Breathe

Deck and Chace met them in the snow outside a dilapidated shed about the size of a big bathroom. The men huddled, kept their lights low in their hands, aimed up but away from faces, lighting the conversation.

“Didn’t pull in lights, Chace, ‘cause it’d be a pain in the ass to haul ‘em up here but also because we might wreck tracks if we did,” Dave informed him and Chace nodded.

“Got in a good look around, though,” Terry added. “Did the best we could not to disturb anything. Not that there was much to disturb.”

This was not good.

Chace nodded anyway.

Avoiding the shed for now, he asked, “What’d you find?”

“Not hard to find the trap,” Dave told him and went on to explain, “seein’ as the blood trail led from it to him.” He dipped his head toward the shed.

“Two hundred yards, I figure,” Terry shared quietly, careful with this knowledge because of what it said and Chace braced so his body wouldn’t jerk.

Two hundred yards. Two f**king football fields. A long way to go with a broken arm, two mangled hands and a f**ked up leg.

A long way to go.

Jesus Christ.

“Able to walk the first fifty.” Dave’s voice was also quiet. It got quieter when he continued, “Had to drag himself the rest of the way.”

Chace closed his eyes and dropped his head.

He shouldn’t have let it go the way it did. He should have tracked him or set Deck on him sooner. He shouldn’t have given in and gone slow. He should have pushed it.

He didn’t.

Jesus Christ.

“Trap’s old,” Terry carried on, Chace opened his eyes and looked at him. “Probably set years ago and forgotten. Rusted. Snowed over. The kid couldn’t have seen it even if he was movin’ in daylight. Pure bad luck he happened on it.”

Malachi seemed to have a lot of bad luck.

But this bit of it was on Chace.

“He’s big on invisibility, Chace,” Dave put in. “Couldn’t find a lot of tracks and, we get lights or come back in daylight, we’ll know more but seems like he covered them. We went a fair ways, large perimeter, got some animal tracks, only thing we got is a few leadin’ toward the trap he probably hadn’t yet covered and was in no state to mess with and the tracks leadin’ from the trap to the shed. Lots of disturbed snow around the trap.”

“Found some drops look like blood,” Terry stated. “Leadin’ to the trap comin’ from the hill, northeast.”

“He was beaten before he hit that trap,” Deck muttered.

“Yeah?” Dave asked.

“Leg was f**ked up by the trap but his arm was broken and his face was a mess. Trap didn’t do that,” Deck told them.

This got nods.

But Chace was thinking of a kid who had been beaten, his arm broken but still had the presence of mind to cover his tracks in the snow.

Who the f**k was beating him, who was he hiding from and why?

These questions were strangely exclusive at the same time inclusive. Somehow, whoever got hold of him got the chance to do it.

But they didn’t know about this place. He kept this a secret.

So how did he keep getting beaten?

Terry looked to Chace. “You want lights brought up?”

Chace looked at his watch then his gaze went to Terry. “Not tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll come back up, get a better look around in the daylight, follow that blood, see if we can get anywhere with that.”

Dave and Terry nodded.

Chace reluctantly turned to the shed.

“Bad shit, man,” Dave murmured. “Popped Terry’s cherry, steppin’ into that.”

Terrific.

“Won’t sleep tonight,” Terry mumbled, glancing at the shed then back at Chace. “How old was he?”

“He is nine, maybe ten,” Chace replied.

“Is, right, is,” Terry mumbled again, this time quickly then he asked, “He good?”

“No,” Chace answered.

“Right,” Terry muttered.

Chace studied Terry a moment and decided not to tell him there’d be other sleepless nights. Memories of this and new memories. Traffic accidents. Domestic disturbances. Child abuse. Suicide. Overdoses. Small town didn’t mean small crime. Even with a clean Department. He stayed the course, made it his career, he’d have enough to haunt his sleep for the rest of his life.

Unless he found a good woman to sleep beside him.

On that thought, Chace turned to the shed to create the next ghost that would haunt his, a ghost only the likes of Faye Goodknight could beat away.

He felt Deck move with him and they both trained their flashlights on the door. Rickety, planks warped. Lots of space in between and not only on the door. There was a wind, snow, it’d rush through and settle inside.

It wasn’t much but for a desperate kid, it was better than nothing.

The door hung drunkenly and it was a miracle it held. The shed wasn’t built in this decade or the last. It was, like the trap, unused and long-forgotten. A great hiding place in the summer. A desperate one in the winter.

He carefully pulled open the door, stepped inside and held his body tight as he swung the flashlight around and tried not to breathe in.

“Remember, kid was here awhile, man,” Deck whispered behind him.

The smell eloquently stated that. So did the state of the sleeping bag. Malachi had been unable to move so a week’s worth of bodily mess was visible to the eye and reeking in the small space. The sleeping bag had been zipped open and thrown wide to get him out so the inside was visible and stained with not a small amount of excrement, urine and copious amounts of dried blood.

Chace moved the flashlight around the area and his eyes followed the beam. Malachi had set up his sleeping area against one side of the shed. Under the sleeping bag were some thin, torn pieces of fabric. They looked heavy, they were definitely discarded. Likely from someone’s trash. These were under his sleeping bag which meant, until Chace and Faye gave him that bag, they were all he had. Chace couldn’t even make out if they were blankets or rags. What they were were definitely not enough to shield him from the cold.

At the top of this mess, a small, round cushion, definitely a castoff, stuffing coming out, soiled, dirty.

His pillow.

By the pillow, a bag of bread torn open as if by fumbling hands, blood on the plastic, blood stark on the scattered white of pieces of bred. Eight bottles of water, empty. Six energy drink bottles, empty. The shampoo bottle sitting on its side, blood on it, top not on, shampoo leaking out. The tube of Neosporin, no cap, squeezed dry. Two apple cores. An empty bag of baby carrots with blood smears. Four banana peels, not peeled off, ripped open, teeth marks visible on the inside skins now brown. He’d gnawed the meat out. The bottle of ibuprofen, blood on its sides, unopened. Possibly too difficult to get the cap off with torn up hands and a broken arm but the pain was bad enough, he’d tried. A milk jug opened and on its side, milk still in it, its sour smell mingling with the foul odor. The flashlight Faye got him was amongst this mess, on its side, the light pointed toward the sleeping area, no beam coming from it now.