The Vines (11 page)

23

The attendant is still stewing over the rich bitch in the BMW X5 who told him to fuck off when he hears a sound like a fantail boat coming right up the highway toward the gas station where he works. The nearest fingers of swamp are too far from his little island of harshly lit concrete for a boat to sound this close. So he just sits there, blinking at the glare outside, cursing the way it masks the highway and the surrounding night sky.

He’s about to leave the register and investigate when the sound gets abruptly—and violently—louder, like a chain saw revving up. It’s a buzz that reminds him of bee swarms he’s seen on nature shows, but there’s another undertone to it, a clicking that sounds almost like his mother’s press-on nails rapping against the edge of the table.

If his mother were a giant and her nails the size of butcher knives.

When the handle of the far gas pump is ripped from its holder and slams to the concrete, he figures the whole thing is a trick of the wind. But everything else outside is ghostly-still, and a few seconds later, he can make out the swarm of insects covering the fallen gas pump as if the rusted metal handle were coated in some sort of irresistible nectar.

Within seconds, a veritable second skin of insects coats the fallen pump. They’re coming so fast and furious from the darkness beyond the station’s island of light that he can’t actually see them. He can’t tell them apart either. Are they termites, roaches, cicadas? He’s had creatures of all shapes and sizes slither and dart across his outpost in the late hours of the night, but never something this immense and angry.

Then they’re rising into the air in several slender fingers that seem positively elegant in comparison to the thickening mass below that gave them birth. He feels his jaw go slack and hears the magazine slap to the floor at his feet.

An impossible shape is assembling beyond the glass, but one that seems vaguely familiar. It is like the finest of pencil drawings, only each pencil stroke has its own violent and barely controlled interior chaos.

The shape is over five feet tall now. And in its details he can see the woman’s skinny neck and sloping shoulders. The rest of her is a mix of suggestions, as if the bugs have latched on to lingering threads of soul and dead skin and made the best version of her they possibly can. Then the shape turns its hollow head in his direction, and he sees writhing knife slashes suggesting the woman’s wide, furious eyes and her snarling mouth. And with a voice that consists of a great swelling and fragile modulation of the grinding chain saw sound coming from the entire cloud, the ghost composed of insects snarls,
“Fuck off!”

Then, as if in response to the attendant’s strangled, terrified cry, the cloud disperses, and he sees the tail end of the thick fingers as they take to the night sky beyond the gas station’s lonely glare, and the ghostly impression of the girl in the BMW X5 has departed on a swarm of tiny wings.

24

The first thing Blake sees in the front parlor is Caitlin’s iPhone glowing in the dock atop one of the antique end tables. The dock is connected to the stereo speakers throughout the first floor, so her phone must be the source of the Faith Hill song that’s threatening to knock him into the past. There are bloody fingerprints on its screen.

Caitlin adds to them by turning the music down, and in the ensuing quiet he can hear Nova breathing next to him. The rush of blood in his ears gradually takes on the rhythm of a desperate, deafening pulse. It seems his every thought, his every breath, is now devoted to assuring himself that Caitlin has completely lost her mind and slipped into a world of self-inflicted violence and delusions.

Then he sees the overturned wing chair, the bloodstained sofa cushions in a tumble on the floor. This evidence of a recent struggle guides his attention to the fat man crumpled in a fetal position on the floor next to the flipped-up edge of the Oriental rug, the same man Caitlin is now standing over. She’s also pointing a gun at his head. The man’s black outfit looks like a trick-or-treater’s idea of a cat burglar costume, save for the silver duct tape that binds his ankles and wrists.

Compared to the man, though, Caitlin is a mess, her hair a clawed and uneven tangle, her left cheek bleeding from scratch marks. Despite these injuries, she seems radiant with feral energy, while the man at her feet is pale and wheezing from extreme
blood loss.

It doesn’t matter that Blake doesn’t recognize the man at first, because there is enough recognition and guilt in the man’s pain-widened eyes for both of them. Just the sight of his expression alone is enough to collapse Blake’s self-assurances that Caitlin’s slipped into a world of utter lunacy.

Which means that this man
is
somehow connected to John’s murder . . . and Blake’s life for the last ten years has been nurtured by a lie.

Nova’s hand comes to rest on his elbow. He’s not sure if she’s frightened or trying to comfort him, and it doesn’t matter. He is grateful just for her touch.

“You don’t remember him, do you?” Caitlin asks. And it takes Blake a second to realize the question is directed at him. Before he can manage a response, Caitlin says, “Of course you don’t. The last time you saw him he was wearing a mask.”

“Listen,”
the man wheezes. “Please . . . listen . . .”

“His name is Mike Simmons,” Caitlin says. “We went to high school with him, Blake. And, boy, did he fuck up. He assumed I was in on it, you see. So after I caught him in the yard, he started making me offers. And he said too much. Way too much.”

“In on it? What’s happening?” Blake whispers. “Just . . . tell me what’s happening.”

