Chapter 4

4

Céleste

Go for the gut.

Peering through the scope, I line the crosshairs over the flank of the wolf. Even from just shy of a couple hundred yards away, I eye the glisten of Noya’s blood still shimmering across the monster’s jet-black fur. I baited the bastard by leaving bits of my dog’s already spilled entrails in the woods where I found her, hoping it’d draw the wolf back. That and a cow horn wolf howler I found left in an abandoned blind a few years back.

I’ve heard black wolves are common in the north, but this is my first encounter with one. Tears blur my vision, widening my view of the animal, and I drag my arm across my eyes to clear the moisture there, before snapping my attention back to the scope.

Hit the gut.

Visuals of Noya’s mutilated body play on rewind inside my head. Have for most of the night, because I didn’t even bother with the pills, so hellbent on getting up early to find that damn wolf. Recalling the sight of my dead dog fuels me, igniting a rage from somewhere deep in my chest. So much blood. In her fur. On the ground. It coated my hands when I lifted her head into my lap, as if she needed that kind of comfort anymore.

I curl my finger over the trigger, holding the arrow steady.

Footsteps crunch from behind over the snow.

Hurry.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Noya.

I squeeze the trigger, and a flash of movement in my periphery is the only warning before the crossbow’s barrel flies upward. The arrow slices through the air. An explosion of birds shoots out from the canopy of trees overhead, squawking and flapping about.

The wolf darts off into the thickness of trees.

Fury rises into my throat as I stare across the snowy hill at where Russ stands. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Bent forward, he rests his hands to his knees as he heaves. Pushing sixty-five is bad enough on his body, but the man has never bought into the idea that his is a temple and, therefore, has treated it more like a rundown trailer in the last few years.

“Told ya … a million … times.” Every word is punctuated by his lack of breath, and yet still carries that flat, nasally sound.

Like a northerner.

And I hate that I sound like him, too.

My longtime accent was the first thing to go when we arrived in this place, because anything that was a part of who I was doesn’t matter anymore. Took months of practice to rid myself of it, only to replace the distinct southern drawl with that godawful Midwest sound. And for what? Not like there was any evidence of my existence from my old life, anyway. No one knew who I was, because there’s no record that I was even born.

“He killed Noya,” I grit, the sting of tears in my eyes again. “He’s a murderer.” The crack of my voice only exacerbates what I know is irrational anger. That’s how life is in the north, after all, but she was my only friend.

“And that is unfortunate. But you do not kill a wolf.” Though he’s white to the core, Russ grew up on a Cherokee reservation somewhere in North Carolina. Just like the native feather arm band I’ve seen tattooed on his bicep, along with the turquoise and leather band he wears on his wrist, the man still honors traces of their heritage, and he believes that to slaughter the animal would bring a bad omen, or something. It’s said that the wolf’s spirit and all his kin would seek revenge for such an act.

He told me the same thing when I was thirteen years old—the first time I ever spoke aloud of wanting to kill another human being.

“I don’t believe in your stories.” Slinging the crossbow over my shoulder, I snatch up my sack that I dropped on sighting the wolf and tromp through the snow toward the cabin.

“Now, just wait a minute, Céleste.”

My first name was the only thing I got to keep from my old life. The last remnant of a mother I never knew. From what small scraps I’ve been fed about my past, she split the scene when I was a baby, and my real father never spoke of her. Of course, none of that matters now. Since having left that life, I’ve been forced to use Russ’s last name, in order to uphold the facade that he’s my father.

He isn’t.

He’s a drunk, a womanizer, and a shitty gambler.

Never my father, even if he’s the man who raised me for the last nine years. A trusted friend of my real dad, who’s now dead. Murdered, actually, in our Louisiana home when I was just going on twelve years old. Russ swiped me up and fled north, to this place, half-heartedly raising me under the guise of a parent.

Hand to his chest, he bends forward on a deep raspy cough that he’s had for as long as I’ve known him. Only, as of late, it’s been tinged with the red blood that flies past his lips on a spray of spittle, coating the white snow below.

“I have to bury my dog.” I don’t even bother to glance back as I keep on toward where my dog lays in a mangled lump of blood and fur a few hundred yards off.

“Well, be sure to keep the shovel handy.” His comment brings me skidding to a halt, and I turn to see him rubbing his hands together, as if the cold suddenly bothers him.

