seventy-nine

SILENCE CREPT IN FROM THE CORNERS of the clearing like floodwaters spilling into a sinkhole. A ring of participants around an open space, in front of them lay the bodies of Haywood and Nick, Haywood unconscious but still breathing, Nick dead to this world but with a serene look on his face, the weight of the years lifted from his shoulders.

The Coldwater people—Clinton, Davis, Frank, Earl, and Lila—looked at Haywood and then at each other and back again in an endless stream of bewilderment. Their eyes had seen what their brains could not process. A vision of hell swirling above their heads and then absorbed by the man they had blindly followed down this demon path. Every horror story they had ever been told manifested in the woods before them.

Clinton looked over at Michael. The man they had pursued, had made the scapegoat for every fear they had, stood near the encroaching forest, his face illuminated by the headlight of one of the trucks. In some subtle way Michael appeared different. His battered and bloody face still showed the evidence of the past several days, and in all likelihood it would for the rest of his life, but something in his eyes shone different.

The boys stood still. They had no idea what was to come next.

Was Haywood just the first to get what was coming to him?

Davis reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. His hands were shaking uncontrollably and it took several attempts to land one in his mouth and get it lit.

Clinton kept staring at Michael.

“Anybody going to say anything?” Earl said, breaking the silence.

Davis looked at him and held up his hands.

Melissa walked over to Haywood and cautiously picked up her pistol.

She turned toward Michael.

Any hint of rage was gone from her bearing, evaporated into the night like the satanic mists that had floated before their faces. She moved in the headlights to her car, opened the door, and placed the gun under her seat. She looked at Michael.

“Come on,” she whispered, “I’ll take you home.”

Michael looked down at Nick. His once-future self. The man who had chased him through the north woods and came close to killing him on the viaduct. The man who wrestled with the same demons he had fought with and who had begged him to take them away.

Nick, the man who saved him.

Michael had no idea where the dark companion that had been dragged out of the corner of his soul had gone, but he felt in his heart that it would not be back. It had been evicted. Nick had done that for him—by taking the bullet in the back, by sacrificing himself, by showing that Michael was worth mercy in his last noble action. As he was unable to ask forgiveness of his dead brother, so he was unable to express his gratefulness to Nick for releasing him back into life by his martyrdom.

Then he looked at Haywood, whose prone body lay on the forest floor.

Michael knew what now resided there.

The shadow that had coiled itself around Nick’s soul was now setting up house in the vacant spaces that Haywood’s anger had cleared out. The demon finding a new home, a new cell, a new place to live out its days in the hollow thoughts of men.

Michael limped to Melissa’s car, opened the passenger’s door, and slid inside.

He knew the woman sitting next to him.

He knew her when he had walked up behind her in the forest and had placed his hand on her shoulder, as if the cells in his body warmed to the sensation of a similar strain.

They didn’t say a word as Melissa backed out of Springer’s Grove, the headlights illuminating the faces of the defanged Coldwater vigilantes. They turned around and headed back to Coldwater.

He waited for her to say something.

He waited for her to pull the gun out and place a bullet in his skull.

But she just drove on. Down the two-track, onto the main road.

The silence echoed through the car.

The lights of Gilly’s and the diner appeared in the darkness. Melissa brought the car to the stoplight and turned east. She drove past the road to the cemetery. Their brother Marcus, lying quietly now in their taillights.

She turned down the dirt road toward the ashen remains of their childhood home, the embers cooling and giving a soft glow to the dead circle like a scorched bomb blast. She stopped the car in the drive.

And she remained silent.

Michael got out. The heat from the fire now subsided, he could see the trailer in the back, still standing.

The wind through the woods blew the smoke to the heavens, purging the earth of sins gone by. Michael looked back into the car.

Melissa was crying softly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything,” Michael said.

She nodded but kept her eyes down. Silent.

It would take a while. A lifetime of anger and resentment quickly washed away could not be instantly replaced with a lesser sentiment. The vacuum in his sister’s heart would take some time to fill with new feelings, but perhaps this would be the first step to start again.

He closed the door and stood, watching, as she eased the car onto the road and headed south toward a life yet unplanned.