Mason (11 page)

Gene sat in his room with the door locked, as always. On the computer screen a white page with a bright blue border was open. It listed the financial activity for a savings account held by a young man named Wesley Michael Montgomery. According to the digital statement, Mr. Montgomery was doing very well for himself. All deposits. No withdrawals. Gene would have envied Wesley Montgomery if the kid weren't dead.

In fact, Montgomery had hardly lived at all. He died from some respiratory disease only a month after his birth. Gene didn't really care about that. His only interest in Montgomery was the birth certificate filed by the hospital, for which he'd paid a good amount of money. With it, he was able to order a social security number in Montgomery's name. He went on to get a driver's license and a bank account up in Shreveport.

On paper Gene was all but broke, his own bank account holding a couple of hundred bucks. Montgomery, however, was quite well off. In a few years, if all went well, Gene could retire in style if he had a mind to. Gene understood the mistakes many young businessmen made and tried to avoid them. A lot of guys in his line of work spent their money as fast as they made it. No thought for the future, no patience for greater rewards down the road. They drew attention to themselves with fine cars and flashy jewelry, living in homes far too opulent to be explained by legitimate financial means, and people noticed. Cops noticed. The government noticed. From there, any brain-dead doughnut vacuum could build a case against them.

That was why Gene still lived at home. He continued to endure the annoyances of his whiny aunt and the doorknob, because they provided him cover. He needed to be ready for the great, big world.

Six months
, he thought. Six more months and Gene Avrett would disappear.

Footsteps in the hall drew his attention from the screen. From the sound of the heavy, plodding steps, his little brother was home. Gene closed the bank-statement window—not that he was worried. Even if Mason got a look at the numbers, they would mean nothing to him.

Gene stood up. He was done with his daily accounting
and wanted to pay his little brother a visit.

It amused him to know his business dealings had inadvertently hurt Mason. So he walked into the hall and wandered down to the small room at the back of the house.

The door was partially open, just a crack between door and jamb. Gene strolled right into the room, to find Mason sitting on the edge of the bed, head down. Afternoon light poured through the window at his back. Dust danced in the thick beam of sunshine, circling Mason's huge head and shoulders.

“Disappointment in the halls of learning today?”

Mason didn't move, just kept his big, dumb face pointed at the floor. Likely the doorknob didn't understand what Gene was asking him.

“Bad day at school?”

In answer to the question, Mason looked up. He glared at his brother with anger, an emotion Gene had never before seen on Mason's face. Though Gene felt the urge to back out of the room, he wasn't going to let his idiot brother intimidate him. Instead, he stared back at Mason and forced a smile to his lips. Something was going on in Mason's head. It showed in his gaze. For perhaps the first time, Mason actually appeared to be thinking, and the thoughts weren't good.

They remained locked in a staring match for nearly a minute. Tiring of the game, Gene turned and left,
following the dark hall back to his own room. He closed and locked the door.

No sooner had he killed the screen saver on his computer than the landline rang. Gene lifted the phone.

“Avrett,” he said.

“Yeah, Gene? Hey, man, it's Hunter.”

“Yes?” Gene said.

“We either got us a major break or just got completely screwed.”

“That's a broad interpretation of a single event,” Gene said. “What happened?”

Hunter told him about Lara Pearce, the girl who'd set up her friend for the dance at the Hollow. Apparently, she went nuts in art class.

“The ambulance came and hauled her away. It was a total crisis.”

“And you're concerned that she might recover sufficiently to expose your involvement.”

“Yeah, right. She could go full-on narc. Maybe not for a while. I mean, she was messed up
bad
. But who knows, right? They might give her something to calm her down, and then the bitch could spill everything.”

“Well, this is problematic,” Gene said, feeling the urge to break something. “I'm not sure you realize the level of my disappointment.”

“I know, man. I know. This blows hard. With any luck, the skank will be a total basket case 'til they plant
her, but what if she's not?”

“What, indeed.”

Despite his calm tone, Gene was already scrambling mentally, calculating the amount of time he would need to escape Marchand. Paper trails would need to be erased, as would a certain young lady named Denton. He needed to clean things up and make a quiet departure.

“So, anyway,” Hunter continued, “I thought you should know. It might be a total break for us, but you never know, right?”

“I hardly think you're the sort to get that lucky,” Gene said. “I suggest you finish your conversation with Miss Denton, and then have a similar conversation with her unstable friend.”

