Déjà Dead (21 page)

I unhooked the lock, pulled the rest of the chain through the bars, and stared at them both. The wind had stopped during my labors, leaving an unsettling hush. The quiet pounded on my ears.

I looped the chain over the right gate, and pulled the left one toward me. The hinges seemed to scream in the void left by the wind. No other sound breached the silence. No frogs. No crickets. No distant train whistles. It was as if the universe were holding its breath, awaiting the storm’s next move.

The gate moved grudgingly and I passed through, easing it closed behind me. I followed a roadbed, my shoes making soft crunching sounds on the gravel. I kept the light roving from the road to the thicket of trees on each side. After ten yards I stopped and directed the beam upward. The branches, ominously still, were interlaced in an arch above my head.

Here’s the church. Here’s the steeple. Great. My mind had switched to children’s rhymes. I was shivering from tension and wound up with enough energy to repaint the Pentagon. You’re losing it, Brennan, I warned myself. Think about Claudel. No. Think about Gagnon and Trottier and Adkins.

I turned to my right and swept the beam as far as it would reach, allowing it to linger briefly on each of the trees bordering the road. They marched along in endless rank. When I did the same on my left, I thought I saw a narrow break about ten yards up.

I kept the beam focused on that spot and crept forward. What looked like a gap wasn’t. The trees didn’t break rank, yet the place looked different somehow, disturbed. Then it struck me. It wasn’t the trees, it was the underbrush. The ground cover was sparse and patchy, and the vines and creepers looked stunted compared with those nearby. Like a clearing partly overgrown again.

They’re younger, I thought. More recent. I shone the light in all directions. The undersized vegetation seemed to flow in a narrow strip, like a stream meandering through the trees. Or a path. I gripped the flashlight tighter and followed the diversion. As I took my first step, the storm broke.

The steady drizzle gave way to a sudden torrent, and the trees burst into motion, leaping and diving like a thousand kites. Lightning flashed and thunder responded, over and over, like demon creatures seeking each other. Snap. Where are you? Boom. Over here. The wind returned with full fury, driving the water sideways.

Water soaked my clothes and plastered my hair to my head. It streamed down my face, blurred my vision, and stung the abrasion on my cheek. Blinking, I tucked some loose hair behind my ears and ran a hand over my eyes. I pulled out a shirttail and held it over the flashlight to try to keep the water from getting inside the casing.

Hunching my shoulders, I edged up the path, oblivious of everything beyond the ten-foot diameter of my pale yellow beacon. I swung the beam back and forth across the path, allowing it to probe the woods on either side, like a dog on a leash, sniffing and poking its way along.

In about fifty feet I spotted it. Looking back, I realize that an instant synapse occurred, that in a nanosecond my brain linked the visual input of the moment to a past experience recently stored. At some level of awareness I knew what I was seeing before my conscious mind developed the picture.

As I closed in and the beam teased its find from the covering darkness, recognition broke the surface. I could taste my stomach contents in my throat.

In the wobbling shaft of light I saw a brown plastic garbage bag poking through the dirt and leaves, its open end twisted and tied back unto itself. The knot rose from the earth like a sea lion surfacing for air.

I watched rain pound down on the bag and the surrounding soil. The water nibbled at the edges of the shallow burial, turning the dirt to mud and slowly but persistently uncovering the hole. I could feel a weakness at the back of my knees as more of the bag was exposed.

A flash of lightning snapped me out of my reverie. I jumped more than stepped toward the bag, and bent down to examine it. Tucking the flashlight back into my jeans, I grabbed the knotted end of the bag and pulled. It was still buried too deep to budge. I tried to undo the knot, but my wet fingers got a poor grip on wet plastic. It wouldn’t give. I placed my nose close to the sealed opening and inhaled. Mud and plastic. No other smell.

I made a small perforation in the bag with my thumbnail and sniffed again. Though faint, the odor was identifiable. The sweet, fetid smell of rotted flesh and damp bone. Before I could decide on flight or fury, a twig snapped and I sensed movement behind me. As I tried to leap sideways, lightning flashed inside my head, sending me plunging back into that pharaoh’s tomb.