“There’s a tape, you see. A tape of this bastard and his friends leaving the scene of John’s murder. Troy had it. He stole it from a security system in one of the homes along the levee that night and kept it from the homicide detectives while he framed the wrong men for the murder. Troy Mangier, our
hero
, he had it for years. And he used it to blackmail this . . .
piece of shit
and his pals. When they heard he’d gone missing, he”—and she emphasizes who she’s talking about by kicking the wounded man in the stomach—“put my house under surveillance and started following me.”

Blake feels as if his gaze is shrinking to a pinpoint somewhere above the man’s body and just below Caitlin’s chest. He is breathing through a straw and there is a tingling weightlessness throughout his shoulders and upper back that makes him feel as if the top half of his spine has gone molten.

“This is him, Blake,” Caitlin says, her voice just above a whisper. “This is the man who killed John Fuller.”

“No!”
The man’s scream is fluid-filled and lashes his gaping mouth with spittle.
“No. No. We didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t know about the pumping station. We didn’t know . . . the water. We didn’t know the water would . . .”

Nova lets out a stunted groan. She tightens her grip on Blake’s elbow just as he begins to sink to the floor. When he lands in the chair she’s steered him into at the last moment, he finds his casual, seated pose to be almost sacrilegious, and so he bends forward and places his face in his hands because it feels like it’s going to fall off him, along with the rest of his skin and anything else designed to armor his soft, interior parts.

He sees Troy, the handsome uniformed officer, giving interview after interview on TV, describing the arrest of Xander Higgins and Delray Morrison in precise, professional detail. He sees the man grilling steaks on the pool deck at that condo high-rise in Pensacola where they all spent a weekend together after Troy and Caitlin first started dating, when the man’s installation in their everyday lives, their lives beyond tragedy, seemed like an inevitable comfort for them all, a selfless hero assuming his rightful place. Frank Sinatra croons from the nearby stereo, and the sugar-white beach looks even more fierce and brilliant than usual beneath a sky piled high with gray storm clouds that drench the watery horizon but not the shore. And Blake sits on a lounge chair, knowing it will make for a perfect memory someday, the kind you take off the shelf and write poems about when your life has stalled out, when you’re lonely and older and working too hard—the music and the barbecue smoke and Troy’s hair and powder-blue polo shirt dancing in the hot wind off the Gulf, the great towering clouds that from this distance are all visual drama and no real rain, and Blake feeling confident that if Caitlin could land someone so handsome and brave, then surely someday he’d find someone who’d make him feel the way John could have if he’d been allowed to live.

And the whole time, there was a tape. A tape of John’s real killers that Troy had hidden somewhere. There was a tape when Troy had turned from the grill that afternoon and sung along with Old Blue Eyes as if Blake were his only audience member in the theater in his mind. There was a tape as the clouds sailed from east to west and the music soared and Caitlin called down from the balcony overhead to ask them how much longer until the steaks were done. The whole time, there had been a tape. A tape that condemned two innocent men to early deaths.

And now Blake can see how Troy could gamble for hours every weekend and never lose his apartment or his shirt. But a tape like that, how long can you use it before one of your victims cracks? So he’d gone after Caitlin years later, the wealthiest young woman he’d ever come across in his years as a lying, duplicitous bastard. Even better, she was always tethered to a best friend who was sure to see Troy as a hero, sure to help Caitlin overlook any missteps Troy might take in the first days of their courtship.

And suddenly no one seems knowable, every promise the seed of a betrayal, and Blake is making sounds into his palms that don’t sound quite human as Nova grips his shoulders from behind. Because never before has the full weight of something come crashing down on him quite like this, with the force and precision of the lead pipe they struck John across the head with that night.

Blake feels a feathery sensation against his fingers and opens his eyes through tears to see Caitlin crouched on her knees before him. She’s taken both of his hands in one of hers, but in the other she still holds the gun. And behind him, Nova has stiffened. She’s watching their captive now that Caitlin has turned her back on the man.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did it this way, but I wasn’t expecting you, and I was planning to . . . Never mind that. I’m not sorry. I’m
glad
you’re feeling it all at once. I’m glad that you’re not shutting it out, denying it. Sometimes you can be too smart for your own good, Blake. Sometimes it’s important just to feel things, even when it’s rage.
Especially
when it’s rage.

“You can’t . . .
explain
to someone that the world is not what they think it is. They have to see it for themselves. They have to
learn
it for themselves. I mean, look at me. You came to me with all those people who said they’d seen Troy in the casinos, and I refused to believe you. And what was my reward? I walk in on him fucking some whore at my own birthday party. And what do I do? I run out to the gazebo and I grab a champagne glass and I slash my wrists and I get ready to die. But instead, something else happens. Something comes up from the earth, and it drinks from me, Blake.

