The Bones of Old Carlisle (17 page)

He’d come across his daughter’s apostasy by accident, and still
wished he hadn’t. She’d posted some things online, saying this and
that about God and Jesus, and he’d read them. But he didn’t dare ask
her to her face. He didn’t want to hear her answer.

As often as he’d differed with her over the last few years, he
didn’t want her to go to hell. If she went to hell – really, if anyone
he’d ever known went to hell, even Madame Homans – he didn’t see how
he could take any pleasure from heaven.

Danielle had befriended some Jewish kids in middle school, and
that had been her downfall, perhaps. “Daddy,” she’d say, “did you know
Jews believe thus and so?” and he’d just nod and say, “Well, that’s
different,” and that was it. He should have told her they were damned
wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about, but he
didn’t, and she figured out that people believed a lot of different
things that disagreed with one another, and when you learned that too
young, it set you awry. “Daddy, which one is right?” she’d ask him,
and then, no matter how he answered, she’d persist. “How do you know?”
He’d just say he was sure, but he wasn’t, because it was at a time in
his life when he was trying to work out the big questions himself.

So it was all his fault. And, if he had to be completely honest,
he still wasn’t sure about much. The difference between dogs and cats
didn’t make any sense to him if God made everything. Astrophysics
didn’t make any sense either. He kept thinking they’d find the face of
God out there, but all they kept finding were more laws, unbreakable
rules that didn’t require any management by anyone, deity or
otherwise. So people believed anything and everything, and none of it
was required to actually make the world go round or turn hydrogen and
oxygen into rain, and that didn’t make sense either.

Arrowroot stopped his ruminations and reminded himself sternly
that he needed to go back to church. It had been months, at least, or
more like a half year. Around the time everything went to hell and
stayed that way. Maybe that was why: lack of church.

Arrowroot returned to the present around him and noticed that the
rain had eased up.
“I’m gonna look,” he said abruptly, and he headed out of the room
and to the front door, careful not to step on the fading lines of
blood that the crawling half-man had left here months ago, or years
ago, or longer. He still suspected – or wanted to believe – that the
death happened in the Cronick days. Maybe that’s why they all checked
themselves into the crazy house. Fellas blowing up in your dining room
will do that to you.
“Wait up, Karl, let me come with,” Hatfield said.
Under a light drizzle, the two men left the Carlisle home, turned
left and stepped between the green flags toward a stand of oak trees
at the end of the driveway.
Ten feet from the first of the trees, Arrowroot stopped, turned
back toward the house, and then fell to his knees.
“Karl, you okay?” Hatfield asked, and he put his hand on
Arrowroot’s shoulder.
Arrowroot reached up, grabbed Hatfield’s hand between both of
his, and looked up. “That’s his shirt, Floyd.”
Hatfield looked at the ground under the trees. “Hard to tell what
it’s wearing. Let’s go back in, have Dr. Schaumberg come out and look
at him?”
“I don’t want that damned Jew touching him,” Arrowroot croaked,
releasing Hatfield’s hand, folding his arms.
“Or just send him it, send the remains back to base, have them
look at everything over there?” Hatfield continued nervously, and he
took a step closer to the trees. “Okay? We’re not going to be able to
tell anything out here. Karl, listen. We shouldn’t even be out here.
C’mon, Karl, let’s get back to town. Karl?”
Arrowroot stood, and then he pulled his leg back and swung it in
a huge, furious arc against a rusty piece of metal, most likely a car
part the Cronicks had dropped there more than 70 years ago, after they
stopped caring about things.
His foot missed, so he drew it back and kicked again, and the
metal crumbled, and he kept kicking until he’d dug a wet, dirty hole
six inches deep into the ground.
“Goddam,” he said, and he turned and stomped over to the trees
and the body that lay there in two pieces. He dropped to his knees
again, beside the upper half, beside the head, and reached out and
touched the hair and the shriveled, eyeless face of a young man who
had died about six months ago. Somewhere, among the oak leaves above
his head, the rain that had fallen was still being channeled through
the leaves, down to a single, heavy drop that fell every five seconds
against the corpse’s nose.
“Oh, God, they killed him, Floyd,” Arrowroot said, and his words
came out flat and quiet, almost a whisper. “This was his shirt. I
bought it for him two Christmases ago. Bought another one this year,
never got to give it to him. Bright red, bright red plaid. Looks black
on account of the rain.”
