Temptation: A Novel (14 page)

39. Bloodline

When I wake up, I’m tied up at the bottom of the hole in that dirty old cabin not far above Uncle Robert’s place.

Wrong story Chris.

I’m in the woods, feeling dizzy and delirious after stabbing Pastor Marsh.

Uh-uh pick again.

I try to open my eyes but feel a burning, sickening feeling against my side. Then I realize that I didn’t dream Wade coming out of nowhere and shooting me.

“Hello, son.”

It’s Dad. He finally made it down here, finally came to help out the family he abandoned, to get Mom straight and fend off the evil wackos around here with his super spiritual Christian powers.

“Just lie back down,” the voice says.

Since when does Dad have a Southern accent?

I blink a hundred times it seems and then stare upward. I’m in a bedroom. I see a man standing next to me. He’s tall. He’s got on dark dress pants and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up. Bloody sleeves. His hands are bloody too.

Is that my blood?

I feel light-headed.

“Go on, close your eyes. It’s gonna be a long night.”

It’s Mr. Staunch.

I’m in Mr. Staunch’s house.

So Wade works for Staunch? No surprise there.

“You’re okay, Chris. You’re going to be just fine.”

“Erd ee sept eere?”

I’d tried to say
How’d I get here?
but that’s what came out.

“You’re okay. The girl is okay too. And the man who did this—”

I blink again and see the smile on Mr. Staunch’s face.

“He won’t be bothering you again. Or anybody else, for that matter.”

I try to understand what this means, but I can’t because I slip back down into the shadowlands.

Wake up Chris wake up.

But my eyes are closed and my side is still sizzling and my throat is dry and my mouth is numb.

Wake your life up Chris wake your soul up.

It’s the same voice, but not. Maybe not. I don’t know. It sounds like there are others that are standing around me.

You are special and it’s time to take your place.

But I don’t feel so special. I feel unconscious, and my place should be at a hospital, not Staunch’s house.

You are part of a bloodline Chris and nobody can take that away from you.

And here I go, knowing this is jibber-jabber stupid talk. One minute it’s Jocelyn and the next it’s some creepy old man in the tunnel and the next—

You’re the last one remaining. Your uncle and you, and your uncle said no.

But the voices—and there are two voices now, I know that—don’t know what they’re saying because my mom is still there so ha, take that, voices in my …

Then I open my eyes.

“That’s right, Chris, we’re right here.”

Jeremiah Marsh is sitting in a chair next to my bed.

Voice #1.

“You hear what we been sayin’?” Voice #2 says.

It belongs to Mr. Staunch—Ichor Staunch, which I still can’t believe is a real name, I mean, come on—who is standing at the foot of the bed.

In a hooded robe with some kind of long blade in his hands …

But no, he’s just there in the same outfit, except he changed his shirt, and his hands are clean.

My side still throbs.

“It’s going to be tender for some time,” Marsh says as I wince.

“What happened?”

Marsh glances at Staunch to see if he’s going to tell me.

“Good ole boy Wade decided to bring a little payback to you,” Staunch says. “Seems he’s been waiting for some time to come back around. Looks like he had no choice after his money dried up. And he just couldn’t resist paying you a visit.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because Mr. Staunch is the man who gets things done, that’s why,” Marsh says. “Listen, Chris, you almost died tonight.”

“Lily?”

“The girl you were with?” Marsh asks.

I nod, looking around the room. It’s some kind of guest room—average and homey feeling.

“She’s fine,” Staunch says. Or actually repeats, since he told me before. “She’s back at the place she’s staying.”

“And what about—”

“Everything is under control. We spoke to Wells and his men. Nobody else was around when it happened. Wade knew it would be deserted around there.”

“Where is he?”

Staunch’s eyes dart to Marsh, then back to me. “When you’re better, I’ll show you. Okay?”

“Show me what?”

“I’ll show you what control looks like,” he says.

Then he leaves me alone with the pastor. Which I normally would have been freaked out about, but strangely I feel relieved that Staunch is gone.

“Is this his house?”

Marsh nods, then rubs his eyes underneath the glasses.

“What—what time is it?”

“About three in the morning.”

“My mom—”

“Is fine, Chris. Listen to Staunch. When things are handled, they’re
handled.
”

“Meaning?”

I expect the same routine, just like every other time. Some mysterious, cryptic answer. But instead I hear an explanation.

“Staunch runs everything around here, and when I say runs, I mean he runs. I still don’t always know how. But I know why.”

