She pointed, and he followed her finger, tasting his own blood on his lips, down the back of his throat. He wiped it with the back of his hand.
Maybe he saw something move where she pointed, a hallucination? He wanted to get out before his eyes started bleeding again, before more blood vessels burst.
“Let’s go,” he said, his own voice sounding like he wore ear plugs.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“There!” she said, pointing somewhere else, and that time he saw a swish of tan. A rabid cougar? Something that looked like a rabid cougar, but killed people? With a machete?
“Yeah, let’s go,” he said, his knees feeling weak, as if the air was too heavy. Sweat covered his body; he could feel the cool air against it, and he shivered, the sudden movement agitating the hum.
He wiped again and his hand came away with more blood.
Kate stared into the darkness, not moving. Paranoia wrapped him like a glove, as he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He pushed her—if she didn’t go, this place would drop him to his knees. If that happened, the thing in the dark would come for him.
She stumbled and he reached for her, but his hand came up short. If she fell it would go for her. She caught herself against the car’s fender, steadied herself, and opened the door.
“Go!” he shouted, and ran for the car.
It was like gravity had been increased, like moving through molasses. Something snapped inside his head. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. He couldn’t turn around— moving his head that distance would take everything he had left—but he could sense it right there. As he slammed the door, he expected something to stop it from closing, something to block his progress.
But the door closed with a muffled click.
“You’re bleeding!”
It was too much work to tell her to go. So he closed his eyes, feeling the car come to life under him, feeling it turn, and accelerate, and before he left the world behind, the darkness behind his eyelids turned to light. He probed at himself, what had snapped? Something…something inside him. And then he passed out.
17
The hum of a revving engine brought Val out of his doze by the television. He felt feverish, definitely better than when he’d been at the mine that morning—which didn’t say much. He spent the day oscillating between dark spells of fearing for his sanity—
someone
had killed those people—and feeling like he needed to get his act together. A job. Something to break up the isolation he felt. So he’d found a marathon of cheesy eighties and early nineties horror movies, and camped out on his couch. He switched off “Fire in the Sky”, though. Made him think too much of his mother, and that silly book. He’d also spent a lot of time thinking he ought to go and see her, but what would he say to her. “Hi Mom, glad to see you look as awful as yesterday. At least you don’t look worse!”
“That’s Rich,” Kate said. She’d been dozing, too, but recognized the engine.
The revving stopped. Doors slammed.
The door to the trailer was unlocked.
Val tore the steps up that afternoon, and burned the pieces, so it would be one big uncomfortable step for whoever came in through the front door. He got to his feet, but could hear the sound of a hand on the knob. Come on, door, be locked.
The door rattled. It wasn’t much of a door. One good tug would pull it right off the hinges.
Val’s headache came back with a vengeance. He was sure he hadn’t locked the door.
But it was locked.
Fists pounded on the door, and there was Rich’s sweet musical voice: “Let me in, you sonofabitch!”
“No one’s home, come back tomorrow.” He wondered if he should get his gun. He settled on a baseball bat instead.
The flimsy door strained against the pounding.
“Where’s my fucking wife?”
Val and Kate looked at one another.
“What’s he talking about?” Kate asked. Val shrugged again.
Oh Christ. Did he have her? Did he do something to her?
If so, he’d had a busy night last night.
Val reached to open the door, unlocked it, as Kate hissed at him not to.
Bat in hand, Val looked down upon Rich, who stood looking fat and out of breath on the ground below. “Where is she?” He raised his pistol up into Val’s crotch.
“Fuck if I know.” Val said. Rich jabbed the gun at him, rapping his balls through his jeans. Val clenched his teeth and took a step back, letting his molars grind in tune with the hum.
“Where is she?”
“Who knows? Search the place if you want.”
Rich hauled himself up into the kitchen. Sweat beaded on his scalp, visible through his crew cut. Val caught him looking around. Maybe remembering the time he’d spent here? It all looked the same, maybe less shit piled up everywhere. Probably looking for his wife. He turned his attentions on Kate.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. We’ve both been here all day.”
“She’s gone. You’re back. I did the math.”
“You really think I could take your wife? She’s more man than I am,” Val said, and mostly meant it. Maria was a tough lady. She’d told him she killed someone once, back home in Mexico, and Val believed her. He’d seen her handle a knife, and had serious doubts he could take her if she was armed. And unless she’d been completely domesticated, she was never unarmed. “You’ve got one
chica loca
.”
