The Safety of Men

My final project for a writing class.

    Grady and Joe sat playing cards until late into the night, when the flickering light of their gas lamp cast manic shadows on the cold cabin walls. They’d made their way through two fifths of whiskey, and were working on the next.
    Grady played a three.
    “Sure bout that?” Joe said, sneering with blurry eyes.
    Grady sunk his brow, challenged.
    “You just wait pally, see what’s coming to ya.”
    He grinned through his frazzled beard.
    “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. Next round?” Joe asked and pointed to their empty, neglected glasses.
    Grady grunted back.   
    He took the two glasses to the kitchen, or rather the corner of the room the kitchen was in. The cabin was a single, open room with a sunken floor living room, a large kitchen and dining area, and the front door and its entrance. Two flimsy walls(added on by Grady and Joe) made the bedroom, and one cut the front bay window right in half: giving the same view in two rooms.
    Joe took the bottle from the counter, and after he’d filled his own glass he heard a noise from the driveway. It was quiet enough to make him wonder whether he’d even heard anything at all, but then there was a second sound. This one was closer; a quick hollow thud. Grady stopped shuffling and tried to squint through the window, but saw only his flickering reflection leering back him. Joe put down the bottle, and this time the sound was at the doorstep.
    The door knob started to turn.
    Joe motioned for Grady to stay put, and took the 30.30 down from the wall, pumping the lever, and moved towards the door.
    “We ain’t got nothing you can steal!” He yelled out, five feet from the door.
    The knob was rattling, and the door started to shake as whoever was on the other side of it slammed into the wood.
    Joe brought the butt to his shoulder, unlocked the door, and turned the handle in one swift motion.
    As the door swung in, the man from outside came toppling into the room.
    Joe tumbled backwards, firing a shot into the ceiling, and landed on his back with the man landing on him.
    “Jesus!” Grady said, and shot straight up out of his chair.
    The man from outside was gurgling something through ragged breaths, and started to crawl up Joe’s body, clutching something in his right hand. He was frail, in tattered overalls, and his face and hands were covered in blood.
    “S**t Joe, get him off ya!” Grady yelled and stood motionless.
    His eyes were wide and trying to speak as he grabbed fistfuls of Joe’s flannel shirt, scaling him horizontally like a rock climber made of brittle sticks.
    “Alright old man, alright.” Joe said pushing against the man repulsively.
    He sat up and shoved the old man to the floor, where he collapsed on his back, clutching his hands together and staring scared at the ceiling.
    He mouthed the word ‘Please’, but neither man saw it. 
    He died and then stopped breathing.
   
    After they had taken a few very long pulls on the bottle, but before they had called the sheriff, Grady pried open the man’s hands and found a tiny key stained in blood. He showed it to Joe and then put it in his pocket.

