William h keith warstr.., p.3
Generation Annihilation, page 3
Thank goodness it’s too warm to worry about kicking that thing to life.
I take another deep breath, then exhale. I close my eyes and do it again. The silence pushes against my eardrums, and I wonder if this place drove Grandpa to madness. He did take his own life after all.
I hope I don’t begin to understand why he made that decision.
I open my eyes again and continue taking stock.
There is a little fridge and a two-burner stove. Maybe there is electricity. Cabinet doors and drawers are open and hang at various angles as if someone had left in a hurry or animals had ransacked the place looking for food.
I listen for the sound of any movement other than my own, and when I hear none, I decide to settle in. I toss my duffel onto the couch, and a cloud of dust bursts into the air. I squeeze my nostrils as I turn in search of a light switch. I find it at the far end of the cabin by the backdoor that is, oddly, locked with a dead bolt.
“Why leave the front door unlocked?”
I flip the switch and nearly cry when a dull light fills the space.
Oh, thank God. Then almost immediately I wonder who has been paying for electricity all this time before I shrug and decide it’s not my problem. If God wants to send me a little help, who am I to question it?
At least I’ll be able to see at night and cook myself food.
The walls are bare save for a painting of an old man sitting at a table, praying over a loaf of bread that hangs above the small table. Cobwebs hang from one corner of the painting to the opposite bottom corner. The windows help the cabin feel less stifling. One window faces the side yard, and two flank the front door. The last window is little and narrow and looks out over the backyard, which is really just the side of a giant mountain.
It takes only a few minutes of standing still for exhaustion to tear through me. I stumble into the only bedroom, right off the front door, barely cognizant of the dust or dead bugs scattered across the floor.
I fall onto the bed, too exhausted to even move. I close my eyes and try not to let my mind wander, knowing there are no fairy tales waiting for me there.
Iwatch as his fist barrels toward her face in slow motion. His knuckles are white with tension. Rage simmers behind the fist, constricting the muscles in the hand and wrist all the way up the arm and into the shoulders. The rage originates from a brain that seems to feel nothing but hatred if it feels anything at all.
The fist has come at her before. I know how bad it will hurt because I’ve seen it used on her face and the bruises left behind.
I cower. Yet, I watch.
Time slows.
I want to yell at him to stop. I want my mom to yell at him.
She doesn’t. It comes. Closer and closer. This one will hurt worse than the others. He likes to warm up slow and finish strong. I brace myself. I feel her pain before the blow even lands.
I jump to my feet, sweat pouring down my back. I dart to the corner of the room.
Where am I?
My eyes sweep back and forth, one, two, three times.
Why am I here?
I try to catch my breath.
What is this place?
I recognize it, but why?
What have I done?
I fold into a crouch and put my hands in my hair, willing my mind to piece itself back together. I hover in this wasteland, uncertain and afraid, for several minutes. Finally, real life returns, replacing my horrible memory-filled dream and I realize I’m awake, huddled in the corner of the room.
A glance out the window shows that it’s daylight, so I’ve slept all night. Another glance, this time at my phone, tells me it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.
I stand and look around as my heart rate slows. I wipe the sweat from my brow and am finally able to move toward the kitchen. I find my gallon jug of water and pull in a big swig. Then I slam down my morning dose of lithium. I never thought I needed meds, and certainly not the diagnosis of bipolar like my mom, but I’m in no position to question it now. Just like it did no good to question it with the psychiatrist in juvie when he gave me the diagnosis and the meds in the first place.
I sit at the table and stare out the side window as an overwhelming sense of aloneness crashes over me. It’s suffocating, this feeling. I feel like the man from that movie who gets left on Mars.
My stomach grumbles loudly when I think of all the potatoes he planted. I look in the fridge only to find more dead bugs and something blackish-green growing in the corner.
A heavy weight pushes down on me, making my shoulders slump and my resolve falter.
What was I thinking? Leaving Baltimore to stay in this shack by myself. I’m seventeen, for God’s sake.
Did I make a mistake by setting that fire?
Mom’s face fills my mind, and hatred fills my soul, squashing my unease. No. He deserved it. Every lick of every flame.
I even feel a swell of satisfaction and accomplishment.
My mom never would’ve left Rodger, so I had to “help” him leave her. She was not a “leaver” of men. She’d left this small town when she was sixteen to follow my dad to Baltimore despite having no promise of a future together with him, and then she found out he’d married someone else right after she’d had me. She stayed a faithful mistress until he died from cancer when I was young—too young to remember any of this. She quickly moved on with that piece of shit Rodger. No matter how many times he put a fist to her face, she would not leave him. I had to take matters into my own hands, or he’d end up killing her. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.
In an attempt to halt my haunting trip down memory lane, I look around the cabin again. Nothing has changed—I’m not sure why I thought it might. There are still no sounds to be heard, and I’m still alone. I wonder how long it will take someone to find me if I die here. Probably so long I’ll be decayed beyond recognition. Maybe I should just go ahead and stuff myself in the fridge. At least my body would be somewhat preserved.
