CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

 

"Keep going. You can park by that tree."

Fitch didn't know whether Detective Goodwell had a plan or whether he was in shock from the burns across his hands. There weren't many places on Earth worse than the Pentacost Convent, but here they were, driving down a dirt track across an expanse of muddy marshland towards the burned-out ruins Fitch and Kimberly had left behind oh so long ago.

He shivered as he remembered the sackcloth-bound faces of the things living inside those walls. Their shuddering, scraping breaths. The dead child they'd dragged through the doorway, neck broken, bleeding from the eyes. "Wouldn't be half so jumpy if you had a gun."

"We won't need it." Goodwell's voice was drifting, dreamy. "Not gonna go inside. Just here. Here!"

Fitch jerked the wheel and they slewed to a stop in the shadow of a leaning conifer. Green needles brushed Fitch's forehead as he stepped out into the rain. He hugged himself against a sudden chill wind. The convent was maybe a quarter-mile distant, a slumped black shape on the slope below. "What's the idea, Detective? Longer we stay out here, longer the beast has to sniff us out."

"Something I need to show you. Only a minute." Goodwell walked hunched, hands buried beneath his armpits. Not good, with the skin so badly blistered. He was liable to peel his whole hand off like a glove. Fitch knew from experience. "Come on. Walk with me."

They fell into step, side by side, two tired men dragging their feet through sucking mud. Goodwell moved like a man carrying an immense weight, chest heaving, head bowed. Rain glistened on his cheeks, dripped from his chin.

Without looking up, he said, "This was a better place, once."

"The moors?"

"Rustwood. At least, I get that feeling. These two queens have been knocking heads for, what, years?"

"More," Fitch breathed. "Decades. Millenia. Maybe longer than the universe."

"Well, I don't know about that-"

"I know, Detective. I know."

A smirk, barely visible above the collar of Goodwell's coat. "Assume you're right. Assume they've been kicking each other's asses since Moses was a twinkle in the milkman's eye. I still don't think this is what Rustwood was supposed to be. Nothing but rain and mud and people beating on people when they're down. All this anger. There's something better underneath."

"That why you're a cop? To clean the streets? Dig up the happy shiny Rustwood?"

"Don't patronise me, Fitch."

"You're patronisin' yerself. Got your head in the alligator's jaws and you think if you push hard enough you'll see light out the far side. Goddamn childish."

Goodwell looked sour, and Fitch realised he'd gone a step too far. The detective had something in mind, and Fitch supposed it was time he closed his mouth and let the man say his piece.

At least, for a while.

Goodwell shook off exhaustion and stood a little straighter. He untucked his hands long enough to wave at the moors before them. "Look at this place. Remember what it was like a couple weeks back? Before you and Mrs Archer decided to mess everything up?"

Fitch nodded. Impossible to forget. The driving rain, the heat of the fire on his cheeks. Slick mud giving way underfoot as he fled from the burning convent, the earth spilling him inexorably towards the river, as if Rustwood itself was trying to drown him beneath thick sludge. After that, the graveyard. Miserable moss-eaten stones tilting and grasping. The chittering thing panicking in his pocket. Those things on their heels, sack-cloth mouths and needle fingers, grasping at the dying grass.

Miserable. Colourless. Nothing but pain, that night. "Don't much want to remember, but you've got me reminiscing. That your plan all along, Detective? To put me in a bad mood?"

"See, there you go again. Always thinking I'm some sort of villain. I brought you here to show you something." Goodwell indicated the mist-blanketed mountains, the slope falling away into the river, the blacked-out hulk of what had been, only weeks before, the convent. The most poisonous place in Rustwood. "Nothing grew here but weeds. Nothing wanted to. Nobody walked here, either. Shit, even if we got a callout to this place, we thought twice. The rest of the squad never knew why, didn't have half a clue what was inside that place, but they understood in their guts. This was a bad fucking corner of town."

Fitch remembered the tightness in his gut when he'd first realised they were headed into the convent. All the stories coming to life. All the fears made flesh. "So? We burned down one place. Like lancing a boil, you know? But there's always more springing up. You don't cure a rash by poking it. Gotta raze the whole town to fix this-"

"Just look, will you?"

