JEREMEY AND I didn't speak about it.
No one spoke about it at the time, really. Although we all knew what it was, somewhere deep down in our guts. It was the subtleness—it crept up on you like the change of the seasons. You don't wake up one morning and realize summer's turned to winter. It happens so gradually that you never pick up on it, leaving you wondering where the time's gone each Christmas.
"Windy today, isn't it?" Jeremey removed the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled, the plume of smoke hanging in front of him like a pale ghost before finally dispersing. We'd switched to sitting on his porch when we smoked, protected on one side by the white-shingled house and enclosed on the other three by a fine wire mesh. That was another thing we'd never really spoken about—the fact that neither one of us wanted to sit outside anymore.
I can't put my finger on one specific day when it all started—the wind, I mean. It just kind of blew in and never stopped. Day in and day out. Wind has a way of wearing on you. It's oppressive. You can't really see it, only the effects of it, so you don't realize that's what's doing it, but it tires you out. It makes you feel weak and thin. Cold.
I've heard that suicide rates are higher than average in those old towns in Spain where the wind never stops, and I believe it now. You can never get comfortable. It leaves you constantly on edge, like any second your entire life might get swept right out from under you.
"Heather's moved to the city. You hear about that, Harper?" Jeremey's eyes met mine as he rocked back and forth on his grandma's old wicker rocking chair.
"No, I hadn't." I coughed, a wisp of smoke caught in my throat.
It was no surprise. The first few months of the year had done a real number on the population of Millstone. People moving away for one reason or another—the younger kids like us taking shiny new jobs in the city, the older folks deciding it was finally time to retire to a resort in Florida called Sunset Ridge, Greener Meadows or some equally depressing name. And that left Jeremey and me, getting lonelier and lonelier in a dying town.
"Have you heard from Lydia?" Jeremey asked.
"Not since last night. I think she's serious about moving away. She keeps talking about getting an apartment in the city and doing acting or something like that." I put my cigarette out in the ash tray in front of me, a line of smoke slowly rising from the smoldering ember.
The truth was, I didn't know what to think about Lydia. I'd been her boyfriend since high school. She'd been a constant in my life for so long, and the idea that she might leave was something I couldn't accept as a possibility.
I stood up and stretched. "I've got to get to work." The sun had set an hour ago, casting the entire street in a faint, blue twilight.
Jeremey nodded as I slipped out the porch door, heading to my car. The wind tugged at my clothes as I made my way across the front yard, and a chill ran down my spine. Pine trees moaned and murmured in the distance. Wind crashed through them like waves. With a shudder, I yanked the door to my car open and swiftly swung it shut behind myself, deafening the wind to a dull howl.
The ten minute drive to the gas station was silent, and the gas station itself was even quieter. I sat behind the register, my mind drifting as I lazily turned through the pages of a magazine. Thin tendrils of wind slithered through the cracks in the door frame, hissing like snakes. Minutes turned to hours, and the dark night grew even darker.
Suddenly, a horn blared in the parking lot, and I jumped in my seat. Before I could move, the horn blasted again. With a groan, I pulled my windbreaker off of the back of the chair, slipped it on over my sweatshirt and stepped out from behind the register. I stumbled as quickly as I could to the door, nearly knocking over a display of overpriced sunglasses in the process.
I headed out into the crisp night air, the little bells jingling as the wind slammed the door shut behind me. I waved to the man in the beige pickup as I trudged over, letting him know I was coming so he'd lay off the horn. A worn blue tarp clung to the corners of the truck bed, billowing and bucking in the breeze like it was trying to escape.
"Fill it up with diesel," the middle-aged man instructed. He rolled down the window far enough to slide his credit card out. His face was hidden by the shadow of the truck cab, with the exception of a hint of yellow light flickering in his eyes.
Joshua Rider, the card read. With everyone moving away, he was the only new face in town—a tumbleweed the wind blew in the wrong direction. Looking back on it now, the fact that he was the only person who moved into Millstone in those months should have been an immediate red flag in and of itself, but at the time I didn't know anything was really wrong. It was just a general feeling of unease in my gut that something wasn't quite right. A little grain of sand in your shoe that you hardly notice, but before you know it your foot's rubbed raw and blistered.
After running his card through the machine, I watched the numbers on the gauge count up the gallons and licked my chapped lips, eager to get back inside and out of the elements. The wind whipped against my face. I pushed my hair out of my eyes a couple of times before giving up in futility. A stray piece of road trash tumbled through the paved lot, illuminated by the dim yellow light seeping out of the shop front window. The plastic grocery bag clung to the tire of the truck for a second before the icy breeze pushed it along.
"You sell dog food here?" Joshua asked, scratching his dark brown scruff of a beard.
"Nah, you'll have to go down the road to the Stop & Shop for that. It's closed at this hour, though." I wasn't in the mood for talking and really just wanted him to leave the gas station and be on his way. I liked the night shift because you see almost no customers at 3am. He was interrupting my reading time. God bless New Jersey for having a law that you can't pump your own gas.
"Hmm," Joshua said. "Well, okay then. Guess I'll swing out there tomorrow."
The pump finally stopped, and I returned the nozzle. I handed Joshua his card along with the receipt.
"Forty-seven fifty-four," I said.
"Thanks, kid. Say, do you know where the nearest hardware store is?"
"There's a mom & pop on Breeker Road, but they don't have much of a selection, so you may just want to head over to Hammonton." I shifted on my feet, trying to keep my blood going. It was only about 35 degrees out, and the wind made it feel even colder than that. I'd always been fairly thin, but Lydia had recently decided she liked kale, which apparently meant I liked kale, too. So, I was a bit thinner than usual, and the wind blew right through me.
"Thanks," Joshua said. "Not much out here in the Pine Barrens, is there?"
"There's enough."
"Guess so." His gaze bore into me, and the wind gusted. A shiver ran down my spine. I wondered why he hadn't left yet. Uncomfortably, I paced back a few steps, toward the rear of the truck. The Pennsylvania plate stuck to the bumper flickered white, blue and yellow in the faint light from the shop.
I stepped back up to the truck window, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jacket. "So, what brings you into town?" I asked, trying to be polite. You don't get to be the number one gas station in town just by being the only gas station in town. You gotta put on the charm sometimes.
"Beekeeping."
It was an odd answer, and I really didn't know what he meant by "beekeeping," but I honestly didn't care at the time. I wanted him out of there. He could have told me he was dealing coke and I would have smiled and waved just the same as he drove off. But that wasn't the case. The man said "beekeeping" and then I said "cool" and he drove off and that was that—my first encounter with Joshua Rider.
I headed into the gas station and sat back down behind the register, picking up the magazine I'd been looking through earlier. Instead of thinking about what Joshua Rider might have been doing, my mind wandered to Lydia. I wondered how serious she was about leaving. I hoped she wouldn't—I won't say I was in love with the girl, but the idea of her being gone was unsettling.
I didn't even entertain the idea of going with her when she left. The thought never entered my mind, much like thoughts of Joshua Rider and what he might have been up to that night.
He'd probably checked into the Super 8 down the road. I wonder if he'd planned to move to Millstone, or if he'd meant to be just passing through. I wonder if he saw the old farmhouse on his drive that evening—up for sale and abandoned—and felt some strange compulsion to buy it on the spot, or if he'd planned to move there all along.
I won't ever find that out now, not that it matters anyway, but I do wonder about it—the man that the wind blew in. I wonder about Joshua Rider a lot, to be honest. I wonder if any of it actually had anything to do with him, or if he was simply a pawn that unfortunately landed itself in the grasp of something sinister.