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It was well past midnight when Danny finally reached the pass. Smoke billowed in the night sky ahead, great ashen thunderheads of it, smoldering in the harsh ember-red glow of an 80,000-acre fire that devoured the forest of the eastern slopes of the Cascades.
Danny was sure he could feel the heat of the distant wildfire, knew that was impossible, that it was simply a warm night in the heart of fire season. But he was drenched in sweat all the same and his mouth was as dry as summer deadfall.
It was going to be a long night.
Hitch sat in the passenger seat of the rented truck, his face awash in the stark glare of his phone. “Steven’s Pass coming up on the right. Tye Road should be on the left, less than half a mile, just before the first ski area parking lot.”
Danny took a long drink from his water bottle, replaced it in the holder. “Yeah, I see it.”
Hitch lowered his phone and leaned forward, craning his neck to look at the fire-ravaged sky through the dusty windshield. “Fuck. You sure about this?”
Danny frowned, shifted in his seat. He didn’t have any idea what the fire was going to do, but the road was open another ten miles on, and he needed Hitch chill for the work ahead, so he said, “That’s the closest fire, and I’m pretty sure it’s moving east. Once we turn off the main highway, we’ll be heading in the opposite direction, Hitch.”
Hitch’s gaze lingered for a long moment, and then he sighed and eased back into his seat. “You say so, man,” he said. Then he raised his phone and glanced at the map. “Shit. Losing service. Should be right here,” he said pointing to the left side of the road.
But Danny was already making the turn.
Hitch took one last look at his phone and then put it in his pocket. “No service. You know the way from here, right?” Hitch asked.
Danny gave his friend a wry smile. Hitch was welcome company. They’d been friends since their last year at Garfield High School, just a couple kids with no plans wandering unnoticed in a senior class consumed by just what the fuck they were going to do next. College? Can’t afford it. Vocational school? Let me think about it. The military? Oh, fuck no.
Danny wanted to get his hands dirty but Hitch just liked to think about shit. Not in a philosophical way, he was too easily distracted for that. He was more the observe, riff, and move on sort, like a standup comic who’s fucking hilarious on stage but damned if you can remember anything they said the next day.
“You know I do, man. Five miles, a little more,” said Danny. “Once we’re through the switchbacks, start looking for a sign for the Wellington Trailhead. It won’t be easy to spot at night.”
“Remind me again why we’re doing this in the fucking dark?”
“No way we could pull it off during the day, Hitch,” he sighed. “Too many people.”
Hitch looked out the window, shook his head slightly. “Who’s this guy again?”
“Harrow,” said Danny.
“Yeah, that’s it... Harrow.”
Hitch rolled down his window, filling the cab with the warm night air of late summer – dried pine and sunbaked earth and the smoke and ash of wildfires.
“Runs some kind of bookstore?” asked Hitch.
“Yeah, a hole-in-the-wall shop down some Pioneer Square alley. Old stuff. Rare books, from what I can tell online.”
“You’ve only talked to the guy on the phone?”
Danny nodded. “Email mostly, he didn’t want to meet in person.”
Hitch shifted in his seat, turned to look at his friend. “I don’t get it. Why the fuck did you take this job?”
Danny’s eyes narrowed. “You know why. I need the cash. The Seattle City Council is sitting on its collective ass. They’ve gutted funding for graffiti abatement while they listen to public comments on the mayor’s new proposal. Most of the Graffiti Rangers are sitting idle. I’ve been lucky to get a shift or two a week,” he said.
Danny turned toward his friend, his jaw taut as a drumhead. “I can’t live on that, Hitch. I’ve been freelancing for a month, painting over tags on random fence lines and buildings for less than minimum wage. I spent last week working for some piece of shit property manager who still hasn’t paid me.”
Hitch extended his hands in a calming gesture. “Alright, man. People are assholes. I’ve always said so.”
Danny loosened his hands on the steering wheel, sighed. “Sorry, man,” he said.
“Nah, we’re good,” said Hitch.
The two men watched the road in silence until Danny slowed the truck and started the long, steep climb up the first switchback. The gravel road was washboarded in places, forcing Danny to slow even further. Something on the trailer they were pulling began to rattle, a steel metronome marking the beat of their ascent.
