire. The hand holding his mug of coffee trembled once, just once. His breath, which had caught in his chest, continued in a slow exhale. It was quiet. It had never been this quiet in his life. He waited. He listened. The sound of crickets came first. A chirp here and there, tentative, curious. Somewhere far off, a siren began to wail, tracing the rise and fall of the mountains. Then the screams started. He could not tell them apart, could not separate the men from the women from the children. In the dark, their screams all sounded the same. In the dark, they all screamed like newborns. As the night woke up around him, he heard madness. Okay, he thought. Okay. John turned and headed for the house. He did not need his eyes to guide him. His feet had made this path themselves, step by step, season after season, and they knew every gnarled root, every dip and rock. He took his time. There seemed no reason to hurry¡ªwhat had happened had happened, and what would come would come. The trees around him were solid black silhouettes set against softer darkness. As he neared the sodium lamp burning over his back porch, the texture of the trees returned by degrees, until he could not only hear but see their leaves stirring in the wind. A squirrel clung to the trunk of a hemlock, frozen, its eyes pinched tightly shut. John hoped it had a few nuts stashed away. He did not think this summer would bring much warmth. In the kitchen, standing under a single weak bulb, he washed his mug, then put it in the drying rack and stared out the window. A hectic, scattered glow pockmarked the mountainside. More lights turned on, describing the town below, the senseless pattern of its streets. It was like watching a rash spread. He thought of his brother Marshall, up in his cabin in the Rockies¡ªthe Hawthorne boys had left behind the woods of their childhood, but they had never truly escaped them. Was Marshall standing at his own window now, looking out over his own wilderness? Had he already opened the scotch? His tastes had always run closer to the top shelf. Glenlivet or Laphroaig, poured over a single tiny cube. God, a drink would go down nice, wouldn¡¯t it? But then, when it came to John Hawthorne, a drink always went down nice. The rash of lights continued to spread until all of Wrightwood had been enflamed in yellow and white. ¡°What are you going to do?¡± John asked himself. He was caught off guard by how quickly and easily the answer came to him. Mariah. She would still be asleep. She worked late at the town bar, and she never cracked her blackout curtains before noon if she could help it. Perhaps the commotion had woken her, but he didn¡¯t think so. The one night they had spent together, he¡¯d shouted himself awake from some unremembered dream, and Mariah hadn¡¯t so much as twitched next to him. John nodded, his hands pressed down on the ridge of the sink. He would go to Mariah so that she did not have to face this alone. He owed her that much, at least. He did not second-guess his decision. That was not his way. He picked up his cellphone from the counter. It was a late model, too old for texting, and that suited him fine. There were no missed calls. No surprises there. Everybody would be trying to call somebody this morning, which meant that no one would get through to anyone. This morning? he thought. Whatever this was, it was not morning anymore. That word had been buried. One more grave, one more tombstone. John slipped the cell in his pocket and reached for the keys to his truck, then let his hand drop. No. Quicker to stay off the roads. Wiser. He shut off the light and left. A few paces down the driveway, he paused. Looked over his shoulder. He¡¯d been wrong, it seemed, about no one getting through to anyone. His house phone had begun to ring. It trilled, and trilled, and trilled. He hesitated a moment. There was still time to turn back. If he had turned back to take that call, the course of everything to come would have been changed. But he didn¡¯t. Turning back was not John Hawthorne¡¯s way, either. He descended the hill into the dead morning, his shoulders squared inside his denim jacket, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Behind him, in the dark of his living room, the answering machine clicked on and a voice that he had not heard in over twenty years¡ªa woman¡¯s voice, so soft it was hardly there¡ªcarried through the empty house. ¡°I¡¯m all tucked in,¡± it said. ¡°I¡¯m all tucked in and ready for dreaming. Come to the blue house by the ocean. Come to Haverhill, Maine. I need you. My son needs you. He¡¯s . . . oh but I¡¯m tired, Daddy. Come and wake me.¡± Chapter Two KNEEL BEFORE ME, WOMAN, spoke the porcelain god, and as commanded, so Mariah Nowak obeyed, rising to offer up her latest sacrifice. Once she had spent herself, she pulled the handle on her lord and savior and collapsed back to the floor. Amen. A few dark strands of hair clung to her brow. The rest fanned out across the chilly tile. She wore her favorite night shirt, the one with the famous (and rather phallic) Zeppelin Airship. The shirt was big enough to lose herself in while sleeping, something she had been doing quite happily until recently, thank you very much, and all its extra length had gotten rucked up around her panties, which were bright red and so tight they squeezed the soul. Period panties. But that was just wishful thinking. Oh boy, was she in trouble. Oh boy. Water carried through the pipes in a deep, contented gurgle. The sound had almost faded before it dawned on her that she shouldn¡¯t have been able to hear it, that her earbuds had flown the coop. How intensely she had prayed! Such fervor she had shown! She clapped a hand to her mouth to stuff a rising giggle (the last thing she wanted right now was to catch another whiff of her breath), then she felt around and popped her earbuds back where they belonged. Better. Much better. All suffering was bearable with a little rock and roll. And if that rock and roll was ripping from the guitar of a Mr. Jimmy Page, why, that was more than fine with her. Mariah stared up into the overhead lamp, thinking back to the moment her troubles had begun . . . the moment when the man who sat at the corner of the bar, the same man who¡¯d never spoken a word to her but ¡®hello¡¯ and ¡®thanks,¡¯ had gotten up from his stool to¡ª No. Be honest, Mariah dear. Your troubles started much earlier than that. With Musty and Mr. Poulter and your aluminum baseball bat. The voice in her head was her mother¡¯s, and Mom was right. She usually was, no matter how much Mariah hated to admit it. Musty had been her yellow lab, named Musty not because he smelled like the inside of a laundry bin but because Musty had sounded like a good name for a dog. Mariah had been nine. Musty had been three. Their friendship required no logic. They existed in the small, private