The Final Rule (3 page)

Ellis traced the letters.

They’d been repainted several times over the years—blue, red, orange, green, never yellow. Sometimes Rudy would want spots, sometimes stripes. The most recent reincarnation had stitches around the edges, making them look like fabric.

Ellis opened the door; the hinges squeaked. He’d never noticed that before.

The laundry basket sat beside the suitcase. A pair of shoes lay next to the drafting table. There was an empty glass on the bedside table next to the lamp and the third shelf on the bookcase sagged.

Then in front of the TV, there was a worn spot on hardwood floor.,

Like the drawings, everything in Rudy’s room were left over pieces from another life.

Rudy’s book bag of baseball cards sat on the floor at the end of the bed. Ellis collected the plastic containers from the top of the dresser, put them on the bed and opened the bag. There must have been thousands of cards.

He picked one up. The edges had frayed and the picture had faded. Rudy had held these cards, looked at them every day, and treasured them. That alone made them a permanent part of who he was.

Was. Because he was gone and he would not come back.

The bleeding grief consuming Ellis had stopped, but the unhealed wound remained. It would always be there, unable to scar, forever open and aching.

Ellis picked up the cards, turning one handful after the other right side up, and put them back in the boxes where they belonged. Within minutes, his world shrank down to the simple act of sorting cards.

He took extra care with the ones crinkled from being stuffed in a pocket. To keep them protected, Ellis placed those cards between the ones that were still rigid.

The floor creaked.

Jon appeared in the doorway, scrubbing one eye. Creases left behind from the sheets, ran from his temple to the thin beard he’d started wearing.

Ellis liked the beard. It made Jon look more menacing. The good kind of menacing, found in hardened detectives, or crime fighters who didn’t follow the rules.

That was him. A hero in boxers with bed-head.

“What are you doing up? It’s like four in the morning.” Jon yawned.

Ellis put the last plastic box back on the dresser. “I couldn’t sleep.” He gestured to the empty book bag. “So I unpacked Rudy’s baseball cards.”

Jon squinted at the rows of plastic containers. “That’s a lot of cards. How long have you been up?”

Ellis shrugged. “A while, I guess.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that. Did you ever go to sleep?”

“No.”

“Christ, Ellis.” Jon walked over and wrapped his arms around him. “If you don’t start sleeping, I think we should get a doctor to prescribe you something.” He leaned into Jon, soaking up the warmth of his body.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You need to sleep.”

“I know.”

Jon propped his chin on Ellis’s head. The steady rhythm of Jon’s heartbeat soothed the lingering turmoil inside Ellis.

“I miss him.” Somehow Ellis managed not to cry.

“I know. So do I.” Jon stared at Rudy’s drawings hanging on the wall. His somber expression hardened into confusion. Jon stood.

“What is it?”

He stopped in front of Rudy’s drafting table.

“Jon?”

He tapped a finger against one of the drawings. “This one.” He pinched the tack holding it up. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

Jon pulled out the tack, releasing several more pictures. They fluttered to the ground. His eyes widened. “Has Rudy ever been to the Grove?”

“What?”

“The Grove.”

“That’s where Lenny…” Almost killed him.

“Has Rudy ever been there?”

“No, of course not.”

Jon held out the drawing. Green scribbles edged the bottom half of the paper, and branching lines reached for the sky. The arrangement of the six trees was unmistakable. Ellis picked up another one. More grass, more trees all placed in the same pattern.

“I dreamt about this place.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. Before you woke me up. Probably from walking past it a hundred times a week, picking up his laundry.” Ellis gave a sad laugh. “I wish I’d never complained about that.” Ellis looked up and Jon’s gaze hit hard. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you think George knows anything about this place?”

“What do you mean ‘this place’?”

Jon snapped the piece of paper. “This is the Grove.”

“That’s impossible, it’s just some trees—”

“No. This is the place Lenny took me. The trees are lined up just like this. They’re pecan trees. Huge. I’ve never seen pecan trees that large.”

