Page 109 of Sleeping Giants
“Stuff from my service. How was your trip?”
“It was great. Ran into Patty in Seaside.”
“She have any news for us?”
“Not for us. I want to go home, Larry.”
“Don’t blame you. Life is a bit hazardous here, isn’t it? A madman chasing you down the beach and setting my cabin on fire. Never a dull moment in Eagle Cove, apparently.” He stopped joking and smiled at her. It was a tender smile. “Of course you want to go home.”
“Will the constable need me?”
“Not right away. If Ike confesses, you won’t be needed until a trial, and if he pleads guilty, you might not be needed at all.”
“Martha never spoke to us.”
“She’s clever, that one.”
“Do you think we’ll ever know exactly what happened?”
“Ike might tell.”
“Okay.” She stood there awkwardly.
“I’d hug you, but I’m all dirty.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”
She turned toward her car. “Bye for now.”
“Bye.”
He watched her walk to her car, and back it carefully away from the burn scene. He could imagine her stopping in Wheel Stone for gas, and then heading into the mountains. He imagined rain pouring down, and then the sky opening the way it did in the ranges, where it seemed you were driving right up into the clouds. Then the slow descent back into the city, and her home there.
Larry went back to picking through his stuff.
32
Brightwood closed, and the years passed. Brett Jarvis had a brief, wonderful stint of sobriety after his daughter, Aspire, was born. It ended with a drunken rage during which he broke every one of his wife’s precious plates, inherited from her family, and left her huddled on the floor with the baby, sobbing.
Stumbling down the beach, Brett saw dead bodies with sea stars growing out of their faces, climbing from wet graves in the woods. They followed him, and he screamed. The constable found him the next day, and was able to talk a judge into putting a two-week hold on Brett. He was taken to the hospital in Seaside to dry out. In the hospital, Brett spit bright red blood into plastic trays. He told the doctors about his visions. He saw ghosts in the windows, luminescent shadows as bright as the northern lights. He talked incessantly about the murderous Sasquatch who had stolen at least one boy from Brightwood.
The doctors said his liver was failing. He would die now no matter what he did. Sobriety could no longer save him. Nothing could save him.
They discharged him. He stayed in bed for a week, pissing himself, then broke the lock Gertrude had put on the beer cooler, drank himself into a stupor, and stumbled out once more to the beach, cursing at her from below. This time Gertrude didn’t call the constable. She let him go.
The beach was awash in moonlight. It bathed the sand with white light. Brett stumbled all the way to the cliffs. The tide was far out. He could see and feel the ocean, as dark as the night.
He was a bit more sober by the time he reached the cliffs. He began to climb. He was an expert at climbing these rocks. He climbed until the rocks ended and steep forested land began. The trees grew almost vertically from the cliff face. He pulled up from one after another, feeling his aching liver.
The top of the mountain was very cold. He spit out a wad of fresh blood. It looked like black tar on the ground.
He walked out to the very point. The trees here bent backward until they tried no more. He stood on the edge of the cliff.
Someone walked out from the woods behind him.
“Sasquatch?” he asked.
