The Shell - Part Six

Short Fiction - Science Fiction

This is Part Six of a short fiction tale called The Shell.

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And now, on to the story…

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Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Bottle full, chamber empty. 

George Cross was taking shape in the barn, a skeleton under glass, and the night drew in around Burgess as he sat on the porch, thinking about the bottle of whiskey under the kitchen floorboards and the long, slim box under his bed, upstairs. 

Bottle full, chamber empty. 

He’d stopped drinking when he moved out here. He hadn’t really done much of it early on, when he was young, but after what happened to Christopher, and after Colleen had gone…

He thought about Colleen, then, like cracking an old door open that had been locked for a long, long time. The hinges squealed. He wondered idly if she was okay, if she was happy, or if she at least had made some kind of happiness out of what he had broken. 

No. What Paul Lannigan had broken. 

Burgess had long since given up on reconnecting; she had made it clear she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. She had moved away, somewhere. East. Chicago, maybe. Before he’d stopped checking online—before the shells, before the community—he saw a rumor going around their mutual friends that she had gotten remarried. He couldn’t blame her, but the hurt of it had always sat like a roiling ball of bitterness at the base of his spine. Never could quite straighten up his posture, after that.

Burgess rocked back, and a pair of owls cackle-called to one another across the basin of the lake, not too far away. When he was a kid, his mom had told him how to identify the barred owl’s tremulous question: Who-cooks for-you? Who-cooks for-youuuuuu?

The whiskey bottle was under the kitchen floorboards. He had put it there, set it aside for the day he could finally put this whole Paul Lannigan business to rest. He would toast to himself. He would drink himself into a stupor. It didn’t really matter, did it? Because it would be done. 

Bottle full. 

The long, slim box under his bed…that was different. He didn’t hunt, anymore. He left that to the younger folks. Used to hunt quite a bit, when the community first got started and they needed food on the table. He had gotten good at it, too. Rabbits, mostly. Grouse. Pigeons. Wild turkeys. The occasional deer, though he couldn’t quite get past the sorrow of it. Watching those heavy heads dip, knees buckle. No…he couldn’t quite get past it. Not with the deer. 

Chamber empty.

The screen door opened behind him and Naomi stepped out of the house, yawning. She had just said goodnight to Paul. She was wearing her hair different, these days, though he couldn’t quite place how. 

He thought she would just give him a wave, a quiet, “goodnight,” and be on her way. But she settled down on the porch step just feet away from his rocking chair, like a child expecting a story, and leaned against the railing, looking up and out at the stars. 

A pause. The breeze ruffled her hair.

“There never were this many stars in Bremerton,” she said, finally. 

Burgess shrugged. “They were there, you just couldn’t see ‘em. Too much light.”

“Funny.” She sighed. “Too much of something good. Gets in the way.”

He wasn’t sure what was on her mind, so he waited her out.  

She turned to look at him, and the dim light from the entryway within the house and the black forest shadows behind bathed her in a stark chiaroscuro. “I know how disappointed you were that you couldn’t print my dad. I know you blame yourself.”

Burgess nodded, faintly. “The ones I can’t print always haunt me.”

“Still, I know I didn’t make it easy on you.” 

She hadn’t. Lord, the weeping. The anger. He could still hear it. Sometimes he couldn’t differentiate in his memories between Naomi’s grief and Colleen’s. They wove together in a vicious harmony, a keening. Naomi had forgiven him eventually. Colleen had not.   

Naomi smiled, then turned away again, out to the listening wild. “You’ve more than made up for it, though. I lost what I wanted, but I got something different. Not better, couldn’t say that for sure, but…different. Good. Couldn’t see the stars until you turned out that particular light, maybe.”

Burgess felt his skin itch, uneasy. She meant Paul. Paul was the stars. Burgess too, yes, but Paul for sure. And he couldn’t let her think that. He wasn’t the stars; he was just a crook-footed criminal, a murderer, and it was Burgess’s fault he was here at all, hanging around. 

Bottle full. Chamber empty. 

Naomi said, “We’ve made a little family here. Somehow.”

She wasn’t asking him to explain it. She was simply marveling, boasting to the dozing mountains, the pine-perfumed air, the barred owls still laughing over the surface of the lake like benevolent ghosts. She was expressing her gentle surprise, her testimony to an unknown god. Maria Valdez, calling for her children. Three days to make a miracle. Bill and Hannah Cross, waiting on a list the size of a dollar-bill.  

She looked up at him, then, and her gaze was complicated. “When you started, did you ever think that you would do so much for so many people?”

Like a slim blade, her words slipped between his ribs and stayed. 

Burgess cleared his throat. “It fell to me to do it. That’s all.”

But Naomi shook her head. “You didn’t need to. You could have just done the thing they hired you for. But that wasn’t enough. You decided to do good with it.”

Am I a good man? Burgess heard the question like an echo, but couldn’t think of where he had ever posed that question before. What is a good man? He wasn’t sure if he would ever know. 