world that lonely children build for themselves around their pets. But Musty was a barker and a fence-hopper, especially when he had something to chase, and the neighbor who owned the property behind them didn¡¯t care for things that intruded on his land or his ears. As far as Mariah was concerned, Mr. Poulter was as slimy and green inside as anything that grew under a rock. And he lived like he was under a rock, too, never leaving his house except to yell at Musty or beat at whatever hunk of metal was rusting away in his yard. Well, one day Musty was fine, and the next day Musty wasn¡¯t. His fur began falling out in big tawny clumps, leaving bald spots like moon craters in his hide. His eyes got soft and gummy-looking, then crusty, and Mariah spent the afternoon wiping them with a washcloth, picking them clean, afraid he wouldn¡¯t be able to see with all that stuff in them. The morning after that, it didn¡¯t matter what was in Musty¡¯s eyes, because Musty was dead. His doghouse¡ªa big square hut built out of hay bales coated in hardened adobe¡ªgave off the worst stink Mariah had ever smelled. It was the stink of guts turned inside out. When she crawled in looking for him, her hand pressed down in something sticky and wet, and came away a dark muddy red. After that, whenever Mariah thought of dying, she saw the black little cubbyhole of Musty¡¯s doghouse. It was months before she could use the toilet without pinching her nose, because the smell¡ªthat low, dirty smell¡ªmade her throat constrict and her eyes well up and filled her head with a fluttery crow-winged panic. They cut Musty open to ensure that whatever he¡¯d gotten into wasn¡¯t something kids could get into. The county footed the bill and everything. They found a few splintered rabbit bones and enough arsenic to kill an army of rats. Soon after, rumor got around that the previous week Mr. Poulter had bought a Dutch rabbit from Mrs. Davies, the librarian, who raised and sold them as pets. Then Mr. Poulter himself was heard at the bar bragging about how he gave the Kowak¡¯s dog something real juicy to run after. Mariah wasn¡¯t told about this until years later, but it didn¡¯t matter. She knew. She knew because Musty used to growl at Mr. Poulter, and Musty never growled at anyone. And when Mr. Poulter came up to the fence one afternoon after Musty¡¯s death and said, ¡°sure is nice and quiet around here¡± with his eyes smiling for his mouth, Mariah¡¯s knowing hardened into hate. She told her mom what he¡¯d said, and her mom responded that it didn¡¯t mean anything, that sometimes bad things just happened and there was nobody to blame. But her mom had known too. It was all over her face, and in the way she kept scrubbing their lunch plates long after they were clean. That night she made Mariah¡¯s two favorite dishes, potato pancakes for dinner and Pierogi for dessert, and the following Sunday she let Mariah stay home from church, something Mariah never got to do unless she was sick. Things went back to normal. Small towns may have long memories, but they have short attention spans. The whispers died down, and nobody in the Kowak household uttered Musty¡¯s name for a month, except for Mariah. She would sit at her window after her parents had gone to bed and stare at the poisoned, evil light of Mr. Poulter¡¯s house shining yellowly through the Yucca. ¡°Musty,¡± she would say softly, her breath fogging the glass. ¡°Musty, Musty, Musty.¡± Speaking his name in the dark was a sort of magic; it made her feel as if he was inside her, barking and running and alive. It was a bright feeling and a black feeling all at once, and sitting there, she would imagine how it would be to open the window and slip outside, to slink over the chain link like a shadow and creep up on Mr. Poulter¡¯s house, tie him down while he slept and make him eat broken glass and wet cement and rat poison until he was good and dead. Her flesh would prickle at the terrible, wonderful thought, and on more than one occasion, she would fall asleep there at the windowsill, only moving when her aching body woke her up and forced her to crawl into bed. Then, one night as she was holding her vigil, the door opened softly behind her, and her dad stepped into the room without turning on the light. Peter Nowak was a mild-mannered man, with squared, straight shoulders. Because of the long hours he worked for the county, he wasn¡¯t around much, and when he was around he was usually quiet. To Mariah, her father¡¯s silence was as familiar and as comforting as his face. He came over to the window and her heart started clapping in her chest¡ªit felt just like that, like two big hands giving a round of applause. She waited, certain that she was in trouble, that he knew about all the nasty things she¡¯d been thinking and was going to tell her how bad she was. How disappointed he was to have her as a daughter. Her eyes began to burn. Her breath caught and stuck, as if her throat had grown hooks. Don¡¯t you cry, she thought, don¡¯t you dare. He stood at her side, slender and still and something else¡ªsomething that Mariah didn¡¯t have a word for yet¡ªa quality that made him seem taller than he really was. Dignified, she would think to herself years later, looking back on this moment. My father was dignified. The rims of his glasses caught the light from Mr. Poulter¡¯s house. His silence seemed to fill the room. It was not comforting now. Tell me you hate me, she pleaded inside. Tell me you don¡¯t love me anymore, just please, please, say something. ¡°What an ugly thing,¡± he said. The storm gathering in Mariah¡¯s chest rumbled and spit rain. A tear slipped down her cheek. A tiny, strained sound escaped her mouth. Only when her father continued to speak did she realize that he wasn¡¯t talking about her; he was referring to the doghouse. It stood alone in the wide open of their yard. Its square doorway held onto the darkest piece of the night. ¡°I built it so he could get out of the wind. I thought it¡¯d keep him cool in the summer and warm in the winter, if a winter ever came our way. But I had no idea the damn thing would be so sturdy. You¡¯d need dynamite to tear it down now.¡± He shook his head, turning from the window, and on his way out of the room, he paused to pick up the aluminum bat propped inside the closet. ¡°You mind if I borrow this?