Arrowroot pivoted away from the body, sat in the wet grass and
pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Damn, looks like everyone in town’s been texting me and leaving
messages,” Arrowroot said. “Danielle, the newspaper, everyone. I never
heard it ring. Must have been out of range in the house.”
“Karl,” Hatfield said, and he knelt before Arrowroot and tried to
look into the mayor’s eyes.
“Give me some space, Floyd, gotta call Danielle,” Arrowroot said.
He punched a few buttons and put the phone up to his ear. “Hey, baby,
yeah. Still at the Carlisle place, yeah. Would you believe they let us
in? I mean, into the house? Place just like they left it, 70 years
ago. Can’t wait to tell you about it. Hey, hey, just slow down, slow
down. No, Robert’s not out here. No, he’s not. Yeah, there’s a whole
pile of bodies out here, terrible things, honey, terrible things. Wait
a minute.” Arrowroot buried his face in the crook of his arm and
coughed. “No, I’m fine. I told you, he ain’t out here. No. No. No, I
ain’t cryin’. I found his shirt though. Huh? Yeah, his shirt. No, he
wasn’t wearing it. Someone else was wearing it. I don’t know, a dead
man. A boy, more like. Another boy. I have no idea who he was. Dead.
Bomb or something. What? No, it wasn’t Robert. What? Danielle? Slow
down! Yeah, Floyd’s still out here. Yeah, he’s right here, sitting
next to me. What? What do you want to talk to him for?”
Hatfield reached out and Arrowroot handed him the phone and
turned back to look at the severed man. His lower half, wearing a pair
of jeans turned dark blue in the rain, had been deposited a few feet
further away, and something about the juxtaposition of upper and lower
halves triggered a memory in Arrowroot’s brain. He pulled Tamani’s map
out of his pocket, unfolded it shakily and realized the i and the u
she had drawn beside the trees were actually the two parts of the
severed man. The fact she had failed to label them as such, just made
them look like two letters, was a disappointment to Arrowroot.
Tamani had drawn the crystals near the dot at the top of the i,
so Arrowroot looked beside the corpse’s head and quickly found what
looked like two cubes of glass, each about two inches on a side. One
crystal was completely frosted inside. The other was half frosted and
half perfectly clear. He shoved the two pieces in one of the cargo
pockets along his shin and zipped it up.
Hatfield, phone to his ear, had moved about 20 paces away to talk
to Danielle, and he was walking in circles, gesturing but speaking too
quietly for Arrowroot to hear. Arrowroot looked toward the house.
Schaumberg and Stapleton were standing by the front door, watching him
but keeping their distance. He waved, wondered where Watell was,
looked for him and thought he had found his face in a second story
window. But it wasn’t Watell up there. It was someone else.
Arrowroot hopped to his feet, folded the map and put it in his
pocket, then headed for the house. At first it was just a determined
stride, but by the time he reached the front door, he was running,
barely slowing as he stormed inside.
“Corporal Watell!” he screamed. “Corporal Watell! He’s up there,
second floor! Murderer! Murderer!”
Arrowroot burst into the dining room. Watell was kneeling over
the box and the canned food, and he looked over at Arrowroot casually.
“He’s just looking down at me,” Arrowroot told him breathlessly.
“Window right up there, second floor. I saw his face, same as you did.
Let’s kill ‘im!”
“Whoa,” Watell replied. “Whoa, my man.”
“Shhh,” Arrowroot said, and in the silence, both men heard the
footsteps pounding along the upstairs hall.
Arrowroot dashed to the door that led toward the kitchen, threw
it open and looked up into the darkness of the cavernous central hall.
Above his head, he saw a dim figure racing along the second floor
landing.
“I see you!” Arrowroot cried. “You ain’t no ghost, you goddamned
liar!”
Watell joined Arrowroot in the darkness. Somewhere at the other
end of the hall, a door slammed and the hall went dark.
“Did you see ‘im?” Arrowroot asked. “Did you see ‘im?”
Watell said nothing, but Arrowroot could see his head in the
darkness, moving in a slow nod.
Everyone was back in the house now, Hatfield behind Arrowroot,
Shaumberg and Stapleton peering in from the dining room.
“You both saw him?” Hatfield asked, and he handed Arrowroot’s
phone back.
“He’s behind a door somewhere up there,” Arrowroot said.
“We’re gonna need light,” Stapleton announced. “Let’s get some of
these rooms opened up.”