“Why do you think this Harrow dude wants these tags removed?” asked Hitch.
“Not sure,” said Danny with a shrug. “At first, I thought he wanted to clean up the place. Harrow seems to have an interest in history and there’s a lot of it in the area – the abandoned Wellington townsite, the Old Cascade Rail Tunnel. I read that an avalanche killed a lot of people here during a winter storm about a hundred years back. Took out the rail depot and two trains trapped in deep snow on the tracks. Most of them died waiting out the storm in the train cars.”
“Haunted then,” said Hitch. “No wonder you didn’t want to do this alone.”
“Thing is,” said Danny with a sidelong glance at his friend, “my first impression was wrong. I don’t think Harrow gives a shit about the history of this place.”
“Why’s that?”
He’s only paying me to remove one specific tag,” said Danny.
Hitch raised an eyebrow. “He’s paying you a grand to remove one tag?”
Danny grinned at his friend. “Yeah. He is.”
“And he’s rented this truck and trailer and pressure washer on top of that? That’s another, what... $500?”
Danny nodded, his grin fading as he focused on the road. Should he tell Hitch the rest? He considered it, just one last casual detail. But no... no, it wouldn’t take much to make Hitch uneasy. He probably wouldn’t believe him anyway. Danny wasn’t sure he believed it. Fucking Harrow.
“It’s a weird job, Hitch, but it beats painting fences in the summer sun.”
“Why can’t we just paint over it and be on our way?”
Danny shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Harrow wants it removed, not covered up. I’ve been on a couple similar jobs with the Rangers, even ran a sandblaster once – fucking sand everywhere.”
Hitch nodded slowly. He looked at Danny for a long moment. “Hmm,” he said.
Danny glanced quickly between Hitch and the winding road a couple times.
“What?” he asked.
Hitch’s eyes narrowed. “Your sister know about this?”
Danny shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“No, Hitch,” he sighed. “Tess doesn’t know about this job.”
Danny’s sister was one of the most prominent graffiti artists in Seattle, at once notorious and revered. Danny liked to think he played a role in her success, that they had a symbiotic relationship. As a Ranger, he gifted Tess, and artists like her, with blank canvas all over the city. Places to make authentic, original art. Not the scrawl of wasted highschoolers. Not the trash tags and throw-ups of toys, wannabe hacks with no sense of style. But stunning, ephemeral art.
“She doesn’t need to know about everything I do, man.”
Hitch leaned back in his seat. “Just asking. You two are tight, thought you might have mentioned it,” said Hitch.
Danny shrugged. “She knows I’m freelancing but we never get into specifics unless I’m cutting new canvas, something she can work with. And this ain’t that.”
“If you say so,” Hitch said with a yawn. He settled deeper into his seat and closed his eyes.
They drove on in silence. Another five minutes of climbing and they were out of the switchbacks.
“Help me look for the Wellington sign,” said Danny.
Hitch stretched and then focused his attention on the road. An instant later, he pointed directly ahead. “There,” he said. “Good thing I’m here.”
Danny smiled. “Oh, you’re gonna earn your pay over the next couple hours, Hitch.”
“We agreed on $150, right?”
“Dude, it was a hundred.”
“Right. Sure, but you’re buying breakfast,” said Hitch.
Danny turned onto the road that led to the Wellington Trailhead parking lot. He zeroed the truck’s trip odometer, drove a short distance, and then slowed to a stop.
He reached for a flashlight on the dash, pointed it out the window, and turned it on. A steep ascending slope of dense forest understory and tightly packed stands of Western Hemlock and Douglas Fir rose into darkness from the edge of the dirt road.
Hitch leaned into the driver’s side of the truck to get a better look. “You sure this is it?”
Danny swept the light back down to the road and said, “I think so. Give me a minute.”
He drove slowly, keeping the flashlight on the margin of the slope. After a few short moments, he spotted a yellow pin flag on the side of the road. Harrow’s marker.
Danny eased the truck about ten feet past the flag and parked. He got out, walked to the marker and crouched, sweeping the light up the slope. The trail, a narrow path ascending through dense forest, was right where Harrow had said it would be.