“Have you called her?” Kate asked.
“Voicemail,” Rich said, staring at Val.
“How long has she been gone?”
“Don’t fucking ask me questions like I haven’t thought of that shit.”
“I’m trying to help me not get shot. I don’t have her, I haven’t had her. If you don’t trust me, listen to your sister.”
Rich looked at her and laughed. “She isn’t even family any more. She gave that up when she tossed in with you.”
Some of Rich’s initial anger seemed to have dissipated. Knowing Rich as well as he did, he suspected the worst was over, this time. Rich was still a serious problem, one he wanted to get away from at all costs. He had a bad feeling about Rich—it would end badly for one of them. But now he seemed too distracted by the missing wife to be concerned with Val.
“You tried calling home?” Kate asked.
“You think I’m dumb?”
Val decided not to push his luck, and kept quiet.
“Look around. She’s not here.”
“I will.”
And Rich did. He moved like a whirlwind, one room to the next, throwing the mattresses off the beds, tearing clothes out of the closet.
“What about the old mine?”
Oh. Fuck.
“Where we used to go and shoot up.”
“Yeah, I know the one.”
The hum pounded in Val’s ears in time with his pulse. This time he didn’t look at Kate, willed her to look cool, to be cool.
“What about it.”
“Is she there?”
“Why would she be there? I haven’t been there since the last time I was there with you. That place gave me the creeps.”
And, funnily enough, it makes me bleed out of my eyes and ears, these days. So please don’t make me go there
.
“Do you think maybe she left you?” Kate asked. Was she trying to antagonize him?
He spun on her, glaring. The topic of the mine seemed, for now, to have been forgotten.
“She wouldn’t leave me.”
“Because she’s scared?”
Now she pushed it, getting him mad in a different way. In a complete role reversal, Val placed a cautionary hand on her wrist. He missed being a mouthy prick.
“Scared? She isn’t scared of nothing. I saved her from her shit Mexican life.”
That was one way to think about it.
Rich stared at them, his eyes looking small in his red, blotchy face. Was he going to cry? That would be an absolutely amazing event to behold.
“Crawl space under the house?”
“Be my guest.” Val and Kate followed him outside, making the hop down to the ground. Val pulled open the little hinged lattice door. Rich gave him a baleful look before he squeezed in, taking up most of the opening crawling through. Val wanted very dearly to shut it behind him and lock the door.
Val’s heart shot to his throat when he heard Rich yelp. “Ah, fuck!”
He found her,
Val thought. I
killed her and he found her.
There was nothing to yelp about the other day, when he was hunting for the hum. Had he put a body there? He looked down at his hands, looking for blood, scratches, anything.
They were clean and looked fine. Calloused from weight lifting in prison, a delicate paper cut on his index finger from his release form.
Rich exploded out of the little door, some of the flimsy lattice wood pieces cracking and breaking off against his bulk. Dust plumed where Rich’s boots scraped up the dirt. He looked pale, his eyes bulging against their sockets.
Bloody fuck, he’s going to have a heart attack
.
“Get out of here,” he said, hustling to his Jeep. He turned his back on them, a very un-Rich thing to do. When as many people didn’t like you as didn’t like Rich, it wasn’t wise to turn your back on anyone.
Val and Kate looked at one another, then at the gaping black maw. A mini-Olympus Mine.
Kate rushed to her brother. “What is it?” she asked, catching him at the door.
“Something down there. It was eating.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Get out of here,” he said again, hauling himself behind the wheel, firing up the engine. “Claws as long as my arm.”
Val and Kate stared at him. Rabid mountain lion?
“I fucking hope it gets you,” Rich exploded, punctuating his word by flinging his Wrangler into reverse, spraying gravel from the driveway, and leaving them in twin plumes of dust.
“He knows about TJ,” Kate said.
“What the fuck spooked him?”
“He was on something.”
Val shook his head. “He can’t, not with his job. He had his uniform on. He’s dumb, but not that dumb.”
Val stared at the gaping black hole under his trailer. Next to it was the spigot for the hose. All perfectly normal. Yet something down there reduced him to jelly. That haunted look in his eyes.
“I gotta go check it out.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I want to know what’s so terrifying under my house. Besides, two seconds ago you said he was on drugs.”
“Take the gun.”
Was that a good idea? Man, that would be loud down there. Couldn’t hurt to bring it along. He went in the house for it, very aware of the floor, wondering what he was walking over.
