The Bones Beneath My Skin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreward

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  epilogue

  author’s note

  about the author

  Also by TJ Klune: Stories from Green Creek

  Copyright Notice

  The Bones Beneath My Skin

  By TJ Klune

  In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he’s been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington, DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family’s summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon, to try and find some sense of direction.

  The cabin should be empty.

  It’s not.

  Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader.

  Artemis, who isn’t exactly as she appears.

  Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past or fight for a future he never thought possible.

  Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

  For those who dream of stars.

  “i just want to go home” said the astronaut.

  “so come home” said ground control.

  “ s o c o m e h o m e ” said the voice from the stars.

  ~jomny sun

  You won’t understand. At least not right away. And that’s okay. You may even think I’m a liar, and that’s okay too. All I ask is that you listen until the very end before passing judgment. I have a story to tell you. Of a place under a Mountain. Of the minds of men. Of what it means to be human, to make a home out of a place where one should not exist. And of what the future holds. For you. For me. For all of us.

  chapter one

  He sang along with the radio.

  Something about taking a sad song and making it better.

  After, he laughed until he could barely breathe.

  He crossed into Douglas County just before another song ended. There was a news break at the top of the hour, every hour.

  A singer named Selena had been shot at a hotel in Texas. He’d never heard of her before.

  TAROM Flight 371, leaving Bucharest and heading for Brussels, crashed shortly after takeoff. All sixty people on board died. An investigation was underway. Terrorism was not suspected at the moment.

  The comet discovered last year, Markham-Tripp, was getting closer. Already it could be seen if you knew where to look, but no worries, folks. It’s going to swing right by us before heading back out into the great beyond.

  And there was still no official word on the helicopter that went down outside of the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Northern California last week. The cause was still under investigation, though it was implied it was related to that big storm that blew through the area. Officials weren’t saying if there were any fatalities.

  And now for the weather. It’s gonna be a beautiful day, would you look at all that sunshine, can you just believe it?

  It was March 31, 1995.

  He continued south.

  The air outside grew cooler the farther he went into the mountains. The sun warmed the hand he hung out the window. The blue sky stretched on and on. There were clouds, but only a few.

  Nice day, he thought. Of course it is. That’s the way things go.

  He hit the town in late afternoon. There was a sign, old and faded. It’d been there since he was a kid and his parents had taken him up to the cabin for a few weeks during the summer. It said:

  Roseland, Oregon

  Pop. 827 Established 1851

  Elevation 2345 ft.

  Gateway to the Cascades!

  He passed by a diner. A church. Shops on either side. Some of them were open. The town wouldn’t hit tourist season for another month or two, but they’d be ready. People driving up from the bigger cities looking for an escape from the heat and grind would spend their money, take their photos, and then disappear back from where they came.

  The air was filled with the scents of pine needles and earth. It was like he was ten years old again and his mom and dad were still in love, love, love. They would laugh and sing along with the radio. They would play road games. I Spy. Twenty questions. The license plate game where you’d try and get all fifty states. He’d learned early on that that was impossible. The most he’d ever gotten was seven. That had been a good day. One had been Maine, an impossibly faraway place.

  He saw the sign for the gas station before the gas station itself. It spun lazily, but not before he caught the words BIG EDDIE’S GAS AND CONVENIENCE. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to see that some things remained the same. Even after everything.

  He pulled in, the tires of the truck hitting the thin black cord. A bell dinged somewhere inside the station as he stopped next to the pump. He turned off the truck, listening as the engine ticked.

  He ran a hand over his face before opening the door, setting his feet on the ground. He stretched his back, hearing it pop. He was only twenty-seven years old, but gone were the days when he could sit in a car for hours without a problem. His muscles pulled. It felt good.

  The glass door to the gas station swung open and a large man walked out, wiping his hands on a rag. If it wasn’t for the smile on his face, the man would have been alarming. He’d never seen anyone that size anywhere else. Must have been the mountain air.

  “Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Big Eddie Green said, his voice a deep timbre. “Nate Cartwright, as I live and breathe.”

  Nate forced a smile onto his face. “Big Eddie. Good to see you’re still running this dump.”

  “You watch your mouth,” Big Eddie said, but he was still smiling, his teeth a little crooked but endearingly so. He held out a large hand streaked with a bit of oil. Nate didn’t mind. He held out his own. Big Eddie’s grip was firm, but he wasn’t trying to be an asshole about it. He wasn’t like that, at least not that Nate knew. He hadn’t seen Big Eddie since he’d turned twenty-one, the last time he’d been up to the cabin. And it wasn’t like they were friends, though Big Eddie could make friends with just about anybody he set his mind to. There was something about the way he smiled that put Nate at ease. It was familiar, this. Heartbreakingly so.

