If It Bleeds Read online

  “I’ll clear them myself,” Drew said. “Pop’s chainsaw is in the equipment shed, unless one of the renters decided to take it. Any gas that was in the tank will have evaporated, but I can siphon some out of the Suburban.”

  “If you don’t get sicker.”

  “I won’t—”

  “I’m going to tell the kids you’re fine.” Talking to herself more than him now. “No sense worrying them, too.”

  “That’s a good—”

  “This is fucked up, Drew.” She hated it when he interrupted her, but had never had any qualms about doing it herself. “I want you to know that. When you put yourself in this position, you put us in it, too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Is the book still going well? It better be. It better be worth all the worry.”

  “It’s going fine.” He was no longer sure of this, but what else could he tell her? The shit’s starting again, Lucy, and now I’m sick as well? Would that ease her mind?

  “All right.” She sighed. “You’re an idiot, but I love you.”

  “Love you, t—” The wind whooped, and suddenly the only light in the cabin was the dim and watery stuff coming in through the windows. “Lucy, I just lost the lights.” He sounded calm, and that was good.

  “Look in the equipment shed,” she said. “There might be a Coleman lantern—”

  There was another of those cicada buzzes, and then nothing but silence. He replaced the old-fashioned phone in its cradle. He was on his own.

  20

  He grabbed a musty old jacket from one of the hooks by the door and fought his way to the equipment shed through the late light, raising his arm once to fend off a flying branch. Maybe it was being sick, but the wind felt like it was already blowing forty per. He fumbled through the keys, cold water trickling down the back of his neck in spite of the jacket’s turned-up collar, and had to try three before he found the one that fit the padlock on the door. Once again he had to diddle it back and forth to get it to turn, and by the time it did, he was soaked and coughing.

  The shed was dark and full of shadows even with the door wide open, but there was enough light to see Pop’s chainsaw sitting on a table at the back. There were also a couple of other saws, one a two-handed buck, and probably that was good, because the chainsaw looked useless. The yellow paint of the body was almost obscured by ancient grease, the cutting chain was badly rusted, and he couldn’t imagine mustering the energy to yank the starter cord, anyway.

  Lucy was right about the Coleman lantern, though. There were actually two of them sitting on a shelf to the left of the door, along with a gallon can of fuel, but one of them was clearly useless, the globe shattered and the handle gone. The other one looked okay. The silk mantles were attached to the gas jets, which was good; with his hands shaking the way they were, he doubted if he would have been able to tie them down. Should have thought of this sooner, he scolded himself. Of course I should have gone home sooner. When I still could.

  When Drew tipped the can of fuel to the dimming afternoon light, he saw Pop’s backslanted printing on a strip of adhesive: USE THIS NOT UNLEADED GAS! He shook the can. It was half full. Not great, but maybe enough to last a three-day blow if he rationed his use.

  He took the can and unbroken lantern back to the house, started to put them on the dining room table, then thought better of it. His hands were shaking, and he was bound to spill at least some of the fuel. He put the lantern in the sink instead, then shucked the sodden jacket. Before he could think about fueling the lantern, the coughing started again. He collapsed into one of the dining room chairs, hacking away until he felt he might pass out. The wind was howling, and something thudded on the roof. A much bigger branch than the one he’d fended off, from the sound.

  When the coughing passed, he unscrewed the tap on the lantern’s reservoir and went looking for a funnel. He didn’t find one, so he tore off a strip of aluminum foil and fashioned a half-assed funnel from that. The fumes wanted to start the coughing again, but he controlled it until he got the lantern’s little tank filled. When it was, he let go and bent over the counter with his burning forehead on one arm, hacking and choking and gasping for breath.

  The fit eventually passed, but the fever was worse than ever. Getting soaked probably didn’t help, he thought. Once he got the Coleman lit—if he got it lit—he’d take some more aspirin. Add a shot of headache powder and a knock of Dr. King’s for good measure.

