Threshold (15 page)

“Don’t freak out, okay,” Sadie says and Deacon makes a noise that isn’t a cough and isn’t a laugh, an anxious, weary noise, and Chance accepts the jar from the albino girl.

“She was afraid I would forget,” Dancy says, and Chance is staring at the bruisedark finger curled like a fat, rotten grub in the bottom of the baby-food jar—not a whole finger, just the second joint down to a short, cracked nail the unhealthy color of an infection, the color of pus. Chance’s stomach lurches, ready to be sick all over again whether there’s a toilet handy or not, whether or not there’s anything left in her to puke up; she gives the jar back to Dancy, swallows hard and almost gags on the acid-sour bile taste rising hot from the back of her mouth.

“They all have claws,” Dancy says. “At least the ones I’ve seen so far.”

Chance looks across the room at Deacon, looking for any sort of explanation on his face, anything to make sense of this, but he’s watching the floor between his feet, rubbing his big hands together, grinding his teeth.

“I’ve never had to ask anyone to help me before,” Dancy says and she sounds ashamed, sounds like she’s admitting to something a whole lot worse than carrying a severed human finger around in her duffel bag.

“I don’t want to
hear
any more of this,” Chance says, and she stands up, wipes her hands back and forth on the legs of her jeans, trying to wipe away the memory of the thing in the jar. Sadie reaches to pull her back down onto the sofa, but Chance is already too far away, stepping quickly past Dancy, and “I want her out of my house, Deke,” she says. “I want you to get her out of my house right this minute.”

“Not yet,” Deacon says, and now he does look at her, turns his head slow, and there’s nothing like sense in his green eyes, nothing like explanation. The same sadness as the day she told him it was over between them, and “I’m sorry, Chance,” he says.

“Here,” and the albino girl is gently shoving the brittle wad of newspaper clippings into Chance’s hands, some of them crumbling at the edges, dry and butterscotch flakes falling to the floor at her feet, ancient newsprint and cracker crumbs littering the floor between Chance and Dancy Flammarion.

“I didn’t
want
to ask,” Dancy whispers, and she still sounds ashamed. “I swear, I didn’t ever want to ask you or anybody else to help me.”

Chance glances down at the headlines clutched reluctantly in her hands—“Water Works Marks 80th Anniversary” and “Wilfred Gillette McConnel, builder of water works, dies”—bold and blocky words almost half a century old. “Where did you even get these?” Chance asks, and Dancy shakes her head.

“I know I shouldn’t have taken them out of the library,” she says, speaking so low that Chance can barely hear her. “I
know
that’s stealing. But I had to. I didn’t have any money, and they wanted ten cents a page for the copier.”

And towards the bottom of the pile there are two smaller clippings, one of them gone only the faintest yellow and the other could be new, could have been cut from the morning paper, the morning obituary column. The name on the first is Chance’s grandmother’s, and the name on the second is Elise Alden.

 

“What in the hell were you thinking?” Chance asks Deke, and he doesn’t answer, turns away from her for a moment, instead, back towards the living room where Sadie and Dancy are sitting together on the sofa, watching television. “Do you actually think I
need
this sort of crazy horseshit, that my life isn’t fucked-up enough already? Or maybe you think I need to be
reminded
what an asshole you are.”

Chance is sitting halfway up the staircase leading to the second story of the house, her back pressed to the wall and both feet braced against the banisters, chewing at a thumbnail and not looking at Deacon. He’s standing two steps below her, slouching in the shadows like a scarecrow that’s lost the poles or planks that hold it upright and at any moment he might tumble over.

“The girl is
not
well,” Chance says. “And Jesus, where the hell do you think she got that finger?”

“She says she cut it off the first monster that she killed,” Deacon replies, talking quiet, either more concerned than Chance about Dancy overhearing them or he just doesn’t feel like speaking up, feels like mumbling so she has to strain to hear, has to pay more attention to him.

“It’s a
human
finger, Deke,” and Chance stops chewing her thumb long enough to wiggle her right index finger up and down at him.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “I kinda noticed that myself.”

