The Winslow Incident (28 page)

She suddenly felt shaky. “No way.
He wouldn’t take that kind of a chance. I know him.”

He narrowed his ice-blue eyes. “You
sure about that?”

She thought about Sean shouting at
her in front of the Crock and then disappearing off the face of the mountain
like a shadow in shade.
No, I’m not sure about anything anymore.
Except
for one thing: “We have to find Sean. We have to take him with us.” If only she
could talk to him. This was the longest she’d gone without seeing Sean since she’d
been quarantined with mono.

“We don’t have time,” impatience
edged Tanner’s words. “Quarantine, remember? Besides, he won’t go. I already
tried, for the same reason I agreed to bring you.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know the way.”

Hazel couldn’t help but laugh. “Go
over the bridge and head downhill.”

“Shut up, I know that. After the
pass—I can’t remember from the drive up which way to go after that, it’s
a backwater down there too. Do I turn left after Hatfield’s tractor or right
past McCoy’s barn? And it’ll be pitch black by then.”

“Okay, but—”

“We’ve got no time to argue, we
have to go.” He got back on the Kawasaki. “
Now.
”

He was right. The bike had no
headlamp and there was little daylight left to get down the mountain. She
looked west toward the bridge. Just over the next hill . . . the way out, the
way to help.

“You coming or not?” Tanner asked.

Without a word of acquiescence,
she moved to get back on the bike.

Before she could, Tanner grabbed
her by the wrist. “You do realize we won’t be able to tell anybody what’s going
on up here.”

“What are you talking about?” She
tried to wrench free. “Why not?”

“Because Sean
told
me not
to say anything to anybody. And
I
know how to be loyal.”

The second Percocet was kicking in
and it was becoming hard for her to think straight. And Tanner was holding and
hurting her wrist just like Hawkin Rhone had. “But we have to get help. Isn’t
that why we’re going?”

“No, we’re going because
everything’s completely messed up and there’s no reason to stick around.”

“But if we can’t tell anybody,
then we won’t be able to get a doctor up here.”

“Don’t need to—Simmons can
handle it.”

“If one more person says that I’m going
to scream!” She thought about poor Jinx and how Doc Simmons had shot at him. With
her injured arm, she hadn’t been able to carry the dog off the road and into
the shade of the trees. Jinx was probably still lying there, baking in the sun.
What’s wrong with me?
She suddenly felt sick and horrified.
How could
I leave him like that? What if somebody runs him over?
She had to go
back—right away—and give the dog water, help him into the shade,
beg his forgiveness for leaving him.

Tanner squeezed her wrist harder.
“If you tell, it’ll be the end of this tourist trap. Did you think about that?
Then what will the Adairs do for a living? Uncle Pard? And everyone else around
here? What about your dad, the Sheriff? How’s it gonna look for him? He’ll lose
his job for sure.”

“You don’t care about any of these
people.”

“
You
do?”

She wanted to screech at him to
stop—to be quiet for a minute so she could think.

But he kept going. “And Sean’ll go
to prison or be banished or pitchforked or whatever the hell else happens around
here.”

“Why? It’s not like anybody’s
died!”

His cool gaze chilled her. “Not
yet.”

Or as far as we know
, crept into her mind. What if all sorts of people were
dead? What if there were corpses stacked behind closed doors all over Winslow?
Swollen bodies collecting flies like the dead cows.

Alarm electrified her every nerve.
Protect me, Hazel!
Sean had joked at Three Fools Creek on Sunday
afternoon.
No joke now
, she thought, her heart racing.

Abruptly, Tanner released her
wrist. “Now or never, Hazel.”

“If we can’t get help, then I
can’t leave,” she said. “So I’m staying.”

He scoffed angrily at her. “What
good will that do?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” She placed her
hand over her ear, panting in panic and frustration while a confusion of images
flashed through her mind: Aaron floating around the hotel, chased by ghosts and
waiting for her to come back like she swore she would; the Rhone sisters in
their jewel-tone gowns, locked in her grandmother’s quarters needing a
babysitter because their parents have gone missing (or worse—that blood);
Rose and Owen Peabody lying dead still on the couch in the ballroom; and the
unprecedented fear she’d read in her grandmother’s eyes.

Hazel shifted her feet in the
dirt, widening her stance. “I have to go back to The Winslow. Nobody’s taking
care of them. They need me.”

“Are you
serious
?” He
couldn’t have looked more incredulous. “Like you give a shit? All I’ve heard
out of you since day one is smack on this—and I quote—rotting
leftover of a town.”

As much as she would have liked
to, she couldn’t exactly argue with that.

“And quit pretending like you ever
gave a shit about him either.”

“Stop it, Tanner. Just stop.”
Tears stung at her eyes. She had no idea where or how sick Sean was, and her
grandmother’s words kept pinging back and forth in her head:
Blame will be
placed.

Tanner scrutinized her for a moment
before saying, “I’ll take you to your mother.”

Suddenly she couldn’t find air as
her resolve was knocked completely on its ass. “You know where she is?”

“Of course. Aunt Anabel stayed
with us for a while after she split here. Had to give her my room, which
sucked. But it’s now or never, Hazel—a one-time only offer.”

He’s bullshitting me
, she thought. But what if he wasn’t?
She tried to
read his eyes, but they revealed nothing except his impatience. “How do I know
you’re telling the truth?”

“You’ll have to trust me. And we’ve
got even less time to argue now. Let’s go!”