“But I—what does—I still don’t get—”

Marsh holds a hand up. “Chris—listen to me. Staunch and I—but mostly Staunch—work for a man you don’t know, but you need to know. He is the reason you’re here. Not just here in this room—the reason we were keeping tabs on you and were able to get you help tonight—but the reason you were born.”

“My father?”

“No. Your great-grandfather. Your mother’s grandfather.”

This makes about as much sense as seeing Wade coming out of nowhere right when I was beginning to think Lily and I were going to be walking into happily-ever-after land.

“You remember when you took that little visit to the grave site in the middle of what used to be old Solitary?”

“You saw that?”

Marsh shakes his head. “No. But you were seen. You’ve been watched ever since you got here. But you already knew that, right?”

“The gravesite? You mean the church?”

My head is hurting, but I want to hear this.

“That is the gravesite—the newly built gravesite—for the original founder of this town. And Chris—that man was your relative. The reason you’re alive too.”

“But what—he’s alive?”

Marsh shakes his head in amusement. “No, not Louis Solitaire—he died in 1842. But Walter Kinner is alive, and he’s the reason
you’re
alive too. He saved you tonight.”

“Who did?”

“Your great-grandfather.”

“How? Why?”

If this is all made-up talk, like the lies that Jared fed me about being his cousin, I gotta admit—they’re pretty wild.

“The how—well, that’s beyond even my belief system. But the why. The why, Chris. The
why
is the thing I’ve been saying to you ever since you stepped foot in this town, but you have never once heard me. The why is the most important thing of all.”

I look at him.

Waiting for an answer.

Please, don’t leave me in suspense anymore. Please don’t leave me hanging—

“You said it yourself, Chris. You wanted relief. And soon—very soon—you will have it. Complete and total relief from all that wonderful
stuff you’re carrying around with you.”

I try to sit up a bit more, but I can’t. Another bolt of pain goes through my body.

“By morning the pain will go away,” Marsh says. “I promise. It’s just—it’s a good thing we were there. Any longer and—you would be gone.”

So Staunch and Marsh … Staunch and Marsh
saved
me?

“That’s why—even though it might be a bit premature—it’s time, Chris. You need to know the big picture. Once you see it, I think you’ll finally understand.”

“Understand what?”

I know I keep asking questions, but I can’t help it. I’m in pain and I feel groggy and tired and I just want Marsh to keep going even if the answers coming from him don’t make perfect sense.

“You’ll understand why I’m not the bad guy you’ve made me out to be. Someone like that Wade guy—that’s a bad guy.”

I want to remind him that there was this girl named Jocelyn who got abused by Wade but ultimately got
killed
by Marsh and whoever else he was involved with.

I want to say that, but I’m too weak and tired. And this all seems a bit—insane, to be honest.

Maybe I’m dreaming.

“There will be more answers, and more proof, and more of everything, Chris. I promise. Just—just be patient and … and be careful.”

This man is telling me to be careful. Like he’s on my side.

“You don’t want to mess with him.”

“Staunch?”

“No. The—other guy I was talking about. The one you’re related to.”

40. Handling Things

There’s a scab on my stomach where there should be a … a hole or a gaping, bloody wound. But I’m touching my stomach, and I can feel the crusted-over skin that feels like I got scraped by a branch.

Like that time my skin got punctured by a tree limb when I was running for my life away from those crazies in the hoods.

I healed quickly then, and it looks like I’ve healed now.

But last night I got shot. Someone rammed a gun into my gut and pulled the trigger.

I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

First Marsh, now this.

This is all I can think as I follow Staunch down a wide, dimly lit hallway into a large room. I try to take in my surroundings. The main thing I notice are the animal heads. Bears and deer and that sort of thing, like he’s some kind of hunter. There’s a massive brick fireplace with a large oak mantle above it. Then I stop.

“What is it?” Staunch asks as he stops and looks at me.

I’m staring at the black wolf that’s hovering above the mantle. Of course, it’s just his head, but it looks alive and real.

“I shot that on our road, the very road you live on,” Staunch tells me with an amused look on his face. “Nobody believes me when I tell them that, but that’s fine. It was standing in the middle of the road.”

I think of the other wolves I’ve seen since being here, and I believe him. Then I think of the mountain man with his large dog. I haven’t seen him in a while.

Then, of course, I think of the demon dog that turned into black smoke.

There it is, right there on the mantle, Chris. It was just taking a nice evening stroll on his property.

“Come on.”

I’m waiting to see something else, something creepy, something scary that might be dead but suddenly moves. I pass a table and see a picture of Gus. In a tie. Trying to smile but not really succeeding.