I
HADN’T BEEN THIS HUNGOVER IN A VERY LONG TIME
. A
S USUAL
, I was too sick to remember much. When I moved, harpoons of pain shot into my brain and forced me to be still. I knew if I opened my eyes I’d vomit. My stomach also recoiled at the thought of motion, yet I had to get up. Above all, I was cold. My body was gripped by a chill that had taken over its core. I began to shake uncontrollably, and thought I needed another blanket.

I sat up with my eyes still tightly shut. The pain in my head was so fierce I retched up a small quantity of bile. I lowered my head to my knees and waited for the nausea to pass. Still unable to open my eyes, I spit the bile into my left hand, and felt for my comforter with my right.

Through the throbbing and shivering, I began to realize I wasn’t in my bed. My groping hand encountered twigs and leaves. That got my eyes open, pain or no pain.

I was sitting in a wood, in wet clothes and covered with mud. The ground around me was littered with leaves and small branches, and the air was heavy with the smell of earth and things that would become earth. Above me I could see a latticework of branches, their dark, spidery fingers intertwining against a black velvet sky. Behind them, a million stars flickered through the leafy cover.

Then memory logged in. The storm. The gates. The path. But how had I come to be lying here? This was not a hangover night, only a parody of one.

I ran an exploratory hand over the back of my head. A knob the size of a lime was palpable beneath my hair. Great. Bashed twice in one week. Most boxers are punched less often.

But
how
had I been bashed? Had I tripped and fallen? Had a tree limb struck me? The storm had been churning things up pretty well, but no large branches lay next to me. I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be gone.

Fighting back nausea, on my hands and knees I fumbled for the flashlight. I found it half buried in mud, wiped it clean, and flicked the switch. Amazingly, it worked. Controlling my trembling legs, I stood and more fireworks exploded in my head. I braced myself against a tree and retched again.

The taste of bile filled my mouth and triggered more questions by my consciousness. When did I eat? Last night? Tonight? What time is it? How long have I been here? The storm had ended and stars emerged. And it was still night. And I was freezing. That’s all I knew.

When the abdominal contractions stopped, I straightened slowly and played the flashlight around me, looking for the path. The beam dancing across the ground cover tripped another cognitive wire. The buried bag. The burst of memory brought with it a wave of fear. I gripped the flashlight tighter, and turned a complete rotation, assuring myself that no one was behind me. Back to the bag. Where had it been? Recall was creeping back, but in still frames. I could see the bag in my mind, but couldn’t fix a location on the ground.

I probed in the adjacent vegetation searching for the burial. My head pounded and nausea kept rising in my throat, but there was nothing left, and the dry heaving made my sides ache and my eyes tear. I kept stopping and bracing against a tree, waiting for the spasms to subside. I noted crickets warming up for a post-storm gig, and their music had the feel of gravel sucked into my ears and dragged across my brain.

The bag was not ten feet away when I finally found it. Shaking so I could hardly hold the flashlight steady, I saw it as I remembered, though with more plastic exposed. A moat of rainwater circled its perimeter, and small pools had collected in the folds and creases of the bag itself.

In no condition to recover it, I just stood staring. I knew the scene had to be processed correctly, but was afraid someone might disturb it, or remove the remains before a unit could get there. I wanted to cry in frustration.

Oh, there’s a good idea, Brennan. Weep. Maybe someone will come and rescue you.

I stood, trembling from cold and whatever, trying to think but my brain cells not cooperating, slamming their doors and refusing all callers. Phone it in. That thought got through.

I identified the borders of the brushy path and picked my way out of the woods. Or hoped I was. Couldn’t remember coming in and had only a vague notion of the way out. My sense of direction had left with my short-term memory. Without warning, the flashlight died, and I was plunged into the near darkness of filtered starlight. Shaking the flashlight did not help, nor swearing at it.

“Shit!” At least I tried.

I listened for some audible direction finder. All I heard were crickets from every direction. Chirping in the round. That wouldn’t work.

I tried to distinguish shadowy small growth from shadowy larger growth, and crept forward in the direction my face was pointing. As good a plan as any. Unseen branches grabbed my hair and clothing, and vines and creepers tugged at my feet.