¡± He was gone before Mariah could form an answer¡ªbefore she could even understand the question. She went to bed on legs full of strange, jittery trembles, and she listened from under the covers as the front door opened and shut. Her heartbeat settled after a time, and she fell asleep despite her best efforts to stay awake. The next morning the bat was back in its place, waiting for softball season to come around again. Mr. Poulter did not emerge from his house that day, nor the following day. When Mariah finally laid eyes on him a week later, he was having a hard time getting around thanks to his limp. A FOR SALE sign appeared in his front yard by the month¡¯s end, and Mr. Poulter blew out of town like a tumbleweed, leaving his junkers behind for the Hispanic family that took his place. They had three children. And six dogs. Mariah never asked her father what had taken place that night, knowing he would never tell. But she loved him for it, loved him with the unrelenting fury of the desert wind¡ªa love that shook her to her foundations and sometimes frightened her. Her mother could not stand up to that wind, no matter how many meals she cooked, or loads of laundry she folded, or fevers she saw Mariah through, sitting up with her in the thin hours of the morning while her father slept undisturbed down the hall. From the moment Peter Nowak picked up her baseball bat and walked out into the dark, Mariah¡¯s heart belonged to him and him alone. Perhaps that was why she still, even now, could not quite separate the idea of love from the idea of violence. And perhaps that was why she had fallen for John Hawthorne. Because loving John Hawthorne and loving violence were one and the same. ??? The night that John Hawthorne got up from his bar stool was one of many blowy nights in a long, listless November. They came rumbling up to the Trotter a few minutes before nine, three of them, their engines coughing in the rough way that always made Mariah think of heavy smokers. She set down the mug she¡¯d been polishing as headlights splashed in through the windows. Dismay rose inside her, like bile from an upset stomach. She had an idea who those headlights belonged to, and she wished, suddenly, desperately, that she had called in sick. As if that were an option. As if there were anyone to call in to, except for herself. ¡°Will they turn them blasted things off?¡± Carl McKenzie yelled, shielding his eyes from one of the booths in the back. He was busy tucking himself into a bottle, or he had been until Mariah cut him off an hour ago. Let Carl pull the covers up high enough, and he¡¯d make a bed out of the booth¡¯s rubbery red cushions. Then nothing would wake him up, short of the jingle from Andy¡¯s handcuffs . . . but Andy was gone now, a fact that Mariah was still getting used to, that she could not quite make sit right inside her head. She glanced down the bar to where John Hawthorne sat in a dark blue denim jacket, sipping on his water. The headlights shined right on him, so bright he might have been in a photo studio, but he didn¡¯t appear to notice. His gaze stayed fixed on something beyond the liquor bottles stacked against the Trotter¡¯s log wall. He¡¯d been coming in as long as Mariah had worked here, which was longer than she liked to reflect on, and not once could she remember him having missed a night. Not once. He¡¯d walk in at eight and walk out by nine, a five-dollar bill tucked beneath his empty water glass. One glass was all he ever had, and he nursed it like it was the bitterest stuff on the shelf. Like sipping on it hurt. And maybe it did. Mariah had observed a great many drinkers over the years, but she had never seen someone want a drink as badly as John Hawthorne. She¡¯d asked Andy about him once, on a slow evening much like this one. ¡°What I know of John is he minds his own business,¡± Andy had told her, ¡°and there¡¯s no reason to worry over a man who minds his own business.¡± The implication there, unspoken but clear, was that if John stopped minding his own business there would be reason to worry. The bikes shut off. The bar dimmed. ¡°Hallefuckinglujah!¡± said Carl. ¡°If you say so,¡± Mariah said under her breath, trying not to look at the front door. Her voice must not have been quite as steady as she thought it was, because for a brief moment, John seemed to notice her. He didn¡¯t turn his head or move his eyes, but a change came about him. An awareness that hadn¡¯t been there before. It was gone so quickly Mariah wondered if she had imagined it. They came in. The Lot Brothers, so called not because they were related by blood but because they dressed alike and talked alike and rode the same vintage Harleys. Bill entered first, his sleeves rolled up to display the tattooed hogs he had for arms (a great believer in working out his glamor muscles, was Bill). Next was Pete, working hard at his head with a fine-toothed comb. He had nice hair, thick and luxurious, and it almost made up for his face. Almost. If it had just been these two, Mariah would have been thrilled, but all turds lead back to an asshole, and this particular asshole went by the name of Rick Lot. He booted his way in as the door swung shut behind his stooges, his hands too lazy to unhook themselves from his belt. Some skulls were not meant to be bald, and Rick¡¯s was one of them: his noggin was a mole-spotted, rugged landscape, divided by a twisting riverbed of scar tissue. He¡¯d gotten that scar in prison, supposedly, where he¡¯d done time for aggravated assault in a roadside bar just like this one. He never smiled¡ªhis mouth didn¡¯t know how to¡ªbut his eyes contained a certain canny cheerfulness, a fool¡¯s gold kind of sparkle. He scanned the room as he strolled in, pausing briefly on John before passing on to Mariah. ¡°Well, hello!¡± he said, as if he had not expected to find her here, exactly where she always was. ¡°Hello, Rick,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re out early tonight.¡± ¡°Me and the boys were feeling antsy this evening. A crisp winter day like today, it just gets in your bones. Makes an itch you¡¯ve just got to scratch, you know?¡± ¡°This is San Bernardino, Rick. We don¡¯t get winter.¡± He laughed a harsh, barking laugh and dragged out a barstool to sit next to his brothers. They were quiet. They knew better than to take the floor when Rick was speaking. ¡°Oh, Mariah, lovely Mariah, how I missed you and that mouth. It¡¯s been far too long.¡± Not by her count, it hadn¡¯t. ¡°What¡¯re you drinking?¡± ¡°That depends,¡± he said, rubbing his sandpapered cheeks. ¡°You don¡¯t happen to fit in a pint, do you?¡± Mariah pretended not to hear him. With one hand, she lined three beers beneath the tap and started to pour. With her other hand, she reached under the rack, out of sight so that she could send Andy a message on her phone. He would stop by and see the Lots along after a drink or two, as he had done before on many occasions, and then all would be right again. At least until they came back. That was the problem with guys like Rick: they always came back. She got as far as, You¡¯d better come over, before she remembered. The phone suddenly seemed much heavier. She set it down and looked up to find Rick watching her, one of his eyebrows cocked in a curious, considering way. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°How¡¯s our dear sheriff these days?