Black Chuck Read online

  Ré’s lungs failed. The floor of the Buick disappeared. And in the instant it took him to register that Evie was bleeding all over the seats, Ré missed the sharp left where the dirt road met the county highway. And then there was no road beneath them at all.

  33

  E

  The car tore through the bushes, shattering saplings and green sumac, bucking sideways and sliding wildly down the hill beyond the road. A ballpoint pen skittered across the dash, lifting, drifting into the air just as the windshield cut into a thousand white spiderwebs. Airbags exploded, crushing Evie and Réal against blue vinyl.

  A strange staccato sound rose as they careened down the hill—hundreds of tiny whips and stones hitting blue paint and underbelly. They turned, juddering backward, crashing through bulrushes toward a patch of black water. The rushes snapped and fell, grabbing the Buick like baleen, finally hauling it to a stop with a wet, heavy sigh.

  Evie’s ears rang. She choked on dust and smoke and plastic powder from the ancient airbags. Outside, water quickly rose in the wheel wells. It began to seep through the cracks at the bottom of the doors. She heard it hissing in the back seat.

  “Ré?” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. She leaned back and looked at the moonlight spidering through the broken windows, at the dark edge of the road above.

  Will anyone find us down here? she wondered, feeling for the knife wound in her side. Probably not, she decided, and closed her eyes.

  Shaun kneels at her feet, hand pressed to the side of his head. Dark red slithers down his forearm, making a lacy cuff. Lucky Shaun, the invincible, trying to steal the future from her.

  She stands over him, seeing stars, skateboard heavy in her hands. She was not marrying him, not having his baby. She was not going to end up like her mom.

  She could smash his head in right now. It would be easy. All those months of feeling powerless catching up with her all at once, a storm pushing back against his force, blowing it down like a house of cards.

  “I hate you, Shaun Henry-Deacon.”

  These are the last words she ever says to him. Maybe the last ones he ever hears. And in that moment, she means them with every piece of her soul, but they still punch a hole inside her.

  Then she turns and swings the skateboard as hard as she can.

  A picture of it spinning sideways in the dark.

  It flies out the hole in the wall and disappears, Shaun’s blood-laced hand reaching after it. “You fucking idiot!” he spits. The last three words she hears him say.

  He gets up and goes to the fire escape, shaking the blood from his arm. She has seen him go out that broken door a hundred times. Monkeying down the busted escape, thrum of rusted metal under his hands. He doesn’t think twice about it now, just leaps straight out into the black. And she just stands there, letting him go.

  34

  R

  Ré dreams of a bright yellow bonfire. Hot sparks dotting the night sky. At his feet lies a red flannel shirt. He lifts it in his fingers; it’s soft and sopping wet. He thinks, Evelyn, but there is no one else here and no sign that there ever was but for the shirt.

  When he balls up the flannel in his fist, a sharp, familiar smell meets his nostrils, and fear slides like a blade in his gut. The shirt is soaked with blood.

  He sees his shadow half crouched by the fire. He asks it, “What have you done?”

  But it only asks him the same question.

  Beyond the fire is a ring of trees, and he knows he’s been here before, in this very spot, up to his knees in snow. Starving. Choking. Between the black tree trunks, white eyes stare. His heart skips like a fly on water, bright ripples vibrating in his veins, making him shiver though the fire is warm.

  So here it is, he thinks. This I where I fall. Where I can’t fight anymore.

  There is no snow now, but it’s as if the ghost of it is still there. A thin red trail stands out as cleanly as if there were snow to stand on. He swallows hard. The dream has never taken him this far before. He’s always woken long before this part.

  This time, he follows the trail.

  When the white eyes see him coming, their owners turn and move deeper into the woods. Deer walking slowly on hind legs, hunched so their fur stands up at the shoulders, greasy and matted in small spikes, like soft armor.

  He doesn’t try to catch up to them but doesn’t get left behind either. He can see his way by the moon, hear his way by the sound of antlers knocking on trees. A soft bone-orchestra, playing a path of hollow tocks, drawing him deeper into the woods.

