The iron gate twenty pal.., p.6
The Iron Gate: Twenty Palaces, page 6
I moved farther from the shore, coming up to the broken windows at the end of the ocean side of the building.
At the back was another concrete slab, which was once a dock for extremely large ships. The funnel I’d seen inside the building was connected to a much larger funnel here.
Then it made sense. The ships would pull up to the dock and dump their catch into the big funnel. The catch would come out inside the building, where, presto chango, they would be turned into canned tuna or salmon or whatever. Dead fish were dumped into the ocean side. Canned fish were driven out of the land side.
But there was something about it that seemed off. I moved along the mezzanine to get directly above the funnel. The top had black streaks down it. The bottom, inside the cramped room behind me, had no black streaks, but it did have a pile of crap lying beside it.
I had no logical reason to think it was important, but I wanted to see the inside of that funnel. A ladder nearby led down to the bottom floor, but it looked too rotten to hold my weight. If only the town had some sort of handyman to fix this sort of shit.
I went the long way, back to the stairs in the larger front room, then wove through the ruined equipment to the bottom of that big funnel.
It was bigger than it looked from up high, at least five feet around at the narrowest part. The pile of crap at the bottom turned out to be a bunch of stacked scrap wood along with one piece of plywood.
Then I looked into the funnel itself and saw long black streaks on the aluminum sheets. Immediately, I knew what I was seeing. The stacked scrap wood and the plywood made a ramp. Kids would ride down the funnel, building up a sweet amount of speed, then hit the ramp and fly over the concrete floor.
I turned toward the rusting hulks and saw a bicycle in the shadow of one of the ruined machines. Moving it into the light, he saw there was no rust on it. No dust or crud. The front rim was bent, with two busted spokes sticking out like porcupine quills. It could have been left there five minutes or five days ago.
There was a bell on the handlebar. I pressed the lever and released it, letting that bright, dragging ring ring bounce around the interior of the building.
I’d heard that sound before. The four kids riding their bikes outside the cop station all had identical bells that sounded exactly like this.
Shit. I’d come here hoping to find some way to identify the asshole behind everything—the asshole running me around like I was a toy—and what I found pointed at a little kid. Or a group of kids. I mean, it made sense. They were the hero detectives. Carl the Handyman was their villain, and they impressed the entire town by running dumb old Carl into their stupid trap.
The thought made me even angrier, not because of what they’d done but because they were beyond revenge. What was I supposed to do, hunt down a pack of twelve-year-olds and break their legs? Find their fathers and knock their teeth in? Assuming they had fathers, and even if they did, no parent deserves to be punished for what their kids do.
But as infuriating as that was, I was glad, too. Little kids had done this to me. They’d used magic, probably, and there was no payback coming their way. Not from me, anyway. I wasn’t that kind of asshole.
Which meant I was free to test the boundaries of this fucked-up place until I found a way out. I didn’t know where I’d go. I only knew it would be far, far away. If that was even possible.
I was already making my way to the exit. This digression into the cannery hadn’t been a complete waste of time—I knew more about what had happened to me, and I knew that I was going to do nothing about it—but I also knew this wasn’t the same place where I’d worn the burlap sack and chased the kids.
Even putting aside the plastic look of that other place, the layouts weren’t similar. When I was a puppet, I’d chased kids from rooms to hallways to other rooms, like we were in a big mansion. There were no hallways here, just a big open space with smaller rooms attached, plus a mezzanine that didn’t even circle the entire building.
Not that it mattered. I was leaving here, and leaving town, and leaving all this trouble behind. Right now.
I pushed through the front door and was thirty feet down the length of the concrete ramp when I noticed Duke blocking the way, staring at me with his front paws braced and his head held low.
Without thinking about it, I stopped dead in my tracks. That was not a friendly pose. What I knew about dogs could be engraved on a collar tag, but I knew more than I should have about threats.
No way was I going to show my fear. And what the hell, it was a dog.
I clapped my hands. “Who’s a good pup? Huh? Who’s a good puppy dog?”
Duke changed his posture immediately, dropping his butt for a moment, then happily galumphing toward me like an awkward baby giraffe. His tail wagged excitedly, and I knew we’d immediately become friends. Somehow. He came close and turned his head so I could scritch him behind the ear.
I told him he was a good dog, because what the hell, he was acting like one. I petted him on the back a couple of times, letting him turn sideways and thump his torso against mine. He had a collar and tags hanging from it, but before I could take hold of them and read them, Duke turned and smiled at me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Dogs don’t smile. I knew that. When dogs show their teeth, it’s a warning. But not this time. Duke actually grinned at me.
And Duke had human teeth.
CHAPTER TEN
Fuck this.
My voice sounded a little shaky as I told Duke he was a good dog but he should get the fuck away from me. He bounded away, then bounded back, but I just kept walking, keeping my hands at my side. After about ten paces, he seemed to get the hint and settled down.
Then he leaned his muzzle on my shoulder, and I was sure, with a blood-chilling certainty, that he was about to whisper something into my ear.
Instead, he licked me and galloped away.
