Excavation

Chapter 26

Audra stepped softly from the cafe just as dark was falling—she was leaving a little later than usual tonight. Jake had stayed for a long time looking over the books, that gun he’d gotten from Charlie Simpson lying at his feet like some stretched-out snake. It scared her, and she started to tell him she didn’t think he should have a gun in a public restaurant, but the look that suddenly came over his face stopped her. She knew there was no use talking to him. He’d been drinking all day and yet had this intense, clear, and dark-eyed look. She’d never seen him like that before; it was as if he were burning up the liquor as fast as he could consume it, with whatever it was he was holding down inside.

Now and then he would glance up at her irritably, sometimes asking her a question or two. She couldn’t tell why he was asking the questions—Is that amount right? or I thought Bobby Waters ate lunches here on Wednesdays? or When did we raise the price on the sausages? Maybe he was just trying to make her feel uneasy. But she was fed up; it was making her angry instead.

No customers came in those last few hours. Audra had seen a few stop in front of the door, peer in at Jake with the papers spread everywhere and that big gun at his feet, and turn away. Finally, a few minutes ago, he had just shoved all the papers into a grocery sack, picked up the gun, and carried it all out to the car without even bothering to say good night.

Normally she wouldn’t be out on the street this time of night, not since the bear came. But she’d grown to enjoy her early evening strolls, and she wasn’t about to let her brother-in-law cheat her out of one of them. She pulled the front door closed and breathed in the cool night air. She started to walk, but held herself in front of the door a moment longer. Her secret admirer… in her hassle with Jake she’d almost forgotten him.

Audra scanned the gray buildings. It was so dark she couldn’t see the corners very well, couldn’t know if someone was hiding, watching her. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that at all.

She stared at each corner she could see of the old hotel. The shadows were dark there, but she thought she’d at least be able to detect any movement if she concentrated enough.

The straight lines of the building wavered as she gazed at it, the wind bending the trees and distorting the shadows, as if she were seeing the building through water. She felt a vague unease in the pit of her stomach and looked away. She studied the dark planes of Charlie Simpson’s store—now where was he? He was always open this time of day—and the empty sidewalk in front of Ben Taylor’s. Nothing. Not a soul around. She felt almost desperate to move, to find someone else tonight, and after a few more moments she was walking down the street and staring at shadows, before she’d even realized it.

Daddy brought me up to be a baby, she thought. Silly goose. Crazier than Doris.

The creaking made her stop the first time. The oddest sort of creaking: it didn’t sound like wood or metal or leather or anything else she could think of. She stared at the buildings across the way, up on the slab. Empty. The wind was picking up, but there were no loose signs to swing or unsecured doors. Maybe it was the buildings themselves creaking, maybe…

Gray light illuminated the slab. And she thought… but it couldn’t be. She slowed her walk but the illusion didn’t alter. The slab seemed to be shifting on its own, being moved, perhaps, by the wind. She stopped and stared at it. The illusion still remained. Creaking.

She began to walk faster. A door banged behind her and she was running.

And stopped just as suddenly. She wouldn’t be pushed around like this, she wouldn’t be… frightened. She turned and everything was still again. Silly goose… a trick of the light.

She decided to take the dirt path that ran behind the stores on the slab, and up around the shacks abandoned by the Nole Company, falling down and filling with dirt and fungus and rot. Lovely image… She shook herself. She’d always been too afraid to take that path at night, and everybody was always warning their kids away from those old shacks.

But she wasn’t going to be scared like this. She was going to fight it.

She rounded the path between Ben Taylor’s store and his house, walking briskly, keeping her eyes steadily on the path ahead. The trees bent around her, and a breeze soft as cool breath moved past.

A large patch of darkness seemed to shift… somewhere… as she passed the back of Charlie Simpson’s store.

She stopped and looked around. Charlie’s fence was still down from the bear attack; apparently he didn’t have the heart to fix it. The place seemed abandoned with Buck not there. It made the whole hillside a bit ominous.

The shadow again. Her hair lifted in the gust and suddenly curtained her face. She cried out and tried to move forward, stumbling through a thistle patch. She thought she might cry.

A lower bough of one of the maples bordering the line of shacks bent low to the ground, then up again, making the shadow. She gasped in relief.

And then knew someone was there, standing in the darkened yard where Buck had been torn apart.

She waited with her arms slightly raised. It would move soon, she thought, and then she’d know whether it was a man, a boy, a woman, or just another shadow under the trees.

But even after five long minutes she did not know. Faint silver spots shone like eyes, and always in the same position, but disappeared again too quickly.

And each time the spots made her colder.