  As they cross an invisible line, the deer drop to their forefeet, shaking off their strange illusion of humanness. They are animals again, not creatures, not monsters. When he steps on a twig, they leap on spindly legs, ears twitching, and he can’t help but laugh, though it feels a little like crying. They seem so gentle now, not the fearful things he always dreams of. And if they’re taking him to the demon, they are breaking his heart.

  From the corner of his eye he sees the woods thinning, sees train tracks and a pale blue light hanging high, but it’s not the moon. It’s an arc light.

  He goes cold.

  His throat and gut begin to ache. He can’t go any closer, can’t move.

  Because Shaun is standing there.

  Ré’s heart becomes a fist, becomes a flannel shirt dripping blood. Tears sting his eyes. He wants to wake up, but he thinks this might not be a dream. It might be a memory. The part he can’t recall. The part he cut off so it wouldn’t rot the rest.

  Something grazes his arm, and Ré jumps. It touches his other side, nudging him toward the blue light.

  Shaun is backlit, his long hair a golden halo over broad shoulders. He’s wearing his leather jacket, hands at his sides, feet a little apart. He looks ready to fight, but Ré won’t fight him. Can’t fight him. Never again.

  “Réal,” he drawls out slow, his voice honey-gold and friendly. “What’s up, bro?”

  Ré can’t see his face in the shadows, but his memory of it flickers in the dark—the broken jaw, teeth knocked out, eyes of pale-blue wax. “Shaun?” Ré says, but his voice breaks. He teeters on his legs like they’re new. “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”

  Shaun laughs, lifting his shoulders lightly. “You tell me, man.”

  Ré blinks at him, tears catching in his voice. “Shaun, I am so sorry. I never wanted this to happen.”

  “Nah,” Shaun says, “we’re cool, Ré.” He runs a hand through his long hair, pulling it back. Ré can see the line of his jaw where the arc light touches it. It makes the same shape it always did, not broken at all, his teeth all where they should be, the shoes still on his feet.

  Ré asks, “Are you okay? Are you…alive?”

  Shaun thinks about it a long time, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t know,” he says. “Are you?”

  Ré breathes out, heart dropping through his chest. He doesn’t know either. Can’t tell if he’s alive—if this is a dream, a memory, or some kind of purgatory, a place where his sins still live. He says, “Shaun, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. You gotta believe me.”

  Shaun stares at him, saying nothing. Ré can almost see his sea-blue eyes working in the darkness. The weight of them pressing down so hard Ré can hardly breathe.

  Then Shaun steps forward. Réal braces for the blow, for what he’s earned. He squeezes his eyes shut. Shaun puts his hand on Ré’s shoulder, making him flinch. “Ré,” he says, voice close and low. “It’s okay, man. Let it go.” He gives Ré’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Ré’s eyes flutter open, confused.

  In the distance, a train whistle howls. It sounds mournful, lonesome, but Ré can hear along the tracks that it’s coming fast. He swallows at the lump in his throat. He puts his hand down over Shaun’s. “I love you, brother,” he says, voice shaking.

  Shaun grins, his bottom lip sliding up to touch his perfect teeth. He squeezes Ré’s shoulder again.


  The train whistle blows closer. Shaun looks toward it, his focus drawn away, and Ré can see now that he is bleeding from a deep cut on his temple, that the side of his face, his hair, is painted sticky red. Suddenly Ré can smell the stink of alcohol on him, a heavy, sweet, sweating smell, like he’s been drinking for hours. Ré is confused—the smell wasn’t there a second ago. “Shaun?” he says.

  But Shaun has turned toward the tracks. Ré sees a shape lying in the ties. A skateboard. Shaun is heading for it, stumbling, arms held out for balance. Even in the dark, Ré can see that Shaun is trashed. He’s muttering to himself as he staggers back over the rails.

  This isn’t the Shaun he’s just been talking to, not sure if he’s alive or dead.

  It’s the real Shaun, from that night.

  Around the bend to Ré’s right, the brilliant white light of a freight train appears.