The only reason someone found Grandpa was because Mom grew worried when she hadn’t heard from him and called an old acquaintance from her childhood. He’d found Grandpa, otherwise known as Earl Pickens, dead in the woods nearby, having used a tree in a way it wasn’t meant to be used.
My throat tightens.
I will not cry. I am not a baby.
Images of juvie return. Cries in the night. Fights in the common room. Dead stares. Angry, abusive officers.
The image of a fist coming at me makes my own fists clench. I’d been in so many fights in juvie, I should have some sort of championship belt to prove my strength and toughness, even though I certainly didn’t win them all. I flinch as if I can feel those knuckles meeting the bone of my cheek all over again. The pain was blinding.
I can’t go back.
I will not go back. And that means I cannot return to Baltimore ever again.
“So what now, Shaun?” I ask. “If you can’t go back home and can’t be put back in juvie, what choice do you have? Adult prison would be even worse.”
I walk to the bathroom just beside the bedroom where there is a small mirror. It’s old and so tarnished I can’t see myself clearly, but I can tell there are dark circles under my blue eyes. My red hair is too long and needs combing. My skin looks pale, making my freckles stand out even more. Maybe I’ll go ahead and dye my hair with the kit I brought. But I’m hungry, and the snacks I have just aren’t calling my name.
It’s not like there’s anyone in this town anyway. You’ll be fine. Dye it this afternoon.
I turn away from the mirror and grab my keys.
Maybe I’ll run into that Cass girl again.
I wouldn’t mind that. If nothing else, seeing her would prove she actually exists and that I haven’t lost it.
The descent down the mountain is treacherous, so I ride the brake the whole way. It takes as long to maneuver down this road as it did to go up.
This might be the sticks, but there has to be a fast-food restaurant and a pharmacy somewhere. I scratch a mosquito bite as if on cue, then sneeze so hard my brain shakes. I turn onto the one-lane dirt road.
Old and dilapidated homes pepper the mountainsides to my right and left. Cabins are spanned so far apart that I doubt neighbors are popping over to each other’s homes for sugar. They all resemble my grandfather’s cabin.
They look like blights on the landscape, dirty and dark with slanted or crumbling roofs. Any cleared land by a cabin is filled with junk—old cars, barrels, discarded planks of wood. I even see an old tractor that’s so rusty it must be a hundred years old. I see a chained dog near one house. It’s a small blip in the distance, but I’m going so slow now, I can just make it out. It’s evident that the dog is barking at me, and it doesn’t want me to come any closer.
A few minutes later, I find Main Street again.
Even though it’s early afternoon, not a single soul is out.
There is nothing. No sign of life.
I slow, seeing Main Street in full sunlight now. I try to get a read on my mom’s hometown where she spent sixteen years of her life. There is a post office, antique and gun shop, a bank, a courthouse, and a place that repairs four-wheelers.
Within a four-block radius, I count three churches. They are all closed up as if religion has left the building. What I don’t count is a restaurant or a pharmacy. Surely, there is some place to grab a bite. Maybe a diner filled with the locals I don’t see on the streets? Or a convenience store selling day-old doughnuts and chewing tobacco?
I take a couple more turns with no success and decide to look for the interstate that brought me into town. It might take me halfway back to Maryland, but I’m hungry and only a chicken nugget can satisfy me.
As I meander, I see the wooden sign for the asylum again, and I take my foot off the gas.
Maybe that’s where all the locals are—committed to the loony bin. Walking around in perfect unison, holding candles in perpetual vigil.
That might not be a far-off assumption considering the only two people I’ve seen so far were on the asylum grounds.
I think of the thin girl and the huge man.
I laugh, then I stop short.
I think of the shovel. The kid’s shoes. It’s a sobering thought and I realize it’s nothing to laugh about.
I park in the same spot I did yesterday, though every spot that lines Main Street is empty, so I certainly have my pick. I get out and glance around. What I’m doing here when my stomach is growling, I don’t choose to question. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that, I guess.
I force a chuckle, as if my internal joke is funny, but the sound falls lifeless as soon as I make it.
I look at the asylum, resting across the street like a dragon in slumber.
The windows are dark. A black crow, or maybe it’s a raven, rests on the apex of the clock tower, watching over its domain. I always get them confused. I think of my favorite poem by the goth-master himself, Poe, and wonder what the author would think of this place. I think he’d particularly like the mist that seems to be ever-present.
While I stand there, studying the grounds, someone appears. Actually, I assume the person was already standing there by the angel fountain, and I just didn’t notice. The mist is thick this morning, thicker and grayer than anything I could’ve conjured up in my brain, though less opaque than yesterday. I recognize Cass, though, and jog across the road. She doesn’t move as I pass under the arch. She just stands there in the angel’s shadow. I slow to a walk, locking eyes with her.