    Neither man had mentioned the key to the sheriff. For two weeks Grady kept it on him at all times, taking it out to cradle it and massage it like a worry stone. There seemed to be a higher importance to the small brass key. It had the number 8 engraved on it in a wavy script, and Grady spent most of his time wondering why the old man had gone to such trouble to protect it. And what it was that had killed him.
    The coroner had found two deep perforations in the man’s chest, and he had slowly bled to death from his wounds. They found no ID, and no one had filed a missing persons report anywhere in the area. There was a perturbed stirring in the surrounding mountain community at first, but soon the old man was swept under the unanimous carpet of country folk that kept to themselves, and was quickly forgotten.
    One afternoon while Joe hauled up buckets of water from the outside well, Grady again took the key from his pocket and studied it on the rotting tree stump he sat on.
    “You know, I’m starting to wonder if you aren’t as crazy as that old coot you stole that from, staring at like that all day.” Joe said through pursed lips.
    “I didn’t steal nothing. He was dead, and sure as hell won’t be using it.” Grady rubbed his beard and the key caught the light of the sun.
    “What do you suppose it opens?” Joe said, pouring the water from the last bucketful into a large plastic container they kept in the cabin.
    “Now how the hell am I supposed to know that?” Grady snapped. “S**t if I know, but damn if ain’t important. Man doesn’t die holding onto something with all that’s left of his life unless it means something.”
    Joe wiped his brow and leaned against the stone well, lighting a smoke. He stared at the man he’d shared a house with for these many years and wrinkled his brow. He’s gone nutso, he thought. Crazy old b*****d probably thinks it’s the key to some buried treasure, or something.
    “Here, lemme see it.” Joe said, and stood up with hand outstretched to Grady.
    “Hell no! It’s sure as s**t mine, and ain’t nobody going to play peek-a-boo with it but me!” Grady said, whisking the hand holding the key behind his back.
    “C’mon you damn codger, lemme take a look at it. You think I’m gonna steal it?” Joe said, and moved closer, his hand still outstretched.
    There was a rising fear in Grady’s chest, one that told him to keep the key safe, to make sure that no one tampered with it. He saw Joe as a threatening weasel, inching towards him.
    Joe closed the gap between them and reached for the key behind Grady’s back, but Grady dodged him, switching hands and holding it out away from them.
    “Now damnit, I’m through with all this nonsense! I just wanna look at the damn thing! I ain’t never stole from you in my life and I’m not about to start now, crazy old fool…” He trailed off as he grabbed Grady’s arm and started to pry open his clenched fist, but he was interrupted when Grady shoved him.
    He was knocked to the ground, and stared back at Grady with betrayal on his face.     He felt his temper rising.
    “You stay back.” Grady said, all temperament turned to ice.
    Joe gritted his teeth, and this time he rushed him, using a tackle from his old high school football days to knock the wind out of Grady and knock Grady off the stump. They wrestled; Grady with the key in his vice grip fist held outstretched as they rolled around in the dirt. They were all tense muscles and kicking feet, until finally Grady saw an opening and threw a close punch square into Joe’s jaw. But as the ripple of the impact faded from Joe’s face, all that was there now was rage. He pulled back his fist in a wide windup, but Grady caught him with another right hook, this time in the nose. The hit knocked Joe backwards, until the backs of his legs met the low stone wall of the well and tripped him, sending him falling backwards into the blackness of the well.
    Joe yelled out, but was cut off in mid cry by the impact, where he promptly fell silent. Grady stood up and crept towards the well with wide eyes. He was holding the key so tight it was leaving indentations in his palm. He looked over the edge, and way down he saw Joe’s outline, floating in the water upside down.
    There was no remorse or sense of pain for the friend he had just killed, only the pulse of a monotonous command in Grady’s mind: Leave.
    Grady ran to the pickup parked in front of the cabin and tore the door open. He locked it behind him. After scouring the dirty dashboard and seat though, he surmised that the keys must be with Joe, in the well. With his heart pounding as the sun began to set, Grady took off running down the dirt road that led to the SR, where he would follow it all the way to Waits.

        *        *        *   

    Jack O’Halloran liked to spend late afternoons on his porch listening to the wind with Husker, his golden lab. The Chinook would crest at Baker’s Point, a small jutting cliff-side that overlooked the rest of Waits, where Jack had built a small house with the biggest view in town. He liked those calm days with the wind; he even liked it when it wound up and beat against his house and windows and threatened to topple him off the ridge. Jack and the wind were two tough old sons-of-b*****s. He’d built the house after Nancy died, and sometimes, when he could no longer tell whether it was very late or very early, he would hear her laugh echo faintly over the hardwood floors.
    “Looks like the end of the world.” Jack said, and stroked Husker’s fur.
    The sky was catching and stretching all the remaining color from the sunset, churning a darkening indigo into sweeping trails of crimson and magenta.
    The dog whined.
    Jack finished his whiskey and stood up to let the Husker inside. He looked out over Waits, with all its firefly flickerings of early evening lights, and felt a sense of dread creep over him, but the wind died away before it could tell him what is was.
   
