Dead Echo

  Chapter 18: The Chronicler

  Miles Placard was in a quandary. He hadn’t been able to keep anything solid down in a week and had already lost nine pounds. The only thing he could stomach were certain protein drinks and just the thought of another one sent ironic waves of revulsion through his system. However, he (unlike Tomas Lopez) had been to see a doctor, a GP in Sylvan, a short fifteen-minute drive from his new home. Dr. Francis Malone had listened silently as he’d gone through the list of his ailments and then run a whole battery of blood and urine tests to try and pinpoint their focus. So far, nothing. Francis had even suggested on the third visit that the problem seemed more psychological than physiologic. Sometimes these things just had to run their course.

  So, yeah, but in the meantime he was still sick.

  He looked down at the small scrap of paper lying on the countertop in front of him. He thought acidly if he didn’t know Frank Meldrum down at Bell South, the paper would not have existed. Or at least his ability to know the name and phone number of the person he had scratched down with his trusty Cross pen. Patsy Standish. Every time he looked at the name he felt a tight hand grip his heart. A shadow falling across his life. And even though he knew nothing about this woman, he did have something in common: he’d lost his wife as she’d lost her husband. They’d been married eight years and she’d died childless, leaving him the same. But that was not what had a hold of him just now; he’d long since resigned himself to the fact of Debbie’s death, to the fact that he was alone now and forever. All that was not new. No, what had him now (after all the tests and appointments with Dr. Malone), was simple cowardice. He felt he’d somehow, and not quite unwittingly, tricked another to stand before a firing squad that had had their weapons pointed at him.

  It wasn’t what he’d intended. Surely…

  Bullshit, the voice spat back, the one that’d been hammering him lately. It’s exactly what you intended; just not like you thought things would unfold. He went to shake his head and stopped. The voice was not far off the mark…but what would anyone have done? That was the question that required a great deal of thought.

  His mind went back to 9535 Samane Street.

  He’d moved there in the spring of ’92 with his new wife of seven months. He handled insurance claims for Allstate and she’d been a sales manager at a women’s clothing store, Dorrie’s Retreat. They could have afforded something a little bigger, but it was just the two of them, with no plans for any others; at least as of yet. Thinking back brought on the familiar nostalgia, the days when everything had seemed wine and roses. They’d been happy, secure.

  And he’d bought that goddamn house.

  In retrospect, that had been the end of it all. Right from the very fucking start. He’d had a brother (still had, in fact, even now rotting away in Angola from a botched burglary attempt ten years before; he sent him a card at Christmas) who’d been in trouble from day one. He’d never been able to get anything right, as if he’d been born under a bad sign, though Miles didn’t ordinarily cotton to such thoughts. Or at least he hadn’t before. Life had a way of proving things that were best (Miles thought) left unknown. But his brother…Miles had always thought of his brother’s life in the terms of a huge cow pasture. And in this pasture waited one, exactly one, pile of cow shit. All that space and just one pile. But it hadn’t mattered for Avery; anytime he chose to walk through that field he still stepped in that one measly pile. Everyfuckingtime. Like it was written down somewhere.

  But now it seemed the pile of shit was not his brother’s alone.

  Perhaps it was a curse, a curse on his whole line, and he’d tried to pass it off on someone else. Yeah, and who wouldn’t? he tried to rationalize but his conviction wouldn’t hold. Because he wasn’t a bad guy. He’d even left the box right there in the attic for anyone to find.

  And you thought that would do what? the voice asked again for the millionth time. Again he shook his head. Impossible to know, really. It seemed to him now that he’d had some plan of warning but, really, if what he suspected about that damn place was true, his little warning would be small potatoes.

  Yeah, well…but he had left something. Nobody had left anything for him.