Vampire fire vampire for.., p.20
The Whistler, page 20
Rhett’s delayed response suggests that he doesn’t like pondering such things. “Would be nice,” he eventually says. “But—”
“But doesn’t do much good thinking about it now.” In fact, it hurts.
“No, not much good,” Rhett agrees. “An afterlife, though, might mean we’re here for a reason. That’s what I find important. What’s your reason, Henry?”
“I don’t—”
“You don’t have to answer,” Rhett interjects. “Your reason might not be any of my business. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to find it. More than that, I want you to enjoy it. This life might not be what you expected…what you planned…but like I told you before, sometimes you have to make new plans.”
“You say that like it’s easy.”
“Henry.” Rhett nudges his joystick, inching closer. His chair blocks much of Henry’s view, the bird no longer visible on the ledge. “It just might be the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”
“So why bother?”
“Because of what you’ll get out of it. Joy. Achievement. Confidence. You might even squash some of your fears.”
“Have you?”
“I went swimming.” Rhett chuckles, probably because of the shocked expression that’s crossed Henry’s face. “It required a lift and someone there to lower me into the water, but the point is that I did something I never thought I’d do again. And you know what? I loved it. And I’ve done it many times since.”
The revelation awakens the competitive spirit within Henry. The man who’d made him think It could’ve been worse upon first laying eyes on him is doing more with his life than Henry has allowed himself to believe possible.
“There was another video you recorded, wasn’t there? One you deleted from your account?” Rhett stops Henry from stammering to explain. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. The first time we met, you didn’t want to be here. You said your grandparents made you come. I didn’t think you’d be back. Not a second time, and certainly not a third. I’m not much of a gambling man, but I’d bet you’ve found value here, in these conversations. I want you to know that I have too. You’ll think about what I’ve said, won’t you? About finding purpose…reason. Maybe when you’re thinking about that video you deleted.”
“Maybe,” Henry says.
“And maybe I’ll see you here again.”
“Maybe.” Motion draws Henry’s eyes back to the window as the bird that’d been on the ledge flits up and away. “There’s something else I said the first time I came here…that I didn’t—”
“You don’t have to—” Rhett starts.
“I want to,” Henry interjects. “I said I didn’t want to be like you. I was rude. And I was wrong. If anything, you’re the one who should have said that to me.”
Rhett flashes a snarky smile. “I’m not that fucking offensive.”
Henry barks out a laugh as footsteps approach in the hall. With a nod at Rhett, he wheels toward the closed door and reaches for its handle, again overlooking the accessible door button on the wall. It isn’t easy, but he forces the handle to turn, and, before someone can do it for him, he pulls the heavy door open, wide enough for him and his chair.
* * *
—
“So?” Mawmaw Tilly asks on the ride home from the Spinal Cord Injury Peer and Family Support Center. “How’d it go?”
Eyes out the window, watching people they pass at the grocer’s, the car wash, and the food trucks in the park, Henry imagines that they’ll see him no differently than anyone else if they spot him in the passenger seat. “Good. I think.”
“You think?”
Henry doesn’t want to talk about it because he isn’t sure if it will last. It might be fleeting, a spark, just a momentary high. “Rhett’s a good guy,” he says, precisely as a question that might determine whether the upswing he’s on is here to stay or not pops into his head. It’s the same question he asked Jade when they had clown cones in their hands. “Maw, are we gonna make it?”
Tilly’s response isn’t nearly as depressing as Jade’s I don’t know had been. “No one can predict what the future will bring,” she says. “But I’ll fight like hell for you…for us…until I can’t anymore.”
Henry says he’ll do the same for her, and silently promises not to let her down after what she reveals next.
“I’d never let myself think about what it would be like to live without him. It’s scary, you know? Being alone. At this age. I used to joke that he thought he was invincible. Remember how I teased him about thinking he’d live forever?” Her eyes flick up to the photo clipped to her visor. “Really, it was me all along who didn’t think he’d ever go.”
Mawmaw Tilly takes a turn on the rez that won’t lead them closer to home. Henry, his eyes stinging, doesn’t have to ask where she’s headed. The tall gate in front of the tribal cemetery is open. Pawpaw Mac’s grave is far from the entrance, along the side of the cemetery where a glimpse of the river shimmers in the distance. Henry hasn’t been back to the grave since they said goodbye to Mac, and he hasn’t asked Maw about her visits. A feather sticks straight up out of the ground next to an empty bottle of Mac’s favorite rye. Flowers in various states of decomposition hang their fluffy heads over the dirt.
Tilly lets the car idle for a minute, both she and Henry just looking out the window, their little family almost complete. “Would you mind?” she says, and Henry tells her to go ahead, to take as much time as she needs. She leaves him with the windows down, the sun heating the dash and Henry’s right arm, resting along the bottom of the window frame. He watches his grandmother climb the slight incline from where the car’s parked to where her husband is buried, dipping his gaze when she turns back to look. Thinking about what Rhett said about reason, he wonders if Mawmaw Tilly has lost hers, and if Rhett would tell her to make new plans. He thinks, too, about the deleted video Rhett mentioned. Shame rises within him. A bit of hope alongside it. Especially when he thinks about Mac and the muttering he’d heard in the night.
