Rock now—I dare you, he thought.
Alan’s extension cord coming up from the bedroom had two things plugged in—a compressor for the nail gun, and a radio. He turned them both on. He got to work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bob's
OCTOBER 23
BOB’S HOUSE looked neat and tidy. The front yard was still mostly dirt, but all the leaves had been raked. Bob had trimmed the scraggly bushes to look symmetrical. A new front porch constructed with untreated two-by-sixes had a sturdy railing attached. These cosmetic changes were not permanent fixes. Bob wanted to influence the inspector by making the house look cared for. So far, the approach had not worked. As Bob had told Alan, his remodeling work had been rejected in several areas.
Alan got out of the Colonel’s old green truck and walked to the front door. He tried the new steps. They were solid. They wouldn’t hold up for more than a few years before the wood started to rot. They weren’t meant to.
Alan went back down and headed for the garage entrance. He let himself in.
“Hello?” Alan called. He heard the radio coming from the basement.
“Hey,” Bob called as Alan walked down the stairs. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” Alan said. “How’s this mess?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said. “I honestly don’t know. I thought I was following the code pretty specifically the first time. The inspector seemed to have all kinds of little exceptions and rules that aren’t documented anywhere. I’m starting to regret ever calling him in.”
Alan laughed.
“Who would know, right?” Bob asked.
“When you go to sell this place, you don’t want the buyer’s inspector finding all the issues,” Alan said.
“You’re right. Anyway, I’m about halfway done with the list. This power cable has to be moved about six inches and I’m just coming to accept that there’s not enough slack. I think I’m going to have to run new cable all the way to the breaker.”
“Can’t you just splice in another section. Maybe put in another junction box?”
“I don’t know. I think not. He said a lot of things. I’m starting to think that this whole thing is a racket. They don’t want to promote safety, they just want to line their pockets by making everyone adhere to arcane standards that it takes years and years to learn. If you try to jump in and do it yourself, they just make up new rules.”
“If that were true, then he wouldn’t have given you a list. Come on, let’s see what’s left,” Alan said.
Bob handed him the list and Alan tried to puzzle out what was written.
“Here,” Bob said, handing Alan a pair of pliers, “you can help me pull these wire staples.”
Bob pointed up to where the wire was mounted overhead between the naked joists. The men worked in silence for a few minutes, separating as their work took them in opposite directions.
Alan broke the silence. “So you wouldn’t believe what Joe wanted to talk to me about last night.”
“Oh yeah?” Bob asked.
“He’s doing a paper for English class. It has to be a scary topic so he wanted to do it on migrators.”
“On what?”
“Migrators—you know like Buster was talking about the other day? Some of the kids at school told him that migrators are around this time of year.”
Bob stopped working on the staple he was trying to remove. He walked over to where Alan was working.
“The kids don’t have any details. They just talk about them like generic boogeymen, you know? Anyway, I guess he overheard me telling Liz about Buster’s migrators, because last night he wanted to know the whole story.”
“What did you say?” Bob asked. Alan didn’t notice that Bob was now completely still, just staring at him.
“I told him some of the Buster stuff. I left out all the gruesome details of course, but I said that some people believe migrators collect remnants of spirits from the deceased. I told him that they were invisible and moved in the wind. I made up some pretty good stuff about how migrators are really made of vapor. I think Joe’s story is going to be pretty good,” Alan said.
Alan finished wrenching out the wire staple. He had bent the wire a bit, but the insulation wasn’t damaged. All in all, he thought he’d done a decent job. He looked down and saw Bob staring at him.
“What?” Alan asked.
“You didn’t see the paper today, did you?” Bob asked.
“Who reads the paper?”
Bob ran up the stairs. He came down a second later, flipping through the pages. He folded the paper and handed it to Alan.
Alan read the headline. It said “Kingston Man Found Mutilated in Home.”
“Oh shit,” Alan said, reading down the article. “It was Clyde?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “He’s gone. Keep reading. They don’t say specifically, but they strongly suggest that he was missing his skin.”
“What? That’s terrible.”
“Terrible and familiar. Read the story and tell me it doesn’t sound like they found him just like he found his brother Hooker. It sounds exactly the same.”
“Oh, come on,” Alan said. “That’s impossible.”
“You only get the luxury of denial for so long, Alan.”
“What are you saying?” Alan asked.
“Buster told us about the migrators and he ended up dead, just like his brother. Now you’ve discussed migrators with your wife and son? I think maybe you should think about how you’re going to spend the next eight days.”
“You can’t be serious,” Alan said. “You’re an intelligent, rational person, Bob. You can’t seriously think that I should pack up my family and move out until the beginning of November just because of some crazy story that a local nut-job told us over noon whiskey.”
“Not just a story,” Bob said. “You and I saw the damn things. We saw the migrators and then we watched the deputy and game wardens cover up the whole thing. Now Buster is dead in the same way that he described. This is a little more than coincidence, and I think it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“We don’t even know how Buster died,” Alan said. “It gives the reporter’s email here. We should email her and find out what she knows about the death. Or we could call the police and ask them.”
“I’m sure they won’t release those details.”
“Well we can just ask them to confirm whether or not his skin and muscle were removed.”
“Yup, and we’ll be in custody before the end of the day. You don’t want to be the one guy who knows exactly what killed a guy, especially when they’ve kept those details out of the paper,” Bob said.
“That’s true,” Alan said.
“Look, just take an impromptu vacation. Maybe go visit Virginia for a week. Can’t you do that?”
“I could,” Alan said. “But Liz would never leave her work. I’m sure Joe has a million assignments and tests and things. I couldn’t even suggest something like that to Liz.”
“Maybe you don’t have to go that far,” Bob said. “All the deaths happen along the path of these migrators, right? Buster’s house, the place they grew up, and your house are all pretty close to each other. Maybe you can just go stay down in Augusta for a week. You can drive Joe to school for a few days, right?”
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “Money’s pretty tight. What would I say to her? It’s just going to sound ridiculous.”
“Don’t mention anything paranormal then,” Bob said. “Just tell your wife that there’s a crazy person loose in the area. Or maybe a rabid animal. She’s going to hear about this story, right? And the cops don’t have any idea what happened. You just play it as the neighborhood isn’t safe right now. Then, on November first, you declare that the neighborhood is safe again.”