Sullivan and her little boy down there with him.”
“Well, let them know we’re up here.”
Paul reached forward and rapped on the glass, eliciting frightened screams from inside the house.
“It’s us,” he called. “Paul Crowley and the Pheasant Brothers! Open up, Axel.”
After a moment, Paul stood up and brushed grass clippings from his hands and knees.
“He coming up?” Greg whispered.
“Yeah. At least, I think so. He motioned toward the stairs.”
They crept back around to the front of the house, arriving just as the front door creaked open.
“You bunch of idiots,” Axel said. “You darn near gave me a heart attack. And I think little Bobby Sullivan might have just peed himself. What were you thinking?”
“We were thinking about you,” Paul said as Axel let them into the house. “How you holding up, oldtimer?”
Axel shut the door behind them and locked it. “We’re scared and we don’t know what’s going on. Any news?”
“Yeah,” Paul replied, “but none of it is any good.”
“Come down to the basement and tell us about it. It’s safe there, if a little chilly. Damn kerosene heater is on the fritz, just like everything else tonight.”
Paul hesitated. “We can’t stay, Axel. We saw your light and thought to check on you. Maybe you should blow out the candles, by the way. You can see them from the street. But like I said, we can’t stay. We’re going for help.”
“I’ve got a bottle of whiskey down there. Don’t usually drink it myself, but I might be so inclined if you boys would do a shot with me.”
Gus grinned. “I reckon we can stay for a little bit, at least. Right, Paul?”
Sighing, Paul shrugged and followed the others down into the basement. He thought, not for the first time, of his dogs and hoped that they were okay.
***
Joel Winkler sat cross-legged in his big, plush recliner and looked around his darkened living room. It seemed so different, so strange, without the lights on. Joel always had at least one light on twenty-four hours a day, even if it was just the small night-light in the bathroom next to the master bedroom. He didn’t like stumbling around in the dark.
The lights had been just one of the things Richard liked to complain about.
He missed Richard. Not a day went by that Joel didn’t think about him, but right now, he was thinking about him more than ever.
They’d met in college. Before his freshman year, Joel had never been out of Brinkley Springs and the surrounding vicinity. Richard was from California and had traveled all around the world. They sat next to each other in psych class, formed a friendship and began spending time together. Within days, that friendship had turned romantic. After graduation, Richard had gone back to California and Joel, unable to find a job, had ended up back in Brinkley Springs. He’d been depressed and despondent until two months later, when Richard showed up at his door. The moving van was parked outside.
They’d lived together for just over a decade. Joel knew what people said behind their backs, but he didn’t care. Yes, some of the people in town were blatantly homophobic, even in this day and age, but most were just curious. As far as he knew, Brinkley Springs didn’t have any other gay couples. Not that they’d let it officially be known that they were indeed a couple. Joel had balked at revealing that, preferring instead to tell people that Richard was just his roommate. In the end, that was why Richard had left a second time—Joel’s steadfast refusal to come out of the closet and openly embrace and acknowledge their relationship.
Joel died a little more each day without him.
Feeling melancholy, Joel began humming Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” It had been their song.
He stared at the picture on the end table. It had been taken four years ago at the beautiful Cass Scenic Railroad State Park, near Bald Knob. In it, he and Richard were smiling, arms around each other. Behind them was a colorful kaleidoscope of fall foliage. Joel had taken the picture himself, using the timer on his camera. They’d been laughing about the mountain’s name—Bald Knob—and it had led to playful innuendos that lasted throughout the day and ended in a slow, passionate bout of lovemaking in a rented cabin atop the mountain later that night.
The shadows swallowed everything else in the living room. Once-familiar objects like the grandfather clock and the potted plants and the coffee table became unidentifiable shapes. The book he’d been reading, a lurid paperback called
The town had fallen silent. The screams and gunshots had subsided. Somehow, the silence was worse. Joel hoped that it would all be over soon.
“The feeling’s gone,” he whispered, “and I just can’t get it back.”
When the window shattered and a dark-cloaked man leaped into the room, Richard didn’t jump or scream or try to run away. He simply looked up, wiped the tears from his eyes and sighed.
“You are not afraid?” The figure loomed over him, arms outstretched.
Joel shook his head. “I’m too tired to be afraid. I saw what was happening. Earlier, out in the street. I watched two of you pull a family from their car. Nobody came to help them.”
“Nobody could.”
“Is this the end of the world?”
The intruder laughed. The sound reminded Joel of a whistling tea kettle.
“No. Merely the end of
“Will it hurt?”
“I could make it very painful indeed. Agonizing and slow. Now are you afraid?”
Joel shook his head.
The man’s shoulders slumped. “It is better when you are afraid. It improves the taste of your soul. But no matter.”
The man in black reached for him and Joel leaned forward into the embrace.
“Thank you,” he whispered as the darkness engulfed him.
***
Kirby Fox cowered in his tree house, reading his Bible (a red, faux-leather-cover King James version that he’d been given at church after completing catechism classes a year before) and begging the Lord not to let what had just happened to his parents happen to him, as well.
He’d been camping out in the backyard, sleeping in the tree house—or at least that was what his parents had thought. In truth, there had been very little sleeping, as Kirby’s tree house contained a folder full of pictures printed off from a porno site. He kept the folder in the middle of an old Trapper Keeper left over from elementary school, and hid the Trapper Keeper inside a long white box of comic books. His parents had never been inside the tree house—at least, not that he knew of—but Kirby saw no reason not to be cautious at all times.
Like now, for example. He looked up from the book of Psalms, his finger frozen over a random passage. He’d had to squint to read it because his flashlight wasn’t working. The tree-house roof had a hole in it so that he could stick his telescope out of it on clear nights. Each spring, his father trimmed the branches away from the hole, providing an unobstructed view of the stars. Kirby kept a five-gallon bucket beneath the hole to catch rainwater and had a tarp he could pull over the top of it. He realized now that he’d forgotten to pull the tarp closed. The leaves rustled softly as the breeze picked up. Wind gusted down through the hole, ruffling the naked pictures, his comics and the Bible pages. The printouts fluttered across the floor. Naked women stared up at him from a dozen different poses. Kirby felt sick and guilty. The pictures had been provided by Gary Thompson. Kirby had given him ten bucks and his copy of Modern Warfare 2 in exchange for them. Gary’s parents had a color printer and unlimited Internet access. The kid had a nice business as a middle-school pornographer.
Kirby had beat off twice, guiltily wiping himself with paper towels and then tossing the evidence in the corner, and then snuggled into his sleeping bag and read some back issues of
