SAFELY BURIED Chapter 19: Fog

Don’t fall asleep, I warned myself. You have to go to work.

I used the bottom step to get up on one knee. I waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. Then I shakily got to my feet. I stood on one leg and shook the other one until most of the tingling stopped. I looked at my watch. The hands pointed to 9:20. It seemed much later than that. Maybe the watch had stopped when I hit the ground. No, it was still running. I had been unconscious only a few minutes.

9:20.

Was it morning or night? I had to get to work. My stomach churned in panic. I thought I was going to throw up.

The headache went on pounding, but the pain began to fade. I felt stiff all over. Why was I sore in so many places—my ribs, my ears, the small of my back?

Finally, it began to come back. Someone had tripped me as I came down the steps. Maybe he had worked me over while I was out cold. Was it the same guy who had murdered the Garths? If so, why was I still alive? Why hadn’t he killed me too? Was he still in the house?

It was hard to decide what to do. I had trouble focusing. I wanted to look around the cellar, but maybe I should check the house first in case the tripper was still around. What would I do if he was? I should get out of here. Get out while I could.

The left side of my face began throbbing. Without thinking, I rubbed the cheek, which meant I rubbed dirt into the scratches and cuts and made it hurt worse. I remembered scraping the wall as I went flying down. I had to wash the scrape before it got infected. I wondered what I looked like.

I went up to the kitchen. The light was on. There was no mirror, but I could see myself in the window above the sink. It was dark outside. That was good—it must still be Tuesday. My reflection revealed a large brush burn, a network of scratches from cheekbone to chin. Long, thin crimson lines laced the skin under an orange smear of clay. The scratches were still bleeding, though not much. I cupped cold water in my hand and splashed it on the wound to clean it and stop the bleeding. Then I patted my cheek with a paper towel. I hoped the scratches wouldn’t leave scars.

To be absolutely sure I was alone in the house I did a quick inspection. As I went from room to room, I thought about my attacker. If it was the same person who had killed the Garths, why hadn’t he killed me? I had been unconscious, completely at his mercy. The simple answer was that he had no reason to kill me. This implied that he did have a reason to kill the Garths. This would mean the killings were not random acts of violence. Of course, if someone else murdered them, randomness remained a possibility.

Was it Walter Boofey under the steps? Why blame him? He owned the house. He had a right to be there, not me. He would not have gone away and left me lying in the cellar. He could have had me arrested for breaking in. He might even have thought I was the guy who killed his tenants. Maybe he thought I would kill him too. He had plenty of justification for tripping me on the steps.

How about Chuck Martin? Paula said she had seen him poking around the house. He may have been poking around some more tonight. Perhaps he was trying to solve the murders to show voters they had made a mistake by not reelecting him sheriff. If he was the one who had tripped me, it was probably just to keep me from seeing him in the house. Like me, he must have broken in. He wouldn’t want that to come out in the paper. But he wouldn’t kill me to keep it out. Or would he?

And, of course, it was possible the tripper was none of the above.

I knew if I had any sense I’d get out of there and go home—or go to the hospital and have my face treated. But I still wanted to have a look at the cellar. Surely there wouldn’t be anyone under the steps again. The bedrooms were empty. No one was sitting on the toilet or taking a bath. I had the house to myself.

I went back to the laundry room and peered down the steps. They looked even more rickety than before, but my skull knew they were solid enough. Get it over with, I said to myself. Check out the cellar and get the hell out of here.

I could feel my adrenaline pump kicking in as soon as I took the first step. All the way down I expected a pair of hands to grab my ankle again, but nothing happened. I touched down safely. Grateful to be alive, I stood under the lone light bulb and looked around.

