Bonechiller by Graham McNamee

Author:Graham McNamee [McNamee, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 0553494279
Publisher: Ember
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Small towns have strange acoustics. Whispers at one end of town are heard sharp and clear at the other end. If somebody gets caught screwing around on their husband or wife, gets pulled over for drunk driving, gets caught shoplifting at the Red and White, gets fired, gets pregnant, gets head lice—then you can be sure the news will whip through Harvest Cove like a tornado on steroids.

But that’s for the small stuff. The everyday embarrassments and misdemeanors.

For the big stuff, it’s like the whole place has gone deaf. The way Fat Bill could prey on young guys for years undetected. The way nobody knew Jan Sorenson, the old man who’s been running the Harvest Cove gas station forever, had also been beating his seventy-year-old wife for forever. Not till after she died from internal bleeding, and the cops pulled her records at the Royal Victoria Hospital. They showed she’d been treated for breaking just about every bone you can break, going back nearly forty years.

Everybody hears whispered gossip and rumors clear across town. But nobody hears the scream next door.

“Man, this town is a hole,” I say, looking at the pages and pages of research Howie printed off for me, like it’s a school assignment.

“A black hole,” Ash agrees.

I’m in her room, with my “homework” spread out on the floor. She’s sitting beside me on her workout bench, going over the evidence.

Ash’s room is so Ash. With free weights scattered on the floor waiting to stub your toes, dirty laundry covering every surface, and posters from slasher movies and punk bands as wallpaper. A bulletin board on the back of her door shows her workout stats, body weight and mileage. Hanging off a nail in the wall is an army helmet.

I point it out. “One of your dad’s?”

“Yeah.” She takes it down and shows it to me. CPT ANIMKEE is markered on the canvas sweatband inside the rim. “See that?” She pokes her finger at the coating of dust on the metal. “That’s real authentic Afghanistan desert dust.”

Ash, with a small smile, rubs the gray chalk between her fingers. Proud of her dad.

My headache has died down to a dull throb. The heat’s still bothering me, but I don’t mind so much now that I’m alone with Ash.

There’s a knock at the door.

“Yeah?” Ash calls.

Her mother pokes her head in. “Dinner’s ready. Are you staying to eat, Danny?”

“If that’s okay,” I say.

“Of course. Come while it’s hot.”

Dinner turns out to be meat loaf and mashed potatoes. The loaf is huge and there’s a mountain of taters, enough for a whole platoon. But when Ash and her dad start chowing down, it goes fast. They eat like somebody’s got a stopwatch on them. No talking. No coming up for air.

Ash’s mom, Laura, has strawberry blond hair, bright hazel eyes and a spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks. I don’t see any of her in Ash. Those Indian genes were way too strong for the pale, freckled Whitey genes.

“I picked up a bunch of those pocket warmers,” Laura says to Ash’s dad.

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