You’re off the path, Brennan. This stuff’s getting thicker.

I was deciding which way to veer when one foot met air and dropped off the earth. I followed it forward, landing hard on my hands and one knee. My feet were trapped, and my forward knee pressed against what felt like loose earth. The flashlight had flown from my hand and jarred to life when it hit the ground. It had tumbled and was now casting an eerie yellow glow back toward me. I looked down and saw my feet disappearing into a tight, dark space.

My heart in my throat, I clawed my way out and scrambled toward the light, sideways like a crab on a beach. Pointing the beam to where I’d fallen, I saw a small crater. It gaped fresh and raw, like an unhealed wound in the earth. Loose dirt rimmed its perimeter and gathered in a small mound behind it.

I shone the light into the opening. It was not large, perhaps two feet across and three feet deep. In my stumbling, I planted a foot too close to the rim, sending a stream of soil dribbling into the pit. Like Grape-Nuts pouring from a box, I thought. They joined those I’d dislodged by my fall.

I stared at the soil as it collected in a small heap at the bottom of the hole. Something about it. Then realization. The dirt was practically dry. Even to my scrambled brain the inference was clear. This hole had either been covered, or dug since the rain.

An involuntary tremor seized me, and I wrapped my arms across my chest for warmth. I was still soaking and the storm had left cold air in its wake. The arm movement didn’t really warm me, and drew the light away from the pit. I unfolded my arms and readjusted the beam. Why would someone . . .

The real question slammed home, making my stomach recoil like a .45 caliber pistol.
Who?
Who had come here to dig, or empty, this hole? Is he, or she, here now? That thought jolted me into action. I spun and swept the flash around in a 360. A geyser of pain vented in my head and my heartbeat tripled.

I don’t know what I expected to see. A slathering Doberman? Norman Bates with his mother? Hannibal Lecter? A George Burns god in a baseball cap? None of them showed. I was alone with the trees and the creepers and the star-pierced darkness.

What I did see in the rotating light was the path. I left the fresh hole and staggered back to the half-buried bag. I kicked a blanket of leaves over it. The crude camouflage wouldn’t fool the person who brought it there, but it might conceal the bag from casual eyes.

When satisfied with my ground cover, I took the can of insect repellent from my pocket and jammed it into the fork of an adjacent tree as a marker. Moving down the path, I tripped on weeds and roots and barely kept my feet. My legs felt as if they’d been deadened with drugs, and I moved in slow motion.

At the junction of the path with the roadbed, I stuck each of my gloves into a tree fork, and plunged on toward the gate. I was sick and exhausted, and feared I might pass out. The adrenaline would soon give out, and collapse would come. When it did, I wanted to be elsewhere.

My old Mazda was parked where I’d left it. Looking neither left nor right, I stumbled headlong across the street, mindless of who might be waiting for me. Almost past feeling, I plunged my hands into pocket after pocket, groping for keys. On finding them I cursed myself for carrying so many on the same ring. Shaking, cursing, and dropping the keys twice, I disentangled the car key, opened the door, and threw myself behind the wheel.

Locking the door, I draped my arms across the steering wheel and rested my head. I felt a need to sleep, to escape my circumstances by drifting out of them. I knew I had to fight the urge. Someone could be out there, watching me, deciding on a course of action.

Another mistake, I reminded myself, as my eyelids drifted toward each other, would be to just rest here a second.

My mind went into random scan. George Burns appeared again and said, “I’m always interested in the future. I plan to spend the rest of my life there.”

I sat up smartly and dropped my hands to my lap. The stab of pain helped clear my mind. I didn’t throw up. Progress.

“If you’re going to
have
a future, you’d better get your ass out of here, Brennan.”

My voice sounded heavy in the closed space, but it, too, helped orient me to the present reality. I started the engine, and the digits on the console clock glowed green: 2:15
A.M
. When had I set out?

Still shivering, I flicked the heat to high, though I wasn’t sure it would help. The chill I was feeling was only partly due to the wind and the night air. There was a deeper cold in my soul that would not be warmed by a mechanical heater. I pulled away without a backward glance.