  He pumped the little gadget on the side to build pressure, opened the tap, then struck a kitchen match and slipped it through the ignition hole. For a moment there was nothing, but then the mantles lit up, the light so bright and concentrated it made him wince. He took the Coleman to the cabin’s single closet, looking for a flashlight. He found clothes, orange vests for hunting season, and an old pair of ice skates (he vaguely remembered skating on the brook with his brother on the few occasions they’d been up here in the winter). He found hats and gloves and an elderly Electrolux vacuum cleaner that looked about as useful as the rusty chainsaw in the equipment shed. There was no flashlight.

  The wind rose to a shriek around the eaves, making his head hurt. Rain lashed the windows. The last of the daylight continued to drain away, and he thought this was going to be a very long night. His expedition to the shed and his struggle to get the lamp lit had occupied him, but now that those chores were done, he had time to be afraid. He was stuck here because of a book that was (he could admit it now) starting to unravel like the others. He was stuck, he was sick, and he was apt to get sicker.

  “I could die out here,” he said in his new hoarse voice. “I really could.”

  Best not to think of that. Best to load up the woodstove and get it cranking, because the night was going to be cold as well as long. Temperatures are going to fall radically when this front comes through, wasn’t that what the scruffy weather geek had said? And the counter woman with the lip stud had said the same thing. Right down to the same metaphor (if it was a metaphor), which likened temperature to a physical object that could roll off a table.

  That brought him back to Deputy Jep, who was not the smartest kid in the classroom. Really? Had he actually thought that would do? It was a shitty metaphor (if it even was a metaphor). Not just weak, dead on arrival. As he loaded the stove, his feverish mind seemed to open a secret door and he thought, A sandwich short of a picnic.

  Better.

  All foam and no beer.

  Better still, because of the story’s western milieu.

  Dumber than a bag of hammers. About as smart as a rock. Sharp as a marb—

  “Stop it,” he almost begged. That was the problem. That secret door was the problem, because…

  “I have no control over it,” he said in his croaky voice, and thought, Dumb as a frog with brain damage.

  Drew struck the side of his head with the heel of his hand. His headache flared. He did it again. And again. When he’d had enough of that, he stuffed crumpled sheets of magazine under some kindling, scratched a match on the stovetop, and watched the flames lick up.

  Still holding the lit match, he looked at the pages of Bitter River stacked beside the printer, and thought about what would happen if he touched them alight. He hadn’t quite managed to burn down the house when he’d lit up The Village on the Hill, the fire trucks had arrived before the flames could do much more than scorch the walls of his study, but there would be no fire trucks out here on Shithouse Road, and the storm wouldn’t stop the fire once it took hold, because the cabin was old and dry. Old as dirt, dry as your grandmother’s—

  The flame guttering along the matchstick reached his fingers. Drew shook it out, tossed it into the blazing stove, and slammed the grate shut.

  “It’s not a bad book and I’m not going to die out here,” he said. “Not going to happen.”

  He turned off the Coleman to conserve the fuel, then sat down in the wing chair he spent his evenings in, reading paperbacks by John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard. There wasn’t
enough light to read by now, not with the Coleman off. Night had almost come, and the only light in the cabin was the shifting red eye of the fire seen through the woodstove’s isinglass window. Drew pulled his chair a bit closer to the stove and wrapped his arms around himself to quell the shivers. He should change out of his damp shirt and pants, and do it right away if he didn’t want to get even sicker. He was still thinking this when he fell asleep.

  21

  What woke him was a splintering crack from outside. It was followed by a second, even louder crack, and a thud that shook the floor. A tree had fallen, and it must have been a big one.

  The fire in the woodstove had burned down to a bed of bright red embers that waxed and waned. Along with the wind, he could now hear a sandy rattling against the windows. The cabin’s big downstairs room was stuperously hot, at least for the time being, but the temperature outside must have fallen (off the table) as predicted, because the rain had turned to sleet.