¡± Spider legs walked Mariah¡¯s spine. Smart Rick might not have been, but stupid he was not. ¡°Just fine,¡± she said¡ªif he hadn¡¯t heard the news, she certainly wasn¡¯t about to inform him. ¡°You know Andy.¡± ¡°I surely do. I surely do. And you know something else?¡± His voice dropped, taking on a conspiratorial note. ¡°I think he might have a thing for me. Whenever I wander around this way, I can always count on him stepping through that door a little while later. It¡¯s like the old boy just can¡¯t get enough of my company. Ain¡¯t that right, fellas?¡± Bill nodded vigorously. Pete only sucked on his beer. He seemed determined to hide behind his glass, not that Mariah could blame him. Good lord, wasn¡¯t acne supposed to settle down after puberty? A loud, bouncing crash rang across the room. Mariah looked over to see Carl¡¯s end-of-the-line drink (H20 and enough lemon juice to make the soul pucker) waterfalling over the edge of his table. The noise turned every head in the bar, except John¡¯s. He merely sat there, his glass clasped loosely in one hand. Mariah couldn¡¯t help but notice that the glass was now almost empty. And when the last of it was gone, he¡¯d be gone too. A five-dollar bill for a goodbye. She gathered up a few dry rags to clean the spill, but did not step out from behind the bar. Back here, there was at least something between herself and the Lots, and maybe the safety was an illusion, but it was all she had now that she didn¡¯t have Andy. Except, she realized, that wasn¡¯t entirely true. She had something else on her side, and it was a small thing, but maybe it was enough. It didn¡¯t matter that Andy was out of the picture; what mattered was what Rick believed, and Rick believed Andy was still around, which meant Rick would be on his best behavior. She hoped. Armed with that thought, Mariah struck out into open waters. The Lots twisted around on their bar stools to stare at her, taking her in, bite by bite. At last she reached the table, where Carl was trying to scoop water back into the glass with his palms. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mariah,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry.¡± ¡°It¡¯s just a little spill, Carl. Cool your jets.¡± She shooed his hands away and gave the table a once-over with the rags, then she dropped them on the floor to mop up the rest with her feet¡ªno way was she bending over for her current audience. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Carl asked, his whiskered face lined with concern. ¡°You look upset.¡± ¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong. You just relax.¡± He swallowed. ¡°Is it the drought? It¡¯s the drought, isn¡¯t it? Here I am wasting water when there are kids out there dying of thirst.¡± She might have laughed, if Carl¡¯s dismay hadn¡¯t been so genuine. That¡¯s how it was with him when he got drunk¡ªnothing in the world was safe from his guilt. Which was why he got drunk in the first place: to break his own heart. In a way Carl wasn¡¯t so different from John Hawthorne, who also came here to punish himself. ¡°Nobody¡¯s dying of thirst,¡± she said. ¡°Not because of you.¡± Carl didn¡¯t hear her. He¡¯d gotten what he needed, what he felt he deserved. He climbed up from the booth, slipping a little on the damp floorboards, and headed for the door. As she watched him go, a thought came to her¡ªone that set her skin tingling. She could leave. No farewells, no explanations . . . she could just leave, and let the boys help themselves to whatever they liked on the shelves. Who cared? She¡¯d never wanted to run this hole in the first place¡ªit just happened, the slow, insidious way it always happens. You tell yourself it¡¯s only for a little while, this job, this house, this town. You say, I only have to pay off my loans, save up some money, then I¡¯ll hit the highway like it¡¯s bad and needs spanking. But you get comfortable. Your routine learns the shape of you, becomes as snug and cozy as a glove. You don¡¯t even notice it smothering you because it feels so . . . good. There¡¯s your television¡ªsixty inches of sexy plasma. There¡¯s your Netflix, always ready to welcome you with some rewarmed sitcom laughter, and your stack of Blu-rays and your bookcase full of well-worn paperbacks. There¡¯s Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram to keep you connected, to show you all the places you¡¯ve yet to visit and people you¡¯ve yet to meet. You¡¯ve got a thousand worlds at your fingertips, a thousand lives, and before you know it, home is just the place you go to be somewhere else, someone else, until morning comes and your dreams end and you have to be you again. Go. Leave. Go. But suppose the Lots didn¡¯t stick around to cash in on a free drink? Suppose they followed her outside, into the wind and the dark? That was their territory. At least in here she was on her own grounds. Mariah scooped up the rags, careful to leave her hips out of it, and returned to the bar on spring-loaded legs. As she passed, Rick clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. The sound was like a door closing, like a key turning inside a lock. ¡°You sure cleaned that spill up nice. I might have to lose this beer to my lap, just so you can come around and wipe me off.¡± ¡°Be nice, Rick,¡± Pete said. ¡°I am being nice. I was paying the lady a compliment.¡± ¡°Maybe she didn¡¯t take it that way. You ever think of that? Maybe you hurt her feelings.¡± In the mirror between the liquor shelves, she watched as Rick drummed the bartop with scabbed knuckles. ¡°You¡¯re being silly. A girl like Mariah doesn¡¯t get her feelings hurt over a compliment.¡± ¡°If she took it as a compliment, don¡¯t you think she would have thanked you?¡± ¡°Well, damn, Pete, you¡¯ve got a point. Maybe she didn¡¯t hear?¡± ¡°Maybe.¡± ¡°Mariah,¡± Rick said, ¡°did you hear that nice little thing I said about you a moment ago?¡± She turned around¡ªa touch too fast for her own good. The room gave a slight, bumping jerk as it settled into place. ¡°I heard, Rick.¡± ¡°Then why didn¡¯t you say ¡®thank you?¡¯¡± Those eyes. That false cheerful sparkle. She swallowed the fishhook in her throat and said, ¡°Guess I forgot.¡± ¡°That¡¯s okay. I know how you can make it up to me.¡± Rick polished off the last of his beer and wagged the empty pint at her. She took down a fresh one. He tsked. ¡°You¡¯re about two short by my count. Me and my boys, we don¡¯t do anything we can¡¯t do together. We like to share.¡± We like to share. The fishhook¡ªnow in her guts¡ªsunk itself in deep. She took down another pair of glasses, then filled all three and carried them over one at a time. As she set Rick¡¯s down in front of him, his fingers sprang open and clasped around her wrist. The feel of his skin was warm and soft, like cheese left out in the sun. ¡°You know what¡¯s special about today?