I watched him go out of the corner of my eye, trying to look casual as he loped off toward town. I came to the edge of the concrete ramp and turned toward Smuggler’s Cove, the ruined bridge, and what might have been the edge of this strange, unnatural place.
As I walked along the beach, I tried to put my previous attempts to escape from town out of my thoughts, and I did the same for the impossible layout of the landscape ahead. There was no point in thinking about what it would mean if I couldn’t make it out, or what would happen if I did.
All of that would be a waste of time. I wanted to see what was waiting for me. Then I would decide on a plan to get me out. Then I would know. Maybe.
The cove seemed farther than I remembered, but maybe that was because walking on sand sort of sucks. Looking to my left, I could see shark fins skimming through the placid salt water. I was fine with that, as long as they stayed where they belonged and I kept my feet right here on dry land.
Part of me wondered if the sharks had come to eat the discards from the cannery and stuck around long after it closed. Part of me didn’t believe they were real sharks.
Smuggler’s Cove was ringed by black volcanic rock and, looking at them a second time, those rocks looked almost like they’d been laid out so the narrowest parts pointed upward. I didn’t have a lot of experience with climbing—unless you count chain link fences—so I moved slowly and carefully, working my way higher through the tumble of rocks.
Something splashed in the water to my left, as though one of the sharks wanted to remind me it was waiting there. I looked away from the water, seeing that the edge of the ravine looked muddy and loose. I didn’t think anyone, no matter how many mountains they’d climbed, would risk that ascent.
Then I came to the highest point of the rock tumble and could see the whole lagoon.
A half-dozen fins skimmed the surface of the water. That was a lot of hungry sharks for such a small pool of water. The opening to a cave sat almost directly across from me. That, I hadn’t expected, but it looked correct for a place called Smuggler’s Cove.
Just beside it was a little waterfall, no more than twenty feet high, that flowed from the bottom of the ravine and splashed directly into the green water. I tried to move closer, because I wanted to climb up there. I wanted to check out that Pacer, along with any other cars lying at the bottom of that ravine.
Unfortunately, the cliff face beside the waterfall was also loose and muddy. It seemed to me that the flow should have washed away all this mud down to bare rock, but I wasn’t exactly a waterfall-ologist.
I tried to climb up anyway, thinking I could jam my toes into the wet earth and work my way up and across, but every time I plunged my fingers into the muddy wall, huge clods came out in scoops. It would have been easier to dig a tunnel. Before I’d managed to get both feet off the ground, a rock became dislodged and slid along the length of my left arm, scraping the skin above my elbow bloody. Another rock just above it was even bigger and looked less stable. Climbing was out.
I moved toward the water, awkwardly descending the jagged rocks. When I got within ten feet, a gray triangular head, mouth bristling with crooked teeth, burst through the surface of the water and splashed back down again. I moved farther from the cliff and tried again, then again, each time with the same result.
I wasn’t even close enough to get bit, but they jumped anyway, as though warning me back.
I flicked a few drops of blood in the water. The sharks didn’t react. They just kept circling, blocking my easiest path out of Stormy Bay.
I hated them. If I’d brought a duffel bag full of guns, I would have started killing one shark after another, turning the whole cove into a blood soup. They would have gone on a feeding frenzy so fierce that the few surviving sharks would loll around in the water like fat uncles on Thanksgiving night, and I could have backstroked through the gore.
But I hadn’t even brought a sharp stick, let alone a bag of guns. I climbed back the way I came, feeling a little sick to my stomach at the thought of deafening gunshots and bloody injuries. Maybe I didn’t like guns all that much. Probably, there was a terrible, gun-related memory hidden deep inside my mind, but I was content to leave it there for the moment.
Back on the beach, I rinsed my scraped arm in the shallowest part of the ocean—it didn’t sting as much as I expected—then started up the impossible road toward the bridge.
Soon, I was wandering through the woods at the edge of the ravine, a hundred feet above the cove and ravine. If the road was capable of impossible feats, the cliff face was too. And the waterfall. And those sharks.
A few of the trees were tall enough to span the ravine, assuming I could chop them down and make them fall in the right direction. Not that I knew how to do that, but judging by the number of them, I had a few chances to get it right.
The gap in the broken bridge could have been spanned by a ladder, if the ladder was tall enough. Logic suggested the mayor and the chief had already tried that, but Stormy Bay didn’t seem to all that concerned with logic.
I crossed the road and made my way along the ravine to the waterfall, where the cliffs on either side of the ravine met in a rough notch. The mist the falls gave off cooled my face and dampened my shirt. It smelled of seaweed, which didn’t make sense to me, but I was in Stormy Bay, so what the hell.
The ravine should have been muddy and unstable here, but it felt entirely solid. I could lay my belly against the cliff face and reach out far enough to feel a few splashes of water, but there was nothing solid to climb on. How many TV shows had I seen where there was a secret chamber or cave behind a waterfall? Here, there was nothing.
The ravine was narrow but not narrow enough to jump. And all the nearby trees were low to the ground, barely taller than me. I couldn’t cross back into the wider world from here without a team of army engineers or something.