So big not even three men could get their arms around the trunk. The limbs would be gnarled, and black. “He saw a picture somewhere.” Ellis sucked in a choppy breath. “Right? A picture?”

“No. I don’t think he got this from a picture.”

Just like he didn’t get the other drawings from pictures.

Rudy’s belongings: toys, early reader books, drawings, crayons, baseball cards, colorful pictures on the wall. The bedclothes and curtains were the only things that looked like they belonged to a man, but that’s because Ellis couldn’t find Spider-Man sheets to fit a full sized bed.

All these years Ellis had never dreamed something other than a cartoon world where Mickey Mouse sang happy songs and baseball cards rained from the sky existed inside Rudy’s head.

If he’d paid better attention, Rudy might have told him other things.

But hadn’t he?

“Are you okay?” Jon ran his thumb across Ellis’s cheek.

“I don’t know.” Ellis chewed his thumbnail. “What if you’re right?”

“About what?”

“Everything you said. About Lenny and…everything.” Ellis wrapped his arms around himself. “It’s insane.”

“I know.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Yeah, I know that too.”

“It’s just some crazy idea, because monsters don’t exist.”

Jon’s eyes were sad. “Dead brothers don’t appear in hotel rooms and people aren’t supposed to predict their own deaths.”

In that realm of the impossible, the existence of monsters couldn’t be far behind.

Maysville was nothing like Gilford.

Modern strip malls lined both sides of the four lane highway; neighborhoods came with cookie cutter houses on stamp sized lots, and traffic could rival downtown.

Ellis and Jon met George at one of the commercial restaurants located behind the home improvement store. Jon had stopped at the restaurant on his way to Gilford. The location stuck in his head because the chocolate cake had been heaven.

They parked next to George’s car and got out.

Ellis carried a folder of Rudy’s drawings under his arm. The anger that had consumed him a couple days ago seemed to have died down, but the quiet sorrow that replaced it was too close to surrender. And the last thing Ellis needed to do was give up.

They met George at the bumper of his sedan. He smiled in a way that only doting grandfathers could. “How are you boys doing?”

“We’re okay,” Jon said.

George squinted up at him. “Looks like someone clocked you a good one a few times.”

“Yeah, a few times.”

Ellis dropped his gaze.

George glanced from him to Jon. The expression on his face said he wasn’t so sure they were okay as Jon claimed. He was. They were okay. They would continue to be okay. He nodded and George cleared his throat.

“C’mon, before all the good seats get taken. Jon tells me the chocolate cake here is the best in the state. I plan to put that declaration to the test.”

The inside of the restaurant was decorated in a southern motif consisting of ceramic roosters and blue speckled cooking pots. Paintings of various food items had been strategically placed over each booth lining the walls.

The meticulous arrangement came together with the kind of perfection only commercial businesses could achieve. And it stripped every grain of personality from the building, leaving it soulless.

They found a table in the back, next to a window looking out at the parking lot.

“I really appreciate you meeting us here.” Jon slid into a booth and Ellis sat next to him.

“My pleasure. It’s nice to get out of town, even it’s just a few hours.” George took up the seat across the table.

The waitress walked up, got their drink orders and filled the coffee mugs.

George tapped a packet of sugar against his fingers. “So what’s so important that you felt you needed to bribe me with cake?”

“Not a bribe. I promise. I just had some questions and I thought it would be better if we talk about it somewhere else.”
A place where there were no memories of Rudy.
George flicked a quick look at Ellis and nodded.

“All right, shoot.” George tore open one of the containers of cream.

“It’s kind of difficult to explain.” Jon pulled a couple of napkins from the holder and arranged them on the table. “Even then it’s going to sound crazy. So I need you to hear us out before you write us off and head back to town.”

George started to laugh. Then the look of worry reclaimed his expression. “All right, I can do that.”

Jon forced himself to quit moving the napkins around. “Do you believe in evil?”

George shrugged. “When you’ve been a sheriff for thirty years you see a lot of nasty things. Kind of goes with the territory of being in law enforcement. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do. But I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about evil. Do you think it could be something tangible?”