¡± he asked. She tugged, but he only pulled her closer. ¡°Today is Sunday, and on Sundays I read the paper. I do it for the funnies, you see¡ªSunday has the best funnies. Now I know what you¡¯re thinking. You¡¯re thinking, Rick, that isn¡¯t special at all. Everyone likes the funnies. But I don¡¯t just read the big papers. I read the little papers too. I get the one from Big Pines, where us three live, delivered right to the door. I even get the one you¡¯ve got here in Wrightwood. That¡¯s my favorite.¡± Mariah listened numbly, her body encased in slow-moving ice. ¡°But it got no laughs out of me this morning,¡± Rick continued with sadness in his voice¡ªand a smile in his eyes. ¡°What I saw on the front page just about broke my heart. I sat down on my stoop and I thought to myself, I¡¯d better go see Mariah tonight and make sure she¡¯s holding up okay . . . she won¡¯t want to be alone right now.¡± He gave a slow, solemn shake of his head, letting go of her wrist. ¡°Poor old Andy. He must have been so well-loved around here.¡± Mariah straightened. It was a difficult thing to do. Gravity seemed to be working twice as hard on her. Except for her feet. Those felt light. Balloon feet. She drifted down the bar, away from the Lot Brothers, and picked up her polishing rag. The wine flutes were dusty, which was no surprise¡ªshe hadn¡¯t popped a bottle of champagne since New Year¡¯s. She reached for one but bumped it with her fingers instead. It walked off the shelf and shattered on the floor. ¡°Be careful,¡± Pete said. ¡°Don¡¯t tell her to be careful,¡± Rick said. ¡°It¡¯s okay, Mariah. Accidents happen. You¡¯ve got nothing to feel bad about.¡± She got down on her knees to sweep the shards into the break bucket. The largest piece¡ªthe stem¡ªwas nowhere to be seen. It must have rolled off somewhere. She¡¯d find it later, hopefully not by stepping on it. That was a thing that happened sometimes to bartenders. They¡¯d be walking along, putting on a show, only to develop a sudden and incurable case of champagne-stem-through-the-foot. Mariah let out a nervous titter and began to feel a little better, a little smoother, as if she¡¯d had wrinkles in her head and laughing had ironed them out. She took a deep breath as she rose back to her feet. Nothing¡¯s going to happen. They¡¯re just playing games. Trying to freak me out. Nothing¡¯s going to . . . John¡¯s glass. His water glass. It was empty. She stared at the five-dollar bill tucked beneath it, knowing what that bill meant. He was leaving. He had finished his ritual, and in another minute he would be gone, and she would be alone. Just her and them, three good old boys who did everything together. Who liked to share. With some difficulty, she looked up at John. He was looking back. His eyes¡ªgreen tinged gray¡ªregarded her as if from a great distance. ¡°Would you like a refill, Mr. Hawthorne?¡± He must have heard the plea in her voice. He must have. ¡°No,¡± he said, and a trapdoor opened beneath Mariah. She was falling, falling, wind in her ears, falling, when he said, ¡°I think something stronger is in order tonight.¡± It took her a while to remember how to speak. ¡°What? You¡¯ll what?¡± ¡°Jim Beam,¡± he told her. ¡°And you¡¯d better make it a double.¡± ¡°Are you¡ªyou¡¯re sure?¡± He nodded, slightly. She selected a big shot glass, filled it to the top, and slid it to him with a hand that felt as if it might start shaking at any moment. Then she watched, waiting for him to pick it up, still not quite believing he had ordered it in the first place. For years he had been coming to sip on his water. In at eight, out by nine, as regular as clockwork. For years. And now, on this windy night in the middle of November, it was three minutes past nine and he was sitting here with a whiskey. The realization was enough to make Mariah forget all about the men at the other end of the bar, if only for a second. When John did not take the shot, when he instead got up slowly from his stool and walked toward the brothers, carrying the glass with him, her surprise had no more room left to grow. She could only stand back and stare. ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Rick asked as John placed the drink in front of him. ¡°You need me to explain it? You confused?¡± A hush fell over the Trotter. Pete¡¯s shoulders took on a hunch, while Bill¡¯s muscles tightened, making his small shirt seem that much smaller. Rick simply gazed up at John with his head cocked and an expression of mild amusement on his face. He appeared to be enjoying this. Whatever this was. At last he shrugged. ¡°Never turn down a free drink. That¡¯s what I say.¡± He booted the shot and slammed the glass down with a bang. ¡°Wooh! That¡¯s good shit. Cheap shit, don¡¯t get me wrong, but only the cheap shit packs enough heat to burn twice. Wait . . . wait . . . wooh! There it is again!¡± ¡°Here,¡± John said. ¡°Let me pour you another.¡± He reached out and caught Rick¡¯s nose between his thumb and forefinger. Then he twisted. Hard. The sound of breaking bone and cartilage was like rock salt grinding between someone¡¯s teeth. Like gravel crunching underneath a Harley¡¯s tires. Rick might have had time to move at this point, but he chose instead to scream. John grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved his face, which had been tapped like a keg, down over the shot glass. As the glass filled with Rick¡¯s blood, his feet performed a frantic, skittering tap dance against the bar¡¯s wooden side. THUMPTHUMPthumpthumpTHUMP. His brothers, meanwhile, had forgotten they had feet in the first place. They watched, frozen, from their seats. When the glass was full again, John let go. ¡°My fucking¡ªfuck!¡± Rick shouted, rocking backward on his stool and cupping the ugly mound that had been his nose. ¡°You sonofabitch. You fucking¡ª¡± He started to rise. Stopped. Something passed between the two men. It was as if the Trotter¡¯s front door had opened and the wind had let itself into the bar. Rick Lot looked up at John Hawthorne from his bar stool, and whatever he saw looking back made him sit down again. That was the end of it, Mariah understood later. The rest was decided in that moment. ¡°Thought you never turned down a free drink,¡± said John. Rick¡¯s eyes, tear-glazed and lacking all trace of their former sparkle, shifted to the shot glass. It brimmed in front of him, a rich, warm, quivering red. He swallowed. Reached for it. His hand, Mariah noticed with a tickle of pleasure, trembled as he raised the dripping rim to his lips. Drink, she thought. Drink, you fucker, drink drink drink drink. Then he did. All of it. He set the glass down, gagged into his palm, got up, gagged a second time, and headed for the door. His boys made to leave too. John stopped them both with a shake of his head. ¡°The first shot was on me. The second was on the house. But the beers are on you.