Maybe, just maybe.
Mawmaw Tilly had come running back into his room in response to his call after she’d hurried the acoustic guitar with its snapped string away. He hadn’t told her why he needed her to look, and, seeing how upset he was, she hadn’t pressed. Nothing, she said, voice trembling, confusion and fear smeared all over her face after she’d dipped her head to peek beneath the bed frame.
She returns from the grave with a sheen on her cheeks, the empty bottle of rye in her hands. She places it in Henry’s lap.
“Don’t know who put that there.” She starts the car again.
Two hands on the glass, Henry lifts the bottle and shakes it. One of Mac’s abandoned guitar picks has been inserted inside. It doesn’t slip out when Henry turns the uncorked bottle over.
At home, Tilly helps him over the concrete step despite his certainty that he’d be able to get into the house on his own today. He doesn’t tip the chair back, doesn’t hear that awful pop. He rolls into the kitchen and sets the empty bottle of rye on the counter next to a stack of sealed sympathy cards Mawmaw Tilly hasn’t brought herself to open. Henry thinks about slipping them into the trash, to stop them from summoning fresh tears. The possibility that they just might bring comfort prevents him from doing it.
Tilly comes into the kitchen behind him, Ratboy and Delilah hopping at her heels, begging for something from the treat cabinet. The sight of the bottle on the counter, positioned as if Mac had set it there after pouring himself a drink, halts her. Maybe it belongs in the trash too.
“All right?” Henry asks.
She nods and looks away. Flustered, she takes a step in one direction, then retreats and heads back in the other, her hands groping but not near enough to grasp anything on the counter. She goes to the cabinet as if that were her plan from the start and tosses two Milk-Bones onto the floor.
The dogs fight over the treats. Henry slips away to his room, slowly, as if he won’t be noticed. He stops just beyond the doorway, much the same way Tilly had upon entering the kitchen. The guitar’s there, back on its stand, giving him the creeps. He stares at it for a while, holding still, like a squirrel watching a feral cat in the grass in case it starts to move.
“Maw?”
The disquiet in his tone brings her in seconds flat. He motions with one arm. Her lower jaw drops; a gasp leaks out.
“Did you…?” he says.
She shakes her head, unable to speak. Henry’s arm falls into his lap. Stunned, he’s numb and scared, just like when he woke up in the hospital. He looks to his grandmother for the answer to a question he doesn’t ask aloud.
Should we touch it?
“I don’t know, sugar,” she says, and he senses that the response applies to more than what he’s wondering.
Gradually, he ventures deeper into the room, inch by inch, passing the dresser against the wall and the foot of the bed. He pauses with plenty of space between himself and the instrument, its snapped string hanging over the fretboard.
“Henry?”
He straightens his body in his chair, raising his head a little higher.
“What happened the other night?”
He presses against his hand rims and spins around to face her.
“Why’d you want me to look beneath the bed?”
His mind cycles, reminding him of what he’s seen and heard since Mac’s death. The gravelly muttering, the footsteps in the yard, the swings, the guitar.
“He said he wouldn’t…that he’d have better things to do.”
Tilly’s eyes cloud with confusion until she remembers when and why Mac spoke those words. She tears up again.
“Jokes,” she says. Her gaze moves to the table beside Henry’s bed, searching for something other than the box of tissues, his therapeutic gloves, and remotes. “Did you ever change the battery?”
The weight of what she’s really asking falls hard on Henry’s shoulders, winding him. He wants to say no, to dismiss the notion entirely. But how can he after his discussion with Rhett? He owes the man. He owes Tilly, too. Most of all, he has to make things right with himself. He rolls toward the closet where the spirit box is stashed. “I have spares.”
Twenty-eight
July 2023
Henry nudged Roddy past the trees, whereupon he released the bough he’d swept aside so that he could move ahead and capture all of Roddy’s reaction. “What does that look like to you?”
Roddy shot a glance over his shoulder, then in the direction of another passing car, anywhere but at the circle on the ground. Through gritted teeth, one hand scratching fresh bug bites on his neck, he said, “It’s just dirt.”
“Come closer then.”
Henry zoomed in on Roddy’s face, his eyes moving all about. Fallen leaves, branches, bark, mushrooms, and stems surrounded the circle, much of the material in some stage of decomposition that smelled a little moldy, a little sweet, utterly earthy. Protruding from the fertile waste were shrubs and vines, moss, ferns, flowering ground cover, and suspicious leaves of three. The circle, however, was bare, nothing but flattened dirt.
“I’m not scared.” Leaving at least twelve feet between himself and its perimeter, Roddy took two steps closer to the circle, which must have been twenty feet in diameter and so perfect it looked to have been made by a giant compass and a No. 2 pencil as tall as the trees.
Turning from Roddy, Henry slowly spun in place, panning the circle from left to right. “Oh shit,” he whispered, some part of his brain telling him to watch his language because it would have to be bleeped.
“What is it?” Roddy called.