Fitch sighed and turned back to the hillside. The convent, roof collapsed, walls blackened and sagging, doors reduced to ash. A skeleton of what once had been. The grasses around the walls were wilted, the mud sheltered from the rain by the overhang of old brick. A dusting of white ash lingered there, impossibly, like snow.

Snow. What would that be like? Snow in Rustwood. White sweeping away all the misery...

And, twenty yards from the convent's doors, a patch of green.

Fitch started. Not a trick of the light. Fresh grass... or clover, or weeds, he couldn't be sure... but did it matter? Something was actually growing within sight of the convent. Something unpolluted. "The hell?"

"I know," Goodwell said. "This isn't the first place. It happens wherever we drive out the new queen, the thing you call the beast. Not quite a... flourishing. Nothing so dramatic. But life comes back. You see over there?"

Fitch followed where Goodwell was pointing. Christ, he was right. A couple hundred yards beyond the ruined convent, where the hills rose up in a long sharp-ridged scar, was a copse of leaning firs. Straggly, thin-limbed, but there were fresh buds growing there, points of green amidst the shadows. And at their base...

A rustling. A twitch of movement. Fitch grinned. "Was that a rabbit?"

"No idea. My eyes were never that great. If you say it's a rabbit, it's a rabbit."

"Jesus Christ. A rabbit just runnin' around, this close to..." Fitch's breath shuddered. He dragged one filthy hand across his eyes. Crying in a place like this? No. Just the rain. "Another week and it'll all be dead again. New queen, old queen, doesn't matter. This stuff, the grass, the flowers, that rabbit... it's scar tissue. The town heals. Goes back to being the way it was. Miserable from top to bottom."

"That's really what you think?"

"I've been fighting it long enough to know better than to get my hopes up."

Goodwell scrubbed one hand through his hair. The detective looked haggard, drawn thin. Putting those boys in the ground for good hadn't helped. Maybe only made things worse. Wasn't much that dogged a man harder than guilt, and Goodwell was carrying more of it than most could bear.

"Fine," Goodwell finally said. "You want to be the nihilist? Fuck off, then. Go be miserable. All I know is what I see. You beat this place good, ripped it up better than anyone else could've. You want to call it a scar? Fine, it's a scar. A big one, right in the beast's side. And things are growing in that scar, now. It's changing for the better. You did that, Fitch. You and Kimberly, you did that damage. And maybe in a couple years, all this will be green again. People will walk here and go fishing in the river. And yeah, maybe they won't know your name, they won't have a big shiny plaque for you, but it's still your work. You brought it back. You gave them this place. That grass? That stupid rabbit? That's your plaque."

Fitch ducked his head. Why'd it have to be raining so hard, right now? Hitting him in the eyes. Stopping him from looking at Goodwell. Saying what needed to be said.

"You've done enough, Fitch," Goodwell said. "You've already fixed so much. Sooner or later, you have to rest. The queens... they're beyond you. Beyond me. Maybe they're someone else's task. Your job was right here. This grass. That dumb rabbit. You see?"

In the end, Fitch settled for, "Thanks."

Goodwell rested one hand on Fitch's shoulder. "Yeah. Thanks to you, too. For pulling my ass out of the fire. For helping me with the kids. For... all of this."

"Can you quit talking about me for five goddamn minutes?"

"If it'll make you feel better."

Fitch shrugged Goodwell's hand away. "I didn't want a medal. Didn't want anything. Just a place to be alone and safe. Always thought I'd die out here and get forgotten. Now you're turnin' me into some sort of saint. I didn't want that. I didn't want that."

"Yeah, well. None of us get what we want. But maybe, if you take the opportunity, you can have a bit of peace and quiet." Goodwell shrugged and turned away. "See you back at the car."

Fitch waited for the clumping of footsteps to fade. Then, when he was sure he was alone, he looked back to the ridge beyond the convent.

There. A flicker of woodland brown between the trunks. Ears high, on patrol. The gleam of tiny eyes.

"Hell," he whispered. "Maybe that ain't so bad."

A twitch. The rabbit stood up above the line of scrub for a moment, sniffing at the air.

Then it was gone.