“Hi,” I call from several yards away.
She doesn’t respond.
“Hey,” I say, closing the distance between us. She stands still, like she’s frozen in place. “You okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
Her voice startles me at first with its grainy tenor. I clear my throat. “Just asking.”
She stares at me from enormous gray eyes, the color of a stormy sky. My observation feels both poetic and pathetic to me. Her eyes aren’t hidden behind the heavy makeup the girls wear back home. She’s only a few inches shorter than me, and I’m just shy of six feet. But she’s rail-thin and it gives her a sort of elfin quality.
Her short, light brown hair flops over one eye. The tips of it are dyed blackish-purple. A thin silver hoop hugs the right side of her lower lip.
“What?” she demands when I don’t answer.
I shuffle my feet, glancing from her to the ground to the sky and back to her.
“Where are you from?” she asks suddenly.
“Me?”
She gives me a look that tells me how stupid she thinks that question is.
“Uh…Baltimore. In Maryland.”
“I know where Baltimore is. Why are you in Blackthorn Peak?”
I ignore that loaded question.
She raises one brow. “Avoid much?”
“Nope.” Yep.
“There must be a reason you’re here. This isn’t a place people come to visit.”
Glancing around, I shrug and attempt a why not expression. “It’s not so bad.”
“Yes, it is so bad.”
“Why?”
“Because this is a town where people come to die.”
“What?”
“Why are you here?” She suddenly seems angry.
“Why are you so aggressive?”
Her lip curls. “This is not aggressive.”
“Don’t get out much or haven’t you learned any social graces yet?”
She looks like she’s going to throat punch me. I throw up my hands, hoping to placate her. “I needed—I mean, wanted—to get out of town for a bit, so I came here.”
“Why?”
“Damn, you’re pushy. It’s nothing. Something happened back home, and I wanted some space.” Something about the blatant way she stares at me loosens my lips.
“You got in trouble.”
“Why do you care?”
After a moment, her eyebrow raises again, spectacular in its arching ability.
“Fine. There was a problem with my stepdad.”
“What kind of problem?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Harsh.”
I shrug.
“What happened?”
The memory of burning ash fills my nostrils as if the fire is still there, raging in front of me in real time.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
“Then why did you come here?”
I shrug.
“Tell me.”
Her directness disarms me, and I don’t know why. I’m used to confrontation. But there’s something about those grey eyes, or maybe I’m delirious from hunger, but her demand makes me speak against the nagging of better judgment.
“There was a fire.”
“Did you set it?”
“Of course not.” You better believe it.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
She puts a fingernail between her teeth and nibbles the edge. “You have family here?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Who?”
My molars grind together. Mom told me to stay at the cabin. Why didn’t I listen?
“I’m waiting…”
“My grandfather.”
“Hmm.” If she notices that I deliberately do not give his name, she doesn’t say.
Just then a vehicle pulls onto the grounds, and she starts speed walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she says over her shoulder.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but there is a small cottage just behind and to the right of the asylum, tucked up against the forest. It looks like that’s where she’s heading.
I turn toward the sound of the vehicle rolling over the gravel driveway, and I resist the urge to run after Cass. If the driver is paying attention, he’ll see me move. Maybe if I stand still, I won’t be seen. I almost missed seeing Cass standing here, so it’s possible. But the truck doesn’t slow and veers left just after passing under the arch. It heads toward the other building at the left end of the asylum. I glance at the cottage, and see Cass enter it, then close the door quickly behind her. She disappears inside like she never existed.
I dart across the lawn after her, something nagging at me, making my hunger all but forgotten. It’s odd that this girl is here in this isolated area. Seemingly alone.
As I pass through the asylum’s shadow, I shiver. It feels as if the temperature drops by ten degrees. I slide to a stop on the front porch of the cottage.
The little home is made from the same stone as the asylum, and it appears to be constructed from the leftovers. The roof is thatched and reminds me of a hobbit house. The shutters are reddish-brown, rounded at the top, and look like they haven’t seen a paint brush in forever. Heavy iron fixtures decorate the doorknob, the shutters, and the porch light that flickers on and off, reminding me of a torch, even though the sun beats a clear beam to it.
I stare at the heavy-iron knocker in the shape of a snarling dragon’s head. I can see it in some horror or medieval movie in my mind’s eye.
I knock.
Cass yanks the door open. “You can’t be here. That was Cyrus pulling in.”
“Who’s Cyrus?”
“My father.”
“You can’t have visitors?”
She lifts to her toes to peer over my shoulder. Seeming satisfied that the truck had disappeared around the far side of the asylum, her heels return to earth. “No. I can’t. If I were you, I’d get off this property. Want some more advice? Get the hell out of this town.”
“Why?”
“I told you. It’s where people come to die.”
As if summoned by her words, a large gray cloud slides over the sun, darkening the grounds.
“You don’t scare me. Trust me, it’ll take more than that.”
