Chapter Six The Rain King
six
The Rain King
School winds up being, well, school. Nothing earth-shattering happens that third week of September.
I easily make up all the work I missed by starting late.
I ignore Jasmine’s constant pleas to help her with her “mission.” I fight the urge to gawk at Everett.
I go to classes. I go home. I don’t get too friendly with anyone, not even Mar.
She invites me to take photographs with her at the railroad tracks this weekend, but I turn her down, saying I still have too much homework to catch up on.
It’s better this way. In less than ten months, I’ll graduate, take my diploma, run away from Tennessee, and never look back. So, really, there’s no sense in creating any meaningful bonds.
On Saturday morning, I’m jolted awake from another nightmare. I’ve gotten good at being quiet about them. This time when I wake, with my heart beating like mad under my thin T-shirt and a gasp caught in my throat, Jasmine is still bundled under her covers, breathing softly.
I slip out of bed and do as I’ve done every day since I arrived here: leave the house without a sound, then find the path through the woods. At least it’s not at the crack of dawn today. My nightmare roused me at a respectable eight o’clock.
It’s chilly and overcast as I walk, but I welcome it, dragging the cold air into my lungs as if it’ll help cleanse the nightmare from my mind. The dreams—memories, whatever they are—didn’t come this often when I lived in Allentown. Maybe they’re happening more frequently because I’m back here.
Here. I hate being here. Even when I lived with Gran, I always felt like there was something tethering me to Starling.
I worry that when I do finally leave again, even when my father is dead and buried, I still won’t be able to escape this place.
I wish I could untangle whatever ties hold me here, but I have a fear that I never will.
Maybe I should help Jasmine look for the bodies.
Maybe the reason I can’t escape is because they never did.
They were supposedly dumped in Sturgeon Lake, but no one ever found them, and Dad refused to speak of them.
He didn’t give any interviews at all. He never had a trial because he pled guilty.
At the sentencing hearing, he didn’t utter a single word—he stared straight ahead, placid and stone-faced, like some freaking wise oracle.
Because of that asshole move, there are six families who never recovered their loved ones and will never have peace.
So maybe, neither should I.
The skies are threatening rain, but that’s not why I turn around and head home. I don’t want to be in these woods. Not these ones. There’s another forest calling for me this morning.
The Shipley house is still dark when I return, but no longer silent.
I hear someone tiptoeing around the kitchen and poke my head inside to find my uncle by the coffeemaker.
I suppose this is better. I was planning on swiping the keys for the pickup and apologizing later. Now I can ask for them like an adult.
Dan doesn’t even blink at the sight of me. “Back early from your walk, huh?” he murmurs.
I guess I’m not surprised that my early excursions haven’t gone unnoticed. Raising teenagers, Dan and Maggie are probably used to sleeping with one ear open.
“I was thinking of going for a quick drive. Do you mind if I take Maggie’s truck? I swear I’m a good driver. I took lessons in—”
“Keys are in the front hall,” he interrupts, then turns toward the cupboard to get himself a mug.
Uncle Dan’s pretty cool.
Since it’s Saturday, the roads are deserted, and it takes less than ten minutes to make the drive.
It’s not a familiar one, but I know the address is correct.
I looked it up online. I don’t turn onto the long dusty driveway, though.
It’s private property, and with Gabriel Thorn being such a notorious part of this town’s history, I’m worried there might be regular police patrols around his house.
I pull off the road half a mile away and park on the shoulder, flicking on the emergency lights. Hopefully a Good Samaritan doesn’t recognize the Shipley truck and call my aunt and uncle. I swing my combat boots over the side of the pickup, hop out, and slip into the trees.
It’s a short walk, and no longer unfamiliar.
It’s as if my body knows exactly where to go, my legs carrying me through the woods, boots confidently moving over the packed undergrowth of the worn path.
When I come to a low, primitive rock wall, which is nothing but a pile of round river stones stretching down a hill and curving out of sight, I know I’m on the right track.
That wall goes directly past the place I used to call home.
But home is not the word for it now. A home is a place people can’t wait to get back to after a long spell away. I cannot say the same about this place. As I walk, the dread builds. But for some reason, I can’t stop my feet from taking me there.
Before I reach the clearing, I see them.
