Bad Things (48 page)

full of terror. I didn’t even know if he could swim.

Brooke’s foot came jackknifi ng down, kicking at Tyler’s head.

Her brain evidently worked fast enough to have decided this would

do as a backup plan.

I kept hold of Tyler’s wrist and used my other arm and both legs

to drive us deeper, away from her and down into the dark. As he came

closer toward me I saw his cheeks bulging, and hoped that meant he

had air stored inside.

Brooke’s foot lashed into my face across the bridge of my nose,

and then we were down and out of reach. I felt the blood pouring out

of my face and a sudden warmth and a metallic taste.

I pulled Tyler closer toward me until I had him fast under one

arm, still kicking, driving us as far from the jetty as I could, back into

the lake.

Suddenly my head was above water. Tyler’s came up with it, and I

shouted at him to breathe. His mouth opened just before I sank again,

his weight and fl oundering pulling me back under.

My vision was obscured by the blood clouding up out of my nose,

but as I tried to right us both and claw back up it seemed as though ar-

eas of shadow and light swirled within the water, as if it was disturbed

more than could be accounted for by my movement. It was the coldest

thing I have ever felt in my life, cold and hopeless, cold with the heavy

resignation of those who have already left. I felt as if the center of the

earth was pulling us down toward it, or as if we were being pushed

from above, and as we fl oated deeper it was as if others fell alongside

us. But I did not want to go deeper with them. Not now, not ever. I

B A D T H I N G S 355

kicked viciously down with both feet, feeling as if I was fi ghting sleep,

as if hands were grasping and pulling at my face, their nails scoring

lines in my cheeks. I kicked again, and kept kicking, lashing out with

my free arm, pushing up.

Then we broke the surface again, and this time I was ready for it

and already kicking toward the jetty. Brooke was well ahead of me,

pulling herself up onto the shore, shouting at Cory—who turned

smartly and pointed the rifl e at my head.

I dropped quickly under the surface again, kicked to the side, and

then pulled us up to break the surface once more.

Carol seemed frozen on the jetty, unable to move in any direction

at all.

“Cory, do it now!”

Brooke was jabbing her fi nger in my direction, her voice barely

audible against the wind pulling the snow around like a whirlwind. It

would have been beautiful but for the likelihood I was about to die,

and were it not that the movement of the air contained within it the

source of the smell that had been at the back of my head for the last

two days. It was not cinnamon or anything like it, but an odor so

rank that the brain was forced to try to invent a new category, to call

it anything but what it was.

I desperately kicked out again with both feet and lunged toward

the end of the jetty, trying to put a physical barrier between us and

the gun. Cory was meanwhile moving the rifl e around, panning it,

trying to get a clear line of sight through the snow.

Brooke kept screaming, telling him to do it, do it now.

Tyler was clinging on to me, his head over my shoulder, and I felt

him stiffen at the same time as I heard a clear, fl at cracking sound.

Carol screamed.

I kept pushing forward, not knowing what else to do, and finally got

one hand onto the lowest rung of the remains of the ladder at the end

356 Michael Marshall

of the jetty. Tyler was kicking and crying now and all I could tell was

that it wasn’t his head that had been hit, because he was holding it bolt

upright and no blood was fl owing from it, or parts missing, at least

that I could see.

I tried to fi nd something down below to brace my feet against,

but I was losing the feeling in my legs and there didn’t seem to be

anything beneath us in the water. I shifted Tyler higher up my chest

so his weight kept him on me, and grabbed the other rail with my left

hand, feeling the muscles in both arms howl as I used everything I

had left to pull us up out of the water.

Tyler was screaming now, too, but the screams didn’t seem to be

sounds of pain. His fi ngers were digging into my back, and when I

turned my head I saw he was staring at something over my shoulder.

I pulled us up another rung and tried to blank out everything

except the idea of getting up a further step after that, tried to fade out

the wind and the sound the trees were making—tried most of all to

blank out the smell. I couldn’t tell now whether it was coming from

the lake, the trees, or out of the earth, or out of myself. It was what

envelops your soul as it lies in the grave, the odor of your own body

rotting around you. It was what would remain if you killed every liv-

ing thing, and left behind only what lay between the trees in these

mountains, and swam in its lakes, and could not be seen.

One more rung and fi nally I was able to get a foothold, and push

myself up the last few steps.

As my head drew above the level of the jetty fl oor I saw Cory

lying fl at on his face on the snowy ground, a couple of yards from

where he’d been holding his position. Brooke was crouched over him,

cradling his head in her arms, making a sound I cannot describe.

Beyond them stood Marie, shouting furiously at another fi gure that

had appeared at the other end of the jetty.

It was Kristina. She was holding Bill’s gun.

As I fell down onto the planking I saw Carol backing away, toward

B A D T H I N G S 357

the land. I thought at fi rst she was looking at me, but then I realized

she was staring at whatever Tyler had been screaming at, something

that still lay behind me.

I gently prized Tyler’s fi ngers from my neck, and bent down to

put him down on the deck.

“Go to Mommy,” I said.

He stared at me, too scared to do anything. I remembered how to

smile at someone that small.

“Go on,” I said, fi nally loving him. “Go to her.
Now
.”

He hesitated, took a step backward, and then turned and ran

down the jetty like a memory fading.