Well, that’s creepy enough, thanks.

Staunch leads me out a sliding glass door onto a deck. The same deck that overlooks his property, the same one I saw the old man looking off from the second time I wandered onto Staunch’s land.

“Come on, I want to show you something before you go.”

Staunch leads me down the grassy hill to the edge of the forest. He opens a black iron gate and then descends a stairway, urging me to keep up with him. There’s a creek below us, and the sound of the small waterfall I discovered when I was trespassing is quite different from the pounding waters of Marsh Falls. I see the clearing in the woods with the early morning sun streaming down.

I want to ask him so many questions, but I haven’t been able to ask even one.

Before Staunch stops, I see him.

A figure at the base of the waterfall, right where the water is dropping into the small pond. One hand chained to what appears to be a rock. Black tape X-ing out his mouth.

It’s Wade, looking tired and angry and confused.

For a moment, as we stand above him, looking down at him, he doesn’t see us. The splashing water echoes all around us.

“There you go,” Staunch says. “
That
is how you take care of problems.”

Wade seems to hear him, although there’s no way he could from that distance. He jerks his arm, trying to breaking it free, screaming underneath the tape over his mouth. Staunch just looks down at him the way he might look at some wounded, dying animal.

“So what do you want to do with him?”

I see bright blue eyes glancing down at me, unmoving and unfeeling. “What do you mean?”

“You control this situation now. You can do whatever you’d like to this thing below.”

I swallow, shake my head, my mouth opening but unable to speak.

“It’s simple. You decide. If you decide nothing—say nothing and never bring it up again—well, that is a decision in itself.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“Well, if you don’t do anything, he’ll stay down there and die.”

“No.”

Staunch nods, then reaches into his pocket.

“Here’s a key. It’s to the lock on his wrist.”

“No.”

“Take it.”

I try to back up, but he forces the key into my hand.

“Listen, Chris—you have to start handling things yourself. This is a good test for you. To see how you’ll deal with things.”

“I’m not going to let him die.”

“Fine,” Staunch says, looking back down at the skinny, soaking figure of Wade. “But let me remind you of something. He just put a bullet in your side. A .45. You should be dead. I’m not going to tell you how it is you’re alive, and I’m not looking for thanks or anything like that. I’m just looking for you to grow up and be a man. I get teens. I got a seventeen-year-old oversized brat for a son who’s probably that way because I didn’t hold him enough when he was younger. That’s fine. That’s another world, Chris. That’s not your world. You’re different. And I think you know it.”

“No,” I say in a very weak voice.

“You say that, but deep down I think you know. And don’t forget why Wade shot you. Or why you shot him.”

“How do you know about that?”

Staunch leans over and looks me directly in the face. “I know about everything that takes place around here. Not that you even tried to keep that one a secret. But the guy’s a piece of trash, Chris. I’d be wasting a bullet if I stuck it between his ugly little eyes.”

This is too much too soon too fast. I feel like I’m about ready to fall off this minor ledge here. But I’ll be falling and won’t hit the ground.

“You want to blame others for Jocelyn’s death. You blame Marsh—you surely blame me, too. You want to know who was under those hoods. Right? Everybody seems to know
about
it, but nobody is confessing to actually having been there. But what if—what if that very man down there was the one who orchestrated it all?”

“No—he’s too—”

“What? Dumb?”

I nod, swallow. I feel like running.

“You calling men and women who dress up in robes and carry torches in the middle of the night smart?”

He’s got a point.

“I have things to do, and you best be going back home. Take the key. You decide. You let me know if I need to do anything.”

“Like what?”

He just looks at me with heartless eyes. “Anything you need.”

Staunch begins to walk back up the hill. I hear a high-pitched, muffled wailing coming from below.

“How did I—how come I didn’t die?” I ask before he’s gone.

“What if you did die, Chris? What if you’re a ghost and don’t even know it?”

Before I can react, Staunch just laughs out loud, then continues to walk back up the hill.

I follow, trying to get away from the stifled cries below.

I don’t know what to do with Wade, but I’m beyond trying to figure it out at the moment.

I need to go back home and …

And what, Chris?

I picture her face and know that I need to call Lily. I’m not sure what happened to her last night, but I’m sure she’s probably wondering what’s going on with me.

I’m walking down the long, circular driveway leading to the dirt road our cabin is on when it dawns on me that I have a cell phone in my pocket.

I keep forgetting that, and keep forgetting that it belongs to me.