He stood and walked back to the truck. “This is it.”
Hitch nodded. “Uh huh.” He craned his neck to keep his eyes on the looming silhouette of the hill. “Looks steep,” he said, a hint of judgement in his tone.
“It’s a short walk, Hitch. The old rail tunnel entrance is directly above us. Not far at all. There’s a small path that runs up from here. It should take us to the Iron Goat Trail a bit south of the old rail tunnel portal. Looks steep in a couple places, but easy enough.”
Hitch slid across to the driver’s seat and climbed out of the truck. He took a long look up the slope and then turned to Danny, raising one dubious eyebrow.
Danny grinned and clapped his friend’s shoulder a couple times. “You’ll be fine.”
It took them a few short minutes to set up the trailer-mounted Simpson pressure washer. When they were ready, Danny detached the coiled 200-foot-long pressure hose and hefted it over his shoulder. He handed the gun attachment and a spare flashlight to Hitch.
“We’ll head up and get our bearings, and then uncoil the hose in a direct line downslope. There should be enough hose, but if not, there’s an extension on the trailer. Follow me up, but not too close, OK?” Danny said.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Hitch said with a sardonic salute.
The night air was still, and the heat of the day lingered in the trees like the low smoke of a smoldering fire. The path was narrow, more game trail than anything. Loose rock and cloying Vine Maples harassed their footing all the way up, and tree branches, some dry and brittle with thirst and disease, forced them to crouch in places.
The hose was damned heavy, and Danny struggled the entire way. His labored breathing drowned out the dramatic groans and colorful objections from Hitch following just below. When he finally reached the top, Danny dropped the hose and bent over, hands on knees, thirsting for air. His calf muscles twitched, and his neck and shoulders throbbed.
Hitch joined him a few moments later.
“You were right, man. That wasn’t bad at all,” he said with a light-hearted smile.
Danny straightened and scowled at him.
He picked up the hose and swept his flashlight forward along an overgrown trail. “It’s this way,” he said.
They walked for another minute, emerging in a rocky clearing bounded by dense forest. Water babbled softly up ahead. Somewhere off to the north, a pair of owls haunted the forest with ethereal, almost maniacal calls.
They moved deeper into the clearing, stepping carefully to avoid small pools of water and the gently flowing brooks that connected them. Something loomed up ahead. Danny narrowed the beam of his flashlight and raised it from the ground, pointing it directly forward. As he swept it back and forth along the margin of the forest, the play of light and shadow evoked a thousand dark-winged birds taking flight.
“There,” he said at last.
The western portal of the Old Cascade Tunnel shown in the diffuse light, a buttressed void in a forested hillside.
Hitch joined him at his side as they closed the distance. “Damn. How old is this thing?”
“Harrow told me it opened in 1900, operated for like... 30 years?” Danny widened the beam of his light, swept it around to get his bearings and then said, “Let’s have a closer look.”
A few moments later, they stood at the opening. A gentle stream flowed from the tunnel, and dry ground was hard to find. A hollow echo thrummed from the tunnel opening, a distant wind played in a minor chord. Directly above the portal arch, weathered metal letters spelled out the word CASCADE.
Graffiti covered the facade and side buttresses of the tunnel entrance. None of it was particularly interesting. Just trash tags and ghosts. Bored kids, drinking and getting high and fucking around on a Friday night.
Danny had painted over plenty of hack work over the years. Usually, the same uninspired scrawl would reappear a few days later, and he’d be right back at it during his next pass of the area, covering it up in unassuming city government gray again.
“So, which one is it? We should blast all of it. I mean... they’re drawing dicks here,” Hitch said, shining his light on what looked like a crop of them standing tall and proud under a blazing yellow cartoon sun.
“It’s none of these.”
“The fuck you mean?”
Danny sighed. Here we go...
He turned to his friend, a confessional smile on his face. “So... yeah,” he said. “Harrow told me the tagger used paint that can only be seen in moonlight, some kind of special mix... like invisible ink. We need to wait until the moon is up.” He looked at his watch. “Maybe twenty minutes, give or take.”
Hitch stared at Danny, his mouth agape.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Moonlight?”
