Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

Shad moved to his old bedroom, sat on the bed ready to stretch out, and heard an odd crinkling beneath the sheets. His breath caught.

He drew back the comforter and there, laid out on his pillow, was a sheet of lined paper.

He recognized Megan’s handwriting and suddenly the sweat rose and began writhing across his face.

I love you but I can’t have you. I will not give this letter to the wind or the water. You won’t have it. I’ll take it home and hide it where you’ll never find it. If you take me into darkness, I’ll still love you, but you know you’ll pay a price. This letter is my heart, and my heart will remain mine, no matter what happens next.

Oh Mags.

He was trembling so hard that the page tore down the middle.

Jesus Christ, she left it here for me on my own bed, and I never even checked.

That’s all she’d wanted him to do since he’d come back home. Just to look in his room.

He had to hold the two sections of paper back together.

We’re not what we choose to be, David. We’re chosen. You by God, and I by you.

David.

Oh.

So look at that, he was here all the time.

Of course he was. And he’s behind you right now. His breath is colder than the flesh of your sister, and the shotgun’s in the other room.

Shad didn’t even have the one small chance he’d been banking on. He would turn and throw everything he had into one swing aimed directly for the point of Dave’s chin, and Dave would be a step ahead of him and watch the fist approach much too slowly, and he would catch Shad’s wrist in his huge hand, pull him close into the crook of his powerful arm, and put a hammerlock on Shad’s throat until the blood squeezed out from the indent of his eyes. He wasn’t going to make it but there was nothing left to do.

“Don’t try it,” Dave said softly, so very far ahead of him.

Shad turned around and Dave Fox was there, staring at the note in his hand. This was it, the final act he’d been waiting for, and it wasn’t going to play out anything like he’d been hoping. He dropped the two pieces of paper and they dipped and twirled to the floor.

Always a mile behind. He stared at Dave’s chest and imagined Megan in those arms, leaning up to kiss the deputy’s lips and catching her cheek against the curved edge of the badge pinned there.

That’s where the scratch came from.

“What happened, Dave?” Shad asked. All the rage had fled now that he needed it most. His voice was hardly more than a whine. He had to lean on the corner post of the headboard to keep from going over. “Why did you kill my baby sister?”

“I didn’t. But I couldn’t save her either,” Dave admitted casually. “The hills use my body on occasion, to take what they want.”

“Then why do you look so guilty, Dave, if it’s not your fault?”

Dave didn’t look guilty in the slightest and he knew it. “I fight but I fail. This is who I am, the purpose given to me. I was chosen.”

“By what?”

“I don’t know.”

Shad’s knees were ready to give and he had to lean more heavily on the perfectly sanded wood of the bed his father had made. It was so smooth it felt like he might fall through it like fog.

“And you chose Mags. Why?”

Rising to his full height, Dave crossed his arms across his broad chest and seemed to fill the entire room with his power and righteousness. Through his tears, Shad had trouble seeing him. It was like staring into the sun.

“Because she was special,” Dave told him. “She had to be taken back to the land. She’ll return again soon. They all will.”

“All of them?” Shad asked. “How many?”

But Dave Fox wouldn’t answer.

“So that means you’re a wraith? Something that comes out of the gorge and plays with the little girls, then bites into them.”

“It’s not like that. I’m a part of the current, the same as all hollow folk. I’m just different.” Then, dropping his voice, and giving Shad the killer eye. “Even from you.”

“You knew I was going up Gospel Trail Road. Were you there when I met the Gabriels?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the one they were waiting for.”

“Yes.”

“The one Jerilyn was writing to, sending letters on the creek.”

“I can read them that way. I was in the woods, watching the snake gathering.”

“Why?”

“I thought I could help you,” Dave said.

“Help me to do what? All I wanted was to find my sister’s killer!”

Still with the questions. Trying to find your way from one end of the bitter confusion to the other. Shad hated himself for even talking. He should be fighting, running for the shotgun. Take another bullet in the back if need be, but he should be doing something.

“Help you to finish walking the road.” Dave paused, finding the right words to use, like he was talking to an ill child. “You’re already different than when you first got back to town, Shad. You must know that. We’re all in a state of… incompletion. Every one of us except the dead.”

So now it was about resurrection.

“Why didn’t you let the Weggs kill me off? If it’s all about sacrificing our lives to the hollow?”

“It’s not. Only favored folk, at certain times. If I’d let them kill you, it would’ve been murder, and why would I go and do a fool thing like that? You’re my friend.”

Shad let out a little chuckle of malice. “Who’ve you got your eyes on next? Who’s the next special person?”

“You need to stop asking questions if you don’t want the answers. Don’t be in a rush to judge. You’ve got blood on your hands now too.”

“You think it’s the same?” Shad shouted. “Murdering teenage girls and taking out some guy coming at you with a shotgun?” Thinking about Howell Wegg’s throat made Shad even more ill. Now, when he needed it, the fire in his skull had deserted him. “I should’ve figured it out. You told me you’d met with some of those snake church folks.”

“Yes.”

“I mentioned your name to Lucas Gabriel. I asked him to call the sheriff’s office and get you and Increase Wintel up there. I mentioned your name. He said he had no need for Moon Run Hollow outsiders. He told me he didn’t know you.”

“He doesn’t. Not with this face.”

“I mean, I should’ve realized it then.”

Dave’s expression grew more disappointed. “You’re a terrible detective, you know that, Shad Jenkins? I said that I’d run into a couple of them snake handlers now and again. I never said I’d met Lucas Gabriel. You didn’t catch me in a lie. I don’t lie.”

Shad grimaced and let out a groan. Okay, he already knew he wasn’t cut out for this private investigator shit.

“That day you searched Megan’s room wearing your little latex gloves. You were looking for this letter, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Dave said. “She didn’t send it to me but she read it aloud. I heard her.”

It was kind of a relief knowing you weren’t the only lunatic in the room.

“You looked high and low and didn’t check my room?”

“It was an oversight.”

So Dave Fox did make mistakes. He did have a weakness. He wasn’t infallible.

“I don’t lie, Shad. Once you accept that, you’ll begin embracing the truth about yourself.”

“You terrified Lucas Gabriel. He actually wanted you to have his daughters.”

“And so I took one. But I didn’t frighten him. He loved me. He still does even now. The same way he loves the rattlers. I came to him crawling on my belly through the thorns, with the face of a snake.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“Because a serpent is as much a part of Eden and man’s nature as anything else. Through our pain and forbearance we grow closer to paradise.”