“Well, that’s because you’re such a goddamn brainy son of a bitch, Deacon. Now, why don’t you cut the crap and take your girlfriend and her creepy little playmate and get out of my house.”

Deacon sighs through his teeth, disappointed or impatient sigh, as if he expected more from Chance, as if this is exactly what he expected, and it makes her want to get up and slap him.

“How’d she know about Elise?” he asks her, the temerity to ask her a question like that, and she looks away from him again. “Answer me that one, Chance, and I’ll go and take her with me.”

“Fuck you,” she mutters around her thumb.

“No, I’m serious. Come on. You’re good at explaining away whatever you don’t feel like dealing with, whatever’s too illogical or inconvenient. You’re a pro.”

“And you’re an asshole.”

Deacon leans closer, lowers his voice even more, and now he’s almost whispering, urgent whisper like he’s afraid, desperate for her to understand and maybe this will be his last chance to get the point across.

“Perhaps you should’ve listened to her story, Chance. Just stop and
think
about it a second. The clippings about the water works and Elise’s obit. She knows about the night in the tunnel.”

And those last five words, that last word alone, enough to get her up and moving again, climbing the few steps to the top in two long strides, and she stops then, turns around and glares furiously down at him from the landing, knows she would glare holes through his shabby soul if she could. So much fury so fast that she’s dizzy with it, and he isn’t even looking at her, is gazing off towards the living room again.

“
That’s
what this is all about, isn’t it? This whole thing, it’s some bogus tale you’ve cobbled together to try and get me to believe that you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to her. That you’re not responsible. Christ, I honestly didn’t think you had it in you, Deke.”

“You’re wrong,” he whispers, but her head buzzing with hate and adrenaline, a head full of wasps and hornets, and “That’s the only way she
could
know,” she says. “If
you
told her about the tunnel. How much are you paying Dancy to say this shit?”

“I didn’t tell her a goddamn thing,” and Deacon’s raising his voice now, punching out the words, takes one step towards her, and Chance takes a step back from the edge of the stairs; actual displays of anger as foreign to Deacon Silvey as sobriety, and she’s not so pissed off that it doesn’t frighten her.

“This girl, she shows up at my apartment, and starts telling me and Sadie some bullshit story about a monster under the mountain,” and Deacon points down, points at his feet, the stairs, at the ground beneath the house. “Then she tells us she’s spent the last two months riding around on a Greyhound bus killing off monsters because an angel told her to, and just in case we don’t happen to believe her, she pulls out that goddamn finger to prove it.”

Deacon takes another step forward, and she can see his eyes, those two bottomless siltgreen pools always so indifferent, always so flat and still, and now they’re as jagged as the edge in his voice.

“Hell, at first, I thought maybe Sadie had set the whole thing up, maybe she’d found this kid and was getting back at me because we had a fight this afternoon. But then Miss Dancy Flammarion down there tells me that she’s certain I’ll believe her, and that I’ll help convince you, because she knows what I saw in the fucking tunnel.”

“This is crazy, Deacon,” Chance says, barely muttering, not wanting to hear any more, and why can’t he understand that and leave her alone? “You
know
that this is crazy.”

“Yeah, it is, Chance. It’s absolutely fucking psychotic, and if you ask me, I think the girl’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but that doesn’t answer my question. How the hell does she know about Elise, and how could she possibly know about the night we were in the tunnel?”

Chance’s eyes hot and wet, and she realizes that she’s crying, hot tears streaking her cheeks, and it’s almost enough to get her angry again, almost enough to push back the fear coiling itself up cold and hard inside her belly; this whole fucked-up night and now she has to start crying in front of Deacon Silvey.

“Listen to me, Chance. I know you’ve heard the stories about me and the cops in Atlanta, about what I did for them before I came to Birmingham.”

“You know I never believed any of that shit,” she says, sobbing and hating the way she sounds, hating that she can’t be stronger. Looking down at the floor now so he can’t see her face, and “I know,” Deacon replies. “I think that’s one of the reasons we got along. I never had to try and explain it all to you.

