That was the day he decided there was no God. That there was nothing more than what he could feel and touch. There was nothing
else in this world, not a single thing.
On a quiet afternoon walk, Dennis couldn’t help thinking about Abby. Eleven years still felt like yesterday, the void in his
heart still empty. As he walked along the trail lining the tranquil Fox River, Dennis knew that this life of his—the house
and the books and the fame and fortune—had all started because of that momentous event.
With his first book already out at the time, his second finished and soon to be published, Dennis had found himself lost without
a story to write. Every time he tried, nothing came.
And then he started to write about a couple that went through a miscarriage, whose lives fell apart after that. And what he
thought was just going to be a drama took a left turn into horror as the couple began to be haunted by a young girl they assumed
was the daughter they lost.
It was creepy and chilling and extremely cathartic. And even if it had never gotten published, Dennis had needed to write
that book. The story became
Breathe,
which went on to sell several million copies.
I’d take back every single copy sold to still have her with us.
He thought of what happened the other night, the image of the girl jumping off the bridge. It had been a pivotal scene in
Breathe, one of the first scenes where the protagonist started being haunted.
Dennis knew he wasn’t being haunted and there had been no girl on the bridge. It had been purely his imagination. That was
all. His imagination and stress.
He passed a couple of joggers and nodded at them. If he got paid by the hour, Dennis would record his walks on his time cards.
They were an invaluable part of the writing process. At least, they always had been before this bout of block seized his fingers
and his soul. The strolls had always given him time to let ideas germinate. Sometimes all an author needed was time. A premise
could turn into a character that turned into a scene. And scene after scene turned into a novel.
As if on cue, his cell phone vibrated. He glanced at the caller ID.
“Hi, Maureen,” Dennis said.
“Just checking in to see how you’re coming along. I sent you a couple e-mails.”
“I’m out walking.”
“Coming up with some great ideas?”
“You know me,” Dennis said, avoiding the answer.
“I just got off the phone with Random House. You’re going to laugh at this.”
“They’re bankrupt?”
“They’re already in their fourth printing for Empty Spaces,” Maureen said. “Making 2.5 million copies in print.”
“The shredders are going to be busy.”
“The sales they’re tracking are going extremely well. And publicity is just starting to kick in too—”
As Maureen spoke, Dennis stopped and stared at the peaceful water reflecting the fading sun. For some time he heard her words
but didn’t really hear a thing she said. Because as she spoke, another thought ran through his head.
Actually, it wasn’t a thought. It was a face.
Cillian Reed’s face. Those eyes.
“Dennis?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Us doing dinner when I’m in town.”
He remembered her saying something about a trip to Chicago, about coming out to visit him.
“I’m up for anything that’ll get me out of the house,” Dennis said casually. “Just let me know when.”
Maureen laughed and told him she had already e-mailed him when she was coming.
After hanging up the phone, Dennis felt a dread hanging over him. He didn’t want to see Maureen. He didn’t want to talk about
the novel that had just been released and oh yeah, by the way wasn’t his. And he didn’t want to talk about the novel that
he should be writing because oh yeah, by the way he hadn’t even started it.
And maybe Cillian would show up to crash their dinner.
As he stepped through the trees at the edge of his property and back onto his lawn, he noticed something on his deck near
the sliding glass door.
The closer he got, the more he expected it to fly away or scamper off. But it didn’t.
And then he saw why.
The body of a Canada Goose lay on its side next to the door, but its head and neck were somewhere else.
And the glass door…
Dennis cursed out loud, wondering if he really saw what he thought he was looking at.
It looked like something had been smeared across the glass. Something bloody and wet with clumps in it.
As he walked up the steps to the deck, he saw where the head and neck had gone.
They were resting on the wooden table. Right next to a blood-smeared note.
Dennis froze. He scanned the lawn, the tall trees on each side, the river, even the sides of the Victorian home. He listened
to see if anybody was around, but he was alone.
Just him and this dead goose.
He flung the note across the kitchen, and it went flying better than most paper airplanes, shooting upward until it hit the
small chandelier above the round breakfast table. It dropped down and seemed to rest, waiting, beating like a just-removed
heart.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the cordless phone on the counter and dialed a familiar number. A cheery voice answered.
“Hey, Ryan, it’s Dennis.”
“Oh, hey,” the deputy replied. “I just passed your way not long ago.”
“I have a situation I need a little input on.”
“Did that young lady come back around?” Ryan joked.
“No. It’s along those same lines, but this time I’m a little worried.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody left a dead goose on my deck, along with a note.”
“A dead what?”
“Goose.”
Ryan chuckled. “Bet that’s a pretty sight. What’d the note say?”
“I’ll let you read it.”
“You know who it’s from?”
“Yeah.”
Dennis didn’t plan to tell Ryan everything. This call was unofficial, and he would urge Ryan to approach the situation that
way.
“Is it threatening?”
“Kind of,” Dennis repeated. “Any chance you could swing by?”
“No problem. I can be there in the hour.”
Dennis shut off the phone and went to pick up the note. He slid it out of the crimson-speckled envelope and read it again.
Dear Mr. Writer:
Or can I still call you that? Didn’ t you once say a writer is anyone who writes?
I hate Canada Geese. Do you know what it sounds like when you break their necks? The sound is delightful. Loud, wild, even
with their head torn from their body. I wanted to leave this here to remind you that I’m not far.
We need to talk soon. But I will tell you where and when. In the meantime, watch your neck—I mean back!
Mr. Aspiring Writer (Who Writes)
Dennis put down the note, knowing this was just the start. The kid would soon be wanting more. Instead of simply harassing
him, Cillian might start asking for money. Or things might get dangerous.
Even after doing Google searches linking Cillian Reed and writing, Dennis had found nothing on the young man. The young writer.