First a few, then more and more. Some are long gone, and only strings of twine remain, like the wispy branches of a weeping willow.
Old, broken birdhouses. I try to look away, but everywhere I turn there’s another one.
Dozens of them. Once, they were a bright array of colors, like a rainbow, making these woods feel like some mythical fairy haven.
Now they’re faded and missing sides, hanging at odd angles for dear life, long abandoned by feathered friends.
I stop, drag in a breath, and let it out, closing my eyes.
The memory flits in. Me, only six or so, sitting at the kitchen table, watching my father nail the sides of a new birdhouse together.
He’d do the carpentry, and I would do the decorating.
I proudly mixed together two paints to make an ugly gray-purple and was so excited to lay a paintbrush against its wooden surface.
“I’m going to do black polka dots,” I said, licking my lips in anticipation. “Like a purple cheetah.”
He glanced up at me with a smile. “Well, won’t that be special, my little sparrow.”
I shiver at the nickname and open my eyes, gazing at one of the empty houses. All the paint has faded away. Is this the one from that day?
There are so many. Some are lying among the dried leaves on the ground, mere splinters. It almost feels like a cemetery. Here lies Gabrielle Thorn’s childhood.
To think I was named after that monster.
I shudder again and take another step, crunching through the thick brown leaves. When the roof of our timber-frame house comes into view, my breath hitches.
Our cabin in the woods. Our little slice of heaven.
That’s what he used to say. All the other kids lived on real streets, with lawns and public paved roads and next-door neighbors.
We had none of that, and I was a bit jealous.
But my father always said that being here, in the middle of nowhere, was a dream come true.
A babbling brook in the back of our property.
Trees upon trees. No one to bother us. Acres and acres of peace and seclusion.
Little did I know that when I was asleep, he would leave our heaven and find women to murder.
I locate the brook, which is little more than a muddy gulch now.
It was too shallow for fishing, and really wasn’t good for much of anything.
It didn’t even babble, unless the rain was coming down hard.
Even though it’s small, I have to step on a flat rock in the center of it to jump to the other side, where I find a path among the leaves.
It was my father and I who walked this path into existence, tromping down the grass and making footprints in the soft earth on our way to look for a new branch for every birdhouse.
The path leads directly to the cabin. The “big house,” as Mom called it. The “little house” was the cabin a quarter mile away. Dad’s studio. I turn my head and peer through the trees in its direction. But I’m not ready to see it. Not yet. Maybe never.
My childhood home is an A-frame, the roof practically slanting to the ground. The dark wooden backside shows age from not having been stained for a long time, and there’s a big hole in the half-boarded back window. It looks like an eye, peeking out at me.
It’s abandoned, then. No one has lived here since us.
I shift my gaze. Against the back exterior wall is an old charcoal grill, struggling to stand upright on three decayed legs.
“Burgers, anyone?”
I remember my dad standing in front of the grill in his ridiculous chillin’ and grillin’ apron and chef’s hat as Mom and I scurried to set the picnic table with plates and condiments. We were laughing so hard at his getup, a gift we’d given him for Father’s Day. It was a good day. We were so happy.
I swallow, not wanting to think about what happened after.
It’s only when I break from the tree line that I hear it.
Music. A guitar riff, and a twangy male vocal.
My father was a freak for country music. He loved Alan Jackson, Johnny Cash, and Tim McGraw. He’d play all their music loud, dance my mom across the living room floor, and she’d laugh so hard, making me giggle until my sides hurt.
But my father is in prison now. Tucked away in a cell.
So where is that music coming from?
At first I think it’s just me, hearing things. But then I creep to the front of the house and see a yellow Jeep, top down, idling in the same place where my father used to park his red pickup.
The guy in the driver’s seat is around my age. He has dark-rimmed glasses and narrow features. He’s looking at something on his lap, so he doesn’t spot me right away.
When he does, he startles. It’s a good thing the Jeep doesn’t have a hard top, because he would’ve hit it—that’s how high he jumps. Then he exhales and turns off the ignition, and Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country” cuts abruptly to the sound of birds chirping in the trees.
“Je-sus,” he exclaims. “Where the hell did you come from?”
I point behind me. “I was…walking…”
“You walked all the way out here?”