He gave her a look, then, that he hoped was sincere enough. Communicated more than the words could say. “I just want to do right by you. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded, but the trust in her eyes was almost too much to bear. “I know.”

Burgess paused for a moment, let the silence stretch. He considered asking forgiveness for what he was about to do. But he knew, if he did that, there was no doing it. So instead he smiled gently. 

“It’s getting late. You should get to your bed,” he said. 

Naomi yawned again, as if in response, and stretched against the stair rail. 

“See you both at breakfast,” she replied, and smiled. 

She stood and folded her arms around herself against a needling wind, fragrant with autumn’s future, and faded away down the path to her own front door. 

Burgess took off his glasses and started to polish them, though they were already spotless. He polished and polished the lenses, his fingers shaking. He watched as the lights turned on in Naomi’s house, following her path from kitchen to washroom to bed, until they finally winked out. 

Once all was quiet and still, he put his glasses back on and stood from the rocking chair. He made sure that Paul was sleeping soundly on the sofa before pulling up the loose floorboard in the kitchen, removing the bottle, then climbing the stairs to kneel carefully beside his bed, sweeping out the long, slim box hidden there. 

Before long he was back on the porch, rifle perched carefully over his knees, whiskey bottle by his feet, a handful of ammunition in his hand.

The bottle slowly emptied, the chamber filled, and Burgess waited for the dawn. 

*******

“Up.” 

Paul blinked up at Burgess from the sofa. “Sir?”

“Up, Paul.”

The younger man did as he was told, sitting up, rubbing his eyes. If he caught the stale burr of whiskey on Burgess’s breath, hours old, he said nothing. “Is everything okay?”

“We’re going hunting,” Burgess said. “It’s time you learned.”

Paul furrowed his brow, glanced quickly around the room. Looking for Naomi, perhaps, and not finding her. But he nodded and stood, balancing on his walking stick while he carefully dressed.  

Burgess waited. He had waited plenty—thirteen years—he could wait a little more. He hated the voice in his head that told him the man standing in front of him looked nothing like Paul Lannigan. He hated the creaking house and the way his empty stomach ached with the whiskey and the way the birds were shrilling the dawn awake outside. 

“Let’s go,” he said, and followed Paul out the door, taking up the rifle as they passed the threshold and out into the alpine cold of the early morning. The sun hadn’t quite crested the mountains and a thick mist settled over everything, turning the trees into robed sentinels overhead, judgmental and shaggy-headed. 

At Burgess’s direction, the two men walked around the back of the house and into the line of the trees. The old trail led from the community through the forest, all the way to the lake. The pine duff was thick underfoot, little green spires of pipsissewa and bundles of yellow balsamroot dotting the way as Burgess walked just behind Paul in silence.

They were halfway down the trail before Paul said, “What are we hunting for?”

“Deer,” Burgess replied, automatically. He had practiced this answer, but it felt hollow in his mouth. Bitter. Heavy heads, buckling knees.

Paul nodded. “Does Naomi know?”

The rifle had more weight than Burgess remembered. 

“We’re gonna surprise her,” he said, quietly. 

They walked on at Paul’s limping pace until the smell of the lake wafted through the trees on the soft back of the fog; they were close to the water. They climbed a subtle rise as the trail mounted up to overlook the long stretch of blue. There was the skeleton of an old burned-out cabin off to the left, ghostly in the mist. 

Empty. It’s all empty. 

It was far enough away from the community that they wouldn’t be seen or heard. Nothing but the report of the rifle. But Burgess had a story for that, too. It was all planned out. He had been rehearsing this for a long, long time. 

Burgess stopped, his heart pounding, and raised the gun. “On your knees, Paul.”

The young man paused, studied Burgess’s face, and then—without a whimper, without a sound—he complied. He used his stick to guide himself down and knelt in the pine duff, face tipped up to Burgess, expectant, sad. He had never looked so young. 

Burgess cleared his throat and walked around to Paul’s back. He didn’t want to see his face. Couldn’t look him in the eye. 

It had already gone wrong. The script, the practice, the way he had always pictured it. Paul Lannigan on his knees, gun raised; this was right. But the rest felt wrong. He couldn’t look him in the eyes. He had always thought he would.

“Put your hands behind your head,” Burgess said. 

Paul did so, leaving his stick in the dirt. He asked, “Sir, what did I do?”

Burgess grunted. He shuffled his feet, planted them firm, aimed the rifle at the base of Paul’s neck, and said, “Look. In all the times I’ve thought about this, I made you confess to what you done to me, to my family. But I can’t do that, because you don’t remember. So I’ll tell you, and you’ll shut up and listen.”

Paul waited. Burgess cleared his throat again. He felt like something was stuck there, something he couldn’t get out. 

So he began. 

“Thirteen years ago, you got jailed for the final time in your whole miserable life. For murder. And the man you murdered was my…was my son, Christopher. Eighteen years old. My only child, our miracle. Didn't think we could have kids.”

Paul was very still. Burgess went on. 