The man isn’t above using his ailing body as a means of sympathy, but I’m not like the women he brings home who want to take care of him. Baby him. I know better than to fall trap to his manipulative crap. Except, a few months back, he did something out of character, by going to have his cough and some headaches and dizziness he was having checked by Doc Reece. That’s when he found out about a nodule in his lungs.

“It’s spread, then?” I refuse to let the worry exploding inside of me touch my voice.

With a sniff, he looks around the forest and nods. “Ride’s about to get a little bumpy, kid.”

Russ and I have this game, one where we pretend like we don’t give a damn about each other. He tells me the nightmares I suffer every night are my own fault for watching those crime show documentaries, all while holding my hand, and I tell him I don’t care that he’s dying, all while holding back tears.

The cold in between keeps us from feeling any pain, but today, it isn’t working so brilliantly as before. Could be that losing my dog has rattled loose emotions that I typically keep in check.

Or maybe I’m just really fucking scared of being alone.

* * *

Flames lick the edge of the burner when I light the old, outdated stove, and set a pot of broth and meat on top. Just one of the many antiquated appliances in the cabin Russ and I have called home for the last few years. Miles out from the downtown area, it sits smack in the woods. Not a single neighbor within walking distance.

Mind lost to the cataclysm of thoughts in my head, I slice through a carrot, nearly adding the tip of my finger to the pile. “You could beat it, you know. This cancer. If we lived closer to civilization. A hospital.”

“Doc says it’s stage four. I’d sooner have them cut every one of my limbs off with a butter knife than sit in some hospital bed all day long and go through their treatments.”

At the sound of his lighter, I twist around to find him lighting up a cigarette, and I swear it takes sheer willpower not to stab him right now. See, Russ believes that his exposure to agent orange during the Vietnam War is what led to the diagnosis of small cell carcinoma, and not the millions of cigarettes he’s smoked over the last four decades since then. “Really?” It’s a miracle I haven’t chopped my fingers off, as forceful as I’m cutting the vegetables for the stew. “Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn?”

“What do you care, Angeltude?”

Angeltude. ‘Face of an angel with a fuckton of attitude,’ he used to say, when I was younger. My name literally means celestial, or heavenly in French, which has become a mocking contrast to the last near decade, during which I’ve been somewhat hellish, bitter and angry. About everything, really. Where we live. How we live. He’s been bitter, too. But it seems the nickname has become more of an endearment for him in the last few months.

Teeth grinding in frustration, I stir the vegetables I’ve chopped into the pot of broth and meat.

“So, how long is it? A year? Six months?”

“Doc says I’ll be lucky to make it to spring.”

“That’s … that’s like … four months away!” Heat pulsing behind my eyes and in my nose tells me it’s only a matter of time before the dam breaks and all these real feelings come pouring out of me.

“I know. We got a lot of shit to do before then, kid. Lot of affairs to settle.”

Keeping my back to him is all I can do from breaking down. “I don’t want anything to do with your affairs.”

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout women. Just tyin’ up loose ends.” A long pause follows, and he’s picking at his fingers when I shoot a glance over my shoulder. “I don’t want to leave you alone by yourself.”

“I’ll be fine.” Somehow, hearing him say it aloud, though, sends a shudder of fear through me. “Don’t you … worry about me. Just … worry about yourself. Maybe stop smoking those things, while you’re at it.”

“I know you’ll be okay. You’re strong. Always been strong. A survivor.” He isn’t talking about the fact that I can hunt a wolf down, or gut a rabbit with my bare hands, even if reluctantly. I’m the lone survivor of one of the most heinous murders in the state of Louisiana, where I’m originally from. A life I had to leave in order to survive. One he had to leave, as well, for reasons that still don’t quite add up for me.

“And what about your family? Shouldn’t you tell them?” Once, about four years ago, Russ left the cabin to set some traps in the woods, and desperate for answers, I rummaged through his stuff. Tucked away in an old, worn-down looking wallet, was a driver’s license, alongside a picture of a beautiful blonde and a young boy, maybe ten years old. When Russ caught me, he swiped the wallet out of my hand and sentenced me to two nights without supper. The worst punishment he’s ever issued in the all the time we’ve been here.

“They don’t need to know anything. Better for them, better for me.”

“You wouldn’t know what was better for you if it slapped you upside the head.”

