CHAPTER TWO

David Harris navigated the Police SUV down a treacherous stretch of Highway Eleven that snaked through the Oregon Mountains. The road had claimed sixty-three lives since it was converted from a twisting logging trail more than a century earlier and was avoided like a curse.

The wipers screeched slowly across the glass as David drove through a churning haze of fog and rain. He had always hated this drive and had known some of the people who had died here. When a car went off the edge it could take days to reach them from the steep embankments and the sheer vast seclusion of the dense forest below. It was an agonizing endeavor that never ended happily.

Even as a teenager his father would volunteer him for the Search & Recovery teams, so the reality of death had been seared into his mind with all its ugly clinical particulars. How the flesh turns those sickly shades of yellow and green. How the body bloats and the limbs turn black and contort. How the eyes hemorrhaged. And that smell of rot. Human rot. "Jesus Christ, that smell," he thought. The revulsion brought a sour taste of coffee back into his throat.

In his dreams the dead would visit him. The Bodies would stand outside his window, scratching on the glass, trying to beckon him to let them in. No longer able to speak, they communicated in horrible, gassy moans that rattled and hissed into mangled curses when he refused their summons.

Sometimes the smell had invaded other dreams, pleasant dreams, dragging him off into some gruesome nightmare where a shadow would change into a corpse with a twisted and hideous grin. Black claw-like hands would reach out for him; slimy at the touch from their decomposing flesh and the stiff boney underlay, while their jagged nails tore at his skin, burning him like hellfire.

He would wake in a sweat-drenched panic with that faint smell of rot still lingering in the air. He would find scratches on his body, which logically he understood had come from his own hands while he was sleeping. But the illogical little boy that still dwelled in that place in his mind that stored all his fears and insecurities, he knew they had almost gotten him. Nearly pulled him down into the depths of death from his sleep. And it still frightened him.

Brenda’s voice had screeched over the radio as he finished off his turkey sandwich back at the house. There was a problem at the Elementary School. Some kids from the high school had pelted Emory Taylor, a nine-year-old autistic boy, with feces.

The school had requested someone give the boys a talk. There was an officer on duty that was closer than David had been on his lunch break. But, then again, it’s what Red would have done. Red would have handled it himself.

Brenda hadn’t said it, but it was there. He had noticed a lot of things being said in the undertones lately. David was one week on the job. Two weeks after arriving back in Brighton. And three weeks since his father had died from a massive stroke.

At the funeral home a town councilman, a tall scarecrow of a man named Tom Newman, had slinked up to him near Red’s casket and gave David his sympathies. He had wrapped his long fingers around David’s hand and given a tight, damp shake with a few kind recollections of Red, before promptly offering him his father’s position as Chief Of Police.

Tom assured David he had the backing of The Mayor and the rest of the town counsel. There was no reason to bring in an outsider, he said. The three remaining Officers, the ones who hadn’t taken flight to The Sheriffs Department or Highway Patrol, which was what the Brighton Police Force was, a platform to move on, were too young and inexperienced. And what better replacement for Red Harris than his son? He was a former Brighton Police Officer, he knew the town. Knew the job. And had the experience of a former big city Officer in Tulsa. It was a no brainer.

Newman had leaned in so closely David could smell a greasy mint scented medicinal ointment wafting from somewhere on that skinny wasted body; so close he could see every broken blood vessel littered over his waxy face, and he was in direct danger of being hit by some falling flaky skin from his shiny bare, sun damaged scalp.

What David understood in that uncomfortable moment was that they saw him as a means of control. David wasn’t some hard ass who’d question every decision they made. Who’d refuse to pull favors or couldn’t be subtly threatened. In other words, David was nothing like his father. And they were right. They didn’t say it. It was in the undertones.

David reached Brighton Elementary within twenty minutes of the call. He pulled into a space in the sparsely filled parking lot and cut the engine. He checked the rearview mirror, running his hand through his sandy brown hair, looking insecurely over a baby face that had thinned in recent years. A few whiskers shined whitely from his light patchy stubble.

He was never a bad-looking kid, just the wallflower that never bloomed. And he still had to force himself to make eye contact when he spoke to someone. Fighting the urge to stare at the ground, at the sky, anywhere but the person in front of him. That included his wife. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise to David when she left him.

