“I thought he was awful.”
I remembered that one reflecting eye and wondered if Malachi wasn’t right, but I couldn’t make myself believe he was correct this time. “He’s different, and strange. But not awful. At least I don’t think so.”
“You must not have seen his eyes.”
“Not both of them exactly, no.”
We scrambled back to the car in time to duck away from incoming headlights. Thankfully, they did not stop for us—though they slowed long enough to make me worry. I had a feeling the driver was pausing for a cell phone call, or making a mental note to send out security later on.
I handed the flashlight to Malachi and made him train it on the badly battered wheel-well while I wielded the stick. I slid it between the tire and the dented metal; slowly, carefully so as not to destroy the stick or further damage the metal, I levered the rim away from the tire. When I was confident that the tire would not explode upon my first ninety-degree turn, I tossed the stick into the trees and unlocked the doors.
“Get in. Now.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. He yanked the door open and threw himself inside before I had time to offer him a rag or a towel to clean himself up with. I crawled into the driver’s seat and turned the key with a wish and a prayer.
The Death Nugget started up immediately and without incident.
I flicked the headlights on and noted that the right one aimed in an altogether incorrect direction, but that was better than if it were smashed. I accelerated slowly out of the grass and mud, sliding a tad but catching solid ground soon enough.
In a moment we were back on the road and trying to look innocuous.
We didn’t speak for five or ten minutes, and when we did it was all I could do not to start swearing at him.
“Why did you hit me?” he asked, tempting me to do it again.
“Because you didn’t follow directions.”
“It hurt.”
“It was supposed to hurt,” I grumbled back, even though it wasn’t true. I’d meant to stop him, not hurt him—and if one was a side effect of the other, then that was tough luck. “And don’t whine at me like I’ve done you some great wrong. I did drive all the way out here in the middle of the night to pick your ass up, and I have wrecked my car on your sorry behalf.”
“Your car’s not wrecked.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re driving it, aren’t you? The car’s not wrecked.”
“All the same”—I spied a sign that pointed to 27 and was greatly relieved to follow its winding ramp—“I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do when Lu and Dave get home. And you are really lucky they’re out of town right now.”
“Thanks for getting me, though. I know you didn’t have to. And I’m sorry about the car.” He leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. This was a man prepared to be yelled at. He was too pitiful for words.
“What are you—? Hey, put your seat belt on.”
He reached around himself and dragged the belt into place, fastening it by his left hip.
“What are you doing up here? Not just the Bend, but here—Tennessee. You’re supposed to be dead; and I’ve got to tell you, this isn’t the best of all possible places you could choose to lie low. People remember folks like you, you know.”
He didn’t say anything until we were on the bridge, headed out of town. I’d promised him a ride to the airport, and that was where I was taking him.
“I did it because you wouldn’t talk to me.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t. I waited, and he kept on talking.
“I needed to know some things, and I thought you could help me. But you wouldn’t talk to me, and I could only think of one other person who might know something.”
“Who?”
“Her name’s Kitty. She’s been in the Bend for twenty years, so I figured she’d still be there if I came up for a visit. She’s kind of like you. She sees things.”
The thought of that made me uncomfortable. “And that’s why she’s in the Bend?”
He shook his head. “Oh no—she’s in the Bend because she killed her sister’s two children. She thought they were possessed by the devil, so she drugged them and shut them in the garage with the car running and they died from the gas. That’s why she’s there. But also, she sees things.”
“Huh.”
“I met her when I was in the Bend after…well, a long time ago. I thought she could maybe tell me something if you wouldn’t.”
“What did you want to know about?”
“My mother.”
“Oh.” We both quit talking then. It took me a minute to work out all the sides of his quest, and when I did I felt like a heel.
Back in the swamp, Avery had implied very strongly that Malachi’s mother, Rachel, was dead. He’d all but said that she was the entity who roamed Pine Breeze, looking for her husband’s lover—my own mother. I couldn’t remember if he’d said it outright or if he’d only hinted, but either way Malachi wouldn’t have bought it without some investigation.
