The Devil Walks in Mattingly (44 page)

Phillip moved beside Kate as I went to Lucy. She reared up again, this time reaching for Bessie, but I kicked the tomahawk aside and took hold of her. “If you want him to live, you’ll get aside.”

She moved, placing Taylor’s head in her lap. She stroked his matted hair and watered his cheeks with her tears.

I took off my uniform shirt and pressed it against Taylor’s wound. He cried out. I looked around for help. My eyes met Phillip’s. He pointed to the log behind the fire, where a small pile of shotgun shells lay.

“Why?” I asked him. “Why’d you make me do that?”

Taylor coughed again. After came a gurgle and, “Should’ve been done long ago, Jake. Don’t pay no mind.”

To Lucy I said, “He won’t last long if we don’t get him out of here.”

Lucy stroked Taylor’s cheeks, grounding him, keeping him there.

Kate moved from her place beside Phillip and went to Lucy. Her words were gentle, like coaxing a lost child in from the dark. “Come on, Lucy. We have to get him help. We have to get you help too.”

Lucy’s hands settled at her thighs. I saw that as invitation enough. I took off my belt and cinched it round Taylor’s chest, pressing my shirt to his wound. I took his arms and pulled him up. Taylor cried out again as I tried to hoist him over my shoulders. Kate left Lucy to help.

“No,” I said. “Tend to the girl. I have to do this myself.”

Phillip looked at me and raised his fist as my knees buckled under Taylor’s weight. A crunching sound came from my back. Still, I straightened.

Kate went back to Lucy. This time the girl did not protest. She stood hunched over, as though sheltering a dying ember.

I felt Taylor’s wheezing against my shoulder. The riverbank stretched out before us. Far in the distance stood Indian Hill. It was miles that way to the gate. Miles and uphill.

I turned to Phillip. “Is there another way?”

Phillip’s eyes went to Lucy. He nodded yes but slowly, as though wanting to say the long way was best.

“Show me.”

He led us on through the trees. I carried Taylor as Kate fell in behind me. Lucy was last upon the riverbank. None of us saw her reach down for what my fear and weariness had left behind.

14

To Lucy the way was through utter darkness, and though she perceived Jake as leading, she could not understand how he knew the way. Taylor lay draped over Jake’s shoulders. His breaths were labored, and his blood soaked Jake’s neck and chest. Lucy wrapped Taylor’s ponytail around her hand. She sang in a soft voice the song they’d shared upon Taylor’s bed, of how death is only a dream of glory beyond a dark stream. Kate draped an arm over her. If that arm lowered itself just a bit more to where Jake’s tomahawk lay waiting, Lucy would shrug her off.

Lucy felt a pain she could not measure, though one tinged with a kind of sweetness. In the shards of her broken heart, she now knew Taylor in a way the sharing of their bodies could never promise. Love cannot be called true unless two people know the pains of one another as well as the joys. Lucy had suffered much in life, but Taylor had suffered to the point where all was lost and living gave way to mere survival. Now at the end, that was a hurt Lucy knew well.

She also knew they meant to take her back to town. Lucy would return to her father, and even if Taylor survived, she would never see him again. He would be sent away, as would she—if not to prison for trying to kill Hollis, then to Glendale or Lipscomb or some other private school where
her father could stay away from her and keep an eye on her at the same time.

And their Hollow, their lovely Hollow. Gone too, and forever.

The faint peak of Indian Hill disappeared, swallowed by a forest so thick and pressing that it stole my breath. For too long the dark land beyond the rusty gate had fed upon Taylor’s anger and regret, trading his memories for madness. Now that source was fading, and the Hollow began to rouse and fight. Phillip’s light pushed against a darkness that pushed back. The eyes were on us all. Whispers from amongst the trees called out in wailing, mournful tones. I faltered beneath Taylor’s dying weight, the cords of my neck straining, willing my tired body to find one more step and then another. Other than a series of shallow moans each time I stumbled, Taylor remained silent upon my back. I implored him to speak, to hear Lucy’s song. To stay awake. Kate took her hand from Lucy’s shoulder and laid it at Taylor’s back.

I asked, “How far?”

Phillip turned and brought up three fingers. Whether miles or hours, I did not know.

Lucy, thinking that question had been aimed at her, said, “I don’t know. I’ve never been this way.”

Twisted saplings gave way to their tall and ancient kin farther on, which then thinned to a small meadow. Lucy’s mind was still on Taylor when Jake stumbled to his right, bumping her. She reached to steady Taylor and felt her hips brush
against something hard. A stone. There just to Kate’s right was another, this larger, its gray face faintly glowing in the moonlight. Four more lay just ahead. To her left the trees rose again, towering and thick like a wall, and that cinder of hope in Lucy Seekins now flickered once more.

She broke away and rushed for the forest. Kate’s voice called out into the night—“Lucy, where are you going?”—but the words only pushed Lucy harder. Toward the trees and the path beyond. Toward what she prayed was home.

Kate ran after her. Phillip followed close, leaving Taylor and me alone in the field. My lungs burned and heaved too much to call for them. My shoulders and back were a mass of knots and pulled muscles. I watched as Phillip’s light faded in the dense trees, unsure what to do. Taylor answered for me, using the precious little air he had left.