The young fan he had ignored and then stolen from.
“Watch your neck—I mean back!”
That was a threat if he’d ever heard one.
Dennis looked around his house as though someone might be there. Then he cursed at himself, the note, the whole situation.
He knew it could be a very long winter if he kept this up, seeing things and being afraid of what was behind his back.
For a brief moment, Dennis thought of his safe in the garage, of the handgun locked there in a fireproof vault the size of
a car engine.
The thought was a mild comfort.
“There’s not a lot I can do about this.”
Ryan wore jeans and a sweatshirt. He was off today, but still thought enough of Dennis to come by. He was tall and lean with
a crew cut and narrow eyes behind narrow glasses. He fit his role well: looking young and inexperienced, the kind of guy who
wrote tickets but wasn’t going to chase down any crazy murderers. He looked like he could be a teenager, even though Dennis
knew Ryan was in his midtwenties.
“There’s no name, nothing too threatening.”
“What about the goose?”
“Well, yeah, that could be vandalism, but again, how do you know who it was?”
“I know.”
“You have some interesting fans. It could be any one of them.” Ryan smiled, but Dennis didn’t return it.
“When should I officially report this?”
“Any time you’d like. You could make it official, start a report. Just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case anything else happens.”
“I can’t. I don’t want any of this to be official. No reports filed, nothing like that.”
“The police can’t do anything if you don’t report this.”
Dennis nodded. “I just—maybe I just wanted you to know about it. So if something else happens, I can get your input.”
“I say file a report. Nothing’s going to happen from doing that.”
“There are some questions I don’t want to answer.”
“Like what?”
“That’s what I want to avoid. Questions.”
“Are you sure you know who you’re talking about?” Ryan asked. “It’s not someone else?”
Dennis shook his head.
“Did you ever kill a goose in any of your books?” the deputy asked.
For a second Dennis wondered if Ryan was joking. He couldn’t help laughing. “To be honest, I don’t remember. I’ve killed a
lot of people—animals too—in my books. Never killed a dog, I know that. That’s the one thing my publisher once said. Never
kill a dog. But as for a goose—you’ve got me there.”
“I still think it might just be a fan’s homage to you.”
“Pretty sick homage, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re the storyteller. Every author attracts certain readers, right? Imagine if you were writing those Fabio-covered romances.”
“Yeah. I’d get women throwing their girdles at me.”
“Now
that’s
scary.”
“I really don’t think this was a random fan,” Dennis said.
“Then look—just—if you reconsider, let me know. I can take down something official at the station. And if you see anything
else that’s—strange, I guess—just let me know.”
“Den.”
He raised his eyebrows and mumbled something.
“Den, listen.”
He groaned and shook his head.
“Den, I’m here. You have to listen to me.”
“Okay, yeah, sure.”
He tried to open his eyes, but they were heavy and the bedroom was dark.
“You have to be careful.”
“Okay.”
“Something bad is about to happen. To you. To Audrey.”
He opened his eyes and reached out. His hand touched nothing but blanket and extra pillows.
The voice sounded—it sounded like many things. It was vibrant, full of so much love and life. But more than anything, it really
truly sounded like Lucy.
It was her.
Dennis stared at the ceiling above, the silence of the bedroom suffocating, like an invisible gas covering him. The kind you
breathe in a gas chamber.
He kept his eyes open, waiting to hear her voice again. But it wouldn’t come.
It was an old farm that hadn’t been used for farming in years and rested in the middle of nowhere. They had traveled west
on the interstate for at least an hour, then turned off onto a dirt side road that stretched into the flat emptiness of Illinois
until it reached the house and barn. By then darkness washed over the countryside like a blanket covering the dead.
The big guy’s name was Bob. He led them to the house first, turning on a dim light in the kitchen. The bulb flickered like
it was ready to take its last breath. Bob wasn’t a man of many words. He liked to show things instead of talking about them.
And that was why they had come out here. Bob wanted to show Cillian something.
The wind screamed outside, the old house creaking and groaning in reply. The kitchen smelled of body odor and garlic, its
white surfaces splattered in grime—the refrigerator now dark with rust, the sink coated in brown, the floor thick with mud
and dirt. On the table sat a long hunter’s knife next to a plate of dried-out fruit.
Bob opened the fridge, the squeaking door showing its age. He didn’t ask but handed Cillian a beer. Cillian took it and guzzled
half of it down. He noticed his hand shaking.
“I’ll be right back,” Bob said.
Cillian finished the rest of the beer and looked around. His eyes took in everything, but they kept coming back to the large
hunting knife on the table. For a second, as he heard the footsteps approaching, he thought of grabbing the knife. Just in
case.
He had no idea what the big guy had done or what he might be planning.
All he had said was: “Want to see a corpse?”
And Cillian, fascinated, half drunk, and mostly skeptical, had told Bob sure.
The big guy lumbered back into the kitchen, stopped for a second and looked at Cillian.
The only thing Cillian knew about this guy was that his name was Bob and that he divided his time between living on this farm
and living with his parents in the house in Geneva. Cillian still hadn’t been inside the house, and the way Bob acted and
spoke about it, he might never go there. Bob’s parents sounded bizarre, their house closed off, their lives a mystery.
The way Bob looked at him made him think Bob could easily take the knife and cut him up and feed him to the pigs. If, indeed,
there were pigs to feed him to.
“Come on,” the big guy finally said.
It was a short walk to the barn through the fierce wind. Cillian could make out the bulky silhouette in front of him, the
peculiar gait. Bob swung open a large door on the side of the barn, and they entered the silent, cold blackness.
It felt like a tomb.
Cillian stopped upon entering the barn, the smell unbearable. It wasn’t a barnyard smell, the kind associated with livestock
and manure.
This smelled like something gone bad.