Sorry, I Have To

Start reading

Confession

The huge dog chewed greedily, glancing every so often at the figure, face tipped back to the sky, catching the falling snowflakes. The animal was used to these nighttime feedings.

"Eat, Bruno, eat," said a voice the dog knew so well.

The figure glanced around and crouched down.

"I think I'll start soon. In three days or so."

The mastiff kept wagging his tail, acting like a big kid.

"I'm sorry, Bruno. You'll be the first."

Chapter 1. Mr. Green

1849. North America.

For years now Blackwood had been buried so deep in snow that for weeks nobody gave the village a thought.

"A break from the rest of the world," the locals joked every winter. This year it hadn't worked out so well.

Ten-year-old Billy, the blacksmith's son, was trudging toward Mr. Green's stable with a crust of bread shoved in the pocket of his sheepskin coat — an offering for Bruno, a dog he trusted more than half the people in the village. The coat hung on him like a shed hide, the sleeves dangling below his bony wrists. He didn't care. He was thinking about Bruno, about that wet nose pushing into his palm.

He didn't know the dog had already gone stiff. Same as his owner. The bread would stay in his pocket.

Billy slowed when he noticed the stable door standing ajar. Bruno might have come running out to meet him. But nothing moved behind it. He called the dog as he came closer, then stopped in the doorway, looking in.

The sun off the snow had blinded him, and his eyes needed time to adjust to the dimness of the stable. Maybe that moment was a mercy.

In the stinking stable Jacob Green lay in wet straw and manure slurry. His head was twisted at an unnatural angle — as if it no longer wanted anything to do with the body. His fur hat lay off to the side.

Not far from the body lay a scythe. The blade was coated dark red — not fresh, but not yet dry — a murder weapon that seemed to shudder at what it had done. The horses shifted nervously, stamped, flared their nostrils. They knew: something bad had happened here in the night.

Billy didn't stay to take it in. He saw the way Mr. Green was lying and he turned and ran. He ran as if he could outrun the image already burned into his memory — and now the world was measured in trees and snowdrifts flying past. He didn't stop until he burst into the forge, his lungs scorched with the frozen air.

His father looked up, saw the pale face, and gave a short nod — out with it.

"Pa… Mr. Green… he…" His voice went hoarse, turned into someone else's. "He's dead. In the stable."

Frank Harrison — tall, wiry, a blacksmith's heavy hands — went still for a moment. Then he lowered himself onto his heels to look his son in the eye.

"Any chance you were wrong?"

Billy shook his head. What Frank read in the gesture wasn't fright but a cold, grown-up certainty. Too soon, too right for ten years old. He gripped his son's shoulders as if checking whether the boy would fall apart.

"Pa will take care of it," he said, his voice low. "Just don't be afraid. You're here, with me." And quieter, almost to himself: "I'll go look myself."

Billy sniffled and nodded again. The words dropped into him like stones down a well, but his chest went a little warmer. Frank straightened up and walked the boy to the house that stood beside the forge. He told his wife in a few words — no details, just the facts: what, where, who. Told her to get something hot into Billy and put a sweet roll in his hands.

At the door he turned back and, looking over his son's head, delivered it:

"Strong men eat well."

He winked. It came off smudged, almost lifeless. A ritual they both knew by heart. But Billy straightened up and didn't even cry — that was something.

Frank went out.

The snow squeaked underfoot. He was walking to the stable to make sure of it: that Billy hadn't been wrong, and that the world hadn't turned upside down in a single night. Or to admit that it had.

***

He drove his horse hard to the stable, jumped down, stepped inside — and stopped dead.

Frank looked at what was left of Jacob's neck.

He let out a heavy breath. Now he understood what his son had seen. This was not quite an ordinary dead body. A thing like that stays with you a long time.

He turned and walked out. The first thing he did was take a deep breath of clean frozen air.

Blackwood was waking up. People were heading for the well. A mare was hauling a sled toward the woods.

From far off, through the frozen silence, came voices. What were they talking about over there? What did it matter — soon they'd all be talking about the same thing.

Frank looked at the nearest house — the elder's house. Patrick Stones. He went straight there. The old man opened the door himself.

"Good morning, Mr. Stones."

Patrick Stones's forebears were among those who stood at the founding of this village. No serious matter here was settled without him.

The elder was nearly sixty, but he was still wiry, and his eyes were alive. He joked that it was his honey. Entirely possible — he was a well-known beekeeper.

"Good morning, Frank!" Patrick narrowed his eyes. "What's happened?"

"Jacob Green's been killed. In his stable."

The old man's eyes narrowed a little more. Frank was the kind of man you took at his word.

"I figured you ought to know first, sir."

Patrick nodded without a word. From somewhere back in the house a voice called out:

"Patrick, has somebody come?" That was Martha, his wife.

He waved it off gently, then brought his eyes back to Frank.

"Mrs. Green…" he murmured, remembering the dead man's wife. "I'll send Martha over, let her sit with her. You go tell the sheriff. Jeff."

Frank nodded toward his horse.

"That's where I was headed."

Patrick stepped out past the threshold and looked around. Nobody had been killed in Blackwood in years.

"Tell him to stop by my place afterward," he said, and he smiled: quiet and joyless.

Frank nodded. No more words were needed.

He got into the saddle and rode for the sheriff's house.

The news went through Blackwood like a snow squall, and it stuck to people the way frost sticks to skin. It was not an ordinary morning.

And soon the whole village was making its way to Mr. Green's stable — to look at the thing a ten-year-old boy had run from.