“Yeah, I know...I know. It sounds like bullshit. Maybe it is,” said Danny, his sheepishness fading now that he’d said the thing aloud. “I don’t know, man, and I don’t much care. It’s good money when I need it most. So, let’s wait and see. OK?”
Hitch looked up at the buttress through narrowed eyes and then slowly nodded his head.
“Look, if nothing happens, we’ll pack up and get out of here. We’ll be back in Seattle before the sun is up.”
“Breakfast for me, either way,” Hitch said with blunt certainty.
“Definitely,” said Danny.
“We’ve got some time, so I’m gonna lay the hose through the trees in a direct line back down to the truck,” said Danny. “I’ll yell if I get into trouble, so keep your ears open.”
“I got you, Danny,” said Hitch.
Danny attached the pressure washer gun to one end of the hose, handed it to Hitch, and then began the short trek down the hill to the truck. The route he took was steep, and the thick understory and fallen trees slowed him considerably. It took him fifteen minutes to make his way to the truck.
Once there, Danny connected the line to the pressure washer, and started the compressor.
By the time he began the climb along the trail back up to the tunnel, the full moon, painted blood red by the smoke of an endless fire season, was beginning to crest the ridge. Once back on the Iron Goat, Danny jogged to the tunnel entrance.
He found Hitch scrutinizing the graffiti on one of the buttresses.
“You find something?” asked Danny.
Hitch started, spun toward Danny’s voice, nearly falling in the process. “Jesus, Danny!” His voice was loud, his eyes wide, alert. Hitch steadied himself and stepped away from the buttress.
“Yeah, I fucking did!”
“Easy, man,” said Danny, his hands extended in a calming gesture. “Show me.”
Hitch shifted his light to a spot well to the right of the area he’d been examining. “Just... just put your hand on the concrete, Danny. Right there, where I’m shining my light.”
Danny stowed his own light as he approached and then placed his hands on the buttress where Hitch indicated. “What am I looking for?”
“Leave them there, maybe feel around a bit.”
Danny pressed his palms flat, held them in place for a moment, shifted to another spot, brushing the concrete with just his fingertips.
“You feel anything?”
“It’s still warm from the heat of the day. Is that what you mean?”
Hitch ignored the question. “Now...” he said, shifting his light back to the area he’d been examining when Danny had returned. “Check this shit out.”
Danny raised an eyebrow, gave his friend a dubious glance. He shifted a few feet to his left and placed his hands on the buttress.
The concrete was much warmer here, and seemed to thrum with a soft, pulsing vibration, as if there were machinery running somewhere deep within the concrete of the hillside itself. Danny ran his fingers along the structure. It was smooth, like the surface of utterly still water.
And then his fingers broke the surface, leaving delicate ripples in the concrete.
Danny gasped, pulled his hands away in a panic. He stumbled backwards.
Hitch reached out to steady him “That’s what I did, too, but I fell on my ass.”
“What the hell?”
“Strange shit, no doubt,” Hitch observed.
Danny stared at the buttress for a long moment.
“Oh, damn,” Hitch said in a hushed voice.
Danny turned and instantly tensed. The moon, blood-red and immense, had cleared the ridge. An ethereal shroud of sanguine moonlight eased into the clearing like a slow rising tide.
Hitch shifted uncomfortably, looking back towards the tunnel. “What... what do we do?”
Danny drew a sharp breath. He stole a glance at the tunnel, and then turned to his friend. “Nothing,” he said. “I mean... I don’t know, man. We wait. See what happens.”
“Maybe we should, you know, put some distance between us and the fucking tunnel,” said Hitch.
Danny nodded. “Yeah, man. Let’s do that.”
They backed away from the tunnel quickly, passing from shadow into moonlight, stopping only when they reached the tree line.
The crimson moonlight seemed to gather momentum as it traversed the clearing. Danny’s pulse pounded in his ears as it reached the base of the tunnel and swept up the concrete buttress, like the margin of a fire smoldering inexorably up the trunk of a tree.
As they watched, a dim amber light dawned on the buttress wall where Danny had felt his fingers slip into the concrete. The moonlight seemed to be drawn to it, as if an eddy had formed there. It grew more radiant as they watched, until it blazed like the coals at the heart of a raging fire.