¡± ¡°I only got a twenty,¡± Bill said, the only words he spoke all evening. ¡°Twenty is fine,¡± said John. ¡°Right, Mariah?¡± Mariah, unable to speak, nodded. Within moments, the three of them were gone. As their bikes rumbled awake and swept off down the road, John turned to look at Mariah over the bar. His arms were slack. The lamp hanging over him did nothing to soften the sharp lines of his face. He watched her for what seemed a long time. ¡°I¡¯m John,¡± he said, finally. ¡°I know. May I pour you something to drink?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°Water would be nice.¡± Between them, on the bar, blood trickled and collected darkly at the bottom of the shot glass. ??? After another hearty round of prayer, Mariah wiped her mouth and sat back from the toilet to catch her breath. She did not move again for a while, and when she did it was to reach for her phone and check the time. It was 8:24. Far too early to be awake (any hour before noon was a blasted hour, as far as she was concerned), but here she was. Morning would have to make do with her company, just this once. Her thoughts soon began sliding back to the bar, to John Hawthorne and Rick Lot and the shot glass filled first with whiskey, then later with blood, but she cut them off before they could gain momentum. No. She had looked back enough for now. Now it was time to look forward, to figure out what she was going to do. A little peppermint tea to settle her stomach seemed as good a place as any to start. And then? She hadn¡¯t considered ¡®and then¡¯ yet, but she figured a trip to the clinic would factor in somewhere along the way. Do you really want to do that? her mother asked. Is that really the direction you want to go? Mariah ignored the voice, something she was often forced to do, and got up to leave the bathroom. The southern region of her butt¡ªthe part that panties never quite covered¡ªunpeeled from the tiles as she rose. The sensation was not pleasant, and neither was the feeling of going vertical after spending so long on the floor. She gave a slow, recalibrating sway before heading out into the hall. The house was still dark, thanks to the blackout curtains hanging on all the windows. Mariah must have closed those curtains extremely well last night, because not even a whisper of daylight had found its way inside. In the kitchen, with a pot of water heating on the stove, she set about rummaging through the cupboards for the loose leaf. She did not notice that the high, tiny pane over the back door¡ªthe pane shaped to resemble a sunrise¡ªwas as black as it had been at midnight. But some part of her felt the darkness. Unease began to pace the back corridors of her mind. She rocked her head to the Black Sabbath pumping in through her earbuds. Tony Iommi was no Jimmy Page (nobody was), but he would do in a pinch. The water reached a boil. She poured it into her teapot to steep. And still that feeling. Something wrong. Something off balance. Something wrong. The electric guitar riff faded, pursued into silence by the downbeat thunder of drums, and she lifted her head. Looked toward the street. Was somebody laughing? Who the hell would be outside laughing this early? And was that a lawnmower? The two sounds did not pair well together. They gave her lizard brain a cool, sharp tickle. But before she could wonder about it any further, Pandora Radio slipped a gear and put on country. Shania Twain, to be exact. And not just some random bit either, but one of those blasphemously catchy, godforsaken creations that had haunted the radio station for years. Title: ¡°Life¡¯s about to Get Good.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll see about that,¡± Mariah said. She skipped the track, and the Mothership swooped in to rescue her with that old classic, ¡°Ramble On.¡± The thing she liked most about Led Zeppelin was that if you stripped away the frills, their music was all about going places. About adventures in strange lands, journeys steeped in danger and excitement and myth. Tolkien¡¯s Gollum. Thor¡¯s hammer. Valhalla and Mordor and days of old. It was impossible to listen to them and not want to get up and go, never mind the distance or the outcome; their songs were made for open roads and far-off horizons. But even as Mariah mouthed the lyrics she knew and loved so well, her unease continued to pace inside her. She looked down. Her left foot had begun to tap. What was happening? Good God, did she really need to ask? She knew what was happening: it started with a P and ended with Nancy. And Nancy should have known better, the bitch. Nausea climbed her throat with slick, green fingers. She poured the weak-smelling tea and carried her mug into the living room. The couch looked inviting to her legs, but the rest of her was too woozy to sit. She walked over to the window, the big one she thought of as her bay window, although in reality it was much too small for the name. Her unease had matured into dread. Its footsteps no longer tip-tapped quietly along. They boomed. The walls of her mind rattled and groaned with the force. But why? Why? Because no matter how tightly she closed the curtains, no matter how careful and thorough she was with sealing the cracks, she could never quite lock out the sun. Some light always leaked in around the cloth. There was no light now. None. Mariah stopped in her tracks. The answer was so obvious that she almost laughed. It was a cloudy day. Of course. Even these mountains, dry as they were chaperoning the desert, occasionally saw some rain. Shaking her head, wondering how she had managed to get so worked up in the first place, she swept open the curtain. The coffee mug slipped from her fingers. Led Zeppelin rambled on. And on. And on. And on. Chapter Three The old man was so still that John almost didn¡¯t see him. He stood on his lawn in the dark, his hands posted high on his hips. The glow from his house stitched his outline with a thread of palest yellow. Water trickled from the gardening hose at his feet, puddling around him in the crabgrass. He wore leather sandals and white socks. The socks were soggy. Roger Harding, retired machinist and John¡¯s only neighbor (except for the Krauters, who hardly counted). Thirty-some years they¡¯d been sharing this dingy dead-end road, and never had John seen Roger look so . . . happy. A contented smile sat on his face. The last of his hair wandered over his scalp in cobwebby strands. ¡°Beautiful day we¡¯re having, isn¡¯t it?¡± he said. ¡°Day like today, you just know summer¡¯s coming soon!¡± Melissa Harding, a former kindergarten teacher of Wrightwood Elementary, was sitting on the porch in a patio chair. The small table next to her, bathed in light from the window, held a tall plastic pitcher full of golden liquid. She waved to John, something she hadn¡¯t done once in the time that John had known her. ¡°Hi there!