    Abby Clemons sneezed into her hands, and then dug for tissues while her sinus engines revved for a follow up. She wiped her nose and felt the pressure behind her face welling up again.
    “Next?” Her voice was thick and hoarse as she called to Thom Hopkins, waiting in line with his daughter June.
    “Jeez Abbs, cantcha get one of the other girls to cover for ya? Ya just sound terrible.”
    He emptied his plastic basket onto the counter and Abby started to add up his total. June counted the candy bars next to the register.
    “Not today, they’ve got the big graduation rehearsal at the high school, and Pepper’s out sick already with the same thing.” Abby said, making the words through croaks and stuffy vowels.
    “Sixteen twenty-five, Thom.”
    “Well I sure hope ya get to feelin’ better, Abbs. Ya here for too much longer?”
    She blew her nose like a warped trumpet. June looked up at her and lost count.
    “Two more hours, then Ben’s picking me up and putting me to bed.”
    “Almost over then. Hang in there hon.”
    He smiled wide, and left the store with his daughter.
    Abby flicked off her lighted register number 7, and signaled to Barry that she was taking a break. She walked down aisle four, past the smells of faux laundry and bad air fresheners, and opened the door that led to a small loading dock at the back of Pritcher’s Foods. She lit a cigarette, and exhaled slowly so as not to burst into a fit of coughing. She took another drag and noticed the body.
    He was an old man, dressed in tattered overalls, and was huddled on his side next to the steel framed roof ladder bolted to the side of the building. Abby tried to focus her swimming eyes, and took a few steps towards him, squinting for signs of life in his grizzled face and frizzy beard. She stepped out from underneath the awning of the loading dock, and got close enough to see his eyes. They were wide open and staring, but there was no depth there. His body was slightly contorted, as though he’d died in mid shiver. Abby tried to scream, but she only started coughing.

    Paul Cavanagh was the one who had finally called the police. He’d been in the store shopping for light bulbs for his café when Abby had burst back onto the floor of Pritcher’s, hacking and wheezing and trying to tell them. Once she’d finally calmed down enough to be able to say, “Dead on the dock.”, Paul and Barry had ventured out to find the poor bum. Paul phoned the sheriff while Barry phoned Ben. Abby just coughed and sneezed. 
    When Sheriff King arrived, Paul was jingling his keys in his pocket.
    He gave a statement after Ben took Abby home.
    “He must’ve been a drifter.” The sheriff said, looking over the corpse with a speculating sterility. 
    “Might’ve come through on one of the trains or maybe just hitched his way here.”
    Paul didn’t like this, the part about explaining how one man’s life came to an insignificant end.
    “What do you suppose he died from?” Paul asked.
    “Well, I’m still waiting on Ray from the Coroner’s, but I imagine it was probably a heart attack. These poor old b******s just wear out after awhile. It’s a tough life for anybody.”
    Paul looked at the body, looked deep into his still-opened eyes and tried to find some sort of answer there.
    “Death don’t ever make much sense, Paul.” Sheriff King said.
    Paul nodded.
    “Suppose life don’t make much sense either.” He said back to the sheriff.
    Ray Wicket pulled his black Landau hearse around back into the loading dock, and waved to Sheriff King and Paul. Sheriff King always thought it strange a man Ray’s age would want to become a coroner.
    “He doesn’t even have a name.” Paul said.
    “Well we‘ll try and see what we can find out.”
    Paul felt numb as Ray snapped a few pictures of the body, and then started the process of bagging him up. He stopped when he found the key, and called the other men over.
    “Looks like it’s for a safety deposit box or something.” Ray said, examining the little thing with his acne scarred face. He handed it to the sheriff.
    King studied it while his mind spun.
    Paul watched the two men talking about a silly key while a man laid frantically dead at their feet.
    “You need me for anything else?” Paul said.
    “Nah, why don’t you get back to the café. I’ll head over if I need anything.” Sheriff King said, and waved him away.
    Paul was happy to be free of the sight of the old man, but he was still hovering in his mind. He was working on him, working on Paul in a way he didn’t know dead men could. He tried to brush it away as he started his truck and headed back to his café.

    Usually, there was only a few patrons at Paul’s Stall & Stay Café after four pm, but today it was totally deserted. Paul wiped the counters and washed the remaining dishes, getting ready to close up early for the day. But as he finished drying his hands, Jack O’Halloran came in with a jangling ring from the brass door bell with Husker trotting behind him.
    “Heya Jack, long time. Can I getcha something to eat?”
    Jack sat at the counter across from Paul. Husker plopped down on the tile.
    “I think just a cup of coffee should do me, thanks.”
    Paul poured him a cup.
    “You hear about the man they found over at Pritcher’s?” Paul asked.
    Jack nodded.
    “Yeah, ran into Abby’s Ben when I was buying my smokes. Said she was all in hysterics about the way his eyes were.” He said, and took a bent Lucky from his pocket.
    “I was there too. And I know what she means, about his eyes. Like if you looked hard enough you could see God, or something.” Paul said and stared at the floor.
    Jack lit his smoke and tossed his dying match into the ashtray on the counter.
    “You don’t need death to see it, you just gotta listen for the pauses.”
    “What do you mean, Jack?” Paul said.
    “Well, it’s been my experience that when life stops moving for just an instance, you get a chance to figure out why it was you were moving in the first place.”
    Paul thought about the old man; Jack thought about Nancy.
    “Or maybe I’m just a senile old man who talks too much.”
    Jack smiled and finished his cup.

