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stout heart and plenty of love to give he worshiped the ground my daughter walked on and the pain of her loss is always with him i wish penny could see it when she looks in his eyes but she well she doesn t look mae and dawn bask in his affection but penny keeps her distance the little shit her anger hurts him and it does her absolutely no good at all she exasperates me but patty won t let me kick her ass it s going to happen sooner or later i don t think i ve ever held my tongue so long i see her looking at him sometimes her eyes blazing oh the grudge that girl clings to i ve also seen her look at him with a speculative expression and sometimes with admiration she loves him she needs to stop blaming him the government that should have protected us all betrayed us and killed my daughter i saw it coming vance didn t want to believe it he was a career military man and believed in being patriotic but he d been coming around opening his eyes and his mind and had gotten very involved with our plans to go into hiding we knew it was coming but we were all late to the game none of us expected things to fall apart so soon or so completely well this is neither here nor there i really want to comment on this mess penny has gotten us into i had this whole area surveyed when we bought up land years ago but i had no idea any of this was here this little man camp town the picturesque church the warehouse and certainly not the oilfield how did we miss it a better question might be why did any of us have to find it at all there s a question to be posed soon and that is whether the benefits outweigh the risks yes it would be beneficial to be able to produce our own fuel but at what cost that valley is spooky superstition is something i ve come to expect from vance it s not so much his heritage although that has a little to do with it it s not his upbringing either although his father and grandfather diligently taught him about the ways of his people and other indigenous peoples from this general area as a matter of course no it s something deeper he senses things he feels them so do his daughters now mind you i have never discounted these feelings i m an open minded man but until today i had no idea what those feelings could be like the best word i can come up with is unpleasant a close second would be disconcerting honestly i don t know how they can stand it if it s something that happens to them often i wanted to jump on my atv and go right back to the compound penny calls it the whim whams patty my wife would call it the heebie jeebies i don t care what you call it it s uncomfortable i don t like it you know what makes it worse mort refusing to go down there that s the thing that guy has been running into situations since he was a kid and he s got a knack for making everything work out he found my granddaughters after all when ariana didn t show up with the girls for our fourth of july barbeque he was the first to volunteer to go to the base and check on things he snuck in there alone he discovered the situation and he planned the rescue vance and i were pretty much along for the ride no wonder penny idolizes him no wonder sid and ash chose him to be their da instead of staying with one of the married couples who wanted to take them in if mort is scared well i think we all need to pay attention but no here i was tooling up the road on an old atv leading some kids into god alone knows what deliberately i am a foolish old man when the road turned into a fairytale nightmare though i decided we d seen enough i stopped in the middle of the road the kids with me stopped too randall looked relieved and i noticed that natalie seemed close to tears if i felt scared an old guy like me imagine how these young people must have felt there s no refinery at the end of this road i announced it s too narrow the oil trucks could never get through those trees the trees were growing closer to the sides of the road and the road itself appeared to be getting narrower it was almost like it was forming a tunnel ahead of us the leaves rustled the fronds in the fir trees rattled i swear it was like they were beckoning to us whispering come on in entering a tunnel definitely seemed like a bad idea natalie shuddered are we going back she asked hopefully i stared down the road watching as tree branches waved like arms my skin prickled with gooseflesh oh yeah we re leaving yay yay indeed as a group we turned our rides and headed back the way we d come randall said whatever s back there i don t think we need it judy pulled her bike alongside mine and added it might lead down to the river but if we need to get there we can find another way can t we gramps i have no doubt i agreed she was probably right although we d been going uphill i could imagine that tunnel of trees opening up on the far side to a vista of the valley down below the mountainside and the river meandering through it the road would start to descend and wind down i could see it in my mind it was an appealing vision in reality it meant going through that tunnel of trees that tunnel called to me but the feelings it inspired were those of impending doom that tunnel made me feel that we d never make it through to the far side and never see what lay beyond nope not going that way when we got back to the fork in the road where we d parted company with vance s group i was alarmed to see the dirt bikes and the hand made signs suggesting we refrain from going up that road are we going to investigate darren asked i felt my jaw drop as i turned to stare at him judy reached over and slugged him in the arm no we most certainly are not going to investigate i growled i took another look at darren ah he s the one mae has repeatedly referred to as the dumb blonde i have scolded her for it of course but now i get it i shook my head a little disgusted with myself he s a kid kids are curious randall pointed at the tracks in the dirt road they ran off on foot he told us something something scared them i finished when his voice just trailed off they ll head back to the church so will we what about the bikes darren asked think you can ride two at a time i asked my voice dripping with sarcasm the boy looked doubtful uh i sighed we ll come back for them don t worry let s go it didn t take long to get back to the church vance was there with his group plus penny and ash mort was there too and barry they d all been working in the village salvaging but i didn t think twice about their presence sid had been with vance on that road whatever had transpired penny felt called to come and join them at the church simple i know to any outsiders it might not seem to be so simple but it s like i told you they feel things and me i am starting to get it i m not crazy about that after the woods and those crazy roads the church felt damn near normal even though there s not much left in the building for the first time all day my stomach settled what set you scrambling without your bikes i asked vance looked reluctant to speak but the girl who d gone with him jumped right in it was me she said i think the fairy circle was trying to pull me in fairy circle oh my god what fresh hell was this vance gave me a rather defiant glare and said i don t know about fairies but there s a circle of trees up there that has a distinctly evil