“The night it happened, there was this…this concert Christopher wanted to go to, in downtown Tacoma. And he asked me if I would go with him. But I couldn’t. I was busy. I told him to take a friend with him, but I guess none of his friends could go, so he…he went alone.”

Damn you to hell, Burgess. 

“I didn’t know it, but he was alone. He was a smart kid, and everything went fine until he was walking back to the bus stop, took a shortcut down an alley. And you…you and your crackhead friends. You were walking up from the other way. And you mugged him and you murdered him, just because you could. Because you were high and stupid and angry and…whatever the hell else. You pulled the damn trigger, Paul.”

If I had been there…

If I had just been there…

“They found you and arrested you. Wasn’t tough to find you. You had been in and out of jail since you were a kid. But this time was the last time for you. Murder. That was it.”

Paul was trembling, now. Burgess spoke the rest in a rush, feeling the squeeze of grief taking hold of his lungs, panicking that he might suffocate before he managed to explain. 

“You destroyed my life, you son a bitch,” he hissed. “You took my son from me. My wife couldn’t cope, and she left me. My whole life, shattered, all because of you. So…so that’s what I’m gonna do, now. I’m gonna take from you what you took from me. I brought you back so I could destroy you. Remove you. Erase you for good, on my terms.”

Burgess finished in a strangled whisper. Paul’s shoulders slumped, his hands loose behind his head. Silence wrapped around the two men, a horrible tableau. Somewhere in the empty cabin, a scrambling of tiny paws, a startled prey-animal.

And then, Paul said, “Yes, sir. It’s only right.”

Burgess wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “What did you say?”

“I said…it’s…it’s only right, Burgess. It’s fair.” Paul’s voice sounded distant, hollow. 

Burgess scowled at the young man’s back, circling around carefully to look at Paul’s face, searching for a trick, scanning for guile. But all he saw were tears, the contriteness of a child, as Paul gazed up at him. 

“I’ve clearly done wrong by you,” the young man said. His voice shuddered, but there was resignation in his expression. “You’re a good man, and I’ve done wrong by you. You gave me your home to live in, gave me a family I didn’t deserve, a second shot at life and love, and…”

He didn’t look like Paul Lannigan at all. This was not the same man. 

This was an innocent stranger. 

“You should do it,” Paul said, finally, voice so quiet in the stillness. “It’s only right. And I don't hold it against you.”

Burgess tightened his grip on the rifle, fury welling up inside of him, the screaming of Colleen in his ears, the shrieking of his own grief trapped within, raging like a soul in a military-grade plastic shell, erased. Erased and desperate for escape. 

If you had been there, none of this would have happened. 

If you had been there, our boy would still be alive. 

You may as well have pulled the trigger yourself. 

I can’t even look at you. 

Don’t touch me. 

Say something. I dare you. 

Damn you, Burgess. Damn you to hell. 

But then, a sound. A repeated sound, cutting through the mist. Rising over it, sweeping through the trees. A calling sound, a familiar voice. 

It was Naomi, calling their names. Calling for both of them. In his mind’s eye Burgess could see her with her hands around her mouth, standing on the front porch. Not afraid, yet. Not worried, but confused. Lost. Unsure. Where could they be?  

Maria Valdez, calling for her children. 

Three days to make a miracle. A resurrection. 

The blade that Naomi had slipped between Burgess’s ribs turned fiery at the sound of her hopeful voice, sensation spreading through his chest, and it was shame. It was the deepest shame, a grief without end, a toothless mouth, and it pulled the old man down to the ground where he sat there—rifle laying harmless nearby—and began to cry. His hunched shoulders shook, his liver-spotted hands curled like leaves, his polished glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, and he wept. 

The shell was empty, he thought, over and over. Somewhere along the line, I got filled up, and I didn’t even notice. 

In another life, a man had stolen Burgess’s family from him. And now, he had almost done the same thing. To himself. To Paul.

To Naomi. Especially Naomi. How much more could he steal from her?

The tears flowed, and he couldn’t stop shaking. Nearly didn’t feel it when Paul shuffled close and laid a soft hand on the old man’s shoulder. And the two waited like that for a while, while the shame simmered itself into vapor and the mist finally faded, began to rise with the light, Naomi still calling like a bird.

When the sobbing ebbed away, Burgess wiped his nose with his sleeve, adjusted his glasses, and looked up at Paul. He expected to see pity in the young man’s gaze, or even anger, but he didn’t. Instead, he saw only a lonely child with a desperate question. 

Burgess settled his hand on Paul’s, patted it. 

“We should get back,” he said. “She'll worry.”

Question answered, Paul smiled sadly. 

The two men helped each other stagger to their feet. Arm-over-shoulder they limped back through the woods, leaning on each other, rifle in the old man’s hand tipped ineffectually down at the pine duff, forgotten. 

The sun slipped up over the mountains, and the mist drew back like a curtain. Burgess and Paul followed Naomi's voice home.

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Read on for Part Seven (the finale)!