Claws as long as my arm
. Maybe he was on drugs.
The weight of the Desert Eagle wasn’t comforting; it was a lump of steel. Maybe he shouldn’t bring it. Maybe he should go down there, and let whatever happened, happen. He set it on the counter. He’d take a shovel. Not a lot of room to swing a shovel. Maybe this was best.
The late afternoon sunlight only reached so far under the trailer before its golden light faded from gray to black. The hum held him tight, felt like a helmet around his skull. Pressure from all sides. Cobwebs stuck to his face and in his hair, pine needles crackled under his hands. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and scanned the crawl space.
Rich had been here, so worried about Maria that he wasn’t interested in kicking Val’s ass. Or killing him, as Val worried things had escalated to. So strange. He knew Rich loved his wife, in the strange way Rich had of loving anyone. Not his fault, not entirely, things had been rough for him as a kid, both he and Kate were in and out of foster homes, then back with their drunk mom when she married a rich guy who had the house in the nice development. He died a few years later, heart attack. Val sometimes wondered, a little bit, if maybe Rich had something to do with it. You never knew. He’d voiced the concerns to Kate, and she’d gotten pissed, denied Rich would ever do such a thing. It brought them to the cusp of a fight and Val had backed off. Why did she feel like she needed to defend him?
A sound. Flies. Now that he noticed it, it swelled so that it rivaled the hum. An orchestra of flies. He crawled towards the sound.
A coyote lay in the pine needles, a sunken eye wide, white and staring.
Three deep gashes tore it most of the way into pieces, he could see white bone and red meat turned brown.
Was this what scared the shit out of Rich? Impossible.
Had he done this?
The coyote’s body was stiff, and its soft parts had been something’s lunch, the white fur of its belly bloody and stiff, surrounding a black hole of ichor. Val slid the shovel under its haunches and crawled backwards, dragging the body with him. It kept sliding off the shovel, and he had to stop and reposition himself to get it to come along.
Above him, in the kitchen, the phone rang. As he scooted backwards, dragging the coyote, disturbing the flies, beetles and maggots, he heard Kate’s footsteps, soft on the floor above him. He heard her say “Hello?”
He brushed a fly away from his face as he paused to listen. Dirt and cobwebs stuck to his sweaty skin; there was a shower in his future.
“He’s here, I’ll get him,” he heard her say, clear as a bell through the thin trailer floor. He hurried with the coyote. He’d miss the open space, but it would be nice to go to Santa Fe, to be in a city, and have people around, and no dead animals, and a house that was better constructed than this POS fire trap. He heard the screen door slam, and her jump down from the missing stoop.
“Val?”
“Yeah, be right there.”
“Phone’s for you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
He burst out into the warm sun, pleased to feel it beating through his shirt and warming him. He couldn’t go back, even if he was doing this. He looked at the coyote, balanced on the shovel, lilting headfirst towards the ground. There had to be another option, a way to tell if he was the killer, a way to make himself stop.
Kate extended the cordless phone to him. He looked at his hands, at the dead coyote, wiped his hands on his pants, and took it.
“Hello?”
“Valentine Slade?” A woman’s voice, the lilt of an accent. Maria?
“Speaking.” It seemed like too much effort to be wise or snarky.
“This is Doctor Villanueva. How are you feeling?”
“I’m all right.”
“Are you still experiencing the vibration in your head?”
“Is that the technical term?”
“I’m not sure there is a technical term. Are you still experiencing it?”
“Not all the time.”
“Is that an improvement?”
“I guess so,” Val answered. “Are you calling to check up on me?”
“No. I’d like you to come back to my office. I’d like to run some more tests.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t get anything definitive from your blood work. The samples came back contaminated.”
“How so?”
“It happens from time to time, careless lab workers, perhaps I made a mistake drawing it. I would like to see another sample.”
“How was it contaminated?”
“We don’t check. Once we see the results are off, we throw the sample away. What an odd question, Mr. Slade.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be coming back in. I feel fine, and I don’t have any insurance.”
“I would really like another look at you—“
“Thanks for your time and concern, Doc.”
And he hung up, the hum resonating louder than ever with the dial tone.
Contaminated.
Deep inside, he didn’t think it was a mistake, or carelessness. He was contaminated, he could tell on his own from this hum, and he was dangerous.
He took the phone inside, hung it up, then went back out to the tall grass where he could dig a hole and bury the coyote.
Contaminated
.