“Yeah, but they're both in the hospital, man. No way I can get in and out without a hundred geeks seeing me.”

“Perhaps. But right now, these aren't my problems. If they become my problems, you and I will have a conversation of our own. Can you guess what I'm likely to say?”

“Hey, man, chill. It ain't going to come to that. Okay? Denton's still in sleepyland, and it doesn't sound like she's leaving any time soon. I'll figure something out.”

“Sooner would be better than later.”

“Yeah, right, man. Yeah, I know.”

“Good-bye,” Gene said.

He hung up the phone. The urge to hurt and break things was strong in him, but right now was the wrong time to take it out on the doorknob. He certainly couldn't take the chance of venting his frustration on anyone else, not with things so close to exploding in his face.

No. This fury he would have to eat and push low. He had to get out of the house, needed to move to clear his thoughts. He would take a drive through the parish, maybe go up to the city for a night and blow off some steam there. If he didn't put some distance between himself and this town, he would do something foolish.

 

Gene drove north on the freeway. He was aware of the traffic on the road ahead but little else. As he drove, he went over a mental checklist again and again to make sure he'd left nothing out. Ultimately, he came to the same conclusion he had while on the phone with Hunter: The two girls, Rene and Lara, needed management. They were big question marks, and Gene didn't like question marks.

Lara was the immediate problem. Her breakdown might have been a momentary glitch, a passing nightmare that her doctors were already bringing under control. It was highly unlikely she would slide into the
kind of permanent madness that had captured Gene's daddy.

Wouldn't that be a bit of luck, though
? Many of his problems would be solved if little Lara went the way of Nelson Avrett.

Gene had been nine years old when his daddy snapped. He remembered the night vividly, and why wouldn't he? It was a turning point. Oh, his daddy had never been exactly right in the head. Not even close. For years Gene had listened to the old man's paranoid stories. His daddy used to believe he could capture thoughts from the people he met. He didn't have to touch them or concentrate. Images just came to him like unexpected memories.

On the night his daddy had snapped, Gene stood in Mason's room, ready to smother his baby brother. Ever since the idiot's birth, Gene had all but vanished in the eyes of his parents. They only had time for Mason, because he was so “special.” Standing over his brother's bed, palm clasped over Mason's plump nose and disgusting, drooling mouth, Gene was going to prove that there was nothing special about the little lump of meat. He was just a retard who always got to do what he wanted, who always got the last cookie, the last piece of pie.

Beneath his hand, Mason squirmed and slapped. His eyes widened. Gene watched as the fear in those eyes
clouded and began to fade. The lids grew heavy and began to flutter.

Then his father started screaming.

Even now, so many years later, Gene believed he had seen something gathering in the room between himself and Mason. Bits of shadow and light came together in dull forms. He thought he saw a beak and a set of black wings, like one of the crows he kept in his shed in the backyard, hovering over his brother's bed, but the image faded quickly.

His father's cries grew louder and Gene raced from Mason's room, throwing open the door, to see his daddy and mama standing on the landing. His daddy swatted the air like he was under attack, and for a moment Gene thought he saw exactly what his daddy did—the black birds swarming the upstairs corridor. His mama grasped at his daddy's arm, calling his name, trying to calm him down.

Stupid woman should have known better.

Gene saw terror fill his daddy's eyes, like the old man was seeing Death himself riding horseback down the hallway. His daddy spun frantically and collided with his mama. She hit the banister hard, rocked for a moment, and then was gone, disappearing over the rail, screaming like a banshee until her neck snapped on the cold wooden floor below.

The house went silent, but only for a moment—a
life-altering moment. Then Mason began crying in the room behind him, and his daddy's eyes cleared. The old man saw what he'd done. Fresh cries of panic—panic for the real and not the imagined—filled the house, until the cops came to take his daddy away.

After that, Gene took control of his family situation. His aunt moved into the house, but she brought no power with her. Little Mason became his pet and his punching bag, and naïve Aunt Molly believed every story about roughhousing, falling off the jungle gym, and whatever else Gene told Mason to say to explain his endless series of contusions.

She didn't want to know what was really happening. Her denial made Mason's punishment all the easier.

As for his daddy, the old man was brain fried. His visions got worse in the nuthouse, so bad the doctors had him medicated 24/7. Nelson Avrett was never getting out.