aura he said i sighed i know what you mean road we took narrows into some sort of crowded tree tunnel and evil is as good as any word to describe how it made me feel me too natalie agreed i i think they could have reached out and grabbed us that s just ash began stupid natalie shot back defensively ash s face flushed and for a moment i was afraid he might lose his temper not at all what i was going to say he assured her i i m sorry natalie looked crestfallen i m still shaking i slapped my hands on my thighs okay folks i said i think we re done here what about the what darren i snapped oil sir the boy s face let me know i d spoken harshly i hadn t meant to instead of apologizing i looked at mort how d the salvaging go there s a lot of good stuff dale let s just deal with that for now then i said i feel like i ve had it too vance agreed even though i hadn t given voice to my thought i looked at penny she had the grace to look contrite i didn t mean for this to be like this she told me i mean hey sometimes we find even when we don t seek sid shrugged i shrugged back i don t know how this was missed when i had the area surveyed but i do know this i don t like it we should get going we ve got to go back for the bikes sid protested you kids get back to the warehouse i ordered the grownups will get the bikes sir darren spoke up are you walking up there what four bikes up there four grownups can you ride two at a time smart ass kid might not be a dumb blonde after all ash said i m going sid you walk the girls back to town sid started to protest but penny grabbed his hand i just need to see a little ash told his brother sid joined penny natalie judy and mary in their walk back to the warehouse it didn t take the rest of us long to join them there together we finished packing up the things we d be able to move to the compound on this trip and locked everything else into the warehouse i already knew the debates ahead of me george and buck were already making plans for the oil share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading ticky tacky houses on september 23 2021 by paulashablo 1 comment they weren t really houses they were storage sheds slash garages garishly painted in pastel colors they stood out like sore thumbs in the alleyway the first time i saw them this silly song jumped into my head that old tome little boxes of course if you really listen to it it isn t silly at all it shares a truth people might like to ignore but those sheds the words ticky tacky just fit they look like someone threw them together from scraps and tried to disguise their essential junk funk with pretty pastels they are not pretty they re hideous i think that s what drew me to them honestly the tacky paint jobs now seriously in need of fresh coats made them singularly unappealing you looked and then you looked away appalled it lent them an air of invisibility invisibility was exactly what i needed i d done my research and knew that they had been deserted a few years back the owner had been renting them out to folks in a nearby projects housing development for cheap the housing had been torn down and everyone collected their cars and their junk and moved on i hear tell that some folks left their stuff and the owner had a shed sale to get rid of it all i don t really know the whole story and it doesn t even matter what matters is i needed someplace to lay low while barry was still on his rampage hunting me down he always swore i would never have the nerve to leave him i take care of you babe he said i pay the bills around here you re nothing but the freeloader i allowed to use me so buckle up buttercup i hate those words buckle up buttercup basically meant one of two things either i was going to spend an hour or so pretending he was making love to me or i was going to spend about the same amount of time protecting my face so i could go out in public without anyone staring at me the worst part of it he was right i didn t dare leave i didn t have a job or any marketable skills where would i go what would i do i was nothing but that changed the little plus sign on the stick i peed on changed everything i had been nothing but now i would be something now i would be a mother and my baby was not going to grow up in that environment no way if i could get to mallory i would be fine but she d be the first person he checked with and he d keep checking so i didn t call her i made a get away plan i had to do it quickly before barry realized what was happening inside my body the last time i d dared to get pregnant he d fixed that situation quick bastard i wasn t stupid enough to tell him this time i pulled money out of the checking account i wasn t supposed to use for anything but grocery shopping at first it was ten dollars here twenty dollars there it was easy to hit that cash back button when i scanned the card but i didn t want amounts that would draw attention not right away i had a little stash of my own that i had been building on since since the last pregnancy change from the washing machine barry notoriously refused to clean out his pockets before throwing them on the bathroom floor and sometimes i was able to net as much as fifty bucks on laundry day if he asked if any money was there i d give it to him i m not crazy oh yeah honey it s in the laundry room let me run and get it for you but basically it meant nothing to him he usually returned his cash to his wallet and the bills he occasionally stuffed in a front pocket generally amounted to only a dollar or two but i did get lucky sometimes and found a ten or a twenty hey it adds up over a couple of years i walked one day to a used car lot to look around i bought this little car that looks like it is being held together with toothpaste and duct tape and chicken wire but runs like a dream they guy who sold it to me said his son used it as a motor shop project at school but he dropped out before doing the body work knocked up his girlfriend the guy looked disgusted and disappointed and proud all in one second it was uncanny got his ged though he s working he didn t want to deal with the body work and i didn t care what it looked like as long as it would run so we made a good deal go me i took some clothes and the few personal items i care about and i checked out of hotel barry for good fine upstanding citizen barry was not going to come looking for me on the far side of town where even the projects won t live anymore he would expect me to look for help among our moneyed friends and neighbors and he d have some wonderful stories to tell about how crazy and messed up i am that wouldn t be a lie exactly i m pretty messed up but now i believe there were a lot of our friends who suspected the problem was not me i left my big house and my nice car i left my books and my cell phone i copied all the phone numbers i might want later into a tiny address book and kept that on me at all times i set my sights on the blue ticky tacky box because the door looked big enough to drive the car inside it was nothing but a space that shed when the car was inside i didn t have much room but i cleaned it up and made a home out of it i got some old fruit pallets from the ship yard and put an air mattress on top and made myself a decent bed i found an old card table at the dump and cleaned it up and got myself a folding chair i spent some ill gotten mo...