Even if it were true, and even if
her elbow really did require urgent medical attention, and even if her mother
might—just might—be thrilled to see her, could she really just leave
everyone here to fend for themselves? Could she really just leave them all
baking in the sun?

“No.” Hazel pictured her father
patrolling the banks of Ruby Creek, trembling and paranoid, worried over
whether his daughter would keep her promise. “No,” she repeated. “I won’t leave
him too. I won’t leave any of them. How could I?”

For the first time, she understood
what a horrible thing that is to do to somebody. And that it was pure fantasy
to imagine that her mother would be happy if she showed up on her doorstep, as
if, miraculously, Anabel might suddenly regret she’d ever left at all. Pure fantasy.
“I’m staying,” she repeated.

Dramatically rolling his eyes, Tanner
said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Hazel shook her head fiercely,
shaking off a dozen years’ worth of fear that when it came time to decide, she
would have no choice. “I don’t have to be like her. I won’t do that to them.”

He threw up his hands in complete
exasperation. “You’re outta your mind to stay here. So what? You’re gonna be
sheriff now? Good luck. And have a nice walk.”

He started up the bike and peeled
off, only to skid to a stop a few yards away and turn back to her. “Oh and by
the way, Hazel,” he yelled over the idling engine, “when you do find Sean, be
sure to tell him Zachary Rhone is looking for him.”

And then he was gone, leaving her
standing outside of Matherston Cemetery in the orange light of the setting sun,
wondering what he meant by that.

Finally, she turned to trudge back
into town for the second time that day, glad to be rid of Tanner Holloway once
and for all, certain she’d made the right decision.

After all
, she thought,
things are so incredibly bad, how much
worse can they get?

T
rapped. Trapped like rats and
left to die.

—Kohl Thacker

D
on’t look at it. Don’t look.
Zachary
Rhone careened down the hallway on the second floor of his house. The light in
the hall was strange—a thick amber.

It’s so hot. I can’t breathe.
His hand went to his throat and he struggled for air.
Is
the house on fire?
he panicked.

No
, he realized and his throat reopened.
The sun is going
down.

The prospect of another dark night
filled him with dread. He had not slept in days, and he didn’t want to go
through the long night alone.

Except there’s him
, he remembered but wished he hadn’t.
He’s worse than
alone. Why won’t he stay across the creek where he belongs?

Losing his balance, Zachary
smashed hard into the wall with his left shoulder. Plaster buckled. He barely
registered the pain—every muscle in his body ached already. Deep. His
bones were sore.

“Where am I?” he asked the wall.
“What am I doing here?”

He spied something out of the
corner of one eye.
Don’t look.

Standing in the bathroom doorway,
he stared at the tub where his daughters always took their baths, their red
hair tucked into polka-dot shower caps because Melanie didn’t like the girls
going to bed with wet heads.

All at once he remembered.
Looking
for her. That’s what I’m doing here.

“Melanie?” he whispered.

Then he stood, uncertain,
listening to his own rapid breathing.

“Melanie!” he yelled at the house,
only to watch his shout bounce against the tile.

“Don’t look at it,” he said.

His voice sounded like his own and
he found comfort in that. Maybe he hadn’t followed him in here after all. But
then Zachary was standing at the sink, the porcelain ice cold beneath his
hands. He gazed into the mirror on the medicine cabinet. And there he was.

“Who are you?” The man in the
mirror had tried everything to look like Zachary: same crew cut, same sharp
jaw, same muddy eyes. “Why are you following me?”

Me.
Zachary blinked hard.
The apple doesn’t fall—

There was no time to think about
him right now. He pivoted away from the bastard in the mirror. He needed to
find his wife.

I don’t want to look at it.

But then he couldn’t stop himself.

He looked.

At the blood.

At the blood on the wall and the
floor of the bathroom . . . bloody handprints on floral wallpaper, bloody
footprints on white tile. When he staggered out to the hallway he saw the blood
there too: smears of it along the wainscot rail, drips of it on the scuffed
hardwood floors. Everywhere he looked, he saw red stains.

Standing at the top of the
staircase, he howled, “Where is my wife? Where are my daughters?” His despair
was profound, running as deep as his aching marrow.

Zachary looked down at his hands
and slowly turned up his palms. Blood.
These aren’t my hands.
Red, dirty,
crusty under the nails hands.

He realized he was crying, animal
sounds coming from his throat, tears and sweat dripping off his cheeks. And he
smelled himself—foul like an animal too.

The apple doesn’t fall far from
the tree.

His eyes went to his feet: red
splashes up and over his ankles as if he’d stepped in a pool of it.
Stop
looking!

He took the stairs down two and
three at a time, marveling at his agility. After he crashed to a stop at the
bottom of the staircase he bent at the side to peer cautiously into the living
room. Nobody. But more red prints led toward the kitchen, the back porch, the
rear yard.

“A killer on the loose,” Zachary
murmured. “A maniac.”

He felt himself disassociate then,
the foreboding so powerful he could no longer bear to be present in this
moment, in this situation.

Bolting the opposite direction of
the trail of blood, he tore out of the house and raced across the yard past the
bakery, feeling
him
just on his heels, feeling
his
stale breath
on the back of his neck. And Zachary did not stop running until he reached the
cover of the apple orchard, where the trees sprouted no blossoms and bore no
fruit.

I‘ll stay here.
He spun in a slow circle, watching the surrounding trees
turn dark against the dusk.
He’ll never follow me here.

To the nearing night Zachary Rhone
pled, “Please let the bear get him first.”