“But I touched that finger, to see if it was real, to be sure it wasn’t made of rubber or something—”

And then Dancy Flammarion interrupts him, the albino girl watching them from the gloom at the bottom of the stairs. “Please don’t cry, Chance,” she says. “There’s no reason to cry. I can show you I’m not lying.”

“
Please
get her out of here, Deacon,” and she turns away, turns towards the narrow stairs that lead up to the attic, putting all these impossible things behind her, and then Dancy says something else, something that makes Chance stop. She stands very still, doesn’t dare look back at the girl or Deacon, stares through the blur of her tears at a faded Currier and Ives print hanging on the wall.

“What did you say?” Chance whispers, and Dancy repeats the word, louder this time.

“Dicranurus,”
she says again, and Chance closes her eyes, shuts them tight and lets gravity and nausea and the certainty that none of this is happening pull her to the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Sadie asks him, and Deacon doesn’t stop staring at the ceiling over Joe Matthews’ bed, the raised fault-line crack beneath the paint where the sheetrock has begun to flake and buckle; doesn’t look at her because he still can’t get Chance’s face out of his head, the cranberry smear of blood across her lips after she fainted, after she fell and struck her chin hard on the floor, bit the tip of her tongue, and he thinks it’s a wonder that she didn’t bite it off.

“I’m not sure I can, baby,” he says and closes his eyes against the lamp light. The room smells like dust and cough drops, reminds him of being a little boy and visiting old people, his grandparents, an aunt, Sunday afternoon smell to remind him how long it’s been since he had a drink. Lying here with Sadie beside him, wishing he had a glass of bourbon or rye or just a goddamn beer, anything would be better than this dusty place inside his mouth.

“You mean you’re not sure you want to,” Sadie says, making no attempt to hide her jealousy, the suspicious edge in her voice, and he doesn’t bother opening his eyes, shrugs and “Yeah, that too,” he says.

“You know, you’re not supposed to just let someone go to sleep after they hit their head like that,” Sadie whispers. “She might have a concussion or something. She could go into a coma.”

“And I’m sure that would break your heart,” then quick, before she can pinch him or tell him that he’s being a dick, “Anyway, she didn’t hit her head. I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten a concussion because they bit their tongue.”

Deacon opens his eyes and the crack in the ceiling’s still there, waiting for him, almost reminding him of something he probably doesn’t want to remember. “Turn out the lamp now. I’m sleepy,” and that’s a lie, but at least if it’s dark he won’t have to look at the ceiling anymore.

“I don’t think I want to. I think this house is giving me the creeps. It’s too big and empty, and it makes sounds.”

“It’s an old house,” he says. “Old houses make sounds.” He rolls over onto his side, puts his back to the wall, and stares at her: Sadie lying on top of the white chenille bedspread in nothing but her panties, her small nipples the color of a burn, and she’s staring up at the ceiling, too.

“What
was
that word?” she asks again, like she hasn’t asked him the same question two or three times already, and “I told you I don’t know,” Deacon says.

“Whatever.” She rolls her eyes and starts chewing at her lower lip, gnaws away a small patch of her black lipstick and probably some skin in the bargain.

“Christ, Sadie, why don’t you get up, go down the hall, and ask Dancy what the hell she said? And why don’t you ask her what it’s supposed to mean, while you’re at it?”

“I did. I asked her while you were up there in the attic with Chance,” and she frowns and points at the ceiling, the crack in the ceiling. “She said she didn’t know. She said Chance knew.”

“Then just turn out the light, and in the morning you can ask Chance what it means.”

And for a moment he thinks that maybe she’s actually had enough for one night, enough unanswered questions, enough weird shit even for Sadie, that maybe she’ll finally turn off the lamp and he can get some sleep. Plenty of time in the morning to think about what happened on the stairs, to think about Dancy and Chance, Elise and the tunnel; plenty of time then to tell her what he does and doesn’t know, later, when the sun is shining and the sky is harmless and blue and far away. But then Sadie rolls over and he can see exactly how mistaken he is, that she’s a very long way from sleepy, a long way from resigned. Those eyes too bright, too full, too hungry for secrets. Afraid of the sounds an old house makes at night, but she’s starving to learn something
really
terrible.