¡± she called out. ¡°I made some iced tea. Come and have some with me, won¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Maybe later,¡± he said, walking. ¡°That would be lovely. And do send the kids down when you have a chance. I haven¡¯t seen them in ages.¡± Melissa took a hearty drink, draining half her glass in one go. ¡°Oh . . . and John? Please tell your lady she¡¯s welcome any time. I¡¯ve got some concealer that¡¯s exactly her color. Perfect for covering up bruises. A few dabs with the sponge, and voila, you¡¯d never even guess. She can have the whole tube¡ªyou tell her that, John. Lord knows I don¡¯t need it.¡± John continued away. Behind him on the lawn, Roger Harding remained planted in a pair of sopping Birkenstocks. ¡°Beautiful day!¡± he shouted at the black sky. ¡°Beautiful day!¡± ??? Wrightwood was a gas stop propped between a ski resort and a highway. It had been built in pieces, by demand, with no real design in mind except for the dollar sign. Down below, the town¡¯s streets displayed a semblance of order; they either dumped into Highway 2 or ran parallel to it, but up in the fringes where there were still enough trees to get lost in, and the houses stood few and far between, the roads formed a snarling, knotted mess. John had no interest in roads. It was in his nature to avoid people, to take the paths that others ignored. He knew all the back ways, had worked on many of them over the years. He¡¯d set his hands on almost everything, from wood to steel to stone. The guys who hired him once always hired him again, because he got done alone what usually took crews of three or more to finish, and in the same amount of time. But it was the woods that called to him. It was in the woods where John Hawthorne, who had grown up in the lonely recesses of Vermont, who had walked into its white wilderness a boy and come out a man, felt at home. After the Harding household, John traded asphalt for dirt and open sky for restless leaves. The path was lopsided but smooth except for a few scattered rocks; he had tended to it personally, stripping away the roots that overreached the border and filling in the trenches formed by heavy rains. Even Nicholas would have found it easy riding if he had come this way, and maybe he had, assuming he knew about it all. This path was the most direct route between their homes, which rested on opposing hills, within sight but otherwise out of reach. John wondered where Nicholas was now, if he¡¯d made it wherever he was going before the darkness fell, if he was safe. He hoped so, for what it was worth. He hadn¡¯t meant to be so hard on the boy, but he¡¯d never been good with kids. Not even his own. Especially not his own. For a moment their names were on his lips, and the need to speak them aloud, to call them into the night, was like a hand squeezing his throat. Trevor . . . Lana . . . John swallowed. Their names were not his to use anymore. He had given up that right¡ªthe right of a father¡ªlong ago. He continued on his slow way, the woods around him alive with noise. Car alarms. Gunfire. Yapping dogs. Somewhere¡ªin a small, unanswered voice¡ªan infant cried. But these were far-off things, of no concern to him. His path was quiet. He walked it alone. For a while. To his left, toward the mountain range, all was dark except for the stars. To his right, toward town, light flickered obscurely through the trees. A shred of color here, a sliver of brightness there, caught like meat in the black teeth of the woods. The ground began to slope down, and then he heard it. A steady, moist, smacking. The sound of an enormous, feeding mouth gulping and slobbering at raw meat. John slowed. He was a practical man at his foundation; his imagination flew on clipped wings, and so the image his brain conjured up¡ªdisembodied, wet lips busy at some foul work¡ªcould not keep itself aloft for long. But he had never believed the world to be practical. Earth was a mudball hurtling through space, and all mud had something blind and slithery and rotten under its surface. You only had to dig deep enough to find it. Humans, living under the sun . . . they held onto this conviction that the universe was a warm, benevolent place, that it obeyed some kind of order. That was the real insanity to John. To stand in the light and forget that the dark exists. To convince yourself that, simply because you could not see something, it could not see you. If the universe had a mind, it was fishbelly white and utterly mad. The mind of an angler, raised and nurtured in endless night. Because night was the natural state of the universe, the cold, cold truth behind the bright lie told by the sun as it looked over the horizon. The universe was darkness¡ªthat was the truth¡ªand the stars were nothing more than little lanterns floating in the black trench of space. Bright, welcoming lures, hiding daggered jaws. So, no, John did not think there was some abomination waiting for him ahead. Still . . . A figure took form beside the path. A man. He was sitting on a bench and clapping his hands above his head, bringing them together with great concussive slaps¡ªSMACKSMACKSMACKSMACK¡ªthat all but drowned out his voice, which was soft and hoarse. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°Encore!¡± he shouted. ¡°Encore! Encore!¡± John moved closer. Drool hung from the man¡¯s lips. His eyes danced with lunatic starlight. He was weeping, and in more places than one. Blood dripped from his palms and ran down his forearms in thick, black lines, spotting his running shorts and the wooden slats between his legs. He had been clapping for a long time¡ªsince the sun had performed its vanishing act, if John had to guess. Perhaps he was trying to call the sun back onstage for a goodbye bow, or perhaps he had no reason for what he was doing, was clapping simply because he felt like clapping, because clapping was the only thing left to do. As John passed the bench, the man¡¯s shouts rose into screams. ¡°ENCORE!¡± he cried out, smashing his hands together furiously, flaying the skin off his bones in ragged strips. ¡°ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!¡± John descended the slope to the sound of applause. And to the sound of applause, where the slope leveled out again, John came upon Nicholas Krauter. At first he did not understand what he was seeing. He could not even tell that the figure was human. It hung off the ground, small in the surrounding darkness. A shadow rocking in the air, twisting, its motions slow and sinuous and somehow awful. The wriggle of an earthworm drowning on a hook. ¡°ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!