The rain had slacked into an anemic haze as David stepped out of the SUV. He headed towards the building that hadn’t changed much in his thirty seven years, when a sharp, wrathful voice screeched out behind him, “I want those Goddamn, fucking animals arrested!”

Sheila Taylor slammed the door to her beat up 1988 station wagon and marched towards David with a thunderous fury in her quick, heavy strides.

She was a big woman, bigger than David. Taller by at least a foot and outweighing him by eighty pounds. Her unruly blonde hair was pulled back into an ungraceful ponytail. Pink translucent glasses graced a blotchy round face set with small lips, a button nose and a prominent chin. Her breasts sagged under a yellow flower patterned blouse to her bulky abdomen. Thick legs stomped in lime green pants as her flip-flops click-clacked over the wet asphalt on swollen feet.

He braced himself as Sheila barreled up to him, her face an angry shade of pink with her thin lips pursed.

“I’m tired of this shit!” she snapped. “Every Goddamn week I have to come down here because someone wants to abuse my poor Emory. They threw shit at my boy, David! Now what are you going to do about it?”

At once the memory of Sheila cornering him in fifth grade popped into his head. With that same pudgy flushed face and those pursed lips, demanding to know if he had been the one to “hock a goober” in her peanut butter sandwich. Except now she wasn’t wearing that huge pink kitten shirt with a faded rainbow behind its fluffy white head.

“Sheila, I know you’re angry...”

“You’re Goddamn, fucking right I’m angry, you stupid fucking asshole!” she screeched. “They threw shit at my child! Those fucking animals probably copped a squat and shit it out themselves. You know how those trailer trash little fuckers are!”

“Sheila. Calm. Down. Let me go talk to them...”

“Talk!” she squawked. “I want those animals arrested! You can’t tell me there’s no Goddamn law about throwing shit at people! You can’t tell me that!”

There was a law, actually. Not to mention it fell under assault and criminal mischief. He also knew juvenile court would either throw it out or the kids would cop to a minor plea and walk away unscathed. Not to mention, Sheila would be up his ass every day about it. He could bypass it all by sending her home to cool off and scaring the punks himself, which would serve all of them for the better. It was what Red would do, after all.

“I’m going to take care of this,” David said gently. “But I want you to take Emory home. I want you to look after your son. And I want you to trust me that I will handle these kids for you. I just want you to calm down. And tomorrow I want you to drop by the station and we’ll see what we want to do. Okay?”

Sheila’s demeanor wilted. She was no longer angry, but surprisingly fragile. There was a light sheen of tears in her eyes that he had never seen before. Even with all the cruel things he witnessed her go through in twelve years of school together, he had never seen her wilt. And it affected him. Her voice quivered slightly:

“He’s my baby, David. He’s just so helpless.”

David cut a look at the old Buick station wagon to find a small shape in the backseat, too big for the car seat he was strapped into. Emory was a pale, scrawny kid with a bowl cut mop of black hair, who stared off aimlessly into some distant place only he knew.

“I just don’t want him treated the way y’all treated me.”

David looked at her. Whatever comfort he tried to summon was lost somewhere in his throat. He watched as her large hulking frame turned and shuffled back towards the car. She climbed inside, started the engine with an ugly grinding whine and pulled out of the parking lot.

David stood there. Her words had shaken him and it took a moment before he started for the school. Halfway to the doors, he glanced across the street.

On the side of the road, against a thick patch of woods that breathed and sighed in the wind, was a dog. A copper colored Pit Bull. It sat perfectly still, watching him with a cold blue eyed stare. There was something in that gaze that unnerved David. As if the Dog was studying him. Observing him. Taking in his encounter with Sheila.

“Bullshit,” he thought. But the Pit sat there. He was a large, muscular dog and he could make out the dark scars that traced his face. There was no collar he could see. A stray. "I should call Harold at Animal Control..."

And just like that, The Pit stood up, oh so regally. Keeping his eyes firmly on David. Then he turned and trotted off into the woods, vanishing behind the brush. It was then that David noticed his hand was on the handle of his Glock 9mm. "So strange.”

Next Chapter: Sixty Seconds