  “Shaun!” he shouts. “Get out of there!”

  But Shaun doesn’t hear. He trips over the rails, swearing, and staggers ahead.

  Ré is stunned. He’s never seen his best friend so graceless, so literally falling-down drunk. He’s seen Shaun wasted before, acting like an idiot, having a laugh. He’s never seen him acting like his mother—so trashed he doesn’t seem to know where he is.

  Shaun is so focused on the skateboard, he doesn’t notice the train, or maybe he doesn’t care. Playing chicken. Invincible. Ré’s seen him do it before, laughing his damn head off. But this is no joke. Shaun can barely stand up.

  “Shaun!” Réal screams, almost pissing himself, eyes darting from him to the massive black engine, the distance between them diminishing too fast. His heart falls through his shoes, his fists balled tight as hammers.

  Shaun seems to wake up too late. He staggers back as the train bears down, dumb surprise all over his face. The engine hits the skateboard first, exploding it into a thousand pieces, and then it hits Shaun and does the same, throwing his body all the way back to the corrugated fence, a hundred yards away.

  Ré squeezes his eyes shut, and his knees melt out from under him.

  Hit by the night train to Belleville.

  Not eaten. Not Black Chuck.

  Ré buries his face in his hands.

  Shaun was family. His pale fraternal twin. He used to cross these tracks to Ré’s every time he had a need for getting lost, like whenever his mom was home. Shaun and Ré knew these tracks, like the veins under their skin. They’d never once come close to real danger, even when they were little and their legs could only take them so fast.

  But seeing him drunk like that—it was like Alex telling him Shaun was prospecting for Satan’s Own. Ré didn’t know that guy. That wasn’t his brother.

  Réal feels the distance between them all now, him and Shaun and Alex. Even Sunny, even Evie. He feels a void opening, feels himself falling in: they can never go back. Nights laughing in Nan’s front room. Fireworks from the Grains. High school. Who they used to be. Kids. It was always going to end. Shaun’s dying had nothing to do with it.

  Ré wonders if he too has changed, slipped away from the guy he thought he would always be…

  And then a warm, wet breath falls on the back of his neck.

  Ré jerks, kicking back.

  In the dark behind him is a massive shape. The biggest bull elk he’s ever seen. The span of its antlers is as wide as Ré’s open arms, its shoulder taller than Ré himself. It sends goose bumps down the flesh of his ribs.

  It can’t be real.

  For a split second Réal thinks, Is this it? Is this the Windigo?

  But his heart knows it is something else.

  This beast, as big as it is, is no demon. Its neck is stretched out. Vulnerable. Trusting. Inside Ré’s chest, a thousand birds burst free, their wings thundering against his bones. He falls back on his elbows in the scrubby grass, heart and breath racing hard and fast.

  “What are you?” he whispers.

  The elk steps forward, bowing, sniffing. Ré can smell its damp breath, sweet as fresh cut grass. And then it backs away, raising its massive antlers into the night sky, scraping up the half full moon.

  Beyond the creature, just inside the tree line, Réal can see the deer peering out, curious, shy. Ré can hardly breathe. Then the bull elk turns and walks back into the woods, silent and graceful despite its great size.

  He watches in awe.

  Inside his ribs, his heart burns pure white, melting everything else away.

  Words come to him then, from his mother’s tongue: Omashkooz gidoodem, Réal.

  And he gets it, finally. At last he understands what the deer have been trying to tell him. What the creature has wanted, all this time. He almost laughs at how simple it is.

  It’s okay, man. Let it go.

  He pulls himself to his feet and follows them all back into the woods.

  35

  E

  Evie woke with a gasp, tail end of a dream slipping away.

  She opened her eyes in a darkened room. An edge of light marked a half closed door, and a patterned curtain ran the length of the bed she was lying in. She blinked at these groggily, trying to figure out where she was.

  She felt stiff and heavy all over. Something was jabbed in her arm, and a tube under her nose blew cold, dry air. It made her cough.