Danny glanced at Hitch, whose eyes never left the tunnel wall. He took a few cautious steps into the clearing, then turned to look up at the moon. His breath caught deep in his throat.
The moon was a gunshot wound in the sky, a luminous orb of blood and shadow.
Hitch, still facing the tunnel, gasped, startling Danny.
“What?” Danny asked, breathless.
Hitch, his mouth wide in astonishment, half raised an arm and pointed.
Danny turned. An image, rendered in a thousand hues of shimmering amber light, emerged from the concrete, like an island rising from the depths of a burning sea.
Danny stood in open-mouthed silence, utterly mesmerized, as the image clarified into an intricate tag that filled the lower half of the buttress – a raven of amber fire and umbral ash, a massive smoldering ember orb held fast in its talons, all of it framed in a spray of opalescent shadow. The play of moonlight on its surface seemed to give it movement, life.
It took Danny’s breath away.
Hitch blinked tears away as he stared at the tag, and then his eyes narrowed. He crossed his arms, cocked his head.
“Huh,” said Hitch.
After a few moments, he placed a hand on the back of Danny’s neck.
“Danny...,” he said, “that’s your sister’s work.”
Danny blinked.
“Tess? What are you talking about? She...”
But his words died there.
“You see it. I know you do. This is Tess’s work. It’s her insane fusion of... I don’t know, Viking and Salish and other shit she never talks about. Doesn’t matter – no one can do what she does. No one would even think of biting her style! It’s her work, man.”
Danny took a few tentative steps toward the moonlit graffiti, nodding slowly as he went. There was no mistaking it. This was his sister’s work.
Danny shook his head in disbelief. “This... this is like nothing I’ve ever seen from her, Hitch. It’s... performance art.” He looked around. “But why here? Why the fuck would she ever put something like this here?”
Hitch gestured at the trash tags on the tunnel portal. “Maybe she’s making some kind of statement on this other shit or trying the scare the hell out of kids who come out here to party.”
“I don’t think so,” said Danny, shaking his head.
He walked to the wall and tentatively placed a palm on the graffiti. The concrete was still very warm, and the subtle vibration was still there, but the surface felt like concrete. It wasn’t smooth and it wasn’t pliable. Up close, the art itself looked like paint.
He scratched at it with his thumb in a couple places, looked at his nail.
Yeah, definitely paint.
“I have no idea how she managed to... animate this – honestly, I don’t know how else to describe what we just saw – but this,” Danny said, pointing to his sister’s graffiti, “this is paint. So...”
Danny looked at his friend and shrugged.
“Oh, no... no, no,” said Hitch. “You can’t buff it!”
“It’s the job, man.” Danny walked over to the pressure washer gun, picked it up.
“Danny,” said Hitch, his hands extended in a pleading gesture toward Tess’s art, “this is a piece.”
“It is,” said Danny. “It’s fucking masterful. But it’s coming down.”
Danny tested the gun. The engine mounted on the trailer down below throttled up with a perfunctory roar. A moment later, a blast of pressurized air and water exploded from the nozzle.
“But why?” shouted Hitch over the drone of the pressure washer. “Why the fuck does this Harrow dude want your sister’s tag buffed, Danny?”
Danny let go of the trigger. He held the gun like a soldier standing post and stepped close to his friend. “I... don’t know. But I don’t really have a choice, Hitch! I need this money. I’ve already burned the deposit Harrow paid me – rent, my City Light bill – and I’m gonna need the rest to help me get through next month.”
He stared at the tag, wondering again why Tess would lay down something like this here. Had anyone ever seen it before tonight? He doubted it. He’d have heard about it, right? People would swarm this place every night if they knew about it. No doubt.
Could it be a prototype for something bigger? Isolated spot, little chance of anyone stumbling on it. Made sense. Tess keeps her shit tight. No one sees anything she does until everyone sees it.
“Fuck, dude,” said Hitch. “Let’s just... call her.
Danny looked at his friend for a long moment. He pulled out his phone, knowing exactly what he would find. Sure enough, there were no bars. “Still no service, man.” he said, extending the phone toward Hitch.