Now, if Lara Pearce would show the same consideration, Gene's problems would be lessened. Right now, though, it was still a question mark.

And Gene hated question marks.

Humphrey Hawthorne told people he got the nickname “Lump” from his sister. One summer afternoon, they were playing in the sprinkler in the backyard to cool off when Betsy pointed at his bathing suit and said he had a lump. From that point forward she called him “Lump.” His parents followed suit, though they had no idea about the name's origin, and the name stuck. Because the story was true, no one believed him.

It was one of the many “whatevers” in Lump's life. He didn't mind the name. It was certainly better than Humphrey. But folks could have called him “Bubba” or “Jack” or “Rosebud,” for all he cared.

He sat in his car outside one of the nasty shacks that dotted the area of town folks called the Bluffs. The Bluffs rose up on the east side of the river. Amid the pine and fir trees, low-rent country folks lived in homes only a
few steps above cardboard boxes. Some of the folks on the Bluffs still used outhouses. Some didn't even have electricity.

A whole lot of them seemed to have the money for meth, though. They wiped their tails with old newspapers, but they could always scrounge up enough green for a rocket ride.

Like the woman he was delivering to.

Lump left his car and walked over the dirt to her shack. He knocked on the ill-fitted door and waited.

The door swung back and Lump winced, not giving a damn if the woman noticed or not. Damn. What a nightmare.

Though not an old woman, she looked old. Her blond hair was thin and wispy, like plucked cotton. She had about three teeth left in her head. That was common enough. Like a twisted tooth fairy, meth collected teeth and slid a bit of euphoria under the pillow in exchange. A blue rag of a T-shirt draped over the woman's belly, just touching the waist of her stained jeans. She looked like a low-rent witch with evil in her eyes.

The inside of the shack was lit by a tall metal pipe with a bare bulb at its end. Cracked two-by-sixes lined the dirt to make a rough floor. Naturally, there was a television in the middle of the room. It was the only real piece of furniture in the place. Like the woman,
the shack was loosely held together and dismal in appearance. And that would have been fine with Lump—gross, but fine. Hell, he didn't care what people did to themselves. But across the room, Lump saw the woman's daughter, and a knot of nausea tied in his gut.

The little girl squatted in a corner, one arm over her head like she was expecting him to haul off and crack her one.

That was just messed up. Friends and family should mean something. They should mean
everything
. And here was this meth-head bitch letting her daughter run around filthy and scared and living like a total animal just because Mama wanted a fast ride out of reality. That wasn't right. Not right at all.

“You got something for me?” the woman asked, the words soft and mushy.

“Let's see the money,” Lump said.

The low-rent witch dug into her jeans pockets and produced a wad of wrinkled bills. Lump counted them. Satisfied, he held out a tiny Ziploc bag, which she lunged at.

“See ya,” Lump said, turning away with disgust. As he spun, he caught a last glimpse of the frightened child across the room.
Someone ought to take that kid out of here,
he thought.
Then they ought to beat the hell out of her mother. It wasn't right to treat a kid that way—not your own flesh and blood
.

It made him think about Tara Mae. She wouldn't give up the booze and smokes the way he told her to. He made damn sure she stayed away from the chemicals, but he'd had no luck at all keeping her off the other stuff. She was taking a lot of chances with Lump's kid, and he didn't like it.

Some things were just too important to screw around with. Family was one of them. Lump would do anything for his family. He'd do anything for his friends. He'd kill for them. He damn near had.

He started his car and backed out of the weed-choked path. He wanted to be away from the broken shack and its human litter. Hopefully, Dusty would get his act together and get back on his route soon.
Where is that guy?
Lump hated dealing with the Bluffers and the outer-parish dregs. He knew his chosen profession wasn't likely to bring him up close to movie stars, but damn…

On the main road he tried to put the grim house out of his mind, but the little girl wouldn't leave his thoughts. Lump had a philosophy about such things. A philosophy of friends and family—a philosophy of fences.

He'd carried the philosophy for quite some time, and it served him well when the big, old world turned shades of gray. It was like the thing that went down at the Hollow. He didn't have anything against the
Denton girl. In fact, he liked her quite a bit. She was hot, and she was smart. He might have liked to slide on up close with her, but he
wasn't
close to her. She fell outside his fences. Lump's sister and his mama and daddy were in the fences. Tara Mae was in his fences. Hunter and Ricky were in the fences. Everyone else was outside, and no one on the outside better think about hurting what Lump kept fenced up. It was about loyalty. You had to be loyal or you weren't worth a good Goddamn.