Keeping a wary eye on the far end of the hall, Arrowroot began
feeling along the wall for more openings. There were a half dozen
doors lining the hall’s first floor, and within a minute, he and the
others had found them all. His earlier curiosity was gone. He noticed
beds and chairs and desks and bookshelves, but nothing behind any of
the doors interested him now.
A flight of stairs appeared in the gloom, and Watell hopped up
and repeated the procedure with a handful of doors on the second
floor, delivering what might have been the most light the hall had
seen in 70 years.
Watell, his M16 slung over his shoulder, did not go to the far
end of the hall to open doors. Instead, after he’d thrown open the
nearest rooms, he hopped back down the stair two at a time to consult
with Stapleton.
“He went through one of the doors up there,” he told her,
pointing to the darkest part of the space.
“Was he armed?” Stapleton asked.
“I don’t think so,” Watell replied. “He was moving pretty fast,
couldn’t have been carrying much.”
“We need backup,” Stapleton said.
“We don’t have time!” Watell insisted, quietly but urgently.
“What if there’s more than one?” Stapleton countered. “What if
he’s got weapons?”
“The longer we wait the more time he’s got to get ready for us,”
Watell argued. “Or the more time he’s got to leave. We gotta go in
there now.”
Stapleton, apparently feeling otherwise, grabbed her walkietalkie.
“Yeah, yeah, so you gonna ask Demizu for backup?” Watell hissed.
“He’s gonna drive over here with his whiteboard, make that sucker
upstairs watch him draw shit in colors till someone dies.”
“Okay, then, what do you propose we do?” Stapleton asked.
“Chief,” Watell said, “your gun loaded?”
“Yup,” Hatfield replied.
“Can you back me up?” Watell inquired.
“I’m here,” Hatfield promised.
“Okay, civilians—“ Watell pointed to Arrowroot and Schaumberg,
“civilians to the dining room, if you hear shooting, go back to the
tent.”
Arrowroot’s hand was shaking as he rested it against the door
frame. He let Schaumberg go first, smiling grimly at her, deeply
regretting what he’d said about her to Hatfield a few minutes ago.
Where had that come from? Surely she hadn’t heard him.
Arrowroot sat down, realizing he was exhausted and hungry. It was
almost 2 o’clock, but he felt like he’d been up for a week. He hung
his head and looked at the space between his feet.
“Are you okay?” asked Schaumberg, standing by the window.
“Oh, God,” Arrowroot moaned quietly, “nothing a huge lunch and a
couple days’ sleep won’t cure.”
From the hall, Arrowroot could hear more urgent whispers, too
quiet to make out the words or even tell who was speaking. He assumed
they were planning out the details of their assault. He watched his
fingers shake.
“Mr. Arrowroot, I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m Karl,” he said. What are you sorry for?”
The question seemed to surprise her. “Out there,” she said
awkwardly. “You found—”
“Oh, that dead fellow?” Arrowroot asked. “Don’t be sorry, no idea
who that was. Just wearing my son’s shirt is all. But— But it’s not—
You know, it’s not Robert. It’s not my son.”
Schaumberg was about to say something else, but the sound of
three pairs of feet thumping up the stairs silenced her. The thumping
seemed to go on a very long time, and Arrowroot looked at his hands
and noticed that they were balled into bloodless knots of skin and
bone.
There was a crash that seemed to shake the entire house, and then
Watell shouted what could only be described as a war cry, a sort of
“ahhh HAAAAA!” There was a moment of silence that seemed to last five
minutes, and then Watell, screaming commands: “Down on your face! Down
on your face! Show me your hands! No! Giddown! Goddammit, gonna put
holes in you! Back me up, he’s not doing it! Down! Down! DOWN!”
Another pause, and then Watell again: “Hands behind your back! Hands
behind your back!”
After another span of silence, Watell’s voice echoed through the
hall again, breathless but far calmer. “Sure, call the colonel, tell
‘im we got someone. Live this time.”
Arrowroot, propelled by a mixture of curiosity and rage, leaped
up, dashed into the hall and up the stairs.
No one seemed to notice him until he was standing next to
Hatfield, just a few feet from a strangely-dressed man lying face
down, his hands secured behind his back with plastic ties.

“This is headquarters base output,” Demizu said. “Outpost. What
have you?”
“We’ve apprehended a person of interest,” Stapleton replied.
“Male, maybe 20.”
“You found no such person,” said Demizu. “Didn’t happen.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Stapleton. “I’ll check back when we know more.”
She turned the device back off.