¡± John took another step, the blood in his veins slowing to a trickle. The shadow had a black beetle head and a pair of skinny white legs. The head¡ªcapped in a helmet¡ªrolled back and forth on its neck. The legs moonwalked, one foot dragging its toe in the dirt. Then there was the shirt, and the stripes on the shirt, and the way the shirt tented out sharply in the back¡ªas if pressed outward by some grotesque, pointing hand. John stood in place, as he had stood that morning on the rise overlooking the valley. He wished that he had gone another route, that he had taken the road instead. But he was here now, and that was all there was to it. When you chose your path, you had to see it to the end. Even if it ruined you. You had to see it to the end. ¡°ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!¡± John looked away from the bike, which lay on the ground with its wheels in the air, and he went to Nicholas. The boy¡¯s arms dangled at his sides, as if dragged down by invisible weights. His fingers played at invisible piano keys. He moaned, not once but steadily, constantly. It was the sound of an engine working deep beneath the earth¡ªsomething you felt in your skin rather than heard with your ears. His eyes were squeezed shut, like the eyes of the squirrel John had encountered behind his house. The squirrel had been stuck to a tree, and that was something else they had in common. Because Nicholas was also stuck to a tree. A sturdy one. An oak, with limbs low enough to climb . . . and thick enough to hang from. The branch entered below his ribs. It continued from his back for two long, saturated feet. He had been coming down the path when the morning turned to night¡ªand fast. Much faster than he should have been going on such a narrow dirt trail. But John himself had plowed the way for the boy, hadn¡¯t he? He¡¯d seen to it that the ground was smooth enough to ride on, the rocks cleared, the roots stripped; and so Nicholas had come blazing along on his blue Cannondale, rushing home, only to find himself in the dark, unable to stop. But none of those things mattered. What mattered was why Nicholas had been in such a hurry in the first place. And John knew the answer to that. He could still see the boy scrambling down the embankment, scared off by what he¡¯d heard in old Mr. Hawthorne¡¯s voice. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have come, kid,¡± John said. ¡°Why¡¯d you have to come?¡± Nicholas opened his mouth. There was blood in his teeth. It was as black as the blood running down the clapping man¡¯s arms, and some of it had begun to gather and dry like plaque under his gums. He let out a low, wet gargle, then his jaws snapped shut and his head heaved forward. The tendons in his neck popped. His spine stood out in raised knobs beneath his skin. Jaws grinding, John took out his phone. He dialed the number a person was supposed to dial in a situation like this¡ªexcept, had there ever really been a situation like this?¡ªand he heard what he knew we would hear: the dull, monotonous beep of a busy line. For a few seconds, he didn¡¯t move, just stood there, thinking, thinking. It would have been rush hour when it happened. The freeways would all be jammed. Crashed cars, confused people, frightened people. Dead people. That left a helicopter lift. But even if a helicopter could be found, even if, was there anyone left to fly it? John hung up and glanced at the time. It was half past eight. Nicholas had been hanging here, by his ribcage, for over thirty minutes. Suffering. Alive. Suffering. Too long. Far too long. John tossed his phone away, let it go, forgot about it. He reached slowly into his back pocket, while up on the bench, the man continued his wild ovation to the night. ¡°ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!¡± There are things the brain forgets, but the blood remembers . . . John thumbed the knife open. Six inches, polished, sharp. In good condition, like all his tools. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, kid,¡± he said, holding him. He began to sing. His voice was low and coarse, and it surfaced from someplace deeper than his throat, deeper than his lungs, deeper than the graves of his darkest memories. A lullaby, his mother¡¯s lullaby, the one faint memory he had of her. He¡¯d sung it to his brother when they were children, and then, years later, he¡¯d sung it to his own children, soothing them when they could not sleep. The lullaby was warmth and kindness in a world without either. Its words were the only comfort he¡¯d ever known how to give. ¡°Good night, good night. The stars are out, the moon is bright. Good night, little one, sleep tight.¡± The knife slipped through the neck and up beneath the skull. Nicholas shuddered¡ªbut a nice shudder, maybe, the kind of shudder that comes when you step into the sun after a long spell in the shade. The knees in his moonwalking legs bent in quick succession. He gave a dancing jig, an airborne shuffle, and went still. It was done. But the job wasn¡¯t. Nicholas had been going home, and he would make it there, both for his sake and for the sake of his father. Matthew Krauter would have been at work or headed to work when the dark fell. If he was still alive, and if he somehow made it back, he would find Nicholas waiting for him. At least this way he would be spared the nightmare of never knowing what had become of his son. It was a pathetic consolation, but it would have to do. John shut the knife and returned it to his pocket. Gripping Nicholas by the back and belly, he began to pull. The branch did not want to let him go; it held onto him from the inside, scraping against his ribs. A long strip of blood-softened bark peeled away, and finally Nicholas was free. John laid him on the ground. After a moment¡¯s consideration, he took off his jacket and bundled the boy in it. He had no practical reason to do so. It just didn¡¯t seem right, the kid wearing short sleeves out in the cold. It¡¯s not cold, Nicholas said, from another place, another time. And it wasn¡¯t, John realized. Even now, it wasn¡¯t. The dark still held onto the morning¡¯s warmth. For how long, though? He knelt there, the night moving stealthily around him, whispering its secrets, too low to hear. At last he lifted the boy and started down the path to fading cries of encore, encore, encore. The old scar ached on his forearm, and inside him wind blew in bitter gales and snow gathered in bone white drifts. The blood remembers. Yes. The blood remembers. ??? No two neighbors had ever lived further apart than John Hawthorne and Matthew Krauter, each one high up on his own hill. Still, they could look out across the way and see into each other¡¯s living rooms, and sometimes John, alone at the dinner table, could even hear scattered bits of conversation through the open window. But there was no road to connect their houses, and no desire for one. Going over to pay a visit was something neither man had ever done. Until now. John walked up Matthew Krauter¡¯s driveway with Nicholas in his arms. He climbed the steps to the front door and, using the dead boy¡¯s key, he let himself inside.