           *        *        *
   
    Sheriff King stared at the little brass key on his desk. He got the feeling it was staring at him.
    “You want me to have Ray drop off the autopsy report on his way home tonight?” Arlene, the dispatcher, asked.
    “Just have him bring it by in the morning, the old boy will still be dead then.” the Sheriff said.
    Arlene spoke quietly back into her headset. 
    “Charlie, can you get into touch with Miles Vernon over in Crest County to see if he’s had any missing persons reports lately? I wanna see if we can give this poor b*****d a name.”
    Charlie Van Doren, Sheriff King’s stout deputy, nodded back to him from her desk. She hated calling Sheriff Vernon’s for anything less than an emergency; interdepartmental courtesies were few and far between all the way out here. Most just kept to their own.
    Sheriff King absently pocketed the key and put on his coat to leave for the day.
    “See y’all in the morning.” He said waving, and went to his Bronco to leave.
    During the twenty minute drive to his house on the outskirts of town, Sheriff King fondled the key in his pocket no less than four times, and with each he was surprised to find it in his hand. He felt a magnetism towards it, and was sure it would cease to exist if he went without touching it for too long.
    When he arrived home, his wife Martha was already asleep, so he made himself a drink and sat in the living room staring at the key in his hand. He fell asleep in his chair with it watching him.
   
    There had been no missing persons report filed anywhere in the Crest County area, but Sheriff Vernon had(after the usual rib-poking comments he was prone to make) said something about two men that lived on the mountain that had come across a body about a month ago. One of them was dead, found by a neighbor, and the other was nowhere to be found. After a few trials with the clunky fax machine, Charlie finally was sent a blurred picture of a Grady Peterson, and now their dead man had a name. Sheriff King was brought up to speed when he came into the station the next morning, bleary eyed and moving slow.
    He sat all morning juggling the key between his fingers, rolling it over his knuckles in one direction and then the other. It seemed to glow from within with a dull throb of color. After a few hours of this, he decided to go by Paul’s for some lunch.
   
    Jack was rummaging around in the attic, clearing out boxes of old memories. Husker was laid down by the retractable stairwell that led back down to the house, watching lazily with his head resting on his front paws. It was a clear sky outside, and long rays of sunlight cut hazy streams through the dust in the air.
    Jack found an old box of Nancy’s things tucked away under stacks of old yellowed National Geographics. He moved them out of the way, noting a cover that showed a hurricane tearing through a coastal town, and cautiously looked into the box.
    Nancy had gotten sick almost six years ago. She fought hard through the first year of radiation, and she kept such a positive attitude that both of them secretly thought they might beat it. But the following summer the doctors had discovered it had spread to her brain, and the prognosis of months(a season, enough time to make some plans) had changed to a dire handful of weeks. Jack was by her side, quiet and steadfast through all of it: even when she started to lose her mind.
    There were the nights when she’d wake up screaming and clawing at him with her skeleton hands. Days where she’d spend long afternoons arranging toothpicks on the kitchen counter into nonsensical shapes, and then eagerly showed them to Jack as a child might show her mother a drawing. His heart had finally broken when she no longer knew who he was, who she was, or why she was being wheeled into the hospice center.
    Jack peeled back the musty flaps of the cardboard box and dug around for Nancy. There were stacks of old photos, mostly of Jack and her early in their marriage, but a few of just Nancy as a young girl in sepia streaked 3x5’s. One showed her at her first communion with a white lacy dress and gloves, and her bright little smile inside a mass of frizzy curls. Jack’s chest filled with pressurized air. Old paperbacks(Nancy had been a voracious reader), a few unfinished needle point designs, movie ticket stubs, and a small stone she’d picked out when they’d spent a weekend at Lake Sherman together. Jack had a fleeting sullen thought that if he could arrange the pieces of the box correctly he might be able to conjure her back to him. He caught brief tendrils of her scent, vanilla and rain, floating out from the box and then dissipating into the sawdust and aged smell of the attic. He’d always loved how she smelled, until the chemo and the last few months, when it began to fade to a dull, dusty acridity as her body died but her brain hung on.
    Underneath it all, there sat a plump hand-carved jewelry box that Jack had never seen before. His brain quickly remedied the confusion: Of course you’ve seen it before, you packed the box. . . He agreed, but was still stuck with the very real feeling that this box was never Nancy’s, and did not belong in his house, let alone with the treasured relics of a dead wife. He took it from the box and immediately felt the weight of it in his hands, as though it were only thin strips of wood glued to a thick lead skeleton. The lid and sides had ornate vines carved out of them and were painted a bright faux gold, with the concave spaces a flat black. The vines met and twisted together on the lid, forming a flowery Mobius strip. There was a fat metal lock on the front with a tiny keyhole, but when Jack tried to open it the wood only creaked. He dug around in the box to see if there was a key, but found none. He thought he might be able to pry the lid off with a screwdriver, and made his way past more old boxes and stacks of holiday decorations, past Husker and down the stairs back into the house.
    As he reached the kitchen, he was trying to remember which drawer it was he’d placed his small tool kit in, but instead of rummaging he went out on the porch for a smoke, leaving the box on the counter.

