Burn All The Bodies

It Steals Things

It Steals ThingsBen rubbed the fog off the windshield with the cuff of his windbreaker, succeeding only in smearing moisture all over the glass. Rain washed down in sheets, and his struggling wipers did no more than slop it back and forth.

“Can’t see a goddamn thing,” he muttered.

It had been twenty-nine years since he escaped Partlow. Twenty-nine years of lying about where he was from, of adopting the accent and attitude of wherever it was he ended up. He remembered little of his childhood, and what he did recall was nothing more than a strobe-light of faces and names, blurred moments and sounds. His cousin, though. Mike. How could he forget him? They’d been so close, but when they were little something happened and Mike changed. He didn’t see him for years. Then in high school, he snapped and stabbed someone. A teacher or an administrator. He remembered his mother saying “thank goodness nobody was killed,” and his father saying “he’s better off where he is.” The details were moths, but one thing was certain: he never saw his cousin again after that.

Out of the blue, he got a letter in the mail. It was from Mike. “Please come home,” it read. “I need help.” It sat on the passenger seat under his overnight bag.

The road twisted and turned, and Ben struggled to stay in his lane. Then a burst of static exploded out of the radio and he jabbed at the power button right as the road button-hooked. His car started to hydroplane. He’d only experienced that kind of fear and panic once before, on a Jetbus that dropped two hundred feet in two seconds as he flew across the country. He gripped the wheel, eyes clenched, jaw clenched, 360 degrees of pure terror, then the car hit the grass shoulder and cracked into a tree. When he finally opened his eyes and saw the road he now faced, he couldn’t help but laugh.

Dunwich Drive.

Mike’s road.

The garage sat open like a yawning mouth. The car’s headlights lit upon the contents inside: drifts of newspapers listed in one corner, a workbench buried beneath a landslide of tools and plastic, a bag of kitty litter, an axe balanced atop a mound covered by a leather tarp. Underneath the tarp blossomed a dark, oily stain. Just as Ben cut the engine, lightening burst in the sky, illuminating the form of a man standing right outside the door. He was wearing a hunter green rain poncho and a wide-brimmed camouflage hat, and Ben couldn’t see his face.

The man ripped the door open and grabbed his elbow.

“Get inside!”

“Jesus!”

“Tornado warning.”

It was Mike. Just Mike. Ben pulled his arm from his cousin’s grasp.

“Okay, okay,” he said, reaching for his bag.

The garage door entered into the kitchen. Mike took his bag and dipped away without a word, and Ben walked into the living room and back in time. Candles sat everywhere, on the coffee table, the mantle, the sills, the floor, lighting the room with a warm, yellow glow. Everything looked exactly as it had when he was a kid. He stopped in front of the wide front windows, straining to see the fields. Memories flooded.

When he was little, he used to eat cereal on the front step, watch the crows hop in and out of the green stalks. He remembered the dust swirls in the air as his uncle steered a tractor up the driveway. He remembered the sun peeking out over the treetops, the sunflowers in the garden. Now all he saw were the shadows of dead corn, gray and silver in the night, and the black outline of the trees beyond. Mike’s reflection appeared in the window. He was standing right behind him, still wearing the rain poncho, his eyes obscured by the brim of the hat.

“Do you remember the farmer’s market we used to go to?” he said. “The one in town?”

Ben turned around.

“The one in Spotsy?”

“No.”

“Fredericksburg?”

“You know the one.”

A strong wind shook the windows, pressed down upon the house. Ben looked over his shoulder. The trees swayed dangerously

“Shouldn’t we get down to the basement?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“But the tornado.”

“We’ll be fine. Do you remember the farmer’s market?”

“Mike, what’s this about?”

“I remember it.” Another rumble of thunder, distant, low. “When we were little, they used to build the straw maze.”

The straw maze. The smell of wet hay, of apple cider. Ben had loved that market, loved everything about it. The moon pies, the pumpkin juice, even the bland natural peanut butter. Maybe something changed in Ben’s face, something that Mike recognized.

“You do,” he whispered. “You do.”

“Mike, are you okay?”

“I was nine. Do you remember, Bennie? I was nine when it happened.”

Ben winced. He hadn’t been called Bennie in twenty years. Another hard gust pressed against the house. The siding popped, sticks pattered on the roof. He turned again to look out the window, worried.

“Don’t look out there,” Mike said. “Look at me.” Ben did as he was told. “Do you remember, Bennie? When I was nine?”

“Mike, I don’t remember what I did last week.”

“You told me to go in. You told me to go in. ‘Just try,’ you said. Called me names. So I did. I went in. It was dark. I couldn’t breathe. The mud wetted my knees. It ruined my new corduroys. It smelled, Bennie. It smelled like . . . like someone had . . . .”

Something clattered and banged on the roof. Ben jumped.

“Bennie, I was only nine. I was only nine, Bennie.”

Hinges whined in some distant part of the house. The basement door.

“What is that?” Ben asked.

“You know in the middle? In the middle of the maze? It’s pitch black in there. It sits on your chest. It steals things.”

A soft thump, then the subtle susurrations as something dragged itself across the floor.

“Is there someone else here?”

“I could hear you and the other kids above. You were laughing. Screaming.”

The noise grew closer. It sounded like someone dragging plastic across the hardwood. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Ben peered into the flickering candlelight.

“Mike—”

“It steals things, Bennie. It stole something from me.”

Ben’s legs flooded with adrenaline. He felt the urge to get off the floor, to leap onto the furniture.

“When mother finally found me, I hadn’t moved from that spot for an hour. I was shivering. You were gone but I didn’t care. It stole something from me that night and I didn’t even know it and never really cared because it was gone.”

They stood there like that for a long time. Mike’s head lowered, the brim of his hat masking his face. Ben in a slight crouch, his hands balled into fists. The thing from the basement slid nearer and nearer.

Morning dawned with all of the warmth and cool clarity of early fall. The woods were alive. Birds flitted through the trees, lighted on the dead stalks in the fields, dive bombed the yard to peck at ants and worms. Puddles from the night’s rain potted the asphalt in front of the garage, the doors of which remained open.

Mike was kneeling in front of the leather tarp, the poncho draped over his shoulders, the hat askew on his head. He grunted as the tried to push something all the way under. When he was satisfied, he pulled the last corner down as tight as he could. He tried to tuck it in, but the edge wouldn’t reach so he just let it hang there.

Someone called from inside the house.

“Hold on,” he said, pondering a stain at his feet. He reached for the kitty litter. “I’ll be right there.”