Free Bad Things by Michael Marshall Page A

outside, Black Ridge looked like it was in the middle of a poorly
    motivated liquidation sale.
    As soon as you raised your eyes above house level you saw the
    ranks of trees waiting only a few streets way, and the clouds thicken-
    ing, coming down off the mountains to remind people who ran things
    around here. There are places where man has convincingly claimed
    B A D T H I N G S 63
    the planet, making it feel little more than a support mechanism for
    our kind. Washington State is not one of them, and mountains every-
    where have never given much thought to us. After nearly three years
    on the coast, it was nice to see them again.
    My phone, meanwhile, did not ring.
    I found myself glancing at the few women on the streets, wonder-
    ing if any was the person I’d come to look for. It was impossible to
    tell, naturally. Usually strangers look like extras, background texture
    in your life. As soon as you start to look more closely, everyone looks
    like they might be someone in particular.
    Eventually I found myself becalmed on Kelly Street, the only
    thing that might cause a tourist to hang around for longer than it
    takes to fi ll up with gas or a burger. I bought a coffee and a sturdily
    homemade granola bar in a place called the Write Sisters, served by a
    cheerful girl with remarkably blue hair. I sat outside on a bench with
    it, sipping the coffee and watching the streets. Nowhere seemed to be
    doing much business except the Mountain View Tavern, which stood
    almost opposite. Even the bar’s patrons seemed lackluster, men and
    women breezing in and out with the stiff-legged gait of the mildly
    shit-faced, walking down slopes only they could see.
    Black Ridge was, as it had always been, kind of a dump. Carol and
    I hardly ever came down here—getting our groceries from Roslyn or
    Sheffer (the closest communities to our house) or Cle Elem (bigger
    than Black Ridge, but still hardly the excitement capital of the world).
    Once in a while we’d saddle up and drive over the Snoqualmie pass
    and thence to Seattle, about three hours away. There were a couple
    other small towns en route—Snoqualmie Falls, Snohomish, Birch
    Crossing—which were just about worth the trip if you are open-
    minded about what constitutes a good time.
    Black Ridge wasn’t one of our places, which is among the reasons
    why, two and a half years ago, I’d wound up in a motel here for a
    while. I’d spent almost all of that time holed up in my room, not so-
    ber, or else out the back in a chair, overlooking the disused swimming
    64 Michael Marshall
    pool—also not sober. It was a condition that I’d specialized in at the
    time. This lay in the past, however, and so I had little patience with
    the people I saw drifting in and out of the Mountain View. I didn’t
    know whether Ellen Robertson was the kind of woman who might
    fi nd herself in bars on an afternoon, however, and so I vaguely kept
    an eye anyhow.
    Or so I told myself. The truth was I had no clue what to do, or
    where to go, and no idea of what she looked like. Until Ellen called
    me, I was just an idiot sitting on a bench. I stretched the Americano as
    long as I could, but as the light began to change it started to get cold
    and fi nally I stood up.
    As I did so I noticed a young woman walking down the other side
    of the street, tall with dark hair and bundled into a black coat, the
    effect overall being somewhat like that of a lanky crow. She walked
    straight into the tavern without hesitating, revealing a fl ash of pale
    cheek and forehead as she reached out for the door.
    Was that Ellen? No, probably not.
    Just after she’d disappeared, I heard a shout from behind and
    turned to see a large man bearing down on me. I froze for a moment,
    wondering what was about to happen next.
    “For the love of God!” the guy said. “What the hell are you doing
    here?”
    “Well, that’s a sort of a greeting, I guess.”
    “Jesus H, John. It’s been . . . You lost weight.”
    “Yeah,” I