This was not your finished basement with knotty-pine paneling, pool table, and bar. The cellar was little more than a hole in the ground, more or less square and with uneven walls and floor. It was less than a quarter the size of the floor above it, and I suspected it was excavated years after the house had been built. The ceiling was about a foot higher than those of today’s basements, and thick wooden posts supported the first floor.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was an array of electronic equipment with little red lights. I felt as if rats with gleaming eyes were watching me. Several pieces occupied a wide space that had been hewn out of the upper half of part of one wall, about three feet farther into the earth. The expansion resembled a large built-in shelf. Other components stood on concrete blocks below the shelf. Wires crawled down the wall into something called a DC Disconnect, and I realized all this stuff was for the solar panels on the roof.

A few feet away an enormous old furnace hogged up a major portion of the cellar. Next to it, a pair of six-feet-long oil tanks took up even more space. The furnace and tanks also stood on concrete blocks, but these blocks were flush with the ground and decades older than the ones under the electronic components. The oil furnace was no longer in service, having been replaced by a much smaller gas furnace on the other side of the tanks. The gas furnace stood on a pad of poured concrete.

A stack of crumpled boxes, a wooden kitchen table covered with dusty Mason jars and other canning materials, a rust-covered ironing board, a mangle, and other pieces of junk littered the rest of the cellar. I had seen enough. It was time to leave. I turned off the lights and went outside.

The fog took me by surprise. It was so thick that I could not even see my car. Here and there a lightning bug made a blurry glow. It took me a minute to find the car, and then, even with my lights on, it was hard to see where the gravel lane penetrated the cornfield. Visibility was two or three feet. The county road was just as bad. I drove incredibly slowly as I tried to keep the car in the middle of the road.

Halfway up the first hill I rose above the fog, and near the ridge my phone started beeping to let me know I had messages. They would have to wait. A bright gibbous moon made the hollow look like a bowl of mist.

From ridge to ridge I dipped in and out of the fog, and in the river bottoms I was back in the soup again. I thought about going to the emergency room to see if I had a concussion, but I felt okay now. I could also get the scratches on my face treated, but they weren’t deep enough to leave scars and would disappear in a couple of days. Besides, I could still help get the Gleaner out.

I clutched the wheel, ran the wipers, and strained my eyes to see the road. It took me an hour to get back to the paper. It was almost eleven when I walked into the newsroom, where I was greeted with gasps and astonishment.

“Are you okay, Phil?”

“Were you in a fight or something?”

“What happened to you?”

Edward heard the commotion and came out of his office. He normally wasn’t here at this hour, but no doubt he had come in to take my place. “My God, Phil, where have you been?” he said. “I’ve been trying to call you all night.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t call in. I was out at the Garth house. I got myself knocked out.”

“What? Are you joking? Who knocked you out?”

“I wish I knew.” I felt the top of my head. A small lump had swelled up.

“Have you been to the hospital?”

I shook my head. “I’m okay. Where are we here? How’s the front page?”

Edward said, “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got to get to the hospital. If you were knocked out—”

“It was just a few minutes. It’s just a little bump.”

“If you were unconscious, you’ve got a concussion. You’re going to the emergency room. Come on, I’ll drive.”

One of the women said, “Edward’s right, Phil. You look like death warmed over.”

“Damn right I’m right,” Edward said. “If you don’t listen to me, and if you keel over, I’ll have Leroy give you mouth-to-mouth.”

Leroy was a 280-pound pressman with a bushy black beard that once had got caught in the ink rollers. He was also president of the East Fork Coon Hunters Club.

“You win. I’ll go,” I said.

Edward yelled, “Mary, how’s that zoning story coming? Let Jack see it when it’s done.”

“I will, Ed,” Mary yelled back. “Why don’t you take Phil to the hospital.”

“Yeah, have his head checked,” the sports desk said.

On the way to the emergency room in the fog, I gave Ed a recap of my trip down the steps.

“You’re lucky you’re still alive,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t go out there anymore—at least not by yourself.”

“I want to get to the bottom of this,” I replied. “I want to know why those people were killed.”

“That’s fine, as long as you don’t get yourself killed too.”