I couldn’t blame him, there. I’d want to know, too. I’d want someone to check it out for me, especially if I happened to be related to somebody who had a knack for chatting with the dead. And if that relative was uncooperative, I could certainly understand why he might reach for a surrogate psychic—even if it was someone like Kitty.
“I thought maybe,” he went on, rolling his forehead on the glass and leaving a crescent smudge of sweat and dirt, “maybe you could go up there to the old hospital and see if it’s her. You could tell me if she’s there. I need to know.”
There was no delicate way to handle the truth, but I gave him my own opinion as gently as I could. “You know that I’ve been there, and I met the…the ghost.” I didn’t have a better word for the vicious presence there, so I assigned it one he’d recognize. “The ghost mistook me for my mother, and then it got mad at me. It chased me away like it hated me, personally. I don’t think that it wants to hear from me again, whoever it once was; and I think that the odds are good that Avery was telling the truth. He had no reason to lie.”
“My mother didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“Lots of people don’t, and then they become one. I’ve found that the experience broadens their thinking somewhat.”
We drove on in silence for another mile.
“I don’t know if you’re aware or not,” I finally broached. “But Pine Breeze was torn down last year.”
“It was?”
“Yes. It’s gone—completely leveled. The paper said that nothing’s left but a few foundations, some stone walls, and the dirt roads that ran between them. For what it’s worth, I bet that whatever walked the Pine Breeze dormitories has probably gone too.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing left to haunt. If it was Rachel, then she probably left when they demolished the place.” I used her name because I couldn’t bring myself to call the thing at Pine Breeze his mother.
Then Malachi actually brought up an interesting point. “If she was looking for your mother,” he said slowly, “and she’s a ghost, how come she didn’t know your mother’s dead?”
I considered my conversation with Gary a day or two before, and had nothing better to offer Malachi than a quick rehash. “I guess it’s just because not everyone sticks around. Maybe my mom passed on, and Rachel stayed. I don’t know. But with the old sanitarium gone now, I can’t imagine that she’d remain there.”
At least I hoped not. It seemed too weird and miserable a fate to walk the same grounds for eternity, hunting for someone long gone who won’t return.
The thoughts rambling around in Malachi’s head came wandering out his mouth. “But if my mother’s dead, when did she die? Why didn’t I hear about it? Aunt Eliza said she ran off with a cult when I was a kid, but Mother used to send me stuff sometimes, every now and again. For the first few years, anyway.”
“Then what?” I asked. “Did it all stop at once, or did the contact taper off?”
He thought about it, then kind of shrugged. “Hard to say. It was always sporadic; sometimes she’d write or call more often than others. I remember once she sent me three letters and a package within a month…but then she’d go for a year or so and I wouldn’t hear from her.”
“So…” I started a sentence but lost the thought before I got too far. I was trying to think in too many different directions at once.
After a protracted delay on my part, he said, “So?”
“So we’re going to the airport.” I said it out loud in time to notice that I was about to miss the exit. Thank God it was late, and there wasn’t much traffic. I cut across two lanes and dashed up the ramp onto the proper strip of highway.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I was thinking, I mean, I was hoping that I could stay up here for a few days or something. Not with you,” he added quickly. “At a hotel room someplace. I only want to look around and see if I can’t find Mother, if that was her out there.”
“I told you, Pine Breeze is gone.”
“I know. I believe you. But you don’t know if it was her, or if she’s still there. You’re only guessing, and I really need to know. What if it is her? What if she’s stuck there and she doesn’t know she can leave? I could tell her, maybe. Maybe she’d recognize me. Maybe I could talk to her.”
I don’t know why it irked and surprised me that he’d be stubborn about it. It’s all anyone wants—from me or from the universe, or from fate, or whatever they want to call it. Everybody wants a second chance to say their piece to someone who’s beyond hearing it.