Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

Jonah approached. “You think we’re connected to C11.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” Silence said. He lowered the shotgun a bit more, then took out the baggie with Amber’s sticky note, held it in front of Beasley’s face. “Talk.”

Beasley squinted. “That’s the address of the Morrison Mission. Who wrote this?”

“Amber. Explain.”

“I … I have no idea.”

Jonah stepped beside Silence, rested a hand on the shotgun’s stock. “Can we put this away?” His tone was mediating, soft.

Silence considered it. He lowered the gun, broke it open, popped the shells out, dropped them in his pocket, then put the gun back by the door frame.

“The note was by her phone,” Jonah said. “The night she disappeared.”

“I haven’t talked to Amber in … God, it must be six or seven years. Not since, you know, I got kicked out. Heroin.”

Silence held the note up again, right in Beasley’s face, an inch away, tapped where Amber had written his pseudonym.

“Weasel,” Silence said.

“That’s what they called me, yeah. I was a junkie. And a rat.”

“And an abuser.”

“Huh?”

“Of women.”

Beasley’s shoulders dropped. “Yeah, man. I did. Hookers, you know? I used to slap them around a little.” He paused. “No. No, it was more than that. I beat the shit out of ’em. Sent a few to the hospital. Nearly killed one. I was a monster. A real weasel. But people can change. Look around you, man. I’ve cleaned myself up. Done good for the world. Started a business. Volunteer work.”

Silence pointed at his eyes. “But still taking.”

Beasley cocked his head.

“Bloodshot,” Silence said.

“Oh.” Beasley scoffed, shook his head. “I’m not taking, asshole. I’ll show you why my eyes are bloodshot.”

He shifted past Silence and Jonah, back to the front door, which he swung open hard enough that it cracked into the wall. He pointed. “Go see for yourself.”

Silence stepped over, looked outside to where he was pointing—the sports bar across the street, the one with a crowd formed around the television sets outside.

“Amber called me her uncle,” Beasley said. “But to me she wasn’t a niece. She was more like a daughter. Remember that.”

His bloodshot eyes filled with tears. One escaped, raced down his cheek. He swiped it away.

Silence looked at him. Then stepped past, back into the sunshine. Jonah followed. The door slammed shut behind them. A deadbolt thudded into place.

Silence put his hands in his pockets as he walked down the sidewalk. His mind mulled over everything he’d just heard.

It was a quiet street, pristinely landscaped. Silence and Jonah strolled across it to the sports bar, stepped to the back of the crowd. There were no cheers, no drunken exclamations from the onlookers. Rather there were whispers, shudders, Oh-my-Gods.

A projector screen television filled the wall behind the bar. Wall-mounted television sets were scattered throughout the space. All the screens showed local news programs. The screen closest to Silence bore a large headline:

AMBER LUND’S BODY DISCOVERED

Chapter Twelve

Silence slowly turned his head, looking out the corner of his eye. Beside him, Jonah wore the same non-expressive look as when they first met. That blank, not quite emotional, not quite upset expression.

Silence took a couple steps away from Jonah, toward one of the television sets that bore closed captioning. He didn’t want to encourage Jonah to join him, uncertain of the younger man’s emotional state. But Jonah did follow.

A gray strip of empty highway crossed the bottom of the screen, and beyond, a flat marshland dotted with palms and pine trees stretched to the horizon. An ambulance was to the left, cop cars on the right, all the vehicles’ lights flashing. The energy was languid and careful as a group of uniformed personnel lifted a stretcher, covered with a white blanket, over the guardrail.

The close captioning read,

AND EARLY REPORTS INDICATE THE BODY WAS FOUND ON STATE ROAD 50 OUTSIDE TITUSVILLE, IN A PATCH OF BRUSH, HALF-SUBMERGED. A PASSING MOTORIST MADE THE SIGHTING.

“They checked that area. Impossible,” Jonah said. Although his face was still emotionless, there was pain and disgust in his tone.

SOURCES INFORM CHANNEL 16 THAT DRUGS HAVE BEEN DETECTED IN LUND’S SYSTEM. A SAD DAY IN THIS EVER-EVOLVING STORY, BUT AT LEAST NOW LUND’S FAMILY AND FRIENDS HAVE SOME MODICUM OF CLOSURE. STAN.

The camera went from a pretty, middle-aged blonde woman to a suited and dignified, silver-haired gentleman of maybe sixty. Stan. In the graphical rectangle over his shoulder was an image related to a new story—a baby panda bear. Stan spoke. Closed captioning said that the zoo had welcomed a recent addition.

Silence turned to Jonah. He was the same. That same look. Even with the bit of reaction in his tone moments earlier, nothing had changed about his face. And as Silence considered this, trying to make sense of it, Jonah suddenly turned and rushed off.

He went to the wrought iron, decorative trashcan a few feet behind them. And vomited.

Someone laughed.

Silence approached him.

Jonah’s hands were on the flared lip of the trashcan receptacle, his fingers wrapped around it tightly, interlaced in the gaps, head hung over the gaping hole in the center, drool dripping down, coughing.

An image flashed through Silence’s mind.

An image of himself. In his previous life. With his previous face and previous voice and previous name. Before the incident, the surgery, his conscription into the Watchers. A disembodied view. A floating camera. The man who Silence had been, crouched on a mansion’s hardwood floor, in a pool of blood.

C.C.’s body.

She was face down.

Cold.

Black hair splayed in the blood.

A hole in the back of her head.

The man who would become Silence had heaved. Like Jonah just had.

And then the man who would become Silence had passed out.

Jonah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Straightened up. Put one hand to his stomach.

A wave of empathy flushed over Silence, a peculiar feeling of connection. Something from his old self fired off in the back of his mind, flickers of what he had been, the compassion. He wanted to reach out to Jonah, embrace him.

But he didn’t.

Silence remembered the judgement he had leveled at Jonah, not an hour