  “Mom?” she croaked.

  A voice replied from the shadows. “She’ll be back.”

  Evie turned her head. There was a shape in the dark. It gathered itself up and rose from a chair, and the machine dotting out her heartbeat quickened as if it too was scared.

  “It’s just me,” he said softly. A warm hand found hers, threaded their fingers together.

  “Ré,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  The light from the doorway marked a pale outline of him. She couldn’t see his face, but she watched his shoulders fall. “I totaled the Buick,” he said. “And I nearly killed us.”

  She tried to remember it. Any of it. But all that sprang up was his arm draped over a steering wheel, golden sunlight painting each tiny hair. The look in his eyes, the shape of his lips, and then…nothing. “I don’t remember,” she told him.

  “It’s okay, Ev,” he assured her. “No one’s asking you to.”

  But she dug around for the pictures anyway, for all the snapshots leading up to that one, in his car. Images shuffled all out of order. Sunny’s hair flung back, her dark and knowing smile. Alex’s long legs leaping over a bonfire, all sand and spark. And Ré, of course, sleeping outside her door. If she took that old journal from her desk right now, its pages would be filled in an instant.

  “I think Sunny hates me,” she said.

  Réal laughed. “Yeah, Sunny’s got a weird way of showing how she feels,” he said. “She was here though. She brought flowers.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and she saw the shadow of a vase by the wall, full of blooms.

  Even though he was here, hand firmly in hers, Evie still felt a twinge of jealousy. Brittle, brash and scary as she was, Sunny was still the coolest girl Evie’d ever met. And no matter what, she and Ré had History. Evie could never blank that out or pretend it wasn’t there, and neither could they.

  Then she remembered Alex. Fire-lit flashes of his angular face, eyes like darts, like a snake’s. She asked, “Does Alex hate you?”

  Ré took a long, deep breath and blew it out slow. He said, “Me and him can never be friends again.”

  Evie squeezed his hand and felt his sadness.

  She remembered the flicker of something else, before the darkness. I should be thinking about Shaun, but I can’t stop thinking about you…

  In her living room.

  A small silver bead. A ball bearing from a wheel.

  She heard those wheels whiz across the concrete floor of the Grains.

  The skateboard flung from her hands, out that terrible hole in the wall. Shaun at her feet, hand pressed to the dark-red side of his head. It wasn’t just a dream. That part had been real.

  “Ré,” she said,
“you didn’t kill Shaun.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know, Ev.”

  “You guys fought that night,” she said, “and then he came to my house, all drunk. He took me to the Grains, and he hit me so hard I saw stars.”

  Réal flinched and sucked air in through his teeth.

  “Ré…” she whispered. “I did it. I killed him.”

  And she held her breath. But he didn’t say anything.

  He let go of her hand, and she thought, That’s it. He’s gone.

  Then he turned and pulled himself up onto the bed, spongy mattress bowing under his weight. The movement made her ache all over, her wounds all waking up and crying out, but she didn’t care as long as he wasn’t leaving.

  He eased himself down next to her and propped his head in the crook of his elbow. She could just make out the glint of hallway light in his eyes.

  She remembered those same eyes from that night at the lake, alone with him. The way he’d looked at her like she was treasure. She’d died then, like she was dying now—heart stopping as she waited for him to say something, anything.

  Dot, dot, dot…

  “Ev, I didn’t kill him,” he said at last. “And neither did you. He was drunk. He played chicken with a train, and he lost. The police released the autopsy report. It was all over the news this morning.”

  She blinked in the dark at the picture his words made. Shaun, fearless, invincible. Staring down the bright lights of a train—he’d lived his whole life like that. Like he could stop the world from turning. Keep the future from getting anywhere near them, keep everything exactly the same, forever.

  But you just can’t stop a freight train.

  R

  Ré had no idea where he was.

  The carpet under his feet was cold and spongy-wet, and then he remembered: in the Buick, in a pond, slowly sinking.

  He turned his head. Everything hurt. Evie was beside him, unmoving. He said her name, but she didn’t respond.