Hitch fumbled his own phone out of his pocket, examined it for longer than was necessary, and then abruptly dropped his arm to his side with a slap that echoed through the clearing.
“Fuck!”
Danny sighed. “No Tess... no choice, Hitch.”
“Dude...”
“I know... but living in this fucking city,” said Danny, shaking his head stiffly and tightening his grip on the gun, “is impossible for people like us. We take what we can get, and sometimes the choices we’re forced to make are fucking awful.”
“I know,” said Hitch. He raised his hands in supplication to the stunning moonlit art. “But this is her best work, Danny.”
Danny nodded slowly.
“Yeah. It is. But Tess knows how this works. She drops her art in public spaces in the dead of night. It’s graffiti, and graffiti is transitory.”
Hitch threw Danny a dark look. He raised his phone, opened the camera app, and took a couple shots of the tag. Then he pushed past Danny, shaking his head in disbelief as he walked away.
He flinched when the power washer hissed to life.
It didn’t take long. The pressure washer devoured Tess’s art in a century of wind and rain delivered in but a few short minutes.
But Danny didn’t stop there. He turned the pressure washer’s gleaming water-knife on the remaining tags. He could not abide them, not in the glaring void he had just created. He obliterated them with a brutality born of guilt, his face grim and his eyes heavy with unshed tears.
Somewhere in the distance, Danny registered a shout. Hitch. He ignored him as he tore through the graffiti.
And then Hitch was at his side, one firm hand on his shoulder, the other pointing at the tunnel.
“Stop, Danny!” Hitch cried. “Oh shit! Shut it down!”
Danny loosened his grip on the pressure washer’s trigger and in the sudden silence, whirled on his friend.
“What!?” Danny shouted. “It’s done!”
Hitch took a step back, his hands pressed forward, his face gaunt with fear. “Danny,” he whispered. “Look.”
Hitch turned his head toward the tunnel opening.
Danny followed his gaze and drew a gasping breath.
The light of the blood moon flowed into the tunnel, countless sparks burning in its wake like ember lanterns drifting in a campfire sky.
Danny stood breathless. Trembling, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as a chill swept through him, he took an unsteady step backwards and then glanced desperately around the clearing.
Glimmering moonlight drifted like a slow-moving brushfire through earth and sky for as far as he could see. It streamed toward the tunnel in broad, graceful arcs that collapsed into a spiraling torrent of vibrant crimson light as it breeched the tunnel threshold.
Danny sank slowly to his knees, speechless, his vision blurred by tears born of guilt and wonder and a primal fear he could not name. An unsettling chill bloomed on the back of his neck, climbed like an invasive vine to his temples. Panic detonated in Danny. His breathing collapsed to a staccato of short, sharp breaths. Move! Fucking move!
And then Danny’s vision tunneled as some...notion touched his mind. It pulled at him, drew him out. His body lingered, held fast as if trapped in some unseen eddy, but his awareness – his thoughts and memories, his very essence – stretched thin and thinner still, drawn toward the raging vortex of the tunnel.
He nearly lost himself in that horrifying moment.
But then part of him became aware of his friend, sprawled on the ground at the tunnel’s entrance, unmoving.
Danny gasped as if breaching the surface of a deep sea. He fell forward onto his hands, his palms slamming into the rough rock of the clearing.
“Hitch?” Danny said softly, craning his head to see his friend.
He crawled gracelessly to where Hitch lay. He reached his friend, turned him over. Hitch’s eyes were open, his face impassive.
“Hitch,” he said, “you with me, man?”
“Pull him away from the portal, Daniel,” said a firm, self-assured voice behind him.
Danny spun.
A man stood in the clearing, maybe ten paces away. He was of average height and build, bald, and had a few days growth of silver-gray beard that shimmered in the impossible moonlight. He wore a weathered brown long coat, over a smoke-gray vest zipped to the neck. His pants were loose, almost baggy, a dingy deep brown, and they were tucked into dust-covered leather hiking boots that rose to mid-calf. A worn leather haversack hung from one shoulder, and what looked to be an old wooden drafting tube from the other.
“Who the fuck are you!?”