          *        *        *
    Sheriff King stared at his ceiling in the darkness. The monotonous sound of his bedside clock ticked away the early hours of morning and acted as a rhythm that lulled him and kept him from sleep simultaneously. His wife Martha was sleeping peacefully next to him, but he felt alone in the bed with his thoughts. The key watched him lazily from across the room on his dresser top.
    It hadn’t occurred to him to leave the key at the station, or even with the few other belongings they had found on Grady. There was a strange attraction he’d felt towards the tiny metal object, and he couldn’t tell if the drawing power of the key or his own apprehension towards it was keeping him up. He rolled over and slid closer to Martha, smelling her shampoo while her hair tickled his face. Her breathing stopped for a moment, and then she spoke.
    “Can’t sleep?”
    “I think I’m trying too hard.” He said to the back of her head.
    “You take your pill?”
    He detested the prescription ‘sleepers’ the doctor had given him, always leaving him feeling hungover in the morning.
    “I’m saving it for a special occasion.” He murmured.
    She smiled and he knew it.
    “You remember how I used to tire you out so much that you just fell asleep?”
    Now he smiled.
    “Hard things to forget.”
    “Feel like reliving your old glory days?”
    She rolled over into her husband’s arms and together they made rhythms and melodies that were strong and complex enough to drown out the clock and the Sheriff’s overactive mind, and even the silent protestations of the little key fell away into the background.