  Drew tried to check the time, but his wrist was bare. He supposed he’d left his watch on the nighttable beside the bed, although he couldn’t remember for sure. He could always check the time and date strip on his laptop, he supposed, but what would be the point? It was nighttime in the north woods. Did he need any other information?

  He decided he did. He needed to find out if the tree had fallen on his trusty Suburban and smashed the shit out of it. Of course need was the wrong word, need was for something you had to have, subtext being that if you could get it you might be able to change the overall situation for the better, and nothing in this situation would change either way, and was situation the right word, or was it too general? It was more of a fix than a situation, fix in this context meaning not to repair but—

  “Stop it,” he said. “Do you want to drive yourself crazy?”

  He was pretty sure a part of him wanted exactly that. Somewhere inside his head, control panels were smoking and circuit breakers were fusing and some mad scientist was shaking his fists in exultation. He could tell himself it was the fever, but he had been in fine fettle when Village had gone bad. Same with the other two. Physically, at least.

  He got up, wincing at the aches that now seemed to be afflicting all of his joints, and went to the door, trying not to hobble. The wind tore it from his grasp and bounced it off the wall. He grabbed it and held on, his clothes plastered against his body and his hair streaming back from his forehead. The night was black—black as the devil’s riding boots, black as a black cat in a coalmine, black as a woodchuck’s asshole—but he could make out the bulk of his Suburban and (maybe) tree branches waving above it on the far side. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought the tree had spared his Suburban and landed on the equipment shed, no doubt bashing in the roof.

  He shouldered the door shut and turned the deadbolt. He didn’t expect intruders on such a dirty night, but he didn’t want it blowing open after he went to bed. And he was going to bed. He made his way to the kitchen counter by the shifting, chancy light of the embers and lit the Coleman lantern. In its glare the cabin looked surreal, caught by a flashbulb that didn’t go out but just went on and on. Holding it in front of him, he crossed to the stairs. That was when he heard a scratching at the door.

  A branch, he told himself. Blown there by the wind and caught somehow, maybe on the welcome mat. It’s nothing. Go to bed.

  The scratching came again, so soft he never would have heard it if the wind hadn’t chosen those few moments to lull. It didn’t sound like a branch; it sounded like a person. Like some orphan of the storm too weak or badly hurt to even knock and could only scratch. Only no one had been out there… or had there been? Could he be absolutely sure? It had been so dark. Black as the devil’s riding boots.

  Drew went to the door, freed the deadbolt, and opened it. He held up the Coleman lamp. No one there. Then, as he was about to shut the door again, he looked down and saw a rat. Probably a Norway, not huge but pretty big. It was lying on the threadbare welcome mat, one of its paws—pink, strangely human, like a baby’s hand—outstretched and still scratching at the air. Its brown-black fur was littered with tiny bits of leaf, twig, and beads of blood. Its bulging black eyes were looking up at him. Its side heaved. That pink paw continued to scratch at the air, just as it had scratched at the door. A miniscule sound.

  Lucy hated rodents, screeched her head off if she saw so much as a fieldmouse scuttering along the baseboard, and it did no good to tell her the wee sleekit cowerin beastie was undoubtedly a lot more terrified of her than she was of it. Drew didn’t care much for rodents himself, and understood they carried diseases—hantavirus, rat bite fever, and those were only the two most common—but he’d never had Lucy’s almost instinctive loathing of them. What he mostly felt for this one was pity. Probably it was that tiny pink paw, which continued scratching at nothing. Or maybe the pinpricks of white light from the Coleman lantern he saw in its dark eyes. It lay there panting and looking up at him with blood on its fur and in its whiskers. Broken up inside and probably dying.

  Drew bent, one hand on his upper thigh, the other holding down the lantern for a better look. “You were in the equipment shed, weren’t you?”

  Almost surely. Then the tree had come down, smashing through the roof, destroying Mr. Rat’s happy home. Had he been hit by a tree branch or a piece of the roof as he scuttled for safety? Maybe by a bucket of congealed paint? Had Pop’s useless old McCulloch chainsaw tumbled off the table and fallen on him? It didn’t matter. Whatever it was had squashed him and maybe broken his back. He’d had just enough gas left in his ratty little tank to crawl here.

  The wind picked up again, throwing sleet into Drew’s hot face. Spicules of ice struck the globe of the lantern, hissed, melted, and ran down the glass. The rat panted. The rat on the mat needs help stat, Drew thought. Except the rat on the mat was beyond help. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist.

  Except, of course, he could help.

  Drew walked to the dead socket of the fireplace, pausing once for a coughing fit, and bent over the stand containing the little collection of fireplace tools. He considered the poker, but the idea of skewering the rat with it made him wince. He took the ash shovel instead. One hard hit ought to be enough to put it out of its misery. Then he could use the shovel to sweep it off the side of the porch. If he lived through tonight, he had no wish to start tomorrow by stepping on the corpse of a dead rodent.

  Here is something interesting, he thought. When I first saw it, I thought “he.” Now that I’ve decided to kill the damn thing, it’s “it.”

  The rat was still on the mat. Sleet had begun crusting on its fur. That one pink paw (so human, so human) continued to paw at the air, although now it was slowing down.

  “I’m going to make it better,” Drew said. He raised the shovel… held it at shoulder height for the strike… then lowered it. And why? The slowly groping paw? The beady black eyes?

  A tree had crashed the rat’s home and crushed him (back to him now), he had somehow dragged himself to the cabin, God knew how much effort it had taken, and was this to be his reward? Another crushing, this one final? Drew was feeling rather crushed himself these days and, ridiculous or not (probably it was), he felt a degree of empathy.

  Meanwhile, the wind was chilling him, sleet was smacking him in the face, and he was shivering again. He had to close the door and he wasn’t going to leave the rat to die slowly in the dark. And on a fucking welcome mat, to boot.

  Drew set down the lantern and used the shovel to scoop it up (funny how liquid that pronoun was). He went to the stove and tilted the shovel so the rat slid onto the floor. That one pink paw kept scratching. Drew put his hands on his knees and coughed until he dry-retched and spots danced in front of his eyes. When the fit passed, he took the lantern back to his reading chair and sat down.

  “Go ahead and die now,” he said. “At least you’re out of the weather and can do it where you’re warm.”

  He turned off the lantern. Now there was just the fai
nt red glow of the dying embers. The way they waxed and waned reminded him of the way that tiny pink paw had scratched… and scratched… and scratched. It was doing it still, he saw.

  I should build up the fire before I go up to bed, he thought. If I don’t, this place is going to be as cold as Grant’s Tomb in the morning.

  But the coughing, which had temporarily subsided, would no doubt begin again if he got up and started moving the phlegm around. And he was tired.

  Also, you put the rat down pretty close to the stove. I think you brought it in to die a natural death, didn’t you? Not to broil it alive Build the fire up in the morning.

  The wind droned around the cabin, occasionally rising to a womanish screech, then subsiding to that drone again. The sleet slatted against the windows. As he listened to these sounds, they seemed to merge. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. Had the rat died? At first he thought it had, but then that tiny paw made another short slow stroke. So not quite yet.

  Drew closed his eyes.

  And slept.

  22

  He awoke with a start when another branch thudded down on the roof. He had no idea how long he had been out. It could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been two hours, but one thing was sure: there was no rat in front of the stove. Apparently Monsieur Rat hadn’t been as badly hurt as Drew had thought; it had come around and was now somewhere in the house with him. He didn’t much care for that idea, but it was his own fault. He had invited it in, after all.

  You have to invite them in, Drew thought. Vampires. Wargs. The devil in his black riding boots. You have to invite—

  “Drew.”

  He started so strongly at the sound of that voice that he almost kicked over the lantern. He looked around and by the light of the dying fire in the stove, saw the rat. He was on Pop’s desk under the stairs, sitting on his back paws between the laptop and the portable printer. Sitting, in fact, on the manuscript of Bitter River.