The man offered a bemused smile. “Mr. Harrow, of course,” he said with a single slight nod of his head. “But I was quite serious, Daniel,” he said, gesturing toward Hitch. “Do take a moment to pull your friend to safety. Yourself as well, I should add.”
Danny stared at the man for a long moment, his mouth half open. Then he turned tentatively toward his friend. It seemed a reasonable suggestion, so he did as Harrow asked.
Hitch stirred as Danny settled him in a patch of grass near Harrow.
He crouched next to his friend, a hand on Hitch’s shoulder. “Hitch,” he said, gently shaking him.
Hitch raised an arm, warding Danny off. He propped himself up on one elbow. “I’m up... give me minute. Fuck,” he said sharply.
Danny stood. He glanced at Harrow and then turned back to his friend. He offered Hitch his hand. Hitch looked at it for a long moment, sighed deeply, and then clasped it. He pulled himself to his feet, grasping Danny’s arm to steady himself.
“You good, man?” Danny asked.
Hitch gave Danny a weak smile, then looked past him. “Who the fuck is this?” he said, nodding in the direction of Harrow.
The man stepped forward before Danny could answer. “I am Mr. Harrow.” He looked Hitch directly in the eyes. “I trust you are... recovered?” He glanced at Danny. “Both of you?” he asked.
Hitch nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah,” he said, turning to Danny. “What’s he doing here?”
“I... I don’t know.”
Harrow regarded Danny, raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a pal along, Daniel,” he said in an admonishing tone. “Understand, it was not my intent that we would ever meet but your friend here, Mr. Hitch, is it?” he tilted his head in the direction of Hitch, his eyes never leaving Danny’s, “nearly lost himself to the Deadroads.”
Hitch stared at the man, a pale, detached expression on his face. He started to turn toward the tunnel opening, but Harrow stayed him with a raised hand. “I would not, were I you, Mr. Hitch. I very much doubt you would survive another such encounter, and I am not looking for company, living or otherwise.”
Hitch shrunk back at Harrow’s words, a horrified look on his face. He looked desperately at Danny, who said, “What the hell are you talking about, Harrow? The Deadroads? What is this? What did you hire me to do?!”
Harrow stepped in close to Danny, his face mere inches away. The man’s breath was hot iron and ash. “Is it not obvious, Daniel?” he asked, a hint of disappointment in his voice.
Harrow placed an arm around Danny, pulling him alongside as he turned to face the tunnel entrance.
“You have opened a door,” he said ardently.
Danny looked at the tunnel opening, shuddered as the maelstrom pulled at his mind, a relentless undertow he knew could not resist if he lingered for more than a moment. He drank in a deep breath of the night air and willed himself to turn away.
His gaze lighted on the buttress, still wet from what he’d done. He pulled away from Harrow and walked slowly toward it. The absence of his sister’s art was a presence in and of itself. He could feel the patina of the place now, a living thing burdened by the memory of ice and suffocating death.
What the hell have I done here?
“You see it now, Daniel. You feel it,” Harrow breathed. “Your sister’s ward is gone, and now you hear the song of this place.”
“My sister...”
“...is a singular talent, Daniel,” said Harrow with a hint of admiration in his voice, “a synesthete of remarkable vision.”
Danny turned slowly away from the buttress, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t understand. What... what the fuck are you talking about?”
Harrow dropped his chin to his chest and slowly shook his head. He raised it and with a scowl said, “It should be clear to you now, Daniel – and I must tell you, I am astonished that you did not know this before tonight’s events – that your sister is more than an artist. She doesn’t experience the world the way you and I do. She perceives the fabric of reality as color – every sight and sound and smell, every taste and touch, every intuition is, for her, color. Hues and tones and shades none of us can imagine.”
Harrow shifted his gaze from Danny to the now blank canvass of the tunnel buttress.
“And, to my detriment, she has learned to manipulate the fabric of reality through her art.”
Danny stood in the silent aftermath of Harrow’s words, his breath held fast, his eyes wide. He reeled as a myriad of thoughts and emotions billowed in his mind like the smoke of a thousand summer fires. In the distance, the machine-drone of the compressor admonished him.
