Page 137 of The Bright Lands
Now was the time again for the stonethings and the bloodthings, the sandthings and the bonethings, all the things the carpenter had banished to the far place, all the things that now would beg to follow Bosheth across the trench, the things that would cry and the things that would weep and the things that would shout please, Bosheth, please forgive us, please: please give us a taste of your men.
And he would smile and he would tell them,When I’m through.
“Some of you we’ll keep in chains,” Garrett shouted. “And some of you will bring more people here. And some of you—”
Jamal was sobbing. Joel was struggling to rise. Clark couldn’t even imagine moving. The moment that voice had finally entered her head she’d felt her lungs fill with lead.
Only Luke seemed unbothered. As the rumble in the hole rose to a roar of delight, as the ground crumbled beneath Clark’s fingers, Evers calmly made his way over a few whimpering boys and stopped a foot from Garrett.
“Celebrate, boys!” Garrett shouted. “These are the best years of your life!”
Luke raised the Glock and fired two shots into Garrett’s chest.
NO!The whispering voice in Clark’s head started screaming. The screeching of nails on the stone below grew louder, Bosheth climbed faster.NO!
Garrett fell back with a cough of surprise. The rifle fell from his grasp. Clark raised her head in time to watch him try to crawl away from Luke but there was something wrong with his legs. After struggling to escape, Garrett gave up, clutched his hands to his Bison helmet and pressed it hard to his head as if it might shield him from the fruits of a life of shame and hate and all the hush-now pillow games his brother had taught him. He let out a child’s whimper. Luke took a step toward him.
A blink, and Clark saw behind Luke—though she wished for the rest of her life she hadn’t—a great white hook of a claw, pale as the moon and long as a school bus, throw itself over the edge of the hole. Saw a clutch of whiskers, tall as cornstalks, bleached white after centuries in the water, rise, dripping, from down below.
Saw a single eye, black and infinite and cold, emerge to stare at her.
“Luke!” she shouted.
But Evers seemed to notice none of this. He only regarded Garrett, regarded Garrett’s helmet.
“It’s just fiberglass, you idiot,” Luke said, and emptied the Glock into Garrett’s head.
Clark buried her face in the dirt as a wail of rage rose from the mouth of the hole, the sound so high and sharp she was certain it would burst her ears. She felt blood run from her nose. She screamed.
She grabbed hold of Joel and Jamal.
From somewhere in Garrett’s direction she heard the pin of the Glock clicking when it struck an empty chamber. Heard a shaking in the dust as Garrett’s body gave up the last of its life.
There was a great splash from deep below a moment later and the wailing stopped.
It took all sound with it. The whispers. The roars. The crackle of the flames. For one long moment, all Clark could hear was her heart, galloping in her chest.
Before her strength returned to her, Clark looked up and saw not Bosheth or the empty hole of the Bright Lands but Troy, standing at her kitchen window, opening his mouth to speak.
AFTER
DYLAN
Nowtherewas a party that had gotten out of hand. Pills and speed, the age-old story: to think these substances had become so pernicious in this country they could ensnare not just the Bison and the new Sheriff’s Deputy but such pillars of the community as Mr. Lott, Mr. Boone and stalwart Coach Parter. The men at the bar agreed that it was a bad business, but it could have been worse. After all, just think what would have happened if Officer Clark hadn’t arrived armed?
From their smoky den at Mr. Jack’s Steaks, the members of the Chamber of Commerce saw to it that the only thing to make the papers were the obituaries. The only soul not memorialized was Garrett Mason, mass murderer and meth addict. The ladies at church folded their hands and shook their heads. Between this and his brother’s suicide, how would Garrett’s family ever bear to be seen in public again?
Offensive coach Bill Wesford was named the new athletic director, despite murmurings of inappropriate conduct from members of the girls’ softball team. The consensus at the Egg House was that you couldn’t let gossip like that slow you down. The boys still had a shot at the state championships, after all. The town still had a dream.
A naked redheaded boy named Baker Channing, delirious and seared with sunburn, stumbled onto the highway the week after all that business, raving about play-offs and blow jobs; he had apparently escaped the violence on foot and become lost in the Flats for days. Baker was loudly and insistently informed of how blessed he was to be alive, reminded of this until he stopped feeling the need to discuss what he may or may not have seen that night.
In his cursory search of the premises, Investigator Mayfield discovered the charred body of Bryan Weissman, a defensive tackle for the Perlin Stallions, propped against the orange door of HOME ON THE RANGE. The boy had taken two 9-millimeter rounds to the back. The bullets matched the shell casings of the customized Glock which had killed Garrett Mason, a murder that Officer Clark ensured was written off as self-defense on Luke Evers’s part.
In the back bedroom of the triple-wide, beneath a heavy pink bed surrounded by shattered mirrors, a trapdoor was discovered in the floor. It was determined that the door must have provided access to the cavernous crawl space that spread among the stanchions of the elevated trailer. It was never determined precisely how a skeleton had come to rest within that crawl space, though Officer Clark had a few theories she kept to herself.
The skeleton was discovered still clad in football pads. It wore a jersey with the name BROADLOCK printed across its back.
The skeleton had been preserved from the explosion overhead by the strange concrete coffin in which it had been enclosed. Beneath the skeleton’s crossed arms there was a photograph that had likely been taken on the same day as the team portrait which Joel Whitley had seen online, after leaving Ranger Mason’s house. Standing in the center of the photo was handsome Corwin Broadlock. To his left was nervous little Toby Lott. To his right was cocky Harlan Boone. And standing there with his arm over Broadlock’s shoulder was hulking, bashful Tom Parter, smiling like he couldn’t believe his luck.
