August Ansel - Shadow Road

At first glance, the upstairs was even less appealing. Then we discovered the bathroom. Downstairs may have been revamped in crappy layers, but nobody had bothered to change things overhead. The bathroom not only had a heavy porcelain sink (dangling from the wall by broken pipes), but an honest-to-god clawfoot bathtub. Jaimee yelled out loud when she saw that tub, and I practically had to stand on her feet to convince her NOT to step into it—I could perfectly imagine her falling through the floor, tub and all, straight down into the foundation. She satisfied herself by running her palms over the rounded edge, which was kind of grimy but otherwise smooth and unmarked. Oh man, the look she gave me—pure bathtub lust!

The rest of the upstairs consisted of a bunch of small bedrooms in the same nasty condition of rot and neglect. The gaping window-holes allowed the visqueen coverings to bulge and flap in the wind, making a draft that ran through the whole place. The bedrooms were empty, except for a single hideous mattress we could smell from the hallway.

After a quick peek we were ready to get out of there, and we damned near missed another jackpot. In the room closest to the head of the stairs—one we’d already glanced into and dismissed—a broken hunk of mirror was propped against the wall. As we moved to the stairs (so ready to get out of the stench), a slight movement in the reflection of that mirror snagged my attention. Gave me a creepy little chill, if I’m honest. I gathered my nerve and stuck my head over the threshold, thinking a raccoon or squirrel would dart out of the dinky closet opposite. I don’t know if someone on the work crew had chosen that closet as a place to store valuables or if one of them was hiding a personal stash, but inside it was a stained-glass window. It was so weird and incongruous, like we’d found the crown jewels in a port-a-potty or something.

No way to class this part up: we stole the damned window. I mean, we didn’t stop to think about it, didn’t even pause. Jaimee tore down a sheet of visqueen to wrap it in. It was so heavy both of us had to carry an end.

We eased our way downstairs and out the way we’d come, shuffling along like sketchy characters from a heist film, Jaimes talking a mile a minute about what we should do next. Obviously we couldn’t get the window back to the cabin on foot. Instead, we scurried into the puckerbrush that bordered the site, struggling through waist-high weeds and trashy shrubs, damned near dropping the thing when I stumbled on a half-buried engine block jutting up from the dirt. Once we were a hundred yards or so from the house, we stashed the window behind a junked car that was buried in Jimson weed and morning glory vines. Jaimee fitted the poly sheeting around the window, folding and tucking so carefully you’d have thought she was protecting the freaking Mona Lisa. She was wide-eyed, her pupils dilated like a cat in the dark, and I started cracking up. Couldn’t stop laughing, even though she gave me a look that would curdle milk. It only made me laugh harder. We managed to tuck the wrapped window underneath the mass of plants, balancing it on one end against the dead car. Jaimee ran about ten feet away, gave the spot a critical eyeball, and we hightailed it out of there, laughing our asses off.

Holy crap, it’s completely light outside and my hand is cramped up. Enough writing. Suffice to say I have a stained-glass window to install. Not to mention a bathroom to build for our new clawfoot tub. Story for another day.

“THE DAY SHE DIED they got buzzed by helicopters.”

Handy had Tom Wallace’s final journal spread open on the table before him. Kory was asleep in his own bed in the loft with Talus curled beside him. Tearing the lid off his cloistered life had finally taken a toll; over dinner he’d been wan and silent, picking at his plate with little interest and barely registering eye contact with any of them. Arie suggested he turn in early, and he’d agreed with palpable relief. He said goodnight all around then trudged up the loft stairs as though hardly able lift his feet from step to step.

Now they sat much as they had at breakfast, but this time with heads together, voices low, faces grim. Curran had twice gone up to make sure Kory really was asleep.

“He knew something was coming,” said Renna.

“Definitely,” Curran agreed. He reached across and paged backward in the journal once, twice, then tapped a blunt finger on a particular entry. “Here.”

“Read it again,” said Arie.

Handy slid the notebook across the table. “Go ahead,” he told Curran. His own reading tended to be slow, sometimes halting, and Arie thought it made him self-conscious.

“ I don’t know who these people are, but they’re into some kind of weird shit. ” Curran’s deep voice, just audible above the pitchy crackle of the fire, brought Tom Wallace into the room with them—a ghostly indictment that raised Arie’s hackles.

“No matter how many times I try to get them to identify, they come back with jack-all. Webb thinks they’re standard backcountry asshats, but this isn’t like the usual run of good-old-boy nutjobbers I’m used to. The whole thing is making my skin crawl. They’re too cool, like machines talking. Wish I could catch them just once in a normal dialog, but so far it’s nothing but a bunch of code-word bullshit. Multi-vector this and that, hub infiltration, hyper-plangent delivery blah blah. I’ve been downstairs every night with the headphones on since I first caught wind of them, always after Jaimee and Kory are in bed. Jaimee knows something’s up. I’ve been dragging my hide around this place during the day. Even if I could get enough sleep, my gut is greasy and I can’t concentrate—just want to sit at the radio until I grind the batteries down. I told her I’m having a convo with a guy in Germany about wind generators.

“Two days before things blew up, this was,” Curran said. He scanned thoughtfully through the last few entries. Dense with handwriting, the pages crackled softly when turned. “Looks like he spent his last days in front of that radio—it’s all he writes about until the end. Nothing like the rest of his journals, just a lot of frustration over these weird transmissions.”

“Then the helicopter,” said Renna. Her eyes were almost black in the lamplight. She gazed at the notebook in Curran’s hands as if it might begin to speak, an oracle.

“More than one,” said Handy.

“Pretty sure he mentions two.” Curran paged forward. “No, three of them. Right here. And he heard something on the radio that scared the shit out of him, but he doesn’t say what it was.”

Arie took the journal and studied the entry Curran indicated. “ They’ve lost their minds, ” she read aloud. “ If these people are for real, we’re screwed. ”

They sat that way for some time, huddled in the faint circle of light. Outside, a wind had picked up; it moved high in the canopy, a sound both distant and intimate, like a familiar voice murmuring in another room.

Renna stood abruptly and slapped at the seat of her jeans as though she’d been sitting on the ground. “Well, Tom sure as shit hit that nail on the head.” She strode to the fireplace. “We most definitely got screwed.” While they’d been talking, the fire had juddered down to a heap of orange embers. She stabbed into the coals until sparks flew out onto the hearth and laid on a fresh chunk of wood. When she bent low and blew on the smolder, bright tongues of fire leapt up, igniting the wood and throwing light onto her face. In her otherwise bland expression, Arie saw the slight muscle at Renna’s jaw clench and release. The quilt she’d wrapped herself in the night before was still puddled on the rocking chair. Renna buried herself inside it, positioning the chair somewhat away from them, so only the tip of her nose was visible.