    Paul and Jack looked at the box together on the counter. Roger Donahue, Paul’s partner in the café, came by with a pot of coffee.
    “Refill?” He asked.
    Jack waved him away absently.
    He scowled and moved on to the seated customers for warmer company.
    Jack studied the box while he spoke to Paul, falling into the crevasses of its arches and valleys of carved vines with his eyes.
    “I didn’t notice the rattling until I had it in the truck.”
    He reached out tentatively and picked the box up from its side, lifting it to a forty five degree angle. Inside there was a fast dragging sound followed by a quick thud. Jack sat it back down on the counter.
    “What do you suppose is in it?” Paul asked, and moved to touch the box, but then just sat his hand back down.
    “Sounds like something rolling around. Something heavy. But the it’s the damndest thing,” Jack said, taking a smoke from his pocket.
    “It rolls when it wants to.”
    Paul look at him puzzled, and Jack pointed to the box. Paul picked it up and tipped it to the left. At first the same rolling sound of something inside picking up momentum as it crossed the box started, but then stopped halfway through. Paul didn’t seem entirely convinced, until whatever was inside the box rolled back, back up away from the counter and up towards Paul’s hand. He dropped it and it smacked back against the counter.
    “You think…” Paul stopped and took a sip of coffee, shaking his head.
    “S**t I feel like an idiot even saying this but, do you think it might be something alive inside it?”
    Jack picked up the box with two hands and analyzed it. He turned it over, studying the smooth engravings in the wood that wrapped and coiled around its frame, tipped it from side to side to feel the strange way the weight moved again, and then put it back down.
    “Hell I don’t know, Paul. I don’t even know why I took the damn thing with me when I left the house. Just saw it looking at me from the kitchen counter and felt like I needed to take it. It seemed to be staring at me.”
    Jack said the last few words in a breathy trance, and flicked the ever building ashes from his smoke. Husker watched him from under his stool, looking worried.
    Sheriff King came through the front door and a tinkling bell turned Paul and Jack’s attention away from the box. King tipped his hat and seated himself two stools down, setting the crumpled newspaper he‘d brought in on the counter. He noticed the bright black and gold box in front of the two men but said nothing, and ordered a chicken fried steak from Roger when he came by.
    “Can’t find a key for it either. I looked everywhere for one.” Jack said.
    Sheriff King’s ears pricked up when he heard the word key, and immediately felt the shape of the tiny brass passenger in his breast pocket. He kept listening, slowly unfolding the paper without reading any of the headings.
    “Looks like it’s supposed to be some sort of symbol, this thing on the top.” Paul said, pointing to the coiling strip of vines on the face of the box.
    The Sheriff peeked over out of the corner of his eye.    
    Jack ran his fingers over the raised wood surface. There was something strikingly familiar about the shape. His mind raced through tangential leads and came to a screeching stop when he remembered one rainy day in his Algebra class, decades earlier.
    “Lemniscate.” Sheriff King said, reading Jack’s mind.
    Paul and Jack looked over at him, and King moved over the seats of the stools to be closer to them.
    “It’s the symbol for infinity.” Jack said.
    Sheriff King sighed, pausing the conversation as he slowly withdrew the key from his pocket.
    “I thought it was an eight, but the top and bottom curves are the same size. I found it on the man that died outside of Pritcher’s. Don’t even know why I’ve been carrying it around, but it seemed important. I guess it was.”
    He laid the key on top of the box, and with both designs in front of them, the men could see that the symbols were exactly the same. They looked at the pair in disgust as though they were disfigured burn victims.
     “Where’d you find the box?” the Sheriff said.
    “With some of Nancy’s old things. It looked out of place, I don’t even really know if it ever belonged to her. I can’t rightly figure how the hell it ended up in my house.”
    Paul was staring holes into the box and the key, and in his mind they were beginning to become one object.
    “Maybe they were trying to find each other.” Paul said, and touched the heavy lock on the front of the box.
    Jack looked at him puzzled.
    “Why the hell would a box and a key, two counties apart, want to find each other?” The Sheriff said.
    Jack that picked up the key and nonchalantly slid it into the first few tumblers of the lock. Husker whined.
    He slid it in all the way and started to turn with the other two men watching in a daze.
    There was a faint revving sound outside. Husker stood up and barked at the box, showing his teeth and growling in a low, challenging tone. Jack moved the key a few more millimeters clockwise, and everyone in the café stopped in mid conversation, glancing hypnotized over at the men at the counter. The revving became a car outside, and the familiar sound of a floored accelerator was now only about a block away. Jack turned it a little further, and now the sounds of Husker’s deep barks were ricocheting around the café, quickly being drowned out by the car, speeding ever closer. He heard a click, and as he reached out to touch the lid of the box, Abby Clemons rammed her car through the front of the cafe.
   
    “And it looks like it’s going to be warm and sunny all through the weekend. Blue skies and a soft breeze, perfect time to be outside--” The radio went dead along with the rest of the car. Everyone had scrambled away from their seats, crowding the back of the café and staring at the wreckage of broken glass, destroyed tables and booths, and the smoking remains of Abby’s green Geo Metro. She was crying hysterically inside as Paul and Sheriff King pried the door open to get her out.
    “I saw him! He’s dead but I saw him!” she was blubbering into Paul’s arms as he held her uncomfortably. She was bleeding from a thick cut on her head.
    “Calm down now, make sense Abbs.” Sheriff King said.
    “Now who did you see?” Roger said, handing her a wash cloth for her head.
    “The man, the dead man from Pritcher’s. I saw him sitting in the car with me. He was smiling, looking at me, and I guess I just tried to outrun him. . .” Abby said, winding herself down to a controllable weeping.
    “He was there.” She said. “I saw him.”
    Jack was holding Husker by the collar six feet away at the counter, petting his head as the dog whined and tugged to go to Abby, and finally let him go. He licked her face and she held the dog, closing her eyes and pushing her face into his fur. 
    It took three hours to get the mess cleaned up, and afterwards there was just a giant gaping hole covered by a thin sheet of plastic at the front of the Stall and Stay Cafe. The name had become a sick joke in Paul’s mind as he looked at it from the street with the Sheriff.
    “There goes the trip to Bermuda.” Paul said, thinking the rubble reminded him of old cartoons where a character would burst through a wall leaving only an outline of their shape.
    The Sheriff stood silent, worrying. His radio squawked from his belt with Arlene’s voice coming out.
    “Sheriff? You there?”
    “Ten-four, go ahead.”
    “Jack O’Halloran’s been calling something fierce, says he wants you and Paul to meet him up at his place, pronto. Ya’ll finished up over there yet?”
    Paul stared at the hole.
    Finished is right, he thought.
   
