“You need to breathe in,” he says, and he almost sounds compassionate, as if teaching a five-year-old how to ride a bike. Or a five-year-old how to smoke.
I don’t know exactly what to expect, but my mouth is quickly filled with thick smoke. It catches in my throat as if I’ve just swallowed a wad of tissues. I start gagging. Smoke is drawn into my lungs where it burns them, and smoke and snot gush from my nose. The cigarette falls from my mouth, but clings to my lower lip. I brush it onto the ground. A small tentacle of smoke whispers from the end.
Landry is motionless, watching me with that same credit-rolling emptiness in his eyes that suggests nobody is home. Nothing here, it seems, amuses or angers him. He looks lost.
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell him.
“I’m almost sorry I have to kill you.”
“You’re sorry?”
Suddenly he seems to snap out of whatever daze he’s in. “I was right about you, Feldman. You’re a real smart-ass.” He waves the gun at me. “Now tidy up that mess.”
I pick up the cigarette and flick it toward the fireplace. I pause, trying to think of an action or a word that will help me, but he pushes me onto the small porch by jabbing me with the shotgun. I put one foot forward and start walking. When I step down onto the mud it feels like I’m being acupunctured with needles that have been kept in the freezer overnight. The cold wind drives those needles deep into my flesh. My wet clothes flap against my skin. It’s the coldest I’ve ever been in my life, and the realization I will never be warm again makes me want to cry, but I hang on to those tears. I don’t want Landry to see them. Fuck him.
He orders me forward by prodding me again then turns on the flashlight and tosses it to me. I miss the catch, and have to stoop down to pick it up. I think of it as a weapon. A useless one, but a weapon all the same. He directs me into the belt of trees. Damn trees. I’ve seen more trees this week than in my entire life. I can’t see exactly where I’m supposed to be heading.
“Stop stalling, Feldman, I’m sure you can find a path in there.”
I point the flashlight into the inky blackness, spotlighting branches and leaves, but not a whole lot more-certainly no dirt path. I head forward anyway, figuring Landry will stop me if I’m too far off the track. I step between a couple of birch trees, struggling to cover my face from the branches that claw at me like dirty fingers. I manage two steps before becoming lost. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Well, in this case I can’t see the forest for the dark. The ground turns from mud to hard-packed dirt and roots. I move the flashlight around and start to walk slower, not to preserve time, but in order to concentrate on each footstep.
“You’ve got the wrong man, Landry.”
“I doubt that.”
“Shouldn’t you at least hold off killing me?”
“I’m a busy man.”
“You could just tie me up. At least until you have a few more facts.”
“I’ve all the facts I need.”
“You’re wrong. Tie me up and when you find you’re wrong I promise not to tell anybody.” I really do promise it. The river nearby is getting louder. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“I am thinking. I’m thinking about your next victim.”
I don’t know how far we’ve come. Obviously Landry doesn’t want my body found near the cabin. I’m thinking he has a nice location out here for me. Maybe a big hole. The colder I get the more I lose any comprehension of time. It could have been ten minutes now. Or fifteen. We could have walked a couple of miles. Kathy told me that time and distance slip away when you’re being marched through a bunch of trees toward your death. Well, she was right.
“I was right about a lot of things, wasn’t I, Charlie?” Kathy asks, and she’s walking along with me now, gliding easily through the trees. She’s wearing shoes that stay clean. It’s a neat trick.
“You were right,” I admit, keeping my voice low so Landry doesn’t hear me. She starts to nod.
“Do you remember what I told you?” she asks.
I remember. “You told me you owed me everything. We were heading away from Luciana’s house. It couldn’t have been long before she died.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that quick, Charlie. You dropped me off home before she died. Do you remember what we were discussing?”
“We were heading toward your house, we were talking about going to the police. I remember driving past the pasture and you pointing out the black van parked opposite. Seeing it gave me the creeps. We both looked toward the trees as we went by.”
“Dalí’s trees,” she says.
“Dalí’s trees.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Landry asks, but I don’t answer. I keep walking, scraping my hands and arms on the branches, shivering hard.
My mind tries drifting to a time where the world was safe and we didn’t know that Evil was a time bomb waiting for us. Then it drifts far enough so I’m no longer walking through the trees, but turning left into Tranquility Drive and Kathy is no longer a ghost, but flesh and blood that was warm to touch. Flesh and blood that wore the same clothes she was attacked in, flesh and blood that hadn’t showered. All I knew about Tranquility Drive was I couldn’t afford to live there.
Looking at her house, I knew Kathy was rich. That was fine by me. The house was a two-storey place, a tad more mansion than town house. Maybe ten years old. Dozens of shrubs dotted the front section and because of the lingering summer there were still lots of flowers in bloom. At that time of night they were black flowers. The trees were black too. Like the birds sitting in them.
This is the house I wanted to live in, with Kathy. All my life I had imagined backing out of my driveway into a neighborhood where Mercedes cars littered the street like cheap Toyotas. Kathy was the woman I wanted to be kissing goodbye as I left for work in the morning on my way to being a brain surgeon or an astronaut instead of an underpaid high school teacher who is the enemy of dysfunctional teenagers. Only it wasn’t really Kathy I wanted to be kissing goodbye to, it was Jo, but Jo was no longer around.
I walked her inside. She never did get hold of her husband.
“He was off screwing some bimbo,” her ghost says, “and I told you he would be back at some point for some fresh clothes before work. You were glad to hear I was having marital difficulties.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I say, but something about it bugs me. The same something that bugged me when I read the newspaper this morning.
“It wasn’t your fault. You helped me check the house and it was nearly five o’clock when I walked you outside. I wrote your name and number down. You left then, and I was dead.”
“You weren’t dead.”
“And you’re splitting hairs.”
I walked backward down the driveway to my car, watching her watching me. We waved then she stepped inside. I heard the door lock and I would never again see her alive. I climbed into my car. I was yawning and dozing, just driving along with the windows down and the breeze coming through, and I had this feeling of normality that made me feel ill. When I drove past the pasture I already had an expectation of what I would see-Cyris stalking through the grass toward the road.
What I saw was worse. When I drove past the pasture. .
“The van was gone,” Kathy finishes, and then she’s gone too.
I break between two trees and see the flashing movement of the river flowing quickly over and around large round boulders, the water white and violent. The rain is hard here, unsheltered by the trees. Huge drops pluck the dirt next to the river, sending out small splashes of mud. It hammers on my head and shoulders and drives those angry needles of ice deeper into my soul. Landry’s footsteps are loud behind me, and each time I wonder if I will hear another. It would have been warmer had he just shot me back at the cabin. All this would be over and I wouldn’t have to be scared or talk to ghosts.