Pieces of paper blew past, plastering her legs and feet like oddly shaped phantoms. Someone’s dog had probably emptied the family garbage… or some other animal had been feeding there.

More and more garbage drifting around her feet, flowing slowly, like a tide. The wind seemed to be moving it in a straight line down the path. She moved her feet, trying to get away from it, but it stuck to her shoes and stockings. She was afraid, and shook her feet, but the garbage refused to let go.

She imagined the garbage rising higher, sweeping her along with it as it descended the valley. She tried to move out of the path, but the garbage seemed to block her.

She’d missed the flood, too. Just like Reed Taylor.

And just as suddenly the wind died, leaving a sediment of debris covering the length of the path. None of it spoiled the grass and weeds on both sides. She stared into the dark behind Charlie’s store, but there were no silver spots anymore. The wind rose up again, as if it were ascending from the ground. Tall grass bowed in waves, showing silver backs, then darker green fronts. She shuddered, and realized the uneasiness that had been building in her since she had left the cafe. She brushed the hair back from her face and gazed up into the gathering thunderheads, silver outlines flashing now and then with no sound. Perhaps it would rain and wash away her anger.

The vegetation appeared to be charged, the darkness full of anger and static. If her secret admirer revealed himself now, she knew she would have nothing to do with him.

She continued her walk hurriedly, crossing under the maples and ascending the short hill. Both sides of the path were lined with broken-down shacks. It was hard to think, now, of people living here. It must have been awful—always dust or mud.

The shacks leaned uncomfortably together. If one fell, it would take several others down with it. She could see where other shacks had fallen together in previous years, reduced to piles of rotting kindling. People lived here. Children played.

A faint voice… a cat crying behind the long drab faces of wood. Louder, and it sounded like no cat she had ever heard. Close to the sound a cat might make when in pain, but not quite.

There was a baby here, trapped in one of the shacks.

A snapping of boards. A roof shifting ever so slightly. The quick and shocking smell of decay suddenly released.

The outline of… something moved somewhere to her left. She turned slightly and an off-center gray door swung out like a broken jaw.

She stared for a while at the pile of mildewed furniture and discarded clothing inside, then continued up the hill, keeping maximum distance between herself and the lines of shacks on both sides.

A building settled, then a piece of tin fell, echoing. And then a cry, a young child’s whimper, lost and afraid…

Silly goose…

She stepped past a sighing building that suddenly moved out, toward her, reaching with its swinging door and gaping windows. She screamed and ran, and the building fell into the pathway behind her, as if it had been pushed. Shadows moved crazily in the darkness behind where the building had been, the dust swirled up in plumes and waves, but she could see no more. The wind was stronger now; it must have been the wind. She was unsafe among the abandoned shacks now because of the strong wind.

The crying again, lifted by the wind, traveling past her. No doubt, no doubt at all. She had to find the child.

She opened one door, then another. Gaping holes in roof and floors, dust and rotted belongings. Rats scurrying in the far corners.

Something falling. She opened each door carefully, and still things fell, creaked, moaned. The cry again, and then again. She was in a panic now, and jerked the doors open, and more and more things fell to disrupt the layers and layers of dust, rot, mildew, grime. She bit her lip as rats and mice scurried out, as bats took wing, as tiny animals snarled in the dark corners.

A little child in one of these places, one of these awful places.

Then she opened one door to black silence. And a piece of the black stirred, and moved. Scrambled across the dark floor. And cried with a hollow sound.

She ran in and there were silver places where eyes might be, and teeth.

He rose up, her secret admirer, with hair only distinguishable because it was darker than the surrounding dark. Dark clothes and skin with no highlights. He turned to her in the shadows and she smelled an ancient, stagnant damp smell.

Teeth gleaming… the only light.

And his size… slight or medium build?… she thought of all the men in the area and found only one who might fit. She started to say his name when he reached for her.

Damp hands and fetid breath.

She pushed and ran, stumbling over beams and something soft and moist as she broke through the door, stepping over the warped gray boards of the shack that had collapsed next door. And still he whimpered behind her.

Why, he’s just a little boy, she thought, still running, her mind racing with fear and whatever reassurances it could assemble out of the shadows, a lost little boy.

Then she heard the hiss, and jumped when the lightning exploded over Big Andy. But an angry, hateful little boy, too, she thought, and felt the anesthetizing dampness even before it began to rain. An old, rich hate. The hard raindrops loosened the tight skin of her face and she began to cry, her lips distorting, hands clenched.

“I’ve done nothing to you!” she screamed, running as hard as she could for the cafe, thinking she might never escape this rain.