     *        *        *

    “Listen fellas,” Jack said, pouring each man a substantial shot of bourbon, “I’ve got a strange feeling about this. You notice how everything started going a little funny when I was about to pop this open?” He pointed to the box on the kitchen table.
    “I hate coincidences.” Paul said embittered.
    “Well I don’t believe in them.” Jack said. “There’s a reason that the Sheriff found this key, there’s a reason I discovered a box that has no business on my property, and it’s the same damn reason that made Abby crash into your café, Paul.”
    “You’re right.” King said. “And I think the only way any of our minds are going to be satisfied is if we open it.”
    They drank their drinks and worked up their nerves.
    Outside the sun was just a glowing sliver at the horizon, and the massive view of the clear purple sky back dropped the men in the kitchen like they were inside a painting, high above Waits.
    Jack took the key in his hand and shoved into the lock, not wanting to waste anymore time. The hi-watt light above them flickered.
    “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.” Paul said.
    They all thought it, but Jack started turning anyway.
    “You know that feeling you get when you see an accident on the road? How you feel bad about it, even want to maybe help the people involved, but mostly you just want to get a closer look at the carnage?” Jack said, still turning until there was a click.
    “How sometimes that feeling is so…powerful?” He put his hands on the edges of the lid and began to lift.
    The Sheriff absent mindedly put his hand to his belt and felt the revolver holstered there.
    “Sometimes you just have to know.” Jack said, and opened the box.
    The house groaned, creaking its disdain at the men as the wind picked up outside. It wailed against the house.
    There was nothing inside. Just rough wood and stale air.
    “Well, son of a b***h.” Sheriff King said, peering into the nothingness.
    The lights flickered again. The bulb above them went hot and then exploded, raining shards of broken glass down on them and casting the room into shadow. Thunder cracked in the distance.
    “S**t! I think I have a flashlight around here somewhere.” Jack said and moved to his cupboards, rummaging blindly through a few before a new stream of light cut through the darkness. The only other light came from outside through the window, where the wind was rapidly moving dark grey clouds across the sky. They morphed and grew and multiplied in sinister replication. 
    “What the hell. . .” Paul said as he watched the sky. The thunder cracked again, this time loud and close enough the rumble their chests, and a pang of fear rammed its way into all of them.
    The house groaned again, and then the lightning hit. It crested the house at the peak of the roof, and then the hard rain dropped like bricks on the roof. In a flash, the wind changed from a moan to a scream and smashed out the kitchen window, whipping its edges and the floor with cold drops of rain and sharp glinting glass. Two more bolts hit the house, and there was a terrible static in the air. Without any words the men rushed from the kitchen and through the den towards the front door. Another bolt harpooned one of the struts at the foundation that held the house aloft on Baker’s Point, and the floor the men stood on shifted towards the drop off. King made it to the door first, slipping on splintering hardwoods and ramming his shoulder through like a linebacker. He could see his Bronco parked just ten feet away, free of the falling house.
    “Move!” He yelled out, but his voice was swallowed by the wind and the booming clouds.
    Paul scrambled behind him and found his outstretched hand, and Sheriff King catapulted him through the doorway and onto the patchy grass out front.
    Jack’s legs were keeping him behind, twenty years older than both of the other men. King waited at the doorway with his hand still open for Jack, but now the house was sliding off the cliff. Endtables and furniture were crashing against the far leaning wall, and Jack’s feet slipped out from underneath him. Sheriff King reached out, almost jumped at him, but Jack slid too fast as the house shifted to an almost complete ninety degree lean. He bounced on his recliner that was smashed underneath the bay window of the living room, and it boosted him high enough with the impact to launch him through the glass. He fell out and then down into the blackness.
    The Sheriff’s outstretched hand closed on nothing but air, and he had to spin his body through the door frame as the rest of the house gave way. He landed in the dirt with the sky raining down on him and the house falling off the Point and rolling down the cliff.
    King and Paul were panting wet in the dirt, looking at the mangled remains of broken beams and gnarled rebar that formed a grotesque sculpture where Jack’s house used to be. Where Jack used to be.
    The Sheriff stood up, slipping his boot on the mud, and rushed to the edge of the cliff with Paul staring bewildered at his back.
    “Jack! Jack, can you hear me?” He called out through the rain, and the wind, and the fear.
    There was nothing but the storm.
   