Hatfield helped Watell hoist the man to his feet. Where his face
had been against the floor, Arrowroot could see a puddle of blood, and
there was a circle of blood running from his nose to around his mouth.
“Got you, ya murderer!” Arrowroot exulted. “I told you he was
here. I saw him. I saw him!”
In the darkness, Arrowroot could tell only that the man was paleskinned and odd-looking, not too different from the man with the
broken neck downstairs. Wide-set eyes, wide mouth, thin eyebrows, nose
broad and flat, and a small chin. Must have the same parents,
Arrowroot thought, which means this bastard killed his own brother.
He was wearing a white one-piece garment that covered everything
except his hands and his face. The same sort of clothes were on some
of the dead people, Arrowroot noted, concluding that they all bought
their clothes from the same tailor.
The man was looking at Arrowroot with an expression that, because
of the darkness or something else, Arrowroot found impossible to read,
and that infuriated him further.
“So, you gonna explain all this?” Arrowroot demanded. “Why you
killed everyone?”
“That’s enough, Karl,” Hatfield said.
The man spoke for the first time. “Ga—,” he said. “Ga, ka, kar.”
He looked down, noticed the puddle of blood at his feet and smeared it
with his left toe. Then he shifted his weight to his right leg, bent
his left leg and looked at the bottom of his foot. He smiled, nodded
and began to babble, meaningless syllables that sounded to Arrowroot
like “blub glub geelb deelb.”
“He’s a fuckin’ retard,” Watell said.
“Hey,” said Schaumberg, who was coming up the stairs slowly in
the darkness. “Don’t call him that.”
“Whatever, Doc,” Watell replied. “Let’s get ‘im downstairs.”
Watell and Hatfield marched the man across the landing and down
to the first floor, but Arrowroot lingered, peering into the room
where the man had been hiding. It was a tiny room, barely bigger than
a closet, with a small gap in the floor that opened to a spiral
staircase. The room below seemed to be a library, or a music room – he
could make out the corner of a grand piano – but Arrowroot’s attention
was fixed on two shapes at his feet. One was a blue backpack, open
partway at the zipper, spilling notebooks and papers, and Arrowroot
picked it up, zipped it shut and put one of the straps over his
shoulder. The other was furry and still, and he bent down and touched
it and knew immediately what it was.
“Hey, Otherdog,” he said. “Hello, Otherdog. Oh God, he just let
you die here, didn’t he? Oh, God no.”
Arrowroot picked up the mass of mummified remains, surprised at
how light it felt, and headed downstairs.
The rain was coming down hard again and there was lightning in
the distance, so everyone was waiting in the dining room. The prisoner
was on a chair, seated between Watell and Hatfield. Stapleton was
holding up her walkie-talkie, and Schaumberg was just looking out the
window.
“I told you, Ed, he was hiding in one of the rooms upstairs,”
Stapleton said into her device. “I’ve already asked him; he didn’t say
anything.” Stapleton turned to the man. “Sir, do you speak English?
Sir, do you know any English? He’s just smiling at me, Ed. We’re not
sure he’s, uh, completely functional, uh, mentally.”
“Look at this, will ya?” Arrowroot shouted, holding up the
desiccated dog. “This is how he takes care of animals!”
“What is that?” Stapleton asked, looking at the furry clump in
Arrowroot’s hands through her reflective sunglasses.
“It’s Otherdog!” Arrowroot cried. He stomped up to the mysterious
stranger and shook the mummified remains in the man’s face while his
words came out in a jumbled, croaking mess.
“Is this how you take care of your pets, you murdering bastard?”
Arrowroot demanded, and he put what was left of the animal’s nose
inches from the prisoner’s eyes. “Look what you did! Look what you
did!”
“Karl, that’s enough,” Chief Hatfield said quietly. “Let’s—“
“There can’t be anyone alive in the house,” Demizu’s yodeling,
crackling voice cried out from the walkie-talkie. “There’s no room for
it in any modularity.”
The prisoner was studying Arrowroot and the dog corpse he held,
and then he smiled in a strange, grimacing way and issued what sounded
like laughter, a dry “ah ha HAH! ah ha HAH!”
“You laughing?” the outraged Arrowroot demanded. “You think
starving an animal to death is funny?” Arrowroot’s face had grown red,
his eyes were wide with rage and he was practically spitting out his
words. “Maybe you think this is funny too!” Arrowroot raised the mummy
dog and brought it down on the prisoner’s head. The animal exploded
into a shower of fur, bones and dusty fragments. The prisoner sat
wide-eyed, staring at Arrowroot as if in shock.