I moved away from the falls and the ravine along the base of the cliff, looking for a way up. A path. A stair. An elevator. A rope with a bunch of knots tied into it. Anything.
A little deer path led through the woods along the base of the cliff, which suggested there might be deer around somewhere. Trees shaded me and I could smell the clean air that green growing things gave off and the wet, fertile soil. The scrape on my left arm had stopped bleeding and was not going stiff with scabs. For all the pain it caused me, it might as well have been painted on. The pain in my right shoulder, slowly returning after the heroic meals I’d stuffed into me, bothered me more.
But there was no way up. No paths. No old staircases. When I tried to ascend a likely-looking part of the cliff, it crumbled beneath me. When I grabbed hold of some sturdy-looking vegetation, it came loose as easily as picking a fresh berry. I burned away the day following the path around the back end of town, seeing no one, talking only to myself, until I came to Dead Man’s Point at the far end.
There were more sharks in the water here. They must have been starving with the hope that I would dip my toe in.
The cliff face above the point looked to be made of rock, but it extended out beyond the shore. To climb there, I’d have to lean back and out. It wasn’t going to happen.
Which pissed me off. The day was fading, and the only thing I’d managed to do was make a list of shit that wouldn’t get me where I needed to be.
I scanned the cliff ahead and spotted the place where the cliff was still pretty much vertical but also seemed to be mostly stone. I scrambled over a few sharp-edged rocks—very like the ones around the cove—and tested the stony face.
It was better than I’d hoped for. The rocks felt stable, and the hand and foot holds were almost as large as the rungs of a ladder.
I started to climb.
I got more than thirty feet in the air—a third of the way from the top, but still a long way from home—when one of the rocks shifted under my feet.
The next thing I felt was the horrifying weightlessness that comes from a high fall. I tried to take a deep breath so I could shout—which was the only thing I could do, no matter how futile—but there wasn’t time.
I hit the sharp, upturned edge of the rocks below with terrible force. I felt the pain in my elbow, low ribs, and the back of my skull.
But only for a moment.
Death ended my suffering almost as soon as it began.
ANNALISE POWLISS
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sound of a car engine woke her from a nightmare. Fucking people. Even out here in the wilderness, there was no peace to be found anymore. No solitude.
Annalise rolled off her shitty bed and peered out the dirty windshield of her RV. A cop car rolled to a stop about ten yards away. One occupant. Oh, right. She knew this guy. Well, she’d been told his name.
His car door opened at the same time as her trailer door, and he tensed up. Fucking cops. Always acting like their lives were about to turn into an action movie.
Annalise had no reason to tense up because she had nothing to fear. Not from a cop, anyway.
The sun was higher than expected. Late morning. The July air was cool in the shade of this stand of ponderosa pine, and after the gym-sock-and-sweaty-bedsheets smell inside her RV, the outside world greeted her with the smell of green growing things.
It reminded her of her childhood—of lean, hungry men cutting pitch-pine timber for pennies—and anything that reminded her of those years pissed her off.
“What do you want?” she demanded, before the cop could even get his hat on straight.
He seemed startled, but only for a moment. A lot of men—especially big ones—expected careful etiquette or timid courtesy from small women. Annalise had put all that shit behind her years before.
“Ma’am, I’m Reginald Finn, sheriff of Fulmouth County. You’re welcome to call me Reggie, if you like.”
Reggie was about six three and broad in the shoulders. He had dark hair and a brush mustache that should have looked stupid on him but didn’t. After glancing around the pines, he looked directly at Annalise.
No actor could have looked the part of a beefcake local cop more, which was probably why he kept winning elections.
Despite herself, she suspected she could trust him. “That doesn’t answer my question, now, does it? Reggie.”
“We can get to that. Are you Annalise Powliss?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing up here?”
“Standing on my property.”
“I thought your property was the other side of that.”
He nodded up the road and Annalise turned in that direction, even though she knew what she was going to see. A chain link fence was strung across the asphalt, through the trees on both sides. It was a flimsy thing—anyone who really wanted to break through could do it without breaking a sweat. There wasn’t even a coil of barbed wire across the top.
But alternating sections of fencing held a sign that read:
WARNING:
TICK AND DOG FLUKE INFESTATION
KEEP CLEAR
PRIVATE PROPERTY
“Nope. The actual property line extends about fifty feet that way, to that tree marked with a red ribbon. There.” Reggie turned to see it, then turned back. “There’s a buffer around the whole fence line, at least ten feet wide, depending on the terrain. But you knew that.”
“Whole property? I think you mean ‘the whole town,’ don’t you? Meadow Corners.”
“Not much of a town. No people in it.”
“Maybe they got eaten by dog flukes, which is a thing I’ve never heard of. Nobody has.”
“Because it’s new. Let me show you.”
Annalise went back into her trailer, then pulled the faked displays from her shelf. When she brought them out, Reggie had moved to a different place and had his hand resting casually on his gun—Right. Action movie—but he looked at what Annalise showed him.