So Hunter tells him Denton is going to be causing some trouble. Major trouble. Bull-in-a-china-shop trouble. Lump doesn't need to ask any questions.

Ricky wanted to know why all the time, but Lump didn't need an explanation, not from a dude in his fences.

He navigated around the corner at the peak of the Bluffs, his headlights cutting chunks out of the darkness. Trees rose up on both sides of him, hurried by as he took the steep hill down.

Now, Lump didn't cotton to the idea of beating up on a girl. Not one bit. That was some cowardly crap if you just went around doing it for grins. But this was business. Hunter's business. Lump's business. And sometimes business got ugly.

There might still be some beating left to do.

That didn't matter. Hunter had been his friend since
they were both dirtying diapers. They used to fish the river together, shoot targets in Hunter's backyard with his daddy's .22. For the last two years, they'd been in business together, and both of them did good with it.

You didn't let anything get in the way of that.

He took the next curve, and the lights of Marchand slid from behind the black sheet of forest. Lump liked the way it looked, as if somebody scooped out a big ol' chunk of star-filled sky and dropped it into a bowl next to the river.

As the lights of the city captured his attention, a chill stream ran over his head. It felt like someone was dripping ice water into his skull, and it trickled along the crease in his brain toward his spine. His shoulders shook hard.

He looked back at the road. The sight of the girl on the dirt shoulder ahead startled him more than the sudden, uncomfortable sensation had. She wore a white dress and walked slowly up the hill. He nudged the wheel to the left to give her more room, and he thought the girl was nuts for walking on a dark road so late at night. He slowed the car and cast a quick glance through the windshield as he drove up beside her.

Lump's breath caught in his throat, and his pulse beat like a drum in his ear.

Even as he recognized Rene Denton's wounded face, he told himself,
It can't be her
.

He punched down on the gas pedal and sped away. The first thing he thought was that he'd lost his mind. He didn't believe in ghosts. His crazy aunt Gladys used to tell him all kinds of stories about lost souls and haunts, and Lump thought it was all crap. So if he wasn't seeing a spirit, he was seeing a hallucination.

The idea didn't comfort him much.

He raced around the next curve and kept the gas pedal down.

Then he saw someone else he recognized.

What the hell is he doing out here?
Lump wondered.

Mason Avrett sat on a rock halfway up the hillside rolling in on the left of Lump's car. The big goof had his head down like he was sleeping. He didn't even look up when the headlights of Lump's car fell on him.

Maybe it was another hallucination.

He never came to a conclusion on this point. He didn't have the time.

The crows dove out of the sky as thick as a cloud. They had eyes that looked like tiny flames and beaks like wrought iron. All of the birds were wounded. They should have been dead. Even before the first one hit the windshield, Lump could see the insides hanging out of their breasts. Several of them had heads that flopped uselessly from their thick, black bodies.

Hundreds of the birds filled the night, obscuring
Lump's view of the road ahead. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and in the moment before the murder of crows hit the glass, Lump took his hands from the wheel and used them to cover his face. He was still screaming and shielding his eyes when the car flew through the guardrail and sailed into the night.

 

Mason raised his head in time to see the taillights of Lump Hawthorne's car disappear over the edge. Remnants of the mind picture of crows still flitted around the vehicle as it vanished.

A moment later he heard the crash. Metal crumpled and glass shattered. The sounds kept coming as Lump's car rolled down the cliffside.

Mason waited for the explosion. In movies there was always an explosion when a car got wrecked.

But no ball of flame or cloud of smoke rose. Eventually there was just silence.

Mason pulled the wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket. He also pulled out the black pencil he kept there. Pressing the sheet on his thigh, Mason drew over the face of Lump Hawthorne. He made loops and scratched lines, gently so he didn't rip through the paper. In a handful of minutes, Lump's face was blended into the dark forest. His cheek became the trunk of another snake-wrapped tree and his eye was
covered with the black body of a wounded bird.

Once the picture was altered, Mason folded it, stood up, and shoved the paper and pencil back in his pocket.

Then he walked home, feeling sleepy and little else.