Hatfield jumped up and grabbed Arrowroot by the upper arms.
“Karl!” he barked. “Karl, that’s enough!”
“Neutralize him,” Stapleton told Hatfield, who obliged her by
leading Arrowroot to a chair at the edge of the room and forcing him
to sit down in it.
Stapleton returned to the walkie-talkie. “Sir, we’re trying to
piece this together.”
“What’s all that noise?” Demizu asked. “What the hell are you
doing over there?”
“Enhanced interrogation,” Stapleton answered.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Demizu said, then he
paused. “So, alright, let me talk to this alleged individual.”
“You walking up through the rain?” Stapleton asked.
“No,” said Demizu. “Absolutely not. I will address him through
the mouth of technology.”
“Excuse me, Sir?” Stapleton asked.
“Hold the walkie-talkie up to him,” Demizu instructed, and
Arrowroot, still seething at the edge of the room, could hear the
advancing inebriation in Demizu’s tone. The Colonel was a heavy
drinker with a high tolerance, Arrowroot guessed, reading the subtle
signs, the way he extended his syllables, the way certain consonants
were pressed out.
As instructed, Stapleton held up the walkie-talkie, and Demizu
began speaking.
“My good man,” Demizu began, “I wish first to apologize for
developing a body of understanding and theory, which was dismissive of
your, oh, how shall I put it, your fleshedness and bloodedness, so to
speak. Do you understand me?”
“Ed, he’s just staring at the walkie talkie,” Stapleton said.
“And smiling.”
“Boy, talk to the damned colonel!” Arrowroot screamed. He looked
down and saw the blood on the floor, and something turned in his
brain.
“You hear me, boy?” Arrowroot demanded, and he jumped up, darted
over to the suspect before Hatfield could stop him, grabbed his
shoulders and shook him violently.
“Vloba-blova-blova-blova,” the prisoner said in rhythm to the
abuse. Hatfield leapt to his feet and yanked Arrowroot back.
“Ed, you’re breaking up, gonna shut this off for a bit,”
Stapleton said, and she aimed her reflective sunglasses at Arrowroot.
“You are right on the edge of getting charged with hindering a
military investigation,” she told him. “You touch the prisoner one
more time and I’m taking you into custody too.”
Arrowroot muttered something and turned toward the wall.
“What’s on your back?” Stapleton asked.
Arrowroot turned around quickly. “My shirt,” he said.
“Where did you get that bag?” she asked.
Arrowroot seemed to notice the backpack for the first time. He
pulled it off his shoulder, cradled it in both his arm and stared down
at it. “It’s mine,” he finally said.
“Where did you get it?” Stapleton persisted.
“Upstairs, next to Otherdog,” Arrowroot said quietly. “It’s
mine.” He unzipped the bag and pulled out a blank sheet of paper.
“It’s Robert’s,” he added, and he knelt down, set the bag on the floor
and pulled out several more sheets. “Robert?” he inquired, as if
expecting to find his son in there. “Robert?”
“That’s evidence,” Stapleton said. “We’re going to need it.”
“The hell you will!” Arrowroot answered, and he stood and set his
feet on the bag and the papers. “It belongs to me. It belongs to my
family!”
The prisoner said something, more nonsense syllables, and smiled
tentatively. It was a smile, at least, if smiling could be defined as
showing one’s teeth while generally turning up the corners of one’s
mouth. The man’s smile was otherwise exceedingly odd, more like a
wince of pain, or the ridiculous smiles people offer when told to
smile, and Arrowroot found the expression to be another irritant.
“Shut the hell up, you damned dog killer,” Arrowroot said. “This
ain’t the least bit funny.”
Stapleton sighed, took off her hat and glasses and sat down.
“Karl,” she said, “I don’t want any more fights.”
“Well, then, quit trying to steal my damned property,” Arrowroot
retorted, but the edge was off his voice and he unballed his hands.
He’d forgotten that one of her eyes was black, and he wondered what
had happened to her and suddenly felt sorry for her.
“Do you want to help us investigate what happened here?”
Stapleton asked.
“Of course I do,” he replied. “Probably more than you.”
“Okay, okay,” Stapleton said. “What’s in that bag might tell us.
But I can’t know unless I can see what’s in it.”
