Rust: One

Chapter 8

The blood in the bowl sizzled and blackened before Detective Jonathan Goodwell's eyes. He wrapped gauze around his arm, wincing at the antiseptic sting. His basement was quiet aside from the hiss as the offering ignited. The air was filled with the barbecue tang of cooking blood.

He closed his eyes and waited.

Finally, the voice came. "Is she safe?"

"Same as last time we spoke. She's at home now with her husband. He'll watch out for her."

"Is she... curious?"

Goodwell was glad that whoever or whatever squatted on the far side of their blood-borne telephone line couldn't see how he rolled his eyes. "Very curious. What do you want me to do, keep her under house arrest?"

"She can't explore."

"I can't stop her."

"Find a way! If she searches..."

"I understand." There were things in Rustwood that even Goodwell wasn't privy to, and he was glad of it. Just as it was easier to not ask what parts of the cow went into your burger, it was best not to know what it took to keep the gears of the town turning. And besides, it wasn't Rustwood's engineers that worried him so much as the things they kept locked away. All it would take was the wrong woman in the wrong place to upset the balance and bring the whole structure of the town tumbling down around their heads. "What do you suggest?"

"She wishes to escape." The voice was glass sliding on glass. He could hear the grumble of an old smoker in that voice, and a child of five in pigtails, and a woman pleading in the dark. "I fear she will-"

"Go places she shouldn't?"

"You must protect her."

"I'll do my best." Goodwell rubbed his eyes. He hadn't slept more than a few hours the previous night. Maybe something he'd eaten, or maybe guilt chewing at his insides. "You want me to sit outside her house? I can't just leave my job. They're writing her name everywhere now, and the goddamn fires-"

"Protect her!" The voice swelled until it rattled Goodwell's teeth in the sockets. The candles alongside the bowl swooped horizontal and guttered. "Protect her or I take you into the mines!"

Goodwell's gut clenched. "You can't mean that."

"Protect-" The voice faded, yanked away into the dark. Not for the first time, Goodwell closed his eyes and imagined himself in a train carriage, his head out the window, listening to someone shouting at him from the platform as the engine pulled away. The scattering of voices lost to distance and time.

He blinked. The basement was dark and the voice was gone.

He cleaned the altar and vacuumed the dust bunnies before creeping upstairs. It was late evening and Hannah had retired early. Her sullen silence was code for I have a headache. She'd had a lot of headaches recently. He couldn't remember the last time they'd had a proper conversation. He was out of the house more often than he was in, and every time he stumbled home late and found her cleaning or reading or sitting silently in the garden the further away she seemed to be.

He undressed and inched into bed beside her, careful not to let the springs squeak, and pulled the sheet up over his nakedness. Hannah didn't stir. Her face was buried in the pillow and he couldn't hear her breathing. He touched her bare shoulder. She was sweating, her skin slick beneath his fingers. "Hannah?"

She grunted tonelessly.

"Nothing." Goodwell sank back down and buried his face in his pillow. "Nothing, honey. Sleep."