“Whatever this thing is, that’s what it does—it drinks from you and then it
heals
you. In every way. I’m just beginning to understand it, but I know one thing. Whatever it is, it’s been waiting for the blood of the betrayed. I gave it mine and it brought me justice. It saved my life and took away my grief. And now . . . now, Blake, it’s time for you to give it yours.”

Blake is pulled to his feet. He’s not sure by whom. Caitlin’s holding the gun but it’s angled on the floor, and she’s pulling him toward the open door. And he’s letting her. When Nova grabs for him, Caitlin swings the gun on her. “Don’t worry. You can be next. Maybe those boys did more to you than you told your daddy. We can bring them here too.”

“Let go of him!”

Blake feels some form of protest bubble inside him and burst somewhere around his chest before it can become words. Caitlin shoves him gently through the open back door with one hand against his back, and he stumbles forward into the porch rail, and then they’re moving through the shadows toward the brightly lit gazebo. He can hear Nova in pursuit, but he can’t take his eyes off their destination. Surrounded by darkness, its floorboards cast aside, it looks like an ornate cellar door. And Caitlin is dragging him toward it by one hand. “Remember when we were kids? When we tried to become blood brother and sister? When I pricked your finger? Well, this will be just like that, Blake. Only much more special. So much more special.”

He can hear himself crying now, or his best attempt to hold back the sobs. He is a rag doll in Caitlin’s one-handed grip, and the gun she carries is a third presence next to him, the reason Nova is following at a distance, her eyes mostly sclera, her terror evident in her inability to stand upright and the glances she’s casting back at the door and the murderer they’ve left bound inside.

“You can’t do this!” Nova screams.

“I’m not doing anything,” Caitlin snarls. “I’m giving him a choice.” In her free hand, Caitlin reaches down and picks up a pair of pruning shears from the red toolbox. One blade is slick with fresh blood.
She tried,
he thinks.
She tried to use her own blood to kill him and it didn’t work, so now she wants mine. Needs mine. Why? Why the rush? Why now?

“Blake,” Nova wheezes. “Don’t. Please. Please don’t . . .”

As if to earn his trust, Caitlin sets the gun down on the ground between them. She takes his left hand in her right, the pruning shears at the ready in her left. She has angled his back to the tiny pit, as if she fears the sight of those thick, slick growths under the floorboards will frighten him out of consenting.

But it is John Fuller’s fingers he feels gripping his palm, not Caitlin’s. Lifeless and unresponsive as the black water rises to swallow them both.

Caitlin guides him backward. His heels strike the rise of the gazebo’s first step, and he finds himself stepping up and onto it. She’s pushing him even closer to the open floor, and he’s allowing it. Because all he feels are his own fingers grasping at John’s palms, striking and slipping, flint against a steel stone.

“Caitlin . . .” All he can manage is this frail, breathy utterance of her name, but there is something in it that strikes at her, a certain tone that pierces the veil of comforting delusions she’s pulled around herself in the wake of having her world cracked in two. Maybe there was grief in it, Blake wonders, grief for John that got all tangled up and came out sounding like grief for the woman Caitlin was before she surrendered to rage and whatever power has come crawling up out of the earth around Spring House. No matter its source, the sound of it has made Caitlin go rigid with something that comes off her like fury. The open shears between them tremble with the promise of homicide.

“They’re coming, Blake,” she says. “There were others. He’s been calling them all night. They’re coming.”

“Why?”

“Because I told them if they didn’t, I would send the tape to every news station in the country.”

“You have the tape?” Blake asks.

“What does it matter?”

Blake sees it first, and when Caitlin sees the sight register in his eyes, she turns to see Nova holding her own gun on her. Her stance seems surprisingly steady, but it could be a trick of the shadows.

“Get away from him,” Nova growls.

“That’s not smart, Nova. Injure me and they’ll simply go for the wound. Then they’ll go after
you
for betray—”

“Shut up! You have no idea what this is!” Nova shouts back. “And you have no right to force it onto someone else, not this way. Not like this.”

“I’m not forcing it on anyone. Grown-ups don’t blame other people for the
truth
, Nova.”

“You never lived the truth your whole life, you spoiled, crazy bitch. You’re nothing but privilege and lies. Something finally wakes you up after being so goddamn blind for so long, and now you think you have the right to drag someone else into your darkness? No way in hell! Get away from him. Or I will shoot you. I swear to
God
.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Caitlin turns away from this blast of hatred as if it were a puff of air. “We don’t have time for this, Blake.”

“No,” Blake says.

Maybe she expected him to whisper his refusal as if it were a shameful confession and she’s startled by his bluntness, because Caitlin stares at him, the pruning shears open in her right hand. “No?” she asks. “No, you won’t make a—”

“No, I won’t do it. I—” Just thinking through his next words has steadied his heart, but before he can give voice to them he feels a white-hot strip of pain across his chest, and only then does he realize Caitlin has slashed him through his polo shirt from his left shoulder to his right hip. Nova screams.