Arrowroot let out a long, slow breath of air, then he crouched
and emptied the bag, laying things out in several piles. Stapleton
joined him as they went through everything together, blank sheets,
notebooks, old typewritten letters, and page after handwritten page of
poetry, narratives, maps, lists and other materials that defied clear
categorization.
“That’s Robert’s handwriting,” Arrowroot said. “I’d know it
anywhere.”
“Some of this looks like official documents,” Stapleton said.
“Letters, bills, statements.”
“It’s all Robert’s,” Arrowroot said. “Else it wouldn’t be in his
bag. And unless you think everyone out here died of paper cuts, I
don’t see anything here that’s the least bit relevant. I’d recommend
looking for bloody hatchets and carving knives, you know, not some
young man’s poetry. And he’s— he’s going to need this when he comes
back home. Probably been sitting up there six months, ever since that
fellow died. You know, fellow blows up, scares the hell out of Robert,
he just ups and leaves, doesn’t stop until he hits Canada, probably,
doesn’t even take his bag. Not even Otherdog. Left Otherdog here,
asked Mr. Smiley there to feed ‘im. Of course, Mr. Damned Smiley,
Johnny Gleebglub or whatever his damned name is, had more important
things to attend to. Like just sitting there, smiling like an idiot.
Hey, when you take him in – you know, I’m serious about this. When you
take him in, don’t feed him tonight, okay? You know, let him go
hungry, let him see what it’s like. Just tell him—”
“Okay, keep it, take it,” Stapleton said, gesturing with her
hands as if she was trying to wipe something off them.
“Thank you,” Arrowroot said.
“Karl,” the prisoner said. “Karl.”
“What?” Arrowroot asked, and everyone looked up in surprise.
“Karl,” the man repeated. “Otherdog. That’s enough!”
Arrowroot stared at the man with all the hatred and contempt he
could muster, but the man simply smiled back. So Arrowroot
concentrated on stuffing everything back into Robert’s backpack, no
small undertaking given how badly his hands were shaking.
“May I approach the prisoner?” Dr. Schaumberg asked.
“All yours,” replied Stapleton.
Schaumberg walked over to the man and bent over so their eyes
were at the same level.
“Hello,” she said. “Hello. Hello.”
“Hello,” he finally replied.
“Open your mouth,” Schaumberg instructed.
“Open,” he said. “Open your–“
“No,” she said, and she opened her mouth wide and pointed at
herself, and then at his mouth. “You open. Open.”
The prisoner at last seemed to understand, and he opened wide.
Schaumberg peered in and quickly turned away. “He’s fine,” she said to
no one, and Arrowroot could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
“Rain’s letting up,” Stapleton said, turning on her walkietalkie. “Ed, we’re coming back, we’re done here.”
“What are you talking about?” Demizu replied, and his words came
out high pitched and airy, Arrowroot noticed, like a man at the last
stage of conscious drunkenness. “Why are you gonna do that?”
“Yes, Sir, we’re done here, we’re heading down,” Stapleton said,
and she hit the off button again.
Watell and Hatfield raised the prisoner to his feet and followed
Stapleton to the front door of House Carlisle. Schaumberg went next,
and she turned and looked back at Arrowroot with pity and perhaps a
little curiosity. She still thought, apparently, that it was
Arrowroot’s son lying out there in two pieces.
Arrowroot was glad to leave the house behind, realizing as he
shut the door behind him that he’d created an ideal for the place in
his mind that had no connection with reality. It was just another
house, a little bigger and a little better-appointed in places, but
with plenty of the kitsch and carpet you could find in Traxie. And
this house was now also burdened with an especially tragic past.
The clouds were breaking up, and sunshine streamed down in broad
ribbons here and there through the valley. Arrowroot looked up and saw
that High Heligaux and Traxie were both glowing. Over the Carlisle
estate, though, the rain was still falling, not much of it now but
driven by a fierce wind, and Arrowroot closed his eyes as the water
whipped his face and smeared his glasses.
“Oh!” Stapleton shouted. “Oh no!”
Arrowroot opened his eyes in time to see that a fierce gust of
wind had grabbed the tent where Demizu was directing the
investigation. The tent lifted, lines popped, a pair of stakes went
hurtling through the air, and the entire structure lurched upwards,
floated 15 feet and came down on its side.
The team and their prisoner hustled forward, finding Demizu
standing over one of the corpses, seemingly oblivious to the absence
of shelter or the light drizzle now falling upon him.
Bonaventure was still there, resting on a table, and he turned
his head weakly, eyed everyone and raised a hand.