George scrunched up his bushy eyebrows. “You mean like the devil?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.” Was
The Big and Terrible
something that simple? Jon was pretty sure it wasn’t.

“Well, you gotta have something in mind or we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Jon nodded. “You said something to me the other day that stuck in my head. You said evil was a disease.”

George sipped his coffee. “Yeah, seems that way sometimes.”

“And you said the crime in Gilford has.”

“Sure.”

“You ever wonder why?”

“I know why. Lot of city folk moving in. That sort’a changes things for any small town.”

“Yeah, but when you talked about how things have gotten bad, you specifically mentioned the change in people you know. Like those two deputies and that judge who vouched for Lenny.”

The waitress appeared with their drinks. “You boys ready to order?”

“What’s the special of the day?” Jon said.

The woman grinned, flashing a gap between her teeth. “All American hamburger with fries.”

“I’ll have that.”

“Make that two,” George said.

Ellis raised his hand. “Three.”

“All right. I’ll have that up in a few.” She left.

Jon chased the ice cubes around in his tea with a straw. “What if you’re right?”

George put down his cup. “I don’t follow.”

“What if evil is a disease and what if it can spread?”

“Son, people don’t catch evil. They learn it. In some cases they might come out a little more inclined than others, but it ain’t no cold.”

“But what if it is?” Jon folded his arms on the table. “What if that’s why otherwise good people in Gilford have gone bad?”

“You’re serious?” George sat back.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“And what the hell stirred up that harebrained line of thinking?” The heaviness of George’s gaze hit Jon hard. He knew damn well how he must sound. Hell, if he’d been on the other side of the table he probably would have looked at himself the same way.

“It’s just that a lot of strange things have been happening. Things that have no explanation and quite frankly shouldn’t be possible.”

“Such as?”

Jon told George about his brother, about the almost car accident, then the warehouse. To the man’s credit he listened without judgment or interruption even when Jon told him about the incident in the hotel room and how he knew where to go to find Ellis that night he went after Lenny. When he was done he looked at Ellis. “Will you show him the pictures?”

Ellis’s reluctance to let the drawings go, showed in how his hand shook when he handed one to George. On the first piece of paper there were three smiling figures holding hands.

“Rudy,” Ellis’s voice cracked. He drank some of his tea. “Rudy drew pictures of things that hadn’t happened yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just like what it sounds. That one,” Ellis nodded. “He drew it before we met Jon.” He took out another drawing and traded with George. “And then this one before Lenny came to the house.”

The second drawing had an ugly creature with big teeth and long claws lunging at two figures. A third stood in front of them with some sort of stick like weapon.

Red colored the surface. More spots dotted the wielder’s arm.

Jon flexed his fingers, remembering how heavy the bat had felt in his hand.

George looked the picture over.

“And he knew things too,” Ellis said. “Like what cards to ask for when he played Go Fish, and you couldn’t hide anything he wanted to find. Like food, or presents. I had to make my catalog orders a couple days before Christmas and pay for overnight delivery just so I wouldn’t have the packages sitting around the house. Otherwise the moment he started talking about birthday or Christmas, he’d find his presents.”

“Rudy was every bit of a kid, Ellis. And kids find things they’re not supposed to all the time.”

“Then explain this one.” They exchanged drawings again.

“This looks like the Grove.”

Jon nodded. “Exactly.”

To Ellis George said, “When did he go to the Grove?”

“He’s never been.”

“Then he must have seen a picture of it at the town museum.”

“I’ve never taken him to the museum either.”

George pursed his lips. “Well, he had to see a picture of it somewhere.”

“Even if he had, it wouldn’t explain how he knew Lenny took Jon to the Grove.”

Jon looked at Ellis. “When he took me to the Grove?”

“That day Lenny…”
Tried to kill you.
That’s what his eyes said. “When I called George, Rudy kept trying to tell me something. I was only half listening until he said Lenny took you to the Grove. He told me he knew the same way he found things.”