Harrow watched Danny, a hint of concern on his face. “I see I have upset you. Far from my intent, Daniel. Do take a moment for yourself.”
Danny let out a deep sigh, closed his eyes.
“So... if I understand you, Harrow – and I don’t, I really don’t – I just destroyed a lock, something my sister created to keep whatever the fuck that is closed?” he said, pointing sharply at the tunnel.
“What the hell is gonna to come out of there, Harrow?”
Harrow’s round face broke into a wide grin. “I can assure you, Daniel,” he said with grave sincerity, “there is little chance anything will ever emerge from that place.”
Danny drew his head back in surprise.
Hitch, who was now crouched a few paces from Harrow, his eyes averted from the tunnel, said, “Something always comes out, Danny. Always!”
Harrow glanced sternly in the young man’s direction. “Don’t be dramatic, Mr. Hitch.”
Danny glanced at his friend, then turned back to Harrow.
“Now,” said Harrow, “to settle accounts.”
Danny gave the man a blank look.
Harrow patted the pockets of his coat, clearly searching for something. “Ah,” he said. He rummaged briefly in his sack and at length drew out a small leather folio, an old billfold wallet, and dropped it to the ground where Hitch cowered. “The balance of our arrangement, Daniel, and something extra for your man.”
Harrow secured his haversack and shifted the weight of the drafting tube on his shoulder. He turned then and had a long look at the moon. “Time enough,” he said.
Danny followed the man’s gaze. “You’re going through,” he said.
“I am.”
“Why?” said Danny as he turned back to Harrow.
“I am a traveler, Daniel, if nothing else, and I have lingered in this world for far too long.”
“No.” Danny shook his head. “Not what I’m asking, Harrow. Why did my sister... seal this fucking thing?”
Harrow stared impassively at Danny.
Danny drew a slow, deep breath. “She wanted to keep you here, didn’t she?”
Harrow’s eyes darkened, and a shadow seemed to move across his face. “Your sister has agitated against me for some time, boy,” he said coldly.
Danny shifted uncomfortably at the change in Harrow’s tone. The man’s calm, practiced formality seemed a veil now, a mask that concealed something more complicated beneath its sheer surface, something ponderous and long carried.
“But you, Daniel,” said Harrow, his composure returning, “you have done me a service, and I am in your debt. I could not have accomplished what you and Mr. Hitch managed so readily – your sister saw to that in her art.” He gave Danny a slight bow. “I offer my sincere apologies for setting you against her in this endeavor, Daniel, but I could not,” he said with a droll smile, “resist the poetry of it.”
Danny stared at Harrow for a long moment, his eyes, bloodshot from the endless smoke, burning into the man.
“Go fuck yourself, Harrow.”
Harrow’s expression was a veil of indifference.
“Mr. Hitch,” he said, his voice raised slightly, his gaze never leaving Danny. With a slight nod, he said, “Daniel,” and then strode, purpose in his step, toward the roiling tunnel opening.
Danny watched him go, wary of the lure of the portal.
“Harrow,” Danny called after the man.
Harrow paused at the portal’s threshold, his head cocked slightly.
“Tess is fucking relentless,” said Danny.
Harrow laughed, a hollow, distant sound, like calving ice in a gale. “An observation of more immediate concern to you, I should think, Daniel.” He turned, gave Danny a slight, self-satisfied smile, and stepped into the swirling moonlight.
Danny watched Harrow disappear into the impossible light of the Cascade tunnel. He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it after a long moment, and then crouched down at Hitch’s side. He put an arm around his friend. Hitch was shuddering like it was a winter night.
“He gone?” Hitch asked, his voice trembling.
“Yeah... He is,” said Danny.
They sat together in silence for a few short moments.
“That was some shit,” Hitch observed.
Before he could respond, Danny’s cell phone vibrated unexpectedly in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the notification.
Danny closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He hung his head low, nodded slowly. “Relentless,” he said softly.
“What?” asked Hitch.
Danny’s hand shook as he handed the phone to his friend. “Tess.”
Hitch winced as he read the text...
WTF did u do, Danny???!!!
“Oh...” said Hitch, “she’s gonna fucking kill us.”