Page 25 of Stay Buried

I thought of the mare in Luther’s barn, the mad yellow glow of its eyes as it burst through the wood of the stall, barreling toward us.

“Dr. Endicott!” Pearl cried, without looking at me. “You’ve got to come quick!”

Without thinking, without realizing that every man in the pub was now looking our way, I took my lover’s gloved hand and brushed the snow from her hair and spoke gently: “What’s happened, Pearl?”

A silence had fallen over the room, all the normal clank and rustle and grumble of the crowded tavern had ceased.

“It’s my mother.” The words came out in sobs. “She’s been… attacked!”

TWELVEASHLEY

October 17, 2016

Ready?” Malcolm called as he came in the front door. Ashley was in the hall with her suitcase packed, and beside it the old wooden steamer trunk.

“Absolutely,” she said, a confident smile plastered on her face.

He’d been worried about her since the episode in the lawyer’s office on Friday. She told him she’d just felt lightheaded and overwhelmed. She hadn’t let on that she’d had another hallucination. The first one since getting out of the hospital.

It didn’t take much persuading to get Mal to make the trip to Boone’s Ferry. He was anxious to see the property they’d inherited, excited about the possibilities for his potential business. They could meet this Josephine Banks, Gram’s mysterious tenant whom they’d also inherited, try to learn more about their “unusual arrangement,” as the lawyer had called it. As much as she was dreading it, Ash had suggested they bring the trunk along. Look through it together, on this strange pilgrimage.

And while they were there, Ash thought, they could try to retracetheir mother’s steps, find out what she was doing in Boone’s Ferry just before her disappearance. Of course, she made no mention of this to Malcolm.

“Listen, Ash, are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked now. “If it’s too much, we don’t have to go.”

Ashley remembered the vision of her mother in Reyes’s office.

Listen.

Suddenly her stomach lurched and the whole thing felt like a very bad idea.

She shook the feeling away. “I’m fine, Mal. Stop looking at me like I’m made of glass, okay? It’ll be an adventure,” she said with an unconvincing smile.

Ash had taken the week off from the café—she only worked twenty hours a week anyway. She hadn’t been able to work more because she needed to be home with Gram. But now that Gram was gone, she’d have to make some decisions. Could she work at the café full-time? Find a second job, or a different job altogether? Would she finally get her shit together and go back to school? Keep living there in Gram’s house—her and Malcolm’s house now, she reminded herself. Would he move in? Would they sell the house, split the proceeds? And what about the house in Boone’s Ferry? Every time she tried to think about all the decisions that needed to be made, and logistics that would have to be hammered out, she felt dizzy and nauseated.

She tried to quiet her mind for this moment, deciding she’d think things over on the drive up.

They loaded the trunk and Ashley’s suitcase into the bed of Mal’s pickup and set off.

“I got you a coffee,” Malcolm said, when they’d settled into their seats. She picked hers up and took a sip. Extra cream and two sugars—perfect. Her brother knew her well.

“I also got some maple bacon sticky buns,” he said with a grin, pulling a white paper bag off the dashboard and handing it to her. Mal knew how much she loved the huge sticky buns from the diner nearhis apartment, loaded with maple frosting and bits of crispy, salty bacon.

“This is my kind of road trip already,” Ash said, pulling out a bun and taking a big chewy bite, feeling the tension slip away as Malcolm pulled out of Gram’s drive, heading for the highway that would take them north, all the way up to the very edge of Vermont.

Malcolm helped himself to the second bun, the crumbs and sticky icing making a mess in his beard. Ashley laughed at him, handed him one napkin after another.

Being with Malcolm was easy and comfortable in the way that being with someone who’d known you your whole life was comfortable. They talked, then they didn’t. They shared memories of when they were kids: the time they went as Batman and Robin on Halloween, the time they built a raft out of sticks and old lumber and set sail in Myers Pond, only to sink two minutes into the journey, the constant searches for buried treasure and bigfoot out in the woods behind their house. They talked about Gram’s pecan pie and the gross drink Mom used to make with Swiss Miss (with the marshmallows!), instant coffee, and Baileys Irish Cream.

They followed the directions on the GPS unit Mal had clamped to his dashboard, and Ashley checked it against the map and directions she’d printed out online. She was pretty sure cell service would be spotty, so she didn’t want to rely on phones.

Malcolm started playing his latest audiobook, insisting that the content was “life-changing,” so Ashley tried. She listened as the voice droned on about manifesting your destiny, how everything you’d ever dreamed of was out there waiting, you only had to ask, to focus, to draw it to you.

Ashley reached over and turned it off. “You actually believe all this?” she scoffed.

“Absolutely.”

“So you think you can get whatever you desire by just thinking about it?”