When he’d made it to Carol, Kristina came walking past them

toward me. She looked exhausted, and nauseous, and I realized far

too late that although she was much thinner and taller and had dyed

her hair to cover the red, it was Kristina that Marie had just reminded

me of: and that she now looked as bowed over and spent as the motel

owner had the day I checked in.

“Don’t look around,” Kristina said as she approached. “Don’t do

it yet.”

My back felt burning hot now. My face was so cold it had lost all

feeling, but the other side of my body and head felt like I was inches

from the sun.

Kristina stopped when she was a couple of feet away. She reached

up and ran a fi ngernail along each of the scratches that I could now

feel throbbing over my face.

“It’s the best I can do,” she said, her voice full of sorrow. “I’m

sorry. I’m new to this.”

She started walking backward, and she, too, looked like she was

being pulled away, back into a dream of which I was no longer a

part.

“Look now,” she said, fi nally.

358 Michael Marshall

I turned.

I felt a thing that had been here for a long, long time, for whom

this was both home and body, something that was in every tree, in

the wind and mud, which sounded in every echo and which fell with

every fl ake of snow, something that informed every deed done, every

secret hidden, each act untaken, and every word said beneath these

skies.

I knew I’d heard its voice before on bad mornings, and mutter-

ing in my ears in the dead parts of the worst nights. I know it had

helped my fi nger pull triggers years ago, moved my mouth when I

had said yes on evenings when I should have not—or perhaps that the

relationship ran in two directions, and that when I had done these

things, I had been feeding it. I knew it smelled my blood now and

recognized it, and I understood that I had perceived it as a smell only

because my senses did not know what else to do with their shocked

knowledge of this creature’s presence, because it was a thing I could

not see or touch and that was always beyond hitting or fi ghting or

pushing away. So I didn’t try.

I let it come in through my mouth and nose, breathed it deep,

knowing that was the only way to stop it getting past me to reach

those who stood behind. Everything under the sun follows the path

of least resistance. Water fl ows down. People commit easy sins. And

this thing came into the person that was closest to it, in space and

character, and that person was me.

For an instant everything around me seemed darker, as if all dif-

ference had faded away and everything in creation overlapped to oc-

cupy the same space. I realized that events that could have happened

a hundred years ago were still very close, and also that this present

night would remain here, a heartbeat away from every night, for all

time: that if any future person stood on this jetty, I would be right

here by their side, and they would turn away, disturbed. I heard the

noise of bears and mountain lions and creatures that had lived in

these woods much longer ago and whose bones we had still not even

B A D T H I N G S 359

found. I heard the sound of horses and logging and settlers banging

nails to make walls in cabins that were now rotted and fallen away.

And I saw once again the fi gures that I had dreamed of meeting in

the woods the night before, but now they seemed to be standing at

the very end of the jetty, their backs to me. Two adult size, and three

small, dripping wet.

Behind me, in what remained of the here and now, I was dimly

aware of the sound of Brooke Robertson, of her screams of grief, and

felt bitter triumph. Otherwise there was only the wood beneath my

feet and the smell now sunk deep into my bones.

And then the figures at the end were gone.

The lake seemed to fade back behind the curtain of falling snow,

to fl atten down from being a wall into its usual horizontal position.

I found I could turn from it, as if it was no longer pulling me, and

looked back along the jetty instead, toward the land.

All the people who had stood in front of the trees had disap-

peared—so completely that I wondered if they’d ever really been

there at all, or if they were merely the souls who were in thrall to

the Robertsons and the power they somehow brokered on the town’s

behalf. Carol was holding Tyler in her arms, their heads so close to-

gether that they seemed fused into one.

Marie had gone. Kristina was sitting by the side of the lake, vom-

iting, her head in her hands, looking as if her back was broken.

The only person looking at me was Brooke.

She pulled herself away from her brother’s body, and straightened

up, a pistol in her hand. Something about the ease with which she

gripped it told me that she was the better shot of the family.

She walked onto the jetty until she was halfway along. Her stride

was steady and her head held high, and I could see in her face every

good, strong quality that had pulled men and women across thousands

of miles to live in places like these. I also saw there everything that

360 Michael Marshall

had subsequently been given up, and lost, and sacrifi ced, to keep on

living in the face of the cold and the mountains and rain and the bad

things that wanted only to live here in solitude, and which dreamed

long, slow dreams of wiping our kind from the face of the earth.

As she started to raise the gun, I heard a voice.

“That’s enough, Brooke.”

She and I turned our heads together, to see Sheriff Pierce coming

out of the woods alone. The rifl e he held was not pointed at me, but

at her.

“That’s enough,” he repeated. “We’re not doing this again.”

She lowered the gun slowly. Seemed to glance at Carol for a mo-

ment, or perhaps not at her, but at the child she held in her arms.

She turned back to me and smiled what appeared to be an ut-

terly genuine smile, for a moment looking like a teenager, a young

girl with things to do and every happiness to hold, the beautiful new

generation of a family that had always been blessed.

Then she tucked the barrel of the gun under her chin, and pulled

the trigger.

C H A P T E R 4 7

A year ago, before any of this happened, I remembered something

from my childhood. I was in my midteens and my mother was doing

stuff in the kitchen in the ordered and correct way she had, while

I sat at the table and cranked through homework. Dad was doing

something outside. The radio was playing, serving up this song and

that, and eventually one I didn’t recognize came on and it wasn’t my

kind of thing and so I reached out to change the station.

I stopped when I saw my mother. She was standing by the sink,