    They sat there, dripping in King’s Bronco for over an hour before he started the engine and they drove back to town. Neither one had spoken, they’d both just stared out through the rhythmic wiper blades waiting for Jack to crawl back up from the precipice. But he never did.
    Neither slept much for the next week.
   
         *        *        *

    The storm had lasted for four days, raining non stop. The weatherman said it broke all the previous records in the area for rainfall. A quarter of Waits’ residents had massive flood damage. The old elementary school at the lowest point in town was completely submerged, and soggy children across Waits rejoiced. Pritcher’s had had their front windows smashed in such a violent way that the entire frames had to be rebuilt. The roads had to be sandbagged in many areas, and cleared of splintered trees in others. Power was out for a solid seventy hours everywhere in town. There were six dead, mostly a group of young kids that had hiked to the water tower at the edge of town to get drunk, and were still in it when it toppled a hundred feet to the ground. And there was an elderly women that lived on Birch Street who had died in her sleep as the water filled her home. Paul’s café strangely didn’t see much of the chaos; only minor water damage to the floor from rain that had got in from the plastic sheeting coming loose. The following week he finally left his house and went to inspect it.
    He stood out front, looking at the hole that now seemed so small in comparison to everything else that had been lost. Sheriff King was helping to lay sand bags down the street. He waved to Paul.
    Paul stroked the week and a half stubble-beard on his face, so deep in thought that he jumped when King put his hand on his shoulder.
    “Sorry.” Paul said.
    They stood in silence for a moment.
    “You alright?” Sheriff King asked.
    Paul took a long, slow breath and felt the weight of everything in his chest.
    “I think so,” He said.
    “You hear about Abby?” King asked.
    “No, is she alright?” Paul said.
    “She’s fine, her and Ben. Got a bun in the oven. Guess she found out after she went to the doctor to get checked up for some scratches she got from the wreck.”
    “Good, good for them.” Paul said. The thought that Jack and Nancy never had the chance to have any children crossed his mind.
    “You looked pretty out of it when I came over.” The Sheriff said.
    “I was just trying to listen for the pauses.” Paul said.
    The Sheriff looked at him puzzled.
    Paul just smiled.

Reviews

[Leap]

I'm really impressed buddy. Going from the section that I read at work to this...you should be proud of yourself. The flow was particularly fluid. Nothing felt out of place or redundant or disjointed. Aside from a few grammatical errors, f*****g kudos. I felt like I was reading an old King short in some long lost collection. Your characterization is wonderful, and the description of those characters and their actions is even better. I read Davey's comment below, and I agree with taking this even further. You've set up so many new and different possibilities with multiple characters -- while keeping it all contained in this small, fictional area. I think the potential here is huge. Not only huge, but I recognize a real classical nature to this story too. Pandora's box man...so many crazy interpretations could be found, and you could play off of an enormous amount of scenarios and concepts. We shall discuss it more at length tonight. Well done, my friend.

[DavidRyanM]

Quite the story, my friend. I like the fact that the whole thing feels like it could be part one and this story goes much further in the end. You better be sticking with this, despite the fact that you're done with school, and finish it completely. I want more. The character development is fantastic. I think, if you were to write more, the only people who could use much more fleshing out would be Abby and Ben. But, they weren't the focus of this particular part of the story so it's understandable why they are only mentioned every once in a while. The ending is great though...I want her to have that baby...I want all Hell to break loose. Just make sure to go through this one more time -- there were a few spots when you forgot a word, or added one too many, to a sentence. All-in-all though, fantastic.