There’s a scab on my stomach where there should be a … a hole or a gaping, bloody wound. But I’m touching my stomach, and I can feel the crusted-over skin that feels like I got scraped by a branch.
Like that time my skin got punctured by a tree limb when I was running for my life away from those crazies in the hoods.
I healed quickly then, and it looks like I’ve healed now.
But last night I got shot. Someone rammed a gun into my gut and pulled the trigger.
I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.
First Marsh, now this.
This is all I can think as I follow Staunch down a wide, dimly lit hallway into a large room. I try to take in my surroundings. The main thing I notice are the animal heads. Bears and deer and that sort of thing, like he’s some kind of hunter. There’s a massive brick fireplace with a large oak mantle above it. Then I stop.
“What is it?” Staunch asks as he stops and looks at me.
I’m staring at the black wolf that’s hovering above the mantle. Of course, it’s just his head, but it looks alive and real.
“I shot that on our road, the very road you live on,” Staunch tells me with an amused look on his face. “Nobody believes me when I tell them that, but that’s fine. It was standing in the middle of the road.”
I think of the other wolves I’ve seen since being here, and I believe him. Then I think of the mountain man with his large dog. I haven’t seen him in a while.
Then, of course, I think of the demon dog that turned into black smoke.
There it is, right there on the mantle, Chris. It was just taking a nice evening stroll on his property.
“Come on.”
I’m waiting to see something else, something creepy, something scary that might be dead but suddenly moves. I pass a table and see a picture of Gus. In a tie. Trying to smile but not really succeeding.
Well, that’s creepy enough, thanks.
Staunch leads me out a sliding glass door onto a deck. The same deck that overlooks his property, the same one I saw the old man looking off from the second time I wandered onto Staunch’s land.
“Come on, I want to show you something before you go.”
Staunch leads me down the grassy hill to the edge of the forest. He opens a black iron gate and then descends a stairway, urging me to keep up with him. There’s a creek below us, and the sound of the small waterfall I discovered when I was trespassing is quite different from the pounding waters of Marsh Falls. I see the clearing in the woods with the early morning sun streaming down.
I want to ask him so many questions, but I haven’t been able to ask even one.
Before Staunch stops, I see him.
A figure at the base of the waterfall, right where the water is dropping into the small pond. One hand chained to what appears to be a rock. Black tape X-ing out his mouth.
It’s Wade, looking tired and angry and confused.
For a moment, as we stand above him, looking down at him, he doesn’t see us. The splashing water echoes all around us.
“There you go,” Staunch says. “That is how you take care of problems.”
Wade seems to hear him, although there’s no way he could from that distance. He jerks his arm, trying to breaking it free, screaming underneath the tape over his mouth. Staunch just looks down at him the way he might look at some wounded, dying animal.
“So what do you want to do with him?”
I see bright blue eyes glancing down at me, unmoving and unfeeling. “What do you mean?”
“You control this situation now. You can do whatever you’d like to this thing below.”
I swallow, shake my head, my mouth opening but unable to speak.
“It’s simple. You decide. If you decide nothing—say nothing and never bring it up again—well, that is a decision in itself.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“Well, if you don’t do anything, he’ll stay down there and die.”
“No.”
Staunch nods, then reaches into his pocket.
“Here’s a key. It’s to the lock on his wrist.”
“No.”
“Take it.”
I try to back up, but he forces the key into my hand.
“Listen, Chris—you have to start handling things yourself. This is a good test for you. To see how you’ll deal with things.”
“I’m not going to let him die.”
“Fine,” Staunch says, looking back down at the skinny, soaking figure of Wade. “But let me remind you of something. He just put a bullet in your side. A .45. You should be dead. I’m not going to tell you how it is you’re alive, and I’m not looking for thanks or anything like that. I’m just looking for you to grow up and be a man. I get teens. I got a seventeen-year-old oversized brat for a son who’s probably that way because I didn’t hold him enough when he was younger. That’s fine. That’s another world, Chris. That’s not your world. You’re different. And I think you know it.”
“No,” I say in a very weak voice.
“You say that, but deep down I think you know. And don’t forget why Wade shot you. Or why you shot him.”
“How do you know about that?”
Staunch leans over and looks me directly in the face. “I know about everything that takes place around here. Not that you even tried to keep that one a secret. But the guy’s a piece of trash, Chris. I’d be wasting a bullet if I stuck it between his ugly little eyes.”
This is too much too soon too fast. I feel like I’m about ready to fall off this minor ledge here. But I’ll be falling and won’t hit the ground.
“You want to blame others for Jocelyn’s death. You blame Marsh—you surely blame me, too. You want to know who was under those hoods. Right? Everybody seems to know about it, but nobody is confessing to actually having been there. But what if—what if that very man down there was the one who orchestrated it all?”
“No—he’s too—”
“What? Dumb?”
I nod, swallow. I feel like running.
“You calling men and women who dress up in robes and carry torches in the middle of the night smart?”
He’s got a point.
“I have things to do, and you best be going back home. Take the key. You decide. You let me know if I need to do anything.”
“Like what?”
He just looks at me with heartless eyes. “Anything you need.”
Staunch begins to walk back up the hill. I hear a high-pitched, muffled wailing coming from below.
“How did I—how come I didn’t die?” I ask before he’s gone.
“What if you did die, Chris? What if you’re a ghost and don’t even know it?”
Before I can react, Staunch just laughs out loud, then continues to walk back up the hill.
I follow, trying to get away from the stifled cries below.
I don’t know what to do with Wade, but I’m beyond trying to figure it out at the moment.
I need to go back home and …
And what, Chris?
I picture her face and know that I need to call Lily. I’m not sure what happened to her last night, but I’m sure she’s probably wondering what’s going on with me.
I’m walking down the long, circular driveway leading to the dirt road our cabin is on when it dawns on me that I have a cell phone in my pocket.
I keep forgetting that, and keep forgetting that it belongs to me.