  “Heading up the mountain?” Big Eddie was already moving to the pump. “Unleaded okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” Nate said, leaning against the truck. He glanced inside the gas station window. There was a kid inside bent over the counter, scribbling furiously on something, his tongue stuck out between his teeth like he was concentrating really hard. “Jesus, is that Benji?”

  Big Eddie laughed. “Yeah,” he said, and Nate could hear the fondness in his voice, rough and sweet. “Sprouting up like a weed. His ma and me can barely keep up with him. More than a handful. Crazy, right?”

  “It is,” Nate said because he was supposed to agree with it. That was how conversation worked. That was how people talked to each other. He wasn’t so good at th
at. And now that he was running away to the middle of nowhere, he didn’t think he’d get much more practice at it than this.

  The gas pump hummed.

  Big Eddie whistled as he looked in the bed of the truck. “Quite a few supplies you got back here. Planning a long stay?”

  Nate shrugged. “A while, anyway.”

  The smile softened. “Real sorry to hear about your folks. That… well. I don’t know much else to say beyond that. Must have been tough. I can’t imagine what that’s like, so I won’t insult you by pretending to.”

  Nate wasn’t sure what to say to that. Tough, sure. Oh yeah, it’d been tough. Murder-suicides usually were. His father had come to his mother’s house, feeling hurt and ornery like he usually did when he drank. There’d been a fight. Neighbors said they heard shouting but thought it was the TV or just a regular old domestic that they couldn’t find the wherewithal to get involved in. Nate didn’t blame them, especially when his father had gone out to the very truck Big Eddie and Nate were leaning against, grabbed his shotgun, hoofed it back inside, and blown his ex-wife away before turning it on himself.

  It’s hard to do, the detective had told him, sounding soft and worn. Committing suicide by shotgun. But Nate’s father had found a way. Sat in a chair, propped it between his legs. The barrel had gone under his chin, and he’d used his big toe, of all things, to pull the trigger. It’d been a mess.

  At least Nate assumed it had been. He hadn’t been inside his mother’s house after. His brother had taken care of all that. There are services, his brother told him over the phone. It was the first time he’d spoken to his brother in years. They come in and clean up crime scenes. They charge you out the ass, but they take care of what they can. They can’t get it all, of course, but that’s what contractors are for. They’d fix up the house before it got put up for sale.

  And later, they’d spoken one more time. Dad left you the truck, his brother said. Mom left you the cabin.

  Oh was all he could say. Oh.

  What he’d wanted to say was how could this have happened? How did it get this far? Sure they’d had their problems—they were divorced, for fuck’s sake. But his father had never raised a fist. Not to anyone. He hadn’t been the nicest guy, but he’d never hit them. Or her. Not once. That wasn’t who he was.

  “Yeah,” Nate said to Big Eddie. “Tough.”

  Big Eddie nodded. “You get the water turned on?”

  “Called a couple of days ago. They’re supposed to come tomorrow. Generator will take care of the rest. Shouldn’t be too cold. Not for long.”

  “Oh yeah. Snow’s gone. Mild winter this year. Christmas was sixty degrees, if you can believe that. I take it you’ll want me to fill the gas canisters you got back here.”

  “If you could.”

  “Will do, Nate. You been up there since—”

  “No.”

  Big Eddie nodded slowly as he lifted the empty canisters out of the truck. “Your ma was out here. Last September, I think. Brought one of her girlfriends. Josie? Is that right? Josie?”

  “Joy.”

  “That’s right. Joy. They were cackling like a pair of old hens. Stayed up there for a couple of weeks. Didn’t see them when they came back down. Your ma was happy, Nate. In case you needed to know.”

  “Thanks,” Nate managed to say because wasn’t that the consolation he was looking for. She’d been happy. She’d been laughing. He hadn’t heard from her in years, but hey, she’d been having the time of her life. Fucking good for her. “That’s… nice. Thanks.”

  “She talked about you, you know,” Big Eddie said like it was nothing, like they were shooting the shit. “Said you were big-time. Living in Washington, DC. Reporter or something.”

  “Journalist,” Nate corrected by force of habit.

  Big Eddie took the pump from the truck and put it down into one of the canisters. “Journalist. That’s right. A journalist. Working for the Post. She seemed awfully proud of that.”

  Nate wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream. He wanted to smash his hands against the truck and demand Big Eddie shut the fuck up about things he didn’t know about. Sure, maybe his mother had been proud, maybe she’d been talking out her ass, but what gave her the right? She’d done nothing when his father had told him to get the fuck out, that he wouldn’t have a fucking faggot for a son. She hadn’t spoken a goddamn word in his defense while his father had shouted that he’d get fucking faggot cancer like all those other queers. She’d done nothing when he’d looked at her, begging for her to say something, anything. Her eyes had been wide and shocked, her bottom lip quivering. But she’d stayed silent, so she’d stayed complicit.