“Fly, Jake, for my sake and the sake of our loves. That way leads only to death.”

15

It was only by Phillip’s light that Kate could weave around the trees. She called for Lucy again as the ground went soft beneath her shoes. Kate looked down and saw that the forest floor had become a path.

Lucy disappeared ahead. Kate’s legs ached from the long run. Her face stung with tiny red scratches from the branches that had poked her. Phillip ran ahead, pushing her, barely keeping her in his light. Kate followed him and stopped in horror.
There in the grove the moonlight shone down upon the cliffs like falling water, making the red hands upon the walls shimmer. But it was the Hole that held Kate, that perfect sphere of tarry black that hung in the air and contradicted everything she thought could never be.

And Lucy stood not ten feet away from it, staring into its face.

Phillip motioned for Kate to follow and stopped her well away from Lucy’s reach. Kate understood why. He was afraid of what Lucy would do to the woman who had ruined the man she loved. The hair on Kate’s arms stiffened as she neared the Hole. She willed herself not to look and found that will crumbling. Kate turned to the Hole, and beyond that thin shroud she felt every nightmare she had ever dreamed and every monster she’d ever imagined.

“Lucy,” she whispered, “you have to come with me now. I have to get you away from here.”

Lucy only stared. Her eyes were two giant ovals. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“Taylor needs help. If we don’t get him back to town, he won’t make it.”

Phillip took a step past Kate, closer to the Hole.

Lucy’s voice came from a place that sounded far away: “Doesn’t matter. I know that now.”

“It matters,” Kate said. “Everything matters. Come with me, Lucy. Please? We’ll go back to Jake and Taylor. I want to help you, but you have to trust me.”

“But I don’t, Kate,” she said. “I don’t trust you. Taylor told me what you did. You say you want to help me, but do you really? Is it me you want, or do you just want my name to write down in a book you use to tell yourself what a good person you are? Do you see all those people when you help them, or do
you see Taylor and that boy? And do you see the good you did after, or do you only see that the thousand good things you do won’t ever make up for the one bad thing you did?”

Kate’s lips trembled. She said, “That’s not true,” but the murmur of her heart and the look Phillip offered told her it was.

“It is true,” Lucy said. She reached out a finger and traced the edges of the circle in front of them. “You shouldn’t burden yourself with that, Kate. Do you know why? Because Taylor says none of this is real. He says it’s all a dream.”

“It is real, Lucy.”

“Is it? Tell me something, Kate. Is there someone beside you right now?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “His name is Phillip McBride.”

And though Kate knew Lucy could not see, Phillip held an upturned fist to her.

Lucy nodded as though she’d known that answer before it was given. “To me, there’s no one but us here. What kind of
real
is this if there’s a dead boy here that only you can see, Kate? Or if there’s a hole in the world that has no business existing? Taylor’s right. But he’s wrong too. It can’t be the same for him as it is for you or me.” She looked from the Hole and took hold of Kate’s shoulders, squeezing them as her eyes grew wide, as though she’d just stumbled upon the answer to every riddle that had marked her sad life. “Don’t you see, Kate?
We can’t all be having the same dream
. It’s just me. No one’s dreaming but me.”

Kate moved her hands to catch Lucy’s elbows. Lucy was faster. She stepped away and pulled Bessie from under her shirt. The blade gleamed with Taylor’s blood. Phillip watched in helpless dread, pushing his fist closer.

“I want to feel warm covers over me and the breeze on my face,” Lucy said. “I want to see a morning that promises a new
day. I want to see my mommy and hear her say she loves me. I want to wake up, Kate. I’m tired of dreaming.”

She turned and ran. Kate screamed for Lucy to stop, please, God, stop. Phillip raced ahead and reached the mouth of the Hole just as Lucy let Bessie fall. He turned with his hands outstretched and a look of despair upon his face.

Lucy jumped. Her arms were wide, embracing her end.

16

Taylor and I reached the grove just as Lucy jumped toward that
(Tear,
I thought,
that’s what it is, like the world’s just wallpaper and this is what lies under it all)
black circle. I saw Lucy reaching for Phillip and Phillip ready to catch her. And when their hands met, I saw Lucy pass through him like a memory. Phillip closed his eyes as the Hole erased Lucy a piece at a time—her arms first, then her head and torso, and last the toes of her sneakers. He drew his arms across his chest slowly, as though pondering what almost was.

Phillip had always watched us. That week he had walked with us as well, hidden but for those small moments when he nearly reached out and grasped us. Whispering Kate’s name as she spoke with Lucy outside the Sheriff’s office. Whispering
I’m coming for you
to Taylor as he waited for Lucy to return from Hollis Devereaux’s farm. Robbing me of sleep and strength. Waiting until we all remembered true. Lucy Seekins had played no part on that clear spring day in 1990, but Phillip had watched her that week as well. I believe he saw much of his old life in her. He knew that pain of wanting to love and never being loved. And I believe even now that Phillip will close his eyes and breathe in the pine and earth that was on
Lucy’s skin as she passed through him. Because heaven is not without the past.