He snorts a laugh that sends him into a coughing fit. Bending over, he holds a white kerchief to his mouth, and I glimpse the red saturating the cloth when he pulls it away.

The sight of him sends a nervous thrumming inside my veins, and I turn away, mentally searching for something else to think about. Something less terrifying than how utterly empty this place will be when he’s gone. And without Noya.

“Shit,” he rasps. “This …. This is my penance. All the bad shit I’ve done.”

“You don’t believe in all that religious crap, remember?”

“Ain’t religion. It’s karma. Bitin’ me in the ass.”

It’s futile asking him to elaborate on what he could’ve possibly done in his life, what horrific events in his past would warrant this shit hand, so I don’t bother to respond to that.

“You still wear that damn thing?”

At his inquiry, I look down the front of me, where I’ve mindlessly pulled out the chain ordinarily tucked inside my shirt. The one I’ve been skating the attached key along, back and forth, back and forth, in habit. “Always.”

The key to a secret place.

It’s the only thing I have left of my true home. My family. The life from before, as I refer to it, but I don’t dare say what it was that broke my childhood into two halves. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to, since I don’t remember most of it, anyway. A blackness that sits on the edge of my memories like a damaged movie reel. But there are these snapshots. Picture frames inside my head that appear and disappear. And I know things, details about that night, from the snippets I’ve read in local newspapers. Except, there’s a strange and inexplicable detachment to them that doesn’t seem to trigger any light inside that dark stretch at the back of my mind. Like I’m reading about someone else’s tragedy instead of my own.

It’s weird.

I remember my real father, the one before Russ, looping the oversized chain over my head and tucking the key in my shirt. In the visual, I see his lips move, but I can’t hear what he’s saying to me, and I don’t dwell on it too much, for fear of my brain changing the narration to something else, entirely. Could’ve been the crazy mutterings of a fool, for all I know. I was certainly old enough to remember that he wasn’t running on all cylinders toward the end. Something I could see even as young as eleven years old, when my suspicions about his mental wellbeing had me second guessing everything that came out of his mouth, no matter how benign. That night, he left a kiss to my forehead, and it was the last I ever interacted with him.

For some reason, I’m able to recall my old address, based on some pneumonic device I must’ve learned as a child. Twenty-nine, three-five-two, Magnolia Lane, in Veilleux. And I remember my last name, Pierce, but everything else about that night is sketchy, half-drawn images that I can’t make out.

Tucking the key back inside my shirt, I return to the task of stirring the stew in the pot.

“Ever wonder what it goes to?”

Wearing a frown, I twist to look back at him. He’s never mentioned, or acknowledged, the key--I’m guessing, because doing so would kick off the slew of questions he’s avoided this whole time. Ones I’ve asked so many times over the years, they’ve practically become a chant. Most times, my probing has been met with a stern face and silence.

Typically silence.

Sometimes I dream of my old house, the few vestiges my brain has tucked away, and a red door that leads to a secret room. Whether it’s real, or something I made up, I don’t know. It’s vivid enough, though. From the small imperfections in the wood, to its black cast iron hinges and lock. I’ve often wondered if it actually exists. And if this key belongs to it.

“Do you?” I ask, giving the soup another stir.

It’s not as if I hit him with the hard questions. Just the long, empty gaps in my memory that need filling in. Like, how he knew my dad. And why he brought me here and raised me all these years? What was in it for him?

The most I’ve gotten out of him is that my father, who worked as a shrink, saved his life, somehow, though Russ won’t tell me the details. Still doesn’t explain why he’d leave his whole life behind, though. People don’t just up and abandon everything. I don’t care how good the doctor is.

“Nah.” He tips back the bottle of beer, guzzling about half of it, drowning all the answers in one swallow. When he’s finished, he sets the bottle back on the table and stares off for a moment. “Can’t change the past. Can’t visit the past. No point in dwelling on it. Best to move on.”

As much as my gut twists with the urge to smack him, he’s right.

There’s nothing for me in the before, and who knows what opening that can of worms might do. Who knows what the hell lurks in that dark stretch waiting to lash out at me, when I least expect it? Maybe it’s better I don’t know. Especially now, when I’ll have to carry on alone.

Alone. In this cabin.

“Promise me one thing, kid,” he says over my thoughts. “Don’t go looking for answers that aren’t there. Sometimes, shit just is, right?”

“Right.”