Henry waved for Roddy to approach, then dug in his pocket to retrieve his phone. Swiping his thumb across the screen, he pulled up a photo he’d taken when he was with the dogs in the woods.
“It’s a rock,” Roddy, finally coming closer, said about the photo of a stone sitting in the center of the circle.
Henry put his phone away. “Where’s the rock now?” He directed Roddy where to look, at the stone nestled in moss beyond the circle’s far edge. “I tossed it into the center of the circle when I found this place. It’s been moved.”
“An animal,” Roddy said, sidling so close to Henry that Henry could feel his heat, which prompted him to ask, “What do you feel?”
Roddy whimpered, suddenly aware. “What the hell, Henry? I’m cold, which doesn’t make any sense because I was just sweating a moment ago.” He rubbed his hands over his arms. “This place is freaky. It’s creeping me out. You got my reaction, all right? Can we go?”
Henry, chilled himself, took a wide step inside the barren patch.
“Hold up!” Roddy struck like a snake and pulled Henry back to his side. “Maybe you shouldn’t…”
“Why not?”
Roddy scratched some more. The welts on his neck appeared angrier by the second. “Just in case.”
Heedless, Henry grabbed Roddy’s wrist and pulled his hand away from his neck, forcing it inside the circle instead. “What do you feel?” he asked again.
Fingers in a tight fist, Roddy yanked backward against Henry’s grip. Henry didn’t let go until Roddy admitted that it felt even colder inside the circle than it did standing beside it.
Walking again, Henry moved along the circle’s edge. He stopped several feet from Roddy, then slipped the backpack from his shoulders and sank into a squat.
Roddy staggered backward, finding shelter beneath the branches of a nearby tree. “What are you doing? Why aren’t we on our way back to the car yet?”
“I wanna try something….” He set the camera on the ground, aimed up at him, and sifted through the devices stowed in his bag, setting some on the ground until he found the one he wanted. Hoisting the spirit box and moving it close to the camera’s lens, he described how it worked in case the eventual viewing audience needed a reminder, saying it swept AM and FM radio frequencies in search of sounds from the dead since spirits, in need of energy to announce themselves, were known to manipulate radio waves when wanting to communicate.
Leaving the backpack on the ground just outside the circle, Henry turned the camera so it would capture what he was about to do, then stood, spirit box in hand, and entered the circle once more.
“Henry…” Roddy winced.
Henry set the box in the circle’s center, right where he’d tossed the stone. White noise hissed out of it when he turned it on.
“There isn’t time.” Roddy retreated even more. Boughs and branches veiled his body.
“Just a minute.” Exiting the circle, Henry backed away from the box and picked the camera up again. “Strange, isn’t it?” He aimed the lens at Roddy disappearing into the trees. “You hear the birds, don’t you?”
Roddy nodded.
“But do you see them?” Henry moved the camera to scan the trees all around. Roddy followed with his gaze. Birds were near, but not one was in sight of the circle. “Still think an animal kicked that rock into the moss?”
Roddy didn’t reply, but his hand did move to his chest, perhaps to prevent his thumping heart from bursting out of it.
Resuming his walk along the circle’s perimeter, Henry stopped when he was directly across from Roddy. Something there brought him to his knees.
“What is it?” The hesitation in Roddy’s voice suggested that he didn’t really want to know.
As the spirit box emitted a cyclone of sound—hissing and whooshing, high-pitched beeps, crunchy static, and split-second fragments of radio broadcasts—Henry inspected the marks left in a muddy patch of the otherwise dry ground. “Holy shivers,” he said, minding the camera. “You’d better come see this.”
“No way.” Roddy put extra bass into his voice. “We have to get back.”
“I’ve never seen…” Henry’s face dipped closer to the ground. His free hand moved toward the mud without making contact. “This wasn’t here before.”
“Henry…”
“This is big. This is…this is unbelievable.”
“Henry!”
His head snapped up, his eyes barely able to see Roddy through the trees. “I need you to look at this. I need you to tell me what you see.”
“I’m not going back by that circle. And if you don’t get over here, I’m not going to do another feature with you at all.”
An unseen branch suddenly cracked, so loud it momentarily trumped the spirit box’s sizzle. Henry thrust a protesting finger in the direction from which the crack had come—behind Roddy.
The reporter whipped his head around so fast that Henry was sure it must have hurt. Another crack rang out. Roddy jumped.
“You’d better get over here right now,” Henry said in a severe whisper.
Roddy wavered, one arm wrapping around the trunk of the tree beside him in what must have been an attempt to steady his nerves by holding on to something solid and firm.
“Listen,” Henry said.
The birds had stopped chirping. The insects had stopped buzzing in the grass. A sense of emptiness had befallen that peculiar portion of the woods. Rustling, like that of feet shuffling through the crispy detritus of the forest floor, finally compelled Roddy to flee from the tree.
“Where’s your key?” he said, upon bending over Henry’s backpack, his hands disappearing inside it. “I’m getting the hell out of here.” He tossed Henry’s flashlight and EMF gauge onto the ground.
Standing, Henry pulled his fob from his back pocket and let it dangle. “Just come look at this and then we’ll go. I promise.”