  They’d been standing in the doorway to the cabin, hadn’t they? They weren’t even supposed to be up there. They’d already told him they were getting a divorce months before, so the fact that they were together at all was confounding. He’d been frantically trying to cover himself and his boyfriend at the time, their skin slick with sweat, his heart racing. He’d felt ashamed for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was an adult. He was allowed to be in the cabin with whomever he wished, but he’d felt bad at the look of disgust on his father’s face, at the way his mother’s eyes were wet. He’d felt awful.

  He and the guy left after that. Hastily, overnight bags stuffed but not zipped up. His parents hadn’t even looked up at him from where they sat at the kitchen table. He’d forgotten one of his hiking boots. It’d been sent to him in the mail two months later. No note, no return address, but he’d known it’d come from his mother.

  He’d thrown it away.

  The boyfriend hadn’t lasted long after that day. Another couple of weeks. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t serious. A distraction, that’s all it’d been.

  He’d gotten the cabin.

  He’d gotten the truck.

  That was fine. They were dead, and he’d gotten two things that were essentially useless to him.

  Maybe he’d burn them both. He had time now that he didn’t have a job.

  How wonderful for her that she’d been proud. How fucking grand.

  “Great,” he said, voice even. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Big Eddie hummed under his breath. The first canister filled up, and he moved to the second one. “You got a phone hooked up there?”

  Nate shook his head.

  “Got a cell phone?”

  He did. “Why?”

  “Give you my number. In case you need something. You being up there all by yourself, things could happen, Nate. Just being cautious is all.”

  “Doubt it’d work up there.” His service was already spotty as it was, being this far into the mountains. It probably wouldn’t work at all by the time he got to the cabin.

  “Still. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  Right. Nate went back around to the driver’s side door. The phone was sitting on the bench seat, a red Nokia, the screen cracked down the middle from where he’d dropped it on a sidewalk while trying to juggle a couple of coffees. Big Eddie spouted off his number, and Nate dutifully typed it in, saving it under EDDIE.

  Big Eddie hoisted the gas cans back into the bed of the truck before he wiped his hands on the rag he stashed in his pocket. He glanced at the pump, then said, “That’ll be $36.50, unless you need anything else from inside. Last stop before all that nothing.”

  Nate shook his head, pulling his wallet out and finding his debit card, something he’d only gotten a few months ago. They were new, and it boggled his mind a little how much easier it was than cash or a check.

  Big Eddie grinned at him again. “Be right back.”

  Nate watched him go.

  The sun was low in the west. It’d be dark in another couple of hours, and he was itching to get back on the road. He had another hour to go, the last half of which was on bumpy dirt roads that weren’t great to navigate in the dark. He should have gotten an earlier start, but his hangover
was harsh this morning, his tongue thick in a mouth that felt stuffed with cotton. Even now he had remnants of a headache, the last little gasps of something that had dug deep into his brain for most of the morning.

  Big Eddie was inside the gas station, saying something to his son. Nate watched as he ran a hand over Benji’s head. Benji knocked it away, and Big Eddie chuckled. He said something else, and Benji glanced out the window. Nate gave a little wave. The kid waved back, his arm thin, his whole body shaking. Big Eddie laughed over his shoulder as he came back out and didn’t see his son scowling at his back.

  “Math,” Big Eddie said as he approached. “It’s not going so well.”

  “Sucks,” Nate said. “Never understood that much myself.”

  Big Eddie handed him his card and receipt. “He doesn’t get why he needs it if he’s going to be running the station. I told him he needs to set his sights a bit higher than Roseland. He wasn’t too happy about that.”

  “Sometimes you need to let them do what they think is right.” Nate instantly regretted the words.

  “Yeah.” Big Eddie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose. I just—it’s being a parent, I guess. You want the best for your kids, to see them spread their wings and fly. He’s going to do great things, I think. One day. I just don’t know if he can do them here.” He shrugged. “You’ll know one day. When you got kids of your own.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. Nate didn’t have the patience for kids. He didn’t like them, and they didn’t like him. It wasn’t in the cards. But he said “Sure” because that’s what he was supposed to say.

  “I better let you get on, then,” Big Eddie said. “I know you’ve still got a ways to go. I could stand out here jawing all day. That’s what the wife says. And her sisters. And Benji. And most of the town.”

  Nate bet he could. Big Eddie was just the type—friendly and open. Nate wasn’t like that. Not at all. He put his wallet back in his pocket. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”