Malorie(78)

But killing Gary will mean more than just becoming a killer. She will also be leveling the loose ends of her time spent in the house with the housemates. The very friends she buried, finding everybody’s body but his.

They find him outside a former liquor store not far from where they stay with Sam. Olympia spots him and taps Malorie on the shoulder in the manner she’s been instructed to do.

“He’s sleeping against the outside wall,” Olympia says.

“It’s him,” Tom says.

The bow is formidable. But after seventeen years of living to protect, Malorie is the strongest she’s ever been.

“A little higher,” Tom says.

He’s at Malorie’s shoulder, helping her aim.

“A little more,” Olympia says. She adjusts the angle of the bow.

If they miss, they will have to think fast.

She can almost hear the door closing. The clicking of a lock. The past put away.

It strikes her as somewhat incredible that, in a way, Gary was right.

Man was the creature she and the housemates had to fear most.

“All right,” Tom says.

Malorie pulls the trigger. Gary makes no sound.

“It hit him right in his chest,” Tom says.

“His heart,” Olympia says.

The three walk cautiously to his dead body.

“Eat shit,” Tom says.

“Watch your mouth,” Malorie says. Then, “For someone who talked too much, he had no last words.”

Olympia guides Malorie’s hand to check Gary’s pulse.

He’s dead.

“Don’t remove that arrow,” Malorie says. “I want him to stay forever this way.”



* * *



—

The teens are asleep. Sam is asleep.

Malorie has spoken long with her dad about what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. Neither of them believes they ought to live here, in this home, in this community, forever. Sam often speaks of wanting to return to where Malorie was raised. It would be a long journey, one Malorie believes her dad can endure, one they both want to take, but neither of them has declared today the day to do it.

Now, six in the morning, the world still dark outside, Malorie takes the stairs to the first floor. There, in the kitchen, she dunks a glass in a wooden bucket of water and drinks.

On the kitchen table is the visor the people of Indian River fashioned out of Tom’s two-way mirror. Some of those people have come to the house, hoping to speak to Tom about his invention. It used to be that Malorie wouldn’t let anyone in. Now, she picks and chooses. When she denied Athena Hantz entrance, the local legend was offended. When she asked for an explanation, Malorie told her she got lucky. Lucky that Tom came up with what he did. Because if something had happened to him…

Malorie picks up the visor. She eyes it. She considers.

She puts it on.

She stands by one of the blanketed windows, facing the darkness for many minutes, before she takes her coat from the rack beside the back door, closes her eyes, and steps outside.

It’s autumn now. Malorie hears leaves crushed beneath her boots.

Her head is lowered as she waits for the heat of the sun to warm her. She likes standing here, beside Mary’s grave. She likes talking to her still. She repeats stories about Shannon, her head lowered, eyes closed.

She tells Mary about Dean Watts. She says that maybe, when they finally do head north, Malorie will make a point of checking Mackinaw City for the man who brought back the train.

And just when the sun prickles her neck, just as she senses that some semblance of light has begun anew, Malorie, for the first time in over ten years, opens her eyes outside.

It surprises her how familiar the colors are. Old friends, back again. At her feet is Mary’s grave; yellow, orange, and red with leaves. When she looks up, she sees a creature stands twenty feet farther into the yard.

Malorie does not move.

She senses a bird attempting to take flight somewhere in her head, a thing as black as her hair and as blue as her eyes.

But, despite the sound of flapping feathers, whatever is trying to get away doesn’t quite get there.

Malorie breathes in. She holds it. She breathes out.

She looks.

She sees.

Infinity considering itself. Eternity facing its own endless journey.



* * *



—

And despite the thousand various words that rise to describe it, and the struggle to name it, she knows that by looking, now, beside her mother’s grave, with her father and her teens asleep and safe inside, she has bridged some gap, she is losing no more, nothing more is being taken. And something has been returned.





       Malorie is for Kristin Nelson.





AFTERWORD/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I’ve got a thing for rough drafts. Some might call it a fetish. In a slightly different reality I consider the rough draft/demo of a book or a song a finished thing. I’ve even gone so far as to consider outlines realized stories, albeit oddly told. Thing is, before getting my first book deal I had no real reason to rewrite at all. I’d wrapped a dozen rough drafts by then (in those days I only called them books), and, to me, they were as complete as any hardcovers on my shelves. I shared them with everyone; bands we, The High Strung, toured with, friends and family, strangers. In the ’90s, my songwriting partner, Mark Owen, and I had a list of names we’d send cassette dubs to, generation-loss copies of already lo-fi albums. Those twenty people were enough. They made the group of songs real. By virtue of mailing out Bid Me Off and A Lot of Old Reasons, Mark and I could move on to the next batch, as yet unwritten, relieved to have another album in our bag, enthused for the next one. It was in those days that I learned to love the initial go-round, the first try, the stab at it when nobody was watching. Do you like live music? The rough drafts and demos were